COVID-19
Herd Immunity Re-Revisited
7. In brief
The WHO stresses that the epidemic is not over even though high vaccine coverage and the lower severity of Omicron might drive this false narrative so, tweeted by a Dutch OMT member. Other leaders in medicine state even boldly that the COVID-19 has no end date, since coronaviruses do not fade. Human rights conventions require that countries protect people from epidemic and endemic infections. Adding these together implies that we still should fight the epidemic in an effective manner. Our current acts are the opposite of what we should do.
The three-acted farce to achieve herd immunity, triples stupidity, or as the WHO would phrase it, is unscientific and unethical. It will severely impact vulnerable people. To put it bluntly, the strategy should not be to have as many people infected as possible, but as few as possible. Vaccination is helpful to reduce disease severity, but previous infections have little effect due to viral immune escape strategies. Limited efforts to reduce virus spread caused the Netherlands to be an exception to the rule that most European countries did not need a lockdown at the end of 2021.
High virus circulation will lead to new variants and possibly new viral serotypes which would double the epidemic. Life expectancy will go down and the burden of chronic diseases will go up due to long covid. The main reasons for lockdown in most countries, hospital overload, will probably not go down. Even without the worse-case scenario, it can be safely predicted that 2022 will yield similar numbers of excess deaths than the previous two years. After all, excess mortality in 2021 was increased compared to 2020.
Testing is the default strategy against virus epidemics. Testing before admittance where people gather to minimize the risk of new infections. Testing in combination with contact tracing to minimize infections in the population. History of tuberculosis in the 18th and 19th versus the 20th century teaches us that reducing the number of infections directly reduces the impact of disease in society. Without testing, we’re likely to have a lockdown every Christmas. Since its impact has diminished, most people are unaware that we are still testing and isolating for tuberculosis. This outlines the alternative for those who see a test society as an unwanted scenario. This epidemic expanded because we tested and restricted insufficiently. Two years ago, microbiologist Friedrich referred to testing business as usual in virology, and testing will bring the exodus to business as usual!
The three-acted farce to achieve herd immunity, triples stupidity, or as the WHO would phrase it, is unscientific and unethical. It will severely impact vulnerable people. To put it bluntly, the strategy should not be to have as many people infected as possible, but as few as possible. Vaccination is helpful to reduce disease severity, but previous infections have little effect due to viral immune escape strategies. Limited efforts to reduce virus spread caused the Netherlands to be an exception to the rule that most European countries did not need a lockdown at the end of 2021.
High virus circulation will lead to new variants and possibly new viral serotypes which would double the epidemic. Life expectancy will go down and the burden of chronic diseases will go up due to long covid. The main reasons for lockdown in most countries, hospital overload, will probably not go down. Even without the worse-case scenario, it can be safely predicted that 2022 will yield similar numbers of excess deaths than the previous two years. After all, excess mortality in 2021 was increased compared to 2020.
Testing is the default strategy against virus epidemics. Testing before admittance where people gather to minimize the risk of new infections. Testing in combination with contact tracing to minimize infections in the population. History of tuberculosis in the 18th and 19th versus the 20th century teaches us that reducing the number of infections directly reduces the impact of disease in society. Without testing, we’re likely to have a lockdown every Christmas. Since its impact has diminished, most people are unaware that we are still testing and isolating for tuberculosis. This outlines the alternative for those who see a test society as an unwanted scenario. This epidemic expanded because we tested and restricted insufficiently. Two years ago, microbiologist Friedrich referred to testing business as usual in virology, and testing will bring the exodus to business as usual!
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John. J.L. Jacobs. 18.02.2022
