A inconvenient [immunological] truth

[_Morley]

Mother Nature washing her hands, the virus is her soap.......

huh?

Did you just rationalize Jeffrey Dahmer as an attribute of natural selection?

Yep, you sure did.

No, he didn't.

[_ajax18]

'Herd immunity'. It's funny, but even if mankind does NOT think 'We are one', the virus sure as hell does.

One with bats, monkeys, and whatever other bush meat that got the virus started.

[_moksha]

One with bats, monkeys, and whatever other bush meat that got the virus started.

Most likely bat guano on the wet market food in Wuhan China.

[_Res Ipsa]

Chap, when you started this thread I hadn’t read that your government was planning to pursue this as a strategy: accelerating the disease spread through the low risk populations to build up herd immunity. Sounds risky to me, especially given that coronavirus aren’t know for covering immunity for long periods of time. We don’t even know that building up herd immunity with this virus is even possible yet. What do you think About this approach?

[_Gunnar]

Chap, when you started this thread I hadn’t read that your government was planning to pursue this as a strategy: accelerating the disease spread through the low risk populations to build up herd immunity. Sounds risky to me, especially given that coronavirus aren’t know for covering immunity for long periods of time. We don’t even know that building up herd immunity with this virus is even possible yet. What do you think About this approach?

You're right. So far, we have no way of knowing for sure that those recovered from the virus are immune or how long they remain immune afterwards. Which raises the question: If having had and recovered from the virus does not confer immunity, is it even theoretically possible to create an effective vaccine?

[_Res Ipsa]

Chap, when you started this thread I hadn’t read that your government was planning to pursue this as a strategy: accelerating the disease spread through the low risk populations to build up herd immunity. Sounds risky to me, especially given that coronavirus aren’t know for covering immunity for long periods of time. We don’t even know that building up herd immunity with this virus is even possible yet. What do you think About this approach?

You're right. So far, we have no way of knowing for sure that those recovered from the virus are immune or how long they remain immune afterwards. Which raises the question: If having had and recovered from the virus does not confer immunity, is it even theoretically possible to create an effective vaccine?

My limited understanding is that a vaccine can confer longer lasting immunity than the virus does. I think the UK is abandoning this strategy.

[_Chap]

Chap, when you started this thread I hadn’t read that your government was planning to pursue this as a strategy: accelerating the disease spread through the low risk populations to build up herd immunity.

There was certainly no plan to 'accelerate disease spread', which would have been a b.a.t.s.h.i.t crazy response (appropriate idiom, no?).

The press furore arose because somebody (who I think was a government scientific advisor of some kind) referred to the fact - for it is a fact - that when sufficient people had suffered from the disease and recovered (or died, which he did not mention) the resultant widespread immunity would create a hostile environment for the virus, which would very frequently fail to find a suitable new host after infecting someone who began to destroy it by developing antibodies, and the virus would cease to be able to replicate, and thus die out. That is not a 'policy', it's just a fact about viruses. But the press response largely assumed that the government was eager for infection to spread as rapidly as possible.

Without a vaccine, the establishment of wide-spread immunity is pretty well the only way to get the virus out of a population. You could also in theory:

(a) Isolate each person in the country for long enough to ensure that they would, if infected, recover from the disease by having killed all the viruses in their body or die without transmitting it during the period of isolation.

(b) Treat each sufferer with a suitable antiviral agent before they have a chance to infect anybody else.

But neither of those is a practical possibility.

By closing places of public resort and either forcing or urging all possible sufferers to isolate themselves, you can slow down the spread of the virus, and hence reduce the peak load on overstretched hospitals and thus reduce preventable deaths. All European countries are attempting that to some degree, including the UK (which has just announced the imminent closure of all schools). But the virus will still be there in the population, and if there is not widespread immunity resulting from infection, or from (ultimately, one hopes, vaccination) then the rate of infection will go up again as soon as these precautions are relaxed. There's no way out of that.

Sounds risky to me, especially given that coronavirus aren’t know for covering immunity for long periods of time. We don’t even know that building up herd immunity with this virus is even possible yet. What do you think About this approach?

"covering" -> "conferring", I assume. COVID-19 is a new type of coronavirus, but it does appear to be a fairly stable one (unlike the common cold virus, for example) so the normal expectation is that infection and recovery will confer immunity in at least the medium term. Given that, it is reasonable to expect that herd immunity will - eventually - develop to a degree sufficient for the virus to die out.

There is no other way than the establishment of widespread immunity to get rid of a virus. A virus pool in a population does not simply get old and die, or just decide to go somewhere else.

Here is a reasonable medium-level article on the topic:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6153 ... ronavirus/

[_Res Ipsa]

Chap, my understanding was that the UK had begun containment and/or mitigation measures to slow the spread of the virus. At the time I asked you the question, there was reporting that the government was pivoting toward taking steps to make the virus spread faster through the non-vulnerable population while isolating the vulnerable population from exposure. At the time, the government’s messaging was confusing to lots of folks. That’s what I meant by accelerating.

If a country decided to implement such a strategy, accelerating the spread among the non-vulnerable portion of the population would not be crazy, as long as the healthcare system had the capacity to handle the peak of cases that would need supportive care in hospitals. If the strategy is to build herd immunity quickly, that would make sense.

But, that’s all hypothetical, as the UK is not pursuing such a strategy.

As for herd immunity resulting in the virus dying out, I haven’t seen experts claiming that will happen with any degree of confidence. What I’m reading is we don’t know enough about the virus to predict whether herd immunity will cause the virus to die out out whether it will become endemic like other coronaviruses. The jury’s still out on that.

[_Chap]

As for herd immunity resulting in the virus dying out, I haven’t seen experts claiming that will happen with any degree of confidence. What I’m reading is we don’t know enough about the virus to predict whether herd immunity will cause the virus to die out out whether it will become endemic like other coronaviruses. The jury’s still out on that.

There are various things you could mean by saying that. I interpret you as saying that it is by no means certain that any government is currently implementing measures that can be guaranteed to lead to a situation where the virus no longer propagates amongst the population because of widespread immunity.

There, I agree with you.

by the way, I carry no torch for the rationality or efficacy of UK government policy on this issue - on the contrary, things have been done about as badly as I would have expected given the known character and habits of the idle and unprincipled man we currently have as Prime Minister.