Trump White House is pursuing 'herd immunity' strategy on COVID-19, say president's advisors

So basically, “it’s cool, we’re doing the thing where you do nothing.”

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Possibly just two months.

In previous studies, researchers found that antibodies peak around two to three weeks after symptoms begin and fall after that. Finzi and his colleagues have also found that the ability to neutralize the virus decreases after that — about three to six weeks after symptoms begin.

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Well sure, but that’s only because no one has tried hard enough. Yet.

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What does Dr. Fauci say?

Idon’t know how to solve this.

But a lot of this talk is predicated on isolating “old people”. That in itself is difficult, people can’t live in isolation, especially when less mobile.

But what keeps nagging me is that until last year I was really pretty healthy, not going to a doctor in over forty years (and the last times were a fractured elbow, and a sliced finger needing stitches).

And then I got really sick, something that actually could have happened at any time. I’m vulnerable because of a weak kidney, a rare autoimmune disease, and apparently the drug that keeps tgat in check leaves me vulnerable.

Autoimmune diseases are now more popular than cancer (so I read), except spread over a whole bunch of diseases. And people with cancer are likewise vulnerable because of the treatment.

Other things make people vulnerable, I gather obesity and diabetes,which are hardly uncommon.

So “protect the vulnerable” isn’t as simple as “isolate old people”.

Death is pretty permanent.

But I’ve stayed inside all these months because of the nurses and other staff last year, I burdened them then, I wouldn’t do that again deliberately.

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Wasn’t that number based on everyone getting it only one time? If post-infection immunity only lasts a few months, it could keep going on forever, and we don’t know enough yet to say what the odds are like the next time around.

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My aunt, born pre-1920, caught a ‘mild’ case of polio in infancy and walked with crutches all her life. Two of my neighbor girls, born around 1950, lived in iron lungs because they were infected before vaccines. I guess I got lucky.

Vaccines halted the terror; mass immunizations provided herd immunity. It’s not that Team Tramp want you to die. They just don’t care, as long as order and power are maintained. Cf sociopaths.

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It is ok. The wonderful US health care system will deal with it. /s

I suspect it may be worth Biden dealing with health care ahead of some of the multitude of other problems just so the post Covid morbidity has something in place to deal with it.

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And once again conservatives latch onto whatever concept, slogan, or ideology that allows them to craft a policy of doing nothing.

Drug problems? “Just say No”
Healthcare? “Unleash the power of the marketplace”
Pandemic? “Let it run its course” (2 million dead if we hold the death rate to 1%)
Pollution? Financial shenanigans? “Industries can self-regulate”
Wage theft? Hostile work environments? Discrimination? “Just don’t work there”
Climate Change? “Not Real” followed by “Not man-made. No need to do anything” and soon to become “Okay it’s real and our fault, but it’s too late to do anything about it now”

The one exception to all of this is if there is a desire to oppress or punish. As a result, there is never enough money for the military, we have a heavily armed police force that treats the public like the enemy and can do no wrong, and we have the world’s largest prison population in which the goal is punishment, not reform.

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GOP health plan: Don’t get sick.

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But to also go to excessive lengths to stymie any effort at preventing people from getting sick.

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Can I just say I adore your username?

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Looking at current maps and test case positivity, I think we can safely say that COVID is already endemic.

“GOP health plan: Don’t get sick.”

GOP Pandemic plan: “Get sick”

GOP politician: “A tax cut should clear up any confusion”

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Looks like someone has finally written the GOP platform.

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I didn’t mean to seem certain of anything. It just bothers me that people even think herd immunity is something you can achieve by allowing a disease to run through a population. As you’ve pointed out, herd immunity is something we achieve through vaccines. When you just let a disease run its course and don’t do anything to combat it, it may die out but it may stick around forever. Name literally any disease you can think of, a strategy of letting it run it’s course is a strategy of letting it becomes endemic (naturally this is because we name diseases that become endemic and not ones that die off almost immediately on contact with the human immune system but I think the point remains).

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@beschizza said it best:

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What about measles and mumps and pertussis and chickenpox? Huh?!?! Whatabout them?!?!?!

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A tax cut FOR RICH PEOPLE should clear up any confusion

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Those who die from Covid, or those who get sick, even those merely susceptible to getting sick, are all losers, same as those who gave their lives or freedom for this nation – losers. And we know how Donny-Boy hates losers. He would like the dead and soon-to-be dead more if they could vote for him. But like Puerto Ricans, they can’t, so fuck-em. Unless Ivanka is available.

I mean, dying from COVID does reduce your taxes.

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