{"id":6870,"date":"2020-06-09T21:21:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T20:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpol.qub.ac.uk\/?p=6870"},"modified":"2020-06-09T21:21:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T20:21:42","slug":"the-original-sars-virus-disappeared-heres-why-coronavirus-wont-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/the-original-sars-virus-disappeared-heres-why-coronavirus-wont-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"The original Sars virus disappeared \u2013 here\u2019s why coronavirus won\u2019t do the same"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

British cancer doctor Prof Karol Sikora recently claimed that the current COVID-19 pandemic would \u201cburn itself out\u201d<\/a>. His thinking is that if there are more infections than we realise, and that those milder, unrecorded infections result in robust immunity, then this would quickly lead to \u201cherd immunity\u201d, leaving the virus nowhere to go but extinct. Extend this to the world\u2019s population and the virus eradicates itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the idea that letting the virus run wild would protect us is unlikely to be valid. The antibody results coming in suggest that only a small proportion of people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2. In the UK, only an estimated 6.8%<\/a> of people have had the virus; for France, the figure is just 4.4%<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that we are far away from achieving herd immunity. It also suggests that the virus does indeed have the relatively high fatality rate that we\u2019ve estimated<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To continue reading, please click here. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Article originally appeared on The Conversation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The featured image<\/a><\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea that letting the coronavirus run wild would protect us is unlikely to be valid says Dr Connor Bamford. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2576,"featured_media":6502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[918],"class_list":["post-6870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-wellbeing","tag-covid-19"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}