2 COVID Vaccines Approved, End to Pandemic in Sight??

[Merlin]

Ok, I'm back.  So I read an article (and forgot to grab it and now I can't find it), from an Oxford doctor (Epidemiologist I think?) who basically said that physical distancing and masks are actually the worst thing to do; just like with all viruses like the regular flu we deal with every year, your body can better deal with very small doses of a virus going around, and that if you get a big dose, you have a better chance of fighting it off.  If you get no small doses from minor contact, then you're kind of doomed when the big dose comes your way. And the way to get a small dose is by the regular everyday stuff.

That is an interesting perspective and does make sense from the perspective of building herd immunity. I wonder how many other scientists agree with that perspective?

I see two big problems here:

1) This approach doesn't limit the spread to people at higher risk who are more likely to have severe symptoms.

2) There is a lot of research and evidence to suggest that natural herd immunity is not possible with this virus since natural immunity is not durable. By this point, we've all seen the various reports of people getting Covid a second time now, which backs up the weak durability theory. Though it could also be that a weak exposure generates a less durable immune response.

He also said that the leading killer in all of the world is poverty, no need to do studies or discuss "science" or whatever - it's the leading killer in every respect, and that's what we're doing with lockdowns.

Well we all know that poverty is the biggest killer worldwide. Lockdowns are definitely adding to the problem, but again we wouldn't need to be locked down at all if everyone masked up while outside and limited contact between people to limit the spread of the virus.

And then there's the meme going around right now - if lockdowns worked, then we wouldn't need to lockdown again (it would have worked in March/April).  If lockdowns don't work, then why are we locking down.  It's a good question though - makes me think (I know, some of you HATE it when people think and question the government or the unproven "science").

Actually, it's easy to explain why that is.

The problem with these memes is that we're not locking down again. It's the same lockdown... restrictions are just increasing because people haven't been moderating their behaviors to keep the curve flat.

The overall goal was to "flatten the curve" until we could develop a vaccine or antiviral treatment for Covid-19 in order to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed and to save lives. One way to do this is for everyone to wear masks in public and limit the physical distance between people. The hope was that would be enough to flatten the curve without additional measures. But not everyone was willing to go along with this.

Since asking people to moderate themselves didn't work, lockdowns were introduced to remove the opportunity to congregate in order to limit the spread of the virus. Lockdown restrictions can be relaxed when data shows the curve flattening, in hope that people would moderate their own behavior to keep the trend flat. Restrictions are increased again when the curve shows an upwards trend in new cases.

So the idea is that the lockdown restrictions should ebb and flow according to people's ability to moderate their own behavior. If everyone just took responsibility for themselves to wear masks outside and keep their distance from people not in their immediate family or social pod, then we wouldn't need the lockdowns at all.