Herd Immunity and its many fatal flaws.
On Maddow's show tonight, she "does the math", and projects that under Trumpy's apparent change in policy toward herd "mentality", or "immunity" (choose your own noun), and using a 3% fatality rate, the US would be looking at around 6 MILLION dead before the hypothetical herd immunity would cause a cessation of infections. Aside from the horrors depicted on Maddow's presentation, there are other horrifying issues. Here are a couple of them.
1. Trump's plan assumes that people will NOT try to prevent infection. For herd immunity to proceed in its idealized form, all US citizens would have to be completely accessible to infection. This means that NO ONE should try to social distance, and NO ONE should be wearing masks. This is because there must be an optimal rate of infection for the math to work and for the US to reach ONLY six million people dead. But we know that people are first interested in self preservation. And we then know that, no matter how enthusiastically Trump wants us to be infected, millions will resist and remain socially distant, and who will continue to wear masks. And there will end up being a correlation between the infection rate and the number of people who are resisting infection. The more that people will resist infection, the SLOWER the reaching of the optimal infection rate in the total population in the US, but the HIGHER the death number because the 70% infection rate necessary for the hypothetical herd immunity will take LONGER TO ACHIEVE.
2. Further, because so many millions will decide for themselves that avoiding infection is far better than getting infected, there may NEVER be the achievement of a 70% infection rate. This would necessarily mean that herd immunity will never occur while millions die for no reason whatsoever. Trump may try to OUTLAW any actions that promote the resistance to infection so that he can realize his fantasy of herd immunity, but even so, resistance will be very high. Can we imagine federal laws that prohibit social distancing and mask wearing? THAT will have to take place to reach herd immunity.
3. The unraveling of this "hypothetical" idea of herd immunity into a chaotic hodgepodge of policy changes and tweaks, none of which will satisfy the herd immunity enthusiasts, and none of which will produce the desired results, leads to a singular bottom line: the idealized death count will NOT be two million or six million. IT WILL BE FAR GREATER. It will be far greater because herd immunity will NEVER BE ACHIEVED.
While the nation's infection rate will sputter and stall, the deaths will not. It will continue to mount. The nation might reach 8 million, or 10 million, before the idea of herd immunity will HAVE to be abandoned. And when that happens there will be a reckoning. There will be a reckoning of people who forced this policy on the American people, who intentionally created situations that caused so many MILLIONS of deaths-- for no reason.
*All of this may never occur if Biden is elected. He'll likely put a quick stop to the herd immunity idea, and the subsequent policy implementation. He'll move quickly toward prevention and mitigation. And he'll examine the decisions that brought about so many unnecessary deaths. And he'll allow his Attorney General to go to work.
= new reply since forum marked as read
