This time will be remembered as a time when there was a genuine debate as to whether a million people should die so that others could go to a bar and par-TAY:
…the [so-called “Great Barrington Declaration” calling for the US to adopt herd immunity] omits mention of how many people the policy would kill. It’s a lot.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, whose modeling of the pandemic the White House has used, predicts up to about 415,000 deaths by Feb. 1, even with current restrictions continuing. If these restrictions are simply eased — as opposed to eliminating them entirely, which would occur if herd immunity were pursued — deaths could rise to as many as 571,527. That’s just by Feb. 1. The model predicts daily deaths will still be increasing then.
Will we have achieved herd immunity then? No.
Herd immunity occurs when enough people have immunity either through natural infection or a vaccine so the outbreak eventually dies out. By Feb. 1, even with eased mandates, only 25 percent of the population will have been infected, by my calculations. The most optimistic model suggests herd immunity might occur when 43 percent of the population has been infected, but many estimate 60 percent to 70 percent before transmission trends definitively down.
Those are models. Actual data from prison populations and from Latin America suggest transmission does not slow down until 60 percent of the population is infected. (At present, only about 10 percent of the population has been infected, according to the C.D.C.)
And what will be the cost? Even if herd immunity can be achieved with only 40 percent of the population infected or vaccinated, the I.H.M.E. estimates that a total of 800,000 Americans would die. The real death toll needed to reach herd immunity could far exceed one million.
As horrific a price as that is, it could prove much worse if damage to the heart, lungs or other organs of those who recover from the immediate effects of the virus does not heal and instead leads to early deaths or incapacitation. But we won’t know that for years.
This vomitous policy is our present moral reality. A moral reality so calloused and cruel that it has no problem accommodating a strategy to deter immigration that depends upon separating children from their parents, locking them in cages, and “losing” the paperwork needed to reunite them. A moral reality designed and celebrated by modern conservatives.
There is something deeply, profoundly sick about America these days. No society that considers itself remotely healthy should be debating the “worth” of such insane notions as herd immunity or family separations.