Breaking: Leaving Your Life Behind To Live Amongst Cows on a Farm Is Not What “Herd Immunity” Means
With the one-year anniversary of the start of this hellish pandemic quickly approaching, many of us our frankly out of bullshit ways to fabricate escape from the torture. The whipped coffee and homemade bread era is long gone, triple masking is apparently the new double masking, and it’s been months since anyone has connected with the passage of time enough to post That Video of Lil Uzi Vert on the third of the month. The delirium is real, understandably so. Said delirium, though, seems to be causing a bit of confusion about what potential solutions might be.
“I’d read, like, headlines of articles about herd immunity, so I knew it was pretty important for this whole COVID thing,” said junior and prevailing horse girl Sarah Stewart, toying with the dolphin Silly Band on her wrist (“quar” reignited the passion, of course). “I just hadn’t really thought about what kind of herd I might be into, you know? Goats are cute but they seem a little aggressive, and elephants are kind of inaccessible here, like on this continent. But I saw a TikTok about how cows can actually have best friends and before I could even finish thinking ‘sorry I can’t be her’ I realized the idea was perfect. If we all just moved onto farms and lived amongst the cattle, ‘rona would probably clear right up.”
“No. That’s– wow. Nope. That’s not what that means,” said public health student and self-identified CDC-FSU liaison Allison Miller. “At all. Not even close. Herd immunity is actually about getting a certain portion of the general population to be immune to the virus so it doesn’t have anywhere to spread. Nothing to do with farm animals. Please, if you have been, stop telling people that. Not that I’m opposed to the concept of leaving it all behind to frolic through some meadows with a bunch of cows. That actually sounds kinda nice. Send me that TikTok. But to be clear, no, that has absolutely nothing to do with herd immunity.”
Of course, in this time of despair and amongst the communal desire for comfort in the place of our complicated and highly infectious lives, the serenity promised by a sanctuary of fluffy bovine pals is naturally appealing. The fantasy just happens to be entirely scientifically unrelated to the pandemic, or its conclusion, despite some unfortunately dual terminology. The same world that gave us Wearing A Mask Into A Place You’re Going To Eat At couldn’t possibly let us have that.