Herd immunity is ‘dangerous.’ Dozens of scientists refute letter from anonymous experts
A group of 80 scientists from across the globe signed a letter warning the world about the risks surrounding a herd immunity approach to overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, stating it’s “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.”
Herd immunity suggests allowing those in the “low-risk population” such as children and young adults to become infected during large uncontrolled outbreaks while protecting the most vulnerable, including older adults and those with underlying medical conditions.
“Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed,” the scientists wrote in the open letter published Thursday in the journal The Lancet.
“Such a strategy would not end the COVID-19 pandemic but result in recurrent epidemics, as was the case with numerous infectious diseases before the advent of vaccination. It would also place an unacceptable burden on the economy and health-care workers, many of whom have died from COVID-19 or experienced trauma as a result of having to practice disaster medicine.”
The letter’s publication comes after the release of “The Great Barrington Declaration” on Oct. 4, which was cited by two anonymous White House senior administration officials on an Oct. 15 call, according to The New York Times.
The declaration says public health measures during the pandemic should be led by a herd immunity approach, stating those who are not vulnerable to COVID-19 “should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal.”
“As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity... and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity,” the declaration reads.
“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk,” the declaration continues.
The nearly 10,000 medical and public health signatories, who are mostly anonymous until the declaration is approved, call their method “Focused Protection.” The document is led by epidemiologists and professors Dr. Martin Kulldorff from Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University Medical School.
But the rest of the scientific community are at odds with the idea of letting thousands, if not millions, become unnecessarily infected with coronavirus and risk death.
The authors of the letter against herd immunity state that the approach, long touted by President Donald Trump, significantly risks disease and death across the whole population, thus harming the workforce and overwhelming health care systems.
They also state that there’s no evidence for “lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” This lack of data builds upon another unknown: how often people can get reinfected by the disease, which has already been reported in a handful of cases.
What’s more, the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is “several-fold higher than that of seasonal influenza, and infection can lead to persisting illness, including in young, previously healthy people,” the scientists write in the open letter.
“We cannot afford distractions that undermine an effective response; it is essential that we act urgently based on the evidence,” the group writes.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said herd immunity is “very dangerous.”
“If you let infections rip as it were and say, ‘Let everybody get infected that’s going to be able to get infected and then we’ll have herd immunity.’ Quite frankly that is nonsense, and anybody who knows anything about epidemiology will tell you that that is nonsense and very dangerous,” Fauci told Yahoo! News.
The World Health Organization has also repeatedly warned about the dangers of pursuing herd immunity.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said Wednesday during a briefing that “allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It’s not an option.”
Instead, he recommends contact tracing, isolation of infected individuals, physical distancing, continued testing and simple hygiene like hand washing as a way to combat the virus.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 9:32 AM with the headline "Herd immunity is ‘dangerous.’ Dozens of scientists refute letter from anonymous experts."
