Category: Massachusetts

Adding some support to the Vietnam War analogy, today’s New York Times says “Omicron Is in Retreat”, with the implication that any decline in “cases” is due to the efforts of the human army and its generals (the Covidcrats):

In the human v. virus war (it has to be a war because one army is retreating), humans are “winning” and it will be humans who decide on when to “close the books” on the spread of the virus:

Since early last week, new cases in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have fallen by more than 30 percent. They’re down by more than 10 percent in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In California, cases may have peaked.

“Let’s be clear on this — we are winning,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said yesterday. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York State, said during a budget speech, “We hope to close the books on this winter surge soon.”

The Tet Offensive of SARS-CoV-2 may continue through Tet (February 1), however:

The Covid situation in the U.S. remains fairly grim, with overwhelmed hospitals and nearly 2,000 deaths a day. It’s likely to remain grim into early February. Caseloads are still high in many communities, and death trends typically lag case trends by three weeks.

On FaceTime last night with a group of friends back in Lincoln, Maskachusetts, a physician said that his hospital was full and transferring patients to other hospitals. Quite a few of the “COVID cases” within the hospital had been acquired in the hospital, due to folks ignoring the April 2020 idea of building renal dialysis-style clinics for COVID treatment (would keep most COVID patients from going to the hospital in the first place). The Democrats in the group then riffed about their dream of denying medical care to the unvaccinated. In their view, it was inconceivable that a vaccinated (“responsible”) human could require hospitalization for COVID-19, but the unvaccinated were nonetheless making it tough for the vaccinated to get ordinary hospital care, e.g., for cardiac issues.

My response to this virtue-based triage system was that, due to American incompetence with keeping medical records and the country’s persistent refusal to implement a chip-in-the-neck system, anyone who was about to be kicked out of the hospital for being unvaccinated (“Djokoviced,” after the first athlete to be banned and deported for not taking drugs) could simply say “I was vaccinated at a Walmart in Punxsutawney,” but lost my vaccine papers. How would the hospital in Maskachusetts be able to check?

A generally conservative member of the group (though he had voted for Obama) pointed out that we did not deny medical care to the obese, to alcoholics, or to drug addicts (I corrected him using CDC preferred terms, such as “Persons who use drugs/people who inject drugs” and “Persons with alcohol use disorder”). This was not persuasive, however, and the Democrats still wanted to exclude the unvaccinated from health care, as they are already excluded from public places in Boston. Confirming our loyal reader/commenter Mike’s worst suspicions, I suggested that the final stage of the Democrats’ triage system for the unvaccinated could be a job as an extra in the next Alec Baldwin film.

Speaking of Massachusetts, it look as though the January 15, 2022 implementation of a vaccine paper check requirement was highly effective. Nearly 15,000 cases of COVID-19 occurred on January 14. Excluding the unvaccinated from restaurants, etc., reduced infection to 0 cases on January 15. From Google:

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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:

• Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?

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

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A friend back in the Land of Righteousness has a child who tested positive for COVID-19, but whose symptoms were mild. The child with laboratory-confirmed infection decided to go to his/her/zir/their Massachusetts public high school since, after nearly two years of coronapanic and taxpayer spending approaching $30,000 per student per year even before 2020, there was no way to participate seamlessly in classes (i.e., the school had never installed $100 webcams in the classrooms to which remote/quarantining students could connect).

• Father: “What will you say to those who could condemn your decision?”
• Child: “Nearly everyone is vaccinated. Don’t vaccines work?”

Can we file this one under “What would happen if children believed what the government tells them?” (Covid is “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” according to the CDC and, in any case, students in this particular high school are sentenced to wear masks at all times. Our infected scholar may recall being informed by the CDC that the simplest cloth masks will stop COVID transmission, even among the unvaccinated.)

Meantime, we can check the Maskachusetts “curve” (NYT) and see if anyone else in MA is Following the Science in the same way as this high schooler.

For the Church of Shutdowners, the above clearly proves how effective vaccines and masks are and demonstrates the importance of hunting down those last 5% who are weakly hesitating (possibly moving them to Protection Camps).

Related:

• See 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.

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This post generally falls into the category of “Are humans in charge of SARS-CoV-2 infections or is the virus in charge?” One of the principal heresies of this blog, since March 2020, is the assertion that SARS-CoV-2 would be in charge of how many humans it infects. I’m wondering if Maskachusetts, which has proceeded under the assumption that humans are in charge, definitively answers the question.

Massachusetts has everything going for it in terms of COVID-19-protection. The population is untainted by Trump supporters, holds a lot of degrees (highly credentialed if not always educated), and is meekly compliant with whatever #Science tells them to do. 95 percent of the subjects, age 12+, have experienced the sacrament of vaccination. Almost any kind of indoor gathering, including attending what’s left of the public schools, requires that everyone wear a multi-layer mask (some private schools are now requiring N95 masks for all-day wear by those aged 2 and over, contrary to “expert” advice in August: “Kids do not need N95, KN95 masks at school amid COVID-19 surge, experts say” (Good Morning America)). Marijuana, which we are informed cures most diseases and is therefore “essential”, has by governor’s order been available at all times since March 2020. Colleges sent students home weeks ago and aren’t inviting them back until February. Unless Karen decides to go on vacation, therefore, Massachusetts is an island guided by Science (capitalized, like “God”).

What does “the curve” look like among this science-following stoned-as-necessary population? NYT:

An uneducated person who was not familiar with nor following The Science might think that the recent trend in cases actually has a steeper slope than prior to universal vaccination. In other words, vaccinating 95 percent of the eligible population has no effect on infection and transmission and, if anything, to the extent that it is causal, actually accelerates the spread. But the faith in forced vaccination remains as powerful as ever. Question for today: Why? Isn’t the example of Massachusetts sufficient to convince even those who put blind faith in Science that vaccines don’t prevent infection/transmission?

(Maybe we can blame the 5 percent? So far Maskachusetts has nearly 1.2 million “cases”. Those are lab-confirmed, so the total cases is probably closer to 2.5 million. Most of the cases seem to have occurred after the vaccines were authorized for emergency use. 5 percent of the population is 350,000. Unless the unvaccinated are getting COVID-19 over and over and over, there simply aren’t enough of these Yankee Deplorables to generate the case numbers reported in the NYT.)

From a reader comment recently, “Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid-19 despite strict measures”:

Two-thirds of the staff currently based in the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica have been infected with Covid-19, even though very strict health measures were put in place.

“All those present have received two doses of vaccine, and one person has even received a booster shot,” said Alain Hubert, the station’s executive operator and head of security measures.

All staff members preparing to depart to the station had to undergo a PCR test in Belgium two hours before leaving for South Africa, take a PCR test five days after their arrival in Cape Town, where they also had to quarantine for ten days. Another test was required when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and another PCR test had to be undergone five days after arrival.

These are folks who follow the Science so closely that they actually have jobs in Science! And yet, despite not letting any Untouchables into their pristine vaccinated and PCR-tested environment, they are all plagued now.

This is not to say that the vaccines aren’t potentially useful for the old/vulnerable in terms of preventing hospitalization and/or death. But given the above examples, shouldn’t a person of ordinary intelligence doubt the idea that forced universal vaccination will reduce infection/transmission and therefore the breeding of mutations? My quick survey of righteous friends says that the answer is “no”. Their faith is stronger than ever. But none has a coherent explanation of the Maskachusetts “curve”.

Related:

• “‘Humanitarian disaster’: Infectious disease experts sound the alarm as Massachusetts schools open amid omicron surge” (Boston Herald, 1/2/2022): “We’re looking at a literal humanitarian disaster because our hospitals are not equipped to deal with this number of patients,” [Epidemiologist/Karen Michael Siegel] said. “Our health care system will not be able to handle it.”
• Coronaplague in the Seychelles proves Dr. Jeff Goldblum’s theories? (May 2021, regarding a plague among a highly vaccinated population)
• Wikipedia on Theodicy (if God, like Science, is omnipotent and benevolent, how can there be innocent suffering?)
• “Puerto Rico Faces Staggering Covid Case Explosion” (NYT, 1/2/2022): The island had a 4,600 percent increase in cases in recent weeks after mounting one of the nation’s most successful vaccination campaigns.
• “Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for 7 days over vaccine misinformation.” (NYT, 8/10/2021): She said there were too many reports of infection and spread of the coronavirus among vaccinated people, and that the vaccines were “failing” and “do not reduce the spread of the virus & neither do masks.” … In a statement circulated online, Ms. Greene said: “I have vaccinated family who are sick with Covid. Studies and news reports show vaccinated people are still getting Covid and spreading Covid.” … Data from the C.D.C. shows that of the so-called breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated, serious cases are extremely rare.
• Maybe it is time for that booster shot? (here 11/18/2021), describing my fully vaccinated friend who was knocked flat for a week by COVID-19.
• “Austria to fine unvaxed citizens over $15,000 a year” (New York Post, 12/13/2021)

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