[woodruffw]

Yes, you can. Herd immunity as a public health policy includes protection from severe illness; COVID vaccines have consistently been shown to provide protection against severe illness even when new variants appear.

Also, to point out the absurdity with all of this: we wouldn't have as many variations as we currently have if people were to actually get their vaccines. Handwringing over variants while also resisting the chief tool we have for reducing the likelihood of new variants is ridiculous.

[swader999]

I agree the vaccine does decrease the incidence of severe illness, even in the new variants. Based on this fact it should be given to the vulnerable.

A policy of mass vaccination to protect the vulnerable is a different thing and is more related to the concept of herd immunity. It can be very bad policy depending on the nature of the virus. Its really good policy for something like measles. Here's a link that takes a deep dive on how this relates to covid and the corona virus: https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen...

[woodruffw]

I did a brief parse of that site, and it's the standard crank spiel about anything vaguely pharmaceutical (plus some "Great Reset" dogwhistling and bloviating about America's founding fathers). He even threw in a Sherlock Holmes quote; how can I argue with that?

Yes, pharmaceutical companies are bad. They're so bad that it's a trite and tired observation to base conspiracy theories on. Nothing written therein changes the fact that the shot is free for you and produces improved healthcare outcomes. The US government already spends hundreds of billions of dollars keeping people alive after decades of damaging their bodies; paying a few billion more for some vaccines is hardly worth a global conspiracy.

[swader999]

Agree with your criticisms but his points on herd immunity are pretty good. If you want a more scientific dive into it this Alberta neurosurgen did a pretty good analysis on some of the same aspects, all referenced: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/not-justified-canadian-...

[woodruffw]

I'm not going to do an in-depth rebuttal of these types of articles, because I'm (1) not qualified to do so, (2) not inclined to do so, and (3) lack the time needed to disentangle the science-adjacent claims from the standard conspiracy chaff about freedom, pharmaceutical companies, &c.

But two points:

* Being a neurosurgeon, even a highly educated and titled one, does not make someone an expert on immunology. If he was an expert on immunology, he would be an immunologist. This is exactly the reason why there are stringent rules about diagnoses and evaluations in hospitals: doctors are no less susceptible to expert confusion than the rest of us.

* mRNA vaccines are a new technology. But they're not that new: research into mRNA transport and delivery began in the late 1970s[1]. By the 1990s, they were recognized as the frontier of vaccine development, and were primarily stymied by an absence of funding. Vaccinology's history spans 300 years, the majority of which involved stabbing people with unknown quantities of pathogens without any real understanding of what we were doing. mRNA represents a significant and positive increase in the use of our modern understanding of immune systems to develop medicine. That doesn't make them safe, but they do represent the safest approach (in terms of healthcare outcomes) we've had to vaccinology in its history.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

[burnafter182]

Explain to me how exerting selection pressures through a leaky system prevents the likelihood of variants.

And to evince you of known hazards of leaky immunity, I suggest you look up Marek's disease.