Donald Trump’s herd immunity plan may result in ‘millions’ of US deaths, experts warn

President’s advisers have consulted scientists about proposals to follow controversial strategy

Donald Trump takes off his facemask as he arrives at the White House following his return from Walter Reed Medical Centre.
(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Senior advisers to Donald Trump have met with scientists for advice on pushing a herd immunity strategy that experts say could trigger the deaths of “millions” of Americans.

On Monday, Trump’s health chief Alex Azar and adviser Scott Atlas consulted three scientists who back the idea that the US “can quickly and safely achieve widespread immunity to the coronavirus by allowing it to spread unfettered among healthy people”, Politico reports.

Following the meeting, Health and Human Services Secretary Azar tweeted that they had “heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace”.

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The scientists present - or as Azar described them, the “three distinguished infectious disease experts” - were Harvard University professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff, Stanford physician and epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, and Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta.

All three are advocates of aggressively reopening up the US economy and sidelining mass testing.

But “mainstream medical and public health experts say that seeking widespread, or herd, immunity in the manner the scientists prescribe could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions more US residents”, Politico says.

The Covid-19 coronavirus has already claimed the lives of more than 210,000 Americans, according to latest figures.

A study published in The Lancet last month found that less than 10% of the US population had antibodies to the virus.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr Robert Redfield subsequently told a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that “a majority of American” were “still vulnerable to infection, serious illness and death”.

But “the idea of allowing the virus to spread uncontrollably is gaining traction in the White House”, despite experts warning that the move could have “deadly and dangerous consequences”, The Hill says.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Azar, declined to comment to Politico on whether the Trump administration is shifting to a herd immunity strategy.

Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.