The never-ending moving of the goalposts for the coronavirus continues.
The latest is that we never achieve herd immunity.
From the Daily Wire
The idea is simple: If enough people get a virus or a vaccine — thus building antibodies — the spread of the virus drops off precipitously.
While experts didn’t know exactly how many Americans would need antibodies to reach herd immunity, the number ranged from more than 50% to upwards of 70%. Early on in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. immunologist, put the number at 60% to 70%, but in April he started upping that number, saying in an interview with CNBC News that it would be “75, 80, 85 percent.”
But now, experts are saying we may never reach herd immunity. “Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers,” The New York Times reported on Monday.
“The virus is unlikely to go away,” Emory University evolutionary biologist Rustom Antia told the Times. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”
This is not new news. We always kinda knew we’d have to live with the coronavirus. Now we’re being told just that.
We, by the way, have been living with the virus for the past year. How’s that worked out for us?
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services:
599,576 have tested positive since last March.
29,441 were ever hospitalized.
6,839 died.
DHS reports the recovery rate at 97.4%. There are 8,600 ‘active’ cases.
Compare that to the 4.4 million people who have gotten one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Just over 2 million people are fully vaccinated.
What does it mean? It means we are living quite well with the coronavirus.
Most of the people who died were older, sicker, and in nursing homes. Over 80% of those folks are now vaccinated.
The biggest group to test positive, college kids and young adults. That’s likely because of required testing on UW campuses.
The big picture is that the coronavirus is no longer a threat for most people in Wisconsin.
So that begs the question with this latest move of the goalposts, which is it?
Are we being told that herd immunity will never come to keep up in a constant state of emergency? Or are we being told that herd immunity will never come because this virus, just like the flu, is an annoyance to many and dangerous to just a few?
I have to assume it’s another attempt to scare us. The same people who’ve been wrong time after time, grabbed more and more of our liberties and freedoms, are now telling us this virus will never go away.
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