Nearly a year and a half into the global pandemic of the Chinese Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia), it remains unclear when the epidemic will end. In the United States, for example, a growing number of scientists believe that “herd immunity” seems unlikely at this point.
The New York Times reports that herd immunity is not possible because the virus is mutating faster than vaccination. Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University, told the paper that the coronavirus (a Chinese communist virus) is “unlikely to go away.
“But we’ll do everything we can to see if we can make it a mild infection,” he said. He said.
Herd immunity occurs when most people in a community are immune to an infectious disease. That means they can come into contact with people who have the disease without getting sick from it.
To date, no one knows exactly what the threshold for herd immunity to the CCP virus is.
In the early days, it was estimated that the target threshold for herd immunity might be reached when 60 to 70 percent of the population was vaccinated. Most experts at the time, including Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. disease expert, expected that the United States would be able to reach this goal once a vaccine became available.
However, as the number of vaccines introduced and distributed increased, herd immunity threshold estimates began to rise. This is because the initial valuation was based on the original version of the CCP virus being infectious. The main variant of strain B.1.1.7, the so-called British variant, which is now circulating in the United States, has seen a steep increase in transmissibility of about 60 percent.
Therefore, experts have newly calculated a herd immunity threshold of at least 80 percent. The calculation will have to be revised upward again if a more infectious variant emerges or if scientists find that people with immunity can still transmit the virus.
The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) predicted on April 25 that some areas of the country are approaching the “herd immunity” goal for the epidemic.
Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, has also said that herd immunity is expected to be achieved if up to 90 percent of the population is vaccinated or infected.
“I think the real range is somewhere between 70 and 90 percent.” Fauci told the New York Times that he does not believe the virus is more transmissible than measles, and that herd immunity for measles is in that range.
He said, “I would bet my house that COVID-19 (a disease caused by the Chinese communist virus) is not as contagious as measles.”
Now, however, Fauci admits that experts’ ideas about herd immunity have changed again.
“People are starting to get confused and think that unless you get to this mysterious level of herd immunity, you’re never going to be able to reduce the infection rate, no matter what that number is.” He said.
“That’s why we no longer use herd immunity in the traditional sense,” Fauci says, “and I would say forget that for a minute. You vaccinate enough people, and the infection rate will go down.”
Polls show that about 30 percent of the U.S. population is still reluctant to get vaccinated. Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says, “It’s theoretically possible that we could get to about 90 percent vaccination rates, but I don’t think it’s likely.”
Recent Comments