Quote:
|
It doesn't need to. It needs to control transmission and avoid community spread. If you monitor health, test those with symptoms or who have been in close contact with someone positive, isolate those who need it and have near-universal universal use of masks, you're past the need for lock down to control it. Between this and SARS, we have lots of examples of how this happens.
|
But until you have that magical 60-70% of people infected to have herd immunity, you can't allow liberal travel to and from other countries. I understand the logic, but isn't that strategy elongating the timetable for return to normal robust trade and travel?
Quote:
|
Having more sick people puts us behind, not ahead. Again, everyone being sick at once is not herd immunity, it's uncontrolled spread. Maybe it will eventually lead to herd immunity, as long as you ignore the inevitable contact with populations that don't have it.
|
I've heard the argument that herd immunity is a strategy - that it's defined as carefully reaching the needed infection threshold. But this misinterprets the term. Herd immunity is a goal. If you get there by mass infection which is uncontrolled, I agree, that's not the best way to do so. But however you get there, you get there. If through mass uncontrolled infection, 60-70% of US residents acquire the virus, then we have reached herd immunity. The wisdom or folly of how we got there is a separate issue.
On your last point, I agree that if you think of the herd as the whole planet, any single country achieving herd immunity is not global herd immunity. But the construct under which the countries which have "beaten" the virus for the moment are operating is nation-centric. They're defining the sphere about which they are concerned as the population within their own borders.
