George Monbiot has some good points:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... long-covid
One of the justifications for selfishness was that liberating the virus would build herd immunity. But we now have plenty of evidence suggesting that exposure does not strengthen our immune system, but may weaken it. The virus attacks and depletes immune cells, ensuring that for some people, immune dysfunction persists for months after infection.
We also know that, with every new exposure, we are more likely to suffer adverse effects. A massive study in the US found that the risk of brain, nerve, heart, lung, blood, kidney, insulin and muscular disorders accumulates with every reinfection. The impacts of long Covid, according to health metrics researchers, are “as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury”. Now that we know how the virus attacks our cells, “traumatic brain injury” looks less like an analogy than a description. The outcomes can be devastating, ranging from extreme fatigue and breathlessness to brain fog, psychotic disorders, memory loss, epilepsy and dementia.
I reported it shortly after lockdown was cancelled that the evidence was in: "herd immunity" was impossible.
Folks could be re-infected, and they could also transmit, even if asymptomatic themselves.
The whole concept of "herd immunity" is that the immune become a "block" on the virus spreading, as it can't re-infect the once infected and those people stand as a "block" to protect everyone else. But neither of those things are true, so "herd immunity" simply can't happen.
And I can't believe that the NHS experts advising the government - with all their data and experience of the virus spread - didn't 100% know this already (or, at bare minimum, very very strongly suspected from how the virus was spreading), when Boris called for "liberation day".
That was already obvious years ago. Studies since have actually shown that Covid weakens the immune system. My own bout with Long Covid tracks with this, that the virus just left me physically and mentally fucked for at least a good year or so. Yes, the neurological symptoms did feel like a brain injury, and I'm not sure I ever got my mental capacities back to where they were, but more I've just gotten used to this new level.
Yeah, it's hard to explain these internal feelings. As, like, I'm still as mentally capable as before to all external appearances, I feel. But, in the words of the Pink Floyd song: "You would not understand. This. Is. Not. How. I. Am.". I have, indeed, kind of become comfortably numb.
It's no longer novel, and we're all jabbed, so it's not the killer it once was. But it's still a pretty serious disabler. If it hadn't been preceded with lockdowns and so many deaths, we'd absolutely see this as the most major health crisis for centuries. But because it was once so much worse, there is the luxury to fob it off with: "ah, things are much better now".
As I said way back, when I caught it back in March 2020, we have no idea whether I've effectively lost 10 or 20 years off my life, or something. No clue as to the long-term implications. No scooby as to whether I might now be more vulnerable to cancer or a stroke when I'm a pensioner - it messed with the blood works for sure, so it might have left some hidden, as-yet-unknown, vulnerability behind it.
At the time, I was resigning to my fate as - like it or not - being the canary in the coalmine. If I start falling apart, then all you buggers know to stay well bloody clear of this. But, yeah, it's all much too late now. Hopefully, being jabbed then catching it mitigates it, unlike me who caught it then got jabbed, so I didn't have the immune "training" and just took the full brunt, with a bout of the Long Covids to follow.
Too fucking late now, though. But I always, from the off, condemned "herd immunity" because, even if we could have it, then it's not a fucking strategy to be pursued. And it all hinged on whether "herd immunity" was even possible - and I doubted that from the off, because there's really zero reason to presume that would be the case. Some diseases have that, many do not. Why presume the optimistic view for Covid, on the strength of fuck all evidence whatsoever?
Just because it was a way for those who wanted to just fob this off to pretend like they were being scientific. If Boris had just said "fuck the poor and ill" then we'd straight up know he was a cunt. But shroud it in "herd immunity" talk, with NHS people flanking you either side, and you can bullshit people that there's something more profound than "I can't be fucked" going on. There isn't, though. There, unfortunately, really wasn't anything there at all.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
