Trump advisers consult scientists pushing disputed herd immunity strategy

Experts say that seeking widespread immunity in the manner the scientists prescribe could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions more U.S. residents.

 

By SARAH OWERMOHLE and DAVID LIM

10/06/2020 06:51 PM EDT

Updated: 10/06/2020 07:54 PM EDT

 

The Trump administration’s health chief met Monday with a trio of scientists who back the controversial theory that the United States can quickly and safely achieve widespread immunity to the coronavirus by allowing it to spread unfettered among healthy people.

 

The meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, which also included Trump adviser Scott Atlas, is the latest example of administration officials — including the president himself — seeking out scientists whose contrarian views justify the government’s handling of a pandemic that has killed 210,000 people and infected nearly 7.5 million so far in the U.S.

 

“We heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace,” Azar tweeted after his meeting with Harvard medical professor Martin Kulldorff, Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya and Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta.

 

Full story: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/06/trump-herd-immunity-scientists-426911

Herd immunity was always the practical way to go. 

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

Well there goes any chance that might have got anywhere, now Trump has been mentioned means that it will be condemned out of hand without any proper debate