washingtontimes | If you’re among the Hollywood elite at the Emmys, you don’t need a
face mask. If you’re a simple school student in most of the rest of
America, you better have a face mask. Any questions?
This is the tale of two emerging societies in
America: those who have to obey coronavirus restrictions and those who
don’t. And guess which category you fit.
Cedric the Entertainer, the host for the
evening, tried to quiet criticisms before they had a chance to brew —
but was largely unsuccessful.
“No Masks at the #Emmys because rules are for the little people,” one social media poster wrote.
“The Only People Wearing Masks At the Emmys Were Servants,” another wrote.
“Is ‘science’ the reason celebrities don’t need masks at the Emmys but all the hourly employees do?” yet another wrote.
“Emmys = no masks. Our college and high school sons = masks. Where’s the outrage?” yet one more wrote.
It’s not that the Emmys’ attendees should have
been forced to wear masks. It’s that everybody else in the country
shouldn’t be forced to wear masks, either.
The fact some can skate on the
Anthony-Fauci-recommendations-slash-mandates while others cannot shows
clearly the growing two-class society in America: the thees — the
Democrat voters, the socialist types, the leftist leaners — but not for
me’s — the conservatives, the Donald Trump base, the tea party types,
the individualists.
It’s the coronavirus version of apartheid.
“Masks are for peasants,” another wrote on Twitter.
And that very succinctly describes the attitudes from the far-left.
oftwominds |Now that every financial game in America has been rigged
to benefit the few at the expense of the many, trust and credibility has evaporated like an
ice cube on a summer day in Death Valley.
Here is America in a nutshell: we no longer solve problems, we manipulate the narrative and
then declare the problem has been solved. Actually solving problems is difficult and
generally requires sacrifices that are proportionate to one's wealth and power. But since
America's elite are no longer willing to sacrifice any of their vast power for the common good,
sacrifice is out in America unless it can be dumped on wage earners. But unfortunately for
America's elite, four decades of hidden-by-manipulation sacrifices have stripmined average wage earners,
and so they no longer have anything left to sacrifice.
Enter the Ministry of Manipulation, which adjusts the visible bits to align with the narrative
that the problem has been fixed and the status quo is godlike in its technocratic powers.
All this manipulation doesn't actually solve the problems, it simply hides the decay behind
gamed statistics, financial trickery and glossy PR. The problems fester until they
break through the manipulated gloss and the public witnesses the breakdown of all the systems
that were presented as rock-solid and forever.
Let's take three core fields of manipulation: cost of living, Social Security and the
stock market bubble. Each is a key signifier of the status quo functioning as advertised,
and so manipulating them to fit the narrative is the elite's prime directive. Goodness
knows what would happen if people were exposed to the unmanipulated reality, but it wouldn't
be good for America's self-serving power elite.
The cost of living--the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a.k.a. inflation--is the most threadbare
trash heap of manipulation currently on display. Fully 40% of the Index is based on
the opinion of random people rather than easily tabulated real-world data.
I refer to the government's comically wacky method of reckoning the cost of housing: ask a
random bunch of homeowners what they guess they could rent their house for.
But wait, why not simply tabulate the actual rents being paid? That data is easily available,
and could be made apples-to-apples by applying the methodology of the Case-Shiller housing
index, which is to track the cost data of the same homes / flats over time. This would provide
reliable data on the actual increase or decline in rents being paid.
Gathering actual real-world date is anathema because then the CPI would be much higher and
not so easily manipulated. The same can be said of all the other tricks of manipulating
the cost of living: seasonal adjustments (i.e., lop off price increases and attribute the
reduction to "seasonality") and hedonic adjustments (i.e., after adjusting for the better
stereo and the rear-view camera, today's $40,000 car is tabulated as "cheaper" than yesteryear's
$10,000 car of the same size).
If these same adjustments were applied to the weight and height of individuals, a 6-foot tall
individual weighing 200 pounds would be "adjusted" to 6 inches in height and a weight of 2 pounds.
This is a slight exaggeration but not by much, as today's calculation of expenses are laughably
understated in the CPI: today's cars haven't risen in cost at all according to the CPI, even as
the number of work hours needed to buy a new car have skyrocketed--that is, when measured in
purchasing power of wages, vehicles are much more expensive now.
Then there's healthcare, which is a weighted as light as a feather in the CPI. Healthcare--
you know, that sector which routinely bankrupts American families with bills in the tens of
thousands?--is weighted as roughly equal to clothing. This is beyond absurd, but par for the
CPI course of endless manipulations, all aimed at reducing the CPI so the public can be
lulled into a fairyland belief that inflation has been trifling for decades, even as their paychecks
buy a third less than they did a decade ago.
mises | The official line on vaccines is that they are extremely effective at
protecting against serious illness. And yet these same people are also
claiming that the unvaccinated are a major threat to the vaccinated.
More specifically, President Biden claimed on September 10 that vaccine mandates were to “protect the vaccinated workers from unvaccinated workers.”
In other words, it is claimed that vaccines are remarkably effective,
and that the vaccinated must also be protected from the unvaccinated.
How can both claims be true at the same time? They can’t. The idea that
vaccinated people are being frequently harmed by the unvaccinated is a
complete fabrication, based on the promandate crowd’s own mainstream
data.
As Robert Fellner points out, according to the official data,
The odds of a vaccinated person dying from COVID are 1 in 137,000.
The fatality rate for seasonal flu, meanwhile, is at least 100 times greater than that. The chance of dying in an automobile accident is over 1,000 times greater.
Dog attacks, bee stings, sunstroke, cataclysmic storms, and a variety
of other background risks we accept as a normal part of life are all
more deadly than the risk COVID poses to the vaccinated.
Moreover, the risk of death to vaccinated people is similar to the risk of having an adverse side effect
to the vaccine. And as the spokesmen for Big Pharma and the regime
never tire of telling us, you shouldn’t care about having an adverse
reaction, because it is so very rare and inconsequential.
So by that reasoning, vaccinated people shouldn’t worry about getting very ill from covid. Those cases are just as rare as the so, so rare cases of adverse reaction.
And yet, even after all of this, the backers of vaccine mandates are
trying to whip up hysteria about how we must “protect the vaccinated,”
who are in grave danger, thanks to the unvaccinated.
The level of mental and logical incoherence necessary to come to this conclusion is quite a feat.
But as [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's] Dr. Walensky explained last month,
while the COVID vaccines remain incredibly effective at preventing
serious illness and death, “what they cannot do anymore is prevent
transmission.” This reflects the official position of the agency as
well, which is why the CDC now requires vaccinated people to mask
indoors and follow the same type of social distancing practices as
unvaccinated people.
The official confirmation that COVID is endemic, and vaccination
cannot stop transmission and thereby eliminate it in the way it could
for things like polio and smallpox, makes mandates intolerable to a free
society. The entire argument for mandatory vaccination originally
rested on the claim that the vaccines could reliably stop transmission.
Moreover, those who are vaccinated often experience a mild form of
covid when they are reinfected, which means they often spread the
disease without even knowing they have it. The vaccinated also carry the
same viral load as the unvaccinated, as noted last month by the UK’s Evening Standard:
While evidence demonstrates that vaccines significantly
reduce hospitalisations and deaths, scientists now believe those
infected by the Delta variant can still harbour similar levels of virus
to those who are unvaccinated.
Previous thinking was that vaccinations would stop the spread, but now
this has been thrown into doubt and raises questions
about vaccine passports … which work on the assumption that
double-jabbed people are less likely to spread the virus.
Yet again, we see the notion that the vaccinated are being endangered by the unvaccinated is a fantasy of the mandate activists.
At least the CDC is being logical when it says the vaccinated should
keep wearing masks. Indeed, every time we hear this from the CDC we
should remind ourselves: vaccination does not stop the spread.
endpts | Two of the FDA’s most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it’s sidelined the FDA.
Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research & Review and 32-year veteran of the agency, will leave at the end of October, and OVRR deputy director Phil Krause, who’s been at FDA for more than a decade, will leave in November. The news, first reported by BioCentury, is a massive blow to confidence in the agency’s ability to regulate vaccines.
The bombshell announcement comes at a particularly crucial moment, as boosters and children’s shots are being weighed by the regulator. The departures also come as the administration has recently jumped ahead of the FDA’s reviews of booster shots, announcing that they might be available by the week of Sept. 20.
A former senior FDA leader told Endpoints that they’re departing because they’re frustrated that CDC and their ACIP committee are involved in decisions that they think should be up to the FDA. The former FDAer also said he’s heard they’re upset with CBER director Peter Marks for not insisting that those decisions should be kept inside FDA. What finally did it for them was the White House getting ahead of FDA on booster shots.
FDA’s former acting chief scientist Luciana Borio added on Twitter, “FDA is losing two giants who helped bring us many safe and effective vaccines over decades of public service.”
“These two are the leaders for Biologic (vaccine) review in the US. They have a great team, but these two are the true leaders of CBER. A huge global loss if they both leave,” Former BARDA director Rick Bright wrote, weighing in on the news. “Dr. Gruber is much more than the Director. She is a global leader. Visionary mastermind behind global clinical regulatory science for flu, Ebola, Mers, Zika, Sars-cov-2, many others.”
nakedcapitalism | Last Friday, the CDC published “Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant in an Elementary School — Marin County, California, May–June 2021”
(“Outbreak”). This got a lot of play in the Northern California press,
with a good deal of reporting done (or at least original stories
written), because the study was led by Marin County Public Health, and they with other California epidemiologists and experts wrote the study up and then
submitted it to the CDC, which accepted it. Good for them! However,
there is a question “Outbreak” does not ask, and that the press did not
ask. Carefully avoiding spoilers — though few NC readers will be
surprised at the plot twist — I will first quote the “Outbreak” on the
incident. Then I will switch into media critique mode, and present the
headlines from Northern Califonia. After that, I will present the
implications drawn from the outbreak by the press (which are more broad
spectrum than the headlines). Finally, I will give the unasked question
from “Outbreak” a thorough airing, and conclude.
The outbreak location was an elementary school in Marin County,
California… Each grade includes 20 to 25 students in single classrooms.
Other than two teachers, one of whom was the index patient, all school
staff members were vaccinated (verified in California’s Immunization
Registry). The index patient became symptomatic on May 19 with nasal
congestion and fatigue. This teacher reported attending social events
during May 13–16 but did not report any known COVID-19 exposures and
attributed symptoms to allergies. The teacher continued working during
May 17–21, subsequently experiencing cough, subjective fever, and
headache. The school required teachers and students to mask while
indoors; interviews with parents of infected students suggested that
students’ adherence to masking and distancing guidelines in line with
CDC recommendations (3) was high in class. However, the teacher was
reportedly unmasked on occasions when reading aloud in class. On May 23,
the teacher notified the school that they received a positive result
for a SARS-CoV-2 test performed on May 21 and self-isolated until May
30. The teacher did not receive a second COVID-19 test, but reported
fully recovering during isolation.
The index patient’s students began experiencing symptoms on May 22.
During May 23–26, among 24 students in this grade, 22 were tested….
Twelve (55%) of the 22 students received a positive test result,
including eight who experienced symptom onset during May 22–26.
Throughout this period, all desks were separated by 6 ft. Students were
seated in five rows; the attack rate in the two rows seated closest to
the teacher’s desk was 80% (eight of 10) and was 28% (four of 14) in the
three back rows…
On May 22, students in a another classroom, who differed in age by 3
years from the students in the class with the index case and who were
also ineligible for vaccination began to experience symptoms. The two
classrooms were separated by a large outdoor courtyard with lunch tables
that were blocked off from use with yellow tape. All classrooms had
portable high-efficiency particulate air filters and doors and windows
were left open. Fourteen of 18 students in this separate grade received
testing; six tests had positive results. Investigation revealed that one
student in this grade hosted a sleepover on May 21 with two classmates
from the same grade. All three of these students experienced symptoms
after the sleepover and received positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. Among
infected students in this class, test dates ranged from May 24 to June
1; symptom onset occurred during May 22–31.
There is a unanimity of opinion by the headline-writing editors that
the source of the problem was the index case: the unvaccinated teacher.
Indeed, that’s without justification — that is, is not only a matter of aghastitude — given the “Implications for Public Health Practice” in the Summary section of “Outbreak”:
Vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, but
transmission risk remains elevated among unvaccinated persons in
schools. In addition to vaccination, strict adherence to multiple
nonpharmaceutical prevention strategies, including masking, are
important to ensure safe school instruction.
(I presume the Summary is tacked on to the submitted study by CDC.)
Now let’s turn to the bodies of the stories, where there is a broader
spectrum of opinion than in the headlines.
onafhanklik | The low frequency of cases and deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 virus
in some countries of Africa has called our attention to the unusual
behavior of this disease. Data from 19 countries that participated in
the WHO sponsored African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC),
from 1995 until 2015, intended to treat over 90 million people annually
and protect an at-risk population of 115 million, were compared with
thirty-five (Non-APOC), countries that were not included. The
statistics show a significant 28% lower mortality (0.72 IC 95%
0,67-0,78) and 8% lower rate of infection (0.92 IC95% 0,91-0,93) due to
COVID-19. It was concluded that the incidence in mortality rates and
number of cases is significantly lower among the APOC countries compared
to non-APOC countries. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.
Ivermectin has been banned in South Africa to used for Covid19
– there is no vaccine and those “promised vaccines” all over, are also
not of any guarantee to anybody. For how long is those vaccines, for a
year perhaps? And people still need to wear masks and closed down
businesses to harm all economies. No income, no food and no employment.
Mass control and manipulation.
What are the benefits of Ivermectin? There were already various trials in different countries.
Regarding the Covid-19 virus, it was earlier stated on 2 November 2020,
that when Covid-19 arrived in Tanzania, their President Magufuli didn’t
believe in his people to stay at home. He wanted his people to get into
the churches and mosques to pray.
Speaking
during a political rally in Chato Geita, Magufuli said his government
did not bow to pressure to lockdowns. He stated that many threatened
us with dire consequences, they wanted us to shut down the economy so
that we run away from the problem but in reality, leadership is about
carrying the problems on those you lead on your shoulders that is why
today we are here. He is not the only country that decided not to
close down the businesses and economy.
Tanzania’s
economy must go ahead as it is more important than coronavirus, which
has killed 21 people in the East African country, according to the
president.
divergemedia | Jim Smith, the Former President and CEO of Thomson Reuters and now the current Chairman
of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the corporate arm of the company,
also sits as a board member at Pfizer – except under the name James Smith.
Robert Malone, the self proclaimed creator of mRNA vaccines was the
first to post Mr. Smith’s LinkedIn profile that showed the connections.
The LinkedIn profile that Mr. Malone posted reads that “Jim is a
non-executive director of Pfizer Inc.”
regarding the "Trusted News Initiative" and censorship of information regarding COVID vaccine safety, please be aware of the link between Pfizer and Reuters. I would call that a journalistic conflict of interest. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/qQCysxnPX6
Since that tweet, it appears that Mr. Smith has removed his picture off
of his LinkedIn profile in an attempt to make the connection harder to
make. However, the pictures are the same person and the “James Smith”
that sits on the board at Pfizer admits to being the Chairman of Thomson
Reuters foundation and the former president – verifying it is in fact
the same Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is also a “member of the International
Business Council of the World Economic Forum.”
People all over the world are hungry for unbiased information that
they can trust. When the chairman of a media company like Reuters also
sits on the board at Pfizer how can we believe that there isn’t any form
of bias occurring in their coverage of the vaccine rollout? Are we to
really believe that there is no conflict here? Do people really believe
someone can sit on the board of a major vaccine manufacturer and still
provide unbiased coverage of that same vaccine? I don’t think you can
remain unbiased – but that’s just my take.
*We have reached out to the Thomson Reuters Foundation about the
connection but did not receive a message back before the release of this
article.*
thesun | The event was hosted in Napa Valley over the weekend and the clip of
the dozens of guests sitting side-by-side was shared online by Dem donor
and winemaker Kathryn Walt Hall.
Critics were quick to slam Pelosi for attending the event in an area where Covid-19 cases are once again spiking.
"Speaker Pelosi wants to lock you down again while she wines and
dines with her political donors," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
said.
"It's utter hypocrisy."
Controversial QAnon Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene also took shots at Pelosi's fundraiser, alleging that Democrats only care about "controlling you."
"[Speaker Pelosi] does not care about Covid," she wrote on Twitter.
"Democrats don’t care about covid. They only care about controlling you.
"Magical covid science: The virus stops spreading the minute you sit
down to eat or when you speak in a microphone or if you are one of the
elites. Liars."
This is not the first time Speaker Pelosi has been slammed for
flouting Covid-19 restrictions while California was dealing with
outbreaks.
Last year, she was caught on video inside a hair salon with no mask
on while such establishments were supposed to be closed due to the
virus.
Pelosi was widely slammed online for ignoring rules that she adamantly supported when speaking publicly.
She later alleged that the owner of the hair salon set her up.
aeromagazine | The First Amendment of the US Constitution specifies that Congress
“shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” In fairness,
Congress has made no such law. The executive branch is simply stating
that it will invoke its power to censor by fiat in collaboration with
social media companies, on the pretext of a national emergency.
Given that the federal government enjoys the cooperation of the vast
majority of media outlets, the fact that competing social media
narratives are sufficient to prevent them from being able to convince
the nation that their message is correct represents a significant
problem with the message itself, the effectiveness of its communication
or the credibility of their sources.
Of these three factors, credibility seems especially weak. Since the
start of the pandemic, health leaders have made definitive statements
that have subsequently needed to be reversed. First, early in 2020, they
insisted
the wearing of masks by the public was unnecessary, as it was not
believed that the virus spread via airborne transmission. That was
incorrect. The hypothesis that the origin of the virus was a lab leak
from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was labelled a conspiracy theory,
but has now been deemed as likely as a natural origin. In late March, the current CDC cirector, Rochelle Walensky, announced that vaccinated individuals were unable to carry the virus, even though existing studies confirmed that they could both carry and spread it. The CDC later awkwardly walked these comments back. In May it was announced that vaccinated individuals were free to roam unmasked
in most settings because they would not spread or contract the virus
except in the rarest of circumstances. This directive has now been
reversed again due to the rise of the Delta variant, as data have shown
that vaccinated individuals may have the same viral load as the unvaccinated, and may indeed be able to spread it to others. The CDC says that vaccinated individuals should return to masking indoors.
Even though some of these reversals were due to changing circumstances,
the ongoing back-and-forth leads many to question the credibility of
the messengers.
It has also become clear that leaders are disseminating
misinformation—or, in some cases, disinformation—on behalf of those who
know the truth but are making statements to the contrary.
In a 21 July 2021 CNN Town Hall, President Biden insisted: “You’re not gonna get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
This was a completely inaccurate statement. Vaccinated people have
contracted Covid since the vaccinations began, and this trend is
increasing now that the Delta variant is the dominant viral strain. Data from the Israeli Ministry of Health
reveal that, at five months and six months after the second vaccine
dose, individuals are only protected from symptomatic Covid at levels of
44% and 16% respectively. Meanwhile, a new study from Israel indicates that protection from serious disease has fallen to 80%.
It may be that this misinformation was conveyed accidentally as a
result of inelegant delivery by the president. But this was a very
dangerous statement, as it promoted a false impression that the vaccines
are completely protective, and was likely to make many question and
potentially resist the new announcement from the CDC that vaccinated
people should wear masks indoors.
The CDC director declared that this was a pandemic of the
unvaccinated—and was soon echoed by President Biden. A large number of
health leaders and media contributors have continued to parrot this
phrase. But case data from Israel, the UK and many other countries prove
that vaccinated individuals are being significantly impacted. Israel
recently announced that 60% of its hospitalised Covid patients were fully vaccinated. The newest Public Health England technical report
reveals that 25% of Delta hospitalisations and 54% of Delta deaths have
occurred in the fully vaccinated. Iceland has achieved a vaccination
rate of almost 90% among adults, but still needed to reinstate public health measures
due to a surge in Delta infections. Now that the Delta variant has
taken hold in the US, there have been numerous instances of vaccinated
individuals being infected, including the notable breakthrough infections
in Provincetown, Massachusetts that were a central factor prompting new
CDC guidance on indoor masking. It is clear that the Delta variant has
produced a much more complicated landscape, in which merely the amount
of vaccine that has been administered is a less significant data point.
In short, it is false to claim that the pandemic affects only the
unvaccinated.
In addition to being inaccurate, the narrative that the pandemic now
only affects the unvaccinated has created division and hostility between
different groups, which is extremely unhelpful given the many cases of
shootings in the US, as well as violent outbursts in public spaces
including airlines. I have seen vitriolic statements on social media by
vaccinated individuals who are blaming the unvaccinated for the Delta
variant, even though it was discovered in autumn of last year, before
vaccinations were available to the general public. Even some in the
media have engaged in blaming the unvaccinated. CNN host John Berman insisted:
“If the unvaccinated aren’t to blame, who is?” We urgently need to
promote a climate in which people work together rather than being turned
against one another.
Some leaders have suggested that increased vaccination levels will
arrest the surge in the Delta variant. After the second dose, it takes
35 days with Pfizer or 42 days with Moderna to achieve fully vaccinated
status. It is obvious that new vaccinations, which take more than a
month to provide full protection, cannot prevent a viral surge that is
presently underway. Additional vaccines may indeed help more people to
have better health outcomes if they were to become infected—but that is
an entirely different claim.
NYMag | “The
message that breakthrough cases are exceedingly rare and that you don’t
have to worry about them if you’re vaccinated — that this is only an
epidemic of the unvaccinated — that message is falling flat,” Harvard
epidemiologist Michael Mina told me in the long interview that follows
below. “If this was still Alpha, sure. But with Delta, plenty of people
are getting sick. Plenty of transmission is going on. And my personal
opinion is that the whole notion of herd immunity from two vaccine shots
is flying out the window very quickly with this new variant.”
“We’re
seeing a lot more spread in vaccinated people,” agreed Scripps’s Eric
Topol, who estimated that the vaccines’ efficacy against symptomatic
transmission, which he estimated to be 90 percent or above for the
wild-type strain and all previous variants, had fallen to about 60
percent for Delta. “That’s a big drop.” Later, he suggested it might have fallen to 50 percent, and that new data about to be published in the U.S. would suggest an even lower rate. On Wednesday, a large pre-print study published by the Mayo clinic suggested the efficacy against infection had fallen as far as 42 percent.
“The
breakthrough problem is much more concerning than what our public
officials have transmitted,” Topol continued. “We have no good tracking.
But every indicator I have suggests that there’s a lot more under the
radar than is being told to the public so far, which is unfortunate.”
The result, he said, was a widening gap between the messaging from
public-health authorities and the meaning of the data emerging in real
time. “I think the problem we have is people — whether it’s the CDC or
the people that are doing the briefings — their big concern is, they
just want to get vaccinations up. And they don’t want to punch any holes
in the story about vaccines. But we can handle the truth. And that’s
what we should be getting.”
The central distortion reflected in the Kaiser report — and echoed by communicators elsewhere, including in the Times
— is the result of a basic error of comparison, one that should have
been obvious to anyone familiar with the shape of the pandemic. Almost
all of these calculations about the share of breakthrough cases have
been made using year-to-date 2021 data, which include several months
before mass vaccination (when by definition vanishingly few breakthrough
cases could have occurred) during which time the vast majority of the
year’s total cases and deaths took place (during the winter surge).This
is a corollary to the reassuring principle you might’ve heard, over the
last few weeks, that as vaccination levels grow we would expect the
percentage of vaccinated cases will, too — the implication being that we
shouldn’t worry too much over panicked headlines about the relative
share of vaccinated cases in a state or ICU but instead focus on the
absolute number of those cases in making a judgment about vaccine
protection across a population. This is true. But it also means that
when vaccination levels were very low, there were inevitably very few
breakthrough cases, too.
That means that to calculate a prevalence ratio for cases
or deaths using the full year’s data requires you to effectively divide
a numerator of four months of data by a denominator of seven months of
data. And because those first few brutal months of the year were
exceptional ones that do not reflect anything like the present state of
vaccination or the disease, they throw off the ratios even further.
Two-thirds of 2021 cases and 80 percent of deaths came before April 1,
when only 15 percent of the country was fully vaccinated, which means
calculating year-to-date ratios means possibly underestimating the
prevalence of breakthrough cases by a factor of three and breakthrough
deaths by a factor of five. And if the ratios are calculated using data
sets that end before the Delta surge, as many have been, that adds an
additional distortion, since both breakthrough cases and severe illness
among the vaccinated appear to be significantly more common with this
variant than with previous ones.
In
2020 people were told that business closures, stay-at-home orders,
lockdowns, and mask mandates were necessary to slow the spread of
SARS-CoV-2.
Some people expected that places where these measures
were absent or implemented half-heartedly would have drastically worse
results.
With more than a year of these measures behind us, it's time to evaluate the results.
Preliminary
academic studies have already been published, and they deserve our
attention. This quiz is intended for the layman, because if these
radical measures were truly justified the results should be clear and
unambiguous in the data.
consentfactory | People can tell themselves that they didn’t see where things have
been heading for the last 17 months, but they did. They saw all the
signs along the way. The signs were all written in big, bold letters,
some of them in scary-looking Germanic script. They read …
“THIS IS THE ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM.”
I’m not going to show you all those signs out again. People like me
have been pointing them out, and reading them out loud, for 17 months
now. Anyone who knows anything about the history of totalitarianism, how
it incrementally transforms society into a monstrous mirror image of
itself, has known since the beginning what the “New Normal” is, and we
have been shouting from the rooftops about it.
We have watched as the New Normal transformed our societies into
paranoid, pathologized, authoritarian dystopias where people now have to
show their “papers” to see a movie or get a cup of coffee and publicly
display their ideological conformity to enter a supermarket and buy
their groceries.
We have watched as the New Normal transformed the majority of the
masses into hate-drunk, hysterical mobs that are openly persecuting “the
Unvaccinated,” the official “Untermenschen” of the New Normal ideology.
We have watched as the New Normal has done precisely what every
totalitarian movement in history has done before it, right by the
numbers. We pointed all this out, each step of the way. I’m not going to
reiterate all that again.
I am, however, going to document where we are at the moment, and how
we got here … for the record, so that the people who will tell you later
that they “had no clue where the trains were going” will understand why
we no longer trust them, and why we regard them as cowards and
collaborators, or worse.
Yes, that’s harsh, but this is not a game. It isn’t a difference of
opinion. The global-capitalist ruling establishment is implementing a
new, more openly totalitarian structure of society and method of rule.
They are revoking our constitutional and human rights, transferring
power out of sovereign governments and democratic institutions into
unaccountable global entities that have no allegiance to any nation or
its people.
That is what is happening … right now. It isn’t a TV show. It’s actually happening.
The time for people to “wake up” is over. At this point, you either
join the fight to preserve what is left of those rights, and that
sovereignty, or you surrender to the “New Normal,” to global-capitalist
totalitarianism. I couldn’t care less what you believe about the virus,
or its mutant variants, or the experimental “vaccines.” This isn’t an
abstract argument over “the science.” It is a fight … a political,
ideological fight. On one side is democracy, on the other is
totalitarianism. Pick a fucking side, and live with it.
Anyway, here’s where we are at the moment, and how we got here, just the broad strokes.
NYMag |But
holding all else equal, if vaccines were still doing a good job
preventing severe disease but a considerably worse job preventing
spread, wouldn’t that drive the gap wider between cases and
hospitalizations, or cases and deaths? Yeah. But —
It’s a lot to hold equal. What
I’m hearing — and I’ve been helping with a bunch of patients — is that
people who are breaking through are getting very sick. They’re getting
Regeneron antibodies.
There
may be something to this waning immunity story. It’s fuzzy, but the
people who are getting hit are more apt to be people who were vaccinated
very early. I had a patient in recent days, who’s in her 70s. She got
vaccinated in January. And, I mean, she almost died. I mean, it’s just
terrible. I think — I hope — the monoclonals are going to save her life.
But she was a healthy 70-year-old lady, andjust
following her case was illuminating — she thought she was protected, but
she also wore masks everywhere. She was on guard and still got infected
and desperately ill.
Most people aren’t being that careful. The
vaccinated — who are now a very slight majority — those people just
think the pandemic’s over. There’s still this sense that if you’re
vaccinated, you’re good to go. I mean, I’ve even seen on television, you
know, some of our leading health experts, tell people it’s perfectly
okay to have indoor gatherings among vaccinated people. Well, it’s not
true. So we’re getting bad advice.
This
booster thing is yet another issue, because we don’t even know if
they’re going to protect against a Delta. I mean, everybody’s assuming
it, but there’s no data. You know, there’s some neutralizing antibodies
from the Pfizer report in 23 people and there’s an Israeli pre-print, it
says there’s waning immunity without any neutralizing antibodies. So
we’ll see. But these are just classic spike-protein boosters. There’s
nothing special about them to handle Delta. So I don’t know. I mean, I
suspect they’re going to provide some protection, but I’m not sure I’m
so confident it’s going to be great.
What
about just the basic heterogeneity of the country? We’re so big, with
so many pockets of vulnerable people, even in states that are, from a
bird’s-eye view, well-protected. Could it be that what we’re seeing now
is just the disease burning through those populations very efficiently
and producing numbers that look large even in the national context? I
think that’s true. I think heterogeneity is definitely playing a role,
but I also think the behavior is playing a substantial role. I mean, why
did Florida succumb? As you know, it’s basically at the national
average for vaccination, one percentage point below. But it’s been a
disaster there, and they have promotion from the leadership of the state
to do everything wrong. I mean, you know, they’ve mandated no masking.
But that should provide some hope, in the sense that other states will take a different course, presumably. I don’t know.
Personally,
I put a lot of stock into the fact that, even in states where the
vaccination levels weren’t so high overall, that seniors seemed pretty
well-vaccinated — I think when we last spoke, a couple of weeks ago, in
the worst-vaccinated state, Mississippi, 76 percent of seniors had
gotten at least one shot. That’s not 99 percent but I would’ve thought
it would’ve shielded a lot. I think for Alpha it would have been beautiful. But for Delta it’s just not nearly enough.
I
mean, one of the worst signals that I’ve seen is San Francisco. San
Francisco is like Vermont, they’re even a little higher than Vermont for
fully vaccinated — it’s 70 percent of the population of San Francisco
county and it’s going through a very substantial hospitalization spike,
unlike Vermont.
And that’s a bad sign because San Francisco has been kind of a rock throughout the whole pandemic.
They’ve been incredible. Even when the rest of California was doing poorly. Yeah.
Exactly. So I look at San Francisco as a bad bellwether for what might
be coming. Why are they doing so poorly right now for hospitalization?
Why is it so different than Vermont? If there’s that many people getting
so sick, something’s just not right. But it’s hard to explain all these
things, right? I mean, why, why did the U.K. on Freedom Day —
VE has always been measured retrospectively — after the fact. Thus accurate or mostly accurate or at least somewhat accurate picture of a vaccine's effectiveness can be gleaned — based on historical data.
And NOT based on Estimates.
Some may notice that “fact checkers” that “debunk” the growing and obvious simple fact that moderna and pfizer may end up having VE = 0 — all rely on CDC “estimates” — even as what they are trying to smear and claim as “false” — was based on an MDs and/or scientists quoting from actual data — and checked by those actually skilled in the science of data.
The narrative fact checkers use estimates to smear actual scientific knowledge — results gleaned from actual, concrete research and data. So what happens, now that our zig zagging, hysterical CDC director Rochelle Walesnky has just confirmed that mRNA neovaccinoid effectiveness equals zero?
Walensky told CNN the covid shots, having failed to prevent the disease among those inoculated also cannot prevent transmission of the disease among those inoculated.
mRNA neovaccinoid effectiveness=zero...,
She prefaced this astonishing acknowledgment of the drugs’ failure with an even more astonishing fabrication: “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well!”
The CDC Director: “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well! They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death, they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
“They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death” she said — but what does the data say?
Don’t expect CDC director to level with the American people on this essential matter.
Expect more tears and flapdoodle from her; it’s how she runs.
To date, I am able to locate CDC published information that says Delta is highly transmissible; and unable to locate CDC information demonstrating this variant causes “severe illness and death” — the CDC’s most recent information from an Aug. 6 published study is equivocal:
“Finally, differences in vaccination coverage in some of these populations might be an additional confounding factor when estimating crude VE at the county and state levels. VE studies with more rigorous methods and the power to estimate protection against severe outcomes are needed to better understand the potential impact of the Delta variant.”
Obvious question: how does “VE studies with more rigorous methods and the power to estimate protection against severe outcomes are needed to better understand the potential impact of the Delta variant”
Square with: the covid shots “continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death”.
Walensky made this claim on national TV — fully aware her own agency’s most recent information is actually claiming that “VE studies with more rigorous methods and the power to estimate protection against severe outcomes are needed to better understand the potential impact of the Delta variant.”
Another paper says the Delta “B.1.617.2 variant is highly transmissible in indoor sports settings and households, which might lead to increased attack rates.”
This paper, last updated July 16, also says, in conclusion: ” Finally, vaccine effectiveness could not be calculated because of an inability to interview all persons associated with the outbreak and incomplete state immunization registry data.”
To sum up. VE is supposed to be determined after the fact.
NYTimes | In late spring,
the 142 nursing homes operated by the Good Samaritan Society hit a
milestone that was unthinkable just four months earlier: Zero cases of
Covid-19 across the whole company, from 900 at the peak of the pandemic.
The relief was short-lived.
The
case count has ticked up again: It’s still below 100 among residents
and staff, the company said, but includes many breakthrough cases of
vaccinated residents testing positive. Then last week, two vaccinated
residents died with Covid at the Good Samaritan Society-Deuel County
nursing home in Clear Lake, South Dakota.
The
company said it had pinpointed the cause of the spread there and at
other of its facilities: The breakthroughs had happened in the same
homes where unvaccinated staff were testing positive, seemingly carrying
the virus into the home from the community.
“We
fought this virus, and we were winning with the vaccine,” said Randy
Bury, chief executive of the Good Samaritan Society, a nonprofit chain
that operates in 24 states.
Late last month,
the company became one of the largest long-term care chains in the
country to order mandatory vaccines for staff, highlighting turmoil
within an industry desperate to avoid a repeat of the devastation that
swept through this highly vulnerable population.
After
sharp drops in infections over the last several months, the number of
Covid cases among U.S. nursing-home residents and staff roughly tripled
from the week of July 4 to the week ending July 25, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency’s data show that cases of Covid among residents had risen to 1,312, the highest figure reported since early March.
About 133,000 nursing home residents died of Covid
over the course of the pandemic, although the death rate has plummeted
in recent months with more than 80 percent of residents now vaccinated.
Overall, Covid deaths among nursing home residents and staff members
accounted for nearly one-third of the nation’s pandemic fatalities.
Growing
calls for vaccine mandates among health care workers have gained
urgency but also met resistance in the nursing home industry, where some
homes say it will cost them staff members in an industry already
plagued with high turnover. Only about 60 percent of nursing home staff
members are vaccinated, and some states report an even lower rate, with
less than half inoculated, according to the most recent government data.
TAE | For some obscure reason we have accepted the idea that we can do no
risk stratification, that everyone is at equal risk, and therefore
everyone should undergo the same treatment. And then we find out that
this treatment doesn’t work, or only half, or only for a few months,
etc. But you can be sure insurance companies are still doing risk
stratification, also for Covid, it’s how they make a profit.
We find the vaccine is not a vaccine, but a therapeutic. An untested
one at that. While we could have focused on prevention, either for
everyone or just for the vulnerable, and early treatment for early
victims. As 80% of people were never at risk at all and 80% have already
been infected and survived.
There are plenty ways to do prevention and we have discarded them
all, in favor for a treatment that now turns against us. That is to say,
the vaccine makes the virus more, not less, dangerous. It’s not the
unvaccinated that are the pool the virus mutates in, it’s the
vaccinated.
And it’s not only the mutations. All Covid therapeutics used in the
west induce the vaccinees’ body to produce spike proteins, which are
toxic to the body. Initially, it was claimed that they would stay near
the site of injection, but we soon found that they spread through the
entire body, and assemble especially in the most vulnerable spots:
lungs, testes, placenta etc.
And that’s not all either: we now see suspicions that the spike
proteins remain active in the body, and continue to be produced inside
the body, for much longer than we were told they would be. An as yet
unpublished report will claim that they have been found five months
after injection, instead of mere days. The potential consequences would
be much more disastrous than the virus.
And wouldn’t you know, the moment we find out from the CDC itself
that the vaccines don’t work, that same CDC clamors for more
vaccinations, and all the usual suspects in the media and politics and
“expertise” chime in. Everyone vaccinated now or we’ll take your jobs
away, and all of your fun. Children, no matter how young, must be
jabbed, even pregnant women. This therapeutic we never really tested is
perfectly safe for your unborn child!
Without a jab, you’re a lethal danger to everyone who’s been vaccinated!
Well, actually, I am not, and thanks to the CDC now I can prove it.
aier | Since the Covid pandemic broke out, Sweden has been fought over more
than any other part of Europe since Germany in the 30 Years War. In
refusing to use an iron fist to control a virus, lockdown advocates
claimed it was either committing murder or suicide; choose your favorite
metaphor. Relatively few such as me, in three separate articles,
claimed the Nordic country was sparing both the economy and something
called “liberty” with its light-handed approach. My favorite title
(editor chose it): “Media Enraged That More Swedes Aren’t Dying.”
Total Swedish Covid deaths at this writing: 14,651.
It’s not that Sweden did nothing – but very little. “From the onset
of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency . . . embarked on a
de-facto herd immunity approach, allowing community transmission to
occur relatively unchecked,” declared a scathing editorial in the leftwing medical journal TheLancet
last December. “No mandatory measures were taken to limit crowds on
public transport, in shopping malls, or in other crowded places,” it
said. “Coronavirus testing, contact tracing, source identification, and
reporting, as recommended by WHO, were limited and remain inadequate.”
High schools closed temporarily, but grade schools never.
“In our view,” snarled The Lancet, “there is still not
sufficient recognition in the national strategy of the importance of
pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission, aerosol transmission, and
use of face masks.”
Time to revisit Sweden as much of the world starts locking down and
masking again regardless of vaccination levels, blaming the Delta
variant. And those impudent Swedes are pretty much refusing to die of Covid at all.
bloomberg | The U.S. agency leading the fight against Covid-19 gave up a crucial
surveillance tool tracking the effectiveness of vaccines just as a
troublesome new variant of the virus was emerging.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped
comprehensively tracking what are known as vaccine breakthrough cases in
May, the consequences of that choice are only now beginning to show.
At the time, the agency had identified only 10,262 cases
across the U.S. where a fully vaccinated person had tested positive for
Covid. Most people who got infected after vaccination showed few
symptoms, and appeared to be at low risk of infecting others.
But
in the months since, the number of vaccine breakthrough cases has
grown, as has the risk that they present. And while the CDC has stopped
tracking such cases, many states have not. Bloomberg gathered data from
35 states and identified 111,748 vaccine breakthrough cases through the
end of July, more than 10 times the CDC’s end-of-April tally.
With
more than 164 million Americans vaccinated, breakthrough cases are
expected. The number of them should rise as more people are vaccinated,
simply because there are more vaccinated people who could get infected.
While a similarly small proportion of vaccine breakthroughs was seen in
clinical trials of the shots, state health officials said it was
important to know how many are happening, how severe they are, and if
they’re getting more common.
The CDC said when it announced the change in May that
it would continue to collect data on breakthrough cases if the
infections resulted in hospitalization or death — a rare occurrence,
since vaccines provide significant protection. The decision to stop
tracking non-severe cases was made to “help maximize the quality of the
data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health
importance,” the agency says on its website.
But that decision to
follow not track mild or asymptomatic cases is now being questioned,
including by state officials dealing with the virus on the front lines.
At
the same time the CDC stopped tracking those cases, the delta variant
began to spread in the U.S. Small numbers of delta-variant cases were
identified in mid-April. The strain began to take over in some parts of
the country in June, then exploded nationally in July.
It now
makes up the vast majority of cases, in part because it is more
contagious than prior strains. New waves of Covid cases have caused a
surge in hospitalizations in the South among unvaccinated people, and
led the Biden administration and states to push for vaccine mandates.
“When
I saw CDC was going to stop tracking vaccinated people who get
infected, my heart sank,” said Charity Dean, who helped lead
California’s response to Covid as the state health department’s
assistant director. “We lost our shot at being able to characterize how
this variant is moving through the population and how new variants might
emerge.”
jonathanturley | Just yesterday, we discussed
the censoring of a commentator by Twitter for merely expressing an
opinion over the need for a “pause” on any federal mandates on Covid-19
as new research is studied. Now, a former New York Times science
reporter, Alex Berenson, has been suspended for simply citing the
results from a clinical trial by Pfizer and raising questions over any
vaccine mandate. In the meantime, the White House accused both the
Washington Post and New York Times of irresponsible reporting on Covid,
but surprisingly Twitter has not suspended those accounts. It is the
license of the censor. Twitter is unwilling to let people read or
discuss viewpoints that it disagrees with as a corporation. Many on the
left, however, have embraced the concept of corporate speech and censorship.
NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE. TWITTER PULLED THE MISLEADING TAG FROM LAST NIGHT’S POST ABOUT THE @PFIZER DEATH DATA.
It turns out that the problem with censorship for many was the failure
to censor views that they opposed. With the “right” censors at work, the
free speech concerns have been set aside.
Berenson has been effectively confined to Substack
by Big Tech due to his discussing dissenting views on the science
surrounding Covid-19. His latest offense against Big Tech came when he
posted the results published by Pfizer of its own clinical data. He
claimed that the research showed little difference in mortality between
those in the trial with a vaccine and those given a placebo.
The rise of corporate censors has combined with a heavily pro-Biden
media to create the fear of a de facto state media that controls
information due to a shared ideology rather than state coercion. That
concern has been magnified by demands from Democratic leaders for
increased censorship, including censoring political speech, and now word
that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to
be censored by Facebook.
dailymail | Joe Biden on
Friday night told Americans to expect more COVID-19 restrictions but
the White House has said new lockdowns were unlikely
Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said on Friday afternoon that a federal vaccine mandate was being considered
On
Friday night, she tweeted: 'To clarify: There will be no nationwide
mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and
portions of the federal government. There will be no federal mandate'
.@BerkeleyJr To clarify: There will be no nationwide mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and portions of the federal government. There will be no federal mandate.
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) July 30, 2021
Her backtracking will add to concern about the disjointed and chaotic messaging regarding the pandemic
On
Thursday Biden said it was 'a question' whether a federal vaccine
mandate could be enforced; shortly after his COVID advisor went on CNN
and said it was 'not an authority that we're exploring at all'
Multiple
private sector employers, plus some state and federal agencies, have
started bringing in rules making vaccines mandatory, to avoid regular
testing
On Tuesday the CDC made a U-turn and recommended once again face masks
On May 18 the CDC had announced that face masks were no longer necessary
Biden
spoke on Friday after CDC published the data in which is claimed that
the Indian 'Delta' variant is significantly more of a threat
It claimed that fully vaccinated people are able to spread the virus
The
report looked at the case of Provincetown, in Cape Cod, where 469
COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents between
July 3 and July 17, including 346 fully vaccinated people
There
were no deaths among fully vaccinated people, and only four
hospitalizations - with two of those patients having pre-existing
conditions
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
