occupied
Diamond Member
- Nov 8, 2011
- 36,705
- 17,198
herd immunity requires at least 70% functional immunity. If you are using any other definition you are not in agreement with the experts. I listen to them not random yahoos on the internet.You are wrong about nearly everything you said.Herd immunity without a vaccine has always meant an appaling number of deaths and a broken health care system. Most of the viruses you mentioned were not actually ended but they are still being held in check through isolation and by virtue of not being particularly contagious.Through this whole ordeal watching the right try to comprehend epidemiology has been like watching a Homo Erectus encountering a black monolith. I'm sure the ones who managed to graduate had high school biology. How the hell do you totally forget all that?
I am an extreme leftist, progressive, liberal who understand epidemiology perfectly, and I can tell you that flattening the curve so we could wait for an untested and unnecessary vaccine is murder.
Herd immunity is historically what ended all established epidemics in all of history, such as the 1948 polio epidemic. The Salk vaccine was not available until 1957, after the epidemic was over.
Vaccines prevent future epidemics, not end ones in progress, because they take too long.
Tell me any epidemic in progress that was ended by anything other than herd immunity.
Even SARS, MERS, Hong Kong flu, Asian flu, Avian flu, Ebola, etc., were all ended through herd immunity.
Herd immunity almost never meant an appalling number of deaths.
That is because herd immunity is similar to total quarantine in working fast.
It relies on local burn out to end the epidemic very quickly.
No virus endemic to humans is ended, and will always keep returning once there are new generations who are not immune. So vaccine are a great idea for them. But covid-19 is not endemic to humans, but to bats, so it is not coming back. So a vaccine for covid-19 is totally and completely useless. And gaining immunity adds risks, as it stresses your immune system more and more.
The highest possible death toll comes from delaying the end of the epidemic through flattening the curve. The longer the epidemic is allowed to stay viable, the wider it spreads and the more will die. A short quick spike of herd immunity results in the fewest deaths.
The definition of herd immunity is whenever an epidemic dies out without 100% of the population needing to first become immune, that is herd immunity. So then since you can't vaccinate 100% of the population, all vaccines depend upon herd immunity in order to work.
If you deny herd immunity, then you know nothing at all about epidemiology.
And clearly waiting a year for a vaccine kills 5 times as many people as a quick early spike would in ending it right away.
The estimates of 4 million dead in order to achieve herd immunity with covid-19 are obviously based on mistakes. For example, with wider testing we now know the number of infected is over 5 times what we thought, meaning the death rate for those infected is 5 times lower than we thought.
Then we thought no one had inherent immunity, so 70% would have to be infected and recover in order to become immune. That turned out to be false, and over half the population already starts off inherently immume. Even children seem to all have a very high level of resistance. So only a tiny portion of the population has to gain immunity through infection, in order to achieve herd immunity.
And finally, the death toll of those who do volunteer for variolation, (deliberate infection), would be tiny as long as they are all under 40 or so, and not vulnerable. That reduces death rate by a factor of 40.