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Dr. Eleftherios Diamandis    Peter J. Thompson/National Post/File

"It looks like a crazy idea -- people say 'No, no, no'."
"[But] the isolation leaves billions of people without immunity, and at the end of the day we must achieve immunity one way or another."
"And this is one way."
Eleftherios Diamandis, biochemist, head, Advanced Centre for Detection of Cancer, Mt.Sinai Hospital, Toronto

"[Diamandis's paper] is shocking in that it proposes the deliberate infection of healthy people in the prime of life by a feared virus."
"[But] it's thoughtful and] offers an important idea to discuss."
Juliet Guichon, ethicist, University of Calgary

"I don't subscribe to either of these proposals."
"Infecting people to build their immunity is wrong -- you do that with a vaccine, not with the virus."
Michael Houghton, virologist, University of Alberta

It is a shocking proposal that Dr.Diamandis proposes in his paper posted on his cancer research laboratory's website. This professor of biochemistry has proposed the setting up of special hospital settings and there volunteers could be infected with deliberation, with low doses of the COVID-19 virus, a procedure he proposes would help to build a national protective herd immunity. One that could be achieved a year prior to a vaccine becoming generally available.

The suggestion, provocative as it is, has appeared elsewhere as various countries in lockdown seeing their economies in dire straits have begun to think outside that particular box where the conundrum of keeping people safe, yet re-opening their economies to escape the devastating loss of national financial security has appealed to some. A group in the United States succeeded in recruiting over 2,000 volunteers prepared to be infected by COVID-19 in the interests if rapidly testing potential vaccines.

There have been suggestions that health workers be voluntarily infected to enable the creation of an immunized medical army. An echo of the past where people had been given a limited dose of smallpox in an effort to avoid a more devastating infection; a tactic named variolation. Nevertheless, this is a controversial concept where some scientists and bioethicists warn it would violate basic moral principles of medicine and research.

The base of the proposal is the understanding that the world will never be free of the novel coronavirus threat until enough immunity exists to cut transmission of the virus short. About 60 percent of the population is considered the base required to do so. The world awaits a vaccine to do the job, but that prospect extends into the future; a year, even a year-and-a-half distant. While lockdowns continue and nations see their economies crumble.

Grassroots group 1DaySooner claims to have recruited almost 2,400 volunteers from 52 countries to submit to studies of vaccine efficacy trials which involve a group randomly selected to receive a new potential agent with the other group receiving a placebo. As they go about their normal lives, the immune response is gauged.

Professor Diamandis states in his paper that Canada should pursue social distancing measures as is currently being done while considering the implementation of his idea when and if the epidemic peak has passed, the health care burden lifted and no vaccine is yet in sight. At that point, young, low-risk volunteers could be infected with a small dose of the coronavirus to result in minimal illness, the process leading to eventual immunity.

A note of caution came courtesy of Dr. Ian Mitchell, pediatrician and ethics export at University of Calgary who emphasizes that it remains unclear as yet what kind of immunity COVID-19 infection confers, and how long if it does, it might last.