Conditions like diabetes and hypertension exacerbate risk. There are multiple dimensions that put someone at risk for severe Covid-19. Herd immunity through natural infection is unethical because disadvantaged people are most at risk for getting very sick “Prolonged isolation of large swathes of the population is practically impossible and highly unethical,” a group of scientists representing the mainstream thinking writes in a letter they are calling the John Snow Memorandum (named after the “father” of modern epidemiology). One group has written a counter piece in the Lancet. That’s caused alarm among scientists who see through its thin scientific reasoning. The Barrington Declaration has been getting a lot of attention in the news and through viral social media posts. We’ve seen outbreaks that have begun in younger populations move on to infect older ones. Society doesn’t neatly separate itself into risk groups. “It just presumes this level of control that you can really wall off people who are at high risk,” Natalie Dean, a University of Florida biostatistician, told me earlier this year. And it could cause devastating unintended consequences. What people get wrong about herd immunity, explained by epidemiologistsĪnd yet there are ample reasons to fear that this “focused prevention” strategy of allowing the young and healthy to get sick to build population immunity to the virus would never work. “When younger, healthier people get infected, that’s a good thing,” he said in a July interview with a San Diego local news station. The declaration website says it has attracted thousands of signatures (though the names of those who signed have not been made public) and has fans on the right and at the White House, where pandemic adviser Scott Atlas (who is a neuroradiologist, not an epidemiologist) has previously suggested this is a good thing to do. The authors of the declaration - a trio of scientists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, whose views, we should say, are outside the mainstream - call their approach “focused prevention.” The big idea is that we could let the virus spread among younger, healthier people, all the while making sure we protect older, more vulnerable people. The proponents of herd immunity, who want all schools and businesses to reopen and sports and cultural activities to resume, say they want to ease the burden of the pandemic: “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” reads a document called The Great Barrington Declaration, the latest vessel for this hope that life can return to normal for some before community spread of the virus is contained. It’s understandable, then, why the concept of ending the pandemic through building up herd immunity continues to hold allure. People are isolated from those they care about, businesses are hurting, education has suffered, and so has our mental health. A staggering number of people have been sickened and hospitalized, and hundreds of thousands have died. It’s been eight, long, devastating months in the United States since the pandemic began.
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