Health Herd

Adadvever.

Concnity... when it comes to the coronavirus.

Countries like sweden have taken that approach -- but... as meredith wood reports in today's 'your health'..

Many experts say that strategy is simply too dangerous.

--reporter pkg-as follows-- as the world waits for a covid-19 vaccine, the term herd immunity has started to be thrown around more.

But what is it?

Herd immunity occurs when a virus is allowed to spread among a population freely -- dr. sanjay gupta/ cnn chief medical correspondent: "it would mean that 60 to 70% of the population becomes infected.

That's a large enough number that they essentially create a herd of protection around other people."

But here's the problem: so far not even ten-precent of the u.s. population has been infected... but over 200-thousand have died.

Dr. sanjay gupta/ cnn chief medical correspondent: "start to multiply that by six or seven and that's when you get to the 1.4 to 2 million people that would potentially die."

Then magnify that on a global scale.

The head of the world health organization worries that could lead to more problems. tedros adhanom ghebreyesus/ world health organization director-general: "allowing a dangerous virus that we don't fully understand to run free is simply unethical.

It's not an option."

Doctor anthony fauci agrees.

Dr. anthony fauci/ dir., natl.

Institute of allergy and infectious diseases: "there will be so many people in the community that you can't shelter that you can't protect who are going to get sick and get serious consequences.

So this idea that we have to power to protect the vulnerable is total nonsense."

For today's health minute, i'm meredith wood.