IMMEDREL//ATTN:CD@TCNET//VIA/JC(EOC)//TTYP/UNCLSF
"What's not being addressed...is the rate of decline in the population..."
Incline Village, Nev. (EOC Net)--Appearing on CNN's State of the Union yesterday hosted by Dana Bash, foremost immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci was forced to respond to his wildly gyrating projections on the concept of "herd immunity." Fauci used known statistics related to the measles in order to make his estimate, which was any where from 75-80 percent on the lower end of the spectrum, to 90-95 percent on the higher end. In addition, asked "when" all of the vaccines would be administered to achieve at least the mid-range, Fauci reported not until the end of Summer, 2021. Called out on the fact that stats were slow to show just how many shots had been given, the immunologist stated there is always some reporting confusion when a n ew vaccine is administered. Even then, the entire concept of "herd immunity" appears to be based on what he referred to its relationship to another highly infectious respiratory illness, the measles. A review of primary sources regarding measles and herd immunity produces quite a different story.
In 1971, the question of the effectiveness of a vaccine against a disease was questioned by Dr. John M. Leedom of the USC School of Medicine in an article published by Robert Cooke in the Town Talk (Alexandria, Louisiana);
"Furthermore, Leedom says, vaccinating a great number of persons doesn't appear to produce a desired effect, an effect called herd immunity. 'We used to think that if we hit a magic percentage figure an epidemic couldn't be sustained...Yet some studies with different populations show that immunity rates as high as 80 per cent aren't enough to protect the rest of the population. We found that rubella (German measles) epidemics proceed until 100 per cent of the susceptible persons have been infected.' "
Leedom also noted in the article that even though the vaccine was effective in those inoculated, a "weak " form of the virus was still passed on to those in close proximity. By contrast, a decade before that, the new polio vaccines didn't guarantee a slowdown or eradication of the highly contagious disease, as reported in 1961 by the Fort Collins Coloradoan;
"For polio vaccination does not confer so-called 'herd' immunity. Vaccination of a fair number of individuals in the population does not suppress the disease."
That report filed by the Colorado Medical Society. Still other reports from the early 60s indicated that at least one type of oral vaccine would create herd immunity in those who received no inoculation at all, so the matter could only be settled in the overall statistics. Dr. H.H. Williams, Dayton City Health commissioner, had this to say in 1963 regarding polio vaccination;
"WHEN THE immunization rate gets so high in the herd, the disease does not spread."
Still, that seems to be more wishful thinking than proven scientific fact. Doctors, immunologists and developers of truth serum that offer elixir remedies can never be sure of the outcome until the actual doses are administered. Even then, strains of the original virus appear in the course of mass inoculation that might bypass the cure. All of this is ignored in the face of the spread of the contagion, replaced by some magical percentage that will eradicate the epidemic. That brings up yet another point that hasn't been addressed.
The nation has watched throughout the course of 2020 the spike in coronavirus cases and the number of deaths that resulted. Several graphs show and compare confirmed-suspected cases, hospitalized and ICU committed cases, and the casualty count itself. The graphs are impressive, exponential, by nature, some taking into account weighted coefficients; that's about as far as it goes.
Dr. Fauci, in his SOTU interview with Dana Bash, gave only estimates to the percentages projected to achioeve the mythical herd immunity that will rescue the population from the "scourge;"
(02:48) FAUCI: "It's a guesstimate, I gave a range..."
(03:57) FAUCI: "I think we're going to get there, end of March, beginning of April..."
(04:05) FAUCI: "It's probably going to take several months..."
What's not being addressed in the interview is the rate of decline in the population. Will that be according to some logarithmic decay equation in much the same way the surge was plotted, or will it be a slow, gradual, almost linear reduction in the road to recovery? Will the pandemic disappear as fast as it appeared?
The answer to that would be in the measles modelling at JSTOR by Bjornstad, Finkelstadt and Grenfell, "The cycles are driven by a rapid (initially roughly exponential) depletion of susceptible hosts," which has already occurred. The authors then establish a stochastic disease model. Several of the plots are innovative and beyond the standard time plotted exponential graphs used currently to reflect infections; one of which is infected versus available population. This particular graph plot might indicate just how far the virus can reach out into the population before an overall un-inoculated herd immunity could possibly take effect. Although the x-axis on the graph indicates a "Susceptible population," that doesn't mean everyone who comes into contact with the virus will get sick. On the y-axis, "Infected population" also does not show that everyone exposed to the virus will get sick, merely exposed.
In yet another model, a number of variables are taken into account that would have an effect on the growth rate of the virus in the community, such as number of "immigrants," the growth rate, community size, and proportion infected. That may explain why, in all of the California purple tier regions, the one that hasn't really dropped below the 15 per cent ICU occupancy level, has been in the far north above Sacramento.
The measles epidemic dynamics are worth noting, but to a greater degree in what has been presented by health officials. Two things still remain vague with relation to herd immunity and mass inoculation, not made clear by Dr. Fauci. The first is where to predict to peak in the graph, which may be considered a stochastic, random model since it's upward turn post-Thanksgiving. The second is the downturn dynamics of the pandemic as vaccinations increase, the nature of the slope of the graph, and not just related to time.
The vaccine driven decrease of infection rate in a population can be found in the Bioscience Journal article by Dobson and Carper, Infectious Diseases and Human Population History;
"One of the major additional effects is the reduction of infected individuals in the population due to the reduced number of contacts that infected individuals have with susceptible individuals. The effect is called herd immunity. As the percentage of the population that is immunized increases, there are linear decreases in the total incidences of the disease in the population and increasingly rapid decreases amongst the proportion of individuals not vaccinated." (Dobson, Carper, 124)
The rapidly accelerating graph as the pandemic sweeps across the population may well not be mirrored as the disease wanes in proportion to vaccination and the in-place existing mitigation measures. Thus, as the pandemic appeared overnight, it may take months, possibly years, for it to be completely eradicated even with 100 percent herd immunity.
LA County To Require 10-Day Quarantine For Travelers
“Because of the likelihood of exposure to COVID-19 while traveling outside of L.A County, for everyone that traveled or are planning to travel back into L.A. County, you must quarantine for 10 days,” the department said in a news release.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. The virus thrives where the population is dense as it has a large selection of susceptible individuals to infect. Someone travelling outside of the county, to a remote area where the rate is lower, as in Northern California, has a greater chance of contaminating that region and should be quarantined there upon arrival.
Cited
Cited
Cooke, R., Town Talk, 29 September 1971, Page 30.
The Fort Collins Coloradoan, 11 May 1961, Page 13
Dayton Daily News, 13 January 1963, Page 21.
Bjørnstad, Ottar N., et al. “Dynamics of Measles Epidemics: Estimating Scaling of Transmission Rates Using a Time Series SIR Model.” Ecological Monographs, vol. 72, no. 2, 2002, pp. 169–184. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3100023. Accessed 28 Dec. 2020.
Dobson, Andrew P., and E. Robin Carper. “Infectious Diseases and Human Population History.” BioScience, vol. 46, no. 2, 1996, pp. 115–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1312814. Accessed 29 Dec. 2020.
Stampede image, Day of the Horns by Roberta Wesley longhorns stampede in the dust (wesleyprints.com)
IMMEDREL//ATTN:CD@TCNET//VIA/JC(EOC)//TTYP/UNCLSF