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<\/a><\/p>\nHerd immunity is a real thing, protecting much of the world against viral threats from the measles to polio. Scientists credit it for helping eradicate smallpox. Having it as a goal likely helped the world embrace measures like wearing masks and social distancing. But it also created a false narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus on \u2018herd immunity\u2019 has, in my view, been quite damaging,\u201d said William Hanage, an epidemiologist and expert in communicable disease dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt presents people with an unrealistic vision of how the pandemic comes to a close and doesn\u2019t account for the evolution of either the virus or the nature of disease in reinfections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some countries learned the shortfalls of herd immunity the hard way. UK prime minister Boris Johnson originally planned to use it as a primary approach to Covid-19, suggesting some of his constituents could \u201ctake it on the chin\u201d with natural infections before the magnitude of the damage became apparent.<\/p>\n
Others are now throwing in the towel, with Indonesia most vocally leading the way. The world\u2019s fourth-most populous nation determined that it would be impossible to stop the virus even if everyone in the country was immunized. It\u2019s redoubling its efforts to promote mask-wearing and social distancing while continuing to boost its vaccination rate.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Singapore and Australia are easing into opening, promising they will do so as they hit sufficiently high vaccination levels.<\/p>\n
The End<\/strong><\/p>\nDespite evidence that it will be difficult or impossible to reach herd immunity, many public health officials aren\u2019t willing to give up on it. Governments worldwide are focusing on widening inoculation programs.<\/p>\n
Yet the individualistic approach by many countries, and vaccine shortages, are contributing to the global problem. The risk will remain for everyone, as long as any nation is experiencing massive outbreaks.<\/p>\n
The world is unlikely to put the pandemic behind it until 2022 at the earliest, experts say. That target could be push back if the virus mounts another metamorphosis to become even more transmissible or even better at evading resistance.<\/p>\n
There is hope for new vaccines and other approaches that could stop transmission more dramatically, but none of those are in human trials yet. It will be a few years before this is a real possibility.<\/p>\n
Regardless, the end may not come via herd immunity. Instead, the virus has a high likelihood of remaining entrenched globally, causing outbreaks that are hopefully mitigated partly by vaccinations, masking and other interventions.<\/p>\n
\u201cDelta is not something we will be able to eradicate,\u201d Hanage said. \u201cEven Alpha would have been hard. However with sufficient immunity, ideally achieved by vaccination, we can expect it to become a much milder illness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Revisiting 1918<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Spanish flu of 1918 may show how Covid may play out, the Mayo Clinic\u2019s Poland said. It\u2019s likely that variants will continue to emerge, forcing the use of boosters or routine immunizations, targeted to the newer strains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, if we are lucky, what is likely to happen is that this will become something more akin to influenza, where we will always have it,\u201d Poland said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll become more seasonal, just like the coronaviruses that are already circulating, and we will just have to keep immunizing.\u201d If things do play out like the flu, the world may have some version of Covid-19 a hundred years from now.<\/p>\n
\nRead: How much money you need to retire comfortably in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Covid-19 surged last year, governments worldwide touted the hope of \u201cherd immunity,\u201d a promised land where the virus stopped spreading exponentially because enough people were protected against it. That\u2019s now looking like a fantasy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":461988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14985,15887,26,15017,15553,15337],"class_list":["post-513060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-astrazeneca","tag-biontech-se","tag-headline","tag-johnson-johnson","tag-moderna-inc","tag-pfizer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513064,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513060\/revisions\/513064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}