Back in 2012 I was at a security conference in Boston and one of the keynote speakers made a pitch that computer security was beginning to show some of the properties of an evolved system. I.e.: pathogens were starting to occupy every possible niche, defenses appeared and were overcome, etc.
Attending with me was a biologist, who immediately leapt up during the Q&A session and commented, “evolution is a good approach only if you’re willing to accept billions of casualties.” That brought down the house.
I have an average education about evolution, which means I’m probably on par with a European high school student, but it’s enough for me to understand that everything in biology only makes sense in the overall context of evolution (Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973) [Yes, I had to look that one up] so I had some brow-furrowing moments when people started talking about “herd immunity” for COVID. But I wasn’t able to put the pieces together until the amazing Daniel Griffin on TWIV explained it clearly. [link below]
Here’s my paraphrase:
Herd immunity only kicks in when you have a significant percentage of a population that has immunity, so that the probability a pathogen will be able to spread is reduced below the point where it sustains an outbreak. However: that kind of immunity level does not occur in nature, it only occurs when you have a way of conferring immunity, i.e.: a vaccine. Proof of that is: The population never developed herd immunity against Small Pox, Chicken Pox, Mumps, Measels – in fact, humans have never developed herd immunity without there being a vaccine.
There are idio-creos out there who don’t understand that, and think that if enough people are exposed to SARSv2.0 humanity may develop herd immunity. No. What has happened, now, in large part thanks to humanity’s incompetent response to the pandemic, is that we will have it with us forever unless we develop a vaccine and work hard to wipe it out. Which, we won’t do, because we’ll have a vaccine and only the poor and underprivileged will get it. We can lose millions of people and maybe develop some kind of immunity, but that’s a really high price to pay (e.g.: the sickle cell adaptation to Malaria) for being stupid. Perhaps if you are seeking a meta-framework to understand all of this: this is the price humanity pays for ignoring science and allowing dipshit authoritarians to rule us.
Here’s the TWIV episode:
I was thinking that, when they build statues to the heroes of the pandemic, it’d be cool to have a bronze car in a parking lot somewhere, with a bronze Daniel Griffin sitting in it, patiently and clearly explaining things to those that are listening. He looks exhausted and rushed, but he’s still giving his personal time to teach. It would be a subtle memorial, but Griffin is – by every definition – a hero. He should never have to pay for his own beer ever again. (That’s my modern rendition of being given the keys to the city)
The whole time, during SARS1.0 I kept thinking “if this is a test for how humanity responds to a new pathogen, we are in trouble” and it turned out that was correct. At the time, I concluded that the problem is our nationalist system. Governments aren’t going to cooperate because some of them see themselves opposed in self-interest, others are dictatorships led by selfish goons who don’t give a fuck, and others are ineffective representative democracies that are internally conflicted and run by selfish goons who don’t give a fuck. The nationalist system makes it impossible for humans to effectively respond to a collective problem that requires a unified response. So, if Apophis does head into the “keyhole” to hit Earth in 2068, one or two nations might act in their self-interest and mount an effective response. But with something like SARS2.0, everyone has to mount an effective response, and that’s not happening because some populations are in thrall to dipshit dysfunctional dictators. What is another global crisis coming that requires everyone to respond effectively? Global carbon emissions, of course. We can’t expect the current nationalist system to mount an effective response, for the same reason it hasn’t mounted an effective response to SARS2.0: idiots and assholes in the driver’s seat. In fact, the US is, right now, pulling exactly the same shit with regard to climate change: exempting its massive military (which by itself emits more pollutants than some developed nations like Sweden) and basically doing the equivalent of global rednecks driving around in de-tuned diesel trucks “rolling smoke.” It is already too late, but American, Russian, and Chinese governments are not going to coordinate an effective response: they’re going to dance around the bonfire pissing gasoline on it and singing “Disco Inferno.”
When I was a kid, parents would take their kids to get infected with Chicken Pox so they could deal with it while they still had a fresh, young, immune system. That did not happen with me, so I got Chicken Pox in my 30s and wound up under an oxygen tent, breathing with lungs full of goopy foam. The point, though, is that even with “Chicken Pox parties” the human population could not develop herd immunity. We’re not going to develop herd immunity to SARSv2.0, period, full stop.
COVID-19 infections are totally spinning out of control in Latvia right now. Back in spring, people took it seriously, obeyed social distancing guidelines, and the virus was stopped early on with contact tracing, quarantines, and social distancing. But now it’s all going downhill and quickly.
We have a bunch of people who believe in conspiracy theories about how the virus doesn’t exist. We have a bunch of “don’t tell me to wear a mask, I am a free man” lunatics. We have some “oh, it cannot be worse than a flu anyway” armchair doctors. We have “but I want to meet my friends at a party” people. Heck, we even have supposedly reputable newspapers printing misinformation. Just two days ago my mother told me some bullshit she had read about COVID-19 in a newspaper.
We have a fucking disaster that goes beyond just nationalism. From incompetent politicians to social media that earn advertisement revenue by spreading deadly misinformation to uneducated citizens who prefer to believe in nice-sounding conspiracy theories, because actual facts (namely that we have a deadly virus spreading around) doesn’t sound appealing.
By the way, I also like TWIV.
Herd immunity without a vaccine is indeed an imposibility. Without a vaccine what is reached is not a herd immunity, but a fluctuating equilibrium in which the virus comes and goes in waves.
Like, for example, flu.
@Charly:
I should have elaborated on the dependence on the size of the herd. If the herd is the attendees of a particular high school, then maybe you can immunize enough of them. For a global population its not gonna happen.
Another thing: the scenarios for “herd immunity” are uglier than extreme individual isolation. “Let’s all get it” is harder than “everyone on lockdown for 3 months”
I also note that the nihilists who are arguing for herd immunity are not, apparently, deliberately infecting themselves – “put your money where your mouth is” fail.
To make matters worse. COVID is a coronavirus (the ones that give the common cold are in that group) and when it comes to that that immunity seems to be following the usual case of being lost in 6 months to a year after it is being conferred. If that bears out you are going to get a COVID shot with that flu shot every year.
@Charly(#2):
Flu has an additional wrinkle with the (fairly) fast mutation rate it has, effectively rendering the immunity gained last year useless for this year.
Yeah, it’s kind of weird: some people seem to have picked up that phrase while being urged to get vaccinated, to help with “herd immunity” without understanding that the “vaccinated” part is the super important part. Herd immunity is not some kind of magical thing that just happens by chance.
It’s quite grim to me to realize that this did not have to happen. I never before realized just how freaking stupid my fellow humans are. And *they* think domesticated sheep are stupid.
How would we know? If there are pathogens for which we developed herd immunity, they are safely in the past. The pathogens that remain, remained because we did not develop herd immunity.
My layman understanding is that what people mean with herd immunity is eg what happened with the plague in the 14th century. Almost everyone got exposed, and either died or didn’t. Of course this didn’t last, but there were decades between subsequent waves. Well, and like a third of the people died, so “let’s introduce basic hygiene and get rid of rats and fleas” would probably have been a better course of action.
The cases they usually cite for “natural herd immunity” is the Spanish Flu and the Plague. Like that’s your reference frame? Two diseases that were basically stopped because they ran out of people to kill.
No, in nature you get infection waves. Those may look like herd immunity for a while, and confer some protection for a while. A baby born just after a major measles epidemic will indeed have some protection, but it will also form part of the group the measles will make their way through the next time a couple of years down the road. because yeah, I’m old enough to remember the chicken pox waves.
COVID-21?
The scale of human suffering involved in these plans is just staggering. The death rate is about 3% (or worse), which means killing ~700,000 people in Australia alone. That’s more than the population of Tasmania (one of our smaller states).
Then there’s all the problems survivors have. Severe cases are about 10%, so that’s another 7% of population.
In US numbers, this is killing everyone in Michigan, and leaving everyone in Florida with chronic effects.
This is what happens when you make policy without an understanding of population statistics.
I suspect many of the of the more privileged and/or hubristic people think they can hide and avoid infection until most other people have gotten it – at which point they’d be protected by herd immunity. The faster the disease burns through the population of Other People, the better for the economy at large and for the wannabe survivalists personally. Of course, the problem is:
a) It’s not actually quite that easy to win the survivalist lottery
b) There might not be even partial lifelong immunity for those who recover from SARS-CoV2
c) Covid-19 is a serious disease and the lasting effects on survivors could quite literally cripple the economy permanently
d) As others have noted, there’s a constant influx of newborn babies who could fuel the pandemic in the future, so adults won’t be safe in the long term – at least unless they can permanently isolate themselves from the young
e) If we hope to get a vaccine in near future, it’d be a terrible waste to let the disease burn through the entire population living now, equivalent to many decades’ worth of newborn babies
It’s not like the Black Death ever actually went away.
Science just developed antibiotics so you can catch it and not die.
Also society decided that the whole sanitation thing was a good idea and people stopped drinking out of the rivers they shit in.
If someone proposed a massive network of underground waste tunnels and water processing plants to deal with the covid problem I guarantee the US government would decide it would cost too much. It’s a miracle some states even have running water at this point.
This is nonsense. As others have mentioned, herd immunity has occurred for plague, seasonal and epidemic influenzas, and countless unknown pathogens throughout the history of life on Earth. (Herd immunity does not mean that a pathogen is eliminated to extinction (although pathogens are certainly just as susceptible to extinction as the rest of us), simply that it stops spreading through a population.)
If herd immunity didn’t happen in nature, then humans would still be constantly infected with every single virus, parasite, and bacterium that ever evolved to infect us. Obviously that isn’t true.
However, unlike at any point in history, we are now a globally connected, highly mobile population of 7+ billion. It is extremely unlikely that, with this particular coronavirus, we would ever see herd immunity without a vaccine.
The herd immunity idea sounds like something that might have come out of a day 0 brainstorming session for possible pandemic scenarios. Some science advisor might have said, mostly to themselves, that, with some very generous assumptions (e.g. permanent immunity from a single infection), something akin to herd immunity might arise. Unfortunately, they were overheard by Boris Stupid Johnson, who responded by shouting, “Yes, that’s it”, messing up his hair and jumping in front of the nearest camera to declare the crisis over, problem solved. All the required assumptions and the accompanying optimism would quickly turn out to be very wrong but the matter was settled and now here we are.
—
“”We have a bunch of people who believe in conspiracy theories about how the virus doesn’t exist. We have a bunch of “don’t tell me to wear a mask, I am a free man” lunatics. […]””
“Vectors.” It’s much less of a mouth full and while it might be a tad unfair to lump in the weary and despondent with the tin foil shadown government crowd, it fits. They’re disease vectors – thanks so much. We (large parts of Europe) almost had it under control, or so it seemed, then we bungled it. Complacency, as usual, is going to ruin everything.
Has, sorry, has ruined everything. Again. Incidentally, does anyone want to bet when first mentions of a “third wave” start appearing or when it’s going to actually happens? (All bets off if we never get out of #2, so the US is already out.)
As for the spreaders of misinformation, don’t forget the wonderful people who have seized the opportunity to build their brand. The conpiracy theory criers who used to be d-list celebrities or completely unknown but now, finally, get the recognition they apparently feel they deserve. They deserve a mention, probably crave it, but should most definitely be remembered for their contributions after the pandemic as well. In the meantime social media, media outlets and the corona spokespeople are no doubt happily benefiting from each other as they generate attention for and through each other.
Sorry, the quote is from Andreas Avester, #1. I should probably refresh before posting, especially if I opened the tab “for later” more than a day ago…
@komarov
I’ll bet we see third wave discussion here in Australia sometime in January. Everyone will go get sick for Christmas
komarov @#13
Back in spring, shortly after the whole mess started and conspiracy theories hadn’t yet spread as widely, in Latvia there was a slightly famous musician who tweeted bullshit about COVID-19 and questioned the severity of the problem as well as opposed the necessity of social distancing and other measures designed to stop the virus from spreading. Each time he tweeted some bullshit, newspapers jumped at the opportunity to write about it: “Sensation! Sensation! A famous musician just tweeted a controversial idea that opposes state guidelines.” Technically, these newspapers weren’t lying, they merely reported the words a certain celebrity had tweeted. This asshole musician gained extra attention and could boost his popularity by tweeting harmful bullshit. Newspapers could get views by writing about a manufactured sensation. Both the musician and the newspapers probably earned some money by this. The harm caused for the society by spreading misinformation? Who cares when personal profits are at stake.
In Germany we have a bunch of celebrities going full conspiracy theorists. Every time I see a name trending on Twitter I’m wondering if they are dead, or just dead to me. Occasionally you get a positive surprise of them calling the others out on their bullshit.
Funny enough, most of them qualified as “problematic as fuck” long before, but oh look how many people told us we were making mountains out of molehills and they were just poor misunderstood creatures…