[alancalverd]

How do you intend to obtain herd immunity from ebola? Or malaria? These diseases are endemic in wildlife.

Please include cost and benefit estimates for your solutions.

[Bored chemist]

No, quarantine is totally and absolutely not acceptable as a permanent solution. 

Who said it was?
The rest of us were thinking of it as a way to keep the death toll down until we had a vaccine.

[alancalverd]

Though it has been effective against bubonic plague, ebola, and several other tropical nasties.

[evan_au]

no travelling... We must obtain herd immunity.

I heard an infectious diseases specialist say that we have never achieved herd immunity by natural infection - it has only ever been achieved by vaccination.
- I guess when there is a low level of circulating disease, the pool of susceptible people gets very large.
- It only takes 1 infected person from outside (with no quarantine) to start another outbreak.

The other aspect of this is that, for travellers, you are not really safe unless the country you are visiting has also achieved herd immunity. That will take at least another year or two, in some parts of the world (even without new variants and waning immunity).

when the Spanish arrived.  Some books consider 75% of the (Incas) died of European diseases.
No, quarantine is totally and absolutely not acceptable as a permanent solution.

I bet the Incas would have preferred that the Spanish invaders were permanently quarantined.
- But the Incas lacked the ability to enforce a quarantine on armoured soldiers equipped with guns.
- And the people of the day lacked the ability to develop a vaccine (and the Spanish had no incentive to develop a vaccine against the diseases they were carrying!)

But the Incas had some revenge: The Spanish carried syphilis back to Europe.

Are you suggesting that hospitals should open up their infectious diseases wards to the unprotected public?
- Isolation and quarantine have long been successful and economical practices in dealing with infectious diseases
- As part of a general public health system
- Why would you think that this had suddenly changed with COVID-19?

[acsinuk (OP)]

Infectious disease isolation wards are essential as a temporary stopgap measure only ,to allow a vaccine or anti-dote to be quickly developed and released for public use.
In the end the only safe way to protect us all is to obtain herd immunity by any and all means as quickly as possible.
However, lockdowns of general public are totally unnecessary and probably an infringement of our human rights as well.

[Bored chemist]

In the end the only safe way to protect us all is to obtain herd immunity by any and all means as quickly as possible.

The quickest way to do achieve herd immunity  is to deliberately infect everyone.
The only way(s) to do it involve infecting nearly everyone.

And you are calling that "safe"- which shows that you have no idea what you are saying and should be ignored.
The concepts of "safe" and "herd immunity" are mutually incompatible unless you can do it by vaccination.

[Bored chemist]

Infectious disease isolation wards are essential as a temporary stopgap measure only ,to allow a vaccine or anti-dote to be quickly developed and released for public use.

And that's what we are doing.
Though the "ward" I am in is called "my house", which is handy for me, and cheaper for the NHS.

[alancalverd]

In the end the only safe way to protect us all is

to quarantine the country until there are no new cases, and impose quarantine on all incoming travellers until the rest of the world is free from infection.

[evan_au]

lockdowns of general public are totally unnecessary and probably an infringement of our human rights

I would say that a government policy of "nothing to worry about here, go about your normal business as usual" is extremely dangerous and definitely an infringement of the rights of the roughly 5% of people who would die because hospitals are overfull.
- This policy was promoted by Trump, Bolsonaro and (less vigorously) by Boris Johnson.
- It is a gross neglect of the government's duty of care for its citizens.

A better policy would be "We have a problem here, let's take sensible precautions to get it under control (and keep it under control)".
- If you don't take sensible precautions early, then you are left with more extreme measures like long lockdowns.
- And if you don't implement sensible precautions during and after the lockdown, you will be left feeling dizzy from the lockdown yo-yo.

[alancalverd]

lockdowns of general public are totally unnecessary and probably an infringement of our human rights as well.

A bit like wartime curfew and blackout. The quickest way to end a war is to let the other side win, as is their human right.

[Bored chemist]

It's a little irritating to have to acknowledge it, but I think Alan has pretty much nailed it here.

The quickest way to end a war is to let the other side win

[charles1948]

It's a little irritating to have to acknowledge it, but I think Alan has pretty much nailed it here.

The quickest way to end a war is to let the other side win

Absolutely - let the virus "win", in the sense of letting it do its worse and run through our population.

Heck - we've got a global population of  over 7,000,000,000 humans!

Should such a huge number of humans be seriously inconvenienced  by a virus that causes a mortality rate of less than 1 percent of us!  I bet our massive global birth-rate far exceeds the death-rate caused by this puny virus.

So let's get a sense of scientific perspective.  Each individual death may be a personal tragedy.  But as a species, can't we take it in our stride?

[Bored chemist]

Should such a huge number of humans be seriously inconvenienced  by a virus that causes a mortality rate of less than 1 percent of us!

It rather depends if you are part of the 1%.
It also depends on whether or not you can avoid it.

[charles1948]

Should such a huge number of humans be seriously inconvenienced  by a virus that causes a mortality rate of less than 1 percent of us!

It rather depends if you are part of the 1%.
It also depends on whether or not you can avoid it.

Even if you try to "avoid it" by taking a vaccine, the vaccine isn't more than 99 percent effective, so it still leaves you with a 1 percent risk of dying. 
 
Which is the same risk you have,  if you don't take the vaccine.

I

[Bored chemist]

Even if you try to "avoid it" by taking a vaccine, the vaccine isn't more than 99 percent effective, so it still leaves you with a 1 percent risk of dying.
 

Are  you being bad at maths, or bad at humour?

[Kryptid]

Even if you try to "avoid it" by taking a vaccine, the vaccine isn't more than 99 percent effective, so it still leaves you with a 1 percent risk of dying. 
 
Which is the same risk you have,  if you don't take the vaccine.

That isn't how the numbers work. A vaccine that is 99% effective would mean there is a 1% chance of getting sick upon exposure, not a 1% chance of dying after getting sick.

[alancalverd]

Even if you try to "avoid it" by taking a vaccine, the vaccine isn't more than 99 percent effective, so it still leaves you with a 1 percent risk of dying.
 
Which is the same risk you have,  if you don't take the vaccine.

Rubbish. Assume 99% effectiveness:

The known unprotected fatality rate is about 4% of those infected.

The vaccine-protected fatality rate is about 0.04% of those infected.

If almost everyone is vaccinated, the probability of being infected  is about 1%  of the raw figure, because 99% of the population will not be infectious, so the worst-case probability of dying from COVID is 0.0004%.

[alancalverd]

a virus that causes a mortality rate of less than 1 percent of us!

Currently, 4% of those infected, in the best available healthcare systems.

If we do nothing, everyone will eventually be infected, one in five will end up in hospital, and 1 in 25 will die from COVID after weeks or months in intensive care.

If you are happy to  sustain an entirely avoidable 4% death rate rather than be inconvenienced, please think of your nearest and dearest 25 friends and family. Name the five that you would like to see seriously ill, and the one you want dead. Tell them.

Would you be happy to be named on someone else's death list?

[charles1948]

a virus that causes a mortality rate of less than 1 percent of us!

Currently, 4% of those infected, in the best available healthcare systems.

If we do nothing, everyone will eventually be infected, one in five will end up in hospital, and 1 in 25 will die from COVID after weeks or months in intensive care.

If you are happy to  sustain an entirely avoidable 4% death rate rather than be inconvenienced, please think of your nearest and dearest 25 friends and family. Name the five that you would like to see seriously ill, and the one you want dead. Tell them.

Would you be happy to be named on someone else's death list?

I don't like your emotive appeals about: "Who do you want to see dead"..

This is entirely false and beside the point.  You might just as well say,  that cars sometimes run over and kill people. 

So if you own and drive a car -  "Who do you want to see dead?" 

Why don't we all stop driving cars then?

Covid-19 is a relatively mild virus that actually kills only a small percentage of the population.  A far smaller percentage, I suspect, than all the cars, airplanes, trains, busses, and other mechanical and electrical devices have killed in the time since they were invented.  So why don't we stop using all of them, because they sometimes kill
people?

And what about tobacco and alcohol.  Don't these substances kill far more people every year, than CV-19?  Why aren't they banned?  Surely we could do it, if we really wanted to.  But we don't.  Apparently the deaths they cause are acceptable.

So I really can't understand the present hysterical attitude towards CV-19. 

[evan_au]

I don't like your emotive appeals about: "Who do you want to see dead"..
 You might just as well say,  that cars sometimes run over and kill people.
Covid-19 is a relatively mild virus that actually kills only a small percentage of the population.

In Australia, population 25 million, the annual road toll is about 1200 (ie 1 in 2,000).
- So the comparable statistic is "please think of your nearest and dearest 2,000 friends and family. Name the five that you would like to see seriously injured, and the one you want dead. Tell them."
- That's why car accidents (which are considered "normal", and pretty much ignored) is much less severe than a year of uncontrolled COVID-19, which is new, and not normalized.

Correction: "death toll" → "road toll". Sorry for the confusion....