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Mon 30 Mar 2020, 15:57 (last edited on Mon 30 Mar 2020, 22:22)
"Surely “herd immunity” is a euphemism for euthanasia " No, and it's a paranoid and misleading interpretation. Herd immunity is a concept that has been around for many years in epidemiology. It's well a well respected and useful idea and actually protects some of the weakest once reached.
Herd immunity occurs when there are sufficient immune people that epidemics are unsustainable. It's very important or else those with comprised immune systems become vulnerable to infections. It's essentially the natural state that any population eventually reaches when exposed to an infectious disease. In the case of communicable diseases where we have vaccines, then this is, of course, the best way of achieving that status. With some, like measles, it requires 90-95% immunity in the population to achieve that level. With some diseases which don't transmit as well, it's a lot lower.
In the case of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which is now effectively endemic to the human population, it's something we will have to live with. Hopefully a vaccine can be produced, and a huge amount of effort is going into it. However, it seems unlikely that it there will be one that's generally available for at least 12 months, and that would be astonishingly fast progress. We have no approved vaccine for any other strain of corona virus (work was started on SARS and MERS, but is stopped when those pandemics were contained and its difficult to test a vaccine when there's no possible exposure).
The issue is what is the exit strategy for this lock-down? Are we going to go through an endless cycle of the controls going on and then coming off again (which, eventually will end up with "herd immunity"), but we might have years of that if a vaccine or effective treatment can't be developed.
The Chinese government still have tight controls, and they are making anybody who wants to travel install and app on their phone with a green or red status. It will keep track of everybody that you've been near (via this app). If any of those goes suspect, then your status will turn red and you will be in quarantine for 2 weeks. You won't be able to travel, or visit shops during that period. It's very intrusive and is the sort of measure that might be required to keep a constant lid on infection.
I really wish people would address the science and not decry the motives of scientists and epidemiologists. There are no easy answers; ultimately if the economy does not recover, then that will have its own enormous repercussions on health and well-being.
A lot of people are working on this, and accusing people of favouring euthanasia is not helpful.
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