Our guest is Gabriela Gomes, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Strathclyde. She specializes in population dynamics and the modeling of herd immunity and her recent work suggests covid-19 herd immunity may be at hand. We discuss how herd immunity thresholds are estimated and why she thinks classic models are flawed and must incorporate a measure of variation in individual susceptibility.

SHOW NOTES

• Gabriela Gomes, PhD: Twitter and website
• Gomes et al. (May 2020 paper), "Individual Variation in Susceptibility or Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 Lowers the Herd Immunity Threshold" in MedRxiv
• Aguas et al. (July 2020 paper), "Herd Immunity Thresholds for SARS-CoV-2 Estimated from Unfolding Epidemics" in Medrxiv
• Britton et al., "A Mathematical Model Reveals the Influence of Population Heterogeneity on Herd Immunity to SARS-CoV-2" in Science (open access)
• Kevin Hartnett, "The Tricky Math of COVID-19 Herd Immunity" in Quanta Magazine
• Fine et al., "'Herd Immunity': A Rough Guide" in Clinical Infectious Disease (open access)
• Watch the episode on YouTube