Excited about the new variant-tailored COVID-19 booster shots?

by philg

Who is excited about the new COVID-19 shots? (not to say “vaccines”) I’m not sure the guy in the photo below is going to camp out at midnight outside CVS. Stopped at a red light in Stuart, Florida, smoking a cigarette and not wearing a helmet:

Let’s check in with folks who say that they’re the world’s smartest. A recent “daily update” email from the City of Cambridge, Maskachusetts:

How many Followed the Science and got all four of the shots that Dr. Fauci told them to get? 1 out of 10. Not everyone is the right age for all four shots (“C.D.C. Urges Adults 50 and Older to Get Second Booster Shot” (NYT, May 2022)), but Science says that nearly everyone must have at least one booster, right? Only 1 in 2 Cambridge residents has made even this minimal commitment to public health.

Related:

  • From August, in which the smartest state refuses to follow CDC guidance: Maskachusetts rejects Science (90 percent refuse vaccines for children under 5)
  • “At Head Start, Masks Remain On, Despite C.D.C. Guidelines” (New York Times, today): the folks who refuse to follow CDC guidelines and get their 3rd and 4th COVID-19 shots also refuse to follow CDC guidelines and continue to force toddlers to wear masks even without “a high community transmission rate” (but toddlers in Florida, like K-12 kids in Florida, are mask-free: “A group of conservative states, including Texas and Florida, sued to prevent the rules from taking effect, and federal courts imposed an injunction on the guidelines in those states.”). Contrary to Science, the article says that forcing children to wear masks harms them: “Masks can make it more challenging for some children to develop early speech and reading skills, which are learned, in part, by observing mouths in movement, according to research.” (and, statistically, this will cause them to die younger because life expectancy and education are correlated; if we count someone who dies a few weeks early with a COVID-19 positive test as a “COVID-19 death” (ignoring life-years lost) then the 745,000 children currently enrolled in Head Start should be counted as “lockdown deaths”)

7 thoughts on “Excited about the new variant-tailored COVID-19 booster shots?”

  1. the photo works on so many levels: the SERVICE DOG with its own sunglasses! the trike! no helmet!

    now that’s risky, dare I say LGTBQ-risky?

  2. In lieu of a more intellectual and incisive argument, instead I’ll offer a song. I think this it captures the spirit of our respective government(s), teacher’s unions, and pharmaceutical companies when it comes to perpetual COVID vaccination and other anti-COVID measures and mandates, including masks. Call me a cynic!

    I do wonder, though – what happened to that early report of a Walter Reed vaccine that vanquished all the variants? Now, apparently, Duke University has done some mouse research to produce an antibody that also works against all the variants, but it’s as far away from human trials as nuclear fusion always is.

    I’ll post the links after everyone has a chance to listen to this song.

    All this was supposed to have ended six months after Joe Biden was elected. Does anyone count that as one of the biggest lies ever told, or do they become a “semi-fascist” for pointing that out?

  3. The great thing about being a dog on the back of a Harley trike is that you don’t have to stick your head out the window. Dog Mode is not needed, and there’s plenty of fresh air. I advise our rider here to quit the cigarettes and lose about 30 pounds, but everything else is just about perfect. He’s also wearing some nice riding boots and is sane enough to sport a long-sleeved shirt even in the Florida heat. The trike also has a sensible liquid-cooled engine and four big brake rotors that work well. Sitting in Florida traffic with an air-cooled anything is a recipe for disaster.

    God Bless America!

  4. My very nice and also ex-girlfriend was willing to take the first two vaccinations. After that she put more trust in her two favorite people, the ex-president and Tucker Carlson. (I think I ranked somewhere below Sean Hannity.) She has been telling me – we still talk – the vaccines don’t work and that she keeps mostly to herself. Apparently not mostly enough.

    She’s got Covid. Dry cough with nasal congestion, headache, heavy fatigue, can’t taste food, can’t work. Six days and counting.

    Other people she knows who are fully vaccinated got as sick as she has from Covid. So she’s convinced the vaccines don’t work. The data prove otherwise.

    My daughter’s school district removed a mask mandate earlier this year. It took about a week for one of my grandkids – and several of his schoolmates – to contract Covid. The family of four were all infected within three days.

    Meanwhile, I’m fully vaxxed and – unlike my ex. I feel free to mingle with strangers. No mask outside. I wear a mask inside markets, movie theaters, hardware stores, on plane flights to visit my daughter and her family, at the veternarian’s office, at Sammy’s Camera, etc. And so far, I haven’t had Covid.

    By the same token, I don’t wear a bike helmet inside, and I always where one when I’m cycling. I have had a few crashes that cracked my helmets instead of my head.

    Lots of people don’t think it’s worth wearing a helmet while on their bikes. Like getting vaccinated, the choice to wear or not to wear a helmet should be theirs. Some of them would surely regret that choice, except they’re dead or in a vegetative state.

    Since it’s obvious most people, like my ex, are not fully vaxxed and probably never will be, I am onboard with getting my omicron-busting booster.

  5. To directly answer your question about the four shot regime – yes. I was vaccinated early and boosted twice. Those were at the recommendation of my doctor, who was (and still is) treating me. I guess that makes me smarter than 90% of the people in Cambridge, and I couldn’t be more honored.

    Since I was (and still am) regularly visiting healthcare facilities and interacting with patients and staff, combined with the fact that what I am being treated for is probably much more likely to kill me than the vaccines and boosters, I decided to follow the guidelines to the letter. My treatments were paused twice due to COVID outbreaks (not caused by me) and that fact has terrible significance in my mind, because I think the treatment delays led to much starker and dangerous treatment consequences.

    So I expect to continue to do so, for at least several more months. I don’t want the hassles and lectures and “semi-fascist” finger pointing, so basically I said: “How much worse can it make things? I certainly don’t want my treatment delayed any longer. At least I will always be able to say that I followed all the recommendations.”

    Kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario and I don’t recommend it. If I had children and was healthy, though, the calculus would have been completely different.

  6. The boosters are only for the already vaccinated, is that 2 shots or four?
    Does this mean no shaming for the purebloods? Surely they don’t expect purebloods to take four outdated vaccines to catch up.

Comments are closed.