As vaccines roll out, some are starting to talk about the ‘herd immunity’ that they could bring.. Released documents from the Trump Administration also show they secretly desired herd immunity by allowing more infections..
But what is herd immunity.. and can it even be achieved with COVID-19?
By definition, this is what herd immunity is: resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination.
This time we are experiencing a novel virus, so this notion of the old rules may apply or could be quite different..
Richard Horton, the editor of THE LANCET, a famous British medical journal, says that we are living through a tornado.
He also opined on the idea of herd immunity:
To reach herd immunity, about two-thirds of the world population – four billion to five billion people – need to be vaccinated. Each person has to have two doses – that is 10 billion doses of the vaccine. This has never been done before. We can be confident in the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. But the pandemic will not be solved by next Easter or next summer. It will take the whole of 2021 and well into 2022, if you think of the global challenge.
The last time the globe faced a medical challenge of this nature was the Spanish Flu — though that seemingly was much more deadly and terrible in its impact, but modern society then was not what it was today. So the comparison actually is probably not as fair as comparing the impact of COVID to, say, the 2009 Swine Flu..
Anyway, Dr. John Whyte, Chief Medical Officer at WebMD, gave a history lesson about how that mother of all pandemics finally came to an end:
Well, probably in the summer, but not necessarily, there was a short, mild wave of influenza. Since we don’t have viral samples, we can’t really prove that. But we do know that in the fall of 1918, influenza, which we have since discovered was the H1N1 strain of influenza, ripped through the world, basically, and particularly the United States. And then there was a second wave or surge in the January to April part of 1919, which was pretty darn bad, but not as bad as the fall one. And then there was another surge, by the way, that nobody talks about, in the winter of 1920.
Well, by the time it was over, probably 40 million people around the world died. In the United States alone, anywhere from 550 to 750,000 people died, and at least 10 million Americans got very, very sick with influenza, which as you know is not a common cold, not a mild infection. It makes you quite ill indeed. There was very little medical care as we understand it. A hospital was basically a bed and maybe somebody feeding you hot liquids. There was no IVs, no antibiotics. And a lot of people who got the flu got a secondary bacterial pneumonia. And that’s what killed them, because there was no medication for that.
He went on to say,
Let’s be clear about this term of herd immunity. And I’m telling you this is an old pediatrician. Herd immunity was never developed as a population kind of a measure when a virus spreads through a particular community. It was based on active immunity, giving people immunizations, giving lots of children immunizations, for example, for measles, mumps. And when you immunized actively, 90 or more of percent of a community, then when that infection came into that community, subsequently, it would not spread.
The notion of letting it rip and letting a lot of people get it– first of all, you would never get levels of 60% to 90%, which is what people are estimating you would need. 20% simply wouldn’t do it. And what is the point of living in the 21st century, if we’re relying on 13th century methodologies of letting it spread throughout a community to protect us? Not to mention the incredible expense of taking care of people and the terrible tragedy of those who would die.
AND ON HOW IT ENDS:
As a doctor, I make prognoses all the time, however. There’s a wonderful poem by TS Eliot, this is the way the world ends, with a whimper, not a bang. And it was written in 1925, but I’m blanking on the title of the poem. But will it just go away? Will it just vanish, like a miracle? Well, hopefully. I think, what the magic bullet that will protect us, and then end this nightmare, will be a safe, potent, and effective vaccine.
DEVELOPING ALL YEAR …
AND APPARENTLY IN 2021 TOO..
