In the case of COVID-19, why the flock’s immunity may not be sufficient

Wouldn’t it be better to just circulate the virus until the flock’s immunity was reached? Originally appeared Quora: A place to gain and share knowledge. Helps people learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer Along Gwen Emer, Emergency public health at the Red Cross Red Crescent Society, session:

Immunity is very complex. For clarity, I specialize in infectious diseases and disasters. I’m not an immunologist, so I keep this at a fairly high level. That said, it’s still unclear if COVID-19 can be obtained more than once, or what “immunity” looks like. Examining other viruses, if some results remain, complete immunity (you can’t catch the virus again like a scuff), partial immunity (before it’s not too bad a second time) If you have, or are initially immune, but over time your immunity weakens), you lose all your immunity (a common cold, caused by various types of coronaviruses, over and over again. It can also be transmitted), or some viruses such as dengue are even more dangerous a second or third time. The best bet is for everyone, whether or not they had COVID-19 before, as it is not yet known exactly how our immune system “remembers” how it reacts to COVID-19. To assume that COVID-19 is not immune. And while we don’t plan on the basis of what we want to be true, we’re not really sure. Maybe this will change as we learn, but for now we have to make this assumption.

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When talking about individual immunity, the issue of “flock immunity” often comes up. Herd immunity occurs when the majority of the population is immune to an infectious disease, either through vaccination or because they have previously survived the disease and developed immunity. Some people Absent Immunity can still protect from illness Indirectly This is because not everyone who is already immune will get sick or spread the disease further, but will protect those who do not. Depending on how contagious the infection is, 70-90% of the population usually needs to be immune to achieve immunity to the herd.

So why not circulate the virus that causes COVID-19 until you get immunity to the herd? There are two problems with this approach. The first is that we don’t really know if immunity to this virus is present or if it can be achieved because we don’t know how long it will last. But even so, for example, if 80% of the world’s population has COVID-19, we would be talking about “achieving” herd immunity. Using today’s numbers to calculate the back of the envelope, about 20% of people who test positive for COVID-19 have moderate to severe illness and 2% die. Then 6.2 Billion The number of cases is 1.25 billion moderate to severe cases (needs hospitalization or may have long-term nerve, kidney, heart, or lung problems), and 25 million deaths. I will. Isn’t that okay for me?

Of course, you can participate in all sorts of discussions about these numbers. Are there many mild cases that you are currently overlooking? perhaps. Will more people survive over time as they learn how to treat them? Maybe, but maybe hundreds of millions of people will die more because we know we couldn’t provide quality treatment. Looking at mortality rates in places like Qatar (0.2%) and Iceland (0.5%), even with the best scenario, we are talking about 12 to 31 million deaths. We know that there is no medical system in the world that could achieve this. Regardless of this calculation method, we are still in a terrible situation.

We also hear social and economic claims to make the virus “coexist” more freely and easily. You can adapt your social and economic life to normal while controlling the transmission of the virus. In contrast, when the transmission of the virus is out of control, many people die and everyone is scared. This has a huge social and economic impact. Controlling epidemics through public health measures Absent It’s harder to live with than to distribute it widely. Let’s be clear: treatment is no worse than illness!

we Have Focus on preventing and stopping viral infections.

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