While the media is focused on the predetermined hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court seat formerly held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the big story of the day is the resurgence of coronavirus. The nation is back up to more than 50,000 new cases a day, the highest rate since early August, and numbers are continuing to rise. The states currently suffering worst are those in the northern Midwest-- Wisconsin, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota—but more than 30 states are reporting rising numbers. Wisconsin is so overwhelmed with cases it’s opening a field hospital this week, and it seems that Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma are right behind.
For me the story of the day, year, decade, century was Senator's Senator Whitehouse's half hour speech -- here's a link to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjcXVKg43qY It feels like a speech that is going to be among the top speeches about democracy -- and shall I say it's demise -- ever given. The dark money that has taken over politics and our government is truly frightening but it all fits together and explains what has happened/is happening to democracy. It goes so far beyond Citizens United and pulls so many of the puppet strings and sticks together. Four things: 1. Dark Money 2. Get rid of those annoying juries 3. Support less regulations and 4. Voter suppression. It is always about following the money and Senator Whitehouse just did. He just went on my hero list. Wow! Every one needs to watch this speech! Vote as if it is the last time you'll be allowed to vote!
I think the real story today are the impossibly long lines of people waiting to vote. That's "people power", with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett dodging and weaving has she prevaricators her way to an unearned seat on the Supreme Court as a sideshow. She may take her place on the High Bench, but there is no guarantee that she'll be allowed to stay there. Barrett has gotten where she is because she has friends in high places. That may change.
As for the spike of coronavirus infections, it is sad to watch what is happening; but what gets my attention is where it is happening. Donald Trump has tricked himself out as the ringmaster of a viral superspreader traveling circus. In behaving this way, Trump has become Joe Biden's best advertisement for getting rid of Trump. We are not seeing Trump performing before increasingly large crowds of his enthusiastic followers; it seems to be a couple of thousand here, or there, about the same as you might find at a second or third tier college football game, or that of a highly ranked high school football team in some rural area where there is not much else going on elsewhere on a warm Friday evening. During the fall football season, there is a lot of that sort of thing that ordinarily goes on here in Northern California, but not this year. It is truly sad that people expose themselves, and their families, and anyone else they might run into to this contagion. What strikes me is the utter nihilism of people's attitude, and how willingly they will parrot a bogus philosophy of 'freedom' to act irresponsibly for no reason other than spite. Social media and a false celebrity have amplified their sense of grievance and entitlement, the reward for which is increasingly illness and death. What I find really sad is the lack of pushback from people within that environment who ought to know better, but who can bring themselves to ring the irresponsible ones to account.
The phenomenon that really impresses me most are the huge numbers of people who were lining up, masked up, provisioned, and who are prepared to stand in line for up to 12 hours just in order to vote. Again, this is "people power"at its best. My vote is already cast, 23 days ahead of the deadline; but this is California, and we try to be proactive about things. That initial show of voter strength is taking on force and speed like an incoming hurricane. The tide is running with the Biden campaign, and people are going to want to be a part of it. Action begets action. The seriousness of the moment amplifies the gravitational force against Trump that has been building over the past four years. This will be a force that no amount of cheating or chicanery will likely defeat. I think Team Biden is going to win this one, big time. Just you watch!
Thank you, Professor. I heard on NPR this morning that Taiwan, a country with 23 million people, has had a little over 500 cases and only seven deaths. They have kept numbers low by following a national plan of wearing masks, testing and contact tracing. Amazing. We are in a very sad state of affairs here.
There was good news on the electoral front, with records of first-day voting in Georgia yesterday and Texas today breaking all records, despite day-long lines and the best efforts of The Enemy to make voting as difficult as possible. 97% of eligible voters in Harris and Travis Counties (Houston and Austin, respectively) are registered to vote. In Georgia yesterday, the majority of those in line who were interviewed had failed to vote in 2016 and 2018. In both states, the voters in line said they were there for three things: anti-Trump, pro-social justice, and concerned about the coronavirus and the government's failure to deal with it properly. As Jason Johnson said on MSNBC, "I'll be very happy to be proven wrong" (regarding turnout). And this was just Days 1 of the next three weeks of voting.
The more I hear about "herd immunity" the more I think it is a sophisticated reframing of the eugenics movement that underlaid both Jim Crow in this country and the Holocaust in Germany. If we look at which cohorts in our population that are most affected by the virus; Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous Peoples and the elderly; it is clear that they correspond to what used to be referred to as inferior or weak members of society. This fits quite nicely with the Trumpian notion that only those with the "best genes" will survive and prosper and that only "losers" die. Not only is it bad science, it's also lousy politics.
Working in the medical field as an ultrasound technologist, thankfully not in a hospital, I confront people everyday who still complain about the masks or espouse the idea that it is a hoax and it will all go away the day after the election. Wittingly or not they are thus subscribers to the "herd immunity" mentality....idiots all.. as they endanger their families and anyone else with whom they come in contact. That this public health crisis was made into a political football early on speaks only to the need of the GOP to hold onto power at all costs. In doing so they have more than likely killed their party, many of our citizens needlessly and possibly our way of life as a democratic republic unless we step up and take them out of power.
You wrote: <snip> Officials are arguing that the nation should protect our most vulnerable neighbors—the elderly and the infirm—and the rest of us should go about our lives normally, without waiting for a vaccine. <unsnip> I am speaking on behalf of the elderly and infirm, my parents (ages 87, 82) and mother-in-law (age 86) and then me (age 59) respectively. My mother-in-law is in a nursing home in North Georgia. She has not been allowed ANY visitors since March. The facility keeps getting positive cases in the staff and they spread it to the residents. And then they add more days of wait and see. This has happened over and over since August. My parents divorced 10 years ago. My 87 year old dad has bought into the - go about his ‘normal life’ in southern Indiana. My 82 year old mother - has largely been self-isolating. I've also been largely self-isolating - due to my own unresolved health issues and the fact that my husband works for a hospital system and an IT infrastructure person. He supports 50K users including e-mail. He can't get sick. He's been working from home since mid-March. So whilst the rest of the world has bought into - just go about your normal lives and SAVE that economy - I sit and wait. Given the lack of vision and strategy, I honestly don't see me ever getting to go to Georgia to visit my mother in law until 2022 or 2023. I wish I were in the position to go downtown Louisville and join the daily protest now ongoing for 135+ days. But I'm not. I tried to take my daughter to a medical appointment and people completely disregard the mask and social distancing rules. I literally jumped into the bushes to avoid a clueless, mask-less person heading towards me. With the lip service people pay to following the rules, I had for the first time possible insight of what it must be like to be invisible and ignored. Civil rights laws are on the books, but the majority of people don't even bother with the pretense that it is the rule of law. The words of Dr. Fauci - while correct, sound hopelessly naive to achieve. Most people are too self-absorbed to bother.
Back in the olden days there was human sacrifice. It was often gruesome and performed with a great deal of pomp and circumstance; those sacrificed were frequently revered, (at least for a few hours). Now, in the United States, we have government sanctioned human sacrifice. The victims aren't thrown into a volcano, pushed off a cliff, burned on a pyre or gutted after crawling up a pyramid's steps on their hands and knees. No indeedy, the victims of Trump Age Human Sacrifice are special because they have no idea they're a contestant! They enter into a lottery every time they walk out of their front door and here's the best part, it's equal opportunity! Young, old, rich, poor, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and yes, even white people get to play. Never have JFK's words taken on such a horrifying context. Then again, never did we imagine we'd be betrayed by a president of the United States.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961.
I live in San Francisco. Every citizen here, almost to a person, even joggers and children, in poor districts as well as affluent ones, wears a mask. Seriously. What is going on with the rest of the country?
In a sense, those elderly Republican senators seeming to embrace herd immunity are communicating that they're willing to "take one for the team." As in die. Of course, they don't realize they're ensuring themselves an infamous place in American history. Who could have imagined that some members of one of the two major parties would embrace a policy that could lead to hundreds of thousands, even millions of avoidable deaths — a policy based on politics rather than science. It's difficult to comprehend the cruelty.
At least those of us in our later years can look on the bright side: we aren't being rounded up and sent away for extermination to reduce the strain on hospitals and the medical profession.
So I know that most of HCR's letter was about the coronavirus and tomorrow's letter will most likely include the SC hearings, but after seeing Cathy's post and the very informative video of Senator Whitehouse, I must also add something. Take away Roe, take away gay marriage, take away the ACA fight and think about this. When asked 3 very simple and obvious questions, (1) can the president move the date of the election, (2) is voter intimidation legal and (3) does the constitution provide for a peaceful transition of power, she refused to answer. These are enshrined in the law and the constitution. To imply that she would have to hear "arguments" is beyond anything I have ever heard from a judge.
I'm going to play a bit of a devil's advocate here. Not about Trump. But about the disease and vaccine. I am a veterinarian with over four decades of practice, much of that holistic. And I have a special interest in vaccination because, while it may save lives (although this is less clear than it seems), it does cause problems, sometimes serious. And there is a _lot_ of money to be made. So "follow the money" also applies here.
The issues with this virus are mostly because it is new, at least a new variant. We'll leave off the origins of the virus. But in the end, the only real solution is in fact the population adapting to the virus. Herd immunity does in fact apply also to this situation, and not only to vaccination. The person who said otherwise is wrong. For infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, a respiratory herpesvirus which affects cattle, in the 70s (I think it was then), the US decided upon a vaccination program, but Australia decided to let herd immunity develop on its own. In the end the disease came under control in both countries at the same rate. There is evidence for this with human diseases as well, in that much of the gains against diseases like measles came prior to vaccination.
In Sweden, they opted to recommend masks and social distancing but they did not close down, and it appears that, while they had much higher levels of deaths than neighboring countries, now the disease has settled there and they do not have the second wave. How it plays out in the end is unclear. Most of their deaths were in senior homes, and their health minister admitted they did a poor job in keeping the virus out of senior homes.
From an evolutionary perspective, viruses like this strengthen the species by killing off weaker members. This is easier to accept in deer or antelope than in humans, and I don't say this is what we should do. But, while I think the isolation measures are and have been appropriate, at some point we do need to get back to being open, as in the end this is what will save the day. And most viruses get weaker over time. This is how Pasteur initially developed a rabies vaccine, by repeatedly passing the virus through animals until it weakened to a non-morbid condition. I think we are seeing this already, in that death rates as a percentage of case numbers is decreasing. I live in Austria, and while we are in a second wave also, with over 1000 cases a day, we still have only something like 800 deaths in total. We are open nearly normally, but masks are required.
The problem in the US has been multifactorial, lack of overall plans, angry resistance with large gatherings, and so on. But while the US has the highest death total, we still do not have the highest death per capita as of the last time I looked. We were number four, I think. And much of this is also due to poor food quality, which again comes back to the problems with our capitalist government.
But our best strategy, in the long run, is better medicine, which would include better information to encourage better health. Vaccination and other "anti" treatments do not encourage better health. The less intervention we do, the better our health, actually. We need to address food quality and availability of good food to all. And we need a better food pyramid, with much lower emphasis on meat and grains and more emphasis on vegetables. And so on. . .
Rachel Maddow threw out some numbers a couple of weeks ago. At minimum herd immunity for our population of 313 million, 60 percent of the population would have to have to be infected--some 215 million of us. At a 1 percent death rate, we would be looking at 2.15 million deaths. At the current rate of 2.9 percent, over 6 million deaths. This is at minimal herd immunity numbers, not the optimal 80 percent. And we don't even know whether or how long this virus produces protective antibodies.
That is quite a gamble, Dr Atlas. One reason why Trump's numbers are tanking, I imagine!
Here's something I wrote on Sept 17 about herd immunity. I would point out that I am actual applied epidemiologist, having spent 35 years working mostly in state health departments.
About herd immunity: before we had vaccines for them, we had herd immunity for diseases like measles, rubella, hepatitis A and chickenpox. Population immunity was high, so we did not have massive epidemics. Instead, we had continuing low-level circulation all the time, and periodic epidemics when there were localized accumulations of susceptible persons. Most such diseases had national epidemics every few years, reflecting a cohort of susceptible children born since the last epidemic. On average, we had about as many infections with these viruses each year as we had births — which meant millions of cases (now we have 3.7 million live births per year) and thousands of deaths.
That is what we can expect if we reach herd immunity from COVID-19 absent a vaccine. It would probably be better than current pandemic levels, but disease transmission would not just stop, and there would be many deaths on the way to herd immunity.
We've had 7 million reported cases so far. That's probably 20 million infections in half a year. If we continue at this pace, we will have 40 million infections by March, 2021. To get to herd immunity we have to get to, say, 70% of the population immune -- that would be about 232,000,000 people. So at current disease rates, about 4 to 5 more years. At a cost of about 1.5 to 2 million deaths, disproportionately among low-income and minority persons and among the elderly. That's assuming that people don't lose immunity a year or two or three after their acute illness, which is not a given.
As always, continued thanks for all of your work. As the days grow closer to November, the news from the White House becomes more surreal. The COVID-19 numbers are rising exponentially around us, particularly in the Schools. The Confirmation hearing is nothing more than an exercise in futility. As you say, it is predetermined. It is. I feel it was determined when Trump was inaugurated. Nothing can be said to derail Barrett. She could shoot someone on Fifth Ave and not lose voters. Sound familiar?
With everything on the table to lose, I have never felt as hopeless as I do now. If Biden can overcome every obstacle that will be thrown at him and even take office, it will take more than 2 terms to correct the path of destruction left by Trump. I am encouraged by the number people going to the polls, but will it be enough?
For me the story of the day, year, decade, century was Senator's Senator Whitehouse's half hour speech -- here's a link to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjcXVKg43qY It feels like a speech that is going to be among the top speeches about democracy -- and shall I say it's demise -- ever given. The dark money that has taken over politics and our government is truly frightening but it all fits together and explains what has happened/is happening to democracy. It goes so far beyond Citizens United and pulls so many of the puppet strings and sticks together. Four things: 1. Dark Money 2. Get rid of those annoying juries 3. Support less regulations and 4. Voter suppression. It is always about following the money and Senator Whitehouse just did. He just went on my hero list. Wow! Every one needs to watch this speech! Vote as if it is the last time you'll be allowed to vote!
I think the real story today are the impossibly long lines of people waiting to vote. That's "people power", with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett dodging and weaving has she prevaricators her way to an unearned seat on the Supreme Court as a sideshow. She may take her place on the High Bench, but there is no guarantee that she'll be allowed to stay there. Barrett has gotten where she is because she has friends in high places. That may change.
As for the spike of coronavirus infections, it is sad to watch what is happening; but what gets my attention is where it is happening. Donald Trump has tricked himself out as the ringmaster of a viral superspreader traveling circus. In behaving this way, Trump has become Joe Biden's best advertisement for getting rid of Trump. We are not seeing Trump performing before increasingly large crowds of his enthusiastic followers; it seems to be a couple of thousand here, or there, about the same as you might find at a second or third tier college football game, or that of a highly ranked high school football team in some rural area where there is not much else going on elsewhere on a warm Friday evening. During the fall football season, there is a lot of that sort of thing that ordinarily goes on here in Northern California, but not this year. It is truly sad that people expose themselves, and their families, and anyone else they might run into to this contagion. What strikes me is the utter nihilism of people's attitude, and how willingly they will parrot a bogus philosophy of 'freedom' to act irresponsibly for no reason other than spite. Social media and a false celebrity have amplified their sense of grievance and entitlement, the reward for which is increasingly illness and death. What I find really sad is the lack of pushback from people within that environment who ought to know better, but who can bring themselves to ring the irresponsible ones to account.
The phenomenon that really impresses me most are the huge numbers of people who were lining up, masked up, provisioned, and who are prepared to stand in line for up to 12 hours just in order to vote. Again, this is "people power"at its best. My vote is already cast, 23 days ahead of the deadline; but this is California, and we try to be proactive about things. That initial show of voter strength is taking on force and speed like an incoming hurricane. The tide is running with the Biden campaign, and people are going to want to be a part of it. Action begets action. The seriousness of the moment amplifies the gravitational force against Trump that has been building over the past four years. This will be a force that no amount of cheating or chicanery will likely defeat. I think Team Biden is going to win this one, big time. Just you watch!
Thank you, Professor. I heard on NPR this morning that Taiwan, a country with 23 million people, has had a little over 500 cases and only seven deaths. They have kept numbers low by following a national plan of wearing masks, testing and contact tracing. Amazing. We are in a very sad state of affairs here.
There was good news on the electoral front, with records of first-day voting in Georgia yesterday and Texas today breaking all records, despite day-long lines and the best efforts of The Enemy to make voting as difficult as possible. 97% of eligible voters in Harris and Travis Counties (Houston and Austin, respectively) are registered to vote. In Georgia yesterday, the majority of those in line who were interviewed had failed to vote in 2016 and 2018. In both states, the voters in line said they were there for three things: anti-Trump, pro-social justice, and concerned about the coronavirus and the government's failure to deal with it properly. As Jason Johnson said on MSNBC, "I'll be very happy to be proven wrong" (regarding turnout). And this was just Days 1 of the next three weeks of voting.
The more I hear about "herd immunity" the more I think it is a sophisticated reframing of the eugenics movement that underlaid both Jim Crow in this country and the Holocaust in Germany. If we look at which cohorts in our population that are most affected by the virus; Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous Peoples and the elderly; it is clear that they correspond to what used to be referred to as inferior or weak members of society. This fits quite nicely with the Trumpian notion that only those with the "best genes" will survive and prosper and that only "losers" die. Not only is it bad science, it's also lousy politics.
Working in the medical field as an ultrasound technologist, thankfully not in a hospital, I confront people everyday who still complain about the masks or espouse the idea that it is a hoax and it will all go away the day after the election. Wittingly or not they are thus subscribers to the "herd immunity" mentality....idiots all.. as they endanger their families and anyone else with whom they come in contact. That this public health crisis was made into a political football early on speaks only to the need of the GOP to hold onto power at all costs. In doing so they have more than likely killed their party, many of our citizens needlessly and possibly our way of life as a democratic republic unless we step up and take them out of power.
You wrote: <snip> Officials are arguing that the nation should protect our most vulnerable neighbors—the elderly and the infirm—and the rest of us should go about our lives normally, without waiting for a vaccine. <unsnip> I am speaking on behalf of the elderly and infirm, my parents (ages 87, 82) and mother-in-law (age 86) and then me (age 59) respectively. My mother-in-law is in a nursing home in North Georgia. She has not been allowed ANY visitors since March. The facility keeps getting positive cases in the staff and they spread it to the residents. And then they add more days of wait and see. This has happened over and over since August. My parents divorced 10 years ago. My 87 year old dad has bought into the - go about his ‘normal life’ in southern Indiana. My 82 year old mother - has largely been self-isolating. I've also been largely self-isolating - due to my own unresolved health issues and the fact that my husband works for a hospital system and an IT infrastructure person. He supports 50K users including e-mail. He can't get sick. He's been working from home since mid-March. So whilst the rest of the world has bought into - just go about your normal lives and SAVE that economy - I sit and wait. Given the lack of vision and strategy, I honestly don't see me ever getting to go to Georgia to visit my mother in law until 2022 or 2023. I wish I were in the position to go downtown Louisville and join the daily protest now ongoing for 135+ days. But I'm not. I tried to take my daughter to a medical appointment and people completely disregard the mask and social distancing rules. I literally jumped into the bushes to avoid a clueless, mask-less person heading towards me. With the lip service people pay to following the rules, I had for the first time possible insight of what it must be like to be invisible and ignored. Civil rights laws are on the books, but the majority of people don't even bother with the pretense that it is the rule of law. The words of Dr. Fauci - while correct, sound hopelessly naive to achieve. Most people are too self-absorbed to bother.
Back in the olden days there was human sacrifice. It was often gruesome and performed with a great deal of pomp and circumstance; those sacrificed were frequently revered, (at least for a few hours). Now, in the United States, we have government sanctioned human sacrifice. The victims aren't thrown into a volcano, pushed off a cliff, burned on a pyre or gutted after crawling up a pyramid's steps on their hands and knees. No indeedy, the victims of Trump Age Human Sacrifice are special because they have no idea they're a contestant! They enter into a lottery every time they walk out of their front door and here's the best part, it's equal opportunity! Young, old, rich, poor, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and yes, even white people get to play. Never have JFK's words taken on such a horrifying context. Then again, never did we imagine we'd be betrayed by a president of the United States.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961.
I live in San Francisco. Every citizen here, almost to a person, even joggers and children, in poor districts as well as affluent ones, wears a mask. Seriously. What is going on with the rest of the country?
In a sense, those elderly Republican senators seeming to embrace herd immunity are communicating that they're willing to "take one for the team." As in die. Of course, they don't realize they're ensuring themselves an infamous place in American history. Who could have imagined that some members of one of the two major parties would embrace a policy that could lead to hundreds of thousands, even millions of avoidable deaths — a policy based on politics rather than science. It's difficult to comprehend the cruelty.
At least those of us in our later years can look on the bright side: we aren't being rounded up and sent away for extermination to reduce the strain on hospitals and the medical profession.
So I know that most of HCR's letter was about the coronavirus and tomorrow's letter will most likely include the SC hearings, but after seeing Cathy's post and the very informative video of Senator Whitehouse, I must also add something. Take away Roe, take away gay marriage, take away the ACA fight and think about this. When asked 3 very simple and obvious questions, (1) can the president move the date of the election, (2) is voter intimidation legal and (3) does the constitution provide for a peaceful transition of power, she refused to answer. These are enshrined in the law and the constitution. To imply that she would have to hear "arguments" is beyond anything I have ever heard from a judge.
I'm going to play a bit of a devil's advocate here. Not about Trump. But about the disease and vaccine. I am a veterinarian with over four decades of practice, much of that holistic. And I have a special interest in vaccination because, while it may save lives (although this is less clear than it seems), it does cause problems, sometimes serious. And there is a _lot_ of money to be made. So "follow the money" also applies here.
The issues with this virus are mostly because it is new, at least a new variant. We'll leave off the origins of the virus. But in the end, the only real solution is in fact the population adapting to the virus. Herd immunity does in fact apply also to this situation, and not only to vaccination. The person who said otherwise is wrong. For infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, a respiratory herpesvirus which affects cattle, in the 70s (I think it was then), the US decided upon a vaccination program, but Australia decided to let herd immunity develop on its own. In the end the disease came under control in both countries at the same rate. There is evidence for this with human diseases as well, in that much of the gains against diseases like measles came prior to vaccination.
In Sweden, they opted to recommend masks and social distancing but they did not close down, and it appears that, while they had much higher levels of deaths than neighboring countries, now the disease has settled there and they do not have the second wave. How it plays out in the end is unclear. Most of their deaths were in senior homes, and their health minister admitted they did a poor job in keeping the virus out of senior homes.
From an evolutionary perspective, viruses like this strengthen the species by killing off weaker members. This is easier to accept in deer or antelope than in humans, and I don't say this is what we should do. But, while I think the isolation measures are and have been appropriate, at some point we do need to get back to being open, as in the end this is what will save the day. And most viruses get weaker over time. This is how Pasteur initially developed a rabies vaccine, by repeatedly passing the virus through animals until it weakened to a non-morbid condition. I think we are seeing this already, in that death rates as a percentage of case numbers is decreasing. I live in Austria, and while we are in a second wave also, with over 1000 cases a day, we still have only something like 800 deaths in total. We are open nearly normally, but masks are required.
The problem in the US has been multifactorial, lack of overall plans, angry resistance with large gatherings, and so on. But while the US has the highest death total, we still do not have the highest death per capita as of the last time I looked. We were number four, I think. And much of this is also due to poor food quality, which again comes back to the problems with our capitalist government.
But our best strategy, in the long run, is better medicine, which would include better information to encourage better health. Vaccination and other "anti" treatments do not encourage better health. The less intervention we do, the better our health, actually. We need to address food quality and availability of good food to all. And we need a better food pyramid, with much lower emphasis on meat and grains and more emphasis on vegetables. And so on. . .
I suspect our COVID numbers will get worse as we approach Election Day and Trump continues to hold rallies.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
Will any of it be over, ever?!
Thank you for cleaning the path, HCR. you are a bramble warrior. So. Many . Brambles.
Rachel Maddow threw out some numbers a couple of weeks ago. At minimum herd immunity for our population of 313 million, 60 percent of the population would have to have to be infected--some 215 million of us. At a 1 percent death rate, we would be looking at 2.15 million deaths. At the current rate of 2.9 percent, over 6 million deaths. This is at minimal herd immunity numbers, not the optimal 80 percent. And we don't even know whether or how long this virus produces protective antibodies.
That is quite a gamble, Dr Atlas. One reason why Trump's numbers are tanking, I imagine!
Here's something I wrote on Sept 17 about herd immunity. I would point out that I am actual applied epidemiologist, having spent 35 years working mostly in state health departments.
About herd immunity: before we had vaccines for them, we had herd immunity for diseases like measles, rubella, hepatitis A and chickenpox. Population immunity was high, so we did not have massive epidemics. Instead, we had continuing low-level circulation all the time, and periodic epidemics when there were localized accumulations of susceptible persons. Most such diseases had national epidemics every few years, reflecting a cohort of susceptible children born since the last epidemic. On average, we had about as many infections with these viruses each year as we had births — which meant millions of cases (now we have 3.7 million live births per year) and thousands of deaths.
That is what we can expect if we reach herd immunity from COVID-19 absent a vaccine. It would probably be better than current pandemic levels, but disease transmission would not just stop, and there would be many deaths on the way to herd immunity.
We've had 7 million reported cases so far. That's probably 20 million infections in half a year. If we continue at this pace, we will have 40 million infections by March, 2021. To get to herd immunity we have to get to, say, 70% of the population immune -- that would be about 232,000,000 people. So at current disease rates, about 4 to 5 more years. At a cost of about 1.5 to 2 million deaths, disproportionately among low-income and minority persons and among the elderly. That's assuming that people don't lose immunity a year or two or three after their acute illness, which is not a given.
As always, continued thanks for all of your work. As the days grow closer to November, the news from the White House becomes more surreal. The COVID-19 numbers are rising exponentially around us, particularly in the Schools. The Confirmation hearing is nothing more than an exercise in futility. As you say, it is predetermined. It is. I feel it was determined when Trump was inaugurated. Nothing can be said to derail Barrett. She could shoot someone on Fifth Ave and not lose voters. Sound familiar?
With everything on the table to lose, I have never felt as hopeless as I do now. If Biden can overcome every obstacle that will be thrown at him and even take office, it will take more than 2 terms to correct the path of destruction left by Trump. I am encouraged by the number people going to the polls, but will it be enough?