The false promise of herd immunity for Covid-19

An opinion piece published in Nature is still just an opinion piece. As usual, this one talks about "untold death and suffering" potentially caused by Covid without comparing it to the death and suffering caused by avoiding infections at all costs. It downplays the damage lockdowns and social isolation cause and compares them to the worst-case estimates for the damage Covid might cause. This is not how you make rational decisions.

> In the US, probably one to two million people would die

For context: That's 0.3-0.6% of the population. The usual death rate is 0.86% per year.[1] Calling this "untold death and suffering" is disingenuous.

> But models that calculate numbers at the lower end of that range rely on assumptions about how people interact in social networks that might not hold true, Scarpino says.

So do the models that calculate more pessimistic numbers. Relying on assumptions that might not hold true is what models do. However:

> Low-end estimates imagine that people with many contacts will get infected first, and that because they have a large number of contacts, they will spread the virus to more people.

How could this possibly not hold true?