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I& #39;m deeply confused by the so-called herd immunity (aka herd mentality) strategy. I don& #39;t just mean that I think this is a bad idea, but I think this strategy is fundamentally nonsense.
When we talk about herd immunity, we& #39;re talking about vaccinating enough of a population s.t. when (a limited number) introductions of a disease occur, transmission is not sustained.
If we reach the 60-70% immune with SARS-CoV2 required for herd immunity with infection, infections will not magically stop happening.
Due to birth/death/children starting school, there will always be a steady supply of new susceptibles. At the same time, when we reach 60-70% immune, we will still have a massive number of cases. R will be close to 1.
These are not conditions for elimination. These are conditions to establish an *endemic equilibrium.* Cases will on average exactly replace themselves and more and more of the population will get infected.
