Some MYTHS about COVID-19: - that herd immunity is inevitable - that epidemiologists love lockdowns - that it is less lethal than flu - that we can easily protect "the vulnerable" - that we can "let it rip" without cost
It may slow to some extent, but previous pandemics have ended with (e.g. influenza) large seasonal outbreaks, or ongoing transmission (e.g. Zika) or in quite a number of other ways (HIV, Ebola, etc). Endemic disease is very much not herd immunity
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It is true to say that some aspect of herd immunity comes in to play for endemic diseases, because while we are using the term to describe a finite ending it's actually more complex, but I do not agree that a regularly outbreaking endemic disease would be described as HI
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Modellers are calling the point when S = 1/R0 the herd immunity threshold, maybe we should change. My main question is, what's the MYTH in the first bullet point? The flu strains in the last four pandemics went endemic & we recognise something fundamental changed when they did.
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