The UK, Dr Fauci, And Herd Immunity

After I put up yesterday's post, something kept bothering me. I quoted an official UK source that said, in part:

An estimated 94.1% of the adult population in England, 92.0% in Wales, 90.4% in Northern Ireland and 93.6% in Scotland tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies in the week beginning 9 August 2021. The presence of antibodies suggests a person previously had COVID-19 or has been vaccinated.

Given at least the conventional wisdom we've heard from the public health establishment, shouldn't this mean that the UK is at, or very close to, "herd immunity"? For instance, according to the Mayo Clinic, on a page specifically discussing COVID,

Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.

Often, a percentage of the population must be capable of getting a disease in order for it to spread. This is called a threshold proportion. If the proportion of the population that is immune to the disease is greater than this threshold, the spread of the disease will decline. This is known as the herd immunity threshold.

What percentage of a community needs to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity? It varies from disease to disease.

. . . Herd immunity can [also] be reached when enough people in the population have recovered from a disease and have developed protective antibodies against future infection.

But in countries like the UK and Israel with very high proportions of the population either vaccinated or with natural immunity, the disease simply hasn't declined. In fact, at least at the moment, the US, with full vaccination rates only above 50%, is performing better than either the UK or Israel. Denmark, with a vaccination rate of only 73.8%, has lifted the last of its COVID restrictions.

The Mayo Clinic says the percentage of a community that needs to be immune to achieve herd immunity varies from disease to disease. So what's the percentage for COVID? We don't have an answer. If Dr Fauci knows, he won't tell us what it is. Late last year, he told the Sunday talks,

"We all have to be honest and humble, nobody really knows for sure, but I think 70-85% for herd immunity for COVID-19 is a reasonable estimate," he said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, adding that herd immunity would require "something a little bit less than the 90%" of the population to be vaccinated.

Fauci had previously said it could take up to 90% of the US population to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus. Fauci told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday that "when polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," but "when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."

So he's said he doesn't know, but he gives out numbers that suit his agenda. He's got a multibillion dollar budget, but he doesn't seem able to get anyone actually to study the problem. But in any case, the UK experience suggests that even 94% isn't enough.

Yesterday, he made a public remark that indicates he has no idea what part natural immunity plays in immunizing the herd, even though every conventional definition of "herd immunity" says there must be one:

Dr. Fauci was finally asked why people with natural immunity should be required to get the covid vaccine given studies that show we have more protection.

His response: “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”

Well, I don't have a really firm answer on what's going on, either, and I'm not even Dr Fauci. But it seems to me that the public health establishment worldwide is hemorrhaging credibility.