‘Corona-parties’ could become the new normal, argues Cambridge immunologist

The new coronavirus may be here to stay and so-called ‘corona parties’, parties where young people get together with the aim of contracting the virus and gaining group immunity, will tend to be the new normal if the pandemic is not eradicated, defended this Thursday an immunologist from the University of Cambridge, UK, quoted by the newspaper “The Guardian”.

Paul Lehner, professor of medicine and immunology at the British university, said that the evolution of covid-19 “will be similar to the four endemic coronaviruses that circulate” and that generate common colds. “Young people are either vaccinated or beat – and young people in general don’t get sick with this virus.”

“I am going to be optimistic and say that I do not think that this virus is so unusual that it exterminates us or puts us to live in a peculiar way or so different from what we currently live”, emphasized the Cambridge professor in an event promoted by Science Media Center, where he defended that there should be ‘corona-parties’ to expose young people to the virus, since their risk is low.

Paul Lehner’s position is contested by other scientists, who oppose the idea of ​​deliberately exposing young people to the coronavirus to gain group immunity. For David Heymann, professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “one scenario is that Sars-CoV2 becomes as endemic in humans as the four other coronaviruses, but we still do not know the long-term effects of infection. , even among those who are young and asymptomatic “