WoMD said:
KidDoc said:
Disagree-- herd immunity depends on vaccine efficacy to not only prevent death but infection. If the goal is a return to pre-pandemic normals then herd immunity is important. If that is not the goal then J&J is fine.
Disagree with your disagreement. And more goalpost movement. You're talking about complete elimination of the virus in essence, not heard immunity, as what is required to get back to normal now. Suddenly keeping people from dying isn't enough. Now no one is allowed to get sick ever.
If 100% of the vulnerable and high risk (and a huge chunk of the remaining adult population) are vaccinated, and occasional cold symptoms amongst adults (with ZERO associated deaths) keeps us from being back to normal then we're never getting back to normal regardless.
I think you misunderstand the concept of herd immunity. Herd immunity requires enough of the population to not be able to get it and pass it on that a sick individual doesn't contact enough susceptible people to pass it on. That way the R stays close to 0 and an "outbreak" would only be a few transmissions deep. It isn't that no one gets sick, it is that it doesn't spread very far.
The point where the virus becomes a minor illness is another way to get back to normal. Usually that would occur from the virus mutating into a variant that causes nothing worse than the common cold. But if you could get a vaccine/treatment that did the same (made the illness minor, but not necessarily prevent spread), you end up in the same place, but only if you get the vaccine/treatment to everyone (or very nearly everyone). Since the virus would still be spreading, it will eventually get to anyone you missed.
This virus most likely will never go away. It can be passed to dogs, cats, mink. That will create a substantial animal reservoir and we will continue to get human infections as susceptible individuals come in contact with infected animals.