Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

I'd suggest reading some scientific papers before going too far in that direction. I've read a lot of them. These scientists routinely do things like cite papers that contradict the claim the citation is meant to support. They write papers based on circular logic. They conflate simulations with reality, they make claims that have no basis in biological science. They do not know what the false positive rate on COVID testing is, but are happy to draw conclusions that flatly contradict decades of biological understanding on the basis of data analysis that critically depends on knowing the correct value. They write models in C that are filled with memory corruption bugs and race conditions. When the results randomly change from run to run they claim that it's an experiment and so averaging the results makes it all perfectly fine. And when professional programmers tell them that incorporating memory corruption into their calculations is not fine, they assert those programmers don't understand science (see: https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim/issues/165)

And that's just the scientists. Public health officials like Fauci have lied to the public and then admitted doing so, more than once! That isn't the data evolving, that's them deciding to change their story and explain that the previous one was a lie. What are we to make of such people?

You believe "experts know nothing" is insanity. I've read what those people are writing and am absolutely sure they know nothing, because if they did, they wouldn't keep engaging in these illegitimate, unscientific and desperately concerning practices.

All the experts are concerned too. I work in vaccines (not claiming to be an expert) and I'm concerned too. Long-term safety trials take time, and so the question is how long are you willing to wait for the data? Its a shitty situation all around with the loss of human life, the impact to the economy and the politicization of every damn thing.

I think this problem is more complex than many talk about and it ends up just being fear based news.

People aren't hesitant to get the vaccine because it might have Bill Gates microchips, they are hesitant because this was the fastest rolled out vaccine in human history (>3x faster than the second) and people don't trust the government. Their concerns aren't founded in science, but they are reasonable. So treating them as unreasonable is going to make them double down on their position. What's worse is that some news organizations ask similar questions but never answer (come on, you're the news and you can't google? WTF, no wonder people don't trust you). If you want to see the exaggerated version of this look at Russia where few trust the government and there is higher hesitancy to take Sputnik V.

Also we can't forget how the definition of herd immunity has changed. Back when the pandemic started I and many others warned that changing the definition of herd immunity to mean only herd immunity built through natural infection would empower anti-vaxers. Places like Nature[0] are supposed to be the place to get scientific news but botched this (even disagreeing with the experts they are quoting in the article), and they aren't the only one. This makes things rather confusing for people. This build distrust, and now we're seeing the repercussions of that. So when someone like Tucker Carlson goes on air and asks a bunch of questions and is always saying that the government wants you to "shut up and listen" (a common phrase) of course people question.

But these people will change, I've seen it. They have a bunch of questions but no answers, and like many, often don't know how to find them. This may be obvious to us who are so used to the internet and google daily to do our jobs, but these people don't even know how to do that or find credible sources. So it then comes down to us, the "smart people", to help. To talk about how doctors have been taking the vaccines for months before we got access. That politicians and wealthy white people wouldn't take it if it was an experiment. There's a lot of data to show that this isn't some grand experiment (well it is, but not in the way those people think experiments are. Maybe leave that nuance out?). But you have to do this without making the person feel like a fool. If you do this I promise they will soon change their minds. As for the 5G/Bill Gates people, well luckily they are a very small minority. Let's just not give them a platform. And don't equate vaccine hesitancy for that. It will just make the path to herd immunity more difficult.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4

Wow - I did not know that was the case.

Look - I'm pretty pro-vax, I went and paid for a bunch privately a couple of years ago because I was travelling and thought 'why not get them all?' (like going for the nice-fancy-extra car wash program), and always get the flu shot - but that, wow, sounds frankly outrageous.

[EDIT] As a Brit in Europe - I do sometimes get the feeling that a lot of this is political maneuvering managing the fallout from the EU's less than stellar program (people can debate all they like, but the objective facts are: They tried, for the first time, to procure vaccines centrally, and after the same amount of time, demographics in the UK and US have them that don't in the EU), so maybe that's why they're so protective about it.

You realize they achieved this by effectively locking down their borders right? Now, imagine the response if Trump had suggested this. Actually, you don't even need to imagine it:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-borders_n_5...