Well, perhaps this could be the first communicable disease of its kind that doesn't produce immunity in the survivors... Perhaps we should craft our response based on that assumption?

Oh, wait. We are...

How long does immunity last? How robust is it? How will we know what the cost would be, so we can make an informed decision on the tradeoffs? Do we have a robust model of the broad immunity response that can help make sound policy decisions?

(These are all honest questions, I’m not leading. I don’t know where to find this information summarized.)

Last I heard, antibodies have been lasting around 3 months, but T-Cell immunity is indefinite (so far none have stopped reacting to the virus).

Your 'of its kind' phrasing does all the work, and it's not justified. Plenty of viruses don't create useful immunity, from flu to AIDS to the other seasonal coronaviruses, where immunity length is in the order of a few months...

Don't we have evidence of reinfection?

We have anecdotes of reinfection. But on the whole, it is very, very uncommon. This suggests that there is some degree of lasting protection in most people.

There are a couple of such claims.

Planet-wide.

Can you name another communicable disease where "herd immunity through natural propagation" is the recommended treatment?

Even relatively less dangerous viruses, like influenza, have strong vaccination programs, and relatively more dangerous viruses (measles, mumps, smallpox, etc.) are only words I know because of the vaccines I got as a child. I can't think of a disease with a nontrivial mortality rate that we don't aggressively vaccinate and have public health measures to prevent. Can you?

> Can you name another communicable disease where "herd immunity through natural propagation" is the recommended treatment?

This was the standard of care for chickenpox (herpes zoster, aka shingles) until 10 or 20 years ago, for example. Sure, the mortality rate is lower, especially among healthy children.

> until 10 or 20 years ago

You're off by a decade and possibly two. I'm older than 20, I was vaccinated for Chickenpox. The vaccine has been commercially available for 35 years.

So I'd reiterate the question.

I'm less than a decade older than you (younger than 35!) and was intentionally exposed to chickenpox as a child at the advice of my pediatrician in the Seattle area. And I've had shingles in my 20s as well, so I'm certainly pro-vaccine.

There may have been a vaccine 35 years ago (I'll take your word for it), but it was not the standard of care even ~25 years ago.

(And to be clear, I'm not advocating for exposing people to COVID, at all. You asked a very broad question upthread with an easy counter-example — chickenpox — and I provided the counterexample.)

That’s complicated though. Getting it as an adult is REALLY nasty, hence the previous history to try and get it done as a kid. Now we immunise instead...

The govt offers chickenpox vaccines here in NZ for kids now. I think it has been a fairly recent addition to the vaccination schedule but it was definitely there 3 years ago when sprog number one arrived.

Sure, it’s been standard of care in the US for a while as well. I’m glad! That change happened sometime after my childhood.

~20 years ago, naturally getting it was the go-to in our area. The idea was "let's just get it over with", because the vaccine isn't 100% effective.

Well, back in the day if one kid got chicken pox other parents would bring their own children around so they could get the infection done and dusted. The younger the child the better.

It’s the default treatment.

Destroying civilization in the off chance that it might help is the approach that’s worrisome.

Can I get clarification on your second sentence? Are you saying that approaches like New Zealand's are destroying civilization?

A few weeks of lockdown destroyed civilisation? With the exception of international travel, life is more or less as per normal in NZ right now. What are you even talking about.

Months of lockdown have destroyed somewhere between a quarter and half of all small businesses in Canada.

The resultant unwinding of commercial real-estate debt hasn’t even begun. The deflationary spike and follow-on “riding the dragon” of inflationary response by central banks hasn’t even begun.

When we finish consuming our personal reserves, and begin in earnest to try to supply food and lodging to the, what, 50% of the population not “employed” by government, what do you guess is going to happen.

It will be illuminating, at least, to those who think they understand how civilization works...

How would antibody therapeutics be a thing if it didn’t produce a certain immunity in the survivors?