Amid Covid’s disastrous warnings, a crucial fact has been ignored: cases have dropped 77% in the past six weeks. If a drug reduced cases by 77%, we would call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predict?
In large part, because natural immunity to previous infection is much more common than can be measured by testing. Tests have been capturing only 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone had the virus. Applying a time-weighted average catch of cases of 1 in 6.5 to the accumulated 28 million confirmed cases would mean that about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
Now add vaccinated people. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine and the figure is rising rapidly. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates that 250 million doses will have to be delivered to about 150 million people by the end of March.
There is reason to think that the country is running towards an extremely low level of infection. Because more people have become infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, fewer Americans are left to become infected. On the current trajectory, I hope Covid will disappear mostly in April, which will allow Americans to resume normal life.
Antibody studies almost underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing does not capture antigen-specific T cells, which develop “memory” once activated by the virus. Survivors of the Spanish flu of 1918 in 2008 — 90 years later — were found to have memory cells capable of producing neutralizing antibodies.