Herd Immunity May Not Be Achievable In US

Medical experts have said that the goal in defeating the coronavirus in the U.S. would be to achieve ‘herd immunity’ – when some 80 percent of Americans would be protected from the virus via natural infection or vaccines. Now, with vaccination rates slowing down, health officials aren’t sure we’ll actually reach that level. From the New York Times:

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves.

It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Medical experts originally thought 60-70 percent of Americans getting vaccinated would get us to herd immunity, but they’ve upped that estimate to 80 percent due to the new variants of the virus spreading. Polls show nearly 30 percent of Americans have no plans to get vaccinated. Read the full article here.

This sucks https://t.co/VLuvL1bct4

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) May 3, 2021

The people who preached herd immunity in 2020
are now the reason we won’t reach herd immunity in 2021.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) May 3, 2021

The Republicans who praise Operation Warp Speed, are now the ones who’ll keep us from reaching Herd Immunity.

Make it make sense 🙃

— Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) May 3, 2021