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NEW YORK CITY: During an ABC News “town hall” style event on September 15, US President Donald Trump told host George Stephanopoulos that without a vaccine, COVID-19 would still “go away.”
Over time, Trump said: “You will develop a herd mentality, like a herd. It’s going to be, it’s going to be developed in a herd, and that is going to happen. “
What Trump was referring to, and misnamed him, is herd immunity, which develops in a population when so many of its members are infected or vaccinated against a contagion since a bulwark of resistance counteracts the spread of contagion.
But to base a response strategy to a pandemic on the assumption that herd immunity is inevitable (vaccine or no vaccine) is to offer the virus a path of least resistance.
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THE SWEDISH EXAMPLE AS FAILURE OF THE IMMUNITY OF THE HERD
That was the case in Sweden, where lawmakers decided to forgo business closings and business closures in favor of more lenient warnings about wearing masks and social distancing.
Unsurprisingly, Sweden’s subsequent COVID-19 infection and mortality rates were among the highest in the world.
In addition, the Swedish economy contracted 8.6% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the previous three months, an important result to consider given the emphasis that many advocates of herd immunity place on reviving economic growth.
People respect social distancing as they sit in the Gallerian Mall, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Stockholm, Sweden, on May 12, 2020 .. (Photo: TT News Agency / Henrik Montgomery via REUTERS)
One such supporter is Scott Atlas, a recently appointed pandemic adviser to Trump who has advocated for the so-called Swedish model on Fox News.
“We like the fact that there are many cases,” Atlas said in an interview.
“This is exactly how we are going to get herd immunity, population immunity.”
Although Atlas has no credentials or epidemiological experience, he seems to have the ear of the president, as evidenced by the latter’s comments on the “herd mentality.”
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On August 31, Trump made similar, if evasive, comments to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
“Once you get to a certain number, we use the word herd, right?” he said. “Once you hit a certain number, it disappears.”
There’s just one problem: when it comes to coronavirus, that “certain number” doesn’t exist.
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SCIENCE DISASSEMBLY THE MYTH OF THE IMMUNITY OF THE HERD
Research in recent decades has established time and again that certain cold-causing coronaviruses can infect a person more than once, and even up to three or four times, according to a six-year study conducted in Kenya.
With SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, the culprits of the last two deadly coronavirus epidemics, long-term research was too scant and lacked sufficient funds to verify their ability to re-infect.
FILE PHOTO: A scientist at RNA drug company Arcturus Therapeutics investigates a vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in a laboratory in San Diego, California, USA, March 17, 2020. REUTERS / Bing Guan / File Photo
But two scientific case studies, one on a patient in Hong Kong and one (still under peer review) on a patient in Nevada, have already confirmed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 can re-infect. to an individual. .
These studies show that our immunity to coronaviruses can be alarmingly brief and disappear quickly, a disappearing act that makes building protection against SARS-CoV-2 difficult enough for an individual, much less the entire population. .
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The day after Trump’s ABC News town hall, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did the numbers on how herd immunity would play out in the United States, which has a population of about 330 million.
If achieving herd immunity requires a minimum of 65 percent of people to be infected, as World Health Organization chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has said, that would mean 215 million COVID-19 cases nationwide. .
If the death rate in the United States remained as it is now, close to 3 percent, it would also mean 6,385,500 deaths.
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REINFECTIONS ARE A REALITY
Earlier I called herd immunity a “reckless and ineffective strategy.”
Now that COVID-19 reinfections are not just a possibility, but also a reality, I would add “lethal” to my description.
“The White House no longer even recommends that states do things to stop the spread of this virus, things that just a few weeks ago they were telling states they should do,” Maddow said.
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump returns to the White House after being hospitalized at Walter Reed Medical Center for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Washington. (Photo: Reuters)
“When it’s not just what [Trump] he’s saying, but what he’s doing, we have to recognize it as a big problem. “
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Atlas himself have categorically denied that the Trump administration has embraced herd immunity as a strategy.
But the words and actions of his boss, who continued to avoid and mock preventive measures as basic as wearing a mask, and who tested positive for COVID-19 this week, tell a different story.
Whether you call it herd immunity or “herd mentality,” the science remains the same. With coronaviruses, this approach is not and should never be an option.
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William A Haseltine, scientist, biotech entrepreneur, and infectious disease expert, is chairman of the global health think tank ACCESS Health International.
