Herd mentality to the rescue
It’s the herd mentality you see, it will save us.
President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday during a televised town hall that “herd mentality” could make the coronavirus “disappear” with or without a vaccine.
During a 90-minute town hall hosted by ABC News in the must win battleground of Pennsylvania, Trump defended his repeated assertion that the virus will eventually disappear even without a vaccine, citing what he called “herd mentality”…
Herd immunity, dipshit.
ABC News’ Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Trump whether the coronavirus “would go away without the vaccine?”
“Sure, over a period of time. Sure, with time it goes away –” Trump responded.
Stephanopoulos interjected: “–And many deaths.”
“And you’ll develop, you’ll develop herd — like a herd mentality. It’s going to be — it’s going to be herd developed – and that’s going to happen. That will all happen,” Trump said.
He knows more about it than anyone.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, who is the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, has said the “death toll would be enormous” if the country attempted herd immunity.
Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, but you get your herd mentality and then you can have football and crowds again.
Here is the blinding ignorance of the man. You could explain it to him using picture cards and he still wouldn’t get it. He seems to think herd is the modifier i.e. that there is herd undeveloped and herd developed. He doesn’t understand that in the phrase ‘herd immunity’ that immunity is the modifier of herd in this context. He might as well swap herd for cheese or King Kong or blue whales or baseball bats.
It is oft said that Trump can’t read very well. That’s demonstrably true in a number of ways; he’s certainly unable to concentrate on one thing for more than few seconds, visibly stumbles when reading a script because he can’t be bothered to learn it and forgets concepts because he can’t keep them in his mind if it’s not directly related to him or his progeny. He also is too vain to wear reading glasses because to do so would admit that a part of him is failing due to age.
But there’s another tell here: Trump is like a kindergartener spelling out words he doesn’t know and is therefore incapable of comprehending the whole sentence or its context. It explains why his recitation using teleprompters is so monotonous and dull. He’s not bothering with context or meaning so he can’t use verbal intonations that normal people use to give flow and indicate important points. The kid who didn’t do his book report, badly improvising on the fly.
Well it’s certainly herd mentality he’s counting on, that enough of his supporters will forget or not care about the massive incompetence and callousness of his response to the pandemic. All those deaths? Mind over matter. He doesn’t mind because they don’t matter. Hell, he could borrow Melania’s jacket.
Ladies and gentlemen! Now for your amazement! The Magnificent Donnie Dipshit will make a pandemic disappear, right before your very eyes! Come one, come all, as we see Mr. Dipshit perform a fabulous magical miracle, using his expert prowess in the lost art of Herd Mentality! Step right up folks, prepare to be stupefied!
For many people the term “herd mentality” translates to “group think”, but if you understand the origin of the phrase it is much worse than that.
Sheep cluster in herds not for protection per se, but on the statistical calculus that while the wolf is going to eat one sheep regardless, if you are in a herd it will probably be one of the others, not you.
I have to say that I aspire to be a bit further up the food chain than that.
Listening to Cyril Ramaphosa talking about reopening our borders.
He’s talking about South Africa joining in the efforts to come up with a vaccine, and the need to pull together to rebuild the economy.
He’s urging people to wear masks, wash their hands, maintain social distancing, and join a dance challenge.
Just to contrast.
@YNNB Sure he could borrow Melania’s jacket…if he wore it as a bandana.
He’s just been reading Andy Borowitz, that’s all. And failed to understand it. Shocked, I know.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-believe-congressional-republicans-have-developed-herd-mentality?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Borowitz_091620&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9e4283f92a40469fa8f72&cndid=24406983&hasha=376648391986c159a1554cbf0c4f32cc&hashb=66855ae766b00c320fe4c43b50b1b6c0b6aa4cc4&hashc=166b3c3425f518905ae62139b048c33117d7682d2df3e7abd06454e9686a412a&esrc=NYR_BOROWITZ_BLOG&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_Borowitz
Okay, I did look up HTML, but my link didn’t work!
If herd mentality were going to fix COVID, then we should hand it over to the TRAs and they could get it banned.
I have a document on my laptop with HTML shortcuts. Here’s the relevant one:
title goes here
(without the carriage returns)
So if you put https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-believe-congressional-republicans-have-developed-herd-mentality between the quote marks, and Andy Borowitz between the > and the <
it becomes:
Andy Borowitz
Damn, I tried to break the HTML so that it would be seen, but it seems it’s impossible to break when you want to!
Yes; that. It makes me writhe with fury and disgust. It’s like being back in first grade and having to listen to classmates who haven’t really learned to read yet when you have…except that he’s not 6 and he does have enormous powers.
I usually try to find shorter addys, HTML is much more clean and neat, but I’m too lazy to type it all in with a touch keyboard, so more like this >> https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report – which is just copy and paste. Dunno if that helps?
I think it all makes sense if we assume that Captain Pussygrabber-Bonespurs alias Donny Dipshit’s next post-prandial I mean post-presidential career move will be to a job as a stand-up comic on late-night TV: on the sort of program pitched towards those who want help getting to sleep.
Given the numbers that we have (e.g., the minimum number of people who must get sick and become immune is about 60% of the total population, and the death rate is about 2.8% of those who become infected), about 5.88 million people would need to die in order to achieve herd immunity. Just in the USA.
James, those figures are horrifying.
But what if it turns out that effective herd immunity would be more like that for measles (which, fortunately, can be achieved through vaccination) and we actually need at least 95% of people to be immune to stop it spreading?
James, it would be worse than that. Some quite large percentage of those who get sick will suffer long-term damage to heart or lungs, which will be terrible for them and further overload our medical services.
@David Evans Not to mention preexisting conditions.
@tigger_the_wing It really depends on the R0. The R0 of measles is very high – in the mid teens to low twenties. We don’t have good estimates on the R0 of COVID yet, but it seems to be in the range of 1.4 to 4. 1-(1/R0) is the classical model of calculating herd immunity rates so that’s why the target rate would be ~60%. It is not likely that the R0 estimates are so bad that the true number is as high as measles. However, the difficulties in finding the asymptomatic people makes estimating R0 properly almost impossible right now.
Having said that, those models assume complete immunity with no possiblilty of repeat infection. If there is a possibility, the calculations get more complex.
@James That’s not quite correct. Herd immunity would require 60% of the population to acquire immunity in whatever way according to the basic model. But that model assumes that a) that everyone infected who does not die acquires immunity, b) any acquired immunity is persistent and effective and c) that immunity suppresses the chance of transmission as opposed to merely rendering an individual asymptomatic on repeat exposure.
Steven#4. I actually worked as an under-shepherd in the Welsh hills briefly in my mis-spent youth, so that I have rather more respect for the ‘herd mentality’ and the intelligence of herd animals than perhaps many people do. Sheep do not in fact make statistical calculations; that is a scientific interpretation of their behaviour – it is the scientists who make statistical interpretations. I am not denying the truth of this interpretation, but will merely say that it is better for the herd as a whole if herd animals do behave in this way: for it also has the effect of making things more difficult for the predator or predators (which or who also have their patterns of behaviour, which, if one wants to look at it that way, are no less ‘selfish’ than those of herd animals). Human beings also behave in this manner – when, for example, the riot police come in, or in the rush-hour when because people in front start quickening their pace or running because they think a train is coming, others follow suit. ‘Herd’ and ‘herd mentality’ are, it seems to me, used far too much as terms of abuse to differentiate brave and intelligent and supposedly individualistic predators such as Homo sapiens from animals like silly and cowardly sheep, and in the case of Homo Sapiens, in spite of all the evidence provided by Facebook, etc.
This is possibly too late and too far down to be seen, but:
Tigger, I think you would love the “code” html tag. It is simply the word code between per usual for html, and it allows html code to be typed out without that code being used by the browser – it remains visible instead of taking effect. iknklast’s URL can be demonstrated like so:
He’s just been reading Andy Borowitz, that’s all. And failed to understand it. Shocked, I know.aaaaaaaand it doesn’t work the way I thought it did. It breaks urls by preventing the browser automatically turning them into a clickable link, but specified links by a=href are still preserved. Oops.
I’m too lazy, so I use Open Live Writer and then copy/paste from the source tab.