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Do we have anything, or can we produce, on herd immunity issues around covid-19? There's a clear demand for this (70k pageviews / day in the last week). Andy Dingley (talk) 11:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Without immunisation I understand populations can become more resistant after multiple sweeps of a disease, so possibly with smallpox, mortality was high in previously exposed populations in Europe, but without that prior exposure First Peoples had catastrophic mortality. This was not herd immunity. That is, after repeated exposure morbidity and mortality in a population may reduce. Is there/should there be an article covering that. Paul foord (talk) Paul foord (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
A popular theory of a new virus which humanity wasn't exposed to before, but looking at 95% recovery/5% death rates, some people are harder or easier affected by Covid-19. Scientists check into genetics of Covid-19 patients (and high risk factors like age, immunity compromise and health conditions), along with blood types such as A, B, AB and O; and the RH factor to determine why some people are easily recovering and others are dying faster. One way to explain this phenomena is ancestrally, there were rare but probable Covid-type plagues in human prehistory or plagues of "unknown origin" described in global pandemic history. A new virus wouldn't kill a scant 5% of their infected rate population, then again a coronavirus similar to its relatives like the common cold, influenza, poxes (i.e. chickenpox, measles, rubella and the now extinct smallpox), herpes (STD) and canker sores can be recognized as "familiar" in some people's immune systems geared up to fight it. And oddly, SARS and MERS which are the worst type of coronaviruses keep originating in East Asia (then spread outward globally in an age of massive travel, but they tend to disappear like SARS or reappear like MERS). Is there evidence of many Chinese and East Asians were previously exposed to Covid-type disease than Europeans and caucasians who had higher death tolls? 2605:E000:100D:C571:7D82:A683:E434:DB3D (talk) 15:15, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
In the section Mechanics, the paragraph that starts with "These calculations assume ..." alleges an assumption about the calculations in the preceding paragraphs – more specifically, that the entire population is susceptible. Is this a left-over from an older version? The calculations explicitly use a variable S, representing the proportion of the population who are susceptible to infection. I do not see the difference between the effective reproduction number Re and R0 · S. Any objections to removing this paragraph (with an appropriate adjustment to the next)? To make things cleaner, we should define the notion of "effective reproduction number" in the article Mathematical modelling of infectious disease and define it mathematically by Re = R0 · S. --Lambiam 11:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
I've included today's BBC report on the estimated HIT range, but it would be best to include the more recent scientific papers I think. kencf0618 (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
COVID-19 herd immunity: where are we? - Nature Reviews Immunology More accurate R0 range is 2.5-4. I don't know where the HI threshold 50-83% have come from. Someone with expertise needs to weigh in and update maybe. - hako9 (talk) 22:59, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
I note that in the table in 'Theoretical basis' section that the R0 value/ranges do not match the values quoted in the referenced BBC article. It should probably read: 3, 4-5, 5-8. 123.208.95.120 (talk) 09:00, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
I have been threatened with banning for supposedly vandalising Wikipedia, but it is clearly baseless and without merit. User:Julius_Senegal quotes Quackwatch.org, which is not a reliable source as born out by the court case brought by it's owner, Stephen Barrett|, in which he and his associate "were found to be biased and unworthy of credibility." (https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/b156585.pdf?ts=1396114003). More details at http://www.truthwiki.org/stephen-barrett-quackwatch/
Then an anonymous coward User:CLCStudent threatened me with a permanent editing block!
I quoted the Weston A Price foundation website which is fully referenced with sources from peer revieved scientific journals. Not all may like the the content of this site, but my quote is fully and substantially referenced out of accepted peer-reviewed literature.
I have therefor created a new section for this information.
Lifeboy (talk) 09:13, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
It's you that's making these claims about peer reviewed, published science. You're the one cherry picking what you don't like it seems. CDC, FDA, etc are definitely not more reliable or trustworthy than The Journal of Clinical Microbiology, are they? (https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.33.9.2485-2488.1995). The expert fallacy should not have a place here, so drop it. And is PLOS also not good enough for you? I think you need to substantiate your claims and if you're unhappy with something I contribute, then be specific or keep quiet. Lifeboy (talk) 16:35, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Without looking for it the following irrelevant but disturbing headline came up in a search result.
It seemed to be fake news as the WHO cannot be so brazen in promoting vaccines that they will mess around with our language.
I wonder if they have tried to adjust reality in the other languages they may publish opinion in.
If they have adjusted the robots.txt file to clear archive.org scans of their site after this (or some other propaganda act) then they need to be censured. Preventing archive.org from crawling a global health site is not right. What if the servers are blown up and the only copy is at archive.org, only it isn't, this is not a good sign.
Is there a place on this wiki page that we can add the proposed new meaning that the WHO gives to Herd Immunity so that people know what to expect when they decide to embark on a career of helping people against the best wishes of the largest ally they though they had.
Idyllic press (talk) 20:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Because of the Great Barrington Declaration and other similar stuff, we have several links to this article that are less than helpful. Just one example:
Of course, the article does not mention what that approach is. After all, the GBD method is not the only "approach based on herd immunity", and the GBD just tried to appropriate the term for their method, which is not relevant here. I think we should have a better way of handling such links, one which does not let them do that. But I don't know how. Maybe change the redirect Herd immunity approach to Great Barrington Declaration and always use it instead of a link here? --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Should population heterogeneity be included in the article?
HIT = 1 - (1/R0)^1\lambda
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/846
--Rcsmit (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Referring to this sentence near the start of the article: "Tetanus, for example, is infectious but not contagious, so herd immunity does not apply." - the difference between "infectious" and "contagious" needs to be explained here, as it is not clear or self-evident - I suspect most non-medical people probably regard the two words as interchangeable. Neither the articles "Contagious disease" nor "Infection" seem to clearly explain the difference. M.J.E. (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
The HIT is a value calc. only by the given value of R0. It does not cover any other relevant aspect (like decay of immuno-response with time, an efficiency of immuno-response lower than 100% etc, mutation). In the case of Covid - Omicron variant, the deduced number seems to indicate that herd immunity is feasible - against the scientific result that herd immunity is not achievable to the current knowledge, as not-covered aspects lifts the threshold beyond 100%. As the HIT number is uncritically calculated - I would suggest to remove the specific column from the table as it is misleading (Note: I was looking for this specific case - and was surprised to find such an unlikely number - till I realized that that is a number generated by a WP-User. To be clear, Ro is a measured (averaged) value - HIT in this table is not a value from a source but self generated) and therefore, actually, violates WP - Rules --DAsia (talk) 01:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
I think it may be good to add very brief info about this. Maybe one would need to wait for a scientific review or e.g. the CDC to comment on this for a sufficiently reliable source. But for example, maybe such a source already exist, or it could be made clear that this is only what has been suggested (based on their reported results) there and that a better source is still needed.
It's included in 2022 in science like so:
A preprint suggests that SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in or transmitted through the air are an unrecognized mechanism by which, transferred, passive immune protection occurs.[1][2]
It's relevant and important to know that protection from passive (herd) immunity is thought to wane over the course of weeks to months, including for such cases, if it's not sustained but I think this is already included elsewhere in the article.
Moreover, this may also be relevant (note that this not necessarily about airborne aerosol transmission):
Antibodies from vaccination can be present in saliva and thereby may have utility in preventing infection.[3]
And things like / including this may also be relevant and aren't mentioned in the article:
References
((cite journal))
: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
Prototyperspective (talk) 12:11, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
The graphic entitled, "Herd immunity protects vulnerable communities" is confusing and raises many questions, IMHO. It's also redundant with the first graphic, which explains the various possible scenarios, including herd immunity (the third scenario) and explains it better, but doesn't call it out as "herd immunity." (If that is wrong or you want a list of the questions and issues w/ second graphic, please advise and I will post.) Can we just delete the second graphic, and add the term "herd immunity" to the third scenario in the first graphic? 2603:8000:8F40:3B08:11EF:6BF7:659C:893F (talk) 19:30, 1 May 2023 (UTC)