Originally posted by Sid Belzberg
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Speaking as a layman on this entire subject matter of viruses / vaccines / immunology, I looked at these two articles and there was no amount of critical thinking that would lead me to conclude the two articles contained falsehoods. Therefore, and also since Sid you are already "wasting your time" by even posting here and trying to convince a dozen or so chess players of your viewpoint (whether it is valid or not), I think it is incumbent on you to prove such falsehoods are indeed in the two articles.
But aside from that.... I think Sid has raised a valid question of whether the world, or at least the U.S. and Canada, should or should not take a path of herd immunity in handling Covid-19. Because if we do indeed go the herd immunity route, we sacrifice the older and more vulnerable population (and some younger, healthier people), whereas if we DON'T go the herd immunity route, we risk a much larger overall set of fatalities via economic depression and the poverty that comes from that. Let's face it, a depression in the USA and Canada right now would kill millions of people from starvation and lack of treatment for many other health problems besides Covid-19.
So in considering this question, I think we need to think also about timing. Why? Because if you haven't noticed, most South American nations (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venuezela, and others) have been in the top group of per capita deaths from Covid-19. And what does that tell us? Well, those are the nations that had the influenza virus(es) circulating all summer long. Their flu season is our summer, our flu season is our winter / spring.
So what this means (to me, again a layman) is that if we go the herd immunity route THIS WINTER, it will lead to unexpectedly large numbers of deaths attributable to Covid-19 which will come about because both Covid-19 AND the flu virus are circulating at the same time. In other words, a person's immune system is busy attacking two major virus attacks at once. This appears to be what happened this past summer in South America.
So if we are to go the herd immunity route, which indeed we may have to -- we can't afford an economic depression -- I can only hope we can forestall that path until the end of the flu season in March / April.
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