Way back in 2020 our authorities were pushing heavily the idea of herd immunity for Covid – that is, through vaccination (well, and natural infection) we will all become resistant to the virus and it would simply disappear, just as happened with smallpox (and no other viral disease, despite many vaccines being available for many diseases). Of course, the more likely outcome of herd immunity would be a significant reduction in cases without eradication of the virus.
But what’s all this about ‘herd immunity’?
On the face of it, herd immunity is quite simple. Once enough of a population has gained immunity to a disease, whether by natural infection or by use of an effective vaccine, then the disease dies out and is no longer a threat. However, it is somewhat more nuanced than this. The important factor is really the number of people that each infected individual passes the disease on to. When the number of individuals susceptible to the disease decreases such that each infected person infects, on average, less than one other individual then the disease will die out in that area. Of course, it doesn’t mean the disease will go extinct – it might remain viable in animal reservoirs or in other areas with lower immunity levels – but once the point is reached where there are sufficiently few susceptible individuals then the disease passes into a new stage typified by sporadic localised self-limiting outbreaks.
This brings us to the mathematical characterisation of ‘herd immunity’. The point at which the number of susceptible individuals falls just below the level required for an outbreak of a disease is the ‘herd immunity threshold’, which can be described by a nice simple equation for situations where there is perfect immunity to the disease following infection or vaccination:
Herd Immunity Threshold = 100 × (1 – 1/R0)
Where R0 is the basic reproduction number (the doubling rate in a population with no immunity to the disease).
It is this simple equation that created all of the estimates of the levels of vaccination required to ‘make Covid go away’ that we were bombarded with in 2020.
The WHO estimated in January 2020 that the R0 of Covid was between 1.4 and 2.5. But estimates of R0 during these early days of the pandemic were quite varied, ranging between around 1.5 and 6.8, giving herd immunity thresholds of somewhere between 33% and 85%. This unhelpfully large range was narrowed down by the modelling team at Imperial College, which decided that the R0 of Covid was around 2.6 (giving a herd immunity threshold of 62%). By September the Imperial modellers had settled on an R0 of about 2.5, giving a herd immunity threshold of 60%. This estimate appears to have driven the reporting of the numbers required to get vaccinated to eliminate Covid that appeared during autumn 2020.
The trouble with the simple herd immunity threshold equation shown above is that it assumes that vaccines and natural immunity offer complete protection from infection and onwards transmission. The full equation for the threshold is given by:
Herd Immunity Threshold = 100 × (1 – 1/R0)/ε
Where ε is the effectiveness of vaccination or natural infection in protecting against onwards transmission.
This substantially more nuanced equation for the herd immunity threshold appears to have been ignored in the reporting to the population of the levels of vaccination required to rid countries of Covid. This was despite there being an understanding that infection with a ‘traditional coronavirus’ type cold doesn’t confer long term immunity, the failure of prior attempts to create coronavirus vaccines and the imperfect performance of vaccination to protect against some other common respiratory tract infections (e.g. the influenza vaccines).
Applying this equation to a vaccine with 50% effectiveness (the goal of the vaccine programmes) and an R0 of 2.5 (the assumption in official U.K. modelling for the latter half of 2020) gives a required herd immunity threshold of 120%. As you can’t vaccinate more than 100% of the population, this is impossible. Yet, even given this information the push for herd immunity via high levels of vaccination continued, helped by the weekly reporting in the UKHSA’s Vaccine Surveillance Report of the proportion of the population that had been vaccinated.
Of course, not only was the concept of herd immunity doomed from the start, but as each week went by the vaccination campaign started to target ever lower age ranges, coupled with ever higher estimates of R0 to support the increased proportion of the population required to be vaccinated. When the Alpha (Kent) variant appeared it was estimated to have an R0 of around 4.2, giving a herd immunity threshold with a perfect vaccine of 76%; the Delta variant had an estimated R0 of about 7, giving a herd immunity threshold with a perfect vaccine of 86%. Of course, these higher R0 values meant that, even assuming a perfect vaccine, herd immunity couldn’t be reached without vaccinating children, and so youngsters were next in line to get jabbed. The decreasing vaccine effectiveness during this time was ignored in these herd immunity calculations.
What was surprising about the reporting of the vaccination rates and the slow progression towards the purported ‘herd immunity threshold’ was the lack of consideration of the impact of natural infection. Even when natural infection was mentioned, it was usually to point out that there was only a short term protection from infection offered by natural infection, unlike the vaccines which we were told offered magnificent protection. This strange state of affairs continues to this day, with countries such as the USA requiring two doses of Covid vaccine to enter the country, with no consideration of the longer term protection offered by natural infection nor of the impact of rapid vaccine waning or vaccine escape variants.
There’s an additional impact of the contribution of natural infection to herd immunity. Given that healthy younger individuals were and are much less likely to suffer from severe Covid, there was an argument to be made for allowing children and young adults to become infected with Covid rather than relying on vaccination. Furthermore, as the key period was summertime in 2021 there was also a natural (seasonal) lowering of the rates of severe Covid (possibly due to vitamin D levels – another aspect of Covid ignored by our authorities). Instead, the younger individuals in our population were subjected to rather stringent lockdowns, with strict restrictions on schooling, the cancelling of music festivals and the restriction of students to their accommodation. Moreover, when young people did have the audacity to enjoy themselves they were lambasted by the media as being selfish. I have long thought the opposite and that it was the older age groups that were selfish. Social interaction is very important during our younger years – this is when we learn to be adults and also partake in important social activities such as the down-selection of future life partners – and so the relative suffering imparted by the social deprivation of lockdowns was greater for the younger generations. I’ve suggested in the past that those aged over 50 should have stood outside one Thursday evening and clapped and banged pans to give public thanks for the sacrifices made by the young for the old during Covid. However most of those in older age groups remain ignorant of the sacrifices made for their sake by the young over the last three years.
Herd immunity is a reasonable goal for many diseases and vaccines, but it also has a dark side, particularly for rapidly mutating RNA viruses where vaccines offer marginal protection. As the proportion of the population with immunity conferred by vaccination increases, the evolutionary pressure for the virus also changes to focus on overcoming vaccine immunity. Even worse, if the immune protection is limited to a very specific part of the virus (as with the viral-vector and mRNA vaccines), this evolutionary pressure will be even more targeted. The entire vaccinated population (save those previously infected) will have a very similar immune protection (immunised against identical viral proteins), compared with the unvaccinated-and-infected who will have the more complex immune protection against the whole virus and also potentially against non-identical variants. Thus in the event of a vaccine escape mutation creating a new variant, those with immunity from natural infection will be relatively more likely to have some maintained protection compared with the vaccinated.
The impact of this effect can even be modelled using equations derived from the herd immunity equations as given above. Indeed, in a simplistic case the equation is identical. Consider a hypothetical situation with a population having received a vaccine with 100% vaccine effectiveness and the rest gaining immunity from natural infection (also 100% effective for this example). A vaccine resistant strain emerges that doesn’t impact on natural immunity (this is unlikely, but the example is for the extreme case). In this situation the original herd immunity threshold equation will apply but ‘in reverse’, i.e., in this case the herd protection will be conferred by those with immunity after natural infection and it is these individuals that will protect the vaccinated. To put some numbers on this, if the new vaccine escape variant has an R0 of 4, then if over 75% of the population remain unvaccinated but are previously infected (i.e., 100 x (1 – 1/R0) = 75%) then their immune protection will stifle the spread of the new vaccine escape variant and help keep the vaccinated (vulnerable to the vaccine escape variant) protected. In this simplistic example, once vaccination levels exceed 25% then this protection will fail (assuming all the vaccinated have no natural immunity and all the unvaccinated have natural immunity) and the vaccinated will spread the vaccine resistant strain until the population overall achieves the herd immunity threshold via natural infection.
Reality is, of course, much more complex than the example above. Considerations have to be made for the relative effective reproduction number of the original and vaccine escape variants in the unvaccinated and vaccinated populations. However, the general concept remains – a population with high levels of vaccination with an imperfect vaccine can be more likely to spread vaccine resistant variants than populations with lower vaccination coverage in conditions where the unvaccinated have high levels of natural immunity. It is likely that through universal vaccination we have encouraged vaccine escape variants to occur that wouldn’t have arisen if we had only vaccinated the most vulnerable – as then the selective pressure on the virus would have been to evade a complex natural immunity, not the highly heterogeneous vaccine immunity. Yet again, the goal of universal vaccination to achieve herd immunity looks like it might actually be a false idol to worship.
I’d note that we don’t normally worry about the above – most vaccines offer high levels of protection against disease and also are either based on an inactivated virus (complex immune protection against many proteins in the virus, some of which will mutate slowly) or are based on viral proteins that mutate slowly (in the case of most protein subunit vaccines). It is only in the case of the Covid vaccines that we chose a small portion of the virus that happens to be highly mutable, thus resulting in the problem of rapid vaccine escape being near inevitable.
There’s another complication related to herd immunity thresholds that can be an important consideration for vaccination policy: the role of community infections while below the herd immunity threshold in naturally boosting immunity. The great example of this that has come to light in recent years is the strange situation of chickenpox that appears to have arisen in the USA.
Chickenpox is an unpleasant though largely benign disease that occurs mainly in children. It is more unpleasant in adults, but the vast majority of individuals catch chickenpox as a child and gain lifelong immunity. Thus adult chickenpox is a relatively rare disease. However, chickenpox has a dark side. The virus that causes chickenpox, varicella zoster virus (one of the herpes viruses) remains in the body after infection, quietly residing dormant in certain nerve cells until a point, many years later, when the virus becomes reactivated causing a painful neurological inflammation that we call shingles.
Way back in the mid 1990s the USA started vaccinating children against chickenpox. There were arguably some reasons in favour of this, including trying to prevent the relatively small numbers of hospitalisations and deaths from childhood chickenpox that occur each year in the USA. There are rare serious side-effects that arise from the chickenpox vaccine, but the U.S. authorities’ assessments suggested a net positive outcome, and so the vaccination programme was started. And it worked – chickenpox rates slowed significantly in the years following the vaccination programme, and some hospitalisations and deaths were averted. Even with a fairly high rate of breakthrough infections (around 10% to 20% of the vaccinated go on to catch chickenpox later in life), when breakthrough infections do occur they tend to be mild and have a much lower risk of hospitalisation than otherwise. As a result, the U.S. health agencies considered their childhood chickenpox vaccination programme a success.
But then in the early 2010s a new phenomenon started to be reported – a significant increase in the incidence of shingles since the onset of the vaccination programme, particularly in non-elderly adults.
According to the natural boosting theory, what has happened is that adults who had caught chickenpox as a child kept their immunity ‘topped up’ by repeated exposure to the chickenpox virus from infected children throughout their lives. However, once all the children were vaccinated the incidence of this ‘topping up’ effect reduced significantly. After a few years this lack of repeated ‘topping up’ of immunity resulted in the latent virus being able to flare up, and as a result shingles rates rose significantly. Thus the unexpected impact of the childhood vaccination programme appears to be a significant increase in shingles in adults. Fortunately, this effect should only last for 40-60 years, at which point all those individuals who were vaccinated as a child should have much lower incidence rates of shingles as their childhood vaccination will have protected them from getting the disease in the first place. Or perhaps it won’t – we just don’t know (yet). In the meantime, the U.S. authorities are keen to point out that the problem of adult shingles rates increasing can be partially resolved by giving all adults not vaccinated as children the shingles vaccine – so a problem caused by vaccines can be resolved through the use of more vaccines. A bit of a win-win for the pharmaceutical industry.
I should state here that the above isn’t accepted by everyone – some say that the rise in cases of shingles since the mid-90s is a coincidence, and it is actually due to other reasons. Nevertheless, the scientific basis of the ‘top up’ theory is sound and it illustrates how complex immune effects can turn out to be.
I must also note here that this appears to be unrelated to the dramatic increase in shingles cases from spring 2021 – this phenomenon isn’t explained by childhood vaccination for chickenpox and remains baffling to doctors and scientists.
So far the evidence is that for Covid the introduction of mass vaccination has coincided with significantly increased Covid incidence rates, so it is unlikely that we’ll see an effect of ‘reduced immune top-up’ similar to that seen after mass vaccination for chickenpox. However, it is possible that the effect of lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 has been to reduce this ‘immune top up’ for various common diseases. Indeed, this is exactly the mechanism proposed by our authorities to explain the significant increase in respiratory tract infections we’re currently seeing (earlier in the year than is usual). I’m not convinced that it is the entire reason (I suggest that there’s also some negative impact on the immune system from Covid itself or the vaccines), however it is likely that it has had some effect. It is strange that they didn’t warn of this negative impact of lockdowns at the time, or that it isn’t usually mentioned as a possible consequence of mass vaccination campaigns.
Before I close, I must state that I believe for many vaccines and viruses high levels of vaccination is a valid goal. I suggest that our approach to mass vaccination of children has effectively eradicated many diseases that resulted in the high child mortality rates of the past, and ‘herd immunity’ means that those that cannot receive a vaccine are protected from infection with these specific diseases. I know that many will disagree with this and I expect some negative comments as a result – but what’s important is that people are allowed to disagree and that the most healthy situation is that we can have a discussion. The one thing I am sure of is that suppression of alternative opinions and the rule of the ‘voice of authority’ is a very negative road to go down.
Next time I’ll discuss the other side of the data on herd immunity – the section of the Vaccine Surveillance Reports reporting antibody levels in the population.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly – subscribe here.
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should have done a cost/benefit analysis
Which civil servant, government minister, or government scientist would have dared say that to Big Pharma?
Yes – imagine standing up for the rights of babes in arms!
And imagine how horrendously common sense has to be have been destroyed or overwhelmed to allow this to happen.
Should have said ministers could only impose this if they had defeated either Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury in a bare-knuckle boxing contest.
If pushed, a win over Frank Bruno, Lennox Lewis or David Haye would have sufficed….
COST Soul
BENEFIT: Knighthood, Trip on Air Epstein v2 etc.
Well, who’d have thought it?
Great job lockdowners.
I’ve had big blazing arguments here with the “it’s just a mask, don’t be selfish” brigade.
I’d love to send them some I told you so’s but I really don’t think they will a) care or b) ever admit they were wrong. Also c) I’m fed up of arguing with lefties, 2 years is my limit.
Amazingly most of the comments on that article are “No, not true” “Well then you failed as a parent” – even when their own (left leaning is my understanding) paper reports an about face they won’t accept it.
The Daily Express isn’t leftwing. Why are you talking about the left anyway? I’m leftwing. Most of what is called the “left” is fake. Being in favour of a redistribution of wealth doesn’t mean I think a person with a todger and a pair of gonads should be called a “woman” if that’s what he’s mentally ill enough to think he is.
Tyson Fury has decided he needs your wallet more than you do so he’s redistributing it to his pocket.
Not many people seem to remember or (have ever known) that the common distinguishing feature of the left was a belief that a small minority of people had far too much wealth and power at the expense of others – those others constituting the majority of humankind.
For the benefit of those who don’t realise that, there was (and is) great difference of opinion on the left about what should be done about the situation.
Leftist political parties, on the other hand, became increasingly disinterested in all this and chose other topics on which to expend their vocal energies. Perhaps it got put in the too-hard basket. Their leaders were particularly exasperated by the differences of opinion on the methods to be employed in redistributing wealth.
Redistribution always tends to CONCENTRATE wealth even more.
Not always.
Except that the answer from the left was socialism.
This is like advocating punches from Mike Tyson as a healing aid for punches from Evander Holyfield.
I’m always advocating the speeches of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, JS Mill and W Churchill.
But I get called a Communist for doing so
That was one of the answers – and there were and are many different ideas on what “socialism” means, let alone how it should be achieved.
The ‘it’s just’ brigade are both moronically stupid and highly dishonest, ‘it’s just the government forcing absurdity on you because they can’ is an accurate summary of what really happened.
Don’t give up. They’re in it for the long-haul. And now, they’ve woken up their ‘sleepers’.
Send it to Ian Hislop at Private Eye. The former scourge of the establishment was a cheerleader for the “it’s just a mask, don’t be selfish” brigade.
Private Eye has become all but unreadable with its cheerleading for vaccines and many cartoons poking fun at so called ‘anti -vaxxers’ or anyone who does not follow and approve the government line on covid. The column by ‘MD’ is almost vomit making in its sycophancy. What on earth happened to their formerly excellent probing and enquiring journalism?
Agree with you 100% – I have had Private Eye on order for over 30 years and was greatly disappointed to see ‘M.D.’ stick his tongue right up Chris Whitty’s bottom.
P-Eye did do a ‘Profits of Doom’ expose of companies/people who enriched themselves ordering ‘PPE’ and suchlike, to be fair.
P-Eye’s ‘anti-vaxxer’ stance looks like it’s straight out of Susan Michie’s kitchen.
I dropped my subscription about five years ago. Private Eye is a pathetic comic which is no longer relevant.
It disappeared, followed shortly by my subscription.
Hislop was bought off years ago with tv and licence payer money. He is an establishment tool.
I’ll eventually be able to meet my parents again this year, after two years of being forcibly separated from them. The It’s just …-brigade is going to be entirely unsuccessful with their habitual attempt to downplay the detrimental effects of the nonsense championed by them by framing it as negligible whenever it was mentioned over here.
My idea of an appropriate reply to that would be That’s just a 4.4 lb military issue boot connecting with your shin, don’t make such a fuss about it!
Every time I pass a masked up kid I say out loud “child abuse!”
How can they say they didn’t know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
That was fascinating. Should be shown everywhere.
Thank you.
But at least we ‘controlled the virus’. Whitty/Valance and BJ need jailing.
Preferably with a 22-stone, hairy behemoth called Bubba, who’d make them ‘his little puppies’.
Preferably wielding a square ended broom handle.
Rough end of a pineapple would serve the same purpose.
I can think of far more suitable punishments than jailing that bunch.
Off you go to grab them then!
No shit, Sherlock?
I asked the very same question when face nappies were mandated as very young children identify with their mothers by facial recognition. If a mother chops and changes her facial appearance every-time she goes into somewhere where nappies were required, would this have an impact of the mother-baby bonding process. I guess any potential sociological impacts wont be fully identified for several years yet.
I wonder if in future criminal cases a defence will be “he was a child during Covid and didn’t identify with his mother or adults”, m’lud.
Maskmania
Of course they are.
Stunting the mental development of children apparently saves lives, according to the Branch Covidian Communist Doomsday cultist party.
‘First, do no harm’ (to Big Pharma).
Anyone heard about the new “hepatitis” epidemic in children under 10? Wonder why this is a thing…? I mean, it’s not like this could be in any way connected to the fact that Pfizer have said the vaccine tends to accumulate in the liver…
https://news.sky.com/story/hepatitis-parents-warned-to-check-for-signs-after-70-under-10s-found-to-have-liver-illness-12583961
Never would have occurred to me in a million f*****g years.
May they rot in Hell.
Selfishly I’m almost glad that this has given my own children a competitive advantage, having never had to look at a masked lunatic for more than 5 minutes and always whilst witnessing their father’s disdain and/or subsequent ridicule. Poor babes I’ve seen wheeled around by masked mothers. What an evil trick to pay on society.
The current generation of under fives will be the prototype slave generation.
With such confused emotions. The clip provided by Paul B shows a baby’s distress and bewilderment when encountering a switched-off or blank face, after experiencing an engaged one.
I’ve seen that vid before and it upsets me greatly.
now we have an outbreak of Hepatitis in children. Scientists are baffled. What could they have been exposed to recently?
Just had an unexpected mask challenge in the opticians of all places. Came as a bit of a shock and I hadn’t prepared for it.
It’s particularly infuriating that places populated by people with supposed medical knowledge are the ones still shitting on science. On the flip side I’m somewhat reassured by the way masking has been handled by the British public; awkward, uncomfortable but not in my experience that fascistic.
I had the same in specsavers. Told them I do not subscribe to ‘that nonsense’ he didn’t ask again! If you notice the maskists remain in all the places that are basically public sector and have no competition. If there is an opticians or dentists or doctors surgery that bans masks they would have all my business.
It’s absolutely disgraceful. Talk about advertising your idiot credentials.
HTF do we process this:
Saw a GP this morning – utter waste of time, space and taxpayers money – but I had to sit and listen to her nonsense with her masked up. And all the bloody medical staff were.
These people are supposed to have a grounding in science yet it appears none of them understand that these damned masks not only serve no purpose they actually undermine good health. Talk about rubbishing your own position.
I have lost almost all respect for GPs. A minority might have stood up against this anti-science, but the majority have enabled it, as they could have stopped all the nonsense in its tracks had they challenged the scam.
That’s exactly how I feel. I have more contempt for medical workers after the last two years than just about anyone, and that’s saying something.
I called mine out on it, her and the Asthma nurse were insisting I wore one, I basically said “look I’m not prepared to spend the other half of my appointment arguing with you, there’s decades of evidence that proves they do nothing, are you refusing to treat me or not?”. A most unpleasant experience for someone with severe anxiety who was dangerously depressed at the time.
An absolute disgrace frankly.
When asked in future which GP I’d like to see? I think I’ll answer, “One that didn’t wear a mask during Covid.” although I fear it might be a very short list.
Well done for making a stand. These morons need to be confronted.
You could have asked: “Are there any with British names?”
It’s completely infuriating. I don’t want anything to do with ‘healthcare’ ever again. Trust is at rock bottom.
The propaganda behind the wearing of muzzles has been 100% reprehensible and wrong. The only thing it appears to have done is make money for those involved
Remember 2006 when a Muslim woman was fired from her teaching assistant job for wearing a burka ?
Her job was teaching the children how to pronounce words.
Less than fifteen years later, teachers had to cover their faces in class.
This was a purposeful bombardment of absurdities from the government, aimed at its real enemy: the human mind.
It’s not over: Globalists still using covid-19 to mind control people into submission
https://www.newstarget.com/2022-04-06-globalists-using-covid-to-mind-control-people.html
By Arsenio Toledo
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There is no Bagshot Lane in Bracknell.
That year, everyone had lost their minds, and decided to wear metal buckets on their heads. Because of Science. Anyone who didn’t wear a bucket on their head was taken out the back and pelted with rotten vegetables. They were good times. The following year, it was discovered that all the children’s teeth had fallen out and none of them knew their times tables. But this was considered a small price to pay, because of the Science. The people picked up the rotten vegetables and fed them to the children, because that was all they had left to eat. They painted the buckets blue and yellow, and stuck them back on their heads. Everyone said don’t worry, it was only a cock-up.
And everyone went out on a Thursday evening 8:00pm and threw rotten vegetables at their own houses.
made me so proud!
It is disturbing how easy it is to rid people of all sense of morality.
And all common sense as well!
That said, common sense was probably never especially common.
Witnessed this firsthand today on a train back from London. Empty carriage apart from me and mother with baby. She was masked and the baby was distressed. She used the mask like a game and pulled it down to say ‘mummy’ and the baby stopped crying. She would then pull it back up and it would cry again. I offered to move so she could remove the mask if she wanted but she declined and continued with the theatre. Was really sad to watch and could clearly see the child was very interested in my unmasked face.
Well documented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
Bloody woman certainly not fit to be a parent.
How frightening for a child in an already frightening situation, ie hospital, not to be able to be reassured by seeing its parent’s face and smile.
.
Yet another side effect that should have e been predicted but no-our “experts” like Va llance and the Proje t Fear group w ere too usy removing everyone civ il liberties to give a damn
Were the hospitals going to throw women out the door whilst in labour, if they tore of a mask and screamed at staff to eff off?
There is an awful lot of behaviour recently that can only be described as evil. The worst kind of abuse is being visited upon us and so many support it. I am depressed by the majority of my fellow humans.