Here’s the latest news from the global pandemic.
Herd immunity might be a mirage
Early in the outbreak, it was good to have a goal. Governments the world over were asking their citizens to social distance, stay inside and wear a mask if they left the house for any reason.
Most complied, believing the situation would last a few weeks, or a month or two at most. As the pandemic grew, and hospitals became overwhelmed, the world focused on “bending the curve,” which again meant staying indoors and avoiding others to prevent transmission of the virus.
As the situation dragged on, vaccines were expected to be the silver bullet that would put the world out of its misery. Once 60% to 70% of the population was immunized, the thinking went, there would be
enough immunity among the people that the virus would have nowhere to go. If it couldn’t spread from one vulnerable person to another, because so many were vaccinated, it would eventually die out.
And then came the delta variant. The latest iteration of the virus is so much more transmissible than the original wild-type that the number of people needed to be vaccinated in order to hit herd immunity has skyrocketed to stratospheric levels. Public health officials have adjusted their expectations, saying 90% or more of the world needs to be vaccinated to stop the spread.
Meanwhile, vaccination hesitancy and supply shortages mean a substantial portion of the population may not be immunized for years.
Taken together, the challenges of delta and lagging vaccination rates mean herd immunity may be a mirage— moving further away the closer we get to the original goals. Widespread infections, which will generate natural immunity, may not close the gap. It’s unclear how long that protection lasts. And of course, the risk of new variants emerging is the threat hanging over every flareup.
A better approach may be to let go of the idea of a silver bullet and instead learn to live more carefully with the circulating virus. This doesn’t mean to give up on vaccination. Indeed, it makes immunization even more important. It’s the most effective way people have to make sure they don’t develop severe disease or die if the delta variant—or worse—gets to them.
As far as the end of the pandemic, there’s good news and bad news. The acute phase of many pandemics, including the 1918 Spanish flu, lasts about two years. We’re getting closer to that now. But they rarely disappear entirely.
The vaccines that are crafted every year to fight off influenza still target a piece of the pathogen that laid the world low in 1918. That means we could still be dealing with Covid-19 a century from now. I hope we’re doing a better job.—Michelle Fay Cortez
Travel tracker
Americans are taking fewer international trips to almost every destination in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. But not all travel destinations are down. Bloomberg analyzed airline flight capacity to more than 30 global destinations from the U.S., and a handful of places are actually seeing more travel. Those places have something in common: They’re three of the most-open destinations for travelers coming from the U.S., according to Bloomberg’s ratings.
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August 21, 2021 at 06:15PM
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Herd Immunity Moves Further Away the Closer We Get to Original Goals - Bloomberg
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