US President Donald Trump pushing for herd immunity against Covid-19, White House officials say
- Three senior health officials said the administration is taking the step to push that strategy into policy, despite the huge risks involved
- Public health officials have repeatedly said that such an approach would be dangerous and could result in thousands of unnecessary deaths
Three senior health officials told The Daily Beast that the administration is taking the step to push that strategy into policy despite public health experts and doctors warning that the strategy would result in many more people getting sick and dying.
What is herd immunity? And can it stop the coronavirus?
Public health officials have repeatedly said that a herd immunity approach would be dangerous and potentially catastrophic.
One source told The Daily Beast that while the administration has been careful not to use the term “herd immunity,” their policy efforts focused on the idea that vulnerable Americans should be protected while everyone else is able to get exposed and potentially infected.
Herd immunity is not a strategy or a solution. It is surrender to a preventable virus
“This is simply wrong,” Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said on Twitter on Monday. “Herd immunity is not a strategy or a solution. It is surrender to a preventable virus.”
Herd immunity is when a population has enough people who are immune to a virus that it slows the rate of transmission. One way of achieving this is through vaccines. A large percentage of the population would need to be immune before this could be achieved.
So far close to 9 million Americans have been infected and over 227,000 have died from Covid-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Atlas has since claimed that herd immunity was not an approach that the White House was considering.
“As we have specifically stated many times on the record and in print, we emphatically deny that the White House, the president, the administration, or anyone advising the president has pursued or advocated for any strategy of achieving herd immunity by letting the coronavirus infection spread through the community,” Atlas told The Daily Beast in a statement.
“That has never been advised to the president nor has it ever been part of any policy of the president.”
