People are talking like "herd immunity" is a "state" you reach and it needs to stop

[Recursion]

Sorry, this has just been irritating me for a while. People have been talking about just letting the virus run its course until we "reach herd immunity", and the fundamental misunderstanding there is pretty glaring.

I won't bother with how many people that would kill, though that's it's own reason to avoid the idea. There's a category error here I'm going to look at instead. It's not as if a population reaches "herd immunity" and then voila the disease is solved. Every time a child is born or an immune person dies, the immune percentage drops.

This is how smallpox, measles, etc. were able to ravage the world for centuries: sure, the village builds up an immunity after a single outbreak, but 20 years later the population isn't immune anymore.

The only way herd immunity can be maintained is with a vaccine. That's what we did with smallpox. It's what we did with measles until wingnuts decided vaccines cause 5G towers or whatever the story is today. Herd immunity isn't some magical state of grace; it takes a lot of public health work to maintain and one jackass with a Youtube video can end up knocking it all down.

[smirkymonkey]

1. K&R

[Aussie105]

2. The concept of herd immunity is simple.

You let everyone catch the disease.

Those that die, maybe 30% of the population, are 'genetically deficient', those that recover are superior.
Weed out the weak, in other words. Eugenics. (Google it). Genocide (Pol Pot, Hitler.)

All of the proponents of 'herd immunity' assume they and their relatives are 'superior stock' and will be survivors. I'm not so sure of that.

But every family will face the same dilemma - you will need to produce 8 or 9 offspring to ensure you end up with 2 or 3 living long enough to reach reproductive age. Back to Victorian times, in other words. Measles, smallpox, cholera, polio.

I think it might be better to develop a vaccine, really.

[Girard442]

15. People like Bill Maher are carrying water for these eugenics assholes.

Start with the undeniably true premise that a better state of general health can improve your chances of surviving a medical crisis, but then take it ridiculously too far and suggest that the people who died somehow brought it on themselves by bad lifestyle choices.

I mean, a healthy person probably has a slightly better chance of surviving a gunshot wound than a someone who is chronically ill, but are we going to suggest that mass shootings are just nature's way of weeding out the weak and inferior?

[Voltaire2]

17. For covid it is 1% or lower, but the total number of deaths at even 0.5 % is staggerng.

If herd immunity is reached at 70% of the population that would be 231 million people infected.

1% is: 2.3 million deaths.
0.5% is: 1.15 million people.

[Igel]

23. This idea keeps going around.

Like the flu.

You become immune because of your immune system. You don't pass it on. If one person becomes immune, others do. Don't follow Lysenko, the biological theorist favored of Stalin and Khrushchov that set Soviet agriculture back decades.

With herd immunity, perhaps 30, 40% of the population is still not immune. Not everybody need catch the disease.

It doesn't render the entire population immune. It breaks lines of transmission.

And, contra recursion, the measles outbreaks still show that we have herd immunity. There are small networks where it can spread through, but the transmission stops.

[Voltaire2]

25. plus measles is stunningly infectious. It has an R0 of 15.7

so it is in the worst case scenario category, and still we have effective herd immunity.

The people in this thread claiming the herd immunity is bullshit are displaying ignorance. It is how we contain epidemics successfully. The issue is that without an effective vaccine the cost of getting to HI for covid-19 is unacceptible to sane people, it is in the millions of deaths. The hope is that we can control the spread over a long enough time frame for a vaccine to be available so we can get to HI without killing 1-2 million americans. But we cannot do that without income support across the board for everyone. We have to have Mr. Yang's Basic Income and we have to have it now.

But that is unacceptable to the Billionaires and their right-wing libertarian ethos, so instead it's 'get the peasants back to work, and get them all infected, and get this over with already.' We are going to be killed to keep us untainted by socialism.

[Mariana]

32. A lot of ignorant people seem to think you can "catch" antibodies

from other people who are immune, the same way you can "catch" a pathogen from someone who is infected.

[Meowmee]

3. There are people here who seem to be ok with all of these people dying

As long as they don’t get it, due to being in a supposedly protected age group or whatever, they don’t care apparently. And as you said there will be no herd immunity without a vaccine.

[Wounded Bear]

4. We had "herd immunity" with measles...

lots of kids died or were affected for life by it, but we were mostly "immune."



Herd immunity just means most folks will survive.

[Roy Rolling]

6. And then some people stopped immunizing their kids

And the herd became not immune again.

Typical Trump thinking. A herd to him is nothing but a group of animals being led to slaughter to feed his fat face.

[Aussie105]

11. Same with polio.

The ones that didn't die, were left in iron lungs or crippled for life.
They were immune for sure, but unharmed? No!

[LeftInTX]

34. Up to 72% of polio cases were asymptomatic

It's so weird, because it is such as horrific disease but it explains why it was rare in adults.

ETA: Then there's this: Approximately 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. This clinical presentation is known as abortive poliomyelitis, and is characterized by complete recovery in less than a week. This is characterized by a low grade fever and sore throat.

So 6% of those infected with polio develop CNS symptoms. I wonder during polio outbreaks in the US, there was concern when kids had fever and sore throat?


https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/polio.html

[LeftInTX]

30. Before there was a vaccine, everyone contracted it

So, we weren't born with immunity.

This is apples and oranges because measles was a "childhood disease", adults didn't get it. (I'm sure some did, but it was rare)
Measles was managed as a childhood illness. Adults were immune to measles because they had already contracted it, but children were not immune. No child was.

The way covid 19 differs from measles: No age is immune. Some cases are asymptomatic. It affects older adults.

[judeling]

5. It is the best state you can reach

Even a vaccine merely accelerates the process. We are not going to conquer the disease. Unless we can find away not only to vaccinate everyone and every animal that can be a vector. But like HIV and many others we can make it not a death sentence.

[Aussie105]

12. The idea of vaccination is:

To prevent people from dying from the disease.

To prevent people from suffering life long permanent damage from the disease.

To prevent the disease (any disease) from spreading to non-immune individuals.
Doctors are required to report any appearance of a communicable disease in patients.

Basically, immunization provides all the benefits of naturally acquired immunity through exposure to the disease, without any of the harmful effects of the disease.

Those who favor herd immunity through letting the disease spread, are fucking mad. This includes whole countries that went 'Meh! Let it spread!'

[uponit7771]

7. K&R, Sweden's herd immunity experiment has gone to shit quick

[Celerity]

21. Herd immunity was never the primary goal here in Sweden. I keep seeing this posted over and over

and it is simply incorrect. It has come up over and over again because some officials have started talking about Stockholm (where we live) reaching this level by the end of May. That has been misconstrued by so many to think that the drive for herd immunity is the principal core strategy, when it is not.

Hallengren: Sweden Not Pursuing Herd Immunity

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-04-29/hallengren-sweden-not-pursuing-herd-immunity

Sweden’s Minister for Health and Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, explains the country is not pursuing a policy of ’herd immunity’ when it comes to coronavirus and that looser restrictions in Sweden are being used because of how long they may have to stay in place. She tells Daybreak Europe’s Caroline Hepker and Roger Hearing it is too early to make comparisons about which countries have made the right policy choices in addressing the pandemic.

Running time 11:20

(Audio at the link.)

[uponit7771]

22. Unnn, "Tegnell, ... not convinced the unconventional anti-lockdown strategy was the best option "

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213408059

Sweden kept NPI loser and it doesn't seem to have worked no matter what the strategy is called on a nation wide level

[Celerity]

26. You just proved my point. They were talking about a possibility of it occurring here in Stockholm, but

it was NEVER the primary goal or strategy. I already stated this in my first reply. Swedish Governments are by design granted far less sweeping powers than many nations, and although there have been multiple bills passed in the Riksdag that give it (the Government, in our case refers to the PM and his/her cabinet, not the Riksdag, ie parliament, as a whole) broader powers, it is not an overarching command and control schema of of power allocation. Norway, Denmark, and Finland do not operate under similar constraints to the level that we do.

The overall Swedish model is based off multiple rationales. Foremost is that due to the socio-political make-up here, there has been, for over a century, a very high level of reciprocal trust between the Riksdag, the Government. The vast majority of Swedes will inherently follow whatever guidelines the Government sets out as parameters. Also, along the socio-cultural vein, Swedes tend to naturally practice a higher level of native social distancing than most other nations. Around half of Swedes live by themselves. The vast majority of younger Swedes move out of their parent's homes as soon as they are able. It is in stark, stark contrast to many of the other cultures globally, where it is extraordinarily common to find 30 year olds, even 40 year olds and up still under their parent's roof. A simple multi-nation trip to South America, for instance, will positively confirm this.

Another factor in our approach has already been stated as well. Long term sustainability, especially if a a vaccine is not found within a year or more. Many of the nations who underwent a severe holistic lockdown will (as I see talked about here all the time) simply have a guaranteed second, and then third wave of dramatic impact. They are but delaying the inevitable unless a vaccine is quickly developed (which is not at all guaranteed.) The Swedish model attempts to control the ongoing caseload to a point where our healthcare system is not completely overrun. In this they have so far been fairly successful.

In terms of economics, we are going to see a vast contraction in the economy, mainly due to the fact that we are export-driven, and the rest of the world is in economic chaos. Finland, Denmark, and especially Norway are very well off nations, even more than Sweden, and are all half our size. They can quite possibly pay off a lot of the damage to their internal consumption superstructures (ie the smaller business and firms overall.) Sweden has relied on a more balanced approach (ie less government outlays due to milder restrictions, thus less need of massive for almost universal propping up of all firms who went into total lockdown in the other 3 main Nordic nations.) IF this pandemic continues on into 2021 or dog forbid even 2022, even those other 3 Nordics will be hard pressed to keep most all of their native businesses whole. The money will run out, even for Norway (although they are positioned better than probably any other nation on the planet due to their insane amount of wealth in their multiple Sovereign National investment and Pensions Funds (they have enough to literally give every adult citizen well over 1 million dollars (US dollars) and still not completely deplete their reserves.)

We shall see what happens in terms of COVID-19 spread in the other three main Nordics, as they are now starting to open up again, albeit they are probably a months or two away from being at the Swedish level. I suspect that IF they start to see a dramatic uptick in cases and deaths, they will go back and shut down again. It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out.

Another huge myth, pushed by cheap, shoddy journalism is that it is the Wild West here, and basically the entire country is running around like banshees with zero mitigation actions. This is utter tosh.

see this article for further drilling down:

'The biggest myth about Sweden is that life is going on as normal'

https://www.thelocal.se/20200424/interview-isabella-lovin-coronavirus-the-biggest-myth-about-sweden-is-that-life-is-going-on-as-normal

also

Sweden to shut bars and restaurants that ignore coronavirus restrictions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-stockholm/sweden-to-shut-bars-and-restaurants-that-ignore-coronavirus-restrictions-idUSKCN2262AX


now I shall deal with the very bad aspects of what happened, as I am in no way try to sugarcoat anything


Our large fail, a horrid tragedy (and the main reason we are so badly off in terms of deaths per million compared to Denmark, Norway, and Finland) was our nursing homes. They account for as much as 70% (there is a shedload of argument here atm, some say it is even higher, some say it is lower,, around 50%, but certainly it is higher than our neighbours) of our deaths en toto. We (unfortunately) had a FAR more lax system in terms of visitation/protocols and in terms of higher staff turnover than the other Nordics do with their elderly-care homes. Those arguments and finger-pointings are now the hottest topic in the whole country atm. They fucked up bad.

Several days ago, on SVT (our state TV,) a group of doctors and healthcare experts (these fall into the group that say it is around 70% of all deaths) said we if had similar nursing home deaths and overall elderly deaths per million rates that Denmark has, our deaths per million OVERALL (for all age cohorts) would only be a wee bit higher than the Danes. They said we would be at around 110-120 deaths per million versus the Dane's rate of 90pm (which will soon cross 100.)

They also said that other Nordics are being far more conservative than Sweden has been with their COVID-19 death attributions so all the other Nordics have higher death rates than they are letting on (that war of words has been going on for months, and has gotten REALLY nasty at times, especially with Denmark versus Sweden, quelle surprise), All the other Nordics have a very hostile stance in regards to Sweden in terms of our refugee/immigration policy. That group (the refugees/immigrants) have also be really hard hit here as well, as they do not practice social distancing to a level anywhere near to what the native Swedes do, plus they are less well-off income wise, and also health wise (for a number of reasons.)

Refugees/immigrants also make up a much, much higher percentage of of the Swedish population than they do in Norway, Denmark, and especially Finland. In the past 23, 25 or so years, we have taken in the US-equivalent of well over 50 million refugees, the vast bulk post 2002 (starting with the 2003 US-led 2nd Iraq war, and continuing on with all the other US/UK/NATO-led ME shitstorms like Libya, Syria, etc) Before that is was the Balkan wars that the US/UK/NATO (we are NOT in NATO) also played a huge role in. Before that it was all the other US shit-stirs (the murder coup against Allende in Chile (when Chile played Sweden in football a couple years back at Stockholm's Friends Arena, 80% of the giant stadium was Chilean), the multiple Central American murder coups and wars, various African coups, etc.) This has been going back to the staring major event, Operation Ajax in 1953, when the CIA led the coup d'etat of Mossadegh in Iran and installed the murderous thug Shah and his SS-style SAVAK into power. It is why we have a shedload of Persians (Iranians) here (and they have integrated in more or less wonderfully over the past 67 years they have been migrating here), but that is a LONG discussion for another time.


more on the false charge of herd immunity being our basic strategy

Sweden hits back at Trump's 'herd immunity' criticism

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/sweden-hits-back-at-trump-s-herd-immunity-criticism-1.1419502

Sweden’s foreign minister Ann Linde has dismissed criticism by U.S. president Donald Trump concerning the country’s outlier strategy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. “He has used a factual error,” the minister said in an interview on broadcaster TV4 on Wednesday. Her comments follow Trump’s remarks a day earlier when he told reporters that Sweden is trying to achieve “herd immunity” and “is suffering greatly” from not doing enough.

The Nordic country is under intense scrutiny as it continues to experiment with a laxer policy response to the virus despite an accelerating death toll. Restaurants, shopping centers and primary schools all remain open in Scandinavia’s biggest economy. “Some countries seem to think that we aren’t doing anything, but we’re doing a lot of things that suit Sweden,” Linde said.

President Trump’s comments have also drawn the ire of Sweden’s top epidemiologist. “If you compare the situation to New York, where I have a relative working, things here are working well,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with state broadcaster SVT. Meanwhile Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven has said he sees no reason to respond to Trump, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. “I have spoken lately to about 10 heads of state and I note that we are all following the same lead strategy,” Lofven said.

snip


The vast bulk of foreign reporting simply ASSUMES that if we are not in total lockdown then that instantly means we are going for herd immunity. That is a pure logical fallacy, one that goes by multiple names: the Either/Or Fallacy, also sometimes called the Black-and-White Fallacy, or the Excluded Middle, or a False Dilemma/False Dichotomy.

Finally, to reiterate, many of the stories I have seen pushed also erroneously try and paint a picture that there are no restrictions (or very little) in place at all (my 'Wild West' analogy above), and certainly do not do any sort of deep, nuanced dive into what actually happened, why it happened, and what's happening at present, here on the ground.

[SergeStorms]

8. Like you say...

many people are misinformed about what the term "herd immunity" means. Many believe once you reach this magical state of herd immunity the problem is solved forever, and everything is back to "normal". The old normal will never be the new normal. Things are changed forever now, so getting complacent, thinking herd immunity has solved the problem, is ridiculous. Try explaining this to the Trump cult though. They believe Trump is of superior intellect to people who've studied medicine and science their entire lives. Trump stared into a solar eclipse after being told not to. But I suppose he believes that was another hoax as well.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Another misconception is that you reach a number and 'click' the switch is on

It is a never-reached state.

There would continually be outbreaks of say 3 to 100 people in pockets all over the place. Continual risk of infection. Continual crises in small communities and urban pockets. Continuing high risk in hospitals.

Mathematically, it is asymptotic, meaning that as you approach "herd immunity", you never actually get there, because the rate of infection slows down as the number of infectable people gets small. The closer you get to it, the harder it is to get more.

People who think "herd immunity" is achievable are often people who think in binary modes: on/off, yes/no, very good / very bad. The same people who think "what racism" simply because an African-American attained the Presidency.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Yet another bad misconception is that it would be evenly distributed among demographics

If you have 80% (pick a number) of people over 65 staying home and even having groceries delivered by services or neighbours, then they have no herd immunity.

They are their own herd.

If you start bringing them out, or forcing them out, or interacting with them at home, they would be giant fresh groups for the virus to infect.

Even if you successfully "open up" with some level of herd immunity among the younger 70% of the population, you would suddenly get large blowups among the older portions who don't have anywhere near the same level of immunity.

Boom! Suddenly grandmothers start dying in large numbers again. Who wants that? Oh, ... Greed Over People wants that.

[Ford_Prefect]

13. Herd Immunity in this case is a false concept. It assumes there is herd survival absent medication.

Last edited Mon May 11, 2020, 07:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Those who survive this first wave of infection may not survive the next. Immunity has not been proven nor is the degree of durability of any immunity understood at present. Neither is there meaningful understanding of the range or potency of COVID-19 mutation. We have no basis to expect that COVID-20 or COVID-20+ will be immunized by COVID-19 exposure and survival

You might also ask Sweden just how wise they think that choice was.

We have no data on the relative condition of those who have survived, either. We lack an accurate picture of what their health will be like in the near or distant future. The relevance becomes clear when you take into account the range of COVIC-19 effects on the whole body and on various organs. It can leave some of the survivors with significant and permanent damage to liver, kidney, lung and heart. This kind of knock-on effect is not considered in the model of Herd Immunity most people seem to think they are speaking of.

[Igel]

24. Immunity's close to being a given here.

When all the reinfected people turned out to not be reinfected, the number of known reinfections went to zero.

So it looks safe to say that there's temporary immunity, at least.

How long lasting it is is still an open question, but time will tell.

[Ford_Prefect]

27. I may be wrong but I believe they don't have enough testing in the US to tell

and few studies to confirm about immunity just yet.

Apparently we have a different COVID-19 strain or mutation to that found in Korea or China, or perhaps more than one. I am sure good minds are very hard at work trying to figure it out but so far we neither know the process of the disease nor how to stop it. Although there seem to be some effective treatments IF you spot it early enough and IF you don't have complicating factors like Diabetes or Heart Disease. Clearly it is possible to survive the first infection but recovery rate and the relative condition of the survivors seems quite variable.

According to everyone worth listening to this is only the first phase and we are likely to see more waves of infection either when social controls are relaxed or as the seasons change, never mind when other strains may arise as different parts of the world are affected and the spread continues.

Since I am 68 I see a US situation in which it will not be a question of how to avoid infection but when It will bite me and how badly. I have been fortunate so far but that is no guarantee that some fool MAGAT won't bring it to my community. You see people with no mask driving around with the windows wide open in town. When you stop to buy groceries or gas 1/2 of the people aren't masked nor keeping enough distance and the checkout clerks aren't masked.

How mad is that? Stupid has a cure but I wasn't planning to be part of it.

[Aussie105]

14. The whole concept of herd immunity was debunked and rejected centuries ago.

That's why we have antibiotics for bacterial diseases and vaccines to prevent viral diseases.

I'm sure the people who died from the black death, would have gladly taken antibiotics at the time if they had been available.

(Bubonic plague, or black death - caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a Gram-negative, nonmotile, rod-shaped, coccobacillus bacterium, with no spores. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans via the Oriental rat flea.)

If herd immunity is such a great idea, why did scientific technology go to the effort to develop either antibiotics or vaccines?
And why do we teach children that rats, mice and insects are dirty and can cause disease?

Another point - letting a virus do it's thing may never end in herd immunity, it may instead end in a 100% death rate, ie extinction.

[GoCubsGo]

16. Thank you. It's been driving me nuts, too.

Almost as much as when Fat Bastard spews, "Go/Going herd." He and his stupidass TV show lingo disgust me.

[tanyev]

18. They are confusing herd immunity with thinning the herd.

[Pobeka]

19. Herd immunitiy, temporary measure, while wating for a vaccine. But it may not last in individuals

Experts repeatedly have warned that our immunity may not last from season to season, if our immunitity to covid19 is like other coronavirii, where you can literally be re-infected with the same virus year after year.

[dawg]

20. Thank you.

The "herd immunity" strategy would be cruel and wasteful even if it were likely to work. The fact that it would be almost certain to fail just makes it all the more sad.

But you can get a rich guy to believe almost anything if he thinks it will help to preserve his wealth.

[LAS14]

33. Why would it be cruel or wasteful??? The same number of cases would occur....

.... in a herd immunity approach as in a flattened curve approach. Granted, if a peaky curve is allowed to overwhelm a health system, more deaths would occurr. That should not be allowed.

What is cruel and wasteful is the devestation happening to people with few resources when jobs are unavailable over a long period of time.

FLATTENING THE CURVE DOES NOT REDUCE THE NUMBER OF CASES.

[dawg]

35. We don't get the same number of cases if we get to a vaccine in time.

If we just let the virus run, hoping foolishly to achieve natural herd immunity to a corona virus, something the human species is not known to have ever done (common cold, anyone?), then millions will die.

Sure would be a shame if an effective vaccine came along a few months later, wouldn't it?

Even without a vaccine, the treatment options are improving almost weekly. First there was nothing. Then Trump's stupid Hydroxychlorquine (which probably only helped because they also gave you a Z-pak along with it).

Now, patients can get Remdesivir, which isn't a game changer but might actually help save some lives.

Even better treatments are surely on the way. They could save many lives if people aren't encouraged to just go ahead and die before better treatments can be brought to bear.

The longer we can keep people from contracting Covid19, the better our chances of saving their lives.

***********BUT!!!!!!!!!!!********>>>>>>>>>>> The real issue here is that it's only theoretical at this point that herd immunity is even possible without a vaccine. We would be throwing people to their deaths on an unsubstantiated hope.

The real solution is massive testing, tracing and isolation. Not the strawman of complete shut down that you are trying to argue against. Some countries have already used that approach with success and their economies are pretty much back up and running.

But that's apparently too hard for the United States. Better to just let people die off and get it over with.

[Baclava]

28. Vaccinations are the safest way to get herd immunity, we've been doing just that for decades

People confuse that with natural immunity (getting antibodies after actually contracting the disease) like being safe from chickepox after getting it as a child.

No sane person I know would rather run out and get polio rather than getting vaccinated against it, same with Covid 19

[Hermit-The-Prog]

29. Vaccines cause faster Internet access. The lack of vaccination caused Rand Paul.

Meanwhile, here's some light reading while you wait for trumPutin's bonespurs to clear up so he can lead the charge in hand-to-mouth combat with COVID-19:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-rightwing-political-group

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

[LAS14]

31. I've said this so many times. Flattening the curve does NOT reduce the number....

.... of cases. A flattened curve contains the same number of cases, spread out over a long enough period that the health care system is not overwhelmed. I haven't actually seen this articulated, but it makes sense that a flattened curve contains fewer deaths IF the peaky curve caused the health care system to be overwhelmed.

Please stop pointing to the number of deaths in Sweden until, say July or August... or September.

In both scenarios the elderly and otherwise vulnerable should shelter until herd immunity is reached, either by infection or by vaccine.