'It would kill lots of people': Expert dismisses radical plan to beat virus
An expert in diseases has criticised the concept of herd immunity as one of the only ways Australia can beat the coronavirus pandemic.
Virologist Professor Ian Mackay, from The University of Queensland, spoke to Yahoo News Australia during a Facebook Q&A on Thursday night.
Coronavirus live blog: Latest news and updates from Australia
Prof Mackay was asked whether herd immunity could be the only strategy to stop the spread if a vaccine was never developed.
Herd immunity, sometimes referred to as community immunity, is a situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease to make its spread from person to person unlikely.
But when Prof Mackay was asked if herd immunity was “our only realistic option”, he replied, “No”.
Prof Mackay said the term was “hijacked” by people in the United Kingdom – allowing the virus to get “let off its leash”, however “it’s not something we intend to do because it would kill a lot of people”.
“I think the UK really quickly wound that back after some modelling showed how bad that would be,” he told Yahoo News Australia.
“So what we are expecting is that the virus will hang around, it will stay with us forever, it’s probably the birth of a new common cold virus.”
“We don’t usually see that.
“Viruses we live with are hundreds of years old – certainly beyond my lifespan.
“So what we are seeing is the birth of a new one now that is initially going to be a bit rough until we get this immunity.”
He explained the hope was a vaccine would be developed to provide immunity.
A viral evolution
When asked if COVID-19 would lessen in severity over time, Prof Mackay said we needed to look back at the birth of the common cold.
He said some people would have initially suffered severe symptoms while others died and the virus made its way around the world.
“We’ve all got infected but we’ve all developed some immunity,” he said.
“Our mother passes it on to us at birth. For a short period of time we’re a little protected while we get those first infections, and we do get them from almost the minute we’re born onwards.
“We start getting respiratory virus infections, so when we live with those viruses we don’t see any of those really bad outcomes.
“We still see some and the coronavirus as we have now that’s caused the ‘common cold’ can also cause croup and pneumonia sometimes in the right populations.”
Prof Mackay said “we almost evolve” with the viruses we suffer from.
“This virus is new, we have no immunity so what we’re seeing is the worst it can do in some proportion right through to the fact that it does really not much at all in a much larger proportion of people,” he said.
Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
