As for Sweden, they do have more cases and more death per capita than we have and are nowhere near herd immunity which requires at least 66% of the population to have been infected. How many millions of Americans would die before that occurs. We are buying time to learn more about this illness and how it may be treated to reduce deaths and, hopefully, an eventual vaccine for everyone.
You may find this of interest....or not.
https://judithcurry....r-than-thought/
A recent paper (Gomes et al provides the answer. It shows that variation between individuals in their susceptibility to infection and their propensity to infect others can cause the HIT to be much lower than it is in a homogeneous population. Standard simple compartmental epidemic models take no account of such variability.
Using a compartmental model modified to take such variability into account, with co-variability between susceptibility and infectivity arguably handled in a more realistic way than by Gomes et al., I confirm their finding that the HIT is indeed reached at a much lower level than when the population is homogeneous. That would explain why the HIT appears to have been passed in Stockholm by mid April. The same seems likely to be the case in other major cities and regions that have been badly affected by COVID-19.
In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests, the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population.
So essentially it looks like Sweden will have achieved herd immunity before they have to go through next fall/winter at their very far north latitude.
Pretty smart decision on their part I would say. Looks like they will get away with a couple thousand deaths and be good to go.
K Wave -- This view is definitely NOT the consensus of current scientific thought by virologists, microbiologists, and epidemiologists. Herd immunity differs for different infections and has been determined to be approximately 70%+/- for COVID-19.
Keep searching and I'm sure you'll find someone writing something that confirms your bias. I'll go with the prevailing scientific consensus. https://www.sciencea...vid-19-pandemic
Edited by claire, 12 May 2020 - 10:21 PM.