There are more than 2 million members of the U.S. military.
Let’s start out with the heroes… a transient A-10 at our local Air Force base, back in October:
And let’s hope that the pilot has been triply heroic now by agreeing to two vaccine shots!
An inconvenient truth from America’s top scientist: just as not everyone in the military can be a combat pilot, it seems that not everyone in the military can be a hero, contrary to what we’ve been told. “Fauci Says Military Who Refuse Covid-19 Vaccine Are ‘Part Of The Problem’ After High Rate Of Service Members Refuse Jab” (Forbes🙂
… the U.S. military is one of a number of frontline professions reporting startlingly high rates of vaccine refusal, despite clear evidence that the vaccines are safe and effective.
“You’ve got to think of your own health, which is really very important, but you got to think about your societal obligation,” Fauci said at a virtual town hall for Blue Star Families, a non-profit focused on helping military families.
Out of 2 million, how many have been felled by what science tells us is a pathogen that requires the most dramatic adjustments to human society since the Black Death of 1348?
The U.S. military, which has been deployed around the country to assist with the pandemic response, has struggled with Covid-19 outbreaks, recording 163,574 cases and 24 deaths throughout the pandemic.
(For comparison, NHTSA says that several hundred U.S. military personnel die in traffic accidents each year, an example of the general rule that I articulated a year ago: Why do we care about COVID-19 deaths more than driving-related deaths?)
If U.S. military personnel could cut their driving by 10 percent, therefore, they could save more lives than by taking a vaccine that was 100 percent effective against COVID-19. So maybe the “you’ve got to think of your own health” advice from Dr. Fauci is medically unsound (i.e., better to spend an afternoon coming up with ways to cut driving miles per year than to drive to a vaccine clinic). Fauci adds, however, that it is each service member’s “societal obligation.” Contrary to Dr. Fauci’s own previous statement, COVID-19 isn’t actually dangerous to a healthy 35-year-old enlisted soldier, but, without a vaccine, he/she/ze/they could be a carrier:
Vaccines are the “best and most important intervention we have” to stop the pandemic, he said, together with public health measures like masking and social distancing.
“Because by getting infected, even though you may not know it, you may be inadvertently transmitting the infection to someone else, even though you have no symptoms,” Fauci said, adding: “in reality, like it or not, you’re propagating this outbreak.”
So… vaccines reduce infection and transmission to the point that everyone has a societal obligation to test out an “investigational” pharmaceutical?
- “Fauci on why you should still wear a mask after vaccine” (CNN, February 18): Americans should continue wearing their masks and social distancing even after getting the vaccine because they can still spread coronavirus.
- “grandma could still get virus in her nasopharynx, even though the vaccine is preventing her from getting physically ill.” (Dr. Fauci on Today, January 21)
I.e., from the same doctor/government official: (a) the vaccine is so effective at preventing transmission that those who face almost no personal risk from the virus must take it, (b) the vaccine is so ineffective at preventing transmission (absent a nasopharynx removal), that Americans should continue to keep their lives on hold until the PCR machines stop giving us numbers that we don’t want to hear.
And don’t forget to wear a mask after you’ve dead… (from our neighborhood, October 25, 2020):
Related:
- Sweden ignores the science on COVID-19 vaccinations (towards the bottom, a Facebook exchange that started with an expression of outrage that young healthy people did not want the vaccine)
It’s weird that you are only looking at the few deaths and not the number of illnesses. Wasn’t there a ship early in this that was somewhat ineffective due to just peop being ill?
Why have the risk of people getting I’ll if the vaccine works?
Members of the military are required to have al sorts of vaccinations. Including for Anthrax.
It’s weird that you didn’t complain about his only looking at traffic fatalities, not traffic injuries and property damage.
Oh, wait. That’s not weird because you are trained to look at only the numbers which reinforce the establishment line.
Dave: The aircraft carrier indeed became ineffective when the heroic crew members abandoned ship (but fear of coronavirus didn’t prevent crowding together (unmasked) below decks to cheer the captain who had tried to protect them from giving each other coronavirus).
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/03/why-wont-the-sailors-who-abandoned-ship-get-coronavirus-soon-enough/ is on this subject. It is funny to go back to April 3, 2020 and see that we were still in the first month of “14 days to flatten the curve”. As I noted in that post, though, after abandoning ship the Navy personnel should still have expected to contract coronavirus eventually (the CDC says that roughly half of Americans ultimately did, despite our yearlong shutdown and masquerade; see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/01/05/we-ran-but-could-not-hide-more-than-half-of-americans-have-now-had-covid-19/ ).
Would the Swedish Navy have been able to operate this aircraft carrier? Sure. Out of the 5,700 people on board, 3 required hospitalization and 1 died (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_USS_Theodore_Roosevelt ). Sad, but disabling only if you want it to be disabling. As with coronaplague in the civilian world, the effects of the virus are primarily mental.
“It’s weird that you didn’t complain about his only looking at traffic fatalities, not traffic injuries and property damage.”
???
He’s dismissing the COVID deaths are not being important. And ignoring the “injuries and damages”.
If the ACLU can successfully pressure state governments to prioritize inoculating prisoners, how long before there’s an ACLU lawsuit against the Department of Defense for not mandating vaccines for all their servicemembers?
https://www.aclu.org/news/prisoners-rights/incarcerated-people-should-get-priority-access-to-the-covid-19-vaccine-its-the-smart-and-human-thing-to-do/
“Today, we are proud to say that people in prisons, jails, and immigration detention — along with people with disabilities and seniors in congregate settings, communities of color, and other vulnerable groups who have been most impacted by the pandemic — should be a first-tier priority for the COVID-19 vaccine. And if officials fail to prioritize incarcerated individuals for the vaccine, we will do what we do best: We will take those officials to court. ”
There is no doubt that people in the military were among the first people impacted by the pandemic. So why isn’t the ACLU taking the Defense Department to court?
Is this one of those 5…4…3…2…1…. situations?
Hey you stupid skeleton, pull that mask over your nose!
Sorta on topic: How did such a sensible airplane as the A-10 get through USAF procurement?
@Donald: I would say that’s 95% down to the influence of one Pierre Sprey, who as you can see was a vocal and super-controversial critic of the F-35 program. The A-10 is Sprey’s airplane. And even with his influence it has been a bumpy road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
“In 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force asked Pierre Sprey to write the detailed specifications for the proposed A-X project; Sprey’s initial involvement was kept secret due to his earlier controversial involvement in the F-X project.[11] Sprey’s discussions with Skyraider pilots operating in Vietnam and analysis of aircraft used in the role indicated the ideal aircraft should have long loiter time, low-speed maneuverability, massive cannon firepower, and extreme survivability;[11] possessing the best elements of the Ilyushin Il-2, Henschel Hs 129, and Skyraider. The specifications also demanded that each aircraft cost less than $3 million (equivalent to $20.9 million today).[11] Sprey required that the biography of World War II Luftwaffe attack pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel be read by people on the A-X program.[16]”
If you want to build an attack aircraft, learn from one of the best attack pilots. If the Germans had 20 more Rudels, they might have won World War II:
“Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II, in which he was the most decorated German serviceman and a recipient of the Knight’s Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements. He claimed 11 aerial victories and the destruction of more than 800 vehicles. He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 “Stuka” dive bomber.”
https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/06/04/screaming-death-10-amazing-facts-about-the-ju-87-stuka/
If you read that article, you’ll see that the basic idea for the Ju 87 “Stuka” began in here when a famous German WWI pilot witnessed a demonstration of a Curtiss F8C Helldiver while visiting America in 1931! So we gave them the idea for the Stuka, which gave Rudel the plane to become the attack pilot who inspired Sprey to design the A-10.
A-10 is airplane for after when air superiority achieved. Price and resource-conscious Israeli military has never ordered one, this is a good indicator that it will be hard to use A-10 against potent potential adversaries such as China and Russia at its full strength. It was never tested against former USSR military. As for Stuka dive bombers it was likely ripped off and improved Curtiss BFC-1 Hawk and it was already behind its times when first used. It could bomb stationary soft target (besides when piloted by Hans Rudel who gave it drone quality) but it was a slow easy pray for even older types of Soviet fighter aircraft. It was not a big threat to trained troops who were not afraid of noise produced by non-retractable landing gear. Direct concentrated small arms and machine gun fire at point of dive would make Stukas bomb off-target or be shot down. Even Rudel was shot down by ground fire. And good Soviet tanks commanders raided deep rear of German troops with impunity, not obstructed by Stukas deterrence. One single BT tank even ran 200 mile long raid parallel front line in Wehrmacht rear, exiting at different geographical military theater.
@philg , I look forward to your upcoming post explaining how those two statements are logically congruent:
“(a) the vaccine is so effective at preventing transmission that those who face almost no personal risk from the virus must take it, (b) the vaccine is so ineffective at preventing transmission (absent a nasopharynx removal), that Americans should continue to keep their lives on hold until the PCR machines stop giving us numbers that we don’t want to hear.”
Once you complete that post, can you please also explain also how the following positions are logically congruent:
(a) It is awesome that the efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 90% plus, because these very high efficacy numbers tell us these vaccines are great, and (2) the J&J vaccine with its 72% efficacy is exactly as awesome, as efficacy numbers are meaningless for comparison and science is telling us these vaccines are indistinguishable in their results.
Thanks in advance.
@Alex My deceased friend LTGEN Carl Peterson was one of the Vietnam Skyraider pilots who contributed to the A-10 specifications. He had a lot of stories, from a 20-year-old B-17 pilot in WWII to his retirement from the F-106 in the 80’s. He used up two B-17’s and several engines in WWII (flak), but never had an injury in the crew.