To see how much more fatal, let’s look at the numbers. Our initial estimates put the herd immunity threshold for Covid-19 – the proportion of people who need to be immune for the disease to stop spreading – at 60-70% of the population. So 60-70% of people need to be infected with Covid-19 for herd immunity to come into play at a minimum, although new data from the CDC indicates the number
may be as high as 85%. And it’s important to note that you can’t really pick and choose these people, because unless you reach that threshold in every part of the country you’ll still see disease outbreaks. The idea that we can only infect young people is simply incorrect, firstly because that’s not how society functions, but also because it’ll create clusters of low immunity where the disease can still spread.