I hope you are wrong.
Johns Hopkins says " Depending how contagious an infection is, usually 70% to 90% of a population needs immunity to achieve herd immunity." [
www.jhsph.edu]
Even using the lower figure, 230,000,000 Americans would have to be infected in order to reach herd immunity.
New York State has embarked on a massive antibody testing program, currently testing 30,000 people a day and looking to ramp up to 40,000 a day. This random testing of state residents indicates what percentage of us have COVID-19 antibodies, i.e. how many of us have already been exposed to the coronavirus. Data so far says 14.9%.
Why is this important? Well, if you have an accurate count of how many New Yorkers have had COVID-19 you can calculate an accurate mortality rate. Based on 10 days worth of data the mortality rate has been calculated to be "between 0.5 and 0.8 percent, depending on which death toll is factored in." [
www.washingtonpost.com]
Again using the lower number (.5%) achieving herd immunity would result in over a million deaths.
Hopefully, though, the mortality rate continues to drop. But even if it drops to the flu-level .1% that's still 230,000 deaths.
edit: A hospitalization rate of 10% would put 23,000,000 people in the hospital. There are fewer that 1,000,000 beds in the USA.
AlbaNY_Ram
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2020 04:28AM by AlbaNY_Ram.
