| > or from it running its course to be done with this. A nitpick, but it deals with a pervasive idea that should be updated. The virus will most likely never "run its course" to give us collective immunity without technological intervention. That's because herd immunity is only known to have ever occurred as a result of deliberate vaccination, and even then it disappears in areas where vaccination stops. It has never been observed to occur naturally as a result of infection. In other words, the "natural herd immunity solution" is simply not something most of the scientific community believes to be an option right now. Instead the prevailing theory is that if we let it "run its course" it would in fact continue circulating endlessly, gradually mutating. Epidemiologists do perform calculations to estimate how natural herd immunity might arise, but it has never yet been observed to actually happen, and the calculations are intrinsically rather unreliable. From "The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19" (21st October 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4): > never before have we reached herd immunity via natural infection Also maybe relevant, if herd immunity could occur naturally, then the calculations done around it lead to: > proposals to largely let the virus run its course [...] could bring “untold death and suffering” |