Herd immunity can also be achieved by the anti-vax people catching the virus. They can develop immunity by being sick instead of getting a shot.

You can reach herd immunity on any one strain - but as we've seen, the virus can mutate faster than we can reach herd immunity.

The arrival of delta (and the other four or five major strains) signal that that theory flat-out will not work, the virus is mutating faster than we are reaching herd immunity. By the time we actually reach full herd immunity, we will have strains that the vaccine only provides significantly diminished protection against - we are arguably already getting there with Delta.

Along with an accompanying crush of ICU hospitalizations and deaths.

Why haven't we spent time bolstering healthcare then? Why have all the field hospitals been destroyed as fast as they were put up?

> Why have all the field hospitals been destroyed as fast as they were put up?

Take your pick from:

a) They were a bit of a PR gimmick? Better for gov't to be seen to do _something_ than standing around wringing your hands and hoping things will improve...?

b) They couldn't be staffed and equipped to provide appropriate and useful additional care?

c) General hospitals were perhaps not quite as close to being overwhelmed as was reported?

There were stories that German hospitals may have been slightly economical with the truth in terms of obtaining additional funding for ICU beds, which perhaps weren't needed or even ever created[0]

[0] https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/corona-hilfen-schummelei-1-3...

I think the argument is a fallacy in general. For people that keep making this argument: Stop beating around the bush and just come out and say you want zero covid at all costs.

We don't have enough doctors and nurses to staff the ICU beds bolted to the floors of the hospital.

Those field hospitals are surge capacity; and work with hurricanes and earthquakes where a single part of the country is affected. You can bring in volunteers and reservists from other areas to create capacity.

When the emergency is everywhere, and on-going, all of your surge capacity is gone.

The emergency has been everywhere and ongoing for almost 2 years now. At what point do they make an effort and the government says "Hey, let's permanently bolster our hospital systems. We'll hire X amount of 'surge' staff, create X amount of 'surge' beds".

But we don't do that. Instead we act surprised every time there's a surge, the media feeds off it and everyone starts infighting. I'm not convinced hospital capacity is really the problem people say it is.

You need to train more doctors first. That’s the issue.

IMO an even more important question is, why aren't we pursuing early outpatient treatment with combinations of existing over the counter medicines?

Such techniques have proven to be very effective at preventing hospitalization and death for SARS-CoV-2 [1][2], yet you will rarely find anyone advocating for them.

The papers I've cited are some of the most highly cited in the literature, with world-wide support from experts at top institutions who are actually treating COVID-19 patients.

These alternatives to vaccination are likely more palatable for the anti-vax crowd, and can help prevent over-utilization of precious medical resources.

[1] Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltex...

[2] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

> why aren't we pursuing early outpatient treatment with combinations of existing over the counter medicines

Doesn't this come back (yet again) to the financial incentives?

Go to FDA.gov and read up on "Emergency Use Authorization"[0]:

> FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.

If it were to turn out that an existing (possibly cheap? maybe even a generic? ) over-the-counter medicine is a good treatment for C19 then that would undercut the business plans of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and co.

Asking "cui bono" has never been more appropriate.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-...

You're making too much sense; someone is going to call you a conspiracy theorist.

Exactly. That's my point. It is unavoidable.

We can hope. Some people have already become ill from COVID more than once.[1] This is rare, but it happens. Immunity from vaccination seems to be stronger than immunity from having the disease, but it's too early to be sure. How long vaccine immunity lasts is an open question. So far, it's at least N months, where N is how long the vaccines have been in wide use. Beyond that is speculation.

[1] https://www.brgeneral.org/news-blog/2021/july/can-i-get-covi...

> Immunity from vaccination seems to be stronger than immunity from having the disease, but it's too early to be sure

Unless anyone can cite peer-reviewed sources that indicate otherwise, there doesn't appear to be any conclusive evidence on this point. In fact these publications provide evidence that naturally acquired immunity is just as effective as vaccination [1][2] ([2] hasn't been peer-reviewed yet).

> How long vaccine immunity lasts is an open question. So far, it's at least N months, where N is how long the vaccines have been in wide use. Beyond that is speculation.

I'm interested in recent peer-reviewed literature supporting this point, and would be grateful if anyone could share links.

[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf

[2] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

Or catching the virus and being more or less asymptomatic.

> because the remaining willfully unvaccinated population is both anti-mask and anti-vax.

That's not quite true. I know people who are not anti-vax, nor anti-mask, but they have an aversion to a new untested vaccine.

That means they will be infected and subsequently immune, boosting herd immunity