Natural immunity, even if temporary, gets a boost from re-exposure to the pathogen. It’s conceivable that social distancing and masking may prevent such a boost, and actually diminishes herd immunity. Public health mandates may actually cause more harm than good in the long run.

Agree that indoor air quality is the one thing that would seem to be a legitimate mitigation strategy that has been totally ignored – have a friend who is in commercial HVAC who has been posting study after study about this, including lessons learned during the SARS outbreak. Yet local health dept has said NOTHING about indoor AQ. Agree we should be focusing on mitigation that would also benefit during flu, etc. But spreading fear = more clicks = more revenue. As for the masks, yeah, something better than nothing, but also can’t help but feeling like wearing a mask communicates, yes I am compliant with the dictates of a health department who said nothing about mass protests, keeping the big box stores open but banning outdoor gatherings that were not protests and allowing small businesses to open.

There are a lot of misconceptions about coronavirus herd immunity. It is worth listening to Dr. Sunetra Gupta on the subject. There are 4 other coronaviruses that are endemic amongst humans. Covid-19 seems to follow a similar pattern. Antibodies fade fairly quickly (n the scale of weeks) and in many cases are not produced at all. Immune memory seems to be mostly via the T-cell system. That memory seems to last for a year or two with the other viruses. There also seems to be a fair bit of cross-strain resistance. That is: if one coronavirus gives you a cold, say, the primed T-cells, confer resistance against other strains of coronavirus.

The above means that antibodies are not very important to defence against coronavirus. It also means that antibody counts are very misleading in judging the prevalence of Covid-19 encounters in the community. That may explain the more-or-less universal experience that the epidemic fizzles once the proportion of the population with Covid-19 antibodies reaches around 20%. This was the case in London, England, and New York City. That fizzling suggests that herd immunity was achieved.

Dr. Gupta talks about achieving endemic equilibrium with Covid-19 (like the other 4 coronaviruses). At that stage, one expects eruptions every few years, but they would be manageable.

To your point on masks, I just mask up in public because if they actually do something, great, if they don’t, who cares. It’s a low cost way to get some optionality. Ideologically I think it’s a dumb hill to die on.

But that said I do worry that it’ll be “masks forever” even after the crisis has undisputedly passed. I have mild asthma and I don’t like wearing them for long stretches. Flights, when they are a thing again, will be a real drag with masks.

Right after I tweeted this article a blue-check came across my timeline breathlessly misquoting a press release from a San Antonio hospital. The PR described a contingency plan. The plan’s title suggested, and the blue-check stated as fact, that the plan was already being implemented. I get a little nervous about tweeting covid information (and I strive to keep these tweets factual and linked to actual data and science) because I am on Twitter for professional networking purposes. I’ve been called out a couple times for being “insensitive”. Responding with facts results in crickets. At least that is better than an ad hominem pissing match. You would think people in my field, software engineering, would be more data and science oriented and less emotional. Maybe this goes a long way in explaining the quality of most software.

I know first hand of a half dozen individuals and families affected. No one was hospitalized, including elderly (80+) relatives. We fortunately rescued my mother from a convalescence facility shortly before 12 people died of the virus there. So yeah, vulnerable people need protection.

Where we may disagree is on indoor and crowded outdoor mask wearing. I’m more in the something is better than nothing camp. And maybe wait staff at bars and restaurants should be outfitted with N95s for their indoor and full-capacity-allowed protection.

I haven’t seen anyone suggesting distributing portable HEPA air filters in public indoor spaces, and/or UV lights (not directed at people) at ventilation outlets. Seems like that could reduce virus saturation indoors.