" Other experts argue that allowing COVID-19 to spread uncontrollably would lead to unnecessary deaths, illness and hospitalizations, even if the U.S. attempted to isolate vulnerable people from the rest of the population while the virus spreads.
"... William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard who noted that most experts are not pushing for continuous lockdowns everywhere all the time, agreed that a better job needs to be done of handling the unintended economic and social consequences of public health measures but argued that speeding up herd immunity without a vaccine is not the answer and could also overwhelm hospitals.
“It’s quite dangerous, for multiple reasons,” he said.
"If you do this, you’ll get more infections, more hospitalizations and more deaths," he added.
The mainstream view of epidemiologists and public health experts, including the nation’s top infectious disease expert
Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization, is that the best way to get through COVID-19 and protect people who are at risk for serious illness is to not get sick in the first place by wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
While young people are far less likely to become seriously ill or die from COVID-19, they’re still capable of spreading the disease to people who will become very sick or die.
...Hanage questioned the ability to successfully cordon off the most vulnerable and protect them from getting infected, noting that the White House recently became the site of a superspreading event involving the president, despite having regular access to testing that the average American does not.
"The greatest risk of introduction to the most vulnerable communities will be when the rate of infection is really high in younger age groups," Hanage said.
“How would you keep the virus out if 10 percent of the younger population is infected at peak prevalence and with tests that cannot keep the virus out of the White House?” he added.
... Questions also remain about how long immunity from COVID-19 lasts after infection and whether people can become sick more than once. It’s also not known what percentage of the population needs to be infected with COVID-19 before herd immunity is accomplished.
Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, tweeted in response to the declaration that a large number of people vulnerable to severe COVID-19 illness don’t live in nursing homes, including 50 percent of all Americans who have some sort of underlying health condition. He added that surges in cases among young people have already likely led to deaths of older, more vulnerable people, despite efforts to protect them.
“If you’re going to turbo-charge community spread, as everyone else at ‘low-risk’ goes about their business, I want the plan for my 86-year-old mother to be more than theoretical,” he said.
A top Trump health official met Monday with a group of doctors who are proponents of the controversial “herd immunity” approach to COVID-19, even as other experts warn of its deadly and dangerous c…
thehill.com
