I wrote: Taking into account one thing and another, the WSJ and the NYT estimates > are not far apart. >
WSJ predicts April, NYT predicts July. A 3-month difference is not gigantic given all the unknowns. For example, what percent of the population will it take for herd immunity to begin? The other day Fauci said he originally assumed it was around 70% but now he thinks it may be more like 75% to 85%. Possibly even 90%. If it is 85%, herd immunity will take longer. He said he cannot pin it down closer than 75% to 85% mainly because we still don't know how contagious it is. Fauci was criticized for changing his mind and for giving such a broad range of numbers. To me, that sounds like an honest biologist. Medicine and biology are not exact sciences! Fauci said we will eventually know more accurately how contagious it is. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.html QUOTE: Interviews with epidemiologists regarding the degree of herd immunity needed to defeat the coronavirus produced a range of estimates, some of which were in line with Dr. Fauci’s. They also came with a warning: All answers are merely “guesstimates.” “You tell me what numbers to put in my equations, and I’ll give you the answer,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “But you can’t tell me the numbers, because nobody knows them.” > The gradations in orange color at the top of the NYT graph show that it > emerges gradually. > I mean the blue color at the top.
