More than 80% of Americans 16 and older have immunity, but no herd immunity yet.

[gargamon]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/02/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html

 

More than 80% of Americans 16 and older have some level of immunity against the coronavirus, mostly through vaccination, a survey of blood donations indicates. The team, led by the CDC's Dr. Jefferson Jones, set out to determine how close the US might be to some kind of herd immunity -- although they do not claim to have any kind of handle on that yet. They worked with 17 blood collection organizations working in all 50 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico to test blood covering 74% of the population. In the end, they tested about 1.4 million samples. 

 

In July 2020, before any vaccine was available, 3.5% of samples carried antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. That rose to 11.5% by December, they reported in the medical journal JAMA. By May, 83.3% of samples had antibodies to the virus, most of them from vaccination.

 

 

[Peterw42]

Isn't 80% of the population the very definition of herd immunity ?

What percentage is considered herd immunity ?

[Salerno]

1 minute ago, Peterw42 said:

What percentage is considered herd immunity ?

Depends, the more contagious the higher percentage required.

[Chomper Higgot]

2 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Isn't 80% of the population the very definition of herd immunity ?

What percentage is considered herd immunity ?

Persons over the age of 16 don’t constitute the full herd.

[gargamon]

The statistics in the article linked in the opening post are all before the delta variant wave. Face it, those who are waiting for herd immunity are going to be waiting a long time.  With all the variants in the pipe, herd immunity will likely never happen...

[cdemundo]

5 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Isn't 80% of the population the very definition of herd immunity ?

What percentage is considered herd immunity ?

No.

Definition is "resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination."

{Definitions from Oxford Languages} definition if you simply google "herd immunity".

 

The percentage sought is the percentage that causes that resistance in the population.

Has been estimated at different percentages, looks like it must be pretty high percentage to reach herd immunity.

Edited September 3, 2021 by cdemundo
correction

[Virt]

7 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Isn't 80% of the population the very definition of herd immunity ?

What percentage is considered herd immunity ?

Here in Denmark they mentioned 90% for the Delta variant, and so far we're overall at 70% fully vaccinated  so we're not even close to 90%.

 

But we are back to normal, and it's mostly the sanitizers placed in shops, that reminds us of covid 19 and the daily "breaking news" in the news papers.

A few people continue to wear masks, but very few.

I was a soccer match the other day with 35,000 people and the only ones i saw wearing masks, were the secutiry at entrances.

 

We expect numbers to rise again, but since 90% of those age 50+ are vaccinated in Denmark, it should be the younger ones plus unvaccinated people,

that will be the majority of new infections, and hopefully that will not overwhelm the hospitals, so we can carry on as normal.

 

We will see.

For now it's just nice to be back to normal and hopefully we can make it though winter without going back to restrictions,

but we have to watch the numbers at the hospitals.

 

Todays numbers are 132 hospitalized plus 32 in ICU (16 of those on ventilators) 

So we're good for now.