The_Barnacle wrote on Sep 4^th, 2020 at 7:06am:


Herd immunity is about creating a community with enough people immune that the virus finds it hard to move from person to person.  The goal is to stop the spread of the virus.

If you intend to reach "herd immunity" but letting the virus spread, that's not herd immunity, that's uncontrolled infections and the spread of the virus.

It's the opposite of the goal one is trying to achieve.

Now if the herd immunity was achieved by a vaccine, that would be different.  The goal is to stop the spread of the virus and the immunity is achieved without having to let it run wild.

The sort of herd immunity people are talking about now is nothing but a political tool to defend mistakes by leaders they like as if they had a plan all along.

It's just like the deliberate attempts to misinterpret the CDC data, attack Fauci and all the other conspiracy nonsense. 

People are stupid, more people than I ever was prepared to accept.

At least in terms of Americans, their fundamental knowledge is so low that they're not just uninformed or even misinformed, they're aggressively wrong.  They don't just believe dumb things, they actually resist further learning rather than let go of their beliefs.

And there is a staggering amount of people on this forum who are the same.

This place has become a hostile environment for the truth like never before.  When I first found these forums it was a nice change from the heavily controlled and often fact-driven nature of the Whirlpool political forum.  I was finally able to engage with more people who didn't just see the world as I did.

But now these people have gone off the deep end and shed all ties to reality.  It's been like watching a slow-motion car crash these few years...

6000 people, median age 80.
Maybe had 5 years left to live.
Years lost 30,000.


Aussie road toll , 1000
Median age 25
Maybe had 50 years left to live.
Years lost 50,000.


The Aussie road toll is more of a catastrophe then covid left to run its course.

And the road toll is a recurring cost,
Not a one off.

Do we insist everyone keeps their cars in " lockdown" in their garage to prevent a catastrophic loss of human lives?
Do we lock cars in garages until we have 4 weeks with 0 cases of road deaths.

Do we close borders to other states when a road fatality occurs for fear of importing a dangerous driver

aquascoot wrote on Sep 4^th, 2020 at 7:12pm:


The road toll doesn't overwhelm our health system.

Kate Walker wrote on Sep 5^th, 2020 at 10:03am:


No.

You know why not?

Lockdowns!

Thank you for pointing out that lockdowns are extremely effective.

If they weren't, our health system would be overwhelmed.

Covid has been contained the same way the road toll has. We could abandon speed limits, allow people to drive drunk while texting, allow children to drive etc. We could allow covid to overwhelm our health system.

freediver wrote on Sep 5^th, 2020 at 10:09am:


Good Point. I think even Bojack would agree.

Jasin wrote on Sep 5^th, 2020 at 10:21am:



incorrect,

the analogy would be that we would reduce the speed limit to 20 kph
and we would have politicians and the roads minister give a daily briefing on road fatalities,

and if someone said on facebook, they were going to go meet up with mates at bathurst, we would send the police round to cuff them and fine them

aquascoot wrote on Sep 5^th, 2020 at 5:19pm:


If road fatalities only started happening this year, that probably would be the case. The speed limit is a genuine drain on our economy. You merely do not recognise this because you take it for granted.

Given that road fatalities are already lower than the covid death toll, why do you insist that 20 km/h is the better analogy? You seem to be suffering from the anchoring and adjustment fallacy. Whatever rules we had back in February were somehow optimal to you, and any change from that need to be justified, apparently ignoring what has happened since February. Thus travel restrictions since February are analogous to reductions to whatever speed limits we had in February. It is all relative, and you are oblivious to the absolute level of restriction that already existed. You do not understand the analogy, because you cannot see any restrictions implemented prior to February as being restrictions.