Just because an idea is bad doesn't mean that
it won't continue to get more and more oxygen
and become more and more prevalent.
If it's politically advantageous or serve
somebodies political interests and we are
seeing the very strong return of the idea
of pushing for herd immunity when it comes
to corona virus in the United States from
the Trump administration.
Donald Trump has brought on a new I guess
he's calling them a Corona virus adviser.
His name is Scott Atlas.
Now, the guy is a doctor, but he's really
more of a political figure than a medical
figure because he is a neuro radiologist,
which is, you might notice, does not have
very much to do with infectious disease and
pandemic science.
But he is a part of the conservative think
think tank, the Hoover Institution.
And he's increasingly talking about going
in the direction of the Sweden model and even
beyond into the herd immunity bottle.
And there's a lot to talk about here.
I want to make sure everybody understands
why this is so pernicious and dangerous.
So herd immunity is the idea that once enough
of your population of a population is immune
to a disease, you have sort of group resistance
to it.
Enough people are immune that it is unlikely
that the reproduction rate of the disease
is going to become high enough to create a
pandemic type situation because there aren't
just there just aren't going to be enough
people left in the population susceptible
to the disease.
Now, typically, the way in the modern human
era we achieve herd immunity is through vaccination.
If you vaccinate a large swath of the population,
that's how you generate herd immunity.
You're not typically generating it through
people just getting sick and recovering naturally.
Now, depending on how contagious a disease
is, the percentage of the population that
needs to be immune varies.
So, for example, we're putting up on the screen
sort of a scale of diseases, of different
levels of contagion.
If you look at measles, measles is so contagious,
it has a reproduction rate between 12 and
18.
That in order to get herd immunity, you need
somewhere between 92 and 95 percent of the
population to be immune, either through having
recovered from the disease or vaccination,
or usually it's a combination of the two.
If you look sort of in the middle, you've
got mumps, mumps has a reproduction rate and
are not of four to seven.
So because it's less contagious than measles,
you need somewhere between 75 and 86 percent
of the population to be immune to get herd
immunity.
And as you can see, if you're looking at this
chart, coronavirus is estimated to have a
reproduction rate of somewhere between two
and six, meaning that somewhere between 50
and 83 percent of the population need immunity
for us to have what we would call herd immunity.
So that brings us to this neuro radiologist,
Scott Atlas, who Donald Trump has brought
in.
And he's cheering and saying it's so great
to have Scott involved.
What he wants is more of the Sweden model
and more of a push for herd immunity as a
way to get beyond Corona virus and the pandemic.
The numbers.
If you think about them, are really, really
ugly.
So I told you that we for Corona virus to
reach herd immunity, we need between 50 and
83 percent of the population to be immune.
Let's just pick a number that's right in the
middle there.
Okay.
We'll call it 67 percent for just to pick
a number.
Let's assume for a second.
Remember, we have to assume that recovering
from the virus gives you immunity for a significant
period of time.
We're still trying to figure that out.
And number two, let's even assume officially
we've had six point one million cases in the
United States.
Let's imagine we've really had twice as many.
OK, let's imagine we've only found officially
half of the cases.
So even though the official number is six,
let's imagine we've had 12 million cases in
the United States with 331 million people
in this country.
If we've had 12 million cases, that means
right now three point six percent of the population
is immune.
Presumably, if nobody gets the vaccine in
order to get to herd immunity, which means
67 percent of the population, that would be
222 million cases.
Right.
Two thirds of 331 million is 222.
If you.
Understand that we have about a one percent
death rate.
That means that to get to herd immunity, the
U.S. would suffer two point two million deaths.
So far, only 180, 7000 have died, an unconscionable
number, but less than 10 percent of what we
would expect if we were to go to herd immunity
without a vaccine.
So that would mean that if we do what Scott
Atlus wants and the other herd immunity advocates,
we still have two million deaths to come.
Now, what might change that number if we get
really good at treating the virus and we can
reduce the death rate, for example, from one
percent to point five percent, then we would
have one million more people die on the way
to herd immunity.
Now, the problem is that there's another side
to that, which is if we have this many cases
over a relatively short period of time, because
we just open it back up and let it rip, the
hospitals will become overloaded.
And what we do know is that the death rate
goes up when hospitals get very, very full.
So this is sort of, again, going back to this.
We've really tried nothing yet and we're out
of ideas.
We've not really had a coordinated national
lockdown.
We never really did a six week serious shut
down.
And now we're heading into flu season.
And what many infectious disease doctors expect
to be at this point, calling it a second wave
doesn't even make sense because we've never
really gotten down below 30000 cases a day
for months and months.
But this is the approach that they now have
now.
On the other side, remember, nobody's calling
for a forever shut down or forever closures
or anything.
What we're talking about right now in a modestly
optimistic scenario is another few months.
We expect some vaccine to be approved in the
next couple of months.
We expect that to start being available by
the end of the year.
We expect that it will be reasonably affected.
And we expect that most of the population
in the U.S. who wants the vaccine, which is
a whole other problem, is going to be able
to get it by the start of the spring of 2021.
That may change, but does nobody understand?
Delayed gratification here we are getting
closer and the approach that Donald Trump
increasingly wants to take of pretending that
this is basically in the rearview mirror while
pushing for herd immunity through some of
his followers and staff is a very dangerous
idea.
And the simple numbers explain why.
