Health professionals and officials continue to warn that there is no easy way out of the pandemic, particularly with parts of the U.S. beginning to ease lockdowns.
Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies director, offered some stern words Wednesday about hopes that herd immunity could stymie the coronavirus.Herd immunity has emerged in recent weeks as a popular talking point among people who argue that coronavirus lockdowns have been too stringent.
"So I think we need to be really careful when we use terms in this way around natural infection in humans, because it can lead to a very brutal arithmetic which does not put people and life and suffering at the center of that equation," he said.Health professionals and officials continue to warn that there is no easy way out of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly with parts of the U.S. beginning to ease lockdowns.
In Wuhan, China, thousands of people returning to work in April were tested for antibodies, and preliminary results found that only 2 percent to 3 percent had developed them. Early results from a nationwide study in Spain found that about 5 percent of the roughly 90,000 people tested were positive for antibodies. And even in hard-hit regions, such as New York City, preliminary testing of 1,300 people found that 21.2 percent were positive for antibodies.
That raises concerns for any country trying to lift lockdown restrictions, said Dr. David Dowdy, an associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In the U.S., where unemployment is soaring and anti-lockdown protests are brewing, some demonstrators and lawmakers have been pointing to Sweden as a model for how to operate without strict social distancing measures — and as a possible way to build herd immunity.
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