Mar 18 2020
Dr. Why: Thank you very much for sharing your notes from the meeting at such a prominent university. My comments are pretty much the same, as in my other replies and posts. Just a look at the list of panelists is enough to realize that they are unlikely have practical knowledge and experience, may be with exception of “infectious diseases doc”. What they say is largely speculations and misinterpretations of facts…
Just looks at these two takeaways:
40-70% of the US population will be infected over the next 12-18 months. After that level you can start to get herd immunity. Unlike flu, this is entirely novel to humans, so there is no latent immunity in the global population.
[We used their numbers to work out a guesstimate of deaths— indicating about 1.5 million Americans may die. The panelists did not disagree with our estimate. This compares to seasonal flu’s average of 50K Americans per year. Assume 50% of US population, that’s 160M people infected. With 1% mortality rate that's 1.6M Americans die over the next 12-18 months.]
#1 may or may not be true. All other coronaviruses we know do not excite immune system and no long-term virus-specific immunity develops. This is a reason some people, who have deficiencies in non-specific immune response, get several “colds” per year.
If this is true for COVID-19 – any attempts to develop vaccine will be either futile or result in kind of 50/50 efficacy of influenza vaccinations. Also, because a flu virus mutates and vaccine makers did not guess correctly a single time in 50+ years of flu vaccine making, the statement “unlike flu” is incorrect. It is likely to be “like flu”. Flu does not induce long-term immunity either.
#2 It is only a “guesstimate” – this is correct, but also a very dangerous and irresponsible guesstimate. This is essentially a reason the world is coming to standstill now.