I wish Donald Trump had learned something from infecting his family with COVID-19. To excuse holding super spreader rallies leading up to the election, the Trump administration has adopted a policy of “Herd Immunity.” The strategy is to do nothing, as he has done all along, and let the virus go unchecked. The basic idea is that the vulnerable and weak are acceptable collateral damage. They will die anyway. “It is what it is.”
This scorched earth idea has never worked. according to Stuart Ray, M.D., professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, countries that have avoided lock downs, masks and physical distancing, we have not seen evidence that any have achieved herd protection on a national scale. Sweden for example decided that social distancing was voluntary. The results were devastating. By the end of May 2020, the nation recorded nearly 41,000 COVID-19 cases resulting in more than 4,500 deaths in a population of 10 million, compared with Scandinavian neighbors Norway and Finland that counted fewer than 600 COVID-19 deaths combined. Out simply the result was death on a massive scale, which America has already seen and will see much more with Trumps continued, do nothing policy. The idea of herd immunity is not a science based theory. It is dangerous.
The director of the World Health Organization held a press conference to state, “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity bee used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic…letting COVID-19 circulate unchecked therefor means allowing unnecessary infections, suffering and death.”
No one knows if it is even possible to develop immunity from the virus. An otherwise healthy 25-year-old Nevada man is the first American confirmed to have caught COVID-19 twice, with the second infection being worse than the first. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee said, “Respiratory infections like COVID-19 don’t provide lifelong immunity like a measles infection.” The man from Nevada has recovered from both infections. a 98 year old Dutch woman got the virus a second time and that second infection killed her.
I did the above illustration after listening to a Jordan Klepper interview with a Trump supporter at the Harrisburg Pennsylvania Trump Rally.
The supporter, proud of the conservative supreme court nominee, confirmed he was pro-life.
Klepper – “It is important for Americans to do whatever they can to protect a human life.”
Supporter – “Yes”
Klepper – “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”
Supporter – “I mean again, it’s a personal choice I think? If everybody was wearing them and everybody said put a mask on, I would respect everybody’s wished and put one on. We are not sheep.”
Klepper – “You are not sheep. But if everybody here was wearing masks…”
Supporter – “Again, we are not sheeple.”
Klepper – “So you are going to look at what everybody is doing and you are going to follow along.”
Supporter – “That’s right.”
Klepper – “But not sheeple.”
Supporter – “Not sheeple.”