Trump embraces herd immunity in wake of his recovery from COVID-19 - Yahoo News

In the days following President Trump’s apparent recovery from COVID-19, he and his administration have returned to pushing the notion that America should fight the pandemic by attempting to achieve so-called herd immunity, rather than trying to stop the spread through the use of masks and by reducing in-person contacts.

In fact, some people — very few — who have recovered from COVID-19 have been infected a second time, apparently with a mutated strain of the virus.

The idea behind herd immunity is that if a high enough percentage of a population, upwards of 60 to 70 percent, is exposed to a virus and produces antibodies for it, the chain of infection will be broken.

Vaccination is one way that communities can help achieve herd immunity — which is why doctors urge patients young and old to get the flu shot each year — because it introduces a small amount of the virus into the human body, triggering the production of antibodies.

“Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Monday briefing.

The same day Tedros made his latest comments about herd immunity, Trump mischaracterized a statement by another WHO official in order to bolster his position that lockdowns put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus should be lifted.

“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.

It is unclear how far Trump and his administration will go to push states to adopt a herd immunity approach to the virus, but as his mass campaign rallies have resumed in defiance of some state guidelines, the number of U.S.

“You’ll develop herd — like a herd mentality,” Trump said during a town hall in Pennsylvania days before he, too, contracted COVID-19.

But in order to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19, the U.S