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WHO chief warned countries against careful reading of collective immunity to stop the spread of the virus, calling the method « unethical » Monday’s remarks came within days barely after the WHO special envoy for COVID-19 warns of introducing lockdowns The radical herd immunity plan is achieved when the vast majority of the population becomes immune to the disease and does not can no longer propagate it
Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, ruled out the strategy, insisting it would have the opposite effect
He said: « Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it
« Never in the history of public health has collective immunity been used as a strategy to respond to an epidemic »
WHO estimates that around 10% of people have developed enough antibodies to fight the coronavirus
M Ghebreyesus insisted that diseases, such as measles, require up to 95% of people to be protected for herd immunity to work
Last week, WHO special envoy for coronavirus Dr David Nabarro questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns
Dr Nabarro insisted that « lockdowns only freeze the virus, they do not lead to elimination »
He added: « Locks have only one consequence that you should never belittle, and that makes the poor much poorer
« Within the World Health Organization, we do not advocate lockdown as the primary means of controlling this virus
« The only time we think a lockdown is warranted is to give you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are depleted, but overall we prefer don’t do it «
He added: « From time to time it will be necessary to briefly restrict movement locally to allow for the suppression of epidemics. »
Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, Matt Hancock said he had « no confidence » that the UK would ever reach collective immunity levels and called the strategy « defective »
The Secretary of Health said: « Some have presented this more relaxed approach, including in the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, and I want to take this argument head-on because in substance, the Great Barrington Declaration is supported by two central claims, and both are categorically false
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« Firstly, it says that if enough people contract Covid, we will achieve collective immunity This is not true
« Many infectious diseases never reach herd immunity, like measles and malaria, AIDS and influenza, and with more and more evidence of reinfection, we shouldn’t be sure we will reach one day collective immunity against Covid, even if everyone catches it
« Collective immunity is a flawed goal without a vaccine, even if we could achieve it, which we cannot
« The second central demand is that we can separate the elderly and the most vulnerable on our way to collective immunity It’s just not possible «
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Herd immunity, World Health Organization, Coronavirus, Tedros Adhanom, Vaccination
News from the world – GB – WHO declares Covid herd immunity is « unethical » but also rejects the lockdown so what does he want?
SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com
