<story><title>The UK’s delta surge is collapsing</title><url>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-u-k-s-delta-surge-is-collapsing-will-ours.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arbuge</author><text>Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity.&lt;p&gt;It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed themselves to infection most during the pandemic, through disdain for social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. In other words those still unvaccinated in Western countries with easy access to vaccines have a pretty good chance of having been infected by now.&lt;p&gt;Adding those two populations together would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd immunity by this point, which would mean that these surges can be reasonably expected to become smaller and smaller. Unless of course some totally new variant capable of evading all existing vaccines and immunity from prior infection emerges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>The herd immunity threshold changed with Delta, which I&amp;#x27;ve heard has an R0 of 8-10 (compare 3.5-4.5 for the UK Alpha variant, and about 2.5 for the original strain).  Instead of 60% vaccination, you&amp;#x27;d need 90%, and will likely overshoot that.&lt;p&gt;It wouldn&amp;#x27;t surprise me if the UK&amp;#x27;s cases are now dropping because they reached that threshold, but I doubt the US is there now.  Probably Delta will blow through literally &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; the remaining unvaccinated people and that&amp;#x27;ll be the last surge, at least unless we get a vaccine-resistant strain.</text></comment>
<story><title>The UK’s delta surge is collapsing</title><url>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-u-k-s-delta-surge-is-collapsing-will-ours.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arbuge</author><text>Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity.&lt;p&gt;It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed themselves to infection most during the pandemic, through disdain for social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. In other words those still unvaccinated in Western countries with easy access to vaccines have a pretty good chance of having been infected by now.&lt;p&gt;Adding those two populations together would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd immunity by this point, which would mean that these surges can be reasonably expected to become smaller and smaller. Unless of course some totally new variant capable of evading all existing vaccines and immunity from prior infection emerges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ikawe</author><text>&amp;gt; and it may also be the case that those who have a tendency to be skeptical of vaccines also were the ones most out and about and exposing themselves during the pandemic, i.e. the ones with the highest chance of being infected.&lt;p&gt;Sure, _maybe_.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; [...] would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd imnmunity by this point&lt;p&gt;Given that infections are still rising pretty hard, what indicates to you that we are _at_ this point, and not, say, 6 months out?</text></comment>