"herd immunity"

[solarbird]

If anyone I follow still considers COVID-19 "herd immunity" viable without a well-distributed vaccine, consider the diseases we did not eliminate without them:

Mumps. Measles. Rubella. Typhoid. Scarlet fever. Smallpox. Diphtheria. More.

Not even diseases as relatively benign as chicken pox or as vicious and feared as polio got eliminated without vaccines.

"Herd immunity" without vaccines is nothing but "eh, let 'em die."

What is herd immunity and why are Trump officials pursuing an idea WHO calls ‘dangerous’?

Comments

[oh6]

I'd only seen "herd immunity" mentioned in the context of vaccination, before now.

[solarbird]

Then you've missed a lot of it. That was the original UK strategy, for example, straight up. Rightists here were pushing it hard, and are sneaking back to it. And fascists of course want it outright, because they actively want the deaths - a 'thinning of the herd' and all that.