Former White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas argued that infections among young people were “a good thing.” | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Let “natural herd immunity” as a pandemic relief strategy be extinguished with the end of 2020.

It’s year-end-list season. Usually, the Vox science team has some fun and compiles a year-end list of bad ideas in health and science that ought to die with the end of the year. In the past, we’ve targeted homeopathic medicine, declared it was time to end the relevance of the fatally flawed Stanford Prison Experiment, and dispelled myths about climate change. This year, though, we have only one target for intellectual demolition.

With the end of 2020, let’s leave behind the idea of using herd immunity acquired through natural infections as a means of combating the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s a lot of words