Category: Coronaplague

Scary-sounding media reports of COVID illness aren’t that scary once one reflects that the media can draw on a population of 330 million to find the worst-case situations. Folks in Maskachusetts and California take risks greater than 1 in 330 million just driving to the dispensary to get their designated-essential-by-Covidcrats marijuana (when schools are closed for 18 months and you’re home with kids, it is important to be fully stoned!).

But what about when COVID strikes a friend? That’s a sample from a population of hundreds of people. The story below is about a friend in his early 50s and generally healthy/fit with a reasonable weight.

Sobering timeline:

• late March: Moderna shot #1
• late April: Moderna shot #2
• October 28: indoor gathering in New York City among the fully vaccinated (by law and, in practice, carefully checked)
• October 31: began to feel sick
• November 3: fever of 101, prompting antigen test for COVID-19 (positive) followed by PCR test (positive)
• November 3: due to history of asthma, qualifies for monoclonal antibody treatment under the rules established by New York Covidcrats (available as a free drive-through for Floridians!). Pays $2,500 for at-home (“in-apartment”?) administration at 6 pm.
• November 4, 2 am: woke up with fever of 103.4
• November 4, morning: fever down to 102
• November 4-10: fever of around 100, sleeping 16 hours/day
• November 13: mostly recovered
• November 18: “pretty much back to normal, but still not working out”

His illness was at least as bad as anything that friends who got COVID-19 in 2020 reported (sample of about 50, mostly in expertly-managed-by-#Science New York and Massachusetts). And none of them had the antibodies or, indeed, any other medicine. I think the most likely possibilities, therefore, are the following

1. the vaccine was worthless, just as the flu vaccine is usually worthless
2. the vaccine was helpful, but only for a few months
3. the vaccine put evolutionary pressure on SARS-CoV-2 to evolve into a nastier form (as happened with the low-quality vaccine applied to Marek’s disease)

My best argument against Possibility #3 is Sweden. If SARS-CoV-2 had evolved to become much more aggressive, the natural immunity that the Swedes built up by letting the virus rage should not be effective against the evolved virus. Yet both deaths and COVID “cases” are more or less flat in Sweden, even as rising numbers in the rest of Europe send fearful populations back into their bunkers:

My friend had Moderna, which should be enough vaccine to treat a horse, at least if we believe that the Pfizer 30-microgram shots are sufficient for a 300 lb. human (Moderna shots are 100 micrograms of mRNA and a good-sized horse is 1,000 lbs.). His protection did not last longer than 6 months. Therefore, if we choose Possibility #2, it seems that those of us over 50 should get a booster after only about 4 or 5 months.

What if we choose Possibility 1, “the vaccine was worthless, just as the flu vaccine is usually worthless”? We could also call this the “viruses are smarter than humans” hypothesis. If a medicine is worthless, and even potentially harmful (maybe in 5-10 years we will have full information about these rushed-to-market vaccines?), can it ever be rational to take more of that medicine?

My answer: Yes!

Today’s official state religion includes Faucism. Religious people love to hear stories of sinners suffering their just deserts. Under Faucism, those who weakly “hesitated” regarding getting a vaccine are the biggest sinners of all (it was formerly those who gathered without masks, but there have been so many photos of the elites not following their own mask rules that it now has to be those who reject the Sacrament of the Needle). The only way to avoid becoming a statistic that will support whatever the Covidcrats want to inflict on Americans is to get the booster on the precise date that is suggested by the Covidcrats. (Consider the above story. If my friend hadn’t been vaccinated, the exact same Oct/Nov experience would have been ammunition for the next forced vaccination campaign.)

Equivalent logic: Officer Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) learns ballet to show that guys who did ballet were “queer”.

Followed by this clip:

Allen Gamble: Hey, I didn’t know you can dance.
Terry Hoitz: We used to do those dance moves to make fun of guys when we were kids to show them how queer they were, okay.

Readers: What do you think? Do we all have to get boosters just to show that vaccination (at least with current tech) won’t make COVID-19 go away?

Also, you may want this Faucism T-shirt for your safe-from-the-bunker Zoom interactions:

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“I’m A Middle-Aged Woman Who Is Considering Hiring A Male Escort” (HuffPost):

“If I can hire a massage therapist to help relieve my back pain … and a mechanic to service my car, I should be able to legally hire a man to have sex with me.”

Who’s the author? “Patricia Thornton is a psychologist, mom, dancer and writer. She lives and works in New York City.” In other words, someone with an elite education (vaguely scientific?) living in an city packed with elites.

Here’s the part of the article that fascinates me:

in October 2020 after not having sex in almost a year due to the pandemic

#AbundanceOfCaution and #FollowTheScience. Avoid sex with mild-mannered accountants because, despite their low comparative risk, it is still possible that they could have asymptomatic COVID-19. But is that level of risk-aversion consistent with wanting, right now, to hire a prostitute (regardless of the prostitute’s current gender ID)? Prostitutes are not known for a low level of infectious disease. Vaccine+sex with prostitute is not the most obvious strategy for avoiding COVID-19.

Related:

• Where New York Times readers don’t want to follow Europe: Legalized prostitution

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Vaccine and mask heresy seeps into the New York Times, via physician-readers commenting on “What We Know So Far About Waning Vaccine Effectiveness”:

Ben: I am a physician. We need to look at risks and benefits of vaccines and masks. The vaccines seem to protect against serious illness and hospitalization and make sense in terms of risk and benefit for adults. But this is no longer a pandemic but this is endemic. We need to understand the endgame. Covid will always be around like the flu even if every human in the world was immunized due to both vaccine failures and animal reservoirs. The best way to prevent serious illness is to reduce obesity as nearly 80% of deaths and hospitalizations are in obese people. This is not fat shaming but fatsplaining. This is why the USA has so many deaths whereas thinner countries have less. Covid is not going [away] even after reaching promised “herd immunity” percentages of 80% if one adds vaccinated and infected people. Also, masks don’t eliminate covid risk but perhaps delay it statistically until we are older and at higher risk. Thus, we just need to accept that this is just another potential way to die. Masking and social distancing worsens obesity with less exercise and walking, depression and suicide, and hurting kids development as they should be seeing faces. The masks at this point are worse than the disease. And let nature take care of the unvaccinated (and vaccinated) instead of dividing the country. We ban the unvaccinated from work but don’t ban obesity which is a higher risk? I am over covid and want to live my remaining years in peace without masks.

Jeff: @Ben Totally agree. As physicians we are constantly reminded of what an incredibly unhealthy society we have become. Nearly every aspect of medical care is complicated by obesity. It is really impressive that as a disease that has never existed before, COVID is yet again trying to smack us across the face of how unhealthy we are. All the politicized articles written early in the pandemic about how badly the US was performing relative to other countries provided zero context about the biggest factor for the disparity . . . The US is incredibly fat! That 50% of a [country’s] population is looked at as high risk for COVID is deplorable. If half the money/effort spent of COVID related stimulus/prevention were given to improving the daily health of our country, we would save exponentially more lives than COVID itself will ever claim.

These docs raise the same point that I’ve been making here for more than 1.5 years, i.e., that locking people at home next to their refrigerators is not the most obvious optimum public health response to a virus that attacks the fat and sedentary. (And in Massachusetts and California, at least, both brownie mix stores and marijuana shops were deemed “essential” so people were encouraged to stay home, smoke dope, and consume pans of brownies whenever the munchies prompted.) What’s new? The idea that, to the extent natural immunity via infection matters, avoiding COVID-19 could actually be harmful because you’ll just get it when you’re older and fatter. (Counterargument: those magic antiviral drugs we’ve read about will actually work, unlike most previously touted magic drugs, such as Prozac, whose initial efficacy claims could not be replicated.)

They also point out that, if we had budgeted $10 trillion and a lot of individual effort/sacrifice, there are many things that we could do that would save a lot more life-years than continuing to fight in the COVID trenches. (I began pointing this out at least as early as March 26, 2020, e.g., with Why do we care about COVID-19 deaths more than driving-related deaths? and then augmented in Save lives by limiting cars to 35 mph?)

If we’re serious enough about public health to suspend the Constitution, e.g., the First Amendment right to assemble, and to close schools, why aren’t we serious enough to ban sweets and junk food until American average BMI trends downward? Why is it legal for a pharmacy to have a sale on candy (as CVS often does)? Although I love them, why is it legal for potato chips to be sold in the U.S.? If restaurants are required to check vaccination tags, why aren’t restaurants required to check BMI for every customer and then limit the number of calories served to customers over a threshold of 25?

From a CVS in Newton, Maskachusetts, October 2021 (enter past a bunch of signs regarding protecting oneself from COVID-19 via masking, then walk out with 10,000 calories of chocolate):

(Ben, the first physician quoted, also says what the Swedish MD/PhDs said in February 2020: you’re not going to avoid COVID, no matter how long you hide in your bunker. So don’t change your lifestyle unless you’re happy to make it a permanent change. That’s another great argument in favor of moving to Florida! The outdoor lifestyle protects against every kind of respiratory virus and it is not an onerous adaption to sit with friends at sidewalk tables or to play tennis outdoors rather than to sit home alone and watch TV.)

Also in the comments for this article, from a Russian trying to influence our elections?

Yuriy: If the vaccines lose effectiveness against infection over time (something that we have known already for a couple of months) then there is no point to vaccine mandates! Vaccine mandates are about protecting other people and Covid spread. If vaccines don’t do that then they are just protecting vaccinated people from hospitalization and death, which sounds like a personal health choice. What is the point of forcing resistant adults and children (who have almost no risk to Covid) to get vaccinated when this doesn’t stop virus spread and just causes conflict in society?

I think the best answer to Yuri is that the government’s forced vaccinations wouldn’t cause conflict if people would #FollowScience and accept vaccinations. Alternatively, those who refuse vaccinations for themselves and their 5-year-olds can be placed in Protection Camps. Then they’re no longer part of “society” and, thus, society becomes conflict-free.

Let’s take a look at Germany (lockdowns, mask orders, and mandatory vaccine paper checks) versus the Swedish Free State:

It certainly look consistent with what Dr. Ben said, above. The Germans completely transformed their society and ended up deferring, rather than avoiding, a lot of COVID-19 cases. Perhaps Germany will ultimately have a slightly lower COVID-19 death rate than Sweden’s, due to the fact that more of the infections are coming after vaccination and better drug therapies, so this will be a “success” from the point of view of folks who judge a society’s success by the sole criterion of COVID leaderboard position.

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I love the imagery in this New York Times headline: “Scientists Fight a New Source of Vaccine Misinformation: Aaron Rodgers”. Here’s how it renders, for those who are not loyal subscribers:

From the article:

So when news broke that he tested positive for the coronavirus last week and was unvaccinated, Rodgers justified his decision to not get vaccinated by speaking out against the highly effective vaccines and spewing a stream of misinformation and junk science. Medical professionals were disheartened not just because it will make it harder for them to persuade adults to get vaccinated, but because they are also starting to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-olds.

“When you’re a celebrity, you are given a platform,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “When you choose to do what Aaron Rodgers is doing, which is to use the platform to put out misinformation that could cause people to make bad decisions for themselves or their children, then you have done harm.”

Scientists in their lab coats are rushing from the 20-yard line trying to get to the touchdown zone in which 5-year-olds are meekly waiting for their injections with the emergency use authorization (i.e., not FDA-approved) vaccine that will protect them from a killer of 82-year-olds. The scientists are bravely knocking over linebackers, cornerbacks, and safeties.

Separately, it is tough to find a reference for this, but I think that Richard Nixon said “You don’t want to be a candy-ass on the gridiron.”

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Here’s an image that, I think, best summarizes the current American spirit. It is from September 7, 2021 at 5 pm and was taken on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University. The apparently healthy and reasonably slender student is swaddled like a baby, wearing a hoodie for protection against becoming dangerously chilled in the 90-degree, 90-percent humidity weather. He’s roughly 75′ from any other human and wearing a mask to protect against becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, a notorious killer of 82-year-olds. He’s using a piece of recreation gear (swing set) typically associated with 4-year-olds.

Anyone else have a better candidate single photo for summarizing the spirit of the typical American in 2020/2021?

Camera: iPhone 12 Pro Max on “telephoto” setting.

From 7:17 pm on the same day, Juno Beach Pier, someone who is seriously out of step with our times (though not out of step with the prevailing spirit among young people in Florida!):

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“In-N-Out closes in San Francisco over refusal to enforce vaccine mandate” (Guardian, 10/20):

In-N-Out burger has become the first restaurant in San Francisco to be temporarily closed for failing to enforce the city’s vaccine mandate. City officials made the move on 14 October after the burger chain said it won’t force staff to check that customers were fully vaccinated before allowing them to dine inside the restaurant.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” Arnie Wensinger, the company’s chief legal and business officer, said in a statement. “It is unreasonable, invasive and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not.”

Do we say that In-N-Out Burger is boldly #Resisting the San Francisco city government’s demand that they check vaccine papers for each would-be customer? Or maybe we say that In-N-Out Burger is weakly hesitating to do the right thing?

Let’s ignore the question of whether the policy makes sense given that COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission (and, in fact, might increase infection/transmission because vaccinated people will take more risk than the unvaccinated). That leaves us with a big question: Why would it be restaurant workers’ job to perform this police-type job? If the government makes it illegal for people without vaccine papers to eat in restaurants, shouldn’t the government station “vaccine wardens” just outside the restaurants and pay these wardens? (They can be armed with guns, since Americans love the idea of government workers with guns, or simply tightly connected to nearby armed police officers who can use force as necessary.)

Alternatively, automate the process, as I suggested in August: How can city vaccination requirements be enforced without RFID chips in residents’ necks? The government owns the city sidewalks from which people walk into restaurants in urban areas where vaccine document checks are now required. As a condition of continued employment, the government can install RFID chips in working citizens’ necks (migrants and those on welfare would be exempt, as with current vaccine requirements). Scanners overhead the sidewalk outside restaurants could notice if anyone unvaccinated is going in and then automatically deduct a fine from the working citizen’s paycheck. Receipts from fining the unrighteous could be used by cities to acquire original Hunter Biden paintings for municipal buildings.

Here I am at In-N-Out on the way back to Reno from Burning Man 2014, thus earning me the Playa name of “Double Double.”

Update, November 1… Swiss police use concrete to block access to Covid sceptic restaurant (The Local):

Police in Switzerland have placed several large concrete blocks in front of a bar in the canton of Valais after the bar owners repeatedly refused to enforce the country’s Covid measures.
After the owner of the Walliserkanne restaurant in Zermatt (Valais) failed to comply several times with the obligation to check the customers’ Covid certificates, local police took a drastic measure of installing cement blocks in front of the entrance.

Covid certificates – which show that someone has been fully vaccinated, recovered or has tested negative to the virus – have been required to eat and drink in indoor areas in Switzerland since mid-September.

Both owners were arrested by the police on Sunday morning.

A fine of up to CHF10,000 can be levied, while jail time is also possible in aggravated cases.

There’s a photo too:

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