immunity

14May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CDC Says Vaccinated People Can Ditch Masks In Most Settings – Herd Immunity Appears Unlikely For COVID-19

When COVID-19 first began spreading, public health and medical experts began talking about the need for the U.S. to reach herd immunity to stop the coronavirus from spreading. Experts have estimated that between 60% and 90% of people in the U.S. would need to be vaccinated for that to happen. Only about 35% of the population has been fully vaccinated, and yet the CDC said on May 14, 2021 that fully vaccinated people can lose their masks in most indoor and outdoor settings. An important question now arises: What happens if we don’t reach herd immunity? Dr. William Petri is a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia who helps lead the global program to achieve herd immunity for polio as the chair of the World Health Organization’s Polio Research Committee. He answers q...

Herd immunity won’t solve America’s COVID-19 problem

After months battling the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea of “herd immunity” is back in the news. This has been stoked by reports about the White House’s new pandemic advisor, Scott Altas, who has argued in favor of ending social isolation measures and simply allowing healthy people to get infected. The idea is that the virus wouldn’t spread as quickly once enough people became immune. But trying to reach herd immunity without a vaccine would be a disastrous pandemic response strategy. As mathematics and computer science professors, we think it is important to understand what herd immunity actually is, when it’s a viable strategy and why, without a vaccine, it cannot reduce deaths and illnesses from the current pandemic. What is herd immunity? Epidemiologists define the herd immunity thresho...

A man was reinfected with coronavirus after recovery – what does this mean for immunity?

A 33-year old man was found to have a second SARS-CoV-2 infection some four-and-a-half months after he was diagnosed with his first, from which he recovered. The man, who showed no symptoms, was diagnosed when he returned to Hong Kong after a trip to Spain. I am a virologist with expertise in coronaviruses and enteroviruses, and I’ve been curious about reinfections since the beginning of the pandemic. Because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can often test positive for the virus for weeks to months, likely due to the sensitivity of the test and leftover RNA fragments, the only way to really answer the question of reinfection is by sequencing the viral genome at the time of each infection and looking for differences in the genetic code. There is no published peer-review report on this man ...