When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? Could be 2022 or beyond, says McKinsey & Co

‘Our estimate is based on the widest possible reading of the current scientific literature and our discussions with public-health experts in the United States and around the world. It’s possible that unforeseen developments such as significantly more infections than expected this winter could lead to earlier herd immunity. And real downside risk remains, especially with respect to duration of immunity and long-term vaccine safety (given the limited data available so far). Herd immunity might not be reached until 2022 or beyond.’

Read here (McKinsey & Co, Nov 23, 2020)

Even with a vaccine, Covid-19 will last for years in the US, expert says

‘I think, even if the vaccine or several vaccines are invented in the next few months, which is likely, we still have challenges in manufacturing, distributing and persuading the public to accept the vaccine. And those challenges will take about a year. And, meanwhile, the virus is still spreading, and it will continue to spread until we reach a threshold of about 40 to 50 percent of Americans who are infected. Right now, we're only at about 10 percent. That threshold is known as the herd immunity threshold.

‘So, that will take us into 2022. So, from my perspective, the first period during which we're confronting the biological and epidemiological impact of the virus, and we're living in a changed world, wearing masks, physical distancing, school closures, and so on, will last until sometime in 2022. And then we're going to begin a second period, when we are recovering from the psychological, social and economic shock of the virus. And this has been seen for thousands of years with other epidemics. And that will take a couple of years for us to rebuild our economy and recover.

‘And so, sometime in 2024, I think, life will slowly begin to return to normal, with some persistent changes.’

Read here (PBS News Hour, Nov 12, 2020)

What fans of ‘herd immunity’ don’t tell you

‘First, it makes no mention of harm to infected people in low-risk groups, yet many people recover very slowly. More serious, a significant number, including those with no symptoms, suffer damage to their heart and lungs. One recent study of 100 recovered adults found that 78 of them showed signs of heart damage. We have no idea whether this damage will cut years from their lives or affect their quality of life...

‘Second, it says little about how to protect the vulnerable. One can keep a child from visiting a grandparent in another city easily enough, but what happens when the child and grandparent live in the same household? And how do you protect a 25-year-old diabetic, or cancer survivor, or obese person, or anyone else with a comorbidity who needs to go to work every day?...

‘Third, the declaration omits mention of how many people the policy would kill. It’s a lot...If these restrictions are simply eased — as opposed to eliminating them entirely, which would occur if herd immunity were pursued — deaths could rise to as many as 571,527. That’s just by Feb. 1. The model predicts daily deaths will still be increasing then.

‘Will we have achieved herd immunity then? No.’

Read here (New York Times, Oct 19, 2020)

China got better. We got sicker. Thanks, Trump

‘Public health expert Dr. David Katz argued in a New York Times op-ed and in an interview with me back in March that we needed a national plan that balanced saving the most lives and the most livelihoods at the same time. If we just focused on saving every life, we would create millions of deaths of despair from lost jobs, savings and businesses. If we just focused on saving every job, we would cruelly condemn to death fellow Americans who deserved no such fate.

‘Katz argued for a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine.

‘Unfortunately, we could never have a sane, sober discussion about such a strategy. From the right, said Katz, we got “contemptuous disdain” for doing even the simplest things, like wearing a mask and social distancing. The left was much more responsible, he added, but not immune from treating any discussion of economic trade-offs in a pandemic as immoral and “treating any policy allowing for any death as an act of sociopathy.”

Read here (New York Times via Salt Lake Tribune, Oct 15, 2020)

WHO head calls herd immunity approach ‘immoral’

‘The head of the World Health Organization has ruled out a herd immunity response to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease through vaccinations or through the mass spread of a disease. Some have argued that coronavirus should be allowed to spread naturally in the absence of a vaccine. But WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said such an approach was "scientifically and ethically problematic".’

Read here (BBC, Oct 13, 2020)

The anti-lockdown scientists’ cause would be more persuasive if it weren’t so half-baked

‘The [Great Barrington] declaration, which calls for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone except the “vulnerable”, is written by three science professors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, giving it the sheen of academic respectability. But there is much to set alarm bells ringing. It makes claims about herd immunity – the idea that letting the virus rip among less vulnerable groups will allow a degree of population-level immunity to build up which will eventually protect the more vulnerable – that are unsupported by existing scientific evidence... And what are scientists doing fronting a campaign whose back office is run by a thinktank that flirts with climate change denial?’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 11, 2020)

When will the Covid-19 pandemic end?

Normalcy by spring, and herd immunity by fall? This McKinsey & Co article assesses the prospects for an end to the pandemic in 2021.

‘More than eight months and 900,000 deaths into the COVID-19 pandemic,1 people around the world are longing for an end. In our view, there are two important definitions of “end,” each with a separate timeline:

• An epidemiological end point when herd immunity is achieved.
• A transition to a form of normalcy. 

‘Both the epidemiological and normalcy ends to the COVID-19 pandemic are important. The transition to the next normal will mark an important social and economic milestone, and herd immunity will be a more definitive end to the pandemic. In the United States, while the transition to normal might be accomplished sooner, the epidemiological end point looks most likely to be reached in the second half of 2021. Other advanced economies are probably on similar timetables.’

Read here (McKinsey & Co, Sept 21, 2020)

As more local lockdowns begin, the hard truth is there’s no return to ‘normal’ [comment on Britain]

‘As well as the risk Covid poses to individuals, our actions affect others including vulnerable and elderly people. Think of it as a chain of infections – if you are a part of this and it gets passed on, others may become ill and die because of your role in that chain. A wedding in Maine resulted in more than 170 people contracting the virus, and seven people dying. None of those who died attended the wedding...

‘Nine months after South Korea and Senegal started building diagnostic capacity, it is comically depressing that the UK government, one of the richest in the world, does not have a functional testing system that returns results within 24 hours. In addition, given that we know the virus spreads easily through households, those who test positive should have the offer to isolate in external facilities (such as hotels). The “14-day isolation” measures for people entering the UK are also a box-ticking exercise where given the lack of screening or monitoring, a constant stream of infections keep coming into the country. It’s like trying to empty a bucket under a tap.’

Read here (The Guardian, Sept 21, 2020) 

Is herd immunity an option for India as it becomes second country after US to cross 5 million Covid-19 cases?

‘As coronavirus cases continue to spiral in India, only the second country after the US to cross the 5 million milestone, questions have been raised over whether herd immunity is an option for India now. Some epidemiologists believe it is already taking place in small areas where high infection levels have been followed by a weakening of the Covid-19 virus. Others believe that it is too soon to predict or holds little promise.

‘Dr Rajni Kant from the Indian Council of Medical Research: "Herd immunity right now is not a (government) strategy for coronavirus control. The current strategy is wearing a mask, following social distancing and good hygiene with regular washing of hands." Still, there are silver linings in India's Covid-19 fight. The country's mortality rate at 1.64 per cent is the lowest in the world and recovery is among the highest with a recovery rate of 78-79 per cent.’

Read here (Straits Times, Sept 17, 2020)

One in six foreign workers in dorms contracted Covid-19, based on official tally

‘About one in six foreign workers living in dormitories contracted Covid-19, a calculation based on Singapore's official tally showed, but the true infection rate in the dormitories is likely to be higher than this, experts say. If accurate, however, an infection rate of one in six would not be enough for herd immunity to develop in the migrant worker population, they added. A total of 52,425 out of 323,000 workers had been infected as of Wednesday.’

Read here (Straits Times, August 14, 2020)

Dr Anthony Fauci warns the coronavirus won’t ever be eradicated

‘White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday it is unlikely the coronavirus will ever be eradicated. While the virus will not disappear, it’s possible world leaders and public health officials could work to bring the virus down to “low levels,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said during an interview with the TB Alliance.

“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year. I’m not certain,” he said.’

Read here (CNBC, July 22, 2020)

The people with hidden immunity against Covid-19

‘While the latest research suggests that antibodies against Covid-19 could be lost in just three months, a new hope has appeared on the horizon: the enigmatic T cell... T cells are a kind of immune cell, whose main purpose is to identify and kill invading pathogens or infected cells. It does this using proteins on its surface, which can bind to proteins on the surface of these imposters... Several studies have shown that people infected with Covid-19 tend to have T cells that can target the virus, regardless of whether they have experienced symptoms...

‘Most bizarrely of all, when researchers tested blood samples taken years before the pandemic started, they found T cells which were specifically tailored to detect proteins on the surface of Covid-19. This suggests that some people already had a pre-existing degree of resistance against the virus before it ever infected a human. And it appears to be surprisingly prevalent: 40-60% of unexposed individuals had these cells.’

Read here (BBC, July 20, 2020)

Swiftly waning Covid-19 immunity poses vaccination challenge

‘Emerging evidence that the body's immune defence against Covid-19 may be short-lived makes it even harder for vaccine developers to come up with shots fully able to protect people in future waves of infection, scientists said on Tuesday.

‘Preliminary studies in China, Germany, Britain and elsewhere have found that patients infected with the novel coronavirus make protective antibodies as part of their immune system's defences, but these appear to last only a few months.’

Read here (Malaysiakini, July 15, 2020)

A new understanding of herd immunity

‘Gabriela Gomes studies chaos. Specifically, patterns in nonlinear dynamics... So with all its apparently chaotic eccentricities, the coronavirus was an ideal challenge for Gomes, a professor at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland... Based on data from several countries in Europe, she said, her results show a herd-immunity threshold much lower than that of other models. “We just keep running the models, and it keeps coming back at less than 20 percent,” Gomes said. “It’s very striking.”

‘If that proves correct, it would be life-altering news. It wouldn’t mean that the virus is gone. But by Gomes’s estimates, if roughly one out of every five people in a given population is immune to the virus, that seems to be enough to slow its spread to a level where each infectious person is infecting an average of less than one other person. The number of infections would steadily decline...

There are two more arguments in the story, citing levels from 20 to 70 percent... The conclusion, as stated in the subhead: ‘The portion of the population that needs to get sick is not fixed. We can change it.’

Read here (The Atlantic, July 13, 2020)

Should we aim for herd immunity like Sweden?

‘One thing is to decide against a Hammer. That’s fine. It happened. We can’t change the past. A very different thing is to know you can Dance to reduce your epidemic dramatically and for quite cheap, but actively decide not to do it. The UK’s government has acknowledged its mistakes and changed course. Pressure is mounting for Sweden to do the same. Tens of thousands of lives are at stake. If the government doesn’t decide to acknowledge its mistakes and correct its course, bodies will keep piling up for nothing.

Summary of the article: ‘Sweden is suffering tremendously in cases and deaths. Yet few people have been infected yet. They are a long way from Herd Immunity. Between 0.5% to 1.5% of infected die from the coronavirus. Left uncontrolled, it can kill between 0.4% and 1% of the entire population. Many more suffer conditions we don’t yet understand. Unfortunately, that death and sickness toll is far from having bought us Herd Immunity anywhere in the world. Only protecting those most at risk sounds great. It’s a fantasy today. Even if Sweden’s economy has remained mostly open, it has still suffered as much as others. From now on, it might start doing worse. Sweden now has regrets. But not enough. It can control the virus without a lockdown if it acknowledges its mistakes and takes the right measures. Other countries, like the US or the Netherlands, are toying with a Herd Immunity strategy. It will only cause more economic loss and death.’

Read here (Medium, June 10, 2020)

Are we underestimating how many people are resistant to Covid-19?

‘One thing seems clear: there are many reasons why one population is more protected than another. Theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford thinks that a key one is immunity that was built up prior to this pandemic. “It’s been my hunch for a very long time that there is a lot of cross-protection from severe disease and death conferred by other circulating, related bugs,” she says...

‘Socioeconomic status, climate, culture and genetic makeup could also shape vulnerability, as could certain childhood vaccines and vitamin D levels. And all of these factors can vary between countries.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 7, 2020)

The world is still far from herd immunity for coronavirus, studies show

‘The precise herd immunity threshold for the novel coronavirus is not yet clear; but several experts said they believed it would be higher than 60 per cent... Some countries - notably Sweden, and briefly Britain - have experimented with limited lockdowns in an effort to build up immunity in their populations. But even in these places, recent studies indicate that no more than about 7 per cent -17 per cent of people have been infected so far. In New York City, which has had the largest coronavirus outbreak in the United States, around 20 per cent of the city's residents have been infected by the virus as of early May, according to a survey of people in grocery stores and community centres released by the governor's office.’

Read here (Straits Times, May 29, 2020)

Three potential futures for Covid-19: recurring small outbreaks, a monster wave, or a persistent crisis

‘What all three scenarios agree on is this: There is virtually no chance Covid-19 will end when the world bids good riddance to a calamitous 2020. The reason is the same as why the disease has taken such a toll its first time through: No one had immunity to the new coronavirus.

“This pandemic is not going to settle down until there is sufficient population immunity,” slightly above 50%, epidemiologist Gabriel Leung of the University of Hong Kong told a New York Academy of Sciences briefing.

‘Since the world “is far from that level of immunity,” said Osterholm (he estimates that no more than 5% of the world population is immune to the new coronavirus as a result of surviving their infection), “this virus is going to keep finding people. It’s going to keep spreading through the population.” And that, he said, “means we’re in for a long haul”.’

Read here (STAT News, May 1, 2020)

The architect of Sweden’s controversially lax coronavirus response says he thinks it’s working

‘Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, has defended his country’s unusually lax response to the coronavirus. Sweden has encouraged social distancing but has not forced businesses, restaurants, or schools to close. Tegnell said the strategy had achieved its goal of defending the health service and that Stockholm was showing signs of herd immunity. Its case numbers are comparable to neighbouring countries, but the death rate is much higher. Tegnell said it was “very difficult” to know if a lockdown could have prevented more deaths, particularly in care homes.’

Read here (Business Insider, April 24, 2020)

The architect of Sweden’s controversially lax coronavirus response says he thinks it’s working

‘Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, has defended his country’s unusually lax response to the coronavirus. Sweden has encouraged social distancing but has not forced businesses, restaurants, or schools to close. Tegnell said the strategy had achieved its goal of defending the health service and that Stockholm was showing signs of herd immunity. Its case numbers are comparable to neighbouring countries, but the death rate is much higher. Tegnell said it was “very difficult” to know if a lockdown could have prevented more deaths, particularly in care homes.’

Read here (Business Insider, April 24, 2020)