Herd Immunity is a Question, Not an Answer
I am totally fed up with herd immunity.
There is no such thing as herd immunity where there are no herds.
The very concept of herd immunity has been widely misrepresented in the media. Herd immunity, according to the practice actually established in veterinary medicine, is accomplished by SEGREGATING healthy, uninfected members of the herd and keeping them isolated from the unhealthy, infected members of the heard. It does NOT involve the deliberate exposure of healthy livestock to cattle with cowpox, for example, but that’s what herd immunity proponents are proposing to do with the human race.
What farmer or rancher in his right mind would ever intentionally expose his healthy inventory to a potentially deadly disease? That’s a prescription for financial suicide. On the contrary, when farmers and ranchers are confronted with livestock infected with a communicable disease, they separate the healthy livestock from the sick animals….and then they kill the sick animals because it doesn’t pay to waste, time, effort, feed and water on animals who are probably going to die anyway.
That’s how herd immunity is actually achieved but human beings are not cattle. They do not live in a constrained, segregated environment. They live in a global culture with people traveling from one corner of the planet to the other on a daily basis. They live in complex communities in which they are constantly intermingling, making it impossible to segregate healthy individuals from unhealthy ones., which is why herd immunity proponents are proposing that we allow EVERYONE to become infected with the COVID-19 virus.
We have never achieved herd immunity with any disease, and we have only come close with diseases for which we have effective vaccines, and the cases where herd immunity appears to exist are all attributed to vaccination programs. There has never been a case of spontaneous herd immunity.
It is impossible to establish and maintain herd immunity to any illness without strict segregation between the infected and uninfected populations.
Meanwhile, in the infected segment of the herd, two things are happening. Some of the animals are dying while others are surviving and, in the process, developing a specific immunity to the pathogen causing the ailment. This specific immunity is NOT transferrable. It is not inherited by the offspring from the members of the herd that have developed a specific immunity to the pathogen.
Translated into contemporary terms, herd immunity to the COVID-19 virus can only be achieved by (a) identifying the infected individuals, (b) rigidly segregating infected individuals from non-infected individuals, (c) allowing the infected individuals to either die or recover and (d) allowing the survivors to integrate into the immune population.
To accomplish this, UNIVERSAL TESTING must be implemented ON A DAILY BASIS in (a) the general population, (b) the infected population and (c) the immune population or, in other words, testing every single person every single day.
Universal testing is required because no quarantine is ever one hundred percent effective and, therefore, everyone must be tested over and over again. Testing must be done on a daily basis because a specific individual may test negative on Monday, become infected on Tuesday, and become a superspreader by the end of the week.
If this sounds impossible, that’s because it is impossible on either a global scale, a national scale, or even on the scale of a single city.
Nevertheless, this is being done right now for certain elite populations. The members of the president’s staff, the two presidential campaign staffs, their support personnel, the staff and support personnel for every other political candidate, the members of Congress, the news media, and team sports participants are all being tested on a daily basis and those who test positive are being segregated from the uninfected population. The upper echelon management of large corporations, senior members of the military…the list goes on and on, but some of the people in these protected populations are becoming infected anyway because it is simply not possible to achieve herd immunity in a population of independent entities.
So, the elites are being separated into infected and immune herds….but we can’t do this with the general population because we don’t have enough test sites, personnel, equipment, or even the reagents required to test 330 million people on a daily basis.
Therefore, we will always have infected individuals coming into contact with non-infected individuals until we have a vaccine that is one hundred percent effective
The problem with that is that we have never found a vaccine that is one hundred percent effective against any illness, not even smallpox, which is the most successful vaccination program ever attempted.
We also have no evidence that this particular virus won’t mutate as other viruses do, requiring the development of vaccine variants on an annual basis.
So, when politicians – or even the rogue scientific “expert” here and there – wants you to consider herd immunity as a viable solution to the COVID-19 epidemic, you have to ask yourself, “Do I feel lucky?”
That’s because luck will determine whether you are forced to remain in the infected herd, or if you will be allowed to join the immune herd, and then you have to ask yourself if you trust the people who are making those decisions. I don’t.
For more scientific information on herd immunity, consult this article from The Lancet
10/16/2020 @ 3:19 pm
In a classic manifestation of a Freudian Slip, Trump referred to ‘herd immunity’ as ‘herd mentality’….
Case closed…
10/16/2020 @ 4:10 pm
I’m in the group that’s over 65, have a chronic health condition, so am unlikely to survive the virus.
For now, we are all learning how to live with a deadly virus in our midst, dejavu of HIV in the 80’s. It was almost ten years before a viable drug cocktail was developed. During that time, people changed their sex practices, and straights and gays alike condomed up. Nobody knew what would happen, we just tried to be careful.
This too might take ten years to pass. We might not get to see that, so in the meantime, what makes life continue to be meaningful and worthwhile? I’ve been into my art like never before, working in the studio every day, and mood of work has turned darker. I’m drawing more corvids, which sound like covid, except with beaks 🙂
10/17/2020 @ 2:52 am
AL:Perhaps four horses would best illustrate ‘herd’. I mulled this diligently and learned ‘herd’ refers to a large group, so your input of the crowded rush of Holstein sans cow pies is apropos.
Four—though many—plausibly is not a large group…. Four: potentially a clash/flash (simulacrum) of all strong winds or collision of swirled itinerant vortex raucous howling quaking invisible as violent as earth’s core. Horse herd? Hey give me another word! Wild horses? Zorro out of the night? Trigger? Fury-Flicka? Blue Velvet?
Paradoxical now that polarized politicized prognosticating protracts/prolongs paranoia. You’d think after all this time spellcheck would redline PANDEMIC. No doubt even the Seven Dwarfs are on hiatus. No time to pass a roach, guys. What then of the God Particle as panacea? Why is IT greed and fear and not fear and greed? Does selfishness usurp ITself. Things got bad and things got worse. As Kaleidoscope Kurt says: worser & worser. Relax Max! Don’t panic us just boys you diabolical PANDEMIC.
Memeishly: SETI perpetually is up to speed, racing for the cure as well as waiting for the train.
0! Need I mention: ‘Democracy is Coming to the USA…!’
10/19/2020 @ 11:30 am
My head is spinning. Thanks for whatever this is. I re-read my article and noticed that the NYT has an article today that says most of the same things, only not as well.