It’s Saturday
morning and I’m bored...so I got to thinking.....
You don’t get immunity unless you catch a
disease, survive, and your body builds anti-bodies. Or, a vaccine, causes your
body to develop anti-bodies.
As more and
more people become immune the disease has a tendency to die out because there
are fewer and fewer “carriers” for it to infect and survive. As a result, people
without the anti-bodies are not exposed to the disease. The “herd” is immune
because some have died. Some have survived through treatment. Some just live
through it without treatment. Or there is wide spread use of an effective
vaccine. Thus “herd immunity.
The “herd”
is never 100% immune. The unprotected, either because, they haven’t had the
disease and developed anti-bodies or not received the vaccine or the vaccine
just doesn’t work for them, remains vulnerable. And then there is the question
of how long personal anti-bodies protect.
The “Anti-Vac”
folks have been tolerated because, more or less, their refusal to be inoculated
for various communicable diseases impact just them, or their children. Given
that Covid-19 is deadly for the elderly or people with underlying health
conditions and no vaccine is 100%, I foresee some interesting situations.
Remember Typhoid Mary was locked up and people who knowingly transmit AIDS are
tried.
I have been
watching Sweden because it is a modern country with excellent health facilities.
Sweden has not closed at all. We have. Their death rate per million/population is
217. Ours is 158. That’s a difference of 59 per million, or 18,880 people dying.
Sweden’s death
rate has been slowly climbing, just as ours has. Will their death rate peak and
then drop as all the old and weak die? Maybe. Will they reach “herd immunity?” Perhaps.
But will all the people who come into their country not carry the disease to infect
those who haven’t been previously infected because the people around them aren’t
carriers? I don’t know but I do know you can’t shut off travel between countries
in today’s world.
Will ours?
Who knows? Studies from NY, CA and now FL show that the disease was here last
December, or earlier, as around 10% of the “tested” population have the
antibodies. That’s interesting. It also means that the number of disease
carriers, leaving the small number of asymptotic aside, is reduced. (Also true
in Sweden.) That’s also why vaccines work. If I’m immune then I can’t catch the
disease from you.
With 20/20 hindsight it appears that we should have just banned
large social gatherings, pushed frequent hand washing, increased the use of disinfectants,
demanded people wear masks and just rode the wave.
Many old people have died. It’s what we do. (I’m 82.) But we
wouldn’t have came this close to destroying the country and who knows, maybe a
lot of old people would have survived just as they hope to now by avoiding large
social gatherings, frequent hand washing, increased use of disinfectants, wearing
masks and just riding the wave.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper
