Public health: Highly infectious viral pandemics end through immunity

Dr/ Gaffney is a pulmonary and ICU doctor and and assistant professor at the Harvard medical school.

The simple explanation of what he is saying is a highly infectious respiratory virus pandemic only ends through immunity (vaccine or having the disease or both) and that NPI measures, at best, delay, but do not end a pandemic. Vaccines, if effective, are preferable to having the disease, to gain immunity.

Original location on X:

Adam W Gaffney on X: “As a general principle, if the reproductive number largely determines the share of a population that will be infected before a respiratory viral wave ends, then only those behavioral/interventional changes that permanently change the reproductive number will reduce …” / X (twitter.com)

I am a brain injured idiot, but I observed, from some literature reading in 2020, that highly infectious viral pandemics only end through immunity – and have written that on this blog. But I am a certified brain injured idiot, so I know nothing. But what was the excuse of the public health experts that said that having Covid would not result in having an immune response to Covid? And that only a vaccine would protect you. That makes no sense whatsoever – is everyone in public health epidemiology also a brain injured idiot? What is their explanation for their idiocy?