Science v2021 and Science v2023 on masks and speech development

Science v2021:

Babies and young children study faces, so you may worry that having masked caregivers would harm children’s language development. There are no studies to support this concern. Young children will use other clues like gestures and tone of voice.

Science v2023… “If Your Toddler Isn’t Talking Yet, the Pandemic Might Be to Blame” (Wall Street Journal):

In an analysis of nearly 2.5 million children younger than 5 years old, researchers at health-analytics company Truveta found that for each year of age, first-time speech delay diagnoses increased by an average of 1.6 times between 2018-19 and 2021-22. The highest increase was among 1-year-olds, the researchers said.

Note the headline: it is the faceless “pandemic” that is to blame for these developmental delays. It is not the Covidcrats who ordered 2-year-olds to wear saliva-soaked face rags all day every day.

In case the above tweet is memory-holed:

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Science says that vaccines prevent COVID transmission

A cousin is a Scientist (i.e., a physician). He is married to a woman with some Deplorable and Deplorable-adjacent relatives. He recently described getting into a fight with the in-laws in late 2021. He and his wife spent some time in their secure all-Democrat enclave with a filthy unvaccinated 19-year-old cousin visiting from disgusting Florida. The girl appeared to be in perfect health. Shortly afterwards, the wife came down with some symptoms consistent with COVID-19. He then waxed expansively to the Deplorable side of the family regarding his regrets that he had allowed this filthy unvaccinated girl within 100′ of his wife. The wife did not speak to her relatives for more than a year and the rift caused by this discussion remains open in 2023.

Our conversation:

  • me: “Did [wife] actually get COVID from this girl?”
  • Dr. Cousin: “No. She tested negative and it never developed into anything more than a slight cold.”
  • me: “Have you considered apologizing to the in-laws now that Science says COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent transmission?”
  • Dr. Cousin: “It’s true that the vaccines were designed to prevent infection and transmission. They were designed to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. But if everyone had taken them as soon as they were available, they would have stopped transmission.”

In other news, Science told the Mayo Clinic to drop the masks:

At the same time, Science told the Covidcrats in New York City to keep the masks:

(The depicted young people are Following Fauci by wearing cloth masks against an aerosol virus?)

By including “thank you for keeping your fellow New Yorkers safe”, I think the Covidcrats of NYC are saying that cloth masks stop transmission, but vaccines don’t (since the requirement to wear a simple mask applies even to those who have accepted the Sacrament of Fauci).

We are informed that Scientists have reached a consensus regarding the temperature of Planet Earth on January 1, 2100, yet those who Follow the Science cannot agree on masks-on vs. masks-off?

In case the above tweet is memory-holed, a screen shot:

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New York as a breeding ground for vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants

New Yorkers were among the most eager followers of Science. Two-year-olds were ordered to wear masks until June 2022, for example (NYT). Science required poor kids to keep wearing them (see “Toddler mask mandate remains for federally funded NYC programs” (New York Post, June 17, 2022)) through the hot-due-to-climate-change summer of 2022.

What are the righteous doing now? Did they move to the suburbs so that they wouldn’t have to be on top of each other anymore? Wearing their N190 masks (double N95s) if for whatever reason they decided to stay in the city? Avoiding crowds by walking or biking instead of taking the subway?

Here are some photos taken this month…

(Note the mask-over-beard technique for keeping out an aerosol virus.)

With rare exceptions, New Yorkers are crowding together without masks. Given that nearly all are vaccinated, what better way to create vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2 and other deadly respiratory viruses?

Compared to in Florida, the chin diaper is extremely popular in NYC.

Here’s a front desk worker at the Dia Chelsea (not selling tickets because the museum/gallery is free). She wore a chin diaper for the entire time that I was there, never adjusting it to cover her mouth or nose/mouth. Maybe she was saving it for a subway ride home?

Virtuous exceptions at the Whitney:

(But if they are afraid that a virus that kills humans at a median age of 82 will kill their 10-year-old children, why did they take their 10-year-old children to the crowded museum?)

Here’s a city-funded homeless shelter (the unhoused will soon be ejected to make room for asylum-seekers?), the Flemister House, that is still following CDC guidance:

My hosts would have been prepared for this. Here’s a table next to their apartment door:

What if someone does get COVID-19? Healing marijuana is never more than a block or two away:

Summary: if an evil scientist (lowercase) wanted to breed vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2, he/she/ze/they could not create a better laboratory than New York City right now. The behavior of New Yorkers would make sense if they had, like Floridians, spent the global pandemic years irresponsibly partying in clubs. But I can’t figure out how the current behavior of New Yorkers is consistent with their previously expressed and never-renounced views regarding the appropriate role of humans with respect to a contagious virus.

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Excess deaths by state map (for assessing coronapanic effectiveness)

I’ve long yearned for a state-by-state map that has similar “excess death” data to what Our World in Data delivers for countries (no-lockdown no-mask-order Swedes holding steady at 5%, substantially lower than the countries celebrated for their police- and military-enforced lockdowns).

Courtesy of heretic Stanford Medical School professor Jay Bhattacharya, I finally have one! It’s from the cheerfully named web site “US Mortality”. Here’s a link directly to the map:

In my opinion, the map tends to show that the Church of Sweden MD/PhDs were correct when they predicted, back in March 2020, that government policies in the West would have at best a small effect on total death rate. How does the map show this when different states are in different colors? SARS-CoV-2 likes to kill those of us who are carrying extra pounds. Here’s a CDC map of adult obesity:

(No data for Florida? You’d think those CDC folks would love to be on South Beach and Marco Island rating body shapes!)

To my eyes, the obesity map explains most of the pattern that we see in the excess deaths map. (You’d also want to look at percent of population over 65; a state that is all young people should have an extremely low rate of both COVID deaths and excess deaths.)

A few highlights…

California with its Science-following fully-masked schools-closed vaccine-papers-checking population suffered 22.4% excess deaths compared to 20.4% in Science-denying irresponsible Florida (inherently vulnerable due to 21% of population over 65). Considering how many Californians were paid to stay home (either working as members of the laptop class or not-working as members of the welfare class) and considering that Californians are slender (CDC map) and young (only 15% of population over 65), this might be the worst performance among all states. Colorado was a close second (slender, young, and a 22.8% excess death rate).

The geniuses at University of California, Berkeley celebrated Vermont, Alaska, and Maine as “the three most effective states in responding to the coronavirus pandemic last year”. How did the Scientific prediction from March 2021 work out? Without a city of substantial size, Vermont had 21.5% excess deaths, almost the same as New York (19.1%). Alaska was off-the-charts bad at 27.7%. Maine turned in a reasonable 16.3% performance, so long as you didn’t mind lockdowns, mask orders, school closures, and vaccine coercion (through May 13, 2022).

Kristi Noem was pilloried for refusing to follow Faucism in South Dakota, but her state had 17.1% excess deaths despite a high percentage of obese adults (see CDC map above).

Kentucky’s Democrat governor was celebrated for “halting the spread of COVID-19” while the Republican fool running Tennessee was slow to order lockdowns (The Guardian). Tennessee ended up with a lower excess death rate. (Possibly explained by a higher obesity rate.)

Not counting Hawaii, Maskachusetts and New Jersey had the lowest rates of excess deaths. Some of this is probably explained by the fact that people in MA and NJ are virtuously thin (CDC map). There are also a large percentage of laptop class folks in both states who were able to stay home in their suburban bunkers. But maybe I will be forced to admit that closing Boston schools for more than a year, ordering people to wear cloth face rags on quiet suburban streets, and demanding that children show their vaccine papers were effective measures!

(People who aren’t cisgender white heterosexuals might nonetheless want to avoid Massachusetts, home to “the country’s second-highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents in 2022” (considering the small population of the state, this is off-the-charts bad per capita). “Hate in the Bay State: Extremism & Antisemitism in Massachusetts, 2021-2022” (ADL):

Amidst increasing nationwide threats to the LGBTQ+ community, Massachusetts has also witnessed a spike in anti-LGBTQ+ activity, including waves of harassment against Boston Children’s Hospital, drag performances and LGBTQ+ events. And as the numbers of antisemitic incidents continue to rise across the country, Massachusetts was no exception. According to ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, it was the sixth most affected state in the country in 2022.

Massachusetts saw a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents, according to ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. In 2022, the number of incidents increased 41% over 2021 levels…

ADL documented 34 white supremacist events in the state in 2021 and 2022, including protests, meetings, flash demonstrations, banner drops and marches.

In 2022, ADL documented 465 instances of white supremacist propaganda distribution across the state, an increase of 71% from 2021 (272).

In May 2022, a student in Waltham brought a knife to school, threatened his Jewish classmates and held the knife to the throat of a Jewish classmate.

Since 2021, the Nationalist Social Club, also known as NSC-131, has grown rapidly to become one of New England’s most active white supremacist groups; their presence is particularly robust in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is a hotbed for anti-LGBTQ+ extremism, which increased nationwide in 2022

Patriot Front is a Texas-based white supremacist group with members all over the country, but they have become increasingly active in Massachusetts because of the state’s ties to the founding of the United States.

The last point strikes me as odd. Wouldn’t the Patriot Front need to find enthusiastic supporters in a state in order to be “increasingly active”? The history of the state doesn’t seem relevant.

The mention of Waltham made me nostalgic. When we lived in adjacent Lincoln I used to offer neighbors whose lawns sported Black Lives Matter signs a free trip to Waltham in our minivan: “You can have a look at some actual Black people.” This did not make me as popular as I expected.)

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Public health experts: COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission

Coronapanic revisionists have at least the following pillars of faith:

  • Florida was locked down
  • New York was never locked down (see the middle of this post)
  • No official ever promoted saliva-soaked cloth face rags to stop an aerosol virus; the peasants were always told to stay in the bunker or don an N95 respirator
  • Nobody ever said that COVID-19 vaccines prevented infection and transmission

Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, was not suspended by the Silicon Valley Righteous in August 2021 for saying that vaccines “do not reduce the spread of the virus” (Daily Mail).

America’s Ministry of Truth is not efficient, however. The New York City Covidcrats’ main web page still says “The best way to protect yourself and those around you from COVID-19 is to get vaccinated.” (The only way that the “and those around you” could be true is if the Pfizer and Moderna shots prevent transmission.

There is a link in which the public health experts recommend that 6-month-old babies get boosted ASAP (“The vaccines will help your child develop immunity and provide them with protection against severe illness and death from COVID-19.”)

Related:

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Write an alternative history of the U.S. if proper COVID policies had been followed?

How about this idea for a novel: Describe what the U.S. would look like in 2024 if proper COVID policies had been followed in 2020-2021.

Suppose that the U.S. had been run by Science-following Democrats without interference from Republicans or Republican-appointed federal judges. “COVID-19: Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated” (January 2021) describes a Rasmussen poll:

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.

Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The survey also found that more black voters (63%) than whites (45%), Hispanics (55%) or other minorities (32%) support Biden’s vaccine mandate for government workers and employees of large companies.

President Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to endorse the harshest punishments against those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. Among voters who have a Very Favorable impression of Biden, 51% are in favor of government putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities,” and 54% favor imposing fines or prison sentences on vaccine critics.

(Note that I previously proposed Protection Camps for the Deplorables and euthanizing the unvaccinated to ensure sufficient hospital capacity for the Righteous.)

Perhaps the novel could follow two families, since statistics are never as interesting as personal stories. Alyssa and Emily Good have two non-binary children together: Dakota and Zen. All get vaccinated and, whenever recommended by the CDC, boosted. Alyssa works at a reproductive health care clinic providing abortion care to pregnant people. Emily works at a non-profit organization fighting anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ hate. They enjoy a rich life in a COVID-free United States and get together with neighbors in their means-tested affordable housing complex to hang BLM and Rainbow banners.

Gunner and Katelynn Bad breed like rabbits because they reject the Sacrament of Abortion Care and have four kids: Cooper, Mallory, Rhett, and Josie (only 3 months old when the Great Removal begins). Gunner sells pickup trucks and goes hunting on weekends while Katelynn stays at home. The Bad parents, having refused the Sacrament of Fauci, are confined to their exurban house while their kids are taken away by a platoon of National Guard troops who arrive in Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The 3-month-old is allowed 2 Zoom sessions per week with the parents, on account of her young age, while the old kids get 1 Zoom session.

I fed all of the above to ChatGPT. Out came a mushy plot titled “The Great Divide” in which “A common threat or challenge unites the Good and Bad families” and “The families reevaluate their beliefs and values”. My further instruction:

Rewrite this so that the Good and Bad families never come back together and the Bad family is sent to a higher security prison after asserting, contrary to Science, that the COVID-19 vaccines of 2021 did not prevent infection or transmission.

The novel this time was called “Worlds Apart”. Here’s an excerpt:

Then I asked ChatGPT to write the first chapter. Here it is, not in quote style for readability:

Chapter 1: Parallel Lives

The morning sun stretched its golden rays across the suburban landscape, illuminating rows of houses that differed only in minor details. In the means-tested affordable housing complex, the Good family began their day like any other.

Alyssa and Emily Good rose early, setting their alarms to make the most of the limited hours they had to themselves. They were the kind of couple that fit together seamlessly, like puzzle pieces that had found their match. Alyssa, a caring and dedicated nurse, worked at a reproductive health care clinic providing abortion care to pregnant individuals. Emily spent her days at a non-profit organization fighting against anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ hate. Together, they created a home full of love and acceptance for their two non-binary children, Dakota and Zen.

The Goods had eagerly embraced the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, seeing it as their civic duty to protect themselves and others from the pandemic. They kept up with every recommendation by the CDC, receiving boosters as needed, and found solace in the knowledge that they were doing their part to keep their family and community safe.

A few miles away, the Bad family occupied a larger, more secluded home. Gunner and Katelynn Bad, fervent believers in traditional values, had built a life together based on self-reliance and independence. With four children – Cooper, Mallory, Rhett, and baby Josie – the Bads were an ever-growing family. Gunner worked at a local dealership, selling pickup trucks, while Katelynn, a proud stay-at-home mom, nurtured their children.

Unlike the Goods, the Bads rejected the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. They saw it as an infringement on their personal liberties, a belief reinforced by the misinformation they consumed on social media. In their world, the vaccines were an untested, unnecessary risk. And so, as the deadline for vaccination loomed, the Bads chose defiance over compliance.

The tension in the air grew thick as the consequences of this choice settled in. When the government announced the Protection Camps for the unvaccinated, the Bad family scoffed, believing the threat to be little more than a scare tactic. But as more families were forcibly removed from their homes, the reality of their situation became impossible to ignore.

The day the National Guard arrived at the Bad family’s doorstep, it was raining, the sky filled with menacing clouds. Gunner and Katelynn watched in terror as their children were taken from them, the younger ones crying for their parents. Baby Josie, just three months old, was whisked away in a military vehicle, her cries barely audible over the sound of the rain.

The Good family, meanwhile, continued to live in relative peace. They regularly gathered with their neighbors in the housing complex, hanging BLM and Rainbow banners as a show of solidarity. As they shared stories and laughter, the fate of the Bad family seemed like a distant nightmare – something that could never touch their happy, vaccinated existence.

But the fates of the Good and Bad families were more intertwined than they knew. As the Bads were confined to their home, they began a desperate search for any means of reuniting with their children. At the same time, the Goods began to question the harshness of the policies that had forced a family apart.

The world had changed, irrevocably, and the two families found themselves on opposite sides of a deep and unbridgeable divide. Unbeknownst to them, their paths would soon cross, and their beliefs would be challenged in ways they could never have imagined.

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Harvard and the Art of Masking

An email received this month:

(Harvard cannot offer free admission to the people who have granted it freedom from paying taxes on what it earns from its $50 billion cash hoard, except for on a few days.)

Note the Science-driven COVID prevention strategy of 1 out of 4 people wearing a non-N95 mask. The same email promotes an event in which it appears that 2 out of 3 visitors are wearing Fauci-approved cloth masks:

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The latest research from Harvard Medical School

If you were wondering where the forefront of medical research is…

A screen shot in case the above is memory-holed:

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Make an appointment to see the doctor to get your opioids

April 5 email from Mass General, below. Customers are reminded that coronapanic officially ends next month and that, to keep the OxyContin flowing, it will be necessary to actually see a physician before taxpayers will pay for the pills. (i.e., for more than three years you’ve been able to get Oxy the same way that Californians with a sniffle get their Paxlovid: an audio or video call from the comfort of your sofa). Given that it takes a month or more to get in and see a physician in the U.S. (the miracle of open borders for the low-skilled and closed borders and onerous re-licensing requirements for qualified European physicians), I’m providing this reminder as a public service.

Related:

  • Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse. (true or false?) (there is one answer that will enable a person to continue receiving a paycheck from Mass General Brigham)
  • Should you wear a mask when going to the doc to get your opioid prescription? “Were masks in hospitals a waste of time? Hated NHS policy made ‘no difference’ to Covid infection rates, study finds” (Daily Mail, April 7): Researchers from St George’s Hospital in south-west London analysed routinely collected infection control data over a 40-week period between December 4, 2021 and September 10, 2022. … Researchers found removing the mask policy in phase two did not produce a ‘statistically significant change’ in the hospital-acquired Covid infection rate. Equally, they ‘did not observe a delayed effect’ in the Covid infection rate once the policy was removed. … Lead author Dr Ben Patterson said: ‘Our study found no evidence that mandatory masking of staff impacts the rate of hospital SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant. … Fellow researcher Dr Aodhan Breathnach added: ‘Many hospitals have retained masking at significant financial and environment cost and despite the substantial barrier to communication.
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COVID-19 state of emergency ending?

H.J. Res. 7 proposes that coronapanic in the U.S. be officially terminated, despite Joe Biden’s desire to continue the State of Emergency at least through May (at which point it can be extended if a variant of concern is identified!).

Who wants to continue cowering? Let’s look at how the democratically elected representatives of the people voted

We can look at the roll call in the Senate for either double-nays or a “nay” and a “did not vote” (some of these folks are too old to show up to work anymore!). States where cowering is most highly prized:

  • California
  • Hawaii
  • Maryland
  • Maskachusetts
  • New Jersey
  • New York (defrost Andrew Cuomo to manage, with some help from young women?)
  • Oregon
  • Rhode Island
  • Vermont
  • Washington

It’s a little more complex in the House.

Not a single Republican who Follows the Science could be found and there were 11 Deplorable Democrats (one from Florida, of course!). The Scientists of Massachusetts celebrated diversity and independent thinking:

How’s CVS helping in our national fight against a virus that attacks the obese? Cadbury (owed by Hershey, which promotes women ahead of the other 73 gender IDs recognized by Science) eggs can be obtained at a discount… if you buy 10. Coca Cola, which is “Creating a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion”, is available on favorable terms in quantity 36. M&Ms supports women flipping the status quo… if you buy two enormous bags. From the CVS we can walk to:

Hate had no home in our neighborhood back in Boston (at least to judge by the lawn signs of the all-white homeowners) and it seems that SARS-CoV-2 has no chance anywhere in the U.S. that CVS does business.

(What if you want to protect yourself against COVID-19 by consuming several pounds of candy without an explicit social justice message on the wrappers? The U.S. brands of Ferrero are potentially DEI-free: Butterfinger, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Nestlé Crunch, etc. Lindt, Swiss-made at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire airport, does not single out any subgroup of consumers on its package. Mondelēz, which owns Toblerone, Milka, Freia, and Côte d’Or, also refrains from advertising its social justice credentials on the packages.)

Related:

  • “WHO experts revise Covid-19 vaccine advice, say healthy kids and teens low risk” (CNN, March 29, 2023) is a “revision” not a “reversal” on the question on whether 6-month-old babies should be injected with an experimental medicine (as Science/CDC says they should) against a disease that kills 82-year-olds
  • “The President strongly opposes HJ Res 7, and the administration is planning to wind down the COVID national emergency and public health emergency on May 11…” (Fox News)
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