Herd immunity as a Covid-19 strategy: can it work?
- The UK, it seems, has been toying with the idea of letting people mingle as usual, by and large—but with the vulnerable kept safely out of harm’s way and within medical help’s reach
Most of us are familiar with the concept of herd mentality, but what is herd immunity? The global response to the Covid-19 menace has largely been uniform. Contain it to local outbreak zones, says epidemic experts. Suppress its spread through a mix of social distancing and strict curfews. But the UK, it seems, hasbeen toying with the idea of letting people mingle as usual, by and large—but with the vulnerable kept safely out of harm’s way and within medical’s help’s reach. “Mitigation”, this strategy has been called, though it looks an awful lot like a veiled attempt at achieving slow herd immunity.
So, what is it? The idea of it is to let a majority of the population get infected, so that they recover after mild illnesses and develop antibodies to ward off the virus. This way, goes the theory, the already-immune would throw a protective ring around those at higher risk. According to its backers, statistical models show that the probability of someone predisposed to a severe attack — say, an elderly person with diabetes—getting infected would tumble if over two-thirds of a country were to turn resistant.
The proposal is highly controversial. The UK government has explained its light social curbs by groaning about “self-isolation fatigue” as a problem. It has also hinted of an inevitable trail of death in the wake of Covid-19. This suggests that the country is keen to deploy a strategy that is both dangerous and unethical.
Will most Britons achieve immunity to the virus? What if it mutates to gain extra virulence? Do we know enough about the pathogen’s trajectory to assume herd immunity? And, most unsettling of all, does it not expose far too many people to fatality risk? Like the rest, the UK had better do what the World Health Organization is saying. Contain the bug. Do not let it infect more individuals than it already has.
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First Published:17 Mar 2020, 03:36 PM IST
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