Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Herd Immunity

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

There's been a lot of discussion about herd immunity in the face of COVID-19, but did you know that anyone who talks about achieving herd immunity without a vaccine (something humanity has never pulled off ever) is a big stinky liar goofball?We'll explore that truth and so much more on this week's episode of Sawbones.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bowen's, a mayoral turf misguided medicine. for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobbing's

Emerald Truth, Miscite Admedicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McRoe. And I'm Sydney McRoe. Sydney, can I tell you about the best joke ever made? I think you're going to, whether or not I, I say yes. So go ahead. So I was driving around town. I saw a bunch of people tailgating before a martial game.

Marshall's a thundering herd. I had their first home game of the year and I saw a bunch of people tailgating before martial game. Marshall's a thundering herd. They're their first home game of the year, and I saw a bunch of people tailgating. This was recent. Recent. That's important, I think, if I know where you're going. Uh, gathered around in groups, all throughout the city, walking around,

mass-free, living their lives, just going for it. Right. And when I got home, I put on Facebook, saw a bunch of people tailgating for the martial game. Guess they're counting on herd immunity to protect them. Because Marshall, of course, is the thundering herd. I did not make this joke on Twitter.

It wouldn't have played there, but here in my hometown of Honeystone, West Virginia, where most of Facebook friends are, they were loving it. And on our medical history podcast, I bet it's going to go over. Like a led balloon kind of button. Well, you walked them in twice saying Thundering Hurts.

They had to set up for that to really land. Right. Herd immunity. Herd immunity. That's what we're going to talk about, Justin. Yeah, that's why I made that great joke so many months ago. Yeah, that's why I didn't want to be cute about it. Just jump right in.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you to Kristen and David and Maggie and Kelly and Julian, Haley and Selena and Jamie and Georgia, who all recommended this topic, herd immunity, or the great barrington declaration, which we will get to. Oh, your reference was much, much less relevant than mine for once.

I think that the great barrington, yeah, I think we have more people going at herd immunity than your reference. I'm not going to find that. Listen, some of these emails were titled the Great Barrington Declaration. Let me tell you, I had not yet heard about it. That is a weird subject line for an email if you have not heard of it. Yeah. I'm gonna get

to there. I promise. How many in those emails that began with that did they did they say hold on I have to stop writing the email to adjust my pocket protector that I have on. Justin yeah I am one of the nerds that I believe you're trying to make fun of right now. Yeah, point dexter, if you will. Okay. So the term, can I say one more thing before I let you get wrong? Do you want to continue to mock my intelligence or my friends? Not my intelligence.

All of my friend listeners, friends listeners. Friends listeners. Friends listeners. Pocket protectors really out like a wildly outdated record. I've never I don't know if I've ever seen one like in the wild. I like on TV like in movies. Like revenge of the nurse. Like PT's huggers.

It's the class at the little knob on there. You can. I'm sure there are people who have them. Just never had one. Anyway, the so the term herd immunity, you could probably guess that it was already, it was used in animals first. I bet you could have guessed that.

Let's hope so. Yes. My understanding is that it was originally used to refer to herds of cows where they would have these, back in the 1910s, where they would have these in back in the 1910s where they would have these epidemic abortions they would call them or miscarriages and The farmers would initially respond when they would see this start to happen among the herd by getting rid of all the cows That it had happened to like get them out of there really quickly right and replace them new cows. And what they realized is that that actually made things worse.

That as you got the sick cows out and put new cows in, that it was like adding fuel to the fire, it continued to spread. Whereas if you could just kind of keep them all together, after they got better, you tended to see some sort of all together after they got better, you tended to see some sort of immunity develop wherein nobody got sick. Not some sort of immunity said herd immunity. Exactly. So the idea is that this phenomenon would keep your herd healthy if you kept them together

instead of trying to like, I don't know, do you? This is not a question for me who doctors only humans, but I don't know if you sell the ones that were sick, that seems like a bad, like do you lie? Surely you tell people, who do you give them to? Maybe you eat them? I don't think you're supposed to. Depends if it's a cow disease.

I don't know enough about this area to come. It's any further. Everything is messed up. They probably slaughter them. They slaughtered a lot of animals, pointlessly during this COVID pandemic. I'm sure that it wouldn't be. I'm sure they just slaughtered them. That's very sad.

Well, yeah. That's incredibly sad. We miss treaty animals in this country horribly. Yes. But that's not on the stock. These are not usually the comments you make. I will say. I'm saying it's not untrue. I mean, we're all connected and I feel bad for the way

we treat cows and that's actually all animals, period, but except for cats, they're doing fun. The fun. Okay, this idea of herd immunity was intriguing to scientists. If you look at this point in history, we're talking about World War I-ish time. This was very interesting. That's what I'm counting on.

Yeah, it's World War I-ish time. And guess what? Also, Spanish influenza time, unfairly named Spanish influenza. As we have said before, the influenza pandemic of 1918 was not the fault of Spain. No. They just were the first to be honest about it. Yeah. So they not the fault of Spain. No. They just were the first to be honest about it. Yeah. So they got the fault of Portugal. No. It's next to your neighbor.

Portugal. No. No. Who can I play? Give me somebody. Listen to that episode. Oh. Anyway, so it's either the influence of pandemic is happening.

And a lot of scientists, bacterologists studying this and looking at this herd immunity phenomenon start to say, like, what is this? What does this have to do with, does this have anything to do with humans? Is there some application for this in humans? Or is this just a cow thing? And so they look at, they do some experiments with mice

and to find, you know, to kind of try to explore this idea. The first look into this in humans was a following year, 1924, when a professor of pathology named Sheldon Dudley started looking at these groups of school-age boys who were in this sort of like boarding school kind of set up, specifically because it was like your perfect, if we're going to look at humans as a herd,

these boys would be put into the school at a certain time, they all stayed together, the single cohort, they weren't going anywhere, nobody was coming in and out. So, and at the same time, diphtheria outbreaks were very common. We didn't have a vaccine yet, so you just got it. And so you could kind of, I know this sounds like a terrible study, nobody was given diptheria, you could just observe

what happened. And so that was sort of the first look into humans was to observe the spread of an infectious disease among this sort of isolated population and then report on it. And that's what he first published on was the way that he would observe like a certain number of the students would get this and then recover and people would stop getting it. Right? And like the herd, so to speak, would be protected.

As he wrote about it, this terminology, herd immunity was not widely accepted by the public. People didn't love this. Literally, the humanizing. Yes, exactly. The idea of calling humans animals was not particularly... I know as a humanist I forced and foremost I typically would agree with that. I think in this specific example though, I like the term herd immunity because it is dehumanizing in a way that is helpful because we shouldn't be thinking of ourselves as

individual human entities. We should be thinking of ourselves as it hurts. I think it's useful. It's a useful way of thinking of ourselves as part of a collective. I understand where you're coming from. I would argue that the human animal is capable of altruism, though, without comparing us to another animal that is perhaps less cognitively developed. First off, rude. Secondly, the Countess, anybody from Puse Playhouse, but also like, I don't know, it's all living as to the contrary since you're out of my welfare currently. That's sure. Yeah, all of it is to the contrary since you're okay. Well, apparently that's okay And especially at this moment in the show we're talking about the 1930s, so I guess this isn't

whoo anyway and because of this time period as Dudley talked about Humans in these terms and talked about different herds of humans like urban herds or rural herds and all these different terms that we use people were not thrilled and then The idea of say urban herds actually hit me different Yes, you had an urban to be good. I get started to feel a little bad Well, the idea of racial herds was also introduced at this time especially with eugenics being popularized

I'm there. Yes, and the idea that like well these people don't get this because that herd has an immunity already for whatever these ideas begin to you know be perpetuated and There's also a problem with this because if you do a direct comparison If you have a herd of animals like we were talking about early on Whether or not you decide that whether or not you've embraced this herd immunity concept and you accept that like these cows that got sick and got better are now like good for your herd. They're helping protect your herd in some way because at that point they didn't really understand why. They just knew that that happened. You do accept that

some will get sick and die. Like that is part of this equation that you're running when you're talking about your herd of animals, your herd of cows or whatever. Right. And so when you apply that to humans, that's not what I would call ethical. Great. Yeah. Right. And the other thing is like, you know, in terms of a good euphemism, if we are talking cows, like you also intend to... We're not talking cows. Well, but you also intend to kill

these animals in a lot of cases at the end. And so, as an analogy to humanity, is a weak one in that way. Fair enough. People don't like that, especially when they're sick and scared, or their family members are sick and scared. That's not a great look.

So because of these reasons, you can see where there really isn't much of a functional application for this idea, right? Like how do you use it? How do you use it as a tool? You can observe it as Dudley did. You can see it happening. But how would you use it as a tool? You can observe it as Dudley did. You can see it happening. But how would you use this functionally? If the consequences are that some members of your herd

will get sick and die, there is no application to this as a doctor whose number one job it is to do no harm. Until you have vaccines. Now all of a sudden, along with vaccine technology, we have like an actual idea of how herd immunity could come into play. Okay, that's what makes it relevant. And this is where math comes in. So in order to understand why herd immunity suddenly became important and relevant with

the advent of vaccines, you have to kind of understand some math. So we have an infectious disease. We have an infectious disease and we have a vulnerable population. And different diseases are different levels of infectiousness, meaning like some spread really easily and some don't, right? Okay, we measure this by how many people is an infected person also likely to infect. You've probably heard about this on the news. The media has talked about this idea.

That's the R-N-O-T. The R-N-O-T. Very good. We've talked about this idea. Yeah, but a lot of other people. I'm just saying, yeah. Okay, yes. That's fine. So what we found is that if you divide one by the R0

and then subtract it from one, that doesn't really matter. The point is you can get a threshold of the population that would need to have immunity in order to stop the spread of the disease, okay? The lower that R0, below one. the disease, okay? The lower that R0 below one. No, well, yes, to achieve herd immunity and stop transmission of the disease.

That number has to be below one, right? Yes, but what, yes, but what we're taught, yes. Stop transmission. Yes, but what I'm trying to get you to see is that the R0 is intrinsic to what that level of herd immunity is. The R-NOT of a particular disease tells you how many people would need to be immune to protect us all. It is dependent on how easily that disease is spread. Okay. Got it. Does that make sense? Yes. So like as an example, measles, one person with measles is likely to spread

it to like 12 to 18 other people. Yeah, it's really infectious. Really contagious. Right. So we have to get to 92 to 95% of the population immune before it won't. That's the threshold of herd immunity. That's really high. Yes. On the other hand, Ebola, if you have Ebola, you're only likely to give it to 1.5 to 2.5 people. So for that, we need to achieve 33% to 60% herd immunity level or immunity level to achieve herd immunity.

Okay. So far from what we can tell of COVID, and this is an evolving science, right, because we we're still trying to, when we're in the midst of it, a person with COVID is likely to infect between two and a half and four people. Okay. Which means we need to get between 60 and 75% of the population immune before we achieve herd immunity, theoretically. Okay. That's a lot of people. We are nowhere near that, like on a global or nationwide level.

There are isolated communities here and there that may be closer to that level, especially in specific parts of New York, but not on any major national scale. Now, as we talk about that, about herd immunity and the way that it was used for like smallpox, for instance. This was all used in conjunction with the vaccine. So we used this concept of herd immunity to vaccinate people against smallpox,

to stop the spread of smallpox, and then to use like what we called like ring vaccination to close in on the infected people like you get an perpetrated and then encircle them with vaccines until we could eradicate it. But nobody has ever suggested, no real epidemiologist has ever suggested that you use this idea of herd immunity just to let people get sick until it stops spreading. Right. Okay. Now, in terms of what we would have to do for COVID, like how many people would have

to be vaccinated or immune or whatever, first of all, as long as we include a vaccine in the equation, we have to know the effectiveness of the vaccine, right? To know how many people would need to be vaccinated. Because most vaccines aren't 100 percent. Every single person who gets it is immediately immune. Okay. So we have to know that. And we have to know how many people are going to get the vaccine. So we can't do that math yet.

But the other way that herd immunity plays into is not just for eradicating a disease, like I just talked about with smallpox. But what it also does is let's say that there are people who can't get a vaccine because of an illness or because of their age or because they get it and they don't generate the immune system response that we would like them to, right? Because I said they're often not a hundred percent effective in every single person. So herd immunity protects those people. By vaccinating a bunch of people,

we achieve those levels, and then those vulnerable people are much less likely to get the disease because they're protected by all of us who are immune, right? So that's where all that comes into play. Right. So that's where all that comes into play. So I think that, and by the way, this threshold is not like concrete. We've seen that with measles. We have, because measles require such a high threshold of immunity in order to achieve herd immunity. We have in certain parts of the world drop below that threshold in large part because of vaccine hesitancy. And so people don't get vaccinated. The levels drop down below 90 to 95% and then we start to see measles

outbreaks. Right. Right. So the thing is about COVID. Why are we talking about herd immunity in terms of COVID? I would think it would be obvious. You know, because I mean, it's obvious, isn't it, said? Well, we would like that to be the case. So we could go to the darn baseball games. So we could go to the darn baseball games. But what I just said, we don't talk about herd immunity outside of vaccines. Not really, not in a realistic actually would happen in reality way. Well, that was when you and I talked about that, that was the main reason I thought this would be, I, not think it was like my decision, but why I was excited to do this episode because I want people to start hearing her immunity right now if people suggest her immunity

as like a way to handle COVID before there's a vaccine, they don't know what they're talking about. Right, because we don't have a vaccine yet. We will, but we don't now. And so it's a mass problem that we can. We do have a vaccine, it's just, they're trying to make sure it's real safe, but they got loads of stuff.

Okay, well yes. I'm just saying to go get me a up with one is all I'm saying. There are vaccines out there, but they're not for widespread distribution yet. We're getting there. But for now, it's like, we can think about the math of all this, but there's no application of it.

Like as an ethical human who doesn't want to see other humans die, the idea that this has any bearing on reality right now, herd immunity in this context is just, it's nonsense. It's complete nonsense. But the other things we need to know are, one, we really don't know what naturally induced immunity to COVID looks like. We have these cases of people being reinfected, right? How often does that happen? We think immunity is probably not lifelong, at least not for everybody. We don't know how long it is. We know that antibody levels tend to decline over time. There might be some T cell mediated immunity. We've talked about

this on the show before. We don't know all these things for sure. And so if you liken it to like a chicken pox party, remember when people used to have those, your kid would get chicken pox, so everybody in the neighborhood would come over and like they'd share blow pops or whatever, so that all the kids would get chicken pox at the same time. And now we don't do that because there's a vaccine you should get instead. Well, imagine if you had a chicken pox party and then next year everybody could get chicken pox all over again, that would seem really wild, right?

Yeah. Well, there's that positive, we just don't know enough yet. What would be the point of that? If you can get COVID again, why would you do that? Right. And the other thing, the other real big difference that we're gonna get into more, but the other real big difference that we're going to get into more, but the other real big difference is that if we're continuing with this chicken pox party

analogy, most of the time at the end of a chicken pox party, somebody doesn't die of chicken pox. Right. Right. Now, if we're going to talk about chickenpox, occasionally people did die of chickenpox. Right, but that's not helpful for them out of our minds. I'm just saying, if you take this like idea of we're going to try to achieve herd immunity with COVID, so a bunch of people will get it all at once and then they'll protect the really vulnerable ones, you have to accept that some of those people are going to die, because we know that some people who we think are young and healthy and low risk do die of COVID.

So it would be like a chicken pox party where you took your kid knowing that maybe you're letting your kid share blow pops and juice boxes with a bunch of their kids, and then maybe they would die. That's what we're talking about. So that is the other reason why this isn't really helpful for COVID.

And when it comes to numbers, because a lot of people have said like, well, how many people would die? What are we talking? As if it, is it that? By the way, as if it matters, but. Here's how many people are too many.

My nonny there. Okay, as if it matters, but. Here's how many people are too many. My nonny, there. Okay, now let's work from there, because if my nonny gets COVID and tragically passes away, that's too many. So let's work backwards from my nonny. And it's really hard to tell you the answer to that question. No, it's not. My nonny, that's it.

Well, no. But the question of how many people would die if we went for this approach, because you'll see numbers thrown out like 500,000 people will die. I've seen like three million people die. There are all these numbers thrown out there. What's hard about that is you have to be able to calculate what we're really talking about. The is the infection mortality rate, infection fatality rate, excuse me. And the infection fatality rate is how many people die out of all the people who got COVID. Well, right now, we don't know how many people are getting COVID because we don't have enough

tests and there's asymptomatic carriers, and we're still not sure. So that number is almost impossible to calculate with any degree of certainty. So what we do know is the case fatality rate, that's what you're seeing reported a lot, and that's of people who we know had it because those are the only people we tested. How many of those people died? And that number's different and it changes. It changes depending on where you are. It changes depending on how full your hospital is.

It changes depending on what time in the pandemic you got sick. It changes, by the way, your likelihood of dying of COVID, not only changes with like things you can't change, like your age or another illness you might have, or your skin color. It also changes with, like, let's say, you are someone who gets COVID and has access

to your own private helicopter to one of the world's best hospitals and an entire team of doctors, and also experimental treatments that only 230 other people on earth have ever been given only in a clinical trial and maybe an entire team to continue to follow your every waking moment and vital sign. Sid, are you talking about Trump? your odds are probably better of surviving it than say anyone else. Yeah, I just busted out the whole the reggae horn for that.

And the thing is everybody's odds should be that good. I'm not saying his should be worse. I'm saying everybody. I'm saying your race should be president because I'm saying everybody. I'm saying we all deserve the same level of care as our public servant, the president. So what, what, what is a better way forward for us? Well, I'm, I'm going to tell you, Justin, but we haven't gone to the building department yet. Oh my God. Okay, let's go. So, Justin, this is where I want to tell you about the Great Barrington Declaration. Mm-hmm. Okay. And it's not the Great Bari or reef. There's no connection.

No. A group of public health specialists and doctors and scientists, and there's really three main authors of this, three lead authors who made this declaration. One's from Oxford, one's from Stanford, one's from Harvard. So this all sounds very impressive, right? Yeah. They got together and they issued this document that in my, in my, just my personal opinion representing only me will be ridiculed by scientific and medical historians

for centuries to come. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know how sometimes they highlight things in, in like your history books and social study books, like when you're in school, it's like bolded or something and you know it's like, oh, this will be on the test. Someday, the Great Barrington Declaration will be in a book about this year, which will be an entire course of history, right?

Like there will be, you can take like the year 2020 in history class. And nobody wants. And nobody wants to take the class. And this will be this will be anyway. The Great Barrington Declaration was issued on October 4th by the American Institute for Economic Research from Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Okay. Well that answers my first question. Why is it great? Declaration is already pretty wild. It is right. It's all wild. But the slap great at the beginning with that one I guess they get it

It's very short and easily available online so you can go read it It will take you it probably won't take you very much time It's like I mean it's one little it's just a few paragraphs. It's one screen almost And they call for what they call focused protection which will result in herd immunity It is it recognizes the fact and this is a truth focused protection which will result in herd immunity. Okay. It is, it recognizes the fact, and this is a truth that lockdown has been hard on people. It's been hard financially, it's been hard from a mental health perspective.

It talks about, you know, all the consequences of the lockdown and the quarantine and the social distancing and the stay at home and stay for at home and everything we've had to do to cope with this virus. And these are true. I am not disputing that. That can all be true and still not come to the conclusion that we shouldn't have done it all.

But yes, this has been incredibly difficult. So what they say is, what we need to do is just let young people get back to their lives, open the schools, open the bars, open the workplaces, open the restaurants, open the theaters, start the sports, get it all. Do the life podcasts. All of it.

Get it going now, have the mass gatherings, have the groups, have the hugs and the high fives. But only for us young sexy people. Only, well, everybody who is low risk. So if you're probably not someone who would die of COVID, you go for it. If you might die of COVID, don't. We should, if you are old or if you have a chronic illness, please stay in your home and don't leave under any circumstances.

Because there's a lot of young sick people out here living it to the fullest. Please stay away from everyone. What we're going to do is bring you food there and things you need. We'll just drop them off. If you work, I'm sure we can figure out a way around that, right? Because our government has always been so good at providing for those in need. So it will be easy. We don't have the answers, people.

We are just saying this is how we should do it. And they say that. We'll leave the nitty gritty of reality to you. The point is get out there and party unless you're old or sick, in which case stay home. And also we'll staff all of our nursing homes with people who've already had it, so we'll be fine there. And obviously, there are things we can't solve for, like if you live in a multi-generational home, I don't know, but there's probably a way.

There's, surely, somebody should be able to figure this out. And also, no masks, no testing, no contact tracing, just wash your hands, and if you get sick, stay home. No mask, but do wash your hands. Mm-hmm, okay. Yeah, I know. It's defiant of scientific thought or understanding. scientific thought or understanding. So this was issued with a lot of co-signatures and caused a bit of a splash because it sounds

very legitimate if you listen to all these people who are proposing it. They have the credentials. I'm not going to list all of them. They have the degrees. You would think they would know better. One thing you should know about this group, the American Institute for Economic Research is a libertarian think-take. And this is not me like, if you're a libertarian listening, anything I'm taking aim at you, I'm not. But if you do

deny the science of climate change, you're wrong, so that's part of their thing. Okay. So maybe you can be a libertarian and not necessarily believe that these people have the answer. They are funded in a large part by the coax and that is the political perspective that this is coming from. Very much a political perspective, not a scientific one. Also, anybody can sign it. You can go online and you can just like, they have little boxes, are you a scientist,

are you a doctor, are you a concern citizen, you just click there and you put your name there and say that I agree with this declaration. I want my name on this declaration. They have had issues with that. It's been noted that Mr. Banana Rama has signed it. Dr. Johnny fart pants. Dr. I mean, you're gonna clean one so I can make a text tone out of it. If you can just give me that one more time, Sydney 321. Dr. Johnny fart pants. There we go. Go ahead and set that up as your your text alert sound. Dr. Person fake name

Professor notif Ucking clue. I did not curse there. No I like professor commonic dummies And that's fun. I know but also this whole thing is dangerous and unethical It's been completely refuted and condemned by the World Health Organization by the London Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene by the Infectious Diseases Society of America,

by the NIH, by Canada's COVID Task Force, like 14 different American public health groups, epidemiologists from all over the world, Dr. Fauci has said, this is nonsense, this is complete nonsense. Even the town of Great Barrington,, please, this is not who we are. We wear masks. Don't stop coming to Great Barrington just because of the declaration that is very unfortunately named after us. Now, of course, the White House was interested in this.

Specifically, Dr. Scott Atlas, who is a neuro radiologist that the president has recently said, Dr. Atlas. Yes, Dr. Atlas. This is that's so part. Dr. Atlas, who has kind of like a La Zay Fair attitude towards infection control. Um, and who recently, by the way, had a tweet removed because he said masks don't work. Okay. That's misinformation.

So that was removed by a fun folks at Twitter, I guess. Yes. Uh-huh. So this is the Dr. Atlas who is now advising the president. Uh, he met with the authors because he liked what he was here and uh... so and that's been an area of concern because while well trump has not endorsed the great barrington declaration his

one of his medical advisors that he definitely likes more than he likes doctor falchi i would say. Sure. Um, has met with them and feels that this is a, a way forward. Um, and Trump has used the term herd immunity or sometimes herd mentality, but he meant herd immunity. Let's, let's just move on from that. But anyway, this has been concerning to a lot of people because while it sounds ridiculous, if you actually did

this, it would be so incredibly dangerous. And the president of the United States seems at least to be flirting with the idea. Now, for all the reasons that we've just covered, you already know why this declaration is ridiculous. Because, well, yes. We don't have a minute without a vaccine. Right. And we don't know if you can get COVID again. We don't know if immunity is long lasting or how long

or whatever. We also don't really understand the full-term, like full long-term morbidity of COVID. We've heard lots of studies on this. How long are you sick from COVID? Even if you are a young healthy person who gets COVID and gets better, there's a lot of indications that some people are going to suffer some pretty severe long-term sequela from this.

And we don't know what all of that looks like. You said sequela? Like complications, long-term negative health effects from this. We don't know why some people who are young and don't seem to have any risk factors get sick enough to die from COVID, we still don't know. We don't fully understand what it does to kids yet. That's still an area that we're trying to understand. And we also can't keep old people out of society. As much as we want. You monsters. I like to. I can't lock old people out of society as much as we want to.

Like to lock my dad in his house. And and I mean, my nanny just goes about our business. The more rampant spread in a community, the more you're going to see it among our vulnerable populations, it's just the way it works. You can't isolate Members of society from society and have everything else just go on as if it's not happening. That's not how That's not how anything works And like you said there is no herd immunity without a vaccine. That's not even a legitimate scientific concept Nobody's entertaining that nobody should be entertaining that no real person who wants to take care of other people would consider that because again,

the most recent like case fatality rate I saw for COVID in the US was 2.7%, which would mean like over 8 million people would die. Now nobody really thinks the number would be that high, but like what is okay? Seven million, six million, five million, two million, half a million. One non-e. Like how, what, you know, what, the other part of this is that the people who would still, well, yes, if we give it to everybody, we are going to see higher morbidity and mortality among the younger, lower risk people, we are still going to affect, like I said, the people who are at higher risk, which if you believe this

declaration, you are valuing those human lives as less than the human lives of younger healthier people. So in order to buy into this idea, you have to believe that some people have less intrinsic value than others. Which to me is, I mean, this is eugenics. And obviously we hear it saw bones or against that. It's been called misguided and dangerous grotesque pseudoscience, it's astroturfing, it's eugenics, it's ideological, political,

it has nothing to do with science or public health and putting these ideas out there could cause more devastation, more death. It is true that the lockdown has been incredibly hard on everyone to some extent and to some people disproportionately much harder than to others. This is true. There were ways that we could have mitigated how difficult social distancing was for people, has been for people, and how difficult having to close down certain parts of society was. But that didn't make it less true that we needed to shut down some things.

And we continue to need to. And we continue to need to social distance. Those things are true. And we could have made it a lot easier, but our leaders didn't. And there is no... The idea that herd immunity would be a better way to get us out of it means that you're saying, well, if we just let a lot of people die of this, then it will be over faster. And I can get back to my life. And I don't think if you're a caring person, you don't mean that, you don't want that. But I don't know what the motivation would be

behind making a declaration like this. Other than political. It's not science. So the idea that herd immunity is a path forward is ridiculous. If people tell you that, we've never achieved herd immunity without a vaccine. When the vaccines are safe and available and we can all get them,

then we can start talking about that as long as this is something that we need one vaccine for and not something that like the flu we may need to take multiple vaccines for in our life. In which case, I think we all need to get used to the idea that we're looking out for each other and herd immunity is the opposite of that. I know it sounds that way. You know they've even talked about calling it like population immunity As a way to make it more palatable for people. I've seen that argument. Well, what if we just start calling it population immunity Maybe then people won't mind it so much. Yeah, but it's still the same thing and you can't get it without a vaccine period so I same thing. You can't get it without a vaccine period. So I know that's well hopefully now that it's clear that herd immunity would involve so many people

getting sick and so many more people dying. It's clear that it's not a good way forward. I really want to go out to eat again too someday. I understand. Yeah. Well, there's and there's, I mean, innumerable people who are also like, I get it like out of a job, out of, you know, I was talking on social media this week about seeing people eating at restaurants and thinking there's just wild and they're people in the service industry that are like, this is my livelihood and I can't do it and it's like we have a government that has failed a functioning government would take care of the people who are in that position while still not allowing the spread of this disease. Like that's what a functioning

government would do. The answer isn't just to pretend it's not happening. No. And the answer's also not heard from you, do we get a vaccine? No, it's unachievable and it would result in massive loss of life. It's ridiculous. The idea that anybody who is tasked with taking care of other people, like in the medical profession, whatever endorse an idea like that is, I mean, it's perverse. Those people should not be practicing

medicine. Could I get that name one more time just to kind of clear the palladium hemantrable remember and some of the different sign number signatories? You could just one more time. Dr. Johnny Farpans. Thank you so much for listening to Sal Bones. We hope you have gotten something out of it. I remember to share this episode. I think this is information that a lot

of people aren't talking about. We'd be better. A functioning government would be equipping people with this kind of information. But since we don't have that, you got some bones. So sorry. Yes, please continue to wear your masks

when you go out in the world. I mean, yes, washing your hands is great. I'm not anti, I think we know, you know, I'm very pro wash your hands, but that's not enough right now. No, yes, stay home when you're sick, yes, wash your hands, also wear a mask, stay in as much as you can,

especially to protect all of our essential workers who do have to go do their jobs right now. Thank you the taxpayers for the use of their song Medicines is the intro and outro of our program. Just a quick reminder that I have a video game podcasts on Spotify called the besties where we talk about a new video game every week. You can follow and listen for free on Spotify. It's only there, but you don't need to paint subscription to listen. You can just go there and check it totally out. It's a lot of fun.

And if you like video games, I would hope you check it out. That is going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Music Maximumfun.org. and Culture Artist-owned? Audience-supported Are you feeling elevated levels of anxiety?

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