Epidemiologists call the level where the epidemic ends the “herd immunity” threshold. Herd immunity does not mean that the virus has completely disappeared, only that it can no longer infect a critical mass of people and become an epidemic again.
Figuring out when a virus has reached herd immunity is very tricky, even trickier than estimating the death rate. It depends heavily on the virus’s reproduction number, or R — how many people one infected person infects in turn.
The higher the R, the more quickly a virus will spread, and the more people must be infected before the epidemic breaks. Coronavirus seemed at first to be highly contagious, and most scientists initially believed that 60 percent to 80 percent of people might need to be infected before herd immunity was reached.
But the R for the coronavirus seems to vary wildly at different times and places. Also, some people may have some pre-existing immunity because of their exposure to other coronaviruses.
A growing number of scientists believe the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower. Some predict it might be 40 percent. Others say it could be as low as 20 percent — meaning that the epidemic will burn out after only 1 in 5 people is infected with and recovers from the virus.
And real-world evidence — from Sweden, from Sunbelt states like Arizona, and now from the Brazilian city of Manaus — provides very encouraging evidence that the immunity threshold may be well below 50 percent. Sweden, Arizona and Manaus don’t have much in common, but in all of them the epidemic burned out relatively quickly, without hard lockdowns, and after a relatively low number of people were infected based on antibody tests.
If we can actually reach herd immunity after 40 percent or less of the population is infected, far fewer people will die than the early forecasts, even without lockdowns. And if the best-case estimates of 20 percent or less are correct, we may be closer to the end than the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic. It’s still too early to be certain — but maybe for the first time since March, we have real reason to hope.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/25/we-co...ccine-is-ready/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
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But NY Post.
This dude Berenson may get a Pulitzer one day for his ‘against the orthodoxy’ reporting on COVID. The reason it’s in the NY Post and not the NYT is because the latter is on COVID Team Orthodoxy. And in a big way.
At any rate, Berenson lays herd immunity out in easily understood lay terms. This is what real journalism looks like. Note the lack of ‘scientists say’.
If you come across an article with sentences prefaced with ‘scientists say’ then the writer either doesn’t know how to report on the subject or they have an agenda. If you want to print an article that favors your own POV, quote only those scientists that agree with said POV and preface sentences with ‘scientists say’. It works like magic on the lemmings.
The left perfected this with climate change. They used the same tactic on HCQ: believe it or not there are doctors—lots of them, who have good reason to think early HCQ intervention is effective vs COVID infections. And doctors are practicing medical science. In short, they are scientists.
So when someone says ‘scientists say’ there is no COVID herd immunity they are either misinformed or they have an agenda. They are basically saying they are only willing to listen to select scientists on the subject.
