Quote
waterfield
I think it depends on how you attempt to achieve it. The "natural" way like Sweden did won't work unless an unacceptable number of deaths become acceptable. It will work with vaccines if everyone is vaccinated. My understanding of the vaccine is that it won't prevent you from getting the virus but it will create the antibodies that will prevent you, after you get COVID, from having the severe symptoms of the virus including death. Also its important to remember that the vaccinations won't prevent you from spreading the virus to others who might not be vaccinated. Also we don't know how long the vaccinations will do what they are supposed to do-1 month, 3 months, 6 months? Likely we will been the vaccination, much like the flu shot, every year.
Bottom line is in order to establish herd immunity via vaccines almost everyone will have to be vaccinated-something unlikely in this country.
Yeah there's 2 ways to get herd immunity, one through vaccines and the other through everyone just getting the illness.
But as part of the way this is talked about, when someone says "herd immunity" in quotation marks it refers to the Swedish idea that you just let the virus take its course while protecting the vulnerable. Everyone knows that medically there are 2 different paths, but in current discussions of this, the in-quotation-marks version always means "just let it spread."
