If there were UFOs and death beams involved it would be easier to comprehend.
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v.o: “previously on ‘The Donald Trump Show’.”
During a coronavirus task force meeting in the Situation Room last month, on the same day Trump ordered travel to be suspended from the United Kingdom and Ireland in an effort to stem the spread of the virus, Trump reportedly asked Fauci, “Why don’t we let this wash over the country?”
Two anonymous sources familiar with the president’s comments confirmed the question to the newspaper.
Trump was reportedly also seeking to understand why “herd immunity” to the coronavirus had been rejected. Herd immunity occurs when a large amount of the population becomes immune either through infection and recovery or inoculation.
“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci reportedly responded to the president’s question.
The Washington Post reported that Fauci initially did not understand what the president meant by “wash over” but was then reportedly alarmed.
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Republican Party = Death Cult
They should replace the Elephant with a Rotting Corpse beckoning the voter to oblivion.
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Hoover Institue needs to die.
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“Wash over” does sort of sound French-ish.
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Gather them all together for a Trump super-spreader event.
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welllllll, Fauci has a chance to head to the exit, all that’s needed is willpower.
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When enough of them die, they’ll flip.
Holy “Stonehenge!” Had no idea the Animals did this. Always been a fan, though.
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People of color are much more likely to get covid, and to be hospitalized and die of it. It’s hard to imagine this isn’t a part of the Trump administration’s desire to go for this “strategy”.
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And then of course there’s the domino effect of all those people not being available to deliver mail, nurse the sick, update your driver’s license, etc.
edit: affect?
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There are three huge problems with this plan of encouraging younger, supposedly less vulnerable, people to go back to pre-COVID levels of social contact in order to get to “herd immunity” more quickly, while protecting older, supposedly more vulnerable, people from social contact.
Most fundamentally, we have no idea if any appreciable “herd immunity” is possible with SARS2. It is not unlikely that having the infection will confer some protection, for some length of time, but exactly how much protection, for how long, is completely unknown.
We have long experience of four conventional coronaviruses, none of which confer protection that is anything close to categorical immunity. None of them produce any level of protection that lasts more than months to a few years. Had the folks who drew up this declaration consulted people who know anything about infectious diseases, they would have learned that very few infections are “one and done”. Very few create lasting categorical immunity after one episode of infection, and there is zero reason to imagine that SARS2 is going to prove to be one of these one-and-done infections, and plenty of reason to doubt that.
Either way, we’re not going to know for years even approximately how much protection for how long can be expected from a COVID infection, and it is quite unlikely that we will ever get an answer that isn’t strictly statistical. We will never be able to give any individual any sort of “immunologic passport”. All we will ever be able to say, is that the odds are x that people in general who had an episode y months ago have a z level of risk of re-infection. Even that is years in the future.
Secondly, the somewhat lower risk of serious COVID infection in younger people is not a zero, or even a very low, risk. Those meat-packing plants were not staffed by 80-year olds. The purposeful mass exposure of lots of people to SARS2 by mandating the pre-COVID level of social contact – even if that would create “herd immunity” as the prize at the end of the short-term carnage, which it won’t – is still going to cause an immediate level of severe cases that will overwhelm medical care resources. If we actually could protect the elderly, sure, there wouldn’t be as many severe cases, but there would still be too many just from younger people to overwhelm the system.
Thirdly, we’re not going to protect the elderly, as called for here as a purely abstract proposition, without becoming in practice massively more socialist than any of the people who signed this declaration would ever agree to. Not to say that we should not, for all sorts of other reasons quite aside from COVID, become massively more socialist in our treatment of everyone, young and old alike. But even if we went so far towards socialism that we achieved results in elder care that would make Marx himself smile, that would not protect the elderly from COVID. The declaration speaks in particular about having only younger people with immunity conferred by their having already had COVID, only these folks with an “immunologic passport”, having contact with the elderly to supply their needs. As explained above, however much protection for however long some hypothetical average person might get from having had COVID, no actual individual will ever acquire an “immunologic passport” from SARS2.
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2 million assumes that it is not possible to be reinfected. Herd Immunity may not even be possible.
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neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet.
roughly translated: kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.
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Is this motherfucker really suggesting the Thanos solution? He better knees to chest collecting the infinity stones. We’re comin for him.
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Next agenda item: Trump proposes a fine if you’re caught wearing a mask.
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Especially as they got nothing and obviously don’t give a shit.
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So we need more people to get sick and die, so that people won’t get sick and die. Just making sure I understand the logic here.
Since when is herd immunity for a deadly disease achieved by contracting and (fingers crossed!) surviving the disease? It used to be discussed in the context of vaccination.
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I’m gonna go with around 1350 A.D. You know, back when the science was really solid.
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It is the New Repug Party’s idea for saving Social Security, will be solvent when all current precipitants die.
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