In case you haven’t noticed, the CDC no longer looks as concerned with herd immunity as it once did.
In what should come as no surprise to anyone watching the Covid related narrative closely (or those who have been watching the herd immunity narrative from the get-go), the CDC has “set aside herd immunity as a national goal,” according to a new report from the LA Times.
What used to be a relatively simple concept has now turned into something “very complicated”, according to Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.
“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” he said to a panel that advises the CDC last week.
While Jones says vaccines are effective against Covid, “even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread,” the report says.
Ergo, herd immunity seems to now be off the table. “We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” Jones said.
Dr. Oliver Brooks, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices told the L.A. Times that “we do need to increase” the uptake of Covid shots.
Brooks admitted that the focus moving away from herd immunity “almost makes you less motivated to get more people vaccinated.”
He also told the L.A. Times he was worried that if the CDC backs off its herd immunity target, it’ll prevent them from reaching their vaccine targets.
It marks the latest of many 180 degree changes of heart on issues related to Covid by the CDC.
“It’s a science-communications problem,” Brooks said, making sure to reiterate that the agency was still following “the science”.
“We said, based on our experience with other diseases, that when you get up to 70% to 80%, you often get herd immunity,” he said about Covid. “It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and it’s repeatedly challenged us. It’s impossible to predict what herd immunity will be in a new pathogen until you reach herd immunity.”
He concluded: “We want clean, easy answers, and sometimes they exist. But on this one, we’re still learning.”
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, added that herd immunity was “never as simple as many Americans made it out to be”.
Sure, Kathleen. Even Americans like Dr. Fauci?
“Humans are not a herd,” Jamieson told the LA Times.
Raj Bhopal, a retired public health professor at the University of Edinburgh, added: “It’s very hard to convey uncertainty and remain authoritative. It’s a pity we can’t take the public along with us on that road of uncertainty.”
Tell that to everyone that’s been listening to “the science” and the “official” narrative for the last 18 months.
This article appeared at ZeroHedge.com at: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/all-sudden-cdc-has-stopped-talking-about-herd-immunity
