Trying to achieve “herd immunity” to #COVID19 through infection rather than a vaccine is a very bad idea. This is not only because health services will be overwhelmed, leading to a rise in all cause mortality, but also because we don’t know the natural history of this disease 1/4
If natural immunity is low or short-lived, re-infection rates could be high. There’s also the possibility of long term, difficult to treat complications after recovery from #COVID19 such as pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, & cardiac failure. #naturalhistory 2/4
The bottom line is that we need to shut this down as quickly as possible and for as long as possible, until we get a successful vaccine. This means harsh measures at first, which are economically damaging, but future measures to deal with wave 2 and 3 could be less harsh 3/4
With carefull planning & global collaboration with countries that have successfully controlled the virus, we can use more intelligent testing, tracing & isolation measures to counter #COVID19 and avoid total shutdown in future. We need to be clever & brave. Nihilism kills 4/4
PS By delaying viral spread as much as possible, this also increases the time to develop more successful treatments. Many global trials are ongoing and some will start reporting in a few months
