All Risks If Herd Immunity Is Implemented

JAKARTA - People seem to have thought too far. Even though the PSBB has not been relaxed, the herd immunity concept has been anticipated to be implemented. Even though WHO has warned that this concept is quite dangerous. The concept that is taken literally is herd immunity. Are humans the same as animals?

The government has begun to study the easing of the PSBB and the procedures for a new normal life. How we eat, worship, enter public places, everything will be arranged and must be followed. But they also emphasized that none of this has been implemented, only at the planning stage.

Unfortunately, the discussion of easing the PSBB and the new normal life has developed in the community. On this basis, there is an idea that the government wants to implement herd immunity. The term has actually been discussed since a month ago in the international world.

Herd immunity is a condition of protection that occurs indirectly because the majority of the population is immune to infection from an infectious disease. This condition usually occurs and can be applied after the vaccine has been found. Meanwhile, a vaccine for COVID-19 has not yet been found.

Apart from the things mentioned above, herd immunity should be done when at least 70 to 80 percent of the population in an area has been cucumber. Indonesia has only recorded 18 thousand cases with 4 thousand cases recovered, while the total population of Indonesia is around 271 million. If calculated, this figure is still far from 1 percent. How can we assume that the majority of our population is already immune?

This herd immunity option is not recommended by WHO. According to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead of the WHO health emergency program, herd immunity is closely related to vaccines and knowledge of the minimum population that must be immune to save the entire population.

Supporting this statement, Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director of WHO's health emergencies program also emphasized that the term herd immunity is actually taken from a veterinarian. Even if viewed from a brutal economic perspective, the different concepts for animals or humans do not seem that important. But it should be remembered, humans are not herd of livestock.

The Indonesian government is also reportedly developing supplements to increase the body's resistance to COVID-19, but this still has a long way to go. The Minister of Research and Technology or Head of the Research and Innovation Agency, Bambang Brodjonegoro, in his live streaming dialogue with the researchers or engineers of the COVID-19 research and innovation consortium asked for research on ways of handling or deterrence such as therapy, serum and supplements.

Any possibility of the herd immunity concept sounded better when fixed distancing protocols were in place. But if people are just let go without any health protocols at all, the worst might happen. We cannot bet our lives on finding a way out of this pandemic.

Listen to the possibilities that can happen if herd immunity is applied in Siniar VOI this time.