Originally Posted by
Knobcrk1
“Our results suggest that the overwhelming effects of COVID-19 may have less to do with the virus’ lethality and more to do with how quickly it was able to spread through communities initially,” Silverman explained. “A lower fatality rate coupled with a higher prevalence of disease and rapid growth of regional epidemics provides an alternative explanation to the large number of deaths and overcrowding of hospitals we have seen in certain areas of the world.”
Your own articles go against you. “herd immunity” means mass deaths as it overwhelms the system. It’s literally in your article. Keep trying.
You appear to be math challenged. If the actual rate of coronavirus infection is what Penn State is suggesting, that is 80 TIMES what we have been counting, then the case-fatality rate is one-eightieth of what we have been saying it is. If they are right - and they may or may not be, their method hasn’t yet had time for full peer review - then there is really no stopping herd immunity. It’s going to happen long before any of the vaccines in development are going to be available, even assuming one of them is effective. The ship will have long since sailed.
Can mitigation efforts slow it down enough to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed? Very possibly. But it also indicates that a community acquired infection - with a low dose inoculum - is going to be far safer than a nursing home acquired infection or even an infection acquired by a young healthcare worker in a nursing home or hospital. But if the infection rate is truly 80 times what we have been lead to believe, no amount of testing and contract tracing will stop it and we will ultimately all become infected.