> But that does not mean that going for herd immunity is a bad thing.
One way or the other, end game is herd immunity. But when you let it just "go freely" you overshot - more people then is necessary for herd immunity will get sick.
Well the point is: it looks like we can go freely but only when we are not in closed spaces without good ventilation (and low humidity).
Studies [1] have shown that "20 percent of Covid-19 cases accounted for 80 percent of transmissions"
And those 20 percent were mostly 'Superspreading events'. We now know almost all those events were inside in bad ventilated areas.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/opinion/coronavirus-super...
Re:I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC
by hcknwscommenter on Thursday June 11, 2020 @02:24AM
(#23485751)
I think you are missing the point. We are long past the point of containment. We will get to herd immunity no matter what. The question becomes, how to do it safely. The answer is to have in place sufficient capacity. One can have sufficient capacity easily if R is kept low. There are other ways of getting there (i.e., actually increasing capacity), or a combination thereof.
We will hopefully not get hers immunity. Spain, Italy and Sweden are not close yet and they were pretty close to capacity, same with NYC. There is no safe way to get to herd immunity, it’s vaccine or nothing.
Re:I'm Married to an ER Doc in NYC
by dillonmckay on Thursday June 11, 2020 @05:48AM
(#23486963)
I agree with you. I have yet to see evidence that once somebody is infected, they cannot get re-infected.
Not to mention, the vaccine needs to work on the correct strain AND be administered to what, 70% of the population?
So I have no doubt that working as health worker without enough protective gear is scary when you see healthy collegues getting sick.
But that does not mean that going for herd immunity is a bad thing. We know now that most people even don't know they have the virus when they were just exposed a little bit to it.
And if the virus travels like an aerosol it might even be true that the world wide protests that are going on in the open air won't lead to much more sick people.
But this also means that people inside a bad ventilated building are at risk.
Edit: an example of an article that explains this more in depth: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200527/aerosol-scientist-c...