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by Izkata 2207 days ago
This virus is more infectious and less deadly than originally estimated, putting herd immunity more like 80-85%.
2 comments

Both of these comments are spreading misinformation about "herd immunity."

Any amount of immunity or resistance within the population will reduce the effective reproduction rate of the virus. This effect becomes more significant as the immunity rate increases.

Herd immunity is a colloquial term which refers to the point where there's so much immunity that the effective reproduction rate <1 and new infection clusters die out. The percentage of the population which needs to be immune to get R<0 depends on many factors, consider that many countries have managed to achieve this with near zero population immunity.

For example - if we imagine a hypothetical society which could indefinitely maintain measures like social distancing and mask wearing, the effective reproduction number will be low to begin with; the population immunity required to get to R<0 will therefore be lower.

Please start here before spreading additional misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

This is just blatantly false misinformation. To anyone reading this, just a simple google of antibody tests will show you how false this is.

Flagged.

Random antibody tests are how we found out it spread further than originally estimated, and is less deadly than originally estimated. The denominator increased, the numerator stayed the same, and R0 was revised upwards.