Herd immunity rate is directly dependendent on Rt. If something spreads faster, and Rt is therefore higher herd threshold will be higher too. I think the UK variant is the cause of recent updates on herd immunity percentage.
And nobody has any idea if that variant actually affects the transmission rate, let alone what impact it might have on “Rt”.
Speculation about this is irresponsible, at the very least. Moreover, we have eradicated exactly one human disease in all of history, and it took a couple hundred years of effort. Eradication is not the goal.
Immunize the most vulnerable people in the population (those over 65 and/or with certain co-morbidities), and the death rate for this virus will be dramatically reduced long before any herd immunity threshold is achieved.
Yes, according to a review of the current evidence by the UK’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG). Its 18 December report said that the rate of transmission of the variant, known as B.1.1.7 or VUI 202012/01 (variant under investigation, year 2020, month 12, variant 01), was 71% (95% confidence interval 67% to 75%), higher than for other variants, and that it may also have a higher viral load.1 While previous variants have emerged without clear evidence of having a selective advantage, the report noted, the “emergence and subsequent dominance” of this new variant in a period of relatively high prevalence indicated that it does have a “selective advantage over other variants.”
Yes, I’ve read the original report upon which that claim is based. They make it utterly clear that the evidence is weak, and that genetic variants can achieve high frequency even if selectively neutral:
This slide deck puts it in perspective: there’s a specific mutation that is increasing in prevalence in a certain surveillance network, there’s a hypothesis about why it might lead to increased spread, and it requires more investigation. That’s it. Any claim of knowledge about impact on Rt is simply wild exaggeration of the data.
This is a case where if you don’t understand the field, you have no ability to judge the quality of the claim being made. People are irresponsibly reading second-hand sources, and quoting numbers out of context. Other people quote those sources, and before long, the snake is eating its own tail.
I would wager that the author of that BMJ piece never even read the presentation I quoted above (even though it’s the cited source by NERVTAG for the “genetic evidence” claim in the brief whitepaper that the authors do cite).
Do you personally understand the field enough to pass such furious judgements? You name suggests me that you are some kind of low-level developer, not an epidemiologist.
Yes. I have a doctorate in the field. Regardless, you don’t have to take my word for it - I linked directly to the source, and you can read it yourself.
It is deeply, deeply ironic that other users on this thread are eager to downvote and dismiss me, based on nothing other than their opinions, when I give citations backing up nearly everything I write. Consider their biases.
I personally wouldn't bother arguing with this user on this topic unless I were really bored and in the mood to waste a bit of time. Check out their comment history for yourself and decide whether it's worth it.
We eradicated SARS in 2004. So no. We also drove many other diseases to the point when it is almost impossible to catch them today, in most of the world.
Speculation is the only way today to establish proactive risk management - it is so much cheaper to contain it and then find that you had overestimated the risk than the other way around. That particular variant ha also a nasty deletion, increasing its chance to escape from the vaccine. Although you are right, you need to vaccinate the vulnerable first, the vaccine is not 100% reliable, and the uncontrolled spread among young population might make the reliability of the vaccine even worth, because of further mutations.
