A. Marm Kilpatrick
Misleading Wall Street Journal opinion piece makes the unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. will have herd immunity by April 2021
“The article’s claim that the U.S. is near herd immunity rests on two numbers: 1) the detection of infections by testing (claimed to be 10 – 25 percent) and 2) the infection fatality rate (claimed to be 0.23 percent). Using the same number of deaths as the author indicates that 0.15%/0.6% = 25% of the U.S. population has been infected, rather than two-thirds as the author claims. Thus, the author’s argument that 55 – 66 percent of the U.S. population has already been infected and has immunity is not supported by available data.”
People who do not show COVID-19 symptoms can and do transmit it to others; physical distancing and face masks effectively reduce the risk of transmission
Claim:
The WHO stated that asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is “very rare”, therefore physical distancing and face masks are not necessary
People who do not show symptoms can contribute to significant COVID-19 transmission, contrary to CNBC report
there is already “abundant data” showing that people who are not showing symptoms—which could include asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and paucisymptomatic individuals—comprise about 40 to 50% of COVID-19 cases