We are listening and reading about this term 'Herd Immunity', way too often now. What fellow researchers and thinker members of the research society think about this. Can it be the key factor, if implemented to fight against the pandemic, we all are facing right now?
Herd immunity is a complex issue principle when we are dealing with this virus
It depends of several factors , like concomitant diseases, oncologic diseases and immune system response . ?
Biosecurity is the main goal . Protection and avoid to be several affected .
Testing and wait for a vaccine .
Countries who started very earlier with protection measures have the best figures , but i can not say that the herd immunity is achieved in those countries
Vaccination will be the way ( but how long should we expect a effective and safe vaccine ? We need clinical trials. Who works in vitro a lot of times do not work on in vivo . All we know this -
According to some experts, due to lockdown, people couldn't get herd immunity. A person can only develop this type of immunity, when first got infected with virus and then recovered.
An Article published in Lancet is very useful, described that;
How much herd immunity is sufficient to overcome substantial outbreaks of COVID-19?
Reference,
What policy makers need to know about COVID-19 protective immunity by Daniel M Altmann et al.
This is the basic rules for me also
But some people should be protected
The problem now is we have a lot is specislists
Which of them have creditability?
It seems that in the last few months we have a lot of expertise but completely different approaches
In Veterinary medicine herd immunity is well recognized and we do it every day
We deal with a lot of virus and bacterial diseases . And we find solutions....
I agree with João Cannas da Silva Sir, that we need a vaccine to fight this and without a vaccine acquiring the herd immunity will be an expensive parameter. Problem is, with such kind of approach in the countries with greater population density with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, are we ready to lose the ones with weak immunities. Is it possible for every child and senior citizen to stay back at home where there is no one to be their back-up?
The short answer is that we don’t know enough right now to say if the infection will offer complete protection. Everyone walking around hoping to engender herd immunity is probably not the best scenario. Maybe a vaccine is probably a better way and the most durable way to engender herd immunity.
We should not only think about herd immunity. Individual immunity is relevan too and it could be certified: Article Certified Coronavirus Immunity as a Resource and Strategy to...
Doomsday statistics if we wait for herd-immunity to develop in the absence of an effective vaccine for COVID-19 pandemic
Herd immunity for COVID-19 pandemic will mean at least 60% of the world population i.e 4.68 billion (present world population 7.8 billion) will be affected over time. Even if overall fatality of this pandemic is only 0.5% (considering up to 90% of those infected are asymptomatic or oligosymptomatic), 37.5 million population will die, most of the deaths among people above age 65 years. With these statistics, COVID-19 would become the mother of all pandemics of modern times.
Can the world wait until this dooms-day statistics are reached to develop herd immunity while we continue present day social distancing and economic free fall?
The best solution is a quick development of an effective vaccine incorporating all the SARS-CoV-19 strains from all over the world (just like the Influenza vaccine).
This might be interesting..
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30985-5/fulltext
There are some misunderstandings about immunity, and people placed a lot of unrealistic expectation on vaccine. Even with vaccine, a lot of people still die from flu and its complications every year. Actually, such death can be largely avoided, if the person has good health.
Immunity is not only our body's protective mechanism against microbial infection. Moreover, immunity is the only way for our body to obtain the essential nutrients from the microorganism community, so as to remain us in good health.
Although each microorganism is a potential pathogen, will cause infection and immune responses in our body, try to gradually expose ourselves to the microorganisms around us as much as possible. And after we have developed antibodies against the microorganisms, don't wipe these microbes out of our body by the antibiotics. The microbiome within us is the best nutrition source for our body. Good health cannot be built in short time. It may take years or tens of years to get the immunity against all the microorganisms around and inside us (the diverse human microbiome) and benefit from these microbiome for our health.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761320301709
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2766096
https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/amp/
No herd immunity, significant immunity after recovery or vaccine for COVID-19.
We will have to live with this pandemic.
Further reading in the link:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20130252v1.full.pdf