Herd immunity DOES work with the flu. The vast majority of flu patients never even see a doctor - they just get better. I am 68 and I’ve gotten the flu once or even twice a year all my life and never once saw a doctor for it. Same with my entire family and most everyone I know. Tens of millions or even hundreds of millions are like me - literally most people.
We get the flu and it never gets reported - it just gets spread everywhere, most of us build an immunity after a week and it goes away. When a high enough % of the population is immune, the virus encounters too many “dead ends” and dies. That’s herd immunity. It happens every year.
Yes, out of the hundreds of millions in the USA who get the flu, tens of thousands do get sicker and even die after having the flu, and that will happen with Covid-19 too. We should try to protect these at-risk people and help them any way we can.
But the irony here is that, while trying to protect these at-risk people through “social distancing”, what if we prevent normal herd immunity from happening? Then we really haven’t protected the at-risk people at all l, have we? We have put them at more at risk by keeping the virus alive in the general population.
Look, I’m not trying to take away from doctors or modern medical science - they are the most amazing people. But nature is infinitely more amazing.
When my wife grows tomato seedlings from seeds - then plants and nurtures the seedlings and produces tomatoes, she proudly says “I grew these!” Then, humbly, she smiles and says “Actually, I took these magical seeds and put them in the magical soil, and they just grew...”
Again, not to take anything away from doctors, or scientists, or gardeners, but we have to be humble here... nature holds all the power - doctors just try to understand it and facilitate it.
When we get a cut, it heals and when we break a bone, it heals (but it helps to have a doctor who can make sure it heals or sets right). The same with a virus... it’s always our body’s that kill the virus - even with a vaccine that’s what is happening..
I think the best doctors are the ones who respect what the body is capable of, and leverage that knowledge to facilitate nature.
I’m not knocking medical science - in fact, everything I learned about herd immunity was from reading things written by doctors.
But that’s not really immunity is it? I mean people still get sick from the flu, then can still pass on the flu and it comes roaring back every year, how is that “immunity”? I mean maybe temporarily, you get it January and you don’t get it again in February, your anti bodies die down and then you can get it all over again next fall/winter. Temporary immunity maybe. Isn’t the point that the health care system can’t handle the flu and the Covid-19? Every winter we get 60,000 deaths from the flu and 100,000 deaths from Covid 19? At least until there is a vaccine for it.