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Assuming an infection fatality rate of 0 9%, they predicted 510 000 (UK) and 2 2 million (US) deaths, with a worldwide death toll of 40 million 1 They convinced almost all governments to engage in rigid suppression strategies of non-pharmacological interventions until a vaccine becomes available 2 Earlier models of the swine flu pandemic, predicting 30 million deaths worldwide from a new A/H1N1 virus, did not consider pre-existing immunity 3 In reality, hardly any people over 60 were affected in 2009-10 owing to the presence of cross reactive antibodies, and in Germany the death toll of confirmed cases amounted to 258 4 Looking at official mortality statistics of the first seven months of 2020, total mortality in Germany showed no excess compared with the average of the respective time period 2016-19 5 In Belgium, another country with strict lockdown measures, the population based death toll from covid-19 is eight times higher than in Germany The observed course of SARS-CoV-2 indicates a much lower herd immunity threshold than the often cited 60%, most likely owing to pre-existing innate, cellular, and humoral immunity Report 9: impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand 16 Mar 2020 https://www imperial ac uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-9-impact-of-npis-on-covid-19 / 2 Sebhatu A Wennberg K Arora-Jonsson S Lindberg SI
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