Originally Posted by
Excargodog
your ignorance just doesn’t quit, does it? I BELIEVE you have no idea what I’m talking about because you clearly don’t know even the basics of epidemiology.
Herd immunity is NOT an all or nothing response. Nor would ‘millions need to die.’ All that needs to happen is for enough people to become non susceptible for the Rt to become below 1.0. Sometimes that takes 96-97% of the population being immunized or recovered. Sometimes 10% will do. According to Gov. Cuomo, over 15% of New Yorkers tested positive for coronavirus antibodies.
But there are LOTS of ways to get down to Rt less than 1.0. Immunizations, for one thing. Or do like we have done - well, SINCE BIBLICAL TIMES, and quarantine THE CONTAGIOUS people rather than locking down the uninfected. Or do contact tracing isolation - like we’ve been doing with STD contacts pretty much for a hundred years.
look, nobody can help their ignorance, we are all born that way, but don’t spread yours. Take an epidemiology 101 course or something.
So, a few questions. What % of the population in the US needs to be infected for seeking herd immunity to be an effective strategy. Don’t forget we have no vaccine and no consensus that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t reinfect hosts.
If you contact trace effectively (that’s a big IF) and you isolate the the contagious, how long does that delay herd immunity? Don’t you need either a vaccine, exposure, or viral mutation to increase herd immunity?
It looks to me like:
In Jan/Feb
1. We didn’t have reliable nucleic acid tests.
2. We didn’t have reliable antibody tests.
3. We didn’t have enough contact tracers or people to train them.
4. We didn’t know the R0 until weeks after the fact but know it went to 3.9 (6.6 now discovered) at least.
5. We didn’t know if immunity or reinfection was possible.
6. We didn’t know how many asymptomatic transmitters there could be.
7. We didn’t know how many presymptomatic spreaders there could be or were.
8. We couldn’t derive an appropriate population exposure for herd immunity if it even works in this case (which it probably would in the long long run).
So with these uncertainties, you would have enacted your strategy of contact tracing, isolating the contagious, and left inter and intrastate travel open? Concerts ok? Restaurants ok? Parties ok? Packing into trains ok? Force at risk people to go to work or be fired?
Or would you have taken some other action? Why do you assume most of the world acted differently than you would have?