Why is herd immunity controversial?

Why even pose the question? Logic tells us herd immunity is simply the biological mechanism that ends pandemics, and there is no other. It comes about through exposure to the virus, and/or a "viral mimic" in the form of a vaccine. If one is never exposed to any form of the virus, biologic or artificial, there can be no immunity, individual or herd.

I've read that vaccines are between 40-60% effective. Not sure how we arrive at that number, presumably in isolated studies where no opportunity to be exposed to the biologic form of virus confounds results. If the 40-60% number is correct, consider that exposure to active viruses may be more effective than exposure to artificial viral mimics. Otherwise it's very unlikely our species sapiens would have survived our 120,000 years on the planet preceding vaccines, a concept that is 200 years old.

Have we been blinded by science with the idea only vaccines are effective? Consider also that vaccines take time to develop, and by the time of their arrival herd immunity is already well along it's path.

And yet all credit goes to vaccines. Hubris?

I'm reminded of the Thomas Dolby song "She Blinded Me With Science".

I have no objection to vaccines that are safe and effective, but I have come to be concerned about the corrosive effect of outsized profits on the vetting process.

The obsession with cases also blurs the issue. Epidemiologists focus on mortality because as the virus "consumes it's resources" (the immunologically naive), two things happen: one, it depletes resources, and two, it mutates and virulence decreases. Both factors cause mortality rates to decline as herd immunity increases.

Of course an overall combined benefit is possible to a double exposure to both live virus and viral mimics. But that is mostly beside the point I'm trying to make.

One pandemic we humans are increasingly infected with is hubris, which is correlated to and increases with industrialization and technology. We have asserted a great deal of control over nature, but at the cost of environmental destruction. There is a belief more technology, the original problem vis a vis ecological destruction, will be the answer. But technology is simply not possible without resource consumption. Collectively we humans have a difficult time accepting that proposition. Every new technology is going to be "the answer". It's a hubristic delusion that takes us further into the current rapid decline of biodiversity, the seventh mass extinction.

Certain members of the health science community take a zero tolerance position, where any number of cases and deaths from the virus are unacceptable. This strikes me as naive, hubristic, and ultimately and ironically, more destructive than the focused protection perspective.

Some also have the idea as an indication of the success of lockdowns to this point only 20% of populations have been exposed to the virus. And going to a focused protection approach will result in a massively higher total mortality. This also strikes me as a naive belief that "waiting for the vaccine to save us" is the answer to everything. It's my impression most experts feel the numbers of the exposed is closer to 60% at this point. Let's also remember that most individuals exposed have either no, or minimal, symptoms.

If that's the case herd immunity to covid is pretty much here already, and the fact global all cause mortality rates have mostly dropped back to normal levels supports that view. This does not mean however care and caution with social distancing is no longer warranted, we first need to see more prolonged all cause mortality rates back to normal levels.

These two perspectives, an overactive belief in science as the answer to everything, versus the less hubristic recognition that nature still runs the show, seems to me to be at the root of the social hysteria we are currently enduring. And if I may note, most of the strife is generated by the overactive belief brigade.

Isn't that usually the case?

We are of the earth and we return to the earth. The human who's biology is not absorbed back into the earth has yet to happen. That would be, I suppose, the first astronaut to slough this mortal coil above the atmosphere, way off into the cosmos somewhere. There must be some innate comfort to death on the earth we don't think of very often. Mother Earth is generous in her birthing of us and grateful in her receiving of us when our time somes. And we are grateful there is life at all in the cosmos, here, on Earth.