Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jews are acting like they have herd immunity. Could they be right?
Continued gatherings of Hasidic Jews drew criticism from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and others in the city this spring who said the communities were not doing their part to stop the spread of the virus. But inside the communities, the overwhelming perception is that most people have had the virus and may now be immune.
“That’s the feeling, that they’ve had it, everybody they know has had it, and the people they know who haven’t had it have some kind of immunity that we just don’t understand yet,” one Williamsburg health administrator said.
If community members’ assumptions are correct — and that’s a big if, as much is not yet known about whether and how COVID-19 infections provide later immunity — Brooklyn’s Orthodox neighborhoods would stand alone. Even in the few places such as Sweden that have explicitly pursued a strategy of trying to reach herd immunity, antibody tests show that...