[Robnlaura]

Originally Posted by Robbie0723

COVID-19 herd immunity? It’s not going to happen, so what next?

August 3, 2021 5.55am EDT
Shabir A. Madhi,

COVID-19 herd immunity? It's not going to happen, so what next?

The best hope of beating the pandemic is to vaccinate as many people as soon as possible.

Any notion that COVID-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. This is what happened in the flu epidemic of 1918.

Herd immunity isn’t achievable. We need to learn to live with COVID-19

In addition very few scientists predicted that we would see the type of mutations that occurred over such a short period of time. This has resulted in the virus becoming both more transmissible and more able to evade immune responses.

The evolution of the virus has been so rapid that the Delta variant, which is currently dominating the world, is at least twice as transmissible as the ancestral virus that was circulating.

What this means is that herd immunity is no longer a discussion the world should be having. We should start to avoid using that term in the context of SARS-CoV-2, because it’s not going to materialise – or is unlikely to materialise – during our lifetimes.

When politicians and others speak about herd immunity, unfortunately, they are under the misconception that the current tools we’ve got are adequate to eliminate the virus. It’s not what we have at hand right now.

Instead we should be talking about how to live with the virus. The tremendous success that’s materialised with COVID-19 vaccines allows us to do this, without actually getting into the herd immunity threshold.

Peddling the concept of herd immunity creates a misconception that we are actually going to get to a stage where this virus is going to be eliminated. That’s unlikely to happen. It will continue circulating.

There are a number of dangers in continuing to make people believe it’s possible.

Firstly, it could dent confidence in vaccines. Even if South Africa gets to its target of 67% of the population being vaccinated – as set out by the Department of Health – there will still be outbreaks of COVID-19. The result will be that people begin to doubt the benefits of being vaccinated. Also, for the now dominant Delta variant, immunity against infection (not only COVID-19 illness) would need to be closer to 84% for the “herd immunity” threshold to be reached.

Secondly, failing to face up to the reality that herd immunity can’t be achieved will mean that countries like South Africa will continue to believe that ongoing restrictions will get them there. That will compromise the lives of people on multiple fronts – including education and livelihoods.

What is herd immunity?

Herd immunity is when someone infected by the virus won’t, on average, infect another person. So you reach a state where the immunity in the population against infection by the virus is such that there are too few people in the environment for sustained onward transmission to take place to others.

This is because they’ve developed immunity against being infected, or at least have developed immunity to the extent where even if they were infected, they would be able to clear the virus very quickly and wouldn’t be able to transmit it to other people.

So herd immunity essentially means that you have brought about an absolute interruption in the chain of transmission of the virus in the population in the absence of other interventions that too could interrupt virus transmission such as wearing of face masks.

But some changes have forced a shift in our thinking about herd immunity. It’s now viewed much more as an aspiration rather than actual goal.

What’s changed

Firstly, the evolution of the virus and the mutations that have occurred.

One set of mutations made the virus much more transmissible or infectious. The Delta variant is just such an example. Initially we thought the SARS-CoV-2 reproductive rate was between 2.5 and 4. In other words, in a fully susceptible population every one person infected would on average infect about two and a half to four other people. But the Delta variant is at least twofold more transmissible. That means that the reproductive rate of the Delta variant is probably closer to six rather than three.

The second change is that the virus has shown an ability to have mutations that make it resistant to antibody neutralising activity induced by past infection from the original virus, as well as antibody responses induced by most of the current COVID-19 vaccines.

The third big issue centres on the durability of protection. Our memory responses are lasting for at least six to nine months at the moment. But that doesn’t mean that they will protect us against infection from variants that are evolving, even if such memory responses do assist in attenuating the clinical course of the infection leading to less severe COVID-19.

The fourth issue conspiring against us being able to reach a herd immunity threshold any time soon is the inequitable distribution of vaccine across the world, the slow uptake and the sluggish rollout. Unfortunately, this provides fertile ground for ongoing evolution of the virus.

No country is going to lock its borders perpetually. This means the entire global population needs to reach the same sort of threshold round about the same time. At the moment just 1% of the populations of low-income countries have been vaccinated. And 27% of the global population.

With the Delta variant, we would need to get close to 84% of the global population developing protection against infection (in the absence of non-pharmacological interventions) in as brief a period of time as possible.

Next steps

The only sustainable solution is to learn to live with the virus.

This will require ensuring that we get the majority of individuals, especially adults, and particularly those at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 and dying, vaccinated as quickly as possible. In my view this could be achieved in South Africa with 20 million people vaccinated – not the 40 million target set by the government. But the 20 million would need to include 90% of people above the age of 60, and 90% of people above the age of 35 who have co-morbidities.

If South Africa achieved this milestone, it could get back to a relatively normal lifestyle even with the virus continuing to circulate and causing the occasional outbreak. It would also ensure a threshold that guaranteed its healthcare systems weren’t going to be overwhelmed, and that people were not going to die in large numbers.

We are simply going to have to become comfortable with the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is going to be like one of the numerous other viruses that circulate that cause respiratory illness each day. Usually mild infections, and less often a severe disease.

So people will, unfortunately, continue dying of COVID-19, but certainly not at the magnitude that’s been seen over the past 18 months. A major advance would be for COVID-19 to be no more severe than what is seen every influenza season (10,000 to 11,000 deaths) in South Africa.

The UK experience is where we should be heading. That is getting back to a relatively normal lifestyle, provided that we’ve got a adequate number of people vaccinated, and particularly people who are at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19.

The UK is currently close to 85% of adults that have already received at least a single dose of the vaccine. As a result they’re able to remove almost all restrictions.

The UK is seeing an increase in number of cases of the Delta variant. But they’ve seen very nominal changes when it comes to hospitalisation and death. The vast majority of people (97%) who still end up being hospitalised and dying of COVID-19 in the UK are those who decided not to be vaccinated

Ons vir jou suid afrika
South Africa has unique challenges superstition is a big big factor 70% of people missed their vaccine appointments in South Africa alone it will be a long long haul to get to herd immunity

[CFrance]

Originally Posted by GeriS

“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” – Revelation 13:17

“Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against a whole world, in defense of their conviction.” – Mahatma Gandhi

The first is cherry picking out of the bible--and not very relevant to the current situation--to suit one's own belief.


The second is a faith-based opinion that has nothing to do with science, from one of the original anti-vaxxers, talking about small pox vaccination. A hundred--hundred!-- years ago. Opinions and faith-based ideas that differ from what's empirically established is not valid science.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by GeriS

We have a solution for covid but it has been kept from us...HCQ & Ivermectin. Many doctors attest to this. Look us Front Line Doctors, Natural News and so much more if you would just look.

This post would be absolutely correct, IF you just substitute the word "quacks" for "doctors"

[toeser]

Originally Posted by Robbie0723

COVID-19 herd immunity? It’s not going to happen, so what next?

August 3, 2021 5.55am EDT
Shabir A. Madhi,

COVID-19 herd immunity? It's not going to happen, so what next?

The best hope of beating the pandemic is to vaccinate as many people as soon as possible.

Any notion that COVID-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. This is what happened in the flu epidemic of 1918.

Herd immunity isn’t achievable. We need to learn to live with COVID-19

In addition very few scientists predicted that we would see the type of mutations that occurred over such a short period of time. This has resulted in the virus becoming both more transmissible and more able to evade immune responses.

The evolution of the virus has been so rapid that the Delta variant, which is currently dominating the world, is at least twice as transmissible as the ancestral virus that was circulating.

What this means is that herd immunity is no longer a discussion the world should be having. We should start to avoid using that term in the context of SARS-CoV-2, because it’s not going to materialise – or is unlikely to materialise – during our lifetimes.

When politicians and others speak about herd immunity, unfortunately, they are under the misconception that the current tools we’ve got are adequate to eliminate the virus. It’s not what we have at hand right now.

Instead we should be talking about how to live with the virus. The tremendous success that’s materialised with COVID-19 vaccines allows us to do this, without actually getting into the herd immunity threshold.

Peddling the concept of herd immunity creates a misconception that we are actually going to get to a stage where this virus is going to be eliminated. That’s unlikely to happen. It will continue circulating.

There are a number of dangers in continuing to make people believe it’s possible.

Firstly, it could dent confidence in vaccines. Even if South Africa gets to its target of 67% of the population being vaccinated – as set out by the Department of Health – there will still be outbreaks of COVID-19. The result will be that people begin to doubt the benefits of being vaccinated. Also, for the now dominant Delta variant, immunity against infection (not only COVID-19 illness) would need to be closer to 84% for the “herd immunity” threshold to be reached.

Secondly, failing to face up to the reality that herd immunity can’t be achieved will mean that countries like South Africa will continue to believe that ongoing restrictions will get them there. That will compromise the lives of people on multiple fronts – including education and livelihoods.

What is herd immunity?

Herd immunity is when someone infected by the virus won’t, on average, infect another person. So you reach a state where the immunity in the population against infection by the virus is such that there are too few people in the environment for sustained onward transmission to take place to others.

This is because they’ve developed immunity against being infected, or at least have developed immunity to the extent where even if they were infected, they would be able to clear the virus very quickly and wouldn’t be able to transmit it to other people.

So herd immunity essentially means that you have brought about an absolute interruption in the chain of transmission of the virus in the population in the absence of other interventions that too could interrupt virus transmission such as wearing of face masks.

But some changes have forced a shift in our thinking about herd immunity. It’s now viewed much more as an aspiration rather than actual goal.

What’s changed

Firstly, the evolution of the virus and the mutations that have occurred.

One set of mutations made the virus much more transmissible or infectious. The Delta variant is just such an example. Initially we thought the SARS-CoV-2 reproductive rate was between 2.5 and 4. In other words, in a fully susceptible population every one person infected would on average infect about two and a half to four other people. But the Delta variant is at least twofold more transmissible. That means that the reproductive rate of the Delta variant is probably closer to six rather than three.

The second change is that the virus has shown an ability to have mutations that make it resistant to antibody neutralising activity induced by past infection from the original virus, as well as antibody responses induced by most of the current COVID-19 vaccines.

The third big issue centres on the durability of protection. Our memory responses are lasting for at least six to nine months at the moment. But that doesn’t mean that they will protect us against infection from variants that are evolving, even if such memory responses do assist in attenuating the clinical course of the infection leading to less severe COVID-19.

The fourth issue conspiring against us being able to reach a herd immunity threshold any time soon is the inequitable distribution of vaccine across the world, the slow uptake and the sluggish rollout. Unfortunately, this provides fertile ground for ongoing evolution of the virus.

No country is going to lock its borders perpetually. This means the entire global population needs to reach the same sort of threshold round about the same time. At the moment just 1% of the populations of low-income countries have been vaccinated. And 27% of the global population.

With the Delta variant, we would need to get close to 84% of the global population developing protection against infection (in the absence of non-pharmacological interventions) in as brief a period of time as possible.

Next steps

The only sustainable solution is to learn to live with the virus.

This will require ensuring that we get the majority of individuals, especially adults, and particularly those at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 and dying, vaccinated as quickly as possible. In my view this could be achieved in South Africa with 20 million people vaccinated – not the 40 million target set by the government. But the 20 million would need to include 90% of people above the age of 60, and 90% of people above the age of 35 who have co-morbidities.

If South Africa achieved this milestone, it could get back to a relatively normal lifestyle even with the virus continuing to circulate and causing the occasional outbreak. It would also ensure a threshold that guaranteed its healthcare systems weren’t going to be overwhelmed, and that people were not going to die in large numbers.

We are simply going to have to become comfortable with the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is going to be like one of the numerous other viruses that circulate that cause respiratory illness each day. Usually mild infections, and less often a severe disease.

So people will, unfortunately, continue dying of COVID-19, but certainly not at the magnitude that’s been seen over the past 18 months. A major advance would be for COVID-19 to be no more severe than what is seen every influenza season (10,000 to 11,000 deaths) in South Africa.

The UK experience is where we should be heading. That is getting back to a relatively normal lifestyle, provided that we’ve got a adequate number of people vaccinated, and particularly people who are at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19.

The UK is currently close to 85% of adults that have already received at least a single dose of the vaccine. As a result they’re able to remove almost all restrictions.

The UK is seeing an increase in number of cases of the Delta variant. But they’ve seen very nominal changes when it comes to hospitalisation and death. The vast majority of people (97%) who still end up being hospitalised and dying of COVID-19 in the UK are those who decided not to be vaccinated

I accept the premise of your post which is why I simply do not understand our government's lack of interest in therapeutics? Many doctors have written that they have had considerable success with new and existing drugs in the treatment of COVID, yet I have also read that hospitals routinely are not using them. Why? I know some people are down on any kind of treatment because an unnamed former president suggested some, but that is not an intelligent way to make decisions.

If we accept that this virus is going to be around from a long time to forever, let's embrace finding effective ways of treating it.

[ffresh]

Originally Posted by joseppe

Segregation of vaccinated and non-vaccinated may be forthcoming.

A New State of Segregation: Vaccine Cards Are Just the Beginning - LewRockwell

[Gray lady of the sea]

Thank you so much for your post. I couldn’t agree more.

[G.R.I.T.S.]

Originally Posted by Robbie0723

Delta just dramatically pushed the herd immunity threshold higher.

And immunized individuals can still be carriers.

Florida: 95% of hospitalizations -Unvaccinated.
100 deaths: almost all -unvaccinated.
Vaccines: not 100% but upwards of 90% effective in preventing infection and offer protection in the event of infection.

[CFrance]

Originally Posted by Gray lady of the sea

Thank you so much for your post. I couldn’t agree more.

Which post... Who is being thanked?

[msu69er]

The case rate among fully vaccinated is very, very low.

COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases: Data from the States | KFF

To quote from the above link:

Overall, we find that:

Half of states (25) report some data on COVID-19 breakthrough events (see Table 1). Twenty-four provide data on breakthrough cases, 19 on hospitalizations and on deaths.
Fifteen of these states regularly update these data, often on a weekly basis. The rest use a different frequency, have one-time reports, have stopped updating, or have an unclear reporting frequency.
The data reported from these states indicate that breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are extremely rare events among those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (see Figure 1). The rate of breakthrough cases reported among those fully vaccinated is well below 1% in all reporting states, ranging from 0.01% in Connecticut to 0.29% in Alaska.
The hospitalization rate among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 ranged from effectively zero (0.00%) in California, Delaware, D.C., Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, and Virginia to 0.06% in Arkansas. (Note: Hospitalization may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)
The rates of death among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 were even lower, effectively zero (0.00%) in all but two reporting states, Arkansas and Michigan where they were 0.01%. (Note: Deaths may or may not have been due to COVID-19.)

The surge in COVID is occurring among the unvaccinated.

The solution to COVID, and getting back to life as “normal” is: Get vaccinated.

[Altavia]

Originally Posted by MandoMan

Just to cheer you up, take note of the Lambda variant, for which the vaccine seems not to work or not to work as well. I read yesterday in Newsweek online that it’s the dominant form in Peru, and there are about a thousand cases in the US so far. Don’t throw away those masks and gloves or that hand sanitizer. What if new variants keep popping up and shutting us down for the next century? What if a new variant also has a much higher death rate?

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say

[oneclickplus]

Originally Posted by Robbie0723

Delta just dramatically pushed the herd immunity threshold higher.

And immunized individuals can still be carriers.

Since all (vaccinated or not) are now seen as major spreaders of the contagious Delta variant, the only differentiator is who gets sick. Why are you (no one specific; just the reader in general) all worried about those not willing to get vaccinated (me and millions of others)? It's not like the unvaccinated are a special risk to anyone. Your fellow vaccinated citizen is just as likely to be infected and contagious as all the talking heads are saying right now.

All you vaccinated folk can infect each other without any help from me or others. You can also catch and spread the virus to all the "vulnerable" population (elderly, sick, immune compromised, etc) all by yourselves.

So, why the passports? Lockdowns? Masks? F*cking the economy up? Now, it's even move obvious that it's all about control. The only people at risk are those CHOOSING not to get vaccinated. Let me take my risk. Don't worry about me. Go about your lives.

It would now seem, given the current parameters, that we should just put COVID-19 on ignore. According to the experts, there is no reason to ask anyone "are you vaccinated?" as your behavior should be the same no matter what the answer. The unwashed masses are not more likely to be infected / contagious / dangerous than all those who chose the path of putting an experimental cocktail in their arm (twice).

It boils down to this fact: The various rules then are simply to coerce vaccination.

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by G.R.I.T.S.

Florida: 95% of hospitalizations -Unvaccinated.
100 deaths: almost all -unvaccinated.
Vaccines: not 100% but upwards of 90% effective in preventing infection and offer protection in the event of infection.

Not just FL. Pretty much the same #s Nationally...

[Swoop]

Originally Posted by Robbie0723

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say

This quote is taken from the link you provided: “He adds that his team's analysis shows that almost every single one of the 100 million unvaccinated Americans who hasn't had COVID-19 yet will likely get it in the coming months”.
Based on that, we will achieve herd immunity pretty quickly…

[MaryShields]

Originally Posted by graciegirl

Your post seems reasonable and I agree. I said to my husband that I never thought that we would see such a time, EVER.

Very good post. I totally agree- we need to learn to live with the virus. Just like we live with the flu. There will be people who succumb to it as with any other virus. All measures are in place to protect us. Time to get back to normal life.

[Gizemo33]

Get the shots and we will get to Herd immunity quicker.