A recent paper says pobably no. Definitely no for the Oxford vaccine (which might not even work in the over 65s… keeping my eye on that).
It’s all based on simple mathematical models, so not decisive, and it’s not yet peer-reviewed, so again possibly to be taken with a pinch of salt. But the conclusion is that even for a population 100% vaccinated (looking at you @RhisiartGwilym 
) the Oxford vaccine will absolutely not provide herd immunity. The best it can do is reduce hospitalisation and serious illness, but it looks like Covid is now here to stay.
The more I look at this virus dynamics, the less I believe true herd immunity (natural or otherwise) is possible. Just like other coronaviruses. Exactly why we should have followed the Indy sage advice and eradicated it when we had the chance. As Nassim Taleb has said “This pandemic was wholly predictable. We issued our warning that, effectively, you should kill it in the egg. But governments did not want to spend pennies in January; now are going to spend trillions”
Quote from the paper
The Oxford vaccine reduces the incidence of serious illness to a greater extent than it reduces symptomatic illness. But its efficacy against the incidence of asymptomatic infections is lower, reducing its efficacy against all infection from 0.704 to 0.525 for the pooled data. Although asymptomatics are less infectious, including them in our calculations still raises R values by 20% or more, from 1.33 to 1.6 for the new variant with 100% vaccination. Neither vaccine is licenced for use in children, and when this is taken into account, this R value rises by a further 37% to 2.2 if the whole adult population is vaccinated. Even the more effective mRNA vaccines may allow the pandemic to persist via transmission amongst children, as current authorisations only allow their use on adults. In the absence of vaccination, R will reduce to 1 when 89% of the population has acquired immunity as a result of previous infection with COVID-19
Reading this, I can’t help seeing ‘experts’ lost in a cloud-cuckoo land of dubious assumptions for their ‘model’, ensuring the usual GIGO upshot. I still expect covid to become just another background endemic flu-nuisance eventually - though I wonder how much the human population might have to shrink before that tolerable balance arrives. We are due for a - self-inflicted - cull-by-pestilence, after all…
And with the ad hoc counters to the illness now being plentiful and easily available, I still shan’t be getting no stinkin’ injectable (not a vaccine, since it hasn’t passed either the definition or the proving tests!). Instead, having had a natural, non-vaccine-mediated infection with the disease, and - I’m assuming - being now both naturally immune and also non-infectious, I shall be carrying on maskless as normal, below the house-arrest/gestapo-patrols radar! 
Apparently, I’m not the only person who now thinks that vaccine-driven herd immunity is not really possible with the AstraZeneca vaccine (or maybe any of them). Herd immunity (in the epidemiological sense of the word) was always a suicidal strategy… I hope that some gigantic class-action suits are taken up against Boris and Dom. Jail would be a great outcome for their murderous policies.
Sarah Boseley
Herd immunity can no longer be the goal for Covid vaccines, researchers have said, following the news that the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine does not stop people with the South African variant becoming mildly or moderately ill.
Oxford and AZ have carried out a small study, in 2,000 younger people in South Africa, to see whether the vaccine protects against the variant. According to the scientists involved who have not yet published it, they did not get severe disease or end up in hospital or die - although because they were young, with an average age of 31, they would be less likely to anyway. But being vaccinated did not stop them getting Covid, albeit more mildly.
Prof Shabir Madhi from the University of the Witwatersrand, and chief investigator of the study in South Africa pointed out that the recent data from trials of the new Janssen vaccine (which is not yet approved) showed that it still protected people against serious disease even though the efficacy was reduced when it came to milder illness.
“These findings recalibrate thinking about how to approach the pandemic virus and shift the focus from the goal of herd immunity against transmission to the protection of all at risk individuals in the population against severe disease,” Madhi said.
Andrew Pollard, Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity, and Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, said the goal must be to stop people ending up in hospital and dying.
“This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected, but, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease,” he said.
Like other vaccine developers, Oxford and AstraZeneca are now working on tweaked vaccines that will prove tougher against the variant from South Africa.
“Efforts are underway to develop a new generation of vaccines that will allow protection to be redirected to emerging variants as booster jabs, if it turns out that it is necessary to do so,” said Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford.
“We are working with AstraZeneca to optimise the pipeline required for a strain change should one become necessary. This is the same issue that is faced by all of the vaccine developers, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new variants that arise in readiness for a future strain change.”
What is there to distinguish ‘Herd Immunity’ from a sales claim? In the Cummings era it was a cover for the So What approach. In the vaccine establishment phase it was a cover for the Vaccine Target that will restore everything (except the lost people) so don’t even think about treating people with anything else unless they turn up in A+E and demand it. Now the vaccines are here, with we presume some degree of immunity that may be quickly fading, hence we need ‘boosters’ to reach that mythical status.
Now the appearance of variants scuppers the idea of permanent immunity but don’t worry - the vaccines are established and just need to be ‘tweaked’. In business terms, this means ongoing sales.
Essentially we are now in a long term contract with Pharma, our immune systems are gradually being privatized. We await the next vaccine ‘update’ to download to make us work properly, until the next time.
As has been pointed out, this is the computer operating system sales model that made Bill Gates rich!
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Well, I’ve had personal immunity to the whole family of corona mutations for decades - as can anyone. It’s ridiculously simple: stay dosed daily with two/three grams per day of the essential food-supplement ascorbic acid; expect to make contact with each flu-causer pathogen as it appears, and to see it off without trouble by upping your daily dose of C by an order of magnitude when you detect the newbie’s signals in your body - or more if needed - and expect the fluoid to have buggered off into the endemic background within a day or so, having re-exercised your immune system’s muscles. Just like George Carlin as a kid, swimming in the sewage-contaminated Hudson River.
After each attempted infection by a new variant, expect your immune system to have recognised it as a close relative of others which it has already offed previously, and to have added this particular new mug-shot to its library of legitimate targets - what’s known widely as natural, long-term immunity - as a result of this latest encounter; and don’t worry!
That’s been my approach for going on thirty years of total immunity to all the repiratory diseases - and a raft of other ills as well - and it’s kept me functionally immune for all that time. Including covid.
But do remember to do also all the things which keep you well by natural, evolved means: right diet and lifestyle. And don’t feckin’ maither and worry about it! This thing, whatever it is, is no big deal.
Oh, and always remember one other thing: oldies gonna die! Live at all times - whether old or not - by the famous Native American life-rule: “Any day is a good day to die; today is a good day to do it, if need be!” And laugh about it! It’s just one more go-round of the great wheel of rebirth, after all… 
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PS: Graham Hancock agrees with me about reincarnation. So there!
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Great post @Evvy_dense.
What a great way to put that. Really we need to reclaim our health, as RG and others (@rippon, if you’re about) have been saying for ages. This feels like a crucial set of skills that there should be much more public information/education about.
Now, whenever I hear someone on the box talking about herd immunity for covid, I think they either don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re trying to promote a cull of the vulnerable. It’s becoming clearer that technical herd immunity is very unlikely in this country, no matter what we do.
I still believe that the world had a chance to just stop covid in its tracks if they had taken it more seriously early on, but that window seems to be gone now.
Oh well.
In other news, the ivermectin train is slowly gathering momentum. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is running a large scale trial (in Africa, of course, because fuck those poor black people), and Germany seems to be taking an interest. Even the NIH in the US is softening it’s stance on ivermectin - it’s now in the same bucket as other more “respectable” treatments like monoclonal antibodies.
Who knows. Perhaps the fact that treatment actually exists will eventually break through the veil of secrecy.
As an aside, I emailed a question about Ivermectin to Indy SAGE, but have not yet been invited on to ask it…
Anyway. Great post
Cheers
