"We want them infected"
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Saying the quiet part out loud again.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408
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Scenario planning requires all options at least be considered.
The money shot of the article is the fact that it was never implemented and the email was responded to with only look into it.
I never saw it as our policy as a country to have herd immunity and it never reached debate stage. Now we comb over the emails of the past, it’s interesting but the gun never fired, so how is it smoking now?
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Sweden very much did not do that. They had recommendations and rules in place to diminish spread, just fewer than other places.
I get that this is a proper description of the strategy that is euphemized as ‘herd immunity’ but you never hear it so honestly described.
Normally it’s described just by the magical outcome (herd immunity) not by the processes by which its proponents want to use to get there.
(Note that ‘everybody mask up and distance until we get you vaccinated’ is also a strategy that ends in “herd immunity”)
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
Herd immunity registers as almost nothing in google trends from 2004 to present except when Covid came along and then it spiked like crazy in April and then several times thereafter.
Is there any place to get a number for how often it appeared in the media?
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Sweden very much did not do that. They had recommendations and rules in place to diminish spread, just fewer than other places.
I get that this is a proper description of the strategy that is euphemized as ‘herd immunity’ but you never hear it so honestly described.
Normally it’s described just by the magical outcome (herd immunity) not by the processes by which its proponents want to use to get there.
(Note that ‘everybody mask up and distance until we get you vaccinated’ is also a strategy that ends in “herd immunity”)
@jon-nyc said in "We want them infected":
Saying the quiet part out loud again.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408
This chain of emails is one guy, wanting (I don't see the word "demand" in the article) to achieve herd immunity by letting young people get infected. Nowhere does the article suggest that he was taken seriously, or that the White House was going to follow him, other than "(Unnamed) Officials told Politico that they BELIEVED, he had the backing of the White House" (emphasis mine).
And way down on paragraph 8....
"Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House's approach to the pandemic. “
So we have one guy, an advisor to Caputo, who shot of some emails about herd immunity and was told to investigate.
And that investigation, as far as we know, led....nowhere.
Read the last sentence in the last email. That's a bit different from the breathless headline at Politico, isn't it?
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Herd immunity registers as almost nothing in google trends from 2004 to present except when Covid came along and then it spiked like crazy in April and then several times thereafter.
Is there any place to get a number for how often it appeared in the media?
@loki said in "We want them infected":
Herd immunity registers as almost nothing in google trends from 2004 to present except when Covid came along and then it spiked like crazy in April and then several times thereafter.
Is there any place to get a number for how often it appeared in the media?
Yea about 70% of news articles. After that you stop noticing it
