Herd Immunity

 President Trump is experimenting with herd immunity.  

Trump has huge crowds at his rallies this month, many unmasked. He assumes that he is not contagious, but did not quarantine long enough after his own COVID-19 illness to be sure. He encourages the reopening of states even when the number of infections of COVID-19 is increasing. The idea is either he believes one can mentally prevent infection and its complications or that by infecting many, society will soon recover from the pandemic. 

The American Indians of Central America experienced herd immunity when they eventually recovered from the measles epidemic brought on by the Spaniards who followed Columbus into the Caribbean islands and Central America. 

Europe experienced herd immunity when it eventually recovered from the epidemics of smallpox and Black Plague.

Bring on the recovery. We can try herd immunity on Ebola now that we know it works. After all, at times there seems to be as much as a 10%  survival rate. 

Once we recover from COVID-19, we can await the next pandemic, or even just the next epidemic. After all, it only takes a few years to develop a vaccine. And the complications or side effects of a vaccine are deemed acceptable if testing is cut short. 

And now that there is no access to fresh fetal tissue needed to develop the immune therapy that Trump received (His meds cost taxpayers $100,000, BTW.), only the very rich can receive the limited supply of available immune therapy. And since we have no ideas if such therapy actually worked, let the rich be the guinea pigs.

Why Portland?

 Why were the protests of  2020 so extended in Portland? What happened in Seattle?

 

Pioneer Square in Seattle Washington. 

Protests in most cities did not last as long as the protests in Portland, WA. I often wondered why BLM was still actively protesting in Portland when other cities were mostly quiet. 

Today I read through the Seattle Met magazine for Fall 2020, a magazine I take at home in Texas because I have relatives in Washington near Seattle. 

This is a totem pole in Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington.

In that issue was a story about the Native American woodcarver John T. Williams. He was killed by a lone cop 10 years ago because he had his knife in his hand. Being partially deaf, he would not have understood or even heard the command to drop his knife. After all, what was he doing with it to upset anyone? 

Being a woodcarver, would he have been waving his knife in a conversational fashion at someone walking by? You know, like homemakers do with knives when they are peeling potatoes or chopping onions and someone walks through the kitchen and speaks to them. A friendly gesture. Was he threatening a passerby? When the cop saw him from his car and got out with gun drawn to tell him to drop the knife, what was happening? 

Read the story in Seattle Met and judge for yourself.

The ten-year later approach is informative.  

 

Photo Credits: Both photos were taken in 2014 by the same photographer and are used by Creative Common License from Wikimedia. For the totem pole and for Pioneer Square: Jrozwado / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)