LANCASTER, PA.— According to a local medical center, the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has achieved what no other community has been able to do – herd immunity.
"Herd immunity refers to the number of people in a community or a country, for that matter, that have developed natural protection against an infectious process," explained Dr. Mike Cirigliano of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Medical experts at a New Holland Borough Healthcare Center said around 90% of Anabaptist households dealt with at least one coronavirus case after churches reopened last year. They say those households are now immune to the virus. Another administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, also estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus.
“You would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.
The Amish and Mennonite groups initially complied with stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic — shuttering schoolhouses and canceling church services. But by late April, they had resumed worship services, where they shared communion cups, handshakes and holy kisses, a church greeting among believers.
Soon after, the virus moved through the community. “It was pretty heavy here in the spring; one patient right after another,” said Pam Cooper, a physician’s assistant at the Parochial Medical Center. In late April and early May, the county’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests exceeded 20 percent, according to nonprofit Covid Act Now.
The medical center saw—on average—nearly a dozen infections a day, or around 15 percent of the patients it serves daily, Hoover said.
Hoover said that it’s difficult to know the full extent of the virus outbreak since he estimates that fewer than 10 percent of patients displaying symptoms consented to being tested. Most of them just dealt with the sickness and went back to work when it passed.
While infections ebbed through the summer, before picking up again in the fall, Hoover said new cases are now far and few in between.
The center hasn’t had a patient present with virus symptoms in roughly six weeks, Hoover said.
But some medical experts are more skeptical that a large outbreak has led to widespread immunity in the community. Eric Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University, said herd immunity is possible but rare.
"It would be the first general population in the United States that’s done it," Lofgren said.
WHO Changes Their Definition Of Herd Immunity
Herd immunity occurs when enough people acquire immunity to an infectious disease such that it can no longer spread widely in the community. When the number susceptible is low enough to prevent epidemic growth, herd immunity is said to have been reached. This has been the accepted definition of herd immunity for centuries.
In a shocking reversal that’s akin to redefining reality, the World Health Organization changed their definition of herd immunity in October 2020, a definition that has stood for centuries.
In June 2020, WHO’s definition of herd immunity, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine said
“Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.”
In October 2020, here’s their updated definition of herd immunity, which is now “a concept used for vaccination”
Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.
This perversion of science implies that the only way to achieve herd immunity is via vaccination, which is—according to medical experts—blatantly untrue. The startling implications for society, however, are that by putting out this altered information, the WHO is attempting to change our perception of what’s true and not true, leaving people believing that they must artificially manipulate their immune systems as the only way to stay safe from infectious disease.
Why would they suddenly change the definition of herd (or community) immunity after centuries of agreement on the term?
As of this writing, other high-profile medical organizations have not signed on to WHO’s altered definition of herd immunity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, in their Glossary of Terms, defines community immunity, also known as herd immunity, as follows:
“A situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. Even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community.”
Pro-vaccination medical workers downplay the idea of natural herd immunity, saying "The only true herd immunity that we can bring as a community is for people to be vaccinated," (Alice Yoder, executive director of Community Health at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health).
As stated, a community gains herd immunity when a significant portion of the population (the “herd”) becomes immune to an infectious disease. The Amish in Lancaster County appear to have done so.
And as expected— they did it the old fashioned way..
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