As a thought experiment, I think it could be an interesting accelerator to reaching herd immunity if low-risk people could go and voluntarily get infected and self-quarantine for a few weeks.

Not unlike purposefully getting the chicken pox, or vaccinated for the flu (except you’d actually have to suffer through the illness).

If a large number of people did this, you could achieve several months of progress towards herd immunity in just few weeks, and potentially do so without overwhelming the healthcare system for those who higher risk or serious cases that still need it. This could jump-stat a decline in infection rates (jump over the curve) and we could get back to normal much sooner than just waiting for the slow spread.


The trouble is, it’s hard to know what to actually believe because all you hear are sensationalized reports, anecdotal cases, and misused statistics. We don’t know definitively what the lasting effects are or the true real risks for the volunteers.

I personally think once we get all the final numbers in the virus itself will be shown to be — on balance — much more mild than we yet realize, and would confer antibodies against reinfection, but the risk of being wrong about that is pretty high so that never happen.

So, it will just stay a thought experiment while we all slowly but inevitably get the virus on a trickle pace. My guess it 10-20 million people this season, then it slows during Summer, another 30 million (but fewer deaths) next season without all the lockdown measures, and then a vaccine is ready to take us up to the 200+ milllion we need to reach herd immunity status next Summer so it is a non-issue the following year.

I know making predictions in CB is dangerous, so we’ll see how this post ages.