And again also, I'll say the Trump administration has proven its inability to stick with any given version of the "truth", which has shown their hand as far as getting accurate information out to us, so while we can only go with whatever info we're given, we know we have to see it thru the lens of healthy skepticism.
And it could get a lot worse pretty soon.
New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy, worrying public health officials
One of President Trump’s top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.
The approach’s chief proponent is Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, who joined the White House earlier this month as a pandemic adviser. He has advocated that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so the healthy can build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading.
Sweden’s handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country has among the highest infection and death rates in the world. It also hasn’t escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic.
But Sweden’s approach has gained support among some conservatives who argue that social distancing restrictions are crushing the economy and infringing on people’s liberties.
That this approach is even being discussed inside the White House is drawing concern from experts inside and outside the government who note that a herd immunity strategy could lead to the country suffering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lost lives.
“The administration faces some pretty serious hurdles in making this argument. One is a lot of people will die, even if you can protect people in nursing homes,” said Paul Romer, a professor at New York University who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2018. “Once it’s out in the community, we’ve seen over and over again, it ends up spreading everywhere.”
Atlas, who does not have a background in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has expanded his influence inside the White House by advocating policies that appeal to Trump’s desire to move past the pandemic and get the economy going, distressing health officials on the White House coronavirus task force and throughout the administration who worry that their advice is being followed less and less.
Atlas declined an interview request. White House spokesman Judd Deere did not respond to specific questions for this story and instead said in a statement that Atlas is a “world renowned physician and scholar of advanced medical care and health care policy” and criticized the media for reporting on the topic.
White House officials said Trump has asked questions about herd immunity but has not formally embraced the strategy. The president, however, has made public comments that advocate a similar approach.
“We are aggressively sheltering those at highest risk, especially the elderly, while allowing lower-risk Americans to safely return to work and to school, and we want to see so many of those great states be open,” he said during his address to the Republican National Convention Thursday night. “We want them to be open. They have to be open. They have to get back to work.”
Atlas has fashioned himself as the “anti-Dr. Fauci,” one senior administration official said, referring to Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, who has repeatedly been at odds with the president over his public comments about the threat posed by the virus. He has clashed with Fauci as well as Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, over the administration’s pandemic response.
Atlas has argued both internally and in public that an increased case count will move the nation more quickly to herd immunity and won’t lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are protected. But infectious-disease experts strongly dispute that, noting that more than 25,000 people younger than 65 have died of the virus in the United States. In addition, the United States has a higher number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung disease and obesity, and millions of vulnerable people live outside nursing homes — many in the same households with children, whom Atlas believes should return to school.
“When younger, healthier people get the disease, they don’t have a problem with the disease. I’m not sure why that’s so difficult for everyone to acknowledge,” Atlas said in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in July. “These people getting the infection is not really a problem and in fact, as we said months ago, when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem.”
Atlas has said that lockdowns and social distancing restrictions during the pandemic have had a health cost as well, noting the problems associated with unemployment and people forgoing health care because they are afraid to visit a doctor.
“From personal communications with neurosurgery colleagues, about half of their patients have not appeared for treatment of disease which, left untreated, risks brain hemorrhage, paralysis or death,” he wrote in The Hill newspaper in May.
The piece goes on to further illustrate that opinion is what matters in this White House - not facts. (color me unsurprised on that one)
ie: "I think we're OK to reopen because I think young people aren't as likely to get sick, and I think if they do get sick, I think they're not as likely to get really badly sick. Plus, our market research strongly indicates the billionaire mega donors are suffering to the point that they're cutting back on their contributions to your re-election campaign."
But the big one is the fantasy that "herd immunity" without a vaccine is a good plan - to just let the thing run its course.
Let's try a little arithmetic on that one.
Herd immunity happens when about 60% of the population either can't be infected or won't be badly affected if exposed to the illness. Basically, the virus is not likely to encounter a vulnerable host, and so the opportunity to spread is so greatly diminished that it's effectively stopped.
COVID-19 is currently believed to have infected a little under 2% of the American population, with a death rate at about 5% of those cases that have been resolved.
Let's get crazy and say that both of those numbers are twice as high as the real numbers, and do the "normal" projections.
These clowns think it means we can safely ignore the problem and go about our bidness because only about 33,000,000 Americans will get the disease, and only about 1,000,000 of us will die.
But wait - let's apply the hands-off bullshit in a slightly different way. If the 6 million infections and 185,000 deaths represent 2% of the population and 5% of the cases respectively, and we need 60% to get to herd immunity - holy fuck, Batman. Suddenly we're up around 185 million cases and 9 million dead.
But wait, Mike. Let's not get crazy. What if it falls somewhere in the middle?
Fine - let's take a simple average: 109,000,000 cases, and 5,000,000 dead.
Feel better?
And let's keep in mind that only about 20% of those infected will get a really bad case, so let's not worry about how we're going to accommodate somewhere between 7 million and 35 million COVID-19 patients in fewer than 2 million hospital beds.
Here's the kicker: There's no solid evidence yet that recovering from the disease imparts immunity to the survivor. There are currently very few cases having been reported of people becoming re-infected after making it thru, but there are some, and "some" is enough to raise concerns about both acquired immunity thru contracture and recovery, and about the development of an efficacious vaccine.
We're being "led" by people who either don't have the capacity to grasp the core concepts of the problem, or don't care to put in the work required to learn, so they just throw up their hands and say "fuck it - you're on your own - we have rent to collect."
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