No COVID-19 regulations, no masks, no social distancing, plus sharing communion cups and “holy kisses” equals — herd immunity? This may very well be the case with a Pennsylvania Amish community, according to a health official. It also may indicate where the wider society has gone wrong.
As the New York Post reports:
The administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus.
“So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.
The Amish and Mennonite groups initially complied with stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic — shuttering schoolhouses and canceling church services.
But by late April, they had resumed worship services, where they shared communion cups and holy kisses, a church greeting among believers.
Soon after, the virus tore throughout the religious enclave.
“It was bad here in the spring; one patient right after another,” said Pam Cooper, a physician’s assistant at the Parochial Medical Center.
In late April and early May, the county’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests exceeded 20 percent, according to nonprofit Covid Act Now.
“However, less than 10% of the patients agreed to be tested for COVID-19, so the exact extent of the outbreak is unclear,” adds the International Business Times (IBD).
“The community had another surge of cases yet again in the Fall, but they are now considered rare,” the site continues. “Hoover noted that no one had presented COVID-19 symptoms at the Parochial Medical Center in about six weeks.”
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“Herd immunity, whether naturally or through vaccination, is achieved when most of the population has become immune to an infectious disease, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (JHSPH) explained,” IBD then related. “To achieve this, some 50 to 90% of the population typically has to be immune.”
While the Post and IBD conclude their articles by trumpeting vaccines, quoting an “expert” who said that they offer the “only true herd immunity that we can bring as a community,” much here is left to be said.
First, if “90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus,” and if SARS-CoV-2 is as asymptomatically infectious as claimed, wouldn’t it follow that every member of that 90 percent of the families has been infected?
Moreover, given the Amish’s communal habits and their intermingling (e.g., the church contact), wouldn’t it also make sense that the other 10 percent of families would have been exposed to the China virus as well?
This is yet another indicator that the virus either, A) isn’t as asymptomatically contagious as claimed; B) isn’t as deadly as the COVID-panic-porn media would have us believe; or, C) both.
As to mortality, Centers for Disease Control data have informed that age-specific survival rates for the virus are, related Breitbart late last year, “0-19 years old, 99.997 percent; 20-49 years old, 99.98 percent; [and] 50-69 years, 99.5 percent.”
Also a possible factor is that the Amish are healthier than most Americans because of their lifestyle, which involves continual rigorous exercise and the consumption of relatively healthful foods. Note that obesity, a major risk factor in COVID, is rare among the Amish.
But what the Amish story mainly appears to illustrate is the folly of lockdowns. Not only do the data show that these measures cost more lives than they save, but they also may fatally forestall natural herd immunity.
As to this, consider the words of Dr. Knut Wittkowski, the former longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City. In an interview with the The Press & The Public Project (PPP) in early April of last year, Wittkowski said that with “all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity.”
“About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children,” Wittkowski continued.
“So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible,” Wittkowski explained, “and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated.”
Yet Wittkowski issued a warning as well: that “flattening the curve” also means lengthening it. “I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary,” he said.
The reason why was explained by Eric Lofgren of Washington State University. “Herd immunity is only true at a given point in time,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. “It’ll wear off.”
While the above was presented by IBD in an obvious effort to discredit the natural-herd-immunity thesis, it should discredit the lockdown thesis. Consider:
It has been said that natural China virus immunity lasts only three months (though the amount of time is irrelevant to the point). What this means is that when we slow viral spread via lockdowns to the point at which it takes far longer than three months for 80 percent of the population to get infected, natural herd immunity can perhaps never be achieved.
That is to say, one segment of the population gets infected and achieves immunity. Yet because of lockdowns, there’s still another segment of the population battling the virus a year later that can re-infect the first segment. Theoretically, it could become a never-ending cycle because the virus never gets exterminated. Thanks, Fauci.
Note, too, that vaccines are also effective for only a limited time. But the ostensible goal is to vaccinate most everyone in relatively short order to achieve artificial herd immunity. Of course, the actual goal may be to just secure herd control by the big government shepherd.
So should we all have just gone Amish a year ago? And is one reason why we didn’t that the pseudo-elites have a different kind of communal living in mind for us?
