Follow the science!! Follow the science!! How many times have we heard this?? Well, here is the science folks. Read this article if you want to be truly informed.
Here are excerpts from an article from Jan 26, 2021 by Jeff Brown, Editor of The Bleeding Edge
Herd Immunity Will Help Us Avert the Next Pandemic
Dear Reader,
Last year, any discussion of herd immunity was often met with vitriol.
The ironic part is that herd immunity – and how to achieve it – is very well-established science that was first recognized as a naturally occurring phenomenon back in the 1930s. A.W. Hedrick published epidemiological research on the measles after discovering that many children had become naturally immune.
Put simply, herd immunity is a threshold. It states that once a percentage of a population has achieved immunity, an epidemic/pandemic will begin to die out. It is the point at which there simply aren’t enough people without immunity to infect.
It is science that has been developed over the course of nearly 100 years. There is even a general equation used to determine the threshold:
1 – 1/R0
Where R0 (R zero or R naught is the basic reproductive rate of a virus)
If we assume that COVID-19 has an R0 of 2.5 (i.e., one person can infect 2.5 people on average), then the equation results in a herd immunity threshold of 60%.
This means that once roughly 60% of a population has become immune through natural exposure to COVID-19, or by receiving a vaccine, then the virus’ ability to spread has been encumbered and the virus will quickly burn out.
Generally, most research on COVID-19 to date indicates that herd immunity for COVID-19 is somewhere between 40 and 60%.
Visually, here is a simple representation:
Source: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine
This is such a well-established scientific fact that a change by the World Health Organization (WHO) really caught me off guard.
Due to the controversy around herd immunity, I went back in December and dug in to find out how the term was being positioned – or re-positioned.
The screenshots below are taken from the WHO website. On the left side is a screenshot from June 2020. On the right side is a screenshot from November.
Source: World Health Organization
The June definition of herd immunity is consistent with decades of scientific research. It acknowledges that immunity can be achieved both naturally due to prior infection as well as through vaccination. It goes further to correctly state that people who have not been infected or vaccinated are protected if those around them have already achieved immunity.
But look at the November definition. Herd immunity is no longer science. It is simply a “concept used for vaccination.” And it refers only to “a threshold of vaccination” without a single mention of immunity achieved naturally.
There was an uproar in epidemiology and virology circles over this chicanery when the WHO rewrote the definition of herd immunity like this.
And the WHO was forced to rewrite the explanation of herd immunity once again.
Here’s what it looks like:
‘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.
This is a somewhat incredulous political position for the WHO to take.
After all, it is well known that for most of the population COVID-19 is far less dangerous than influenza or pneumonia. Countries like Sweden stuck to the science and allowed their economies, schools, and society to remain open, knowing that the healthy part of the population would develop immunity with less risk than influenza. But they were derided for reckless policymaking.
And the WHO dug its hole even deeper when it said:
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.
Please notice what I bolded. This comment is patently false. It is a misleading, unethical, and very dangerous statement.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) began publishing an online database of all deaths, hospitalizations, and other effects linked to vaccines. The data is publicly available in its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
At least it was… This morning as I was researching, I was met with this:
In fact, it has been down for the last couple of days. But fortunately I take screenshots of information just in case.
As of last Friday, January 22, there have been 148 deaths in the U.S. caused by the COVID-19 vaccines. There have been 170 life-threatening situations, 65 patients who are now permanently disabled, 449 hospitalizations, and 1,662 visits to the emergency room.
Again, these stats are just for the U.S., and they are lagging indicators. The actual numbers are worse, but we just don’t know yet by how much.
And for the most part, the current adverse events are the side effects from the first dose of the vaccines. Clinical trials demonstrated that the side effects can be more severe after the second shot.
Clearly, the WHO’s comments are not giving accurate information.
I’d like to reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago. I’m providing this information because I would want to know this if our roles were reversed.
This information is not to suggest at all whether or not one should take the vaccine. I simply provide information to help us all make our own personal decisions according to our own risk profiles.
This is powerful science!!