If vaccines are effective against COVID-19, why doesn’t China vaccinate its way into normalcy?

by philg

We’re informed that COVID-19 vaccines prevent nearly all serious consequences from being infected with SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 is no worse than the common cold for those who have accepted the sacrament of mRNA vaccination. “CDC: COVID-19 Is a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated'” (WebMD): “COVID-19 cases are continuing to spike in communities where vaccination rates are low, leading to what CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, called ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated.'” The Official Newspaper of the Coronapanicked pointed out “Before Omicron, a typical vaccinated 75-year-old who contracted Covid had a roughly similar risk of death — around 1 in 200 — as a typical 75-year-old who contracted the flu. … Because it is milder than earlier versions of the virus, Covid now appears to present less threat to most vaccinated elderly people than the annual flu does.” (NYT, 1/5)

China continues to incur massive costs from its efforts to control COVID-19. Cities are locked down CNN, 1/3/2022: “For 12 days and counting, Xi’an’s 13 million residents have been confined to their homes.” (unlike in the Maskachusetts “lockdown”, they can’t even leave their houses to purchase marijuana at one of the always-open “essential” cannabis dispensaries and then meet a new friend from Tinder). What had been legal norms are discarded. “Chinese police parade suspected Covid rule-breakers through streets” (Guardian):

Armed police in Jingxi, in southern China, have paraded four alleged violators of Covid rules through the streets, state media reported, a practice that was banned but which has resurfaced in the struggle to enforce a zero-Covid policy.

The four men were accused of smuggling people across China’s closed borders, and on Tuesday they were led through the streets wearing hazmat suits and bearing placards showing their name and photos. The state-run Guangxi daily reported the action was designed to deter “border-related crimes”.

A common practice during the Cultural Revolution, public shaming has long since been banned in China, and the Communist party-affiliated Beijing News said the Jingxi incident “seriously violates the spirit of the rule of law and cannot be allowed to happen again”.

(Maybe the Chinese need a lesson from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris regarding the merits of open borders and the fact that it is not necessary for those who walk across a border to take a COVID-19 test?)

Business and leisure travelers are discouraged by quarantine requirements (14 days minimum; sometimes 21 days). “This impoverished Chinese city bet its fortunes on the 2022 Winter Olympics. Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened” (SCMP): “Zhangjiakou, the city hosting many of the skiing events, is hoping the event will transform its fortunes even though few, if any, spectators will be attending.”

The Chinese are intelligent (higher average IQ than Americans). China was untainted by the anti-Science rule of Donald Trump. There is no obstacle to the Chinese following the Science and therefore believing Dr. Walensky, MD regarding COVID-19 being merely a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” (in which case it can be trivially stopped by eliminating the unvaccinated). The Chinese have tremendous wealth (soon the world’s largest economy), certainly enough to buy mRNA vaccines at retail or purchase a license to manufacture mRNA vaccines locally. The Chinese have tremendous manufacturing capability and organizational capability. Isn’t the obvious step for the Chinese to arrange to vaccinate 100 percent of the population with an mRNA cocktail and then drop all of their anti-COVID-19 measures? If U.S. states and cities can exclude the unvaccinated from public places and European countries can straight up order subjects to accept the Church of Shutdown’s sacrament (Greece and Austria), surely China’s government has the power to persuade/force the “hesitant”.

(Friend’s shortening of the above: “If Alec Baldwin has killed more vaccinated people than the Omicron variant, why doesn’t China vaccinate and reopen completely?”)

As loyal readers may recall, I’m always fascinated by apparent logical contradictions in human reasoning. Doesn’t China’s behavior reveal that one of the above assumptions is invalid? If so, which one?

From a November 2019(!) trip to Shanghai, proof that the Chinese already have the right architecture for a central vaccine injection site:

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Take a weekend trip to the desert, to the gay inns, where clothing is optional (and so are masks)

by philg

Here’s a mid-December 2021 story from the LA Times:

Some excerpts from a newspaper that has supporting school closures, mandatory vaccinations, etc.:

The skin wants the sun. The skin wants warmth and touch, and then water and air, shade and cool. The skin pulls you to the desert, to the gay inns, where swimsuits are optional.

some pump gay-circuit electronica through speakers hidden in cactus gardens, that peculiarly ubiquitous and relentlessly driving sex-club music, and those places tend to be more … playful.

None of the photos show anyone wearing the masks that the newspaper says the general public should be ordered to wear.

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Who has recently switched from Verizon to T-Mobile?

by philg

We are in an abusive relationship with Verizon right now. They gaslight us by showing at least 2 bars of 5G service in our neighborhood (Abacoa; part of Jupiter, Florida) and at the beach, but, in fact it isn’t possible to view a Web page, use Google Maps, or send a photo via iMessage. I upgraded from an iPhone 12 to an iPhone 13 and the behavior is the same.

Rumor has it that T-Mobile runs a superior network in the Palm Beach area. So… who has recently switched from VZ to T-Mobile and how did it go? Verizon seemed like a better choice in the pre-coronapanic days because they had better coverage in out-of-the-way places where travelers might find themselves. But for the next 5 years of 14 days to flatten the curve I expect that I’ll be mostly walking distance from our apartment.

For our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters who are shoveling snow in the Northeast and showing their vaccine papers… our neighborhood in December:

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Omicronicles: the high schooler tests positive and then goes to school

by philg

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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Is Service in your DNA?

by philg

Here’s a sign that I was able to contemplate at leisure while waiting to get a license plate (Florida delegates what would a massive DMV bureaucracy to counties).

The “Is Service in your DNA?” headline made me wonder how often people write “If not, Moderna can add it for you” underneath.

Could service actually be in your DNA? Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, out of the Big Five, seem likely to be important for doing a good job in customer service. Wikipedia says these are 49 percent and 42 percent genetic.

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Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes

by philg

The Supreme Court recently took up the question of whether elderly elites can order young peasants to get vaccinated against a virus that attacks the elderly. The argument took place in two parallel universes.

Let’s first check my usual source for truth… “Conservative Majority on Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Biden’s Virus Plan” (New York Times):

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the states and Congress, rather than a federal agency, were better situated to address the pandemic in the nation’s workplaces. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the challenged regulation appeared to reach too broadly in covering all large employers.

The court’s three more liberal justices said the mandate was a needed response to the public health crisis.

“We know the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he would find it “unbelievable that it would be in the public interest to stop these vaccinations.”

The NYT has one sentence regarding Sonia Sotomayor, the self-described “wise Latina”:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes and has worn a mask since the justices returned to the courtroom in October, participated remotely from her chambers.

What about the Deplorables over at the Washington Examiner? “Liberal Supreme Court justices spread COVID-19 misinformation”:

Kagan began by claiming “the best way” to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is “for people to get vaccinated,” and the “second best way” is to “wear masks.” Neither claim is true. While the vaccines appear to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the chance of death, there is absolutely no evidence that they prevent transmission, especially not against the much more contagious omicron variant. The cloth masks mandated in different parts of the country don’t prevent the spread of the virus either, as several public health experts have recently admitted.

Breyer continued to spread misinformation by falsely claiming that 750 million people — there are only 330 million people living in the United States — tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. That would mean every single one of us tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday twice.

Breyer then implied, like Kagan before him, that Biden’s vaccine mandate would bring the number of daily cases down to zero. Again, this is not true. Fully vaccinated and boosted adults are testing positive for COVID-19 at about the same rate as unvaccinated people, which means everyone is going to get the virus one way or the other, vaccinated or unvaccinated.

But the worst falsehoods by far came from Sotomayor, who claimed the omicron variant is just as deadly as the delta variant was and that more than 100,000 children have been hospitalized by COVID-19, with “many” on ventilators.

he current national pediatric COVID-19 census from the Department of Health and Human Services shows 3,342 children with COVID-19 in hospitals. And, as Anthony Fauci admitted last week, there is a huge difference between children hospitalized by COVID-19 and those hospitalized with COVID-19. The vast majority of pediatric cases are from children hospitalized with COVID-19, meaning they were hospitalized by something else first and happened to test positive at about that same time.

“If you look at the children [who] are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” Fauci said last week. “What we mean by that is that if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID, and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that.”

There is almost no overlap between what the NYT reported as having happened and what the Washington Examiner reported as having happened.

How about the Sotomayor 100,000? That’s a lot of hospitalized and/or ventilated kids. But could we ever establish the truth or falsehood of her statement? I thought the whole point of the U.S. is that we can’t distinguish between people who go to the hospital because of COVID-19 or who go to the hospital for some other reason and then happen to test positive for what might be an asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Readers: Who wants to guess the outcome? (and when will the Supreme Court rule?) I’m 95 percent sure that the Supreme Court says it is okay for President Biden to order the health care industry around. The health care industry is essentially part of our government, with most of the costs socialized (albeit with the profits privatized). I’m less confident regarding the order directed at private employers, but I still think it will be approved since Americans desperately crave central planning and management whenever a crisis is declared. A ruling against President Biden would be taking away the president’s emergency powers. Who on the Supreme Court would be willing to risk a lifetime Facebook and Twitter ban by saying “COVID-19 is not an emergency”?

Related:

  • Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism? (infections and transmission in a 95% vaccinated population doesn’t dim anyone’s faith in vaccines)
  • Email received today from a hospital in Massachusetts: “As you may know, hospitals and health care providers across the country are busier than ever. The number of hospitalized patients is the highest since the start of the pandemic. The high demand for care and staffing challenges are causing longer than normal wait times for all types of care, which we know can be frustrating.” (Summary: NYT says nearly everyone in the state is vaccinated; CDC says they are therefore protected from severe illness; this email says that the vaccinated righteous are nonetheless hospitalized…)
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Coronascience charts

by philg

A reader sent me the following Trust in Science page: https://data.spectator.co.uk/category/sage-scenarios

The Spectator folks track the predictions of Science against actual outcomes. This is enabled by the fact that the UK rejected Science’s advice to impose a lockdown and therefore we can see the predictions of a no-lockdown situation versus the reality of a no-lockdown situation. (I.e., the Scientists can’t say that their doomsday scenario would have materialized if the politicians hadn’t followed their lockdown advice.)

One thing that is interesting about Coronascience is how fragile it is and how dependent on suppression of criticism. Astronomers don’t need Facebook, Twitter, and Google to suppress speech from people who believe in astrology. Astronomy’s credibility comes from a track record of successful predictions, not from silencing dissent. After two years of what we are told is enormous progress in Coronascience, however, the predictive ability of those who call themselves “Scientists” is minimal and the public’s faith in “The Science” can be maintained only by banning from Twitter, Facebook, et al., those who point out apparent contradictions.

See “Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for 7 days over vaccine misinformation” (NYT, August 2021), for example:

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.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current guidance states, “Covid-19 vaccines are effective at protecting you from getting sick.”

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.

It can’t be simply that Representative Greene was speaking on a medical topic and therefore misinformation cannot be tolerated. Ordinary medicine apparently has a sufficiently secure reputation that Facebook and Twitter allow people to talk about their beliefs in herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture and other “alternative” medicine. It is specifically Coronascience where respect for the field must be manufactured via suppression.

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Merry Collectivist Christmas to Russian Orthodox readers

by philg

Last month we visited the Morikami Museum, a building owned by Palm Beach County, notable for its constant efforts to force schoolchildren to wear masks, contrary to orders from the governor, rulings by judges, and an actual law passed by the Florida Legislature. The latest exhibit of works by Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002) contains one that is sure to warm the hearts of readers who grew up under the Soviet system:

Ants are exemplars of cooperative living. Although in isolated numbers they act independently, once they reach a critical mass, they begin to behave as one organism. They organize according to distinct functions and coordinate in ways that support the group. One might call cooperating for the good of the whole community ‘antropy.’ Human ways driven by notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are manifestly maladaptive. Perhaps humans will also reach ‘antropy’ and begin to move as one organism that acts to sustain the whole.

I thought that the aspiration for us all to become ants and serve the collective would be a heart-warming message for those celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas today.

[Speaking of serving the collective, what was the mask situation in the museum? The associated gardens are mask-free, as you might expect in Florida. The museum itself has signs demanding that people wear masks indoors. This demand is ignored by all children, 75 percent of visiting adults, and 30 percent of those working on site.]

A few bonus photos of the gardens:

How does it compare to gardens in Japan? The scale is much larger, though it is broken up into sections, each of which may contain a small garden in a style from a particular period in Japanese history. The vast pond contains alligators, which remarkably have not managed to eat the koi. The buildings and other structures are much newer than anything you’d see in a tourist garden in Japan.

If you choose to visit the garden, I recommend stopping at Wakodahatchee Wetlands to see native birds and alligators and also the nearby Green Cay Wetlands. Finally, delight the kids with a trip to K&L 98 HotPot, a restaurant that combines individual at-table cooking with a conveyor belt of stuff you can put in the pot. Not precisely Japanese, of course, but the Japanese copied a lot of stuff from China!

Here are a few images from Wakodahatchee (iPhone and Canon R5, 800/11 lens):

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How’s COVID test availability in your neighborhood?

by philg

From three weeks ago: Why is it still almost impossible to schedule a COVID-19 test? (at least in Maskachusetts)

How are things now? Here in the Palm Beach area, using the CVS web site, the earliest appointment that I was able to find was for next Friday, January 14, in the reasonably-nearby town of Hobe Sound (at a purpose-built “community test center”, not a CVS per se). The web site cautioned that it might take 3 days to get a result:

(How can anyone travel internationally? For most countries, we need a PCR test within 3 days prior to the trip but it will take 3 days to get a result?)

Adding together 7 days to wait for the test and 3 days to wait for the result, that’s 10 days to know whether or not one has been infected with deadly SARS-CoV-2 and therefore it is time to get monoclonal antibodies, emergency use-authorized pills, etc. There are free line-up-and-wait (usually in a car, since this is Florida and people love to idle in their SUVs) sites, but there are no guarantees regarding wait times (four hours last week in Tampa, but more recently maybe only 40 minutes).

For a Trump-hating, Biden-loving friend who is a professor at the University of California Berkeley, it is straightforward to maintain full confidence in the central planners who have devoted themselves (and a $10 trillion) for two years to the testing challenge. He simply denies that there is any shortage of tests or testing capacity. He asserted that anyone intelligent would have stocked up on at-home kits, as he did months ago, and that, in any case, it is straightforward to order kits via Instacart and have them delivered within hours. (NYT says the at-home kits won’t detect the Dreaded Omicron so maybe these will turn out to be the hand sanitizer of 2022? Consumers thought that Purell was critical to hoard, but it turned out to be useless.) He also pointed out that there are some walk-in test clinics and simply asserted that the waiting time wouldn’t be too long: “I don’t know what the line length is, but … there probably isn’t much of a line.” Anyone who can’t arrange a test within hours of feeling sick is “doing something stupid.” (Biden’s re-election seems secure!)

What would happen if he left the bubble of his multi-$million stocked-with-test-kits bunker? “Coveted COVID tests causing four-hour traffic jams as omicron explodes in Bay Area” (Mercury News):

Waits longer than a week for PCR tests. ‘A lot of people are frustrated’

“Getting vaxxed and boosted was fine — it’s the testing that’s been difficult,” Chandani said.

With California and the U.S. experiencing the worst COVID-19 case spike of the pandemic as the super-contagious omicron variant spreads, Bay Area residents are scrambling to get tested, and some are waiting for appointments more than a week away.

In the Bay Area Vaccine Hunters group on Facebook, set up last winter to help people find vaccine appointments, posts have shifted from where to find a booster shot to how to find a COVID-19 test, moderator Jessica Moore said.

And the antigen rapid tests that can be purchased at pharmacies remain scarce. Schools that were provided them by the state have been running out, and they disappear quickly from store shelves.

“Any time anyone posts on the Facebook site, if you click half an hour later, they’re gone,” Moore said.

Deemed-essential-by-Governor Newsom marijuana stores remain open in California, but “Bay Area schools close due to staff shortages, high case rates” (Mercury News).

Readers: What if you wanted a PCR COVID-19 test right now? How would you get one? How long would it take? (and say, in the comment, where you live)

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How is Rivian still worth $78 billion?

by philg

In What edge does Rivian have in the truck or EV market? (November 2021) I wondered how Rivian could be worth $127 billion, given that Ford will soon be selling electric pickups. As of today, the company is worth $78 billion and GM has promised to start delivering electric pickups in volume within two years (engadget). Like the Ford, the Chevy starts at around half of what Rivian wants for its electric pickup. If everything goes perfect, Rivian will produce a handful of trucks before Chevy pushes the Silverado EV out the door in late 2023, but why does that translate to $78 billion in long-term value? If there is $5,000 in profit to be had from each truck and we use a discount rate of 0%, Rivian needs to sell more than 15 million trucks before $78 billion in profit is generated.

The GM truck does seem better than what Rivian is offering due to the capability of extending the bed via folding back seats. And with a massive frunk it would be a pretty good family vehicle (put the stuff that is valuable and/or can’t get wet in the frunk). Why would anyone pay $67,500 for the Rivian when the “work” version of the GM can be had for $40,000?

In my opinion, the Silverado interior and dashboard seem to be better-designed than what Rivian offers. If we wanted a pickup truck we certainly wouldn’t pay extra to get a Rivian rather than a Chevy or Ford and it doesn’t seem likely that Rivian can profitably produce trucks at the Chevy or Ford price.

Can someone again please explain to me why Rivian is worth anything?

[Also, what about my faith in the Efficient Market Hypothesis? How did Rivian go down in value by 40 percent over two months? There haven’t been any surprises from the legacy car manufacturers.]

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