David L. Katz in the NYT
nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opin … ncing.html
His basic argument seems to be that…
[b]'If a germ can’t secure its hold on your body, your body no longer serves as a vector to send it forward to the next potential host. This is true even if that next person is not yet immune. When enough of us represent such “dead ends” for viral transmission, spread through the population is blunted, and eventually terminated. This is called herd immunity.
What we know so far about the coronavirus makes it a unique case for the potential application of a “herd immunity” approach, a strategy viewed as a desirable side effect in the Netherlands, and briefly considered in the United Kingdom.'[/b]
On the other hand, remember when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson [the libertarian] was talking about letting the virus run its course in Britain, allowing the population to build up a natural immunity to it…
nytimes.com/2020/03/13/worl … hnson.html
Now listen to him as he shuts the country down.
'The data from South Korea, where tracking the coronavirus has been by far the best to date, indicate that as much as 99 percent of active cases in the general population are “mild” and do not require specific medical treatment. The small percentage of cases that do require such services are highly concentrated among those age 60 and older, and further so the older people are. Other things being equal, those over age 70 appear at three times the mortality risk as those age 60 to 69, and those over age 80 at nearly twice the mortality risk of those age 70 to 79.
So, the idea is go from a “horizontal” response to the pandemic by shutting everything down, to a more “vertical” approach where the emphasis is placed on protecting that 1% of the population most at risk, without upending the lives of the 99% who are not really at risk for any serious consequences even if they do get sick.
Or something like that.
Of course thinking something like this up in your head is not the same as coming up with actual social, political and economic policies to implement it “in reality”.
The law of unintended consequences often runs rampant “in reality”. Not to mention Murphy’s Law.