Fauci on Moving the Goalposts

Don’t we have enough data by now to calculate herd immunity? Do we really need to vaccinate the same (herd immunity) percent if a large percent of the population have already been infected? Even if we mostly go back to normal wouldn’t a large proportion of people still be taking a lot of precautions for a very long time?

I’m concerned the vaccine strategy may backfire and create a worse situation in the long run either because we don’t know the long term repercussions of the vaccine for us or we don’t adequately know the mutation issues. From what I can make out this (mRNA) is a new methodology, never approved before (or am I wrong?) yet they plan with no long term experience to inject almost everyone. I spent my career in engineering, development, validation, fault finding but I do not share the confidence of/in science/engineering to understand and control nature. As they say; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I fear despite our huge advances and some successes (perhaps giving us false confidence) we may still be at that very dangerous stage of assuming we are clever enough but blissfully unaware what we are doing dangerously wrong.

Seeing these leaders etc getting vaccinated on TV to convince others reminds me of the BSE issue we had in the UK where we were wrongly told it should not transfer to humans and was definitely safe to eat and watched a minister feed a beef burger to his child to convince us all it was safe to eat beef. The scientist who was saying he thought it might transfer to humans was moved on so he could not continue his research. Are we learning the right lessons? Implementing the right procedures to avoid dangerous mistakes? It seems to me in such circumstances, when we are under great pressures, trying to be clever, messing with nature, fall back on the same arguments “no evidence of”, “we cannot see a mechanism by which” “our experience and scientific knowledge (from what we think are similar situations) tells us” we are making very dangerous assumptions.

I’ve been watching the graph for Swale in Kent, south east England where there has been a large wave starting around October, and it may be one of, or the main location where the latest variant wave started. Numbers in Swale kept rising unlike most other areas in the country despite national lockdown2 in early November so perhaps that could be suggesting (I’m no expert in any of this) this latest wave is due to the new variant and that lockdown was not adequate to bring it under control. Unfortunately I don’t know how much the Christmas holiday is delaying reporting of the numbers, I suspect there is a very big delay, but even so I’m hoping it may be looking like for Swale, and its neighbour Medway, numbers might be falling now since about 14th and 18th Dec respectively. If so, I’m wondering if Swale and Medway have reached a kind of herd immunity in the part of the population not adequately shielded, on the basis lockdown is not bringing down numbers with the new variant, so perhaps it’s a kind of herd immunity finally bringing it down.

I don’t know whether it’s coincidence but by my calculations if both Swale and Medway are now falling, they did so on about 14th and 18th December respectively and both at a point when their cumulative values since mid October reached 4.1% of the population, same % for both.

If the above is correct and we assume that 4% value is much lower than the actual because we are not testing everyone, and assume most of the infections are among the group of the population not adequately isolated, then perhaps that group have already reached a considerably larger %, enough to bring their R below 1. If all that is so, by the time the wave has fully passed in Swale/Medway in perhaps a couple of weeks(?) the cumulative value will be much higher so we can accommodate some dilution as the shielders come out of hiding. And, at this rate most of England might have reached the same situation as Swale and Medway in a couple of months? And if so, would the vaccine, then really have so much of an impact anymore? Or have I got that all wrong?

Even if we really do have no alternative but to vaccinate, wouldn’t it be better and less risky for now carefully targeting who to vaccinate, bearing in mind the above, keeping the vaccinated numbers of people as low as possible while we learn more. And have a big education campaign to show people how to eat and live more healthily, getting plenty of vitamin D, C, B, potassium, selenium, zinc, copper, etc, fresh air and exercise both to boost their immunity and reduce health issues that put them at higher risk. Plus extremely careful isolation for anyone with very poor immune system if they catch it severely and need considerable medical help in case they produce dangerous mutations.

Mr. Fauci is an Italian Jew. That’s all you need to know.