@jasjas1973 Naturally occuring Herd immunity, means subjecting everyone to the full force of the disease, so killing off those who can't survive and leaving some with long term complications.
No, it doesn't. Herd immunity in that context is what farmers do to cattle and sheep. Herd immunity in the context of humans is about reducing R0 to less than 1. R0 refers to the infection rate of a disease. Coronavirus has an R0 of 2.5- that is, every infected person infects 2.5 others. This results in exponential growth of the disease.
Now, once you've had Corona once (like virtually all viruses) you can't get it again until it mutates. Even then, it is generally gotten more mildly and with less virulence. So once 50% of the population have had Corona virus, now all infected people are only infecting 1.25 people. In order to have a virus cease to spread, you need R0 to be less than 1. 1/2.5=0.4. So once 60% of the population have had Corona virus, R0 is now less than 1.
That is the point at which Corona virus is going to end- every infected and contagious person at that point will infect (on average) less than 1 other person. That is what herd immunity is, in human populations. The point at which the distribution of human antibodies means that a disease no longer grows at an exponential rate (anything with an R0 above 1 is exponential, anything less than 1 is terminal).
This is the huge disadvantage of the lockdown method that China and all the others are applying- while R0 remains above 1, all lockdown does is delay a second pandemic. Ideally you wait until R0 is below or approaching less than 1, then hit lockdown. At that point the 40% of the population who haven't yet been infected have a real chance of avoiding it all together because herd immunity suppresses the distribution of the disease, and by locking down you give a chance to those who have it to recover and stop being contagious.
China has had 80,000 cases, with a population of 1.3 billion. Less than 0.00001% of the population have had Corona virus. Right now R0 in China is approximately 2.4999999999999999. i.e.: the second lockdown ends, epidemic resumes.
If China had caught this out the gate, if they had locked down and banned travel back in November when they first got wind of it, this might have been contained. But they didn't. So now this is what we have to face.
This isn't politics. It's maths. It's brutal, but it's the facts of the matter- because I can guarantee that no matter how total the lockdown, someone who is contagious will come out of the lockdown. If R0 is not below 1, then lockdown has achieved nothing. It is awful, my parents are in their 70s and my mother is an asthmatic. They are self isolating at the moment. Hopefully herd immunity is reached before they get it. If not, then there is a 15% chance they will die. That's awful, but i appreciate their best hope lies in weathering this storm which may mean months of isolation. Hopefully they can do that. I may have to drive 4 hours each way to deliver them groceries, thank goodness for things like facetime so at least we can see and talk to them.
Lockdown in China and other countries has already shrunk global GDP growth to less than 1.5%. which means we are already looking at a financial crisis worse than 2008. If this continues for long enough, we are looking at possibly the worst financial crisis since the Spanish flu or bubonic plague. You want to know what kills more people than coronavirus? Poverty, homelessness and starvation due to massive global economic shock. Crumbling infrastructure in cities that lead to faulty sewerage that results in spikes of typhoid fever (easily spread without sanitation infrastructure and a mortality rate of 20%). That will kill untold numbers, and is far more fucking scary than Corona virus. You better bloody hope the government retains the financial capacity to maintain basic infrastructure.
So no, it's not about money over people. It's about damage control. Don't be so fucking stupid.