Running With the Herd

We aren’t cattle, sheep, or wildebeest, but as fellow mammals, we all can be considered part of a herd. The coronavirus has introduced discussion of the term “herd immunity” and how to get there. In Sweden, rather than suffering under the strict limited-contact measures adopted by most countries to fight the spread of the disease, citizens are allowed to interact fairly normally. Yes, more people will get sick, but the idea is that if up to 70 percent of Swedes contract the disease and recover from it, the herd will eventually develop immunity to COVID.

While the death rate in Sweden is higher than in the rest of Europe, and the World Health Organization has not yet concluded that people recovering from the disease are immune, the Swedish model sounds attractive. So why aren’t we doing it?

Well, as one of our own top  epidemiologists has pointed out, only 30 percent of the Swedish population has been infected so far, and they have a long way to go before herd immunity sets in. Here, we are doing what we can under the circumstances to limit death until a vaccine comes, which will allow the inoculation of members of our own herd at a level necessary to achieve immunity.

Disease is a natural process, like the weather. When the rain falls, there are two ways to go: getting wet and waiting for the sun to dry us off after the storm clears, or seeking shelter. We Americans are seeking that shelter in the form of accepting restrictions and looking forward to the quick development of treatments and a vaccine.

We may be saving lives with this approach, and life is precious. But what if you have lost your job, can’t pay bills, and you and your family may have to join the herd of the homeless? You have a life, all right, but there isn’t much quality to it.

The thing about rain is that it falls on the just and the unjust, as is often said. The coronavirus respects no boundaries or social status, or red and blue. It has no morals and doesn’t read the Constitution. There aren’t any haves or have-nots,  just catch and catch-nots. It gets increasingly hard for people to hold on to lofty principles when they can’t eat, and that is as dangerous as the disease.

As I have said in previous posts, there is a tipping point coming, where a level of risk has to be accepted to keep the economy from going off the cliff. It actually has already done that; we are simply clinging on to one of those branches growing from a crevice in the rock face that keeps us from falling all the way down. It is not  about an either/or choice, life versus the economy. It is going to have to be about both.

Spotlight on the Out-of-Sight

One of the things the coronavirus has done is shed light on groups of people who don’t get much attention in what we would call “normal” times. Here are three that stand out now to me.

The first are the elderly – specifically, those who live in nursing homes. What are these places? It has been pointed out that there are likely more of these homes in our culture, while in others, older people tend to spend more of their senior years at home with their families. But in many cases, loving families simply don’t have the facilities or expertise to properly care for the oldest among them. Curiously, though, nursing home residents dying of COVID-19 are often not included in the disease’s casualty figures.

Then there are the prisoners. It’s said that the US is the clear world leader in the percentage of the population behind bars. Most of us are perfectly content to have these individuals locked up so that we don’t have to deal with them or think about them. This group includes those whose offenses are no longer crimes and, of course, those who didn’t commit crimes in the first place, and are disproportionately people of color. Even for those who have fairly earned their sentences, however, we might wonder if they deserve to be trapped in what amounts to a COVID petri dish.

Finally, there are the folks who work in meat-packing plants, often foreigners placed at close quarters, working with animal parts. Many of these plants are in fly-over states, and in those states, they are often COVID hotspots. Most of us meat consumers probably prefer not to know where this part of our diet comes from and how the animals (still another forgotten group) are raised. While I’m sure that most of the vegans and animal-rights enthusiasts don’t support seeing humans get sick, they may be pleased that a spotlight is shining into a corner where the majority of us don’t want to go. It has been suggested by some that COVID itself is Mother Nature’s way of paying us back for the abuse that is done to animals, as the disease itself is believed to have jumped from animals to humans, who are not naturally immune from it.

These groups are the ones currently getting some extra attention due to the virus, and I’m sure you can think of others. It usually takes a really inconvenient truth to shake us out of automatic thinking, and once in a while, we need that.

Testing, Testing...Is This Thing On?

If you’re having trouble getting your head around this coronavirus testing issue, you’re in a very large club. The way it has been explained, there are two basic types of tests. The first, the PCR, is diagnostic and tells you if you have the virus, though you may not feel sick. If the test is positive, you need to be quarantined, and those who have come into contact with you recently need quarantining too. The second is the serology test, basically a blood test that determines if your immune system produced antibodies and successfully fought off the virus in the past.

The first test is a snapshot: you either have the virus or you don’t. if it comes out negative, It only means you did not have the virus when you were tested, but you might catch it later. The other test sounds like better news: you defeated the virus with antibodies, and maybe you are now immune. If so, it is you who may lead us on the long road back to normal.

How might this work in practice? If you are indeed immune, theoretically you could get a certificate that says you’re clean and return to work. If you never had the virus, you may not be able to return until you test negative via the PCR first. Even then, you might have to take repeat tests periodically to check your status.

The tests have been hard to get. There are a number of versions with varying degrees of accuracy. A lot of them are missing swabs, reactive chemical agents, or some other component needed to make them work. As with many shortages right now, it’s all about manufacturing and supply chain issues -  tough problems, but soluble. But we just don’t have the right President now.

Those in the know say we need to get a lot more testing done, with the tracing of contacts of virus carriers, to determine the penetration of the disease before we open up the economy. Others say we won’t really be safe until there’s a vaccine. But can we stay locked down for six months, or a year or more? In my own humble and unprofessional opinion, there is a tipping point coming, where we may have to open parts of the economy up, if only to save a little public sanity. That will come when improvement in our testing program intersects with the level of risk we are willing to tolerate. And whatever we open, we might have to close again.

Are we at this tipping point yet? No, and I fear that the governors of those states where the reins are being loosened may find the virus teaching them some hard lessons. The states hanging back will learn from the experience, or the mistakes, of those opening too soon. As for the protesters in the lockdown states, a few cops armed with cameras and books of tickets, each carrying a fine of a couple hundred bucks for violating local mask and separation orders, could easily thin those crowds out.

There will be plenty of time later to call out those who dropped the ball in responding to this crisis. In my view, It wasn’t all about negligence or denial; some of the mistakes were just unfortunate. Now, however, it’s time to pick up that ball and put our index fingers down - and then wash our hands, of course.