“Herd Immunity”, leads to "Herd Insanity".
Carl Jarvis, doing the same thing over and over, looking for different
results.
On 11/6/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Trump’s Great Barrington “Herd Immunity” Hoax“Herd Immunity”
https://socialistaction.org/2020/11/03/trumps-great-barrington-herd-immunity-hoax/
November 3, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
The moron Trump, perhaps the crudest specimen of capitalist cruelty
these days, takes the matter one insane step further with his ongoing
public and personal opposition to mandated lockdowns, mask wearing and
social distancing necessitated by the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.
Trump’s current pandemic science adviser, Stanford University’s Hoover
Institute Dr. Scott Atlas, last spring put his name to the so-called
Great Barrington [Mass.] conference and its declaration that calls for
allowing COVID-19 to spread “naturally” in order to achieve “herd
immunity” — the so-called point at which enough people have been
infected, and allegedly then become immune, to effectively stall
transmission of the pathogen in the general community. “Leading lights”
from prestigious Harvard and Oxford Universities were conference
participants presumably to lend “scientific legitimacy” to this
auspicious gathering.
The Great Barrington nationally-orchestrated spectacle was sponsored by
the American Institute for Economic Research, a rightwing think tank
that partners with the Charles Koch Institute, founded by the
billionaire industrialist Koch brothers. Their proclamation claiming
endorsements from some 40,000 “science and health specialists,” insists
that everyone must be “free” to return to “normal life” with zero
restrictions, that is, no masks, social distancing, testing,
quarantines, etc. Among these endorsers, according to a skeptical UK
source is one “Dr. Johnny Bananas.” We have yet to check out the others.
None of the Great Barrington declaration’s “scientific” assertions have
been peer reviewed. Yale Assistant Professor of Public Health Gregg
Gonsalves stated, “They’re staking out a radical claim that has very
little support in the scientific community, so it’s not as if there’s
like a scientific debate. It’s sort of flat earth versus the world is
round.”
While neither the Trump administration nor its now chief science
adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, again, of the Great Barrington confab and
co-author of its ludicrous declaration, have formally endorsed it as
official government policy, Trump’s Oct. 22 debate remarks all but
confirmed his adherence to its basic principles. Indeed, Dr. Atlas
couldn’t restrain himself when he recently tweeted his view that masks
were unnecessary, only to have his anti-science missile removed by
Twitter’s fact checkers as unsubstantiated!
Capitalism’s prime directive
“Survival of the fittest” is the prime directive of capitalism,
especially of its current neo-liberal, free market, and unregulated
variant. Trump, a staunch opponent of masks, demonstrably and repeatedly
speaks at mass rallies where few are protected. He boasted during the
debate that be had quickly recovered from COVID-19 and was now immune,
“no one knows for how long,” he felt compelled to add. Serious
scientists have countered that if Trump’s “herd immunity” orientation is
pursued the number of U.S. deaths could exceed one million by February
2021. Even if current standards are applied to these calculations,
wherein today only 50 percent wear masks in public, the death toll is
expected to surpass 500,000 in the same time frame, and countless more
thereafter.
Here one might ask the simple question, what’s in it for Trump and his
Koch libertarian billionaire friends in promoting, not to mention
seeking to implement, the conception of herd immunity? There appears to
be no rational answer to this question and especially so when most all
scientists agree that with zero efforts to control COVID-19 the
projected numbers of deaths will be astronomical.
Trump: Embarrassment to the ruling class
I can only guess that some proponents of this reactionary “theory”
believe that there are those among us, perhaps the egomaniac Trump
himself, who are “naturally” in the category of the “fittest,” along
with their billionaire associates whose “superior intelligence” earns
them the right to rule. The moron Trump has participated in televised
interviews with “medical specialists” who routinely administer
“intelligence” examinations to him aimed at detecting signs of dementia.
Trump, touting his test-affirmed ability to remember the names and order
of five previously stated words, claims to have “aced the test”! Need we
pursue Trump’s absurdities further other than to conclude that he has
become an embarrassment to the ruling class itself, who increasingly
indicate that he needs to be dumped, albeit without anyone fully
revealing how it came to pass that the likes of him ever made it to the
White House in the first place.
That Trump could state during the debate that “We have rounded the
corner” in the fight against COVID-19, in the face of the fact that the
week of his debate marked the largest number of coronavirus infections
on record, attests to the tragic truth that for some, at least in his
inner circles, “the naked moronic emperor does have clothes.”
The tragedy of science under capitalism
“Herd immunity” notwithstanding, Trump’s handling of the search for an
effective vaccine is a case in point, with at least five major behemoth
corporations, financed by billions in federal grants, competing to
secure the lion’s share of the expected future billions in profits. The
simple notion that scientific research in a sane society should operate
as a collective endeavor, wherein all discoveries are immediately shared
by everyone for the common good, is unknown under capitalism. Neither
Biden nor Trump uttered a word on this matter. A final point; might we
ask the question as to whether a vaccine is needed at all, since Trump’s
“herd immunity theory” postulates that the fastest way to stop COVID-19
is to do nothing and allow “nature” to take its toll… I mean course?
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