Coronavirus: Herd Immunity Really Works on Coronavirus 2019?

On March 13, 2020, Patrick Valence, the chief scientific adviser of the British government, said that about 60% of the British population would need to be infected with the novel coronavirus to obtain “group immunity” in the whole country. This caused a lot of controversy in the world.

What is Group Immunity?

Group immunity (Herd immunity) refers to the resistance of populations or animal groups to infection. A high level of group immunity indicates that the percentage of animals in the group that are resistant to infection is high. Because, the possibility of epidemic disease depends not only on the number of resistant individuals in the animal group, but also on the frequency of contact between individuals in the animal group. If 70% -80% of the animals in the group are resistant, no large-scale outbreaks will occur.

Regarding the strategy of UK, Chen Zhengming, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, commented at the time that the UK’s epidemic prevention strategy was almost ruthless and rational.

Advantages:

• COVID-19 Vaccine By Oxford University Will Begin Human Body Trials On Thursday (2020/04/21)
• New Mutating of Coronaviurs May Affect COVID-19 Vaccine Research and Development
• Breakings News of Coronavirus at Apr 4, 2020
• Mask-Wearing Policies Added to San Diego County’s Public Health Order
• Fighting Against COVID-19 is A Life Long War

This brings less loss, less impact on people’s life, work, and study, and less economic loss caused by social shutdown. It will also minimize the collateral damage caused by strict blockade measures.

If the novel coronavirus is really unstoppable in the end, and it will set off the epidemic again and again, then the British, with full infection and group immunization, will be the biggest winner. Because in countries where strict quarantine is implemented, although the epidemic can stop temporarily, if it comes back every few months, then you are in tragedy, because the squats were squatting in the past few months at home, and now the epidemic is coming again, you still have Go back and squat.

Disadvantages:

To obtain the effect of “group immunity”, at least 60% of people need to be exposed to the virus. According to the data on the lethality of novel coronavirus, the lowest argument is 0.5%. So how many people will die in the UK? The British population is 66 million, 6600 * 0.6 * 0.005 = 19.8 million. The British are going to die 200,000! Are you ready for this?

What if the virus mutates? In the history of the Spanish Influenza of 1918, which killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide, there have been three waves in more than a year. Why are there 3 waves? The virus mutated. So if coronavirus is very cunning and constantly mutating this time, and the infectivity and lethality remain unchanged, then the fate of the British will be the most tragic and will suffer several waves of blood washing!

Does Group Immunity Work?

Group immunity has many misunderstandings in the early stage of the anti-epidemic period, for the world may have few knowledge of it. Group immunity is interpreted as letting the people infect, regardless of the life and death of citizens, let everyone infect. The fact is not. There are some reasons for this misunderstand. One is improper communication of the government; the other is cultural differences between the East and the West; the third is some media hype that attracts attention.

Group immunity is based on the theory that if 60% to 70% of people are infected without any epidemic prevention, the virus will die naturally.

In fact, it is impossible to live a normal life after the outbreak, and everyone will take protective measures. In this case, if the population’s immunization or infection rate may reach 20%, plus some social distance isolation and other measures, coronavirus will get a good group immunization in UK.

And from the researches, the virus mainly infects the elderly, and their case fatality rate is particularly high. Most young people actually have a very low case fatality rate, a few percent. So it is very important to protect these high-risk groups like the elderly and those with basic diseases.

And so far, no one could have 100% confidence of group immunity strategy. Because we still have not totally understand coronavirus, and whether the virus would have some other fatal mutations in the future.

In this case, the British government subsequently changed its strategy and announced more aggressive countermeasures such as the closure of the city. But as of April 22, the number of people infected with the coronavirus in UK reached 129,000, of which about 17,000 died, becoming one of the epidemic centers in Europe and the world.