Life can go back to normal if we make it our common goal to achieve herd immunity Comment Life can go back to normal if we make it our common goal to achieve herd immunity We have a relatively clear picture of who is at risk.
Let's isolate them from harm while the majority of people conduct normal lives 7 October 2020 • 6:38pm When asked how it all began for me, the image that returns is of the 90 year-old street vendor walking back home to her village because lockdown has now forbidden her to sell the few toys on the pavements of Delhi that might occasionally have provided her with a bit of food to eat.
Naturally, an understanding of the dynamics of the spread of SARS-CoV2 (the virus responsible for Covid-19) is of importance in making these difficult decisions.
Mathematical models can be very useful in this regard, and these are all built on the premise that recovery from infection leads to immunity (not necessarily lifelong).
simply describes the ecological process by which immunity accumulates in a community to the detriment of the pathogen; it does not contain any implication or acceptance of culling those who are vulnerable to disease.
To steer a population towards high levels of herd immunity is a sustainable public health goal upon which we have relied to manage a very large catalogue of infectious diseases.
While we remain uncertain about levels of herd immunity that have been attained to SARS-CoV2, we do now have a relatively clear picture of who is vulnerable to severe disease and death upon infection.
that we exploit this feature of Covid-19 to formulate a strategy of Focused Protection, whereby those who are at high risk may be shielded to varying degrees over the period (a maximum of six months) it takes to acquire sufficient herd immunity while the majority of the population conduct normal lives – thereby protecting the whole community from the devastating effects of lockdown.
To answer this, the problem needs at first to be broken down into several parts.
Such inequalities will only be further exacerbated by endless cycles of lockdowns and other restrictions aimed at keeping “case” numbers low.
Once sufficient levels of immunity have built up in the population such that the overall risk remains low (and this may already have happened in many areas), life can go back to normal for everybody.
It should be our common goal to achieve such a state – which will be but cannot rely solely on that route – without causing irreparable damage to those who are vulnerable to other diseases, to the disruption of education and training, to job losses and food insecurity.