Coronavirus: An Infectious Disease Specialist Suggests Letting Young People Infect Each Other

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Coronavirus: An infectious disease specialist suggests letting young people infect each other

HYPOTHESIS: On the condition that they do not meet people at risk

It is a shock proposal made by infectious disease specialist Eric Caumes in Le Parisien: he proposes to “let” young people be contaminated with the coronavirus covid-19 among themselves, on the express condition that they are not in contact with parents and adults. -parents. “We will not be able to impose the mask on them everywhere and forbid them to gather, especially in the middle of summer. It may not be politically correct, but I think more and more that we must let them contaminate each other, ”says the head of the infectious diseases department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.

“Let’s not stigmatize them, let’s tell them to respect the elders. By letting them become infected, they will participate in collective immunity and it will be more important at the start of the school year, in schools and universities, ”says the infectious disease specialist. A position which is, of course, controversial while the thesis of collective immunity (when a sufficient number of people, around 70% of the population, has been contaminated, the epidemic ends up extinguishing itself) has not yet been proven, even in Sweden, where the government has chosen not to confine the population as in France, Spain or Italy.

Admittedly, young people are often less at risk than older ones and are more often asymptomatic than others. But it is not without risk for them either: “Young people can also have serious forms …”, recognizes Eric Caumes.

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