The ‘Zombie’ Theory of Herd Immunity: Update
Amazing.
The Daily Mail is reporting that a petition organized by Gupta and the author of the well debunked Stanford study that promotes the astonishingly illiterate but emotionally attractive idea that we can solve Covid by protecting the “vulnerable” while letting the virus rip is gathering thousands of signatures.
It didn’t go that well last time. Those “shielding” were more likely to die:
Politico is reporting meetings between Gupta and the author of the well debunked Stanford study with the US government’s Covid tzar Alex Azar.
Everything Gupta said in March 2020 turned out to be wrong.
Her “Oxford Model” was used to counter the Imperial Model. Her “model” claimed over 50% of the UK had already been infected – in March 2020.
The “vulnerable” can’t be protected, not least given that 30% of us are obese and therefore “vulnerable”.
Such a large proportion of the population have co-morbidities like diabetes their category of “vulnerable” even under objective definitions widens to include almost anyone.
Then of course there’s the issue of “vulnerable” being a “relative concept”: if you wear a mask and act as if it’s an airborne transmitted virus, then I’m not vulnerable at all.
But if I don’t wear a mask and I pretend 6 feet physical distancing is enough to stop me getting the virus, then I am vulnerable after all.
Now it turns out that Covid actually replicates inside the parts of our immune system sent to target it. This is one reason why Covid is sometimes worse i’m people who are re-infected:
In fact, Gupta and the other Great Barrington Declarers who have been promoting Mass Infection's whole argument is based on an incorrect notion, formed without empirical evidence earlier this year, that Covid was no worse than seasonal flu and that therefore only one demographic — older people — were “vulnerable” to it.
We didn’t know about Long Covid then. Now we do, have they changed their minds? Nope. They’re rowing on. Odysseus’s rowers are now the Sirens. How confusing. But I guess that is the point. Confuse people into thinking there’s an easy solution. We can have our cake (keep the workers rowing on) while we, or rather the lucky ones, eat it.
Nor did we then have documented cases of reinfections: so much for the unscientific notion of perpetual immunity to coronaviruses!
Note To File: Let the record show that even Armchair Epidemiologists such as me knew as early as March 20th 2020 that cats’ coronaviruses struck twice. And with worse consequences the second time:
Even though we completely failed to protect the “vulnerable” (as narrowly defined as “older people”) in Spring they want us to have another bite at the cherry.
Even though all governments promised to protect the “vulnerable” and even though our health systems never were overloaded (the curve was flattened adequately, until now) oodles of “vulnerable” people were left to starve to death in the US and Spain’s nursing homes, abandoned by their “carers”.
Tens of thousands died unnecessary deaths in England, because the “system” couldn’t test “bedblockers” for Covid who were then dumped from acute care beds into “care homes” from which clusters all over the country were seeded — zero hours “care” home workers, also untested for Covid, were working in multiple homes simultaneously.
No-one promoting these policies seems to think of these ‘little things’ which will always thwart their cunning plans which require everything to work perfectly for there to be even a chance of success. Those failures in March led to over ten thousand direct deaths, at least.
Even though all of this failure is evident and there’s no reason to believe despite their “caring” rhetoric we’d be any better this time at preventing leakage of the virus into/from those being shielded into/from the rest of society, they want us to let the virus rip.
Even in the same week that Science published the largest study anywhere — of 85,000 confirmed Covid cases in India and which confirmed that the case fatality rate for 5–17 year-olds is 0.05%, they still keep peddling their science-free fictions.
Why?
A 0.05% case fatality rate is more than five times the death rate Gupta in her “Oxford Model” and Bhattacharya in his Stanford paper, like Sirens, claimed, without evidence last Spring, of Covid.
We couldn’t have had the evidence then. We had to take them on trust (though thankfully most of us saw through the flaws in their call for such a deadly mass experiment).
Now, the evidence is actually in: their policy prescriptions will lead to vast numbers of unnecessary deaths, and yet, and yet, they still persist.
Why? What and who is behind this madness?
To them a case fatality rate of 0.05% is not an “appreciable” risk. What is for them an “appreciable risk” that would persuade them to change their minds?
I suspect nothing could change their minds. But why is their crazy talk, denuded of everything they claimed was true in March and April, being amplified by the right-wing media now again? Why are they meeting Trump’s healthcare tzar? Why are they on Fox News?
These researchers’ division of society into a floating completely undefinable “vulnerable” category we’ve proved we cannot protect and an “invulnerable” group which, like the US president has proven, aren’t actually that invulnerable after all is yet another rhetorical sleight of hand.
I’m not vulnerable if you wear a mask: but you are vulnerable if I don’t.
This is just another attempt to segment society into an in-group (invulnerable) and an out-group (the vulnerable).
They need to feign care about the “vulnerable” because otherwise no-one would give them the time of day for their science free bunkum.
Bhattacharya’s “Stanford paper” was so wide off the mark in its insistence that ‘herd immunity’ had already been reached in March 2020, it actually undermined the entire basis of the scientific method itself, or so I argued:
What can account for this “campaign”?
Its underpinnings shift constantly and no amount of quality science or empirical evidence can persuade them that they’re misguided or that their policies, which have been well tested already in the US and the UK have led to 100s of 1000s of excess deaths, would lead to vastly greater numbers of deaths.
And for what?
A rhetoric of ‘herd immunity’ which anyway will never be reached unless, as is seeming increasingly unlikely, a proper vaccine can be found.
In which case those deaths were double-wasted: could have waited for a vaccine anyway.
My collected Covid posts:
