Why ‘herd immunity’ is a distraction

Sweden’s many successes in curbing coronavirus have been overshadowed by its one spectacular failure: namely protecting the elderly. Goodman’s assessment of Sweden’s approach as “an unorthodox, open-air experiment” is not alone; the headline of a Washington Post article by Professor Gina Gustavsson in May termed it an experiment in “blind patriotism.” According to a more recent report in The Washington Post by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Josh Dawsey, one of Donald Trump’s chief health advisers, Scott Atlas, “is urging the White House to embrace a controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus.” The article goes on to suggest that Dr Atlas is advocating an embrace of the so-called “Swedish model.”