What If COVID Herd Immunity is Impossible?

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This last week I’ve had to talk more than one person off of the ledge of “It seems herd immunity is impossible, so we’re going to have to live like this forever.”

So, let’s talk about some things related to that in the hope that it will help others.

Possible Ends to the Pandemic

In very broad terms, there’s three ways this pandemic could end/have ended.

1. Everyone dies. That was never going to happen. Wiping out a species as numerous as humanity with a single virus is a very tall order. It would take a virus that had both a long incubation period during which people were infections and a high enough fatality rate to cause total collapse. Even then some pocket would survive. Civilizational collapse might have been a risk, but the fact is that SARS-CoV-2, while terrible, isn’t bad enough to do that. Sigh of relief.
2. We eradicate the virus and go back to normal. To be honest? This was never going to happen either. Containing a virus with such a long incubation period and high rate of asymptomatic, subclinical and extremely mild infections that are easily mistaken for other diseases? SARS-CoV-2 is well designed to create a major pandemic. We’ve only eradicated one virus, smallpox. We’re close to eradicating polio, but we’re not there yet and it’s taken…