Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/28/trump-white-house-is-pursuing-herd-immunity-strategy-on-covid-19-say-presidents-advisors.html
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Wait, why would this lame-ass-duck be “pursuing” anything right now? Although in this case, “pursuing” herd immunity is about as active a pursuit as “pursuing” midriff insulation on the couch.
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Letting people get sick and die is NOT a fucking “strategy.”
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It’s October of an Election Year. Surprise!
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What the fuck does taking fancy pictures of people’s brains have to do with epidemiology anyway? Especially since we are talking about the progression of disease through a population instead of an individual. Atlas completely lacks the education and experience to provide guidance on this matter and he lacks the ethics to admit it.
The only time responsible public health officials endorse herd immunity is in cases where there is an effective, widely available vaccine (i.e. most of the shots we all got as kids). Pushing herd immunity, no matter what idiotic handwaving bullshit you call it, in an uncontrolled epidemic is somewhere between 325 million counts of reckless endangerment and maybe 500k counts of negligent homicide.
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I’m still waiting for someone to actually provide a historical example of naturally acquired herd immunity. Seems we only got herd immunity to measles, chickenpox, etc once vaccines came around for them. I’m pretty sure natural herd immunity is a pipe dream and doesn’t really exist.
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Brush on the thin veneer of “herd immunity” to the “do nothing and die” strategy, giving the latter an authoritative scientific resonance which – oddly – appears to be working well on the anti-science crowd.
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The world of Zazzle Heard Immunity gear is a surrealist conceptual landscape. I’m not even sure what to make of it all.
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Remember in the real world herd immunity doesn’t work all by itself - humans never developed herd immunity to small pox or polio - there’s always a reservoir of new born babies without it, unless of course the plan is to stop everyone reproducing - it’s only practical in the context of a working vaccine - and then the people it protects are those with compromised immune systems … including all those babies too young to be vaccinated
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Yeah, “herd immunity” is a concept that came after, and existed to describe the effect of, mass vaccinations. It’s especially, maddeningly, absurd in the context of covid where we now know re-infections happen with some frequency (even if we’re not sure how common they are). This suggests there’s no “herd immunity” without a vaccine, even if the required percentage of the population get infected. Also, we now are seeing how common chronic health conditions are as a result of infection - so it’s not a case of you get it and, as long as you don’t die, you’re fine. You’re highly likely to get a serious health problem that will shorten your life, degrade its quality, leave you incapacitated for months, etc.
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To some extent herd immunity did work for polio. From wikipedia:
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“All you have to do is get it like I did, then they’ll chopper you over to Walter Reed, where you’ll get cutting edge treatments and be better toot sweet. What’s the big deal?”
-Some dumbass probably
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Of course that’s the strategy he wants to take. It requires zero effort or work on his part. He can do NOTHING and call it a “strategy.” And, thanks to his self-perceived “immunity,” he can blame the victims who die of his inaction.
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This strategy officially makes puts Trump on almost the same level as Hitler. Sorry for invoking Godwin’s Law, but if left unchecked, this virus will kill around 3 MILLION people in the United States alone. I apologize to anyone of Jewish decent who may read this, but this blatant disregard for human life needs perspective.
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Umm no it reads more like a natural inoculation. The affected children became immune.
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Despite the fact that the Trump administration is too lazy and disorganized to pursue a chocolate chip cookie; heard immunity is similar to not brushing your teeth for a year to see which are the strongest.
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I think it would be way more than 500k. I guess probably more like 2 millions.
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Not yet, Nazis murdered about 17 million people. I agree that the 3 million deaths would be getting close to that of the Holocaust (6 million).
Easy, smallpox! Oh, wait, no, that didn’t work, that was vaccines. Polio! Nope, that was vaccines too. Cholera! No vaccine for that! Nope, sanitation did that one in. Nope, outside of vaccines herd immunity is never reached. Not gonna happen.
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