Opinion on covid-19 ignores the realities

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s op-ed in the Sunday, Nov. 15, Perspective section makes a case for letting the pandemic create herd immunity simply by encouraging infection, except among the most “vulnerable.” This assumes that the vulnerable are mainly the elderly and those with preexisting conditions and there will be negligible casualties among the younger, healthy population. It recommends that the economy be opened fully and that working from home should be discouraged to increase infection rates and eliminate isolation stress. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

And Bhattacharya reports that 43,000 health professionals have signed on. Of course, it is also health professionals who are sounding the alarm about intensive care units filling up with stricken covid-19 patients and overwhelming the frontline health care workers in the current wave of infections, despite advances in treatment of the disease. Many of these ICU patients are not in the supposedly most vulnerable group. So, herd immunity may be achieved at the expense of collapsing our health care system.

Who has the most to fear from infecting most of the population? Despite the cited low fatality rate, that is not the only metric that should be considered. Many, many Americans have preexisting conditions besides old age that increase the risk of severe cases of covid-19, such as diabetes, obesity and compromised immune systems. Therefore, the population at-risk for severe, even fatal, infection is much larger than just the elderly. In addition, many of the people who have “recovered” (that is, left the hospital) report continuing symptoms and even permanent cardiovascular, kidney, liver and neural damage (brain fog) because the virus can affect systems throughout the body, not just the lungs. There is not even a hint of acknowledgement that this policy would leave large segments of the population with extended, even permanent, health problems.

There is another consideration. The impact of the pandemic is being felt disproportionately among the poor and non-white populations, including a much higher mortality rate than the general population. For a variety of reasons, those groups already have worse health than the more affluent and white segments of our country and less access to health care.

Bhattacharya’s preference to “let ‘er rip” in pursuit of herd immunity may very well decimate (in the true sense of the word) our poor and non-white populations. If Bhattacharya has considered these negative outcomes of his recommendation, I see no evidence. We could wind up with over a million deaths and too many permanently impaired people to count in his pursuit of herd immunity. We should follow the science, but in this case, I believe it is fatally flawed by failure to consider all the consequences. MALCOLM K. CLEAVELAND, PH.D.

Fayetteville