"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

[kevin_standlee]

As I mentioned to you on Twitter, I (born in the mid-1960s) was unfortunate enough to catch scarlet fever around 1972. It was Not Fun. Even chicken pox (which my sister Kelli and I had either the previous or following year; I can't remember) was less bad. I do remember how surprised my current doctor was when we were doing my second shingles vaccination and I mentioned that I'd had scarlet fever. He said he didn't think he'd ever had a single patient who had ever had it.

Astonishingly, my grandparents (with whom I lived at that time) were able to keep me sufficiently away from my sister (three years younger than me) so that she didn't catch it from me. Presumably I was treated with antibiotics, although I have no memory of it, being rather miserable the entire course of the disease, and took no long-term harm from it. My most intense memory of the experience was that I would wake up not being able to open my eyes when waking up because they were "glued" shut by excess eye mucus ("sleep dust"). I'd have to call my grandmother, who would come clean my eyes with warm water so I could open them.

thanks for the nightmare fuel

[solarbird]

Yep. That eye thing would nightmare me right the fuck out. I'll be over here -----> sedating myself. xD