Wednesday, October 14th, 2020
What a beautiful autumn day we had today. Temperatures at 18C which I noticed only when I headed to the pool for my lap lane – outdoors today. It would have been the perfect day to take the office outside, alas inside is colder now than outside which causes confusion.
Tonight, is the night the parents of the teenagers get together to lay down some ground rules for the three girls planning a camping trip Friday – Saturday. We shall all congregate around our firepit to impress on the girls that it is now as if all of us lived in the same household, at least as far as the virus is concerned. However, they are all working so hard and have a really constrained senior year that I am willing to take the risk and let them go. We already form a bubble with Anna and her family so all we are adding to the mix is one more family, albeit reluctantly.
Tonight will be about establishing protocols to hopefully keep us all safe. Technically we should have done this two weeks ago (wear a mask, keep 6 feet apart from anyone but the parents and the friends in the bubble). I am reasonably sure though that is already happening, with the exception of the BF, but he was in Florida last weekend for his mothers wedding and all contact between him and EM has been prohibited until mid-next week, when he has been back for ten days.
I believe it is appropriate to be vigilant given the world has 38.4 million infected today and numbers in the US continue to increase on a day to day basis with 54k new cases reported today bringing the total to 8.1 million of which a mind blowing 221k have died. This is mainly the results of the Covidiot’s “herd immunity” strategy, aka do nothing to control the spread. People in the US are dying faster than in other developed countries. The journal which has published these results has also published an article on herd immunity, stating it is not a viable health strategy.
The term herd immunity is typically used in combination with vaccines as a measure of percentage of population which needs to be vaccinated to ensure safety for the entire population. Such health policy is about preventing people getting infected or sick. The kind of “herd immunity” proposed by the US government would mean that 70-80% of Americans would need to contract the virus and survive the COVID-19 infection. Even with the most conservative estimates this would mean the government accepts 2-3 million dead Americans.
The Swedes have tried this, and the results are not positive. The country has one of the highest mortality rates in Europe and the world and is nowhere close to herd immunity. Also pursuing this would mean following Sweden’s example to lock up all vulnerable segments of the population more or less indefinitely.
This paired with news of antibodies fading reasonably quickly does not make it feasible to pursue this strategy. Given that people cannot only be reinfected, but can die of the second infection after having survived the first indicates just how crazy the idea of achieving herd immunity through exposing people to infections is. The Chinese way, rigorous contact tracing and isolation seems to be a better route. To put yet another damper on things: The antibody treatment may not be quiet as safe after all, at least the clinical trials are on hold.
Maybe major news outlets should have done this sooner, but better late than never. They are pulling their correspondents from the WH and stop, traveling with the Moron in chief. If they no longer travel with the orange Cheeto, may his free press coverage will cease, given the campaign has no more funds to run ads.
This has let me to donate more money to the Biden campaign. Vote Blue!