You say that is we went back to herd immunity that humans would go extinct, that obviously has to be totally false because vaccines did not exist at all until around 1800, and we did not go extinct before then.
You claim these epidemics would burn through the population like a forest fire, and that is easily proven false because they never did.
They sure did -- all of them --- when faced with a virgin population. Namely, the whole population of North and South America after Columbus. Killed out some 90% of Indians. That would be us, I realized, if we couldn't keep vaccinating.
No, Rigby, Europeans did not go extinct, because disease epidemics came one or two at a time and there were survivors, and most were not as lethal as smallpox or plague or the English Sweat (now disappeared). So people either died or became immune and some had time to have children before the next iteration appeared, often of the same disease as last time: the plague lasted off and on for 300 years, the lethal English Sweat for at least 50.
I am saying we are right now in the same position as the Indians of North America: we have NO-NO-NO natural immunity to anything except some colds and flu. Hit with a new disease --- well, you see what has happened. Hit with everything at once on a population unvaccinated for 50 years? Extinction event.
The worst in all history was Bubonic plague, and that did not kill any more than 30% of the population, and was still ended by herd immunity.
And that was with 100% infection rates, because they did not realize it was hosted by rodents and spread by fleas. which were ubiquitous.
No, it did not have 100% infection; that's measles. It missed some whole areas and a lot of towns. The best way to survive plague was not to catch it. I can't believe you give it 30% mortality! You are making that up; it was way worse. Next I suppose you'll say Ebola is only 30% lethal. Not a good idea to underestimate the bad diseases' potential for killing. Smallpox would pretty much kill the world if released now: it DID kill up to 90% of all the natives of North and South America after that Spanish slave brought it in. Because they didn't have "herd immunity." And when they got it, there weren't many left. So Europeans easily conquered the continent.
Nor doe going back to herd immunity mean not using vaccines.
It just means that vaccines take too long when an epidemic like covid-19 starts.
If we had ended it with herd immunity in March, then we would have saved over 250,000 lives.
My point is just that "flattening the curve" does not at all work, since all that does is give the epidemic more time to entrench more widely and impossible to end.
Okay, I see what you are saying -- you are saying we should have just let it rip in March 2020, and let people alone to decide what to do themselves. I am inclined to agree with you. A lot more would have died at that point, presumably, but people are dying anyway now and you are contending the population immunity would have built up fast. As I say, I agree with that. I think the government took a wildly wrong turn and made the problem much worse.
There nothing wrong with quick things that work, like quarantine with contact tracing.
Yeah, great stuff if it works, like it did with SARS and earlier, eventually, with leprosy.
Obviously quarantine and contact tracing were total failures with COVID. Because it had already gotten free of the bottle, so to speak, and no one could stuff it back in.