Herd immunity has to be built. — zoey

The Cost of Herd Immunity in the U.S.

It's not certain what percentage of the U.S. population of about 328 million would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity. Given its transmissibility, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 65% to 70% of a population would need to be immune to the virus before it would burn itself out -- though in some recent reports, experts have argued that the number may be closer to 40% or 50%.

Currently, the U.S. has a case fatality rate of about 3%, based on 187,000 deaths and 6.2 million infections; however, the infection fatality rate is likely lower since most asymptomatic infections probably aren't detected. The CDC uses 0.65% in its pandemic planning scenarios.

Using the WHO (65%) and CDC (0.65%) figures, 213 million people in the U.S. would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity, leaving 1,385,800 Americans dead.

Stress on the nation's hospitals could also be tremendous. Thus far, about 370,000 Americans have been hospitalized with COVID-19. If we assume that, for each case diagnosed so far, five cases occurred without symptoms or diagnoses, that leads to a hospitalization rate of about 1%. With 213 million infections, then, about 2.3 million could be expected to end up hospitalized.

Those hospitalizations come with a cost, of course. Studies have yielded a wide range of median or average costs, from just over $10,000 to more than $70,000. If for simplicity we assume it averages $30,000, the total hospital bill to achieve herd immunity is about $80 billion.

And herd immunity works only if people can't get re-infected with the virus, which isn't a certainty, according to Leana Wen, MD, of George Washington University.

"We don't even know if we can achieve lasting immunity -- most likely, we can't," Wen tweeted. "And even if we could, it would take hundreds of millions more #covid19 infections & millions of preventable deaths. That cannot be our price."

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CDC 6% COVID Death Rate?? | A Doctor Explains _{Here's how to actually interpret those CDC #COVID19 mortality numbers.} (8m:53s facebook av) ← a trained medical professional explains

False claim shared by President Trump that only 6% of CDC-reported deaths are from COVID-19 is based on flawed reasoning (Pablo Rougerie; Health Feedback; Aug 2020) ← fact check

Misrepresentation is this → ← close to lying (or it's bullshitting).