Guardian: 'Herd immunity now seems impossible. Welcome to the age of Covid reinfection.
The virus is now embedded in our world. But there are steps we can take to keep it at bay while we continue to live our lives.'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/herd-immunity-covid-reinfection-virus-world
[What do I wish I had known in early 2020? Other than to buy shares in toilet paper, Zoom and vaccine companies, I wish I had known that a safe and effective vaccine against severe disease and death from Covid-19 would arrive within a year – and that reinfection would nevertheless become a major issue in managing the disease. These two facts would have shifted the UK government’s response, and allowed for a more unified scientific front in advising them.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, several governments – including in Sweden, Netherlands and the UK – believed the best path through this crisis was to allow a controlled spread of infections through the population, especially the young and healthy, in order to reach some static state against the virus. The idea was that “the herd” who got infected would protect a more vulnerable minority.
This concept came from our approach to other vaccines, in which we inoculate the majority of children against, for example, measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) in order to protect those who cannot be vaccinated due to health conditions. If Sars-CoV-2 only infected people once, or vaccinated people couldn’t catch Covid (ie if infection or vaccination resulted in lifelong immunity) then herd immunity would be possible. By now, we would have eliminated Covid completely in the richer world where seroprevalence – estimates of antibody levels – are more than 90%, and in Britain as high as 98%.
However, this is far from the position we’re in. The rising number of documented reinfections, sometimes occurring relatively quickly after the initial infection, as well as the high number of infections with the Omicron variant among the fully vaccinated, means that herd immunity is likely impossible – even if seroprevalence hits 100%. Relying on herd immunity to manage Covid-19 rather than on the strategies of east Asian countries to suppress it until a vaccine was available was a gamble that Britain took early in March and unfortunately lost. Especially given the presence of variants, Sars-CoV-2 will just keep circulating and reinfecting people.]
There's much more text and photos at the link. This is a very long Opinion piece and
while it's focused on The U.K. Experience it is very informative and useful.
My takeaway is: Keep mask and vax mandates in place. Of course, that's my plan.
And don't trust governments, The WHO, The NHS or The CDC. Of course, I've
followed that from the beginning too. Surviving is a lot of work but it's worth it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
