@LаngLаngС Heard a bit of Offit on NPR today. He's a bit narrowly focused, quick to dismiss things like compliance and side-effects. Very much a "perfect world" mindset. I was disappointed in the simplicity of his statements, though maybe it got better (I didn't hear the entire interview).

He did make a claim "herd immunity has never occurred naturally". Hmmm, don't know about that. If both viruses and hosts evolve, then herd immunity should be the tendency, no?

Maybe I'm playing fast and loose with his context, which was short timeframes and humanity. He was criticizing Britain.

@fredsbend Herd immunity has quite a bit more than one specific reading or precise definition. Even more important is that it will be a spectrum, not a defined endpoint. In that sense prior to vaccination a kind of herd immunity nearly always occurred 'naturally' for an adult population in eg measles. Older people couldn't catch nor spread that what they once had. That protects all, for a time, through herd immunity. Then fresh fodder is born…

Compare such effects to when Europeans came to America. In quite a few cases minimal index cases devastated the native population with things the Euros had a kind of herd immunity.

Yes, kind of my point with Offit. He was speaking in a pretty narrow context, overly simplifying things. But you say his new book is great ...

When 'he' speaks of "never" he must mean a narrowed down definition: big%, perfect, 'extinction event for pathogen' herd immunity. That is strange and sounds like rabulistic rhetoric.

@fredsbend It is. Imo. Not a 'believe like bible, or else' recommendation, of course. This is SkepticsSE. ;) Painkillers, VitD and other suppleme are especially worthwhile.

A twisted read would also be thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31924-3/… on terminology alone ;)

Ahm. Correction. Instead of 'Painkillers' it was "antipyretics".

I liked this for a definition:

> [Without] a steady influx of susceptible [hosts], the rising prevalence of immune individuals would end an epidemic.

@LаngLаngС I liked that one, thanks for sharing it.

Another definition offered called it herd immunity when simply the disease vectors were avoided. Say what? The English aren't immune to Plague. They're simply less filthy than their ancestors.

Would that make masks and social distancing contributors to herd immunity? Lol, Orwell is calling. "Immunity is not immunity".

I also appreciated the brief points on eugenics, a topic too readily dismissed. Unfortunately, it was with the context of one "tainted by proximity".