Herd immunity impossible?

Total herd immunity is not possible with a virus that is continually mutating. Just like the common cold.

But we can achieve a degree of fairly widespread immunity with vaccines, which also appear to reduce the severity of symptoms.

I freely admit I don't understand herd immunity. I am not an epidemiologist. I get the distinct impression however that we are all being left to get on with it. Ive never known as many people to have Covid, as this year and some have not fully recovered. I don't know what is going on as the general public ( with few exceptions) are all behaving as if it's all over. I keep hearing it's a mild cold, yet people I know have been really unwell, not needing hospital but a damn sight worse than flu.

But Johnson has begun to ignore Covid. No free tests so we go out to infect others unawarely. I think Johnson's tactic is to assume the death rate from Omicron is low enough to let Covid run through the population to gain herd immunity without a public outcry. That omits any considerations like long Covid, international issues and a new variant of concern.

How can you have heard immunity in a pandemic when a huge proportion of the world 's population are unvaccinated? Not possible anyway.

It's very worrying, thank you for sharing the article

I could never understand why anyone took 'herd immunity by infection' at all seriously. We surely all know that we've only achieved herd immunity to some diseases by the use of vaccines that prevent us being infected. And a large proportion of the population has to be vaccinated for it to be effective.

I think it was criminal to even consider herd immunity.