Power to the Patient!
Two months ago I blogged about virus data, and noted that a “natural experiment” was happening in Scandinavia, where Sweden was trying a strategy of herd immunity. It appears to be a complete failure.
The idea was that herd immunity would cause the number of new COVID-19 cases to decline, without the shutdown policies and economic impact adopted by its Scandinavian neighbors. But the rate of new cases in Sweden hasn’t declined, while its neighbors’ all have:
Caution: This post is not a prediction. It’s just a tutorial about the concept of herd immunity, with an eye to why it’s probably not an approach the US wants to take in solving the complex problems we’ve gotten ourselves into with COVID-19.
Click this graphic to go see a six second animation of these images, created in 2017 by Reddit user TheOtherEdmund. You many need to watch a few times. Get a feel for the differences in what happens in the different blocks, and come back to discuss:
