Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year

Re:Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year by ggreer on Monday July 06, 2020 @04:07PM (#23752146)

Herd immunity would require that over half of the population get the disease.[1] (Probably closer to 70% based on the virus's R0.) With an IFR of 0.5%, that would mean around 0.25-0.35% of the population has to die before we get herd immunity. No country has come close to that many deaths yet, so we shouldn't expect any of them to have herd immunity.

1. See figure 2 in this paper for a graph of the relationship between R0 and herd immunity thresholds: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-pdf/52/7/911/847338/cir...

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Re:Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year by ShroudedNight on Monday July 06, 2020 @06:09PM (#23753364)

> Herd immunity would require that over half of the population get the disease.

Doesn't this also assume that those people remain inoculated to further viral infections after being infected the first time? From my limited understanding, that is not a given for SARS-CoV-2.

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Re:Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year by ggreer on Monday July 06, 2020 @06:20PM (#23753459)

Correct. This is an optimistic scenario for herd immunity. It assumes low mortality (probably true), no permanent damage to those who survive (unclear, but probably untrue), and immunity lasting a couple years (long enough to remain immune until a vaccine is available).

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