Trump team met with doctors who want to combat the pandemic by letting the virus run its course

Last Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar informed the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that "Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus." But on Monday, he and Donald Trump adviser Dr. Scott Atlas met with three physicians noted for their out-of-the-mainstream views that the most vulnerable in the population be aggressively protected while the economy is reopened and broad testing for the virus, along with some other public health measures, be dropped. One of the three, Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, told Laura Ingraham on Fox News Monday, “Three months, maybe six is sufficient time for enough immunity to accumulate … that the vulnerable could resume normal lives. [...] Don't test [the healthy]. Let them live their lives and let them build up the immunity that will eventually protect the vulnerables.”

As Sarah Owermohle and David Lim at Politico report, most medical and public health experts don’t see things this way. Said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former Obama administration official who oversaw disaster response, “This is not a good faith attempt to talk to experts. This is an attempt to cherry- pick credentialed people who happen to agree with the administration’s political instincts or political inclinations.” He added, “They are putting out a half-baked policy proposal that is not grounded in science, but aligns very well with the political direction that the administration wants to take and that the president wants to take and that he sees as being most consistent with his reelection prospects.”

The three doctors’ records don’t offer much confidence. For instance, Gupta and colleagues in her Oxford research group rejected the tight restrictions adopted in the U.K. in March, claiming then that “the death rate or the likelihood of dying from infection was very low.” The virus has since then killed more than 42,000 Britons.

Harvard medical professor Martin Kulldorff argues that getting to herd immunity with the lowest number of fatalities will depend on how many older, more vulnerable people are in the infected group since younger people are less likely to suffer serious symptoms or die. Focusing on protecting those older vulnerables will reduce the eventual toll, he claims. But Owermohle and Lim point out:

Death rates from the coronavirus are exponentially lower among children and young adults than elderly people, but recent studies also show they can spread the virus fairly easily. A CDC study this summer showed the virus’ rapid spread through a Georgia summer camp, with 44 percent of people there testing positive for the virus — more than half between six and 10 years of age. The findings show that the virus can spread “efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting: and “adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible,” scientists wrote.

In the absence of a vaccine, gaining so-called herd immunity with the approach these doctors prescribe would lead us down a path that could mean adding hundreds of thousands or even millions more U.S. COVID-19 deaths to the existing toll now pushing 220,000. The largest study to date shows that fewer than 10% of the population has antibodies against the virus in their blood, nowhere near the 60% to 70% level epidemiologists consider necessary for herd immunity. Protecting the vulnerable would not be possible under such circumstance, according to Dr, Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, because the requisite numbers of people getting infected and spreading the virus would be so high.

And dramatic increase in funerals wouldn’t be the only outcome, since large percentages of people who have recovered from COVID-19 are showing a range of long-lasting residual effects ranging from mild to serious.

What Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts continue to say at every opportunity is that social distancing, mask wearing, and widespread testing are needed until an effective vaccine is broadly available. Mina told Politico, “We have it completely within us to stop transmission and keep outbreaks under control in a sufficient way so that we don’t have to make this tough decision of trying to achieve natural herd immunity as our only option to get the economy back going. That’s frankly what Trump’s policy is whether he is willing to say it or not.”

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