Read on Twitter
Am I correct in the assumption that allowing the virus to spread among the "young and healthy" with stronger immune response means allowing for the conditioned emergence of variants even more dangerous for those who do not happen to fall into that category?
In fact, it would also be more dangerous for those who do fall into that category: being part of a statistical category doesn't guarantee average outcomes. In other words, the impacts would be worse for everybody, even if harm is unequally distributed.
The new worrisome Covid variants are then the direct product of what we were told would "create a protective wall around the vulnerable", while having only mild impacts on others (except for those on the lower end of their statististical classes, where the bad luck happens).
To note: I'm asking the question, not answering it, but I don't oversee what the other conditions are, to make this either hold up or not. Which is why I am asking. The background of my question is Dutch epidemiologists' advocacy for "herd immunity as a tactic".
"Herd immunity" as a concept is tied to a situation of available, effective vaccines, which cue the immune system with a harmless copy of a virus. Why do some epidemiologists gloss over that distinction to see live/harmful virus as being able to create a similar immunity blanket?
Btw, this question was prompted by a sentence in Rob Wallace's 2020 book Dead Epidemiologists, but it is already known how he sees the question of "immunity by allowing infection among the least vulnerable". See the first question in this interview: http://unevenearth.org/2020/03/pandemic-strike/
So my question is also about why there are some epidemiologists who advocate the opposite, a position which breaks with the existing, legitimate public health use of the term "group immunity". I have seen denunciations, but no arguments for the defence of such positions.
