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Is there a way to stop the virus without completely shutting down the economy? A couple of countries are giving it a try, with some hoping the fastest way to achieve herd immunity is by letting the virus spread through the population. Tacoma MD Dr. Gordon Cohen joined Seattle’s Morning News to discuss.

“Herd immunity is really when most of the population is actually immune to some sort of an infectious disease, and as a result, this provides indirect protection to those who are not immune to the disease,” Cohen explained. “An example is if 80% of the population is immune to some virus. That means four out of five people who encounter someone with the disease won’t get sick, and as a result, there won’t be further spread of the disease.”

In India, for instance, they have social distancing guidelines in place, but do not appear to be locking down the economy due to the severe economic consequences, betting that the infection will spread but the population will develop a natural immunity before too many require hospitalization.

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“Apparently 93.5% of the Indian population is younger than 65, so given that they have such a young population, the risk of people getting sick and dying is relatively small,” Cohen said. “The notion would be that if you just basically let the virus run rampant throughout India in a very short period of time, you would achieve herd immunity. Now, this was the approach that the United Kingdom took, but they don’t have the right population.”

“And so they quickly switched from trying to achieve herd immunity to social distancing because they saw their death rate go up quite quickly,” he added.

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“We’re learning more and more things about the disease,” Cohen said. “So it’s not just about the respiratory failure anymore, but actually we’re suddenly realizing that it’s probably causing strokes in younger people, we’re also aware of the fact that it’s now causing some sort of clotting abnormalities.”

“There’s still a lot about what this virus is doing to the body that we don’t even understand yet,” he added. “So sure, it could come off as a big hoax like, ‘Well, only this many people died and only this many people got it.’ But to be honest with you, what has been successful is this whole notion of social distancing. It really has kept it from spreading.”

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