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[OhNo-Really]

This message was self-deleted by its author (OhNo-Really) on Sat Dec 10, 2022, 07:45 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[snort]

1. Moo

[OhNo-Really]

11. Snort 😂

[Mr.Bill]

2. Herd immunity is not a good strategy

when we don't even know how much immunity we get by having the virus and for how long it lasts.

[OhNo-Really]

8. Exactly. Better to err on side of caution

Thank you for commenting ☺️

[elleng]

3. Yes it does, as does much of the behavior of many humans,

sadly.

[Buckeyeblue]

4. The irony of the term "herd immunity" is that it is very Darwinian

Yet those running around saying it are probably creationists.

[OhNo-Really]

6. Thanks. I missed that irony because

Irony died of f’n exhaustion

I love irony.

[Donkees]

5. Community immunity

[OhNo-Really]

7. Better however it's an unproven theory

Science won’t know for at least a year or two.

Until then should present the real danger high infection rates ie Covid could mutate and kill off a much higher percentage than we have seen to date.

Err on the side of caution

Thank you foe jumping in. Very appreciative

[Klaralven]

9. There is herd immunity for the flu

It is specific to a particular variant of the flu virus. And it is not lifetime immunity. Therefore different flu strains circulate in subsequent year until immunity fades and the same strain can circulate again.

Measles, mumps, and chicken pox are better examples of herd immunity. After an epidemic among children, they don't reappear until a new batch of children is available. The same child rarely gets chicken pox a second time.

[OhNo-Really]

12. It's the Darwinian Phrase "Herd Immunity"

I object to. It’s dehumanizing imho

In Covid19 it’s potentially dangerous unless and until it’s proven possible.

I was the rare child that almost died in third grade of second case of measles.

Immunization brought these in control. Sadly the propagandists & autism rates spawned anti-vaxxers and these diseases are reappearing which negates herd immunity.

And we wonder why people have weakened immune systems. How many vaccinations will be needed in Sai 30 years from now. Surely some miracle yet unknown method will be developed by then.

[Klaralven]

34. 2a(1): a group of people usually having a common bond, e.g. a herd of tourists

From Merriam Webster

[OhNo-Really]

36. Never herd that before. I avoid them.

I prefer cows & goats

I might be sun downing ☺️

[Klaralven]

37. Although usually used in the context of hoofed animals, it can refer to any collection of animals

And humans are animals.

[OhNo-Really]

38. And a lot in common with viruses

Look what we’ve done to our host, Mother 🌍 🌎 🌏

Not all animals are created equally. No animal has created more or, in fairness, destroyed more than the human.

Or create as much dread.

[Chainfire]

10. Give a virus a billion petri dishes and wait to see what comes out.

[OhNo-Really]

15. Exactly. But make sure to move them around

Often. Like vacationers traveling the lab ☺️

Great analogy. I did a deep dive into some scientific Covid variants analyses and realized the potential danger of variants merging.

Viruses have one job: Survive & replicate

Hmmmm maybe we are a virus 😂

I get the media doesn’t want to alarm but the stakes are getting higher quickly.

I can’t even get an appointment for vaccine in my state. I’m signed up 2’weeks ago. Crickets

[gulliver]

13. I don't object to the term "herd immunity." But let's talk about "dehumanizing".

Exactly what is it about our fellow creatures that happen to live in herds you find objectionable when applied to humans?

[OhNo-Really]

17. Very funny. Thank you 😂

[Ford_Prefect]

14. Herd Immunity is a debunked theory that never could apply to humans.

It is a poorly defined theory with a lot of observational bias when applied to mammals. It depends upon the fairly short cycle of reproduction found in wild mammals and is an extension of the poorly named "survival of the fittest" school of evolution theory.

Its primary flaw is that this theory depends upon a segment of the population dying off, leaving those with some degree of resistance alive to reproduce the next generation of offspring. It is a formula for excusing genocide that once was applied by some to ideas for public policy response to AIDS and Ebola.

In NO way does it actually function to successfully immunize a human population as Sweden has demonstrated. It assumes all survival cases reacted successfully to a standard of medical response which is impossible to maintain across diverse communities of income, service delivery, population and physical distribution. It also assumes the resistance gained by survivors will last a significant time if not become permanent, neither of which conditions has occurred with COVID-19. It also assumes that survivors cannot be carriers which sadly hasn't been true enough.

[OhNo-Really]

20. Omg Thank you Ford_Prefect

Your contribution and insights really helped me get to the core of my disdain of the phrase.

I am familiar with the history of Euthanasia both here and abroad.

Every time I hear some of the most respected scientists use the phrase, my brain instantly thinks “cull the herd”

I envision the horror of Hitler, Indonesia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Uganda, Darfur

But even more so, an alarm 🚨 goes off hinting “the worlds youth & anti-maskers” are being lured into a false sense of security that there own herd is safe.

It is not!

And they are making all lives less safe.

[Celerity]

30. no, not perfect by a long shot, that reply is flawed on multiple levels

see

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214999292#post28

[Celerity]

28. Vaccines work via producing herd immunity, & for the umpteenth time, we here in Sweden never had

natural, non-vaccine-derived herd immunity for a planned response, that was disinfo that fortunately I have not seen pushed about for a few months, until now.

The worst thing that happened to us, framing-wise, was when bad faith actors (with ZERO knowledge of what was actually going on) on the RW started trying to us us as a cudgel to beat their enemies in the US over the head with. I have posted many updates over the past 10 or 11 or so months, but it often gets lost in the fog, and also many took an a priori hostile stance in terms of anything to do with Sweden and COVID-19, due to the bastards on the RW (especially in the US) trying to inject us into their fucked up politics.Natural, non-vaccine-derived herd immunity was never the primary goal nor a programme put into practice here in Sweden.

I kept seeing this posted over and over and it was, and still is, simply incorrect. It has come up over and over again because a couple of officials started talking about Stockholm (where we live) perhaps reaching this level by the end of May 2020. They NEVER said it was by design though. It (herd immunity) did not happen here in Stockholm, but those few statements were misconstrued by so many to think that the drive for herd immunity was the principal core strategy, when it is not. At the very beginning there was private discussions between the state health officials about the possibility of herd immunity, but that was decided against as a course of action. Those discussions (via e-mails) were hacked and released months and months ago, and were seized upon to start a shit-stir all over again (the hackers selectively leaked info to try and false-frame the entire thing, which was quickly debunked when the entire set of e-mails were then released).

Hallengren: Sweden Not Pursuing Herd Immunity

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-04-29/hallengren-sweden-not-pursuing-herd-immunity

Sweden’s Minister for Health and Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, explains the country is not pursuing a policy of ’herd immunity’ when it comes to coronavirus and that looser restrictions in Sweden are being used because of how long they may have to stay in place. She tells Daybreak Europe’s Caroline Hepker and Roger Hearing it is too early to make comparisons about which countries have made the right policy choices in addressing the pandemic.

Running time 11:20

(Audio at the link.)


Another huge myth, pushed by cheap, shoddy journalism is that it is the Wild West here, and basically the entire country is running around like banshees with zero mitigation actions. This is utter tosh. We also have passed new laws allowing the government to clamp down much more. Our Riksdag (parliament) has far more limitations on what it can legally do, especially compared to the other Nordic nations.

see this article for further drilling down from back early on:

'The biggest myth about Sweden is that life is going on as normal'

https://www.thelocal.se/20200424/interview-isabella-lovin-coronavirus-the-biggest-myth-about-sweden-is-that-life-is-going-on-as-normal

also

Sweden to shut bars and restaurants that ignore coronavirus restrictions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-stockholm/sweden-to-shut-bars-and-restaurants-that-ignore-coronavirus-restrictions-idUSKCN2262AX


Now I shall deal again with the very bad aspects of what happened, as I am in no way try to sugar-coat anything


Our large fail, a horrid tragedy (and the main reason we are so badly off in terms of deaths per million compared to Denmark, Norway, and Finland) was our nursing homes and our scattered site elderly care. They account for as much as 70% (there is a shedload of argument here atm, some say it is even higher, some say it is lower, around 55-60%, but certainly it is higher than our neighbour Nordic nations) of our deaths en toto. We (unfortunately) had a FAR more lax system in terms of visitation/protocols and in terms of higher staff turnover than the other Nordics do with their elderly-care homes. Those arguments and finger-pointing are now (and have been for months, even as the deaths has basically slowed to a drip in the summer and fall) the hottest topic in the whole country atm. They fucked up bad.

Many months ago, on SVT (our state TV,) a group of doctors and healthcare experts (these fall into the group that say it was around 70% of all deaths) said if we had similar nursing home deaths and overall elderly deaths per million rates that Denmark has, our deaths per million OVERALL (for all age cohorts) would only be a bit higher than the Danes. They also said that if you adjust for the vastly increased level of COVID-19 in the immigrant/refugee saturated areas, and make their percentages of population the same as Denmark or Norway (let alone Finland which has by far the fewest number of immigrants and refugees as a % in all of the Nordics, most who go there are only going to immediately flood over the Finnish/Swedish border, as Denmark cut them off down south at the Öresund) that our overall death (when combined with a similar elderly care death rate as discussed above) would not only be lower than Denmark, but would have been approaching Norway levels.

They also said that other Nordics are being far more conservative than Sweden has been with their COVID-19 death attributions so all the other Nordics have higher death rates than they are letting on (that war of words that went on for months, and has gotten REALLY nasty at times, especially with Denmark versus Sweden, quelle surprise), All the other Nordics have a very hostile stance in regards to Sweden in terms of our refugee/immigration policy. That group (the refugees/immigrants) have also be really hard hit here as well, as they do not practice social distancing to a level anywhere near to what the native Swedes do, plus they are less well-off income wise (so forced to keep working jobs with public contact), and also health wise (for a number of reasons.) Many of them adopted a very hostile response to any efforts at transmission mitigation, somewhat along the lines of the MAGA anti-masker/anti-social distancing groups in the US.

That is the reason for the lowered death rates when adjustments are made for an apples-to-apples comparison, as opposed to the chalk and cheese raw numbers that are rammed in our face far too often. I do, however have to add, that ANY discussion, as I said above, of immigration/refugee here is Sweden has been a minefield for ages, although the Syrian conflict several years back, finally broke the silence (at peak, we were taking in the US equivalent of 3 to 5 MILLION a month and the far RW white nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD, in Swedish Sverigedemokraterna) were surging towards a historic, terrifying victory, until some of the other parties finally caved in and slowed the inflows and changed the laws (to a point). (A bit of an aside, SD, whilst hardcore RW, white nationalists, are also pretty much VERY anti-Russian as well, for centuries-long historic reasons that are almost never talked about in the foreign press as well. We do have some hardcore, actual neo nazi parties who DO love Russia, but they are microscopic in size. The biggest, Alternativ för Sverige, has only around 1200 members, most other have less than 100)


more on the false charge of herd immunity being our basic strategy

Sweden hits back at Trump's 'herd immunity' criticism

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/sweden-hits-back-at-trump-s-herd-immunity-criticism-1.1419502

Sweden’s foreign minister Ann Linde has dismissed criticism by U.S. president Donald Trump concerning the country’s outlier strategy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. “He has used a factual error,” the minister said in an interview on broadcaster TV4 on Wednesday. Her comments follow Trump’s remarks a day earlier when he told reporters that Sweden is trying to achieve “herd immunity” and “is suffering greatly” from not doing enough.

The Nordic country is under intense scrutiny as it continues to experiment with a laxer policy response to the virus despite an accelerating death toll. Restaurants, shopping centers and primary schools all remain open in Scandinavia’s biggest economy. “Some countries seem to think that we aren’t doing anything, but we’re doing a lot of things that suit Sweden,” Linde said.

President Trump’s comments have also drawn the ire of Sweden’s top epidemiologist. “If you compare the situation to New York, where I have a relative working, things here are working well,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with state broadcaster SVT. Meanwhile Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven has said he sees no reason to respond to Trump, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. “I have spoken lately to about 10 heads of state and I note that we are all following the same lead strategy,” Lofven said.

snip

The vast bulk of foreign reporting simply ASSUMED that if we were not in total lockdown then that instantly means we are going for herd immunity. That is a pure logical fallacy, one that goes by multiple names: the Either/Or Fallacy, also sometimes called the Black-and-White Fallacy, or the Excluded Middle, or a False Dilemma/False Dichotomy.

Finally, to reiterate, many of the stories I have seen pushed also erroneously try and paint a picture that there are no restrictions (or very little) in place at all (my 'Wild West' analogy above), and certainly do not do any sort of deep, nuanced dive into what actually happened, why it happened, and what's happening at present, here on the ground.

Here are the current numbers in terms of deaths per millions today. We, at the peak, were the 2nd highest in the world in terms of non microstates, now we have dropped to 22nd overall, and were as low as 27th a months or two ago. Denmark's rate of deaths per million was at one time more than 10 times lower than ours, now it is around 3 times lower (and they are worsening faster than we are, although they will not catch us, as they and Norway and Finland did not fuck up early on with the elderly care homes and scattered sites like we did, as I explained above).

The EU numbers across the board are surging (Sweden included) because of the prevalence of the new, more transmissible, more deadly variants, some of which the US now has too (although nothing like the level that the UK and some EU nations now have), and thus the US will probably see similar increases, tragically.







Here are the official stats from Folkhälsomyndigheten (Our version of the CDC)

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

In terms of schoolchildren ages 5 to 19 years of age (our sub high school level schools were never closed, and many high schools remained open most of the time as well) we have had 4 total deaths, all 4 had pre-existing comorbidity. Until a few months ago, we had zero school age deaths.

The bottom half (age-wise) of our entire population of 10.13 million (so a little over 5 million people) has seen a total of 51 deaths as of Friday.

That works out to 99.5% of all COVID-19 deaths have come from age 40yo and above.

99.0% have come from 50yo and above.

96.8% have come from 60yo and above.

91.1% of all COVID-19 deaths have come from 70yo and above.

70.1% have come from 80yo and above.


Here are our daily deaths from COVID-19 for the past 6 months. We had it down to some days with zero, but the new variants started to hammer us in November/December. Thankfully it is on the decline again now.

[Ford_Prefect]

33. I accept your correction about what is and hasn't happened in Sweden. I stand corrected, thank you.

My answer above was not intended to apply to Sweden beyond what I read in the Guardian and NYT. I regret that they were so ill informed and inaccurate.

As to the use of the term "Herd Immunity" I must beg to differ. I stand by my remarks there. They are specific to that term and the repeated misuse of it.

We have a broken national political system here which we are trying to repair, an almost non-existent official response to the scale of our pandemic (until this week), and a media who too often write whatever feeds the best and most click-worthy headline which the editors insist upon. As such the careless and often uninformed way such terms are thrown around mangle truth. It has no place in describing human situations at all. I understand the desire to reach such a condition but it is so far from accurate to apply it this way. It is like trying to use interface as a verb. Habit and lazy thinking may make its use common but they cannot change what it actually describes. You can't get there from here may be even more accurate.

Inoculation will help build a population with resistance, but that is not on a genetic level nor, as it seems, is it durable or transferable. So far 5 to 11 months seems a likely average depending on the person, the vaccine, the degree of exposure, and the range of virus mutation. As we go forward and more is known that could change and improve. Breakthroughs have been surprisingly early and one has reason to hope such revelations will continue. However we also note that world wide there have been markedly different reactions to COVID-19 infection both as to symptoms and severity.

Appropriate behavior and reasonable precautions could have reduced the impact and spread of COVID-19 dramatically. Without referring to the departed idiocracy by name, their attempts to profiteer their way through the pandemic as well as the complete lack of leadership skills at many levels of their corrupt administration and the wanton, unproven accusations of political manipulation by anyone who offered a different view of how severe and how large the threat was were almost as damaging as the Disease. Indeed they may have made it many times more difficult to respond to the entire situation, what with nearly 1/2 of Americans believing COVID is a hoax, that the efforts to control it through masks and social distancing are political theater, or that the vaccines are not to be trusted nor accepted, that Public servants, doctors and other health professionals and the federal government are in on the hoax and trying to control the minds and behavior of a large portion of our society against their will, we have a lot on our plate to thank the Useful Idiot (and Lord Rupert) for.

[Celerity]

35. Using vaccines to reach herd immunity is a basic, simple scientific concept, but do not take my word

Last edited Mon Jan 25, 2021, 11:53 AM - Edit history (1)

for it: (call it community immunity or population immunity if you prefer those terms, but they are all the same thing)



Herd immunity and COVID-19 (coronavirus): What you need to know

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808











https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/work/protection











https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

[smirkymonkey]

16. K&R

[OhNo-Really]

18. Thank you ☺️

[KentuckyWoman]

19. People don't understand how it works. Media has failed to inform people how it works.

The more cases you have, the more opportunities the virus has to mutate. And not just in people .... on the planet. A virus that is only in bats can evolve to a point it can jump to humans. Obviously.

Unfortunately we have a whole group of Americans who believe the planet is 6000 years old, Adam rode dinosaurs to work, and there is no such thing as evolution.

[beastie boy]

21. Herd immunity is a well established scientific term. It does not apply exclusively to humans.

It has been used for nearly a century, and the meaning of the term is well established. It is not exclusive to humans, and has nothing to do with human dignity. It applies to any living organisms that are capable of transmitting diseases through social interaction and having immune systems capable of developing a natural defense to these diseases when exposed to them. Thus, judging the term from the perspective of human dignity may be a bit deceptive.

What is dangerous is not whether the tern is used in a proper scientific context, but how it is misinterpreted outside of its proper scientific context.

[Denzil_DC]

22. The WHO on herd immunity:

What is ‘herd immunity’?

'Herd immunity', also known as 'population immunity', is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection. WHO supports achieving 'herd immunity' through vaccination, not by allowing a disease to spread through any segment of the population, as this would result in unnecessary cases and deaths.
...
Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission. Visit our webpage on COVID-19 and vaccines for more detail.

To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population. One of the aims with working towards herd immunity is to keep vulnerable groups who cannot get vaccinated (e.g. due to health conditions like allergic reactions to the vaccine) safe and protected from the disease. Read our Q&A on vaccines and immunization for more information.

The percentage of people who need to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity varies with each disease. For example, herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining 5% will be protected by the fact that measles will not spread among those who are vaccinated. For polio, the threshold is about 80%. The proportion of the population that must be vaccinated against COVID-19 to begin inducing herd immunity is not known. This is an important area of research and will likely vary according to the community, the vaccine, the populations prioritized for vaccination, and other factors.

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

It's a valid term in epidemiology. In the end, like it or not, we are animals, and we do live in social groups. Like us, no cow is an island.

The science has been oversimplified and twisted, even denied, by politicians who've overvalued economic considerations and issues they'd rather concentrate on over people's wellbeing and lives.

They are the ones who place too little value on our lives, not the scientists.

[OhNo-Really]

23. Awesome. Thank you. This is perfectly stated

“ The science has been oversimplified and twisted, even denied, by politicians who've overvalued economic considerations and issues they'd rather concentrate on over people's wellbeing and lives.

They are the ones who place too little value on our lives, not the scientists.”

May I add to my article”

I’ll cite you ☺️

The media goes along with the same watered down version used by politicians which begs the question:

Are corporations, who both are dependent for their survival, hamstring “The Messaging?”

This living alone with no one to talk to makes it difficult to ferret out thoughts. On top of being old and composing on the smallest iPhone ever made with a thumb that often, quite frankly, sucks.

I do believe the term is misleading the public in a dangerous manner.

[Denzil_DC]

25. It HAS been debased by misuse to the point where it probably isn't helpful to use it

in everyday discussions.

Where it may be helpful, for those who don't have axes to grind, is in emphasizing that we need to see widespread, as near universal as possible, vaccination in an effort to protect all of us, not just us as individuals. The same sorts of arguments apply to social distancing and masking.

[OhNo-Really]

26. Thank you again.

[ananda]

24. I like it. It's catchy and immediately understandable.

..

[OhNo-Really]

27. It is both, yes. However, it may be misleading

At the birth of this NOVEL virus as in never seen before.

As noted above, it is a common scientific phrase.

Even if it proven possible to attain, no scientist today will state the year it happens. It could be a few.

I dislike its use when it is unknown if it is achievable.

[ananda]

29. I think of it as a tongue-in-cheek slap in the face...

of Trump and all his Reep cohorts who wanted people to catch Covid
to establish herd immunity... particularly people of color and the poor.

But "herd immunity" established by vaccination and safe practices
aims precisely at the virus and not people.

[OhNo-Really]

31. I was going to circle back to ask if your

Comment was a play on words. ☺️

Nerd immunity hasn’t succeeded quite yet. Lol

Joy

[ananda]

39. Lol.

My head is spinning backwards now!

[OhNo-Really]

40. Mine landed on a bad sector last April

An endless loop command sector making life appear like the script of Ground Hog Day with a double dose of Dread.

Backwards sounds appealing quite frankly

Meditate 🧘?♀️ ☮️ 🤩 💕

What’s new on_____________?

If we don’t laugh we will be not be _______!

Thank you for playing.

Ananda AUM

[LeftInTX]

32. The word vaccine is derived from the Latin word for cow: Vacca

Although it references cowpox and not herd immunity.

The first anti-vaxxers were against smallpox immunization because people feared they would turn into cows.

I don't know if this is considered "herd immunity", but I was born before MMR and Chickenpox vaccines. We all got those "childhood diseases". Parents wanted their kids to get them before kids started first grade. I caught all of mine before first grade.

[OhNo-Really]

42. Well that was udderly readiculous

So propaganda & The Crazy Stupid is a long established problem.

Time for an Education Makeover imo

And maybe our Dem candidates need to dumb it down with a wink wink for the mostly informed Democrats 🤷🏻?♀️

[Act_of_Reparation]

41. Coronaviridae are RNA viruses.

They don't have a DNA in which to contain their "tricks".

[Caliman73]

43. Common Cold

Some (relatively few types) common colds are caused by coronaviruses the vast majority are caused by the Rhinovirus family.


Also, "herd or population immunity" is not about never getting a disease, it is about mitigating the effects and the spread of communicable diseases. When scientists say, "small pox/ measles/pertussis etc... have been eradicated" they do not mean that there are no causes anywhere anymore, they mean that the risk of epidemic and pandemic have been decreased to the degree that the viruses do not have sufficient hosts to spread in a population.

The problem is that when terms are put out into the general population, they are often misused to the point that they become irrelevant or even harmful.

For example, Imbecile, Moron, and Idiot were all clinical terms for Intellectual Disability, which was previously Mental Retardation. The word "Retarded" or more horrifically "Retard" were so used to disparage people, that a new clinical term had to be invented.

Schizophrenia and Bipolar mean something very specific to mental health professionals, but to the average person they can mean that a person (schizophrenia) holds two different thoughts about something, or in the case of Bipolar disorder, that someone is happy for a bit, then sad. I see the terms used so poorly, that they actually misinform people about what the conditions mean.

It isn't the terms themselves, it is how they are used, that is not good.