Against the backdrop of covide warnings, a crucial fact was largely ignored: cases have dropped by 77% in the last six weeks. If a drug reduced cases by 77%, we would call it the miracle pill. Why is the number of cases collapsing much faster than experts have predicted?
Largely because natural immunity to previous infection is much more common than can be measured by testing. The test captured only 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when someone received the virus during the pandemic. Applying a weighted average of 1 in 6.5 case capture to the 28 million confirmed confirmed cases would mean that approximately 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
Now add vaccinated people. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the number is growing rapidly. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates that by the end of March, 250 million doses will have been administered to about 150 million people.
There is reason to believe that the country is heading for an extremely low level of infection. As more people became infected, most of whom had mild or no symptoms, fewer Americans remained infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid to disappear for the most part by April, allowing the Americans to return to normal life.
Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing does not capture antigen-specific T cells, which develop “memory” once they are activated by the virus. Survivors of the Spanish flu of 1918 were discovered in 2008 – 90 years later – with memory cells still capable of producing neutralizing antibodies.