My intuition is that the effect of the most infectious people getting infected first is even bigger than you suspect. It will not be herd immunity what brings this under control. Herd immunity would be if the infected person has a harder time infecting because some are immune already, and that requires some significant % of people being immune (unless it’s juuuuust R=1.04 or something very near 1 but bigger, too much of a coincidence). Yet most countries got it under control at low %s with either lots or little action (even when at first many of the same countries seemed unable to affect the spread with anything short of total lockdown).
It seems much more reasonable that as the virus selectively removes the most susceptible, the R drops below 1 and that’s it. The proportion of removed could be at 1%, 0.5%, 5%, no problem here. Argentina is having a spike despite being in lockdown for months, because they locked down too early, I think because the virus refuses to be tamed until it has eaten up “those” communities.
Regarding the rate being ~1, I share the suspicious attitude, but something doesn’t feel right in suggesting the control mechanism is people’s behaviour. Maybe there’s something else. Or maybe there isn’t even a control mechanism (one that slows the spread if the “next generation of infected is bigger and viceversa”), but the dynamics are is just not behaving naturally like an exponential. Maybe there’s a “cap” of how many peoplee can get infected per 2 weeks because not that many (accidentally?) commit one of the “high-risk” things you suggest. Or the connection graph between people is shaped in a way that tends to this linear thing. I don’t know.
My intuition is that the effect of the most infectious people getting infected first is even bigger than you suspect. It will not be herd immunity what brings this under control. Herd immunity would be if the infected person has a harder time infecting because some are immune already, and that requires some significant % of people being immune (unless it’s juuuuust R=1.04 or something very near 1 but bigger, too much of a coincidence). Yet most countries got it under control at low %s with either lots or little action (even when at first many of the same countries seemed unable to affect the spread with anything short of total lockdown).
It seems much more reasonable that as the virus selectively removes the most susceptible, the R drops below 1 and that’s it. The proportion of removed could be at 1%, 0.5%, 5%, no problem here. Argentina is having a spike despite being in lockdown for months, because they locked down too early, I think because the virus refuses to be tamed until it has eaten up “those” communities.
Regarding the rate being ~1, I share the suspicious attitude, but something doesn’t feel right in suggesting the control mechanism is people’s behaviour. Maybe there’s something else. Or maybe there isn’t even a control mechanism (one that slows the spread if the “next generation of infected is bigger and viceversa”), but the dynamics are is just not behaving naturally like an exponential. Maybe there’s a “cap” of how many peoplee can get infected per 2 weeks because not that many (accidentally?) commit one of the “high-risk” things you suggest. Or the connection graph between people is shaped in a way that tends to this linear thing. I don’t know.