Herd Immunity is a Giant "Fuck You" to Lots of People

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Source: CDC / WHO


There are two ways to beat the novel coronavirus. One is to take sufficient social steps to get R0 (reproduction rate, or "r naught") down low enough so that the virus burns itself out for want of new hosts. Estimates vary wildly, but current data suggests an R0 of around 2.5. We need to get it down to somewhere as low as 0.3, from what I understand. Doing so requires meaningful testing, contact tracing, and quarantine.

The other way is to achieve herd immunity, either via vaccine or via acquired immunity after infection or some combination of both.

It's pretty clear at this point that the U.S. is going for herd immunity rather than suppression of R0, given the Trump Administration is doing literally nothing that suggests the latter (and is in fact advocating for the former, albeit not explicitly). Basically the U.S. is doing what Sweden is doing, but without the honesty and without the social safety net and national healthcare system.

Herd immunity requires high infection rates, somewhere in the realm of 70-80% based on what literature I've seen. Some estimates are as low as 60%, but that seems to be an outlier on the low side. Likewise with 90%, and outlier on the high side. Put differently, the U.S. will achieve herd immunity once around 75% of the population has gotten COVID-19 and either died or recovered.

Given a population a bit over 330 million, that means 248M or so people need to be infected to confer herd immunity.

Although it's too early to be sure, it looks like the infection fatality rate is going to end up around .005, meaning that 1/2% of people who get the infection will die from it.

248M infected x .005 fatality rate = 1.24M dead to achieve herd immunity.

Obviously these estimates could be off, particularly the infection fatality rate. And I hope they are! As long as they're off on the high side, that is. But either way, we know what populations are most at risk. And that means that taking the herd-immunity approach is telling the old people -- and plenty of young people too, let's not forget -- that their lives just aren't worth the effort.

The Trump Administration, and the 40-ish percent of the country that enables it, is okay with that. It's apparently okay to say, as a society, "your life isn't worth the inconvenience of testing, tracing, and isolation. Good luck."

It's sickening.




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