Should young people be allowed to infect each other to strengthen collective immunity? This is the idea "not politically correct" advanced by Professor Eric Caumes, infectious disease specialist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, in the columns of the newspaper Le Parisien on Sunday. But the scientific community is far from being in tune on this subject. For his colleague Bruno Lina, professor of virology at the University of Lyon 1, this way of fighting the coronavirus is theoretically valid, but unrealistic in practice, as he explains at the microphone of Eve Roger on Europe 1.
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"Intellectually satisfying, extremely complicated in practice"
"Theoretically, this 'cohorting' with the infection of young people which would participate in collective immunity, it is intellectually satisfactory. In practice it is extremely complicated, because we cannot let this epidemic go away", explains Bruno Lina. , continuing: "We can intellectually conceive the construction that Eric Caumes proposes, which is very good, but in practice it risks being confronted with the reality on the ground." Because the ulterior motive of the infectious disease specialist is collective immunity: the more contaminated we are, the more antibodies we develop. Ultimately, this logic could lead to fewer positive cases during the regroupings caused by the re-entry into universities and high schools.
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The 20-30 year olds are now those who are most infected in France. One of the risks to be taken into account is the danger they run and cause their loved ones to run. "We must nevertheless be wary because among these young people, even if the rate of very serious forms is relatively low, there will be some all the same", judge Bruno Lima. Eric Caumes makes it clear that this decision can only be taken "on condition that they do not see their parents and grandparents". The epidemiologist Catherine Hill, is much more virulent with regard to this proposal, calling it a "very bad idea" or even a "crazy theory that does not hold water".