In its March 27 publication, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) presented “Herd Immunity Won’t Save Us – But We Can Still Beat Covid-19.” The all-encompassing article was written by medical officers and immunology experts: Larry Brilliant, W. Ian Lipkin, Lisa Danzig, and Karen Pak Oppenheimer.
The authors dismiss the fact that “herd immunity” would be an easy plateau to reach. A possible spike in numbers seems to be inevitable with super-spreader holiday weekends already upon us and still ahead this spring and summer. Also, to establish Covid-19’s herd immunity, the best estimates reveal that at least 80% of the population (due to the contagiousness of the disease) would have to be exposed to immunity, either through inoculation or through previous infection. Finding inadequate numbers of susceptible hosts, the virus then would begin to die out.
Here are more recent approximate U.S. statistics of population involved in getting viral shots:
1. With 130 million doses having already been given, 46.4 million are fully immunized with 33 million having received their first shots only.
2. There have been 30 million reported cases/possibly 30 million cases have gone unreported.
3. In a population of 330 million people, this amounts to about 140 million Americans with at least some immunity. The WSJ authors stress “That is just under 43% of the population – very far from the 80% needed for herd immunity.”
Another very crucial point deals with the virus’ natural tendency to mutate to “stay alive.” Our four experts warn us “The virus is changing so rapidly that immunity to the Covid strain of yesterday may not protect against today’s or tomorrow’s strain.” They continue “—new variants—may elude immunity created by natural infection and possibly by vaccines as well.”
The other situation is that of vaccination rates. The immunologists state the realistic difficulties in vaccinating the following groups:
1. Many Americans are not receiving their viral shots due to medical reasons
2. Outreach or distrust of the medical system has left others from securing the vaccinations
3. Children, at this point, have yet to receive their inoculations, although it looks like they could soon be candidates
4. New births and in-migration of unvaccinated people will continue to occur each year
5. The largest challenge, according to a recent poll, is the 30% of U.S. citizens who say that they will definitely or probably not be vaccinated.
On a worldwide scale, our scientists emphasize “—the greatest impediment to reaching herd immunity is not vaccine hesitancy or even the new, more contagious variants (found throughout the world); it is the lack of access to vaccines—–The global initiative called COVAX was created to procure and deliver vaccines for lower-income countries, but COVAX remains underfunded and will miss even its modest 2021 goal of delivering 2 billion doses.”
As a result of this issue, it appears that billions of people on the global stage will remain susceptible to our dreaded virus for at least the next “couple of years.” This will allow variants to continue multiplying and spreading and dashing our hopes of viral containment.
If herd immunity is not achieved, what then is the “much more that needs to be done?”
The answers to that question will be explored in Part 2 of this topic (next edition, April 22).
