Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
Is herd immunity the best way to beat coronavirus?
Position‹2 of 4›
Herd immunity will not work
Argument1 of 3›

Herd immunity will not work because you can get coronavirus twice

Because there is no evidence that proves that people gain antibodies after being infected by the coronavirus, being infected with it twice is a possibility.

The argument

There have been some cases where people have caught coronavirus twice. Usually, patients are tested twice within a 24-hour period to see if there are still signs of the virus in their body. In others, patients who were released after recovering from the virus returned to the hospital with the virus again. If certain people can catch coronavirus twice, it could suggest that immunity against the virus doesn’t exist. Therefore, herd immunity would not be an available option to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Premises

[P1]Some patients have caught coronavirus twice—recovering and being released, then returning to hospital reinfected with the virus. [P2] If people can be reinfected, lasting immunity against the virus may not exist, yet herd immunity depends on such immunity accumulating across the population. [C] Because reinfection suggests immunity is not durable, herd immunity will not work to beat coronavirus.

Counter-arguments

The cases of people who have caught the coronavirus twice has not been proven. According to the CDC located in South Korea, the reason why the tests come out as positive is because there are weakened amounts of the virus still present in the body, creating false positives. Unless the coronavirus started mutating, there would be no threat of catching it a second time.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The cases where people have caught the coronavirus twice have not been proven as being a threat to stopping the spread of the virus.