Category: Coronaplague

The 6-year-old hater

by philg

Rousseau thought that children were innately innocent, but maybe that is because he never reared any.

On the way to the Stuart Boat Show, we stopped at a favorite local restaurant for breakfast. I finished my Egg McMuffin before our 6-year-old had consumed his Big Breakfast with Hotcakes and decided to share with him some news of the world. I stumbled upon “China Bans Flights From U.S. as Covid-19 Measures Intensify” (WSJ):

The 6-year-old’s comment? “But they started Covid.”

Freed from the supervision of Senior Management, the young hater enjoyed his first caramel apple later that day. After sampling this new delicacy, he said, “You know what would be better? A caramel apple with no apple. The same size and shape, but all caramel.”

(Why don’t the Chinese postpone the 2022 Olympics until they’re willing to allow spectators? If the Japanese could kick the Olympics a year down the road, what would be wrong with a postponement to December 2022 or February 2023, for example? If we believe Science, COVID-19 won’t be a problem then. See “Fauci: US can get Covid under control by next year with more jabs” (Guardian, November 16, 2021), for example.)

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The Serbian Mushrik is cast out of the Antipodal Mecca

by philg

From “Why Are Non-Muslims Not Allowed Into The Cities Of Mecca And Madinah?” (Inside Saudi):

In Islam, the cities of Mecca and Madinah are considered as places of peace, refuge, and sanctuary for Muslims only. Non-Muslims termed Mushriks are prohibited in order to keep it that way.

For example, Hindus believe that Brahma is one and many. Also, 80% of Christians believe in the Trinity that God is three equal and eternal persons in the form of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

The very fact that the Mushrik believes and acts on the basis of polytheism makes him/her a Mushrik and in effect spiritually Narjis (unclean) in the eyes of Allah.

It is NOT the case that he/she is unclean in the physical sense but only in the spiritual sense.

From CNN:

“Rightly or wrongly” tennis star Novak Djokovic is perceived as endorsing anti-vaccination views — and his presence in Australia could influence people, said lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who is acting for the government.

Lloyd said it was “common sense and uncontroversial” to assume that people would listen to Djokovic’s views, given what we know about the power of celebrity.

According to Lloyd, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke doesn’t need to show evidence that Djokovic is influencing people’s views to cancel his visa — just that there’s a risk that he might.

He said Hawke made the decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa in accordance with the Australia’s Migration Act that enables the minister to bar someone who “may” or “might” pose a risk to public health.

From an American point of view, the Australian government’s position isn’t novel. While at least 10 million undocumented immigrants are welcome to stay in the U.S. (even after being ordered deported, as with Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni) and there is no requirement that those who walk across the border and avail themselves of our multi-year asylum process accept Science and the Sacrament of Vaccination, there is no realistic way for an American to express him/her/zir/theirself if he/she/ze/they endorse anti-vaccination views. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will ban heretics. I recently met a recruiter who had 5,000 LinkedIn contacts and was subject to a “lifetime ban” in the fall of 2020. (She appealed the decision and got a response that they’d “reviewed [her] private messages” and decided to sustain the ban.) She had posted skepticism that mask orders (bandanas at the time!) and U.S.-style lockdowns were effective in long-term reduction of COVID-19 deaths.

The New York Times says that Djokovic has been cast out via a flight from Australia to comparatively free Dubai. Let’s check “the curve”. From a few days ago:

Now that Djokovic has left via Dubai, and thus the sanctity of Australia has been restored, it does look as though the curve is flattening. From the Google:

Advantage, #Science?

Samizdat currently circulating among Irish sports fans via WhatsApp:

(Facebook owns WhatsApp, but due to tech limitations, it can’t read messages that are exchanged among users and therefore it can’t easily hunt down and ban the unrighteous.)

Related:

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Trying to make sense of the Supreme Court rulings on the vaccine orders

by philg

We tried to predict what the Supreme Court would do with President Biden’s vaccine mandates on health care workers and on employees of larger companies (see Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes).

In the ruling on the health care industry, dependent on the twin rivers of Medicare and Medicaid cash, the Supreme Court said the following:

In many facilities, 35% or more of staff remain unvaccinated, … and those staff, the Secretary explained, pose a serious threat to the health and safety of patients. That determination was based on data showing that the COVID–19 virus can spread rapidly among healthcare workers and from them to patients, and that such spread is more likely when healthcare workers are unvaccinated.

the Secretary also found that “fear of exposure” to the virus “from unvaccinated health care staff can lead patients to themselves forgo seeking medically necessary care,” creating a further “ris[k] to patient health and safety.”

(The last one is interesting. Suppose that we find that patients are uncomfortable with white cisgender heterosexual physicians, whom they perceive as intellectually inferior due to being able to slide into medical school via privilege. Can the government order that the health care industry hire only the BIPOC and 2SLGBTQQIA+? Otherwise patients might forgo seeking medically necessary care.)

The core of the above-cited section is that a lawyer, with no technical or scientific training, has decided to disagree with a Stanford Medical School professor (see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation” (Nature)) who found that the vaccinated might actually be more likely to get infected and spread disease if you assume (a) an imperfect vaccine, and (b) humans take more risks once they’ve been told that they’re invulnerable due to vaccination. (see also Perfect illustration of risk compensation rendering COVID-19 vaccines ineffective and Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?)

So the Supreme Court accepts as scientific fact that vaccination and casting out the unvaccinated are critical to #StopTheSpread. This, plus potential patient discomfort with heretical providers, led to the Court approving Biden’s order.

In the ruling on generic private employers, however, COVID-19 seems to be a different, much milder, disease. Certainly COVID-19 does not present a “grave danger” to humans nor is SARS-CoV-2 “toxic or physically harmful.”

[workplace-related orders from the Pharaoh] are permissible, however, only in the narrowest of circumstances: the Secretary must show (1) “that employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards,” and (2) that the “emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger.”

So too could OSHA regulate risks associated with working in particularly crowded or cramped environments. But the danger present in such workplaces differs in both degree and kind from the everyday risk of contracting COVID–19 that all face. OSHA’s indiscriminate approach fails to account for this crucial distinction— between occupational risk and risk more generally—and accordingly the mandate takes on the character of a general public health measure,

The last paragraph says that there is an inevitable risk of COVID-19 exposure based on inhabiting the biosphere for workers, but, based on the previous ruling, this is apparently untrue for patients visiting Medicare- and Medicaid-funded health care facilities.

Let’s see who among us got this right…

  • I was at 50% (correct about health care order being approved, a 95 percent prediction and incorrect on my “less confident” prediction that the workplace order would be approved)
  • Craig said “I’m predicting the court will find the federal vaccine mandate to be an overreach simply because the narrative is already shifting towards Omicron <= flu and we must learn to live with it (like you predicted). There is no federal mandate for flu vaccinations, although I believe some federal agencies like VA hospitals can require staff to have flu immunizations.” (he didn’t separate out the two issues before the Court, but I think we might have to give him 100% since he mentioned “federal agencies” (and any enterprise on the Medicare/Medicaid dole is essentially a federal agency)
  • Jack was at 50%: “My guess is the Court will rule against the Biden administration — seems that a substantial number of Americans are opposed to the vaccine mandate & therefore any mandate will be widely ignored. Affects the Court’s legitimacy to uphold law that will be ignored & will encourage civil disobedience. Also, as a matter of numbers, the statist justices are in the minority.”
  • JT was at 50%: “Predict struck down and that it’s a blessing for Biden. It’s obvious it doesn’t stop the spread so all a mandate could possibly do is create onerous bureaucracy people hate.”

Can these rulings be considered logically consistent? There are sicker/older people who go to hospitals than to work. But on the other hand, hospital staff are highly competent at using the masks that the government says stop COVID-19 transmission. Also, the ruling is based on the vaccines being highly effective and sicker/older people are generally vaccinated. And if they can catch COVID-19 nonetheless, they will eventually catch COVID-19 indirectly from people who get COVID-19 in the unsafe workplaces. Ivan pointed out that “Sotomayor claimed that the federal government has ‘a police power to protect workers'”. If we combine these two orders do we find that the federal government has a police power to protect those visiting health care facilities, but as soon as the visit is over the police power evaporates?

Color me confused! The Supreme Court accepts that vaccination leads to reduced COVID-19 infection and transmission, and that the peasantry believe this as well, and therefore the government can order doctors and nurses to be vaccinated. Yet the government cannot order this vital protection for workers outside of health care? And, though this issue wasn’t before the Court, it sounds as though, unless prohibited by state law (as in Florida!), a mayor can order the peasants within a city to be vaccinated if they want to leave their hovels (see Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow for example).

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School administrators comfort the afflicted

by philg

Everyone and his/her/zir/their brother/sister/binary-resister in fully-masked fully-vaccinated Massachusetts is testing positive for a deadly virus (but this in no way diminishes our faith in masks and vaccines). The exponential spread of the mask-blocked vaccine-neutralized plague in the masked-and-vaccinated school population leads to a rash of emails from schools informing parents that a child has been tarred with the “close contact” brush. Here’s an example from a middle school in Maskachusetts:

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I am writing to inform you that we learned today that a student in 7th grade tested positive for Covid. Your child is considered a close contact. The date of the last exposure was January 12, 2022.

Close contacts will participate in the Test and Stay program with a daily test through Tuesday of next week. You will only be notified if your child tests positive during Test & Stay. As a reminder, students who are identified as close contacts who are participating in the district COVID Testing Program may stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic.

Close contacts are not permitted to attend after school activities. Please limit exposure outside of the home and monitor for symptoms.

A close contact at school is defined as someone who has been within 3 feet of distance of the positive individual while indoors, while wearing a mask, for at least fifteen minutes, within a 24 hour period.

We cannot provide specific information about the person who tested positive. School personnel are working with the family as they navigate this stressful experience.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Respectfully,

[*** name elided ***]

Lincoln School, 5-8 Principal

The highlighted content is what fascinates me. Suppose that the family comprises typical Massachusetts residents, a.k.a., Followers of Science. In that case, they believe that they have been exposed to a virus that often has crippling and/or fatal consequences within households containing middle school-age kids. Who will comfort them as they shop for coffins and grave sites? “School personnel.”

My Facebook feed was packed with parents proud of youngsters who are refusing to attend in-person school. See “Students don’t want to learn in a ‘COVID petri dish.’ They’re walking out to prove their point.” (USA Today, 1/14):

Despite surging COVID-19 cases across the country, fueled by the highly-contagious omicron variant, Quinlan said many Boston schools have started to take precautions less seriously, often not enforcing masking or social distancing.

“We are the ones who have been in this environment every day. It’s our bodies that we’re putting at risk,” said Kayla Quinlan, a 16-year-old student activist at Boston Day and Evening Academy. “Students should have a say in what their learning environment looks like, but our voices are always left out.”

“It feels like a breeding ground for COVID, like a COVID petri dish,” she said. “How are you supposed to feel safe?”

See also “Students, seeing lax coronavirus protocols, walk out and call in sick to protest in-person classes” (Washington Post):

Thai Jones, a lecturer at Columbia University who studies radical social movements, said the rise of student activism amid the omicron threat reminds him of the youth movement for gun safety that sprang up after the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school and of ongoing teen-led advocacy around climate change.

“What ties those movements together is these are all times when grown-ups have failed young people, where the politics of adults have really let down teenagers,” Jones said. “And so young people have decided to take matters into their own hands.”

(Old people have failed young people by not locking them down for another few years in order to protect old people from a virus that kills old people?)

Circling back to Facebook, each post celebrating the walkout was heavily “liked” and attracted supportive comments.

What’s happening in the Florida Free State, by contrast? We went to the Stuart Boat Show yesterday and found a fellow refugee from New England. Her summary of Massachusetts-based relatives’ current concerns: “Omicron is an anagram for ‘moronic’.”

Lest you think that everyone in Florida is ignorant regarding #Science-based methods of fighting a virus that attacks the obese, here’s a fully-masked Follower of Fauci ordering fried Oreos and a funnel cake:

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Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow

by philg

Let’s check in to see how things are going at the Center of the Free World (TM). From the mayor of Washington, D.C.:

Adults need a photo ID to go more or less anywhere in the city. If we believe the Washington Post, restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, and bowling alleys in D.C. are about to get richer, whiter, more Anglophone, and younger… “Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly” (WaPo, May 2016):

many election experts say that the process for obtaining a photo ID can be far more difficult than it looks for hundreds of thousands of people across the country who do not have the required photo identification cards. Those most likely to be affected are elderly citizens, African Americans, Hispanics and low-income residents.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to obtain an ID without the proper identification and papers,” said Abbie Kamin, a lawyer who has worked with the Campaign Legal Center to help Texans obtain the proper identification to vote. “Many people will give up and not even bother trying to vote.”

What does a Washington Post-selected expert on being poor, Black, Latinx, and elderly look like? From abbiekamin.com:

vaxdc.dc.gov provides a helpful poster for local businesses:

“Beginning on January 15, 2022, businesses shall display prominently, visible to patrons prior to entry, a notice informing patrons that proof of vaccination is required to enter any indoor portion of a covered location. Before patrons can access the indoor portion of the business, a business is required to check the patron’s proof of vaccination.”

Related:

  • “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in Adolescents in Another Important Action in Fight Against Pandemic” (fda.gov): Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age. (i.e., the medicine that 12-year-olds are required to take in order to eat in a restaurant is not FDA-approved, but can be used for “emergency use” (e.g., if a doctor thinks that a slender healthy 12-year-old might be killed by a virus that regularly kills senior citizens with multiple comorbidities, he/she/ze/they could roll the dice with the 12-year-old’s immune system and stick the kid))
  • ACLU on photo ID: Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
  • ACLU on Civil Liberties and Vaccine Mandates: Far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further them.
  • ACLU on mask mandates: As millions of children head back to school, some states have banned mask mandates on school grounds [including Florida!]. As of this recording, school districts in eight states cannot require students to wear a mask in school; if they do, many risk losing crucial state funding. This ban ignores national recommendations by the CDC to wear a mask indoors for those who are unvaccinated or in an area of high COVID transmission. For children with disabilities or families with high-risk medical conditions, the ban makes in-person learning perilous. Many children are forced back into remote learning even though studies have shown students — particularly students of color and those with disabilities — fall behind when they can’t attend school in person. Excluding these children from in-person learning violates federal law which is why the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program is suing on behalf of groups of parents with vulnerable children in both South Carolina and Iowa.
  • “Voter ID laws a burden on poor, black Americans, research shows” (Guardian) (“research” can be considered another word for “Science”!)
  • “Why It Is so Hard to Vote If You’re Black, Poor or Elderly in America” (Newsweek): More than half of all states require voters to show ID when they cast a ballot, yanking the most vulnerable in U.S. society from the electoral process. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Texas’ electoral law, which requires voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot, intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic voters.
  • “Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy” (Atlantic): Nine percent of black respondents and 9 percent of Hispanic respondents indicated that, in the last election, they (or someone in their household) were told that they lacked the proper identification to vote. Just 3 percent of whites said the same.
  • and… from the academic heavyweights: “Racial Microaggressions Related to Voter ID Laws in the United States” (Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 24, No. 1-2): This paper attempts to examine the microaggressions related to current voter ID laws along with various moderns tactics of disenfranchisement, many of which were adopted in 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
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Will Americans use their free at-home test kits to ensure negative official test results as needed?

by philg

In a triumph of central planning, the test kits that nobody can buy will now be free. “Insurers Will Have to Cover 8 At-Home Virus Tests Per Month” (New York Times, 1/10):

The Biden administration announced the new guidelines as it continued to work to get coronavirus tests to people regardless of their insurance status.

Private insurers will soon have to cover the cost of eight at-home coronavirus tests per member per month, the Biden administration said Monday.

“Today’s action further removes financial barriers and expands access to Covid-19 tests for millions of people,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Biden administration’s Medicare and Medicaid chief, said in a statement about the new guidelines.

From the CVS around the corner from our apartment, also on January 10:

(It’s Florida, so, even in Palm Beach County, apparently there is no demand for a “please wear a mask” sign on the front door.)

A family of four would be entitled to 384 kits per year, which happens to be exactly 384 more kits than are available at all of the CVS stores within 20 miles right now. Joe Biden’s campaign site, November 2, 2020:

As President Biden is not a liar like the previous dictator, presumably Uncle Joe will make good on this campaign promise and when that glorious day arrives, someone can actually get 384 kits. What could he/she/ze/they possibly do with them?

One use scenario comes from the comments on Protected by masks on a 100-percent full flight in which SK describes a family that was excluded from returning from Cancun to Seattle by air due to having tested positive while on vacation. They legally took a domestic flight to Tijuana, legally crossed the land border (no test required, whether one is a current or future U.S. citizen!), and then another domestic flight from San Diego to Seattle.

Suppose this family wanted to be sure of catching their flight home to Seattle and they had all of the reagent fluid from their 384 kits. What would stop them from, before taking the official test, using this fluid as a nasal spray to bind to whatever antibodies the official test’s reagent is going to bind to? Then they flush their noses with saline and/or alcohol spray. Five minutes later, they take their official tests. At that point, isn’t it likely that there wouldn’t be enough test-triggering stuff left in their noses to result in positive tests?

(And, actually, this makes me wonder how big families can travel internationally right now. Isn’t it virtually certain that at least one child, for example, will test positive? At that point, though, the entire family will be stuck in quarantine prison for 10 days. Who would willingly take this risk?)

A recent Facebook post:

In other words, the trip to Jamaica turned into a prison experience, albeit a prison with a view.

Related:

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Non-white people considered high-risk when it is time to get COVID-19 medicine, but low-risk when gathering

by philg

Welcome to Covidcratic Logic Lesson #731.

From the Followers of Science in California, Order of the Health Officer of the County Of Sonoma C19-35:

To slow the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”), this Order prohibits large gatherings, as defined, as well as gatherings of 12 or more individuals of any age who are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19, for the duration of this Order.

For the purpose of this Order, “individuals of any age higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19” means Persons with Certain Medical Conditions as defined by the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html.

If we follow the CDC link we learn that having HIV (a disease not in any way associated with the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community) or being obese (a disease not in any way associated with having been locked down next to the fridge for two years) puts a person at higher risk, and therefore unable to gather legally (not in any way guaranteed by the First Amendment). Being non-white, however, does not prevent a person from gathering legally up to the 50-person limit that the Sonoma Covidcrats have established for the low-risk.

Both Federal and state Covidcrats, on the other hand, say that, when it is time to hand out the life-saving new COVID-19 treatment pills, skin color is important. “FDA wants race, ethnicity factored in administering COVID drugs” links to New York State and Utah policies. The Utah one is more precise:

If a person ages from 51 years old to 100 years old during 14 days to flatten the curve, his/her/zir/their point score goes up by 2 (from 3 to 5). If a person, on the other hand, embraces a non-white racial identity (like Rachel Dolezal or Justin Trudeau or any Virginia Democrat), he/she/ze/they gets the same 2-point boost. According to the table above, a white-identifying 51-year-old, in other words, has the same risk of being killed by SARS-CoV-2 as a 100-year-old who identifies as non-white and/or as white+Latinx. But this risk equivalence is to be used only for purposes of allocating scarce medical treatment and never for purposes of restricting the freedom to assemble.

A healthy BIPOC-identifying or Latinx-identifying resident of the U.S., in other words, is low risk for the purposes of Covidcratic centrally planned gathering restrictions and high risk for the purpose of Covidcratic centrally planned medicine allocation.

(Fans of chivalry will note that identifying as “male” (however that term is currently understood) adds 1 point on the Utah scale. How can this be applied if a COVID-19 patient shows up unconscious and is not able to explain his/her/zir/their current gender ID and preferred pronouns?)

Expert analysis of the advantages of being white:

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Checking in on the wicked Swedes

by philg

One country we haven’t heard much about during the Ominous Omicron Oscillation is Sweden. As noted in Coronascientists are the modern Aristotles? for those who Follow the Science the original comparison countries to Sweden were Ireland, Britain, and France (NYT, April 28, 2020, “How Sweden Has Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown”).

The wicked Swedes followed the WHO pandemic guidebook in what we characterize as an “experiment.” (Closing schools, using bandanas as PPE, keeping marijuana shops open as “essential”, and giving non-FDA approved drugs to 5-year-olds is, by contrast, decidedly not an experiment.) Why isn’t Sweden featured in our media lately? Don’t the righteous among us want the satisfaction of seeing how badly the wicked are being punished by a just CoronaGod?

How about let’s look at cumulative deaths tagged to COVID-19 compared to the NYT’s originally chosen comparison set of nations. (I added the U.S. as well so that we can see the effect of Joe and Kamala’s Plan to Beat COVID-19.)

Maybe the flat line is because Omicron hasn’t hit Sweden? The answer seems to be “no”; cases are rising exponentially there, more or less as they are everywhere else.

What about vaccination rates? Perhaps these can explain any country-to-country variation in death rates. From the New York Times, January 6:

  • Ireland: 79% at least one dose; 45% turboboosted
  • France: 79% at least one dose; 35% turboboosted
  • United Kingdom: 78% at least one dose; 52% turboboosted
  • Sweden: 75% at least one dose; 25% turboboosted
  • United States: 74% at least one dose; 22% turboboosted

There doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable about Sweden in terms of attempts to induce artificial immunity via vaccination.

Heretical thought: Should we suspect that the country’s decision to allow young people to get infected in the spring of 2020 (while sheltering the elderly/vulnerable) built powerful natural immunity, even against the yet-to-develop Omicron variant?

Also, we can look at all of 2021 (source):

Related:

  • From August 16, 2020… “‘History will judge the hysteria'” (Israel National News): Prof. Udi Qimron will soon head the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University. In an interview with Yediot Ahronot, Qimron shed further light on the coronavirus. “There is a very great interest for anyone who has supported the draconian measures taken around the world to say that Sweden’s policy has failed. Because if it succeeded, and trillions went down the drain for no reason, someone will have to answer for it.” (I’m willing to bet that Professor Qimron is dead wrong on that last point!)
  • Also from Professor Qimron, from January 6, 2022: “Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure”. The best English summary from the original Hebrew: “I never want to get another government grant”, but it also contains some choice sentences, e.g., “Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail. You do not admit it, because you have admitted almost no mistake in the last two years, but in retrospect it is clear that you have failed miserably in almost all of your actions, and even the media is already having a hard time covering your shame. … There is currently no medical emergency, but you have been cultivating such a condition for two years now because of lust for power, budgets and control.”
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Population-wide COVID-19 vaccines a failure measured by death toll?

by philg

The mRNA vaccines invented in 1987 by Robert Malone and perfected to build immunity against COVID-19 in 2020 have been hailed by many as a great public health success. CNN, 5/26/2021: “The speed at which vaccines for Covid-19 have been developed and their effectiveness at stemming the pandemic are nothing short of a modern miracle. … society will marvel at the science behind these vaccines for years to come …”

Certainly the clinical trials suggested that these work far better than my June 2020 proposal: U.S. should approve a saline injection as a Covid-19 vaccine?

The most vulnerable Americans, i.e., the elderly living in retirement and nursing homes, were vaccinated beginning in December 2020. The vaccine rolled out quickly to the rest of Americans 65 and older and, by November 2021, 98.5 percent of seniors had been vaccinated (Forbes).

Even without a vaccine, we might have expected the 2021 death toll from COVID-19 to be lower than the 2020 statistic. A virus usually kills the most vulnerable people first. The nursing home residents who died in 2020, e.g., in Cuomo’s technocratically managed New York State, couldn’t be killed a second time in 2021.

What actually happened?

  • “The COVID-19 pandemic caused approximately 375,000 deaths in the United States during 2020.” (CDC)
  • roughly 425,000 COVID-19-tagged deaths in the United States in 2021 (CDC says about 800,000 deaths through end of 2021 and subtract the 2020 deaths from that total)

Is it obvious from the above numbers that the vaccination effort was a huge public health success?

One explanation for the apparent failure of vaccines as a public health measure is that the clinical trials did not include the kinds of people who are typically killed by COVID-19. I raised this point in December 2020: If COVID-19 vaccines weren’t tested on likely COVID-19 victims, how do we know that they will reduce COVID-19 deaths?

Deplorable Canadian MDs in a slide deck regarding Pfizer make a similar point:

The vaccines were tested on the healthy, and then immediately given to the frailest members of the society – the elderly with multiple health conditions. This is unscientific and unethical.

The Canadian docs make some good points about the terrible quality of the research that has been done, but I’m inclined to think that they’re at least partly wrong. This is not because their dangerous anti-science message has been banned by Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the Internet righteous, but because of my love of influenza analogies. Flu vaccines are somewhere between 10 percent and 50 percent effective and therefore my best long-term estimate of COVID-19 vaccines is in this range as well.

“Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation” (Nature, by Stanford Medical School professor John P. A. Ioannidis, a.k.a., the one honest person in medical research) points out that a vaccine that is less than 60 percent effective might be worse than no vaccine if humans who are vaccinated change their behavior as a result of having been vaccinated.

What have we seen? Karen goes to Universal during Christmas week. Karen gets on 100-percent full flights to attend a wedding. Karen clogs airline flights and hotels for leisure trips. The formerly bunkered Karens in our old neighborhood changed their behavior 180 degrees after getting their children vaccinated against a virus that has primarily killed 82-year-olds in Maskachusetts. Prior to the Sacrament of Fauci, their children were forbidden to meet other kids in outdoor playgrounds. After the Sacrament, they were literally hosting sleepovers. Their behavior could be explained as rational only by inferring that they considered the vaccines to be 100 percent effective.

A New Year’s card from a friend who has a Ph.D. in public health:

We are grateful for 2021’s vaccines that allowed travel to [foreign country 10+ hours of flight time away] and [far-away state], kids returned to school, [PhD in public health] resumed in-person teaching… Here’s to lots of joy, health, and as the kids say “more playdates and sleepovers.”

Paging Dr. Ioannidis!

Risk compensation is well-known phenomenon (Wikipedia isn’t a bad place to start). Anyone who claims expertise in public health certainly could and should have expected dramatic changes following the release of wildly optimistic clinical trial results.

Given the above simple arithmetic (deaths in vaccinated 2021 exceeded deaths during unvaccinated 2020) combined with the American belief that “success” is measured by COVID-19 body count (shades of the Vietnam War) has it been scientifically proven that the COVID-19 vaccines are a public health success?

Related:

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Revisiting my coronaplague prediction from July

by philg

On July 28, 2021, while we were at Oshkosh, a friend (who is a pre-2020 “scientist” in that he formulates hypotheses and tests them rather than constructing retrospective explanations) sent me a chart showing that Massachusetts, which was earning Silver in the Vaccination Olympics, was suffering only minimally from coronaplague.

I wrote back “The peak of Covid in MA always seems to be winter… I am going to guess that MA will have a renewed plague starting November and peaking in January” and marked my calendar for today to see if this prediction turned out to be correct.

From state-sponsored NPR, 12/27/201, “Mass. hospitals welcome National Guard members, cancel non-urgent procedures as cases rise” (WBUR):

State health data show the seven-day average of hospitalizations due to the virus was nearly 1,600 patients statewide. That figure has more than doubled in the last month.

“Mass. on Pace to Hit 1M Confirmed COVID Cases This Week” (NBC, also 12/27):

Regardless of when Massachusetts reaches 1 million COVID cases, it’s likely that the number of infections will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Wastewater data for the Boston area shows that the level of virus in local sewage has continued to rise since the start of December, reaching new heights since the start of the pandemic.

And the total number of confirmed COVID deaths stands at 19,604, meaning Massachusetts is approaching another sobering milestone: a confirmed death toll of 20,000.

Whether private or state-sponsored, American media never likes to provide comparisons. How does 20,000 compare to the population of 7 million? 1 out of every 350 residents of Maskachusetts has died with a COVID-19 tag. In Sweden, by contrast, roughly 15,300 people have died out of 10.2 million, 1 death for every 667 residents. In other words, those who followed the science, wore masks, closed schools, smoked plenty of healing marijuana from the always-open “essential” cannabis dispensaries, and otherwise did everything right ended up with 2X the death rate of a country that gave the finger to the virus.

January 10 NYT data show near-complete success with vaccination (injections if not efficacy) while cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all increasing exponentially:

How are the Followers of Science following Science right now? Checking Facebook I found that a friend had attended a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert over the weekend. He wore a surgical mask over an N95 mask while his family members wore N95 masks. The players themselves were wearing cloth masks that have failed randomized controlled trials even against less contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2. As with Karen visits a Florida theme park and If at least 50 percent of us are Covid-righteous, how did hotels and flights fill up with leisure travelers? I wondered why he hadn’t stayed home. He considered the environment dangerous enough to warrant surgical mask+N95 mask. Why wasn’t it dangerous enough to avoid altogether? Why not stay home and listen to a recording?

An OR nurse from our old neighborhood had followed AOC down to Florida. A Chinese-American from Belmont, MA proudly posted photos of her teenagers getting “Boosted at the Third Base Concourse. Thank you, Red Sox!” (37% effective, say the Canadians) This echoes a New Year’s card that we got from someone who lives in a $5 million house in the Portland, Oregon suburbs. Three children were pictured with masks. Each had a Band-Aid on his/her/zir/their upper arm. A mom from Lincoln, MA who previously celebrated lockdowns and mask orders and demanded that the unvaccinated accept the Sacrament of Fauci (from December 21: “Please, hose your toughy-selves down and get vaccinated. If my 1st grader can do it, you can too”) posted pictures from an entire weekend spent in a public indoor setting (gymnastics meet, with participants and parents in cloth masks).

Related:

Only loosely related… literal “bad news” from Oshkosh:

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