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Dear Editor:

Given the Trump administration's failure to implement an effective national policy against COVID-19, is its strategy actually to allow this deadly disease to spread, to create herd immunity? Rather than preventing infection and deaths until a vaccine is available?

There's always a "tell." Here, people are thinking they'll gamble with our chips.

The Washington Post reported that in a June 20 email, Dr. Paul Alexander, a Trump appointee to the Department of Health and Human Services, said, "Importantly, having the virus spread among the young and healthy is one of the methods to drive herd immunity."

Sen. Rand Paul's attempt to out-doctor Anthony Fauci in a Sept. 23 Senate hearing included his suggestion that in New York City, "they've developed enough community immunity that they're no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in NYC to actually stop." Fauci refuted Paul's thesis.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar met on Oct. 5 with Trump adviser Scott Atlas and three other proponents of building herd immunity through infection spread, and later tweeted that the meeting provided "strong reinforcement" of the administration's strategy.

Publicly available information shows the costs of a strategy of immunity by infection: 1. The current US COVID-19 infection rate is estimated at a 2% to 3% national average, with some areas as high as 20%. 2. Herd immunity requires an infection rate of 65% to 70%. And 3. Several million Americans would die while we reach that level.

Modern nations, and states like New York, largely beat the virus and reopened their economies with uniform policies aimed at keeping their citizens alive while vaccines are developed. Back in modern times, the world beat smallpox and polio with mitigations and vaccination.

We did not give the administration permission to send us as cannon fodder in a suicide charge at the virus so it could "win" with little effort.

Johannes Sayre

Kingston, N.Y.

Read the original here:
Letter: Herd immunity isn't solution to COVID pandemic - The Daily Freeman