Attempting to reach herd immunity through natural infection will result in devastating losses of both life and quality of life for those infected and are completely insupportable as a public health strategy

DARWINISM, that is the theory of natural selection NOT the theory of evolution, is again mounting a direct and deadly danger to the lives of Americans and others through Trump's nominations, most well known the idiot lawyer-liar, celebraty anti-vaxxer Little Bobby Kennedy (I won't sully the name of his father, anymore) but also to other and perhaps even more dangerously important offices.  One of the worst of those is Jay Bhattacharya for head of the National Institute of Health,  Bhattacharya's professional credentials consist of the deadly combination of economist and MD, a combination I don't trust at all because economics is such a pseudo-science, one which apparently dominates in Bhattacharya's interest.   The danger he poses is best shown in his part in the deservedly infamous Great Barrington Declaration.  That declaration advocated a Darwinian form of "herd immunity" which would rely on imagined evolution of natural immunity through the mass infection of the human population, one for which the imagined mechanism of such included a very large number of deaths from, in that case, Covid-19, what we got, especially in the Trump I regime because he and Republican-fascist governors implemented that, none of those more deservedly infamous than the criminal idiot Governor Noam of South Dakota.   And it's a use of the term "herd immunity" based on the crudest and most primitive notions of Darwinism, one advocated by Charles Darwin, his son Leonard Darwin and many others of those generations, especially in opposing mass vaccination against small pox as evolutionarily dysgenic - though I have seen no evidence that the Darwin anti-vaxxers, like Little Bobby, practiced that for their own families.  Here is the most known and influential claims to that effect by Charles Darwin from The Descent of Man:

There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
 

Especially in this case, it is vitally important to notice  Darwin imagines and advocates the idea of the human population as a herd of animals and not a natural herd of animals but those kept artificially under human animal husbandry, to be exploited and then slaughtered  due solely to their economic utility, that slaughter put off, in some cases, due to their perceived superiority IN THEIR ECONOMIC UTILITY.  Though there is no actual evidence that such a thing has anything to do with the evolution of new species or that that is actually an accurate description of what happens in the wild.  That is what lead the, thankfully, unsuccessful candidate for the British Parliament and later big deal in organized eugenics, Leonard Darwin, to run on a platform that opposed mass vaccination against small pox.  And which, since many of the economists advocating "herd immunity" to Trump claimed to be practicing "Darwinian economics," is the inspiration of that deadly and stupid ideology. 

And, as is proving typical of the late 19th and early 20th century concept of natural selection, actual science, especially done later in the 20th and 21st centuries, provides ample evidence it is deadly wrong. 

Here from a paper by Angela Rassmussen, thankfully available to the public, which notices the objections of comparing the human population to a herd of animals as kept for exploitation by agriculture:

Herd immunity is a relatively recent concept, and some have taken umbrage at the term as it equates human populations with animals. However, this reflects the origin of the term, which was originally coined by livestock veterinarians in the early 20th century referring to epidemics of “contagious abortion,” or pathogens that caused spontaneous miscarriages in herds of cattle and sheep. By the 1950s, the term was applied to newly developed vaccines and their potential for preventing widespread viral diseases such as polio at population scale2. As herd immunity as a concept became more broadly associated with immunization campaigns, it gained that specific meaning. Until recently, herd immunity generally referred to population immunity acquired through vaccination.

UNTIL RECENTLY.  

It's from the National Library of Medicine so you might want to copy it and any like it before the Trump team gets in, they'll probably suppress it as they did suppress science not congenial to their idiotic and homicidal line during his first regime.

Notice that the original use of the term by actual scientists referred to its use in assessing the efficacy of vaccination.  She, as well, honestly ties the concept to the theory of natural selection.

Human communities defend themselves against specific infectious agents in a way that extends beyond the simple sum of the immune status of its individuals. By analogy with individual immunity to specific agents, the community level of immunity may vary from complete susceptibility to full protection. Herd immunity has been used to name this community property, which is the result of evolution through natural selection, leading to relationships between two species, typical of prey–predator systems. Varying uses of the term herd immunity led to the use of other expressions, such as herd protection, herd effect and community immunity. Knowledge derived from observational studies and models on herd immunity has supported decisions on the choice of vaccines and vaccination strategies for the benefit of populations. This knowledge is most likely to be extended in the future, with far-reaching effects.

Notice the phrase "typical of prey-predator systems" which is as close as anyone I've read on this in the short time available to admitting that the concept is derived from the deaths by slaughter of those labeled as "susceptible."  IT SHOULD NEVER BE FORGOTTEN THAT WHEN THE PHRASE "NATURAL SELECTION" IS USED, THAT "SELECTION" MEANS SOMEONE IS DEAD, DEATH IS THE "SELECTIVE" FORCE IN THE THEORY.   In Darwin's imagination and that of everyone who accepts the theory, the dead one is biologically inferior, though there may be no other evidence of such a valuation in nature.   It is no accident that such thinking is so congenial to the racist, bigotry practicing, elitists in the Trump world.  I would say that such Darwinism is entirely in line with it because that's the case.

Certainly, from the hard experience of human history under modern economics, including many from that list of unfortunates marked as dysgenic by Darwin in the quote above.  Elsewhere and throughout the book he lists entire groups of such dangerously dysgenic People* as the economic underclass (a product of entirely artificial choices made by law makers and the economic elite, in no way a natural population) and entire ethinicities and races of human beings, those as well subject to entirely artificial discrimination and subjugation.  I will note he not infrequently makes the contradictory claims that such "inferior" People have an enhanced state of vigor due to their violent culling by "nature" and by each other, even as he marks them as inferior.  I mention that because such thinking is endemic in the Republican-fascists who support such Darwinian economics, even those who are among the most rabid "Anti-Darwinists" as long as by that is only meant his association with the theory of evolution.  They love the scientific-racism and eugenics of Darwin, they only hate that it's tied to the fact of the evolution of species.

In her paper Angela Rassmussen also says:

Furthermore, relying on natural infection rather than vaccination to reach the herd immunity threshold assumes that infection and vaccination induce comparable immune responses with similar durability. There is growing evidence that this is not the case. Many pathogenic viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, inhibit the activity of type I interferons, which drive innate antiviral responses that are critical to both initial suppression of virus replication and subsequent induction of robust adaptive immunity. SARS-CoV-2 infection profoundly suppresses type I and type III interferons compared to influenza A virus in vivo 7. Systemic suppression of type I interferon is associated with severe COVID-198, which is also linked in multiple studies to lymphopenia9. As type I interferons drive Th1 polarization, which enhances both neutralizing antibody and CD8+ cytotoxic T cell responses, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the subversion of these responses could impact adaptive mechanisms of viral clearance and the development of immunological memory. Although most COVID-19 patients do develop detectable antibody responses, multiple studies have observed that serum antibody titers may rapidly decline within months, for SARS-CoV-2 as well as other coronaviruses10. While the significance to functional immune protection is unknown, it does suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection may result in atypical long-term immune responses. A recent study showed substantial depletion of follicular CD4+ T cells and a loss of germinal centers in the lymph nodes and spleens of patients who died of COVID-19, and this was accompanied by severely reduced follicular B cells11. As follicular CD4+ T cells within germinal centers are necessary for differentiation of memory B cells, this finding suggests a possible mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 infection may impair the development of long-lasting, durable immunity.

Immunity induced by vaccination is likely to produce very different responses. The current vaccine candidates in late-stage clinical trials do not cause SARS-CoV-2 infection, therefore will not interfere with or evade either innate or adaptive immune responses. Although several of the candidates are viral-vectored vaccines, these undergo an abortive, non-pathogenic replication cycle and do not suppress these immune responses. Therefore, they are less likely to result in subversion of memory immune responses. Data from pre-clinical and phase 1/2 trials support this finding: while infection results in a wide spectrum of antibody titers, immunization consistently produces neutralizing titers comparable to the highest titers seen in convalescent patients12 , 13. While there is not yet data on how this impacts durability, it suggests that immune responses elicited by vaccines are fundamentally distinct from those produced by naturally acquired infection. Thus, reaching herd immunity through immunization rather than infection will not only occur more quickly and with vastly less morbidity and mortality, it will likely result in greater functional immune protection for a longer duration of time (Figure 1 ).

In other words, there is evidence that natural infection may not produce the levels of natural immunity that the damned economists dream of.  I suspect that is tied with the widespread (even within science) old-fashioned idea that viruses and bacteria, once identified as a species, are a fixed entity which the human immune system will recognize and successfully fight off when the truth is that such pathogens are, in many cases, rapidly evolving - evolving especially rapidly in epidemic or pandemic situations in which more host organisms are infected and reacting to them - and that, as in the cases of influenza and the common cold, they are very able to surmount the human immune system due to their evolution of defenses against it.  Such is what such up-to-date researchers in evolution as Denis Noble and James Shapiro have repeatedly pointed out as overturning the neo-Darwinian dogma that most such college-credentialed "experts" hold as the foundation of their pseudo-scientific proclamations and declarations.   There are, of course, organisms which are far more permanently suppressed, perhaps in the rarest of cases to the point of extinction by mass vaccine programs. 

Rassmussen's paper ends.  

Many questions remain about how herd immunity will contribute to the ultimate control of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the long-term prospects for preventing future outbreaks. However, several facts are abundantly clear. Although vaccines, when available, will require months to distribute and tremendous efforts to overcome vaccine hesitancy, they still will reach the herd immunity threshold, whatever that may be, in far less time than natural infection would permit. They may produce more robust, longer-lasting, and more protective immune responses than infection. Most importantly, decades of reliable research demonstrate that vaccines are a safe and highly effective means of preventing widespread infectious diseases and are the only morally and scientifically acceptable approach for achieving herd immunity at national or global scale. Attempting to reach herd immunity through natural infection will result in devastating losses of both life and quality of life for those infected and are completely insupportable as a public health strategy for controlling a generational pandemic.

Our mass media, our legal system, our political class have put us at the mercy of psychotics wedded to mid-19th century science who haven't even defined their terms correctly.  It's obvious from how many of them hold prestigious university positions that the academic community isn't anything like up to date with the science.   

Will we have a mass disaster, maybe a huge version of the measles epidemic that Little Bobby helped set off in Samoa, leading to a large number of deaths of children?  Something which he lies about his role in, regularly.  Maybe it will be a new and worse pandemic disease such as is incubated regularly within the animal husbandry industry.  The damage that Trump and his pseudo-scientific hacks, Harvard trained lawyer-liar, economists - the evil of Darwin's theory of natural selection being a development of Malthus's economics - may get a lot of us killed.  One thing is clear, they will take a wrecking ball to what may be the best scientific health agency in the world and, if we get the chance, it will probably take decades to rebuild it after even four more years of Trump.   That's what was chosen earlier this month.