The New York TIMES generated some chatter on the Internets for a report that ‘herd immunity’ may not occur in the United States..
Though American cases have yet again been falling, perhaps that seasonal spring sun has worked to get people in fresh air again.. also 100 million vaccines have been administered in the United States. The rest of the world has seen a surge of the scourge, but to date North America has been watching a reprieve in the hell.
Apoorva Mandavilli writes this in the TIMES:
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives. Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever. Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
The TIMES article focuses on the dwindling vaccination rates, and the variants. Mandavilla writes, “It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.”
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The world deserves truth and now fanciful lies and feel good ”flatten the curve” style phrases. People need to realize that this virus will undoubtedly now stay in circulation for the foreseeable future. It will not go away.. with time and medical intervention, there will be a lessening degree of severity. But it should never be assumed that this can be eradicated 100% ..
That said, some of the perilous stories about vaccine compliance dropping forgets one more thing: Natural immunity .. there are some estimate that up to 1/3 of Americans already had COVID at some point during the previous year..
That adds to the notion of ‘herd’ immunity.
However, there is one more thing to consider: The question of how long immunity will last.
We have seen stories of vaccinated people getting COVID. Or those who had the virus getting it again.. Even some stories from other nations have dropped stating that people get TWO COVIDS (two variants) at one time!
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It is fascinating to consider the ‘flatten the curve’ stay at home world of 2020.. This from the TIMES:
Once the novel coronavirus began to spread across the globe in early 2020, it became increasingly clear that the only way out of the pandemic would be for so many people to gain immunity — whether through natural infection or vaccination — that the virus would run out of people to infect. The concept of reaching herd immunity became the implicit goal in many countries, including the United States.
DEVELOPING..