Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim’s video was clicked more than three million times within just three days: “The corona crisis is only just starting,” the German says to her followers. As long as there is no vaccine against Corona, the pandemic will only be over when 60 to 70 percent of the population has become infected and has recovered from it, according to the doctoral chemist. That would be between 48 to 56 million people in Germany. According to their calculation, there is currently a herd immunity of just one percent. So far too little to speak of an imminent end.
“I’m afraid we still need a lot of stamina,” said Nguyen-Kim, who studied at Harvard, among others. Achieving herd immunity is unrealistic. This would mean that many people would have to get sick at the same time, which would lead to the overloading of the health system, or the previous measures would have to be maintained, which could cause great damage to the economy and society.
Imagination away from reality
Nguyen-Kim finds clear words for those who think that the crisis will be somewhat under control until after Easter: “This idea is unfortunately unrealistic imagination.” The goal now is to slow the spread of the virus. This happens when the so-called reproductive number of the virus is reduced to less than 1. So if one person infects less than another person with the corona virus. «This is only possible with a decent number of contacts. We have to stop the curve, »says the chemist, whose YouTube channel has been subscribed 716,000 times.
No concerts, soccer or après ski
Society and governments are currently working to restore normalcy. “We won’t be able to do without a long time without giving up,” said the YouTube star. Big concerts or filled football stadiums are still too risky this year and therefore unrealistic for the 32-year-old. «Even après-ski in the coming winter season. For that I see black. » In order to avoid a collapse of the health system, “we have to maintain strict measures for a year or two,” says the science journalist, who has 124,000 followers on Instagram.
Science journalist of the year
The German chemist moderates the knowledge magazine “Quarks” on TV and produces videos for the youth format “funk” by ARD and ZDF on her YouTube channel “maiLab”. The 32-year-old has already received the Grimme Online Award and the Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for science journalism for her work. In 2018 she was voted science journalist of the year. In addition, in 2019 she was chosen as one of the winners of the “EDITION F 25 award”. Women who move society with their voices receive this award. She recently became a mother.
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