Isn't the concept of herd immunity a bit absurd?

The Quarantine Zone
41

I’m old enough that I walked to school along with dozens to hundreds of other suburban kids in my neighborhoods.

For the last 20+ years (IOW, thoroughly pre-COVID) that’s all unthinkable due to stranger danger; hundreds of cars line up outside each school to ferry the kids safely home. If indeed you have small kids the protective parental attitudes I’m betting you have today that you accept as normal would be utterly alien in the 1950s & 1960s when I was raised.

I also routinely rode in the back of pickup trucks and unbelted in cars. Everyone did. I assume you have/had/will have protective car seats for the kids at the relevant ages. Once again the attitudes you think are completely normal and immutable were utterly different just half a lifetime ago.

I submit that those attitudes will be utterly different half a lifetime in the future as well. I can’t predict the specific changes nor in which direction. But I can safely predict there will be major changes.

Hats, sunscreen, bike helmets, baby helmets, kiddy car seats, football is too dangerous to play, etc. All of that has come from absent to mainstream in my lifetime. Learning to wear a mask to reduce COVID will soon be as normal as all that stuff is. Every bit of which was derided as weird, unnecessary, and an affront to all that’s Holy by the usual suspects who exhibit a pathological phobia about change. And who often have a pathological desire to only identify the downsides of anything while studiously avoiding noticing the upsides.

Can science lick this one? I sure hope so, and sooner rather than later. But we’ll save a lot of lives meanwhile if we adopt sensible precautions immediately & thoroughly even as we hope they will prove temporary.

Said another way, the best way to ensure your kids aren’t wearing masks in 6 years is for you to wear one for the next 6 months.


Said yet another way, we can choose to eschew precautions and pay a massive economic price. Not a price inflicted by government edict, but by customer behavior. If you want customers for whatever you do for a living, you need to ensure they, and nearly everyone they encounter, is as healthy and as employed as possible. That feedback loop can be virtuous or it can be vicious. We choose which way that wheel turns by our collective behavior.

Right now half of Americans are pulling one way and half the other. The stall-out is spreading as the necessarily temporary government support for the true shelter-in-place effort comes to an end as we all know & knew it must.

We either get the economy spinning again by filling it with health-confident customers and health-confident workers, or it’ll fall into a real depressive rut.

42

I’m talking next year and the year after. You’re fine with indefinitely?

43

In the US to date:
3,219,999 total cases
135,822 dead, 45+ 9/11s
How long are you gonna be fine with that?
CMC

44

“Herd immunity” really means “I don’t need to get immunized because everyone else has already acquired immunity.” You’re still vulnerable to the disease, but the risk of encountering the virus is very low because the majority of people don’t contract it.

People who are talking about reaching herd immunity with COVID are really talking about managed exposure. They want to gain some sense of control in a situation where the only aspect under control is whether you get it sooner or later. This sense of control depends on whether the body’s immune system retains long-term immunity, which is not a proven fact with COVID. Therefore it may be a pipe dream to think the human herd will ever achieve natural herd immunity.

There are also a few people talking about “herd immunity” meaning conceding the fight to natural selection (let the virus spread until it kills everyone with high natural vulnerability. Millions would die in America alone. Some people are betting that they’re young or fit enough to escape serious consequences, but there’s no way to be sure.

I’ve heard that 40-60% of the population needs to be immune in order to provide anything like herd immunity, maybe higher for something more contagious like COVID.

It remains to be seen, but at this point I don’t think we can rely on either herd immunity or intentional exposure to protect anyone from COVID. We may not even get a long-lasting vaccine (we don’t even have vaccines for scourges like HIV or the common cold). Most viruses never have a vaccine developed, and AFAIK there has never been a successful long-lasting human vaccine for any coronavirus.

So, herd immunity for COVID is probably not happening.

45

What is the point of that post? I am quite aware of the current numbers.

46

And how long are you gonna be fine with them in lieu of masks and social distancing?
That’s the only choice we seem to have and you seem to have a problem with that.
CMC

47

Are you not comprehending the conversation? I’m talking about the future in places that have the disease under control but plan on repeating lockdowns with every new outbreak. Not your current clusterfuck.

48

If it’s an endemic disease then the best response is still the best response.

The herd immunity option is going to kill many, many people. And with so many people hosting the virus it’s bound to mutate to become more dangerous in some way. It’s giving up, and it’s really no option at all.

49

Are you not comprehending the conversation? What else do you want them to do?
CMC

50

Okie dokie.

51

Yep. I’m willing to social distance and wear masks for 3-6 months every outbreak if it means people who think like Reality Check will stop volunteering me to die for their perceived convenience right now and every time an endemic disease shows up.

Don’t look now but if we do that it will be your turn to die for the ‘greater good’ sooner than you think.

52

I believe the only correct response to @BippityBoppityBoo is Okie dokie!
:wink:
CMC

53

So. You accept the possibility that an effective safe widely utilized vaccine may not be just over the next, that indefinite or even intermittent general lockdowns are not going to be able to be sold (even if your assessment is that they held long term would do more net goods than harms), and that “all the other measures” are something that can be hoped for, but might not happen. (So far very little reason to hope that contact tracing will be effective in the U.S. or even most of Europe, but say a reasonable hope.)

How do you hedge for that? Head in sand that it can’t happen and not even think about how to minimize morbidity and mortality and overall harms if that occurs? If it happens then infections will continue at some rate in some populations at some times of year until enough living people have survived infections and have at least some protection that the societal changes that can be maintained are enough to stop spread, whatever fraction that ends up being - herd immunity.

54

Too many people ain’t gonna take this seriously until they see a loved one in the ICU with a endotracheal tube down their throat . . . and at that point it will, almost certainly, be too late.
CMC

55

Good for you. But you will lose allies every outbreak. If you think people will put up this forever, you simply don’t know people.

I am not volunteering you to die. People are dying because a disease is sweeping across the planet. We are disagreeing on mitigation. If you stop accusing me of being evil incarnate, you might learn the decisions aren’t black and white.

56

Those who refuse to consider that a vaccine might not be here in time to save the day, that general complete lockdowns are highly likely not going to be complied with for an indefinite future of possibly years, and that the attempt to keep rates suppressed by contact tracing and quarantines might not be successful, are not taking this seriously. They are playing with peoples lives with their fantasy alt-world, secure in their minds that they can simply live comfortably blaming everyone else for the reality not being as they would imagine it could be.

57

Some people are apparently not taking this seriously until an endotracheal tube is being placed down their own throat, like this guy:

Actually, the article doesn’t indicate whether he was placed on a ventilator or not. Nevertheless, for him the realization that COVID should be taken seriously was still too late.

58

Yup. Canada got this under control with the lockdown/social distance plan (masks optional, fyi). We just got the financial update that we are at a Great Depression economy and a WWII debt. That is separate from all the losses to families from staying home. But super duper righteous CrowManyClouds is fine with us doing that every year. Only savages would disagee and savages don’t vote, right?

59

Here’s another option–instituting universal health care. The caption doesn’t go into it, but there are THREE, not two, countries in this picture and the only difference between the three is that two of them have universal healthcare and one does not. Medicare For All along with keeping as many workers as possible working from home, increased protection for essential workers who must be out in the mix every day, routine daily measures to avoid disease transmission and instituting widespread ongoing testing and contact tracing changes the outcome from a pestilential wasteland to a manageable health care issue. Maybe some day we’ll come up with better therapies or vaccines and THEN we can continue with business as usual. Remember when HIV was the terrifying boogyman that’s gone kill us all? Now it’s a manageable condition–all it took was time, research, coping mechanisms and unfortunately a lot of deaths of people who stubbornly refused to comply with best practices.

60

I am? I thought what I was fine with is whatever doesn’t make an investment in body-bags a smart financial move.
CMC