CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity

“It’s a science-communications problem,” said Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 response.<p>“We said, based on our experience with other diseases, that when you get up to 70% to 80%, you often get herd immunity,” he said.<p>But the SARS-CoV-2 virus didn’t get the memo.<p>“It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and it’s repeatedly challenged us,” he said. “It’s impossible to predict what herd immunity will be in a new pathogen until you reach herd immunity.”<p>What obtuseness on display here. Governments and scientists teamed up to socially distance, mask, slow the spread and to create a vaccine that failed spectacularly.<p>Put it all together, and they KILLED herd immunity. The spread has been so slowed down, and the vaccine so leaky, that Covid is here to stay.<p>Maybe it would have been anyway, but I bet you some big imaginary coins that cross reactive immunity is what makes diseases like Covid go away, and leaky vaccines are what make them here to stay.

&gt; <i>Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.<p>Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.<p>The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.</i>