The whole world is looking up to each other to find a measure to stop the outburst of this pandemic. Britain announced a different strategy to tackle the situation by not suppressing it completely as it would help in building up a degree of ‘herd immunity’.
Now what’s “HERD IMMUNITY”? 🤔
Let’s take a closer understanding of this terminology:
Pictorial representation ‘Herd Immunity’
Source – Wikipedia
Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or vaccination, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune.
But what about the case of coronavirus where there is “NO VACCINE”?😭
Well those already exposed to the virus naturally build immunity and stop the human-to-human transmission or they build up antibodies is a better way to put it up.
Hence, if a high enough proportion of individuals in a population are immune, the majority will protect the few susceptible people because the pathogen is less likely to find a susceptible person.
What stats say about Herd Immunity
Herd immunity can go into effect when 40 percent of the people in a population become immune to the disease, such as through vaccination. But mostly 85 to 90 individual out of 100 need to be immune in order to work out this concept perfectly.
In past, people in Norway successfully developed at least partial herd immunity to the H1N1 virus (swine flu) through vaccinations and natural immunity.
But what about now .. has any country tried implementing Herd Immunity for Covid-19
A vaccine will take 12-18 months to surface in a global level. By far countries like Sweden which is expecting to reach herb immunity by mid-May, Netherlands, Denmark, France and Germany under discussion. Without a vaccine and with a heamoraging economy, the fact is many countries have, or are looking to, promote a controlled spread of COVID-19 in the healthy population to achieve herd immunity. Some governments own this strategy, others outwardly dismiss it yet have a “hidden herd immunity” policy.
There are basically three ways to stop the Covid-19 disease for good. One involves extraordinary restrictions on free movement and assembly, as well as aggressive testing, to interrupt its transmission entirely. That may be impossible now that the virus is in over 100 countries. The second is a vaccine that could protect everyone, but it still needs to be developed.
A third is potentially effective but horrible to consider: TO APPLY HERD IMMUNITY
But point here is even if we slow the spread of the virus but are relying on herd immunity to protect the most vulnerable people, we would still need 47 million people to be infected worldwide..
Even if we manage to protect the most vulnerable people (though no discussion is provided on how this will be done or for how long) the fatality rate for the otherwise healthy portion of the population may still be 0.5% or higher. This means that even in this unlikely “best case” scenario we would still be looking at more than 236,000 deaths.
“No country can afford a prolonged period of lockdowns, and least of all a country like India,” so is this demanding a stronger step than lockdown?? HERD IMMUNITY in the cards … MAY BE 🤔
Warning
The product and facts mentioned in this article has not been shown in any instance to mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-19 or other disease in people.
0 Comments