no. I’m not responsible for someone catching a cold. If I have symptoms, I’ll do my part to keep it from others. Look, the goal is not to try to keep it from spreading, that is impossible.the goal was to not overwhelm the hospitals. We achieved that goal. Now it’s time for herd immunity. Wearing masks will only prolong the inevitable. You WILL catch the Wuhan virus eventually. The sooner the young people get it and develop immunity, the better for all of us.
Let me challenge your thoughts on this...
The prolonging the inevitable argument against mask wearing has some flaws but in the setting of herd immunity I understand your point but still disagree.
We could do better and have a nationwide effort to slow spread by wearing masks. As demonstrated in other countries, it works. Now I know you know this, but wearing masks would keep the peaks as low is possible. You say we met our goal, but hospitals are more crowded now than ever before so we are certainly trending away from out goal.
Your point is not missed and makes some general sense, but let’s assume we get a vaccine in January. Making an effort to decrease cases now will allow people to get vaccinated without a risk of death. Using a live virus and allowing it to spread to increase immunity in our population will cause mass death.
It’s also not known the active immunity the virus gives us after becoming infected. Many don’t have neutralizing antibodies, and it’s tho for any immunity from infection will only last 3-6mo.
Flu vaccines have demonstrated clinical immunity for a full 8-12mo, even at a 50% efficacy (the flu has had a longer time to mutate so that’s best case). Covid vaccines could have better efficacy because this virus just jumped species, so it hasn’t mutated like flu has.
Right now we have this unique opportunity to come together as a nation and save our family members lives. I highly highly doubt you’d try and champion an effort for natural herd immunity if your family member died from Coronavirus. There’s another way, we don’t live in 1918 — we have over 100 years of science and vaccine development on our side now.
My prediction is multiple vaccines will show efficacy and be produced. I think the Coronavirus vaccine itself won’t be hard to make in
and we will be ready for winter 21-22.
If we stop wearing masks now, this winter will be one of the deadliest winters if not the deadliest in our lifetime. Metropolitan areas in the south and west could end up like Italy and NYC because the cities have had time to develop their background infections over the summer just in time for fall when everyone goes back inside. We need to start our efforts now, not lift them.