Dashmellow
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I'm sure some of the people who write these articles don't understand what herd immunity is!
That is just wrong. Before we invented vaccines we always achieved immunity via natural infection, we would not be here today if we had ever failed to do so.
And even if some medical experts don't like it, every country now has some level of herd immunity, maybe not enough to stop the spread, but always enough to slow the spread. That can be seen quite clearly in the data where most countries experiencing a "second wave" are seeing a less steep and smaller rise in cases than in the first wave. (In USA, the second wave was mainly states that were having their first wave, so it is the third wave that is less steep.)
During the first wave, just letting it go free clearly wasn't a good option since the hospitals then got overloaded, lockdowns were necessary, but for further waves it is far from clear what level of lockdown is useful, people are getting infected anyway, the infections stop when enough immunity is achieved, not for any other reason, lockdowns just slow down achieving enough immunity. Some precautions are clearly useful in reducing the amount of immunity required, improving ventilation systems so that they don't circulate virus around the occupants, and so they do maintain decent humidity is sensible. But like every coronavirus that has arrived in the past, it seems likely that most of us will defeat this one using natural immunity before the medical people get a working and approved vaccine into enough people to make a difference.
If the governments really wanted to save lives then we would be distributing the vaccines now, and not pausing trials for 6 weeks at a time because 1 single person became ill for unknown reasons at a time when the figures show 5000 people per day are dying of the disease!
The journal Nature, founded in 1869 is perhaps the leading multidisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific publication of its kind in the world. You quote Kristian G. Andersen, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, with joint appointments in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, and at the Scripps Research Translational Institute. The Scripps Reserch Institute is ranked as the #1 most influential research institution in the world.
The Lancet, founded in 1823 is among the world's leading, most respected and best-known general medical journals. According to The Lancet's most recent report, (10-15-2020) the "herd immunity theory" approach to the COVID-19 pandemic as "a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence", further stating that, "Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed." - "Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection,4"
Literally every professional scientist who has researched the issue has concluded that a herd immunity approach would cause many millions of unnecessary deaths and then, even still, would not fully resolve the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic due to the unique nature of this particular novel coronavirus. And THIS is the overall consensus and conclusion presented in the journals Nature and The Lancet from multiple leading researchers.
And now, here comes Nigel, a random guy on the internet who, seven days a week spends literally most of his waking hours from early in the mornings to late into the wee hours at night on a dash camera forum presenting himself as an absolute authority on literally "everything", this time, dismissing the world's leading scientists, medical professionals and epidemiologists writing in the world's premiere scientific and medical publications as "just wrong" and asserting that "the people who write these articles don't understand what herd immunity is!"......... Well, because, you know, Nigel knows better than anyone else about literally everything. I mean, Good Lord!
I don't know what is worse, Nigel, the astonishingly arrogant pontificating or the sheer gormlessness but I almost feel embarrassed for you at this point.
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