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The trace model: identify each infected person, trace all their contacts, test all of them, expand outwards. Full quarantine the infected. Intensive but it works; see South Korea and New Zealand.

The "herd immunity" plan can only work with more than 50% of the population infected, of which about 1% will die and some slightly higher percentage suffer lingering ill health, which in the US means at least a million people.



The "herd immunity" plan can only work with more than 50% of the population infected, of which about 1% will die and some slightly higher percentage suffer lingering ill health, which in the US means at least a million people.

That's current US policy. That's what the "Get and Keep America Open" plan does.[1] Current death rate for the US is around 1,400 per day.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/open-america/i...


This could be a naive question, but everything I've heard is that coronaviruses don't disappear, they just sorta integrate and mutate into our normal "known set" that we deal with year-to-year.

If that is true, doesn't the strategy taken by SK and NZ put them at continued risk for a another outbreak if the virus sneaks back in? Without a vaccine, and then significant uptake by the population yearly, doesn't the risk of covid-19, and its mutations, come back every year?


We do eventually require a vaccine or similar.

SK and NZ can "end" the outbreak. The "herd immunity" strategy will simply continue it straight through the whole year, with a lot more deaths.




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