It’s pretty irritating to see people referring to “herd immunity” as if it was some idea from an old horror film invented by a mad German scientist. In fact, the epidemic will only end when we achieve herd immunity, which will happen sooner or later and the only question is by
what means. Of course the best way would be to reach it through an effective vaccine (and that’s precisely what a vaccine does, because we don’t need to vaccinate everyone and the vaccine need not be effective in 100% of cases precisely because of this “herd” effect).
Without a
Without a
vaccine herd immunity will also be reached - though at a much higher cost in health and life, as happened many times in the past. It’s possible that making an effective and safe vaccine will take a long time (some vaccines may be effective but not safe, others safe but not
effective). But note one thing, if one country, say Sweden, reaches herd immunity through enough people getting infected and gaining immunity (and even if such immunity is not complete, eventually the illness will become very mild for those who had once had it) and another
country, say Finland, successfully eradicated the virus through lockdown, than in the absence of vaccine (i.e. herd immunity) Finland will never be able to fully open its border with Sweden, otherwise its citizens will rapidly become infected by the semi-immune Swedes.
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