What Herd Immunity Really Means

It's day two hundred and twenty three since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. Herd immunity has become a buzzy phrase on the right. But the idea that allowing the coronavirus to infect more people will offer some type of protection from the virus to spread has been widely denounced by experts. But first, here's what happened in virus news today. Cafe Pacific will cut about fifty three hundred jobs and close its regional airline, Cafe Dragon unit.

It's part of a sweeping restructuring that was triggered by the pandemics hit to air travel. In addition, to the layoffs, thousands of currently unfilled positions will be eliminated. The entire reduction amounts to around of cafe's head count. It's one of the largest cutbacks in the aviation sector globally since the outbreak started. Germany's new virus cases hit another record. The country recorded eight thousand, five hundred and twenty three

new cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That's the most the country has seen since the pandemic began. Like other countries in Europe, Germany has been grappling with rapidly rising cases in recent weeks. There were also forty new fatalities on Tuesday. Finally, an inspection of an Eli Lily, New Jersey facility where the company planned to produce its

antibody therapy, found major quality control problems. In a memo from October two, compliance officers at the Food and Drug Administration, who conducted a four week site inspection over the summer, wrote that it is quote imperative that f D a take action. They recommended that the company received a warning letter, one of the agency's strongest enforcement measures. According to documents for You by Bloomberg News and Now for Today's main story.

In the US, enthusiasm on the right is building for so called herd immunity as much of the public grows skeptical of coronavirus vaccines. These developments could dash hopes for containing COVID nineteen in the months ahead. Proponents of herd immunity say exposing more people to the coronavirus will build protection broadly in the population, but experts say that will result in many more illnesses and deaths, and that vaccines

are a safer route to herd immunity. I spoke with Emma Court, who reports that the concept gained attraction in the White House due to the increasing influence of Trump medical advisor Scott Atlas. It would backed this month by a group of academics and a treatise titled the Great Barrington Declaration. Broadly speaking, when we talk about herd immunity, what do we mean. Herd immunity is this idea of having widespread enough protection in the population that the viruses

chain of transmission gets cut off. Truly, we're talking about immunity that protects the herd. Right Usually, herd immunity comes up and is taught in epidemiology classes in the context of widespread vaccination, but it's emerged more recently as something that can be achieved through exposing more people to the coronavirus.

Inherent in this idea of herd immunity, and the reason we've heard so much pushback from health experts is that by intentionally exposing more people to the coronavirus, we know there will be deaths, and people do suffer quite a lot from even mild forms of this disease, and it's not clear whether even if people survive the coronavirus, they, you know, will ever stop dealing with these longer term

effects that we've been seeing among among patients. So have there been any real life examples of communities taking this herd immunity approach to COVID nineteen. People often point to Sweden as an example you can let the virus kind of run free, but even Sweden put restrictions on large gatherings, and there's been some reporting lately that the country may actually be changing its policies on on the coronavirus um.

The United Kingdom as well was also accused of pursuing her community earlier on in the pandemics, something that officials they're denied Ultimately, health officials state we've never intentionally pursued her immunity as a strategy, um, and is too much on the line now to try it right today without

a vaccine. What is the theory of achieving herd immunity to COVID nineteen, Yeah, you know, to some extent, this idea of herd immunity, you know, let the virus do what it wants, has been around in popular conversation since the start of this pandemic. Right. I think we've all heard some iteration of that from folks too, you know, think the virus isn't as serious that they should be allowed to move around the world freely. So, you know, like let people kind of do what they want and

let the virus kind of spread as a will. It's it's been out there, um, but it's being packaged through this terminology of herd immunity. And most recently, um, you know, earlier this month at a gathering that was hosted by a free market think tank in Massachusetts, it was sort of put together as this Great Barrington Declaration. The leaders of this are are academics, you know, three academics at Harvard, Stanford,

and Oxford, and they basically came together in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Instead, we can let the virus do what it will as long as healthy people are kind of out there moving around the world, and we can protect the vulnerable, you know, the elderly successfully until enough healthy people have been exposed and have this protective immunity, and hopefully, you know, that

stops the virus from spreading. The timing of this, of course, is is all very interesting because theoretically we may have a vaccine in a matter of months um and it also is coming out here in the US and being sort of supported by politicians on the right at a time that the president himself just had COVID nineteen and

there's an election rapidly approaching. So it's not clear to me what all of this signifies, but I think it is clear from how we've seen politicians at the state level, the local level talking about this Great Barrington declaration that no matter what the outcome of the presidential election is, this idea of herd immunity is going to live on. It's going to be used to justify policies at the stand local level, even if we have a change in

the presidential administration. And what's been the response from a governmental perspective to this Great Barrington Declaration. This Great Barrington Declaration has been highlighted, you know, as prominently as the White House. There's a call last week by officials there who talked about how the Great Barrington Declaration was, you know,

aligned with the President's own policies. And there's been a lot of talk about a senior medical advisor to the President named Scott Atlas, who is a neuro radiologist but doesn't have any formal epidemic theological training um and he's affiliated with Stanford's Conservative Hoover Institute. You know, this idea of herd immunity, which he's a proponent of, has become

more discussed by the President. The White House has said, we are aligned with these principles of the Great Barrington Declaration, but we're not proponents of herd immunity. But ultimately, if you look at what herd immunity entails or what these Great Barrington proponents are talking about, it it's really not that dissimilar from what the United States is doing right now. So let's just get a little more specific in terms of what is in this Great Barrington Declaration, What exactly

are they calling for in this document. This is kind of where the rubber meets the road. So if you look at this document, they aren't sayings, stop taking any precautionary measures at all. They actually say, you know, you should keep taking hygienic precautions like handwashing and staying home when you're sick. But we have seen this document be espoused by people who who are questioning masks and saying

masks don't work, masks shouldn't be used. But if you look at the Great Barrington document, they actually kind of don't get into the details all that much. They say, and this is a quote, a comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi generational households, can be implemented and as well within the scope and capability of public health professionals. So they're like, herd immunity, we should be talking about it, but I'm not going to get

too detailed on the policy. And that's important because we are many, many months into this pandemic. Who's going to come up with this policy on HERD immunity and how it's gonna work other than the people who are advocating for it, you know, public health professionals don't want to pursue her immunity. What they want is for widespread testing and tracing and all of the things we've been talking about for so long. As you've mentioned, there has been

really significant criticism of this declaration. I know, one former Harvard Medical School professor called it amount to mass murder in terms of her immunity. So I was wondering, if you might walk us through what makes the ideas proposed in this declaration so potentially lethal COVID nineteen experts, mainstream public health leaders really come out and condemned this concept.

You know. The leader of the World Health Organization said it was scientifically and ethically problematic and it's never been intentionally used as a solution to a pandemic. We had a group of eight scientists the other week come out and say, you know, this is a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence in this letter that was published in a medical journal called The Lancet and which they actually

named the John Snow Memorandum. So we're, you know, giving big titles to things in this in this scientific debate. But I think talking about the science here is sort of critical as well. It's it's it's not just a moral and ethical dilemma that is being posed by proponents of herd imu unity. There's also some gaps in the science because we don't totally know that protection from the

virus is going to be long lasting. In fact, there's evidence that antibody levels drop off after a period of a few months um, so we don't know that even pursuing her immunity is a is a good strategy in the big picture, because there are these questions about whether protection is even gonna last, and that's something scientists have pointed to alongside these other qualms raised with her immunity.

It's important to be clear that the leading experts we've turned to for guidance throughout this pandemic are very much against her immunity, and it's being advanced at a time when it's more important than ever to be on the same page about how to contain the virus that was em Core. And that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating.

On Apple podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Jordan Gospoure, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Emma Corp. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening, BLA