>Takes your soapbox spot< Around here in South Carolina there's a lot of talk about constitutional rights and herd immunity. The AG said just because you don't agree with the mandate doesn't make it unconstitutional. As far as herd immunity, if these jerks refusing to wear masks don't get the vaccine (which is the real way we reach herd immunity) I'm going to be really mad. We still haven't seen anyone but neighbors at a distance since March. It's lonely but we're okay.
Argh! Anybody who's tossing around the phrase "herd immunity" doesn't understand how many tens of thousands of deaths would be required to achieve that. I've interviewed so.many experts about coronavirus for WebMD, and they all say natural herd immunity should not be the goal here. COVID is too deadly, and we'd need something like 200 million of us to catch it and survive to reach the necessary levels. We're officially at 2.5 million. Let's say 10 times as many cases are undiagnosed and the real number is 25 million. That means another 175 million people still have to be infected to reach it. The numbers are staggering.
Not to mention the fact that we don't know yet if antibodies actually protect you from catching it again! The common cold is a type of coronavirus and we all get that repeatedly. We want to control the spread as much as possible until there's a vaccine. And masks are necessary to do that.
I know I don't need to tell you all this, but maybe it'll give you ammunition when talking to others. It's all so exhausting. Why are we the only country in the Western world that doesn't respect basic science?
>Takes your soapbox spot< Around here in South Carolina there's a lot of talk about constitutional rights and herd immunity. The AG said just because you don't agree with the mandate doesn't make it unconstitutional. As far as herd immunity, if these jerks refusing to wear masks don't get the vaccine (which is the real way we reach herd immunity) I'm going to be really mad. We still haven't seen anyone but neighbors at a distance since March. It's lonely but we're okay.
Argh! Anybody who's tossing around the phrase "herd immunity" doesn't understand how many tens of thousands of deaths would be required to achieve that. I've interviewed so.many experts about coronavirus for WebMD, and they all say natural herd immunity should not be the goal here. COVID is too deadly, and we'd need something like 200 million of us to catch it and survive to reach the necessary levels. We're officially at 2.5 million. Let's say 10 times as many cases are undiagnosed and the real number is 25 million. That means another 175 million people still have to be infected to reach it. The numbers are staggering.
Not to mention the fact that we don't know yet if antibodies actually protect you from catching it again! The common cold is a type of coronavirus and we all get that repeatedly. We want to control the spread as much as possible until there's a vaccine. And masks are necessary to do that.
I know I don't need to tell you all this, but maybe it'll give you ammunition when talking to others. It's all so exhausting. Why are we the only country in the Western world that doesn't respect basic science?