Endemic state cannot be achieved without Herd-immunity

"In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic (from Greek ἐν en "in, within" and δῆμος demos "people") in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs.^[1] For example, chickenpox is endemic (steady state) in the United Kingdom, but malaria is not. Every year, there are a few cases of malaria reported in the UK, but these do not lead to sustained transmission in the population due to the lack of a suitable vector (mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles). "

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_(epidemiology)

What it means is that R0 is 1.

You should notice that you cannot achieve R0 to be around 1 if there is no herd immunity. Let me remind readers that herd immunity is not only for those who are (1) vaccinated. They include those who have recovered from the disease and have (2) built up a strong antibody defense against the disease. But also include those who (3) take  consistently and in sufficient quantity, any immune enhancing food or supplements such as habbatus saudah or vitamin C. What is not clear is the (4) practising of good hygien, such as washing hand and body, wearing masks, using mosquito screen or lotion, and other preventive actions such as local lock down.

Datuk Khairy kept on saying that Covid19 is endemic so no need to achieve herd immunity by vaccination because it is too late for Covid19 as it has become endemic like Flu and Dengue.

This view had been said by a few doctors and elaborated by journalists. To me, it is stupid. They were adopted by people who do not understand statistics, but they include among the richest and powerful people on earth, such as Elon Musk.

What these people ignore are the facts that Flu and Dengue had become ONLY endemic, because humans have achieved herd immunity through the 4 activities mentioned before.

If Flu vaccines were not taken up by sufficient number of people, there will surely be flareups as what had happened at Kota Kinabalu in 2018-19. Luckily a lot of people got the flu vaccine, urged by doctors. At least for those who can afford. Unfortunately, so many instances when the flu vaccines were out of stock.

That is why I suspect the flu vaccination rate for Malaysia is much less than 10%. This could be one reason why Malaysians are happy to achieve 10% vaccination for even Covid. They forget that Covid19 is very noble.

Covid19 is still pandemic because R0 is still higher than 1 if there is no lockdown. We are able to make it appear endemic by locking down. As our Finance Minister had stated, the cost of lockdown is too high. The cost of 1 day of lockdown is equivalent to one dose of vaccine for the whole population, and thus allow humans achieve herd immunity without doing the other 3 activities, which further reduce costs in combating Covid19. 

That is why I was extremely worried when Khairy said that Covid19 is endemic. This is completely false because R0 is kept low by lockdowns and contact tracings. If you stop the lockdown, Covid19 in Malaysia will certainly become pandemic. Vaccination can be effective to stop pandemic, but it requires a high rate of vaccination, for Covid19 because it is novel.

Treating people infected with Covid19 is expensive because those who are sick cannot work for a few days, with many becoming dead. The method of achieving herd-immunity by letting people got sick was adopted by UK at the early stage. It led to huge losses in lives.

No matter how novel Covid19 is, it is still a type of flu. So the latest flu vaccine should have some protection although not as high as Covid19 vaccine which is 95%.

Although dismissed by some doctors, I experience the protection of vaccines despite the length of time and exact version of the vaccine. For example, I do not suffer too much immune responses when I took the Covid vaccine. Similarly for people that I know had taken flu vaccines previously. All doctors know this but advise to retake full vaccines regularly to maximise protection and reduce chances of deaths. Even those having taken full doses of vaccine can still die as shown in records but they are thousands less likely compared to those who do not take any vaccine.