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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Why oh why does this never get mentioned in any MSM news?
Because most have sold themselves to government and its advertising bribery, and are also terrifed of being “cancelled” if they don’t toe the line. A bunch of frit proprietors, editors, journalists and reporters.
The Trusted News Initiative.
Fact checked by the Ministry of Truth.
Because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
And as we all know, it’s very difficult to admit you’re wrong.
because OFGEM applied a D-Notice to them in early 2020
Because Belarus maybe?
They are all ‘on notice’ from OFCOM, restricted from printing anything negative about the ‘pandemic’. You have to hope that when the orders are lifted the floodgates will open, my guess is that the order will be lifted about a week after Doris has announced his exit from the stage.
Because the politicians and MSM believe themselves to be all-knowledgeable and infallible, but more importantly, having set themselves up on a pedestal, cannot be seen to be proven wrong. They are the very opposite of scientific.
Belarusian President Lukashenko: “It’s better to die standing than live on your knees”.
I think I can agree with him on that at any rate.
So do I. But it’s even better to live standing, which is what Belarusians are doing.
Funny, I seem to remember we once had politicians who said, and acted upon, that kind of thing. No longer.
I remember last year he suggested saunas and vodka. A very high rate of sauna use is possibly the reason for the mildness of the COVID outbreak in Finland, see some of the Medcram videos on this subject for example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFRwnhfWXxo Not sure about the vodka but it might have merit as a mouthwash if used regularly
The vodka is just to make the sauna more fun
Vodka makes everything more fun
Lukashenko refused a large WHO bribe last year to fall in line. He refused, hence the EU orchestrated ‘colour revolution’ and smears from the BBC etc.
Alexandr Lukashenko – a president with scruples – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)
Brilliant! Thank you very much.
The six countries ‘deaths from all causes’ chart looks a bit like a part of one of those wavy lines charts where the median 0% turns out to be pretty much the average over, say, a five year period……..
An age adjusted version would be very interesting.
It’s good that there is some real evidence for some nations on at least two continents now which demonstrates what the real enemy is – not an inanimate object, namely a virus.
Also gives weight to the very simple precept that you can’t control a virus.
“…the epidemic is self-limiting…having infected a similar number of people.”
Talking of numbers, reminded me of this which I came across a couple of days ago and I checked again prior to posting, for updates:
The infamous 233 cases.
What do all these places throughout the world have in common?
Alberta; Oregon; Singapore; Mizoram,Ind; Charleston,W.Va; Latvia; San Diego County; Allen County, Indiana; Idaho Falls; Lithuania; NSW; Alberta; Croatia; Trinidad and Tobago; Winnebago County; Jackson,Miss; Hawaii; Frankfort, KY; Tajikistan; India etc etc
They have all reported as having ‘233’ new cases at some time or other since April 2020 – some as recent as a few hours ago!
Just google Covid 19 233 new cases and it brings up the many reported news items for the different areas.
I haven’t posted the link as it is one of those long, convoluted ones that spreads across the page but included a screen shot of some of the reports.
Interesting reading.
233 new cases…MSM at its finest…
Found this earlier:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IIUKRXWUCmIo/
Incredible, its as if they were made up! smirks.
Must be another one of those darned coincidences because they would never lie to us, would they? Wink wink, nod nod, cough cough.
that is totally weird, from the start and still doing it, they’ve stuck to 233
What’s 233 divided by 42?
Sorry, as much as I agree this is all dodgy, try the same for 234, 235, 236, etc. You find exactly the same. What I think this really shows is the absolute obsession with reporting mindlessly exact numbers, not trends and percentages.
Very much this, you can just put any number in and get something similar. All this shows is the media’s rampant obsession with covid, endlessly reporting the same nonsense day-in, day-out. The lazyest of journalism. Pathetic, how can anyone read this garbage?
Could the second peak be related to Sinopharm vaccine as well as winter?
Will HMG be taking legal action against Berooos?
“Will HMG be taking legal action against Beroos?”
For the benefit of those who may not have seen this….it’s priceless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvgwKX-3Gs
Beroos. Lol. And she claimed it was racist to mock her. What an Idiot
All these free countries have effectively been ‘living with Covid’ – which is the policy that we are now starting to espouse.
‘Living with Covid’ essentially means accepting that the illness is around (just like flu) and treating it properly if you do happen to catch it. However, ALL treatment protocols have been effectively banned by our authorities, who have been blinded by the promise of a vaccine, and insist that 100% vaccination is the only answer.
We will not be able to ‘live with the disease’ until the medical industry is allowed to develop effective treatments, and we should be pushing for that to happen.
Those treatments and protocols exist already, and those who use them are threatened, criticised and persecuted.
You forgot banned & cancelled
Precisely. Proof that “saving lives” isn’t part of the plan.
‘Living with Cancer’, maybe for the same reasons? Just have to ‘live with it’
Yes indeed, except that I see little evidence we are “living with covid” in much of a rational manner. The Big Lie that it was/is exceptional is still unchallenged, billions are still being spent on political theatre connected to it, and lots of restrictions are either still in place, or threatened.
So Belarus is described as an “authoritarian country” but the UK and France are not? In the UK, opposition parties’ bank accounts are closed without warning (Reform), there is heavy censorship, freedom of movement has been limited, the main media are to a considerable extent funded by government, a well-known journalist has been held without trial with long periods in solitary confinement, and the right to protest is at the discretion of the government.
Fancy swapping?
Quite possibly, when my circumstances permit. Mexico and to some extent Russia also looking interesting.
The Allied countries in World War II were not paradises, nor were the neutral countries, but most of them would have been preferable to live in compared to the Axis countries. The attraction is relative.
Yes of course it is relative. Do you really think the constraints on our liberties are worse than in Belarus or Russia? I wonder how many people on this forum would agree.
On the face of it, they are quite a lot worse yes. Are you thinking of anything specific or just the general rhetorical case made by the UK’s government-controlled media? The whole of the UK was put under damaging house arrest for months, on a medical pretext without evidence or cost-benefit analysis; that’s quite a constraint. Imagine the uproar if the things I listed above had happened in Belarus rather than the UK. Taxes are also much lower in Russia than in the UK.
The reality is this is just how it has always been. The UK is not some special country free of corruption. Belarus may have taken a different path when it comes to covid, but in many ways they are much worse off than the UK.
Oh no, the UK is a democratic country, just like the German Democratic Republic was…
Please keep in mind that it’s not just lockdown in a given country that causes disruption in basic functioning of society and excess deaths in that given country, but also lockdowns in other, neighboring countries and lockdowns around the world that cause disruption and excess deaths in that given country.
For example, it was already written how global lockdowns have disrupted global supply chains and this has caused many extra starvation deaths in 3rd world countries (more extra starvation will come in the next years and decades). So, it’s not just lockdowns in those 3rd world countries that caused excess deaths but lockdowns around the world.
Belarus and (south)eastern Europe are not 3rd world countries but are also not 1st world countries, they are somewhere in between. Lockdowns in whole of Europe and world would affect these countries (even if countries like Belarus didn’t impose lockdown).
A lot of people from eastern Europe work in western Europe and around the world (mainly US & Canada). Some of them have citizenships of those countries but many don’t and/or are just seasonal workers. When everywhere lockdowns were introduced these people lost their jobs, they didn’t get the furlough or any kind of welfare. They were also literally kicked out of these countries if they didn’t have residency.
In many of the (south)eastern Europe countries the money sent by diaspora to their families in a given year is close to the annual budgets of these countries. So if half of this money stops flowing it’s going to cause a mess.
An illustrative example. You have older and frail people living in Belarus. The pension is very small and public heath care very bad. They don’t have enough for basic medicine or ok heating in the winter (public heating is bad, private too expensive for them). So their children or grandchildren send them money which is just enough to go by. But if this money stops coming, some of these old and frail people will die, especially during cold winter.
Also the fear and panic is global, so even if Belarus or some other country didn’t lockdown many people would still be afraid. They wouldn’t go out of the house, would suffer physically and psephologically, or they wouldn’t go to the hospital in case of an emergency (even if there were empty places in public hospitals or they could afford private care).
These factors are most probably what caused those peaks of excess deaths in Belarus. I think the virus itself wouldn’t do anything in these countries. Unlike 1st world countries, people die more of more general conditions (due to lower quality of life) before they can get old and frail enough to be “finished of” by c19.
“[Uk lockdown contributed to] many extra starvation deaths in third world countries”.
And the Guardian is supporting these lockdowns? Utter sellouts!
Belarus has an unrepentant dictator crushing his political opponents by murdering them. Even Sturgeon hasn’t gone that far. Yet.
I think people look at Belarus and its lack of covid restrictions with envy, while completely forgetting everything else wrong with the country. The grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence.
The problem is expecting the same media that brought you wall-to-wall COVID propaganda to somehow be a beacon of truth when reporting on an “enemy” country. Mainstream media has been an unreliable source for foreign policy issues for many years, to some extent for ever.
How many people have our own unrepentant dictators’ so-called public health policies killed? Particularly the banning of safe and effective treatments? And the totalitarian states that these people are trying to bring in are not going to be safe places for political opponents.
Didn’t Belarus require masks?
Dunno, I was watching some Belarusian football, from last year and there seemed to be plenty of people without masks. I know Belarus has its problems, but strikes me it has some mighty powerful compensations too. August 2 last year, they had crowds watching football mask free. A few days before, our mad government pronounced restrictions on visiting people’s homes for millions of people in the North of England. The graphs above, and the effects on children reported elsewhere suggest it was pointless and harmful.
This is why Lukashenko was put on a fast track regime change op after he refused the IMF ‘loans’ to go along with the lockdown scam. He was marked for assassination as per usual with these things. Fortunately he had some assistance from Russian intelligence.
The ‘game plan’ so beloved of the CIA involved the equivalent of Venezuela’s Random Gaido Guy declared by the US to be the legitimate ruler of Venezuela. It looks like the UK government /courts are close to handing over ~£1.3 billion in gold held in London for ‘safety’ to this ‘official’ representative of the Venezuelan government. Now, that is how you rob a bank.
The Belarus equivalent is some non-entity called Tikhanovskaya who has gained a place at Stanford (unusually not Harvard) where whe will recevie full attention for her handlers.
It’s not ever going to change, sorry guys. Not until all the lockdowners grow grow a pair and stand up to the bullshit that’s being thrown at them.
When, not ever will that happen, it’s to late.