It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening here.
The government's mandates came out when the concern was Delta, not Omicron, and therefore its "findings are now obsolete."
The Supreme Court held in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that the right to refuse medical treatment could be overcome when society needs to curb the spread of a contagious epidemic. At Friday’s oral argument, all the justices acknowledged that the federal mandates rest on this rationale.
But mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission (rather than efficacy against severe outcomes like hospitalization or death).... For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence.
The little data we have suggest the opposite. One preprint study found that after 30 days the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines no longer had any statistically significant positive effect against Omicron infection, and after 90 days, their effect went negative—i.e., vaccinated people were more susceptible to Omicron infection....
According to the CDC, the overwhelming majority of symptomatic U.S. Omicron cases have been mild. The best policy might be to let Omicron run its course while protecting the most vulnerable, naturally immunizing the vast majority against Covid through infection by a relatively benign strain....
It is axiomatic in U.S. law that courts don’t uphold agency directives when the agency has entirely failed to consider facts crucial to the problem....
Posts
159 comments:
The leaderships of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter must be angry that they could not prevent The Wall Street Journal from publishing that article.
There is a question worth asking, that won’t be asked: does the vaccine actually make people more susceptible to omicron? That’s how it seemed to me. Everybody around unvaxxed me got mildly sick with the ‘cron. I didn’t get it. So… maybe antibody dépendent enhancement is really a thing.
What took so long?
A lot of qualified people suspected this and have been muzzled.
Mr. Rubenfeld is a constitutional scholar
Tiger Dad?
The links to the WSJ are broken, FYI.
I know, by now it's a broken record: but just consider the reaction if it was the Trump administration trying to impose vaccine mandates. "He's trying to kill us all! Impeach the SOB!"
So these guys think they know more about Covid-19 than Sotomayor does, or what?
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
Generally slippery slope arguments are contrived rather than historical fact.
The mandate was always unnecessary. Voluntary vaccination levels were high enough to accomplish the goal of the mandates if vaccination were capable of achieving the goal at all. Now we have evidence that the vaccine is not capable.
As a forced medical procedure, vaccine mandates should, at a minimum, have to pass strict scrutiny. They don't even pass rational relationship.
Let everyone get! Unfortunately lots people think Omicron will long Covid them and leave them with lasting bodily damage. It's going to take a while for people to realize not to worry about that. I guess until that time there will always be demands to lockdown public activities.
I tested positive over Christmas. For me it was 3 days of allergy symptoms and then several days of lethargy after the symptoms went away.
US Health Authorities applied a worst-case scenario mitigation (akin to 28 days later) to a bug that targeted the elderly and the health compromised. They'll never admit it.
On a related note, Biden is about to mail out millions of test kits which will arrive just about the time Omicron will be all but over.
Duh?
And BTW, the UK mailed out test kits 10 months ago.
"For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence."
Was there ever, for any variant?
Of course, progs don't need no stinking' evidence. As Wise Sonia demonstrated.
All true but so with Delta and original. There’s been so much garbage science relating to testing yet we’re still relying on data from the garbage testing to create policy.
It’s shit all the way down…
…and now the argument the vaccine isn’t a vaccine but an effective therapy is now shit but they’re still trying to roll with it.
Fuck you and your irreparably damaged credibility…
A friend sent an email over the weekend with excerpts from an amicus brief filed with the S.Ct. on the mandate issue. The excerpts were:
1. "Quite simply, the Omicron variant is now a normal respiratory virus, not an unusual, extraordinary, or grave danger."
2. "Vaccines Are Ineffective At Preventing [as opposed to reducing the severity of] Omicron Infections."
If the S.Ct. accepts this as valid, the mandate will be disallowed.
Gee, I hope SCOTUS can get around the paywall.
From the BBC re: test kits
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59895258
How many people did Biden kill by putzing around for 9 months (he asked rhetorically)
Actually, the justification comes from before Delta. If herd immunity were possible for this type of virus (it probably isn’t - respiratory viruses like this one mutate too easily), using this type of “vaccine” (definitely impossible - we have known that it wasn’t sterilizing since the P Town festivities in early July), it became impractical with Delta, which raised the Herd Immunity Threshold (HIT) from roughly 60% to roughly 80%, due to its greatly increased infectivity (R0). With Omicron, HIT is probably around 90%, with its even higher infectivity (R0). Of course, Omicron seems to somewhat evade the vaccines, which is what you would expect from non-sanitizing vaccines, made worse this time, because the vaccines each target just a couple of viral proteins.
My theory is that a year to a year and half ago, before these inconvenient facts became known, the public health bureaucracies determined that we should fight the virus through gaining herd immunity through vaccinations. It might have almost been plausible back then. By July, it clearly wasn’t. That didn’t matter. They had their plan, and they were going to stick with it. That’s what bureaucracies are good for, besides being a vehicle for graft (turns out there is plenty of that involved). I would like to believe that Trump would have seen the problems, and reacted quickly and decisively to retarget our public health bureaucracies. Regardless. Wasn’t going to happen with a figurehead President, whose strings are being pulled apparently by a committee headed by someone with a participation doctorate (Jill Biden with regard EdD). There’s no real Decider, and the top public health bureaucrats are free to fight each other for bureaucratic turf, instead of actually addressing the real issues.
“and after 90 days, their effect went negative—”
Quite a phrase, that is.
Sorry about the bad link. Fixed.
This kind of sucks. The mRNA vaccines obviously protect against severe COVID. But the vaccine does not stop infection. It still takes a bit of time, maybe a week or so, for our bodies to clear the virus. So people who have received the COVID vaccines can still transmit COVID to the unvaccinated. I wonder if vaccinated people are acting as asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic carriers and are responsible for the bulk of omicron transmission.
The authors appear to make sense. Triple vaxxed people I know are all getting sick. The vaccine mandate may have made sense in April, but only those who are unscientific and in a panic would double down on it now. At the very least they should admit that waiting for an updated version would be the wiser course of action. The politicos are panicking because they fear losing elections if they openly reverse course.
“The best policy might be to let Omicron run its course while protecting the most vulnerable, naturally immunizing the vast majority against Covid through infection by a relatively benign strain.”
They are only asserting a “might,” these two commentators don’t purport to know that Omicron immunizes against other covid strains.
"There is a question worth asking, that won’t be asked: does the vaccine actually make people more susceptible to omicron? That’s how it seemed to me. Everybody around unvaxxed me got mildly sick with the ‘cron. I didn’t get it. So… maybe antibody dépendent enhancement is really a thing. "
A simpler explanation -- the vaccine impairs your immune system, allowing infection to occur more easily. ADE would mean that having had the vaccine would actually make you sicker once you're infected, which doesn't seem to be happening. (At least, not yet.)
My son and his wife came down with Omicron during the first week of January. Both were fully vaccinated. Ocasio-Cortez and Whoopi Goldberg were vaccinated and had had the booster and still caught Omicron. Omicron doesn’t care about your vaccination status, and continuing to push vaccination in the face of Omicron ought to be a capital offense.
This topic must be what talking about religion was like in the 19th century. All you need for evidence is the certainty of some blowhard or other you watched on YouTube or the assertions of some politicians who think that following the "science" means following the polls.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59895258
Note the part in the above article that notes how they are keeping schools open in the UK using these lateral Flo tests.
While Biden fiddled.
"I wonder if vaccinated people are acting as asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic carriers"
Applied to Delta as well.
When you're told you're bulletproof....
Looks like FDA will have to add to their dot matrix printer arsenal to bump up their document delivery from 75 years (to stop the spread) to 8 months.
You would think the Vaccine Mandate supporters would feel abashed and kinda stupid right now.
But as Freder demonstrates there just isn't enough self awareness on their part for something like that.
Yes, taking a rushed "novel" vax with suppressed short term issues and unknown long term effects is akin to religion, a leap of faith, repeatedly.
rubenfeld, got back from his unpersonning,
The Supreme Court held in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that the right to refuse medical treatment could be overcome when society needs to curb the spread of a contagious epidemic.
Jacobson did not deal with "society" writ large, much less the entire country across 50 states. It was about one little locality.
We have been trying to make vaccines work for respiratory viruses for a very, very long time. The best we have ever come up with are flu vaccines that barely have any effect at all, and to get that small effect, you have to take a new one every year. Viruses in these classes simply mutate faster than we can develop vaccines for the new strains, and even worse, it now appears that if you have enountered a family member of a virus in the past, you won't really develop specific antibodies against a new variant or for a vaccine target- you will just be left with the original antibodies from the memory B-cells from that earlier infection, and the other various components that are T-cell mediated. These will usually be good enough until your body's immune system is just too old and worn out to activated/reactivated by any infection or vaccine- this is where therapeutics come in, like Mabs.
As long as we keep testing for COVID and its progeny at 1-2 million tests/day, we will keep finding it at a rate of at least 10,000 new cases/day at the seasonal nadir in May/June, and find 100,000+ new cases/day in South in July/August, and everywhere November/April. Old people will continue to die of it even if you vaccinated them and boost them on a 3-month basis. Most of us will catch Omicron, even those of us who were infected with Alpha and/or Delta. A new strain will predominate this coming Summer, and perhaps another in the Fall/Winter. Most of will get infected with symptoms once a year for the rest of our lives, regardless of what we do with lockdowns, masks, or vaccines.
I would like to believe that Trump would have seen the problems, and reacted quickly and decisively to retarget our public health bureaucracies.
According the Scott Atlas' book, Trump agreed with him and DeSantis about sheltering the high risk people and opening the economy for the rest but his administration was afraid to fire Fauci and Birx because of public uproar. As Scott concludes, "They lost the election anyway." As usual, Trump was surrounded by fools.
Worth reading the study itself. Seems that the small sample size included on the Omicron infections included exposures during super spreader events that moved quickly among highly vaccinated populations. That is enough to account for the "negative efficacy". It will probably even out over the next few weeks and more data about the general population is gathered.
Trump was surrounded by both fools and knaves.
...for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target...
That's Assuming the point of the mandates are to stop the spread
Take away that assumption, and what's left?
The government is just seeing how far they can push?
The government is using them to set up internal passports? (your papers, please)
The government is using the 'vaccines' to actually INCREASE covid infections? (why? why not?)
The 'vaccines' have NOTHING TO DO with covid, and are part of a nefarious mind control scheme?
[and NOT in a cool porno movie mind control way]
Spiros said...
This kind of sucks. The mRNA vaccines obviously protect against severe COVID. But the vaccine does not stop infection. It still takes a bit of time, maybe a week or so, for our bodies to clear the virus.
--------
Q @Spiros : may be you have answer -
what happens to virus when body clears it? is it turned into /metabolite/ products?
turned into variant?
"Our studies demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-based vaccination of humans induces a persistent germinal centre B cell response, which enables the generation of robust humoral immunity."
All right. IF that is true, then why do people need booster shots? Especially within months of taking the vaccination series? The fact is that most commentators are scientifically illiterate, and most of the rest are on the pharma payroll in some manner or the next. No one can explain why the humoral immunity generated by mRNA vaccines can't prevent infection, or even how it supposedly prevents hospitalization/ death GIVEN its inability to prevent infection.
words of Wisdom, from John Borell
1. We are all getting Omicron no matter what anyone does.
2. Get vaccinated so it isn’t bad when you inevitably get it.
3. Don’t worry about the unvaccinated. See No. 1.
4. Don’t worry about masks. See No. 1, again.
5. Go on about your normal, 2019 life. See No. 1 one more time.
…and after this fails the CDC will dramatically improve Biden’s death count numbers by excluding deaths with covid from the deaths from covid count.
…but the hospitals won’t have to return their covid death bounties…
the optics are going to change real fast. Makes one suspect it could be an election year or something…
If it weren't for people treating science and politics like religion, I'd be encouraged they would (now) have a healthy skepticism for both.
I had a respatory infection (negative for Covid and Flu) that lasted longer, and was more severe, than some of those I've known who had Covid. Only got a couple of days of work - damn you Covid!
Yancey: "Trump was surrounded by both fools and knaves."
True. Doesn't speak well of them and of him.
The "vaccine" made itself obsolete. Omicron opened a few more eyes of people that were certain without a shot they would never be able to exceed the 99% survival rate.
FYI-
Those island has the highest per capital Covid infection rate of any state (23+%). It also has one of , if not the, highest vaccination rates (76%). The combined total is over 100% of the population.
The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death. The public interest in keeping hospital beds available alone makes the mandates worth it.
For what it's worth, Salt Lake county just issued a 1-month *respirator* mandate... not mask mandate. They at least are recognizing that the cloth and surgical masks don't do anything.
OTOH, they're still doubling down on a face-covering mandate when the sad reality is that even the "respirators" aren't terribly effective either.
Thanks for linking to the WSJ. You should do that more often. It publishes some of the best analytical writing in American. The article is persuasive and convincing. The authors have real credibility; there is no substitute for deep knowledge of your subject. I liked how they skewered Breyer and the unwise Latinx. As one of my graduate school professors said, in writing there is no substitute for a well-stocked
mind on your subject. The behavior of omicron, makes the previous “settled science” on the virus obsolete.
Everybody around unvaxxed me got mildly sick with the ‘cron. I didn’t get it.
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
I'd love to see the data that proves Joe Blow would have been hospitalized without the shot.
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
@RMc, actually, yes it is.
Blogger doctrev said...
explain why the humoral immunity generated by mRNA vaccines can't prevent infection, or even how it supposedly prevents hospitalization/ death GIVEN its inability to prevent infection.
--
Perhaps because the immune system (as a whole) gets trained not only against a select portion of Spike, but at a diffuse systemic level instead of upper respiratory tract.
What happens when the Spike evolves away from that slice O' Spike then becomes unpredictable systemically as well.
Perhaps.
Maybe whatever's causing Xi to lock down millions again will force that to the test.
Bah. Let the games begin.
The assertion that vaccines do not reduce transmission is false. They do, in fact, reduce transmission.
1. Vaccinated people are less likely to be infected, therefore reducing the fraction of potential viral vectors.
2. Vaccinated people who do become infected are more likely to be asymptomatic. Asymptomatic people are about 1/20th as likely to infect another person as a symptomatic person.
3. Vaccinated people who become infected clear the virus faster, therefore reducing the time that they are contagious. Additionally, clearing the virus faster lowers the chance of generating new variants, so that new variants are introduced at a slower rate.
Some places, such as New York City, keep track of the fraction of people who test positive who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated. In NYC, there was a factor of 6 difference in the rate of cases among unvaccinated versus vaccinated people. This translates to an 86% efficacy of the vaccine against *infection*.
Browndog said...
I'd love to see the data that proves Joe Blow would have been hospitalized without the shot.
******************
Tons of reporting out there stating that 90%+ of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated.
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-hospitalizations-pa-vaccines-omicron-20220107.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-covid-surge-shows-overwhelming-cost-of-being-unvaccinated-america/
Mark said...
The Supreme Court held in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that the right to refuse medical treatment could be overcome when society needs to curb the spread of a contagious epidemic.
Jacobson did not deal with "society" writ large, much less the entire country across 50 states. It was about one little locality.
*************
Agreed, and more to the point, the Court held that a **state legislature** could pass a law empowering **local** health authorities to impose such a mandate.
Jacobsen offers no precedent for the **federal executive branch** imposing uniform health mandates on the states by asserting that OSHA includes such an inherent power.
I wonder how different things would have turned out if the main strategy for combatting covid had been on therapeutics rather than prevention. As it happened, the powers that be decided to put all their eggs in the lockdown, masks, and vaccine basket while seemingly banishing even the suggestion of therapeutic drugs from public discourse. Granted, the vaccines did a lot to reduce the severity of infections; but if a commensurate amount of effort and resources had been devoted to figuring out how to get already-infected people feeling better and back on their feet, then it seems to me we could have gotten through this without nearly as much social and economic upheaval.
"The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death. The public interest in keeping hospital beds available alone makes the mandates worth it."
Who is being hospitalized, who is dying? Let me guess, the old, the sickly, and the obese? Let them get "vaccinated" and leave the rest of us alone.
And since the studies are suggesting that the "vaccinated" are more likely to get omicron then how is there any public good forcing these "vaccines"?
What is wrong with these mandate pushers? I thought we had finally reached peak stupidity, but maybe not…
RMc said...
Everybody around unvaxxed me got mildly sick with the ‘cron. I didn’t get it.
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
-------
are you claiming anecdote is hearsay and data are not ?
data could be just say and not hear?
since nobody provides raw version anymore!
Andrew Bostom, MD, MS
@andrewbostom
·
21h
Reminder that NEGATIVE “vaccine efficacy” was documented for trivalent flu vax during 2009-10 H1N1 swine flu pandemic: “Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Increased Risk of Pandemic A/H1N1-Related Illness” https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/51
Tons of reporting out there stating that 90%+ of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated.
LOL.
Reminder: The U.S. is the only country that does not recognize natural immunity, and does not factor into it's computer models they parade around as "data".
@RMc, actually, yes it is.
At the very least for a large enough sample size you can get a pretty close approximation.
"Asymptomatic people are about 1/20th as likely to infect another person as a symptomatic person. "
Assuming that's accurate for anything recent..also more likely to circulate than symptomatic unjabbed who know they're sick.
I had a potential client in process to hire me for a gig when he revealed provided room would be "shared". Skipping over the awkwardness of that in normal days, I figured I could use Rona to argue against that.
nope:
"Nothing to worry about. We're all vaccinated!"
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
It’s his lived experience, which is actually even BETTER than data.
And don't start crying about how the hospitals have shortages. The mandate proclamation from King Biden the Simple got hundreds, maybe thousands of unvaccinated healthcare workers fired during a health care crisis. People who bravely manned the front lines and caught covid, before we even had a "vaccine". He's a real fucking genius.
@Conrad I wonder how different things would have turned out if the main strategy for combatting covid had been on therapeutics rather than prevention.
There have been some therapies developed on the fly. Steroids and monoclonal antibodies are in wide use. We are lucky that Merck and Pfizer had antivirals that were in development before the pandemic and were found to work sortof (Merck) and well (Pfizer's Paxlovid). Antivirals are among the hardest drugs to discover, develop, and get deployed. They pretty much are cutting edge of drug development right now.
Conrad @ 12:01: "...I wonder how different things would have turned out if the main strategy for combatting covid had been on therapeutics rather than prevention. As it happened, the powers that be decided to put all their eggs in the lockdown, masks, and vaccine basket while seemingly banishing even the suggestion of therapeutic drugs from public discourse."
I guess we'll never know: the road not taken. But for the State the attraction of vaccination over therapeutics is obvious: therapeutics are a one-by-one solution, with each case being managed on a close feedback cycle with the caregivers. Whereas vaccinations are a collective solution. In at least two ways: one being the "industrialized" administration of a standardized substance in a standardized way to a mass market, the other being the claim that vaccination will help the population reach herd immunity. And to the State, not only is it a more efficient means to care for the herd; it allows (requires) compliance by the herd with the desired intervention. The vx ID cards and social credit systems follow naturally.
Night Owl said...
And since the studies are suggesting that the "vaccinated" are more likely to get omicron then how is there any public good forcing these "vaccines"?
**********************
As I already stated, because the vaccines are extremely successful at preventing hospitalization death. They are now less successful at preventing infection, but no one ever said they were going to be 100% effective at that. What they are very, very good at is keeping you alive.
Browndog said...
Tons of reporting out there stating that 90%+ of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated.
LOL.
1/10/22, 12:15 PM
**************************
Feel free to actually read those articles and educate yourself.
"The public interest in keeping hospital beds available alone makes the mandates worth"
Can we call it blackmail and assault? Is it worth that?
Monoclonals and steroids pre-existed rona.
Let's see what comes from the FDA dot matrix printers before assuming Pfizer's data is worth a shit. You know, the folks who characterize paralysis and a feeding tube as gastric distress.
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
@RMc, actually, yes it is.
The Althouse Hillbillies are out in force, I see. Tsk. (At this rate, I'm going start agreeing with Field Marshal Freder!)
sure brecht character
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/funny-story-the-chinese-want-nothing/comments
I am heartened, 2 yrs in, to see Da Fauch voicing the distinction between with and from. He's a quick study.
And the fact that all the powers that be have done everything they could to block any and all other therapeutics in favor of the moneymaking "vaccines" is shameful.
When sanity returns our so-called leaders should be made to answer for those untold millions of unnecessary deaths caused by withholding treatments, bad reactions to the experimental shots, and missed medical evaluations due to lockdowns.
In addition to the unknown psychological damage done to our children.
Night Owl: "When sanity returns our so-called leaders should be made to answer..."
And there you have the Deep State answer to Justice Barret's question: never.
Feel free to actually read those articles and educate yourself.
CDC under fire for decision to limit tracking of Covid-19 cases in vaccinated people
The Centers for Disease Control’s limited tracking of Covid-19 cases in vaccinated people is hindering public health officials’ attempts to stem the nationwide surge of the highly transmissible Delta variant.
The agency said in May that it would stop routinely tracking so-called breakthrough infections that didn't lead to hospitalization or death. Several states then stopped tracking mild breakthrough cases, and at least two states told POLITICO they are having trouble reliably tracking infections in vaccinated people.
-Politico
By RACHEL ROUBEIN and DAVID LIM
07/30/2021 03:42 PM EDT
Blogger Arturo Ui said...
The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death.
Lefties gotta lefty. The virus is a threat only to the elderly and obese or those with serious comorbidities. The vaccine may have helped those.
My wife and I fit that category, being old and having lung issues. Last week we both had Omicron and took HCQ, Azithromycin and Zinc. We have recovered.
My unvaccinated younger son had the virus before Christmas and said it was like a bad cold. My fully vaccinated and boosted older son got the virus in early December and was sick a week.
Rory said...
"The public interest in keeping hospital beds available alone makes the mandates worth"
Can we call it blackmail and assault? Is it worth that?
1/10/22, 12:30 PM
*******************
If you want to be completely nonsensical, sure!
Michael K said...
Blogger Arturo Ui said...
The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death.
Lefties gotta lefty. The virus is a threat only to the elderly and obese or those with serious comorbidities. The vaccine may have helped those.
My wife and I fit that category, being old and having lung issues. Last week we both had Omicron and took HCQ, Azithromycin and Zinc. We have recovered.
My unvaccinated younger son had the virus before Christmas and said it was like a bad cold. My fully vaccinated and boosted older son got the virus in early December and was sick a week.
1/10/22, 12:49 PM
**********************
Glad to hear you and your family have recovered.
Night Owl said...
And the fact that all the powers that be have done everything they could to block any and all other therapeutics in favor of the moneymaking "vaccines" is shameful.
1/10/22, 12:43 PM
LOL, did you think the therapeutics aren't "moneymaking" for the pharmas?
"What they are very, very good at is keeping you alive."
How many times do you have to be told that the virus has an over 99% survival rate even w/o a shot, before you understand what that means?
I haven't had any shots, I've been around, and taken care of sick covid people and I haven't had a sniffle in the last 2 years. It's called having an immune system, (and being an obsessive hand washer).
"LOL, did you think the therapeutics aren't "moneymaking" for the pharmas?"
Sorry my mistake. I shouldn't have said "moneymaking", I should have said billionaire making.
“Señorita AOC is not worried about COVID since horse dewormer works fine on her.”
Got my how to avoid omicron email from medicare today:
"The Omicron variant spreads more easily than the original virus that causes COVID-19. Here are 3 things you can do to help protect yourself and others:
1, Get the COVID-19 vaccine, if you haven't already. Vaccines are the best tool to protect us from COVID-19. They slow the transmission of the virus, and provide strong protection against severe illness and hospitalization.
2. Get the booster when you're fully eligible. Everyone 18 years and older should get a booster shot 2 months after their Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or 5 months after completing their primary COVID-19 vaccination series of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna. Adolescents and teens ages 12 to 17 should also get a booster of Pfizer-BioNTech 5 months after their primary series.
3. Continue wearing a mask in indoor public places in areas of high or substantial community transmission. Use the COVID-19 County Check Tool to find your county's level of community transmission."
In short- do all the things that have been proven not to work! No mention of Vitamin D. No mention of any other supplements. No mention of nasal sprays that doctors themselves use. Not even any mention of chicken soup. Nope - do all the things THAT DON'T WORK!
Sunday, the San Jose Mercury News front page featured a story speculating that Covid could turn into the common cold (or not) and another featuring people who are living with Covid and without fear.
Ranjan Wadhwa used to be terrified of Covid, writes Julia Prodis Sulek. He double-masked and wore gloves to go to the grocery store. Now, “we’re all resigned to the fact that this is something we all have to live with so why be afraid of it?”
His third-grade twins will be back in school in Fremont this week, after testing negative for Covid on at-home tests.
A woman with cystic fibrosis says, “You can’t stay home all day. That’s unhealthy. You need that sanity.”
Two kids in my family, both vaxed, got Omicron last week from friends. It's a mild cold for one, a bad cold for the other.
California kept schools closed more than any other state, despite a relatively high vax rate, and saw big losses in math/reading scores, especially for low-income, Hispanic and immigrant students. The real learning loss is hidden because the least engaged students didn't test in the spring. https://bit.ly/3HO1lmU
Jersey Fled said...
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59895258
Note the part in the above article that notes how they are keeping schools open in the UK using these lateral Flo tests.
And from this link we have this:
"In its latest guidance issued on Jan. 2, the UK Department for Education (DfE) recommended that secondary school pupils in England should wear face coverings inside classrooms to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Before that, masks were already recommended in outdoor communal areas and corridors. Secondary school students are also advised to take a lateral flow test twice a week.
But according to the NASUWT teachers’ union, there has been strong resistance from pupils to the new policy. Damien McNulty, a national executive member of the union, told the BBC on Thursday: “Sadly, we have had reports in the last 24 hours of at least six secondary schools in the northwest of England where children, in huge numbers, are refusing to take lateral flow tests or to wear masks.”
“We’ve got one school in Lancashire where only 67 children out of 1,300 are prepared to have a lateral flow test and wear masks,” he said."
So children are starting to refuse to live in fear. Almost as if they can find the data as to how the dreaded covid will actually affect them. Couldn't be because of social media now, could it? Because MSM is telling them they're going to die.
"What they are very, very good at is keeping you alive."
How many times do you have to be told that the virus has an over 99% survival rate even w/o a shot, before you understand what that means?
********************
How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid? You keep ignoring that part.
"How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid?"
Not true. There are no hospital systems "in collapse" (at least in the US, other countries YMMV) and the heavy utilization is not solely because of "severe" covid, it's because they have a surge of viral infections this time every year and most hospitals are short staffed due to ill-considered vaccine mandates and chronic staffing shortages (exacerbated by some staff coming down with o,icron - which the vaccines apparently do nothing to reduce transmission). We went through this panic last year and have apparently learned nothing other than to let the Fake News media drive an untrue narrative.
How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid? You keep ignoring that part.
We were told lots of things that weren't true, like the vaccine will prevent transmission, That the general population was at high risk for death, that deaths with covid and deaths from covid ere the same thing. These were told to us not by crazy people on the internet but the CDC.
Today they walked back all of three claims. CDC will soon update us with a MUCH small er number of covid deaths. It's amazing what an election year does to science...
... it's because they have a surge of viral infections this time every year and most hospitals are short staffed due to ill-considered vaccine mandates and chronic staffing shortages...
...and I was getting to that.
The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death.
I get so, damn tired of this being repeated as truth.
You have no way of knowing if the 'vaccine' prevents hospitalization and death. None. That's because symptoms vary according to the individual, and there's no way to prove the 'vaccine' had any impact.
Jim at said...
The vaccines are still extremely successful in preventing hospitalization and death.
I get so, damn tired of this being repeated as truth.
You have no way of knowing if the 'vaccine' prevents hospitalization and death. None. That's because symptoms vary according to the individual, and there's no way to prove the 'vaccine' had any impact.
**********************
Except that we do have a way of knowing, because if the vaccines weren't effective at preventing hospitalization and death, you would see the percentage of those hospitalized with Covid to have a more even distribution between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. But you don't see that at all. You see the vast majority of hospitalizations impacting the unvaccinated: full stop.
hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid?
Wrong. Fauci himself informed the masses the positive cases in hospitals are for the most part, incidental positives. Meaning the patients are in the hospital for other care and test positive after they check in.
Hospitals are collapsing because they fired 15% of their staff.
I'm with Browndog. Deeply skeptical of the claim that getting vaccinated materially reduces a reasonably healthy person's chances of requiring hospitalization or dying. I've seen it suggested by approximately a million news accounts, but never with the hard data that would permit a careful look.
Arturo Ui said...
How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid? You keep ignoring that part.
That's because it's a lie.
People are showing up "with" Covid, as in they get checked in for something, they get a Covid test, and it comes back positive. They're now "hospitalized with Covid".
If the health system were actually being overwhelmed, hospitals wouldn't be firing people for not having the shots. Because when your'e overwhelmed, you don't fire productive people
iowan2 said...
Hospitals are collapsing because they fired 15% of their staff.
*************************
LOL, 15% is utter nonsense. More like between 0%-1% across the board of people fired due to vaccine mandates. Just look over this list:
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/hospitals/how-many-employees-have-hospitals-lost-to-vaccine-mandates-numbers-so-far
It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening here.
It's nice that this is finally getting the coverage it deserves.
Too bad none of the lawyers brought this up Friday when arguing in front of SCOTUS
Arturo Ui said...
"What they are very, very good at is keeping you alive."
You know what else is "very, very good at is keeping you alive"? Condoms.
So I'm going to suggest that my State Legislature impose a "condom mandate" on anyone having sex for other than the purpose of having children.
So, if you get an STD, and you can't prove you got it with a person you were trying to get pregnant, or who was trying to get you pregnant, then you immediately get fired from your job for having violated the condom mandate.
You don't like that?
Great. Then STFU about the government having the right to force us to do things "for our own good".
A vaccine mandate can be justified when teh purpose is to stop teh spread of a disease. the Covid "vaccines" do not do that.
So there is no possible legitimate reason to mandate them, and anyone supporting such mandates is an authoritarian thug
Bumped into a Covid related problem this morning. I was having an initial conversation with an oncologist. I need surgery for a not too aggressive cancer. I asked about waiting times and where the operation would take place. He identified the hospital but said that the hospital had put all such surgeries (and probably a bunch of others) on hold for four months.
The government is busily counting covid cases (and stoking the panic porn). What we don't hear about are the deaths from other causes or diseases because hospitals are essentially shut down waiting for the "flood" of Covid hospitalizations--which probably won't come.
BothSidesNow said...
A friend sent an email over the weekend with excerpts from an amicus brief filed with the S.Ct. on the mandate issue.
Good. Which amicus brief was it?
… but never with the hard data that would permit a careful look.
Hmmm. I wonder why that is?
Left Bank of the Charles said...
“The best policy might be to let Omicron run its course while protecting the most vulnerable, naturally immunizing the vast majority against Covid through infection by a relatively benign strain.”
They are only asserting a “might,” these two commentators don’t purport to know that Omicron immunizes against other covid strains.
That's because they're not lying hacks, and are aware that a new variant can always come along.
Whereas the Biden* Admin, being lying hacks, assert that a vaccine made for the original CCP / Xi strain is still going to work perfectly for the Delta and Omicron strains, and therefore everyone must be forced to get that shot.
Despite teh fact that there's a good deal of evidence out that teh shots do not work:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
That's from Sept 30, and Delta. Omicron so far has been even worse
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Great. Then STFU about the government having the right to force us to do things "for our own good".
A vaccine mandate can be justified when teh purpose is to stop teh spread of a disease. the Covid "vaccines" do not do that.
*******************
LOL, you can't keep your principles straight. Vaccine mandates are evil government overreach if they're used to keep hospitals from overflowing with dying patients, but they're just fine if they're only used to "stop the spread of a disease"? That's a totally inconsistent position, hard as you try to seem like some pillar of libertarian freedom.
doctrev said...
"Our studies demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-based vaccination of humans induces a persistent germinal centre B cell response, which enables the generation of robust humoral immunity."
All right. IF that is true, then why do people need booster shots? Especially within months of taking the vaccination series? The fact is that most commentators are scientifically illiterate, and most of the rest are on the pharma payroll in some manner or the next. No one can explain why the humoral immunity generated by mRNA vaccines can't prevent infection, or even how it supposedly prevents hospitalization/ death GIVEN its inability to prevent infection.
B cells produce antibodies. These are good against bacteria, might stop virus particles that are in the blood, but are useless against virally infected cells.
T cells protect against viral infection, but killing viral infected cells before they can dump a new set of virus into your body to infect other cells.
So a B cell response is nice, but not actually what you're looking for
"That's because symptoms vary according to the individual, and there's no way to prove the 'vaccine' had any impact."
Math denial, one of my favorites. The sentence is correct enough if it had finished ' on any single individual."
I don't support the mandates, but I try not to fool myself about the facts of the matter, and obviously omicron has drastically changed the reality on the ground as the data has begun to show no effect from the vaccine, which people had been claiming was the fact even when the data clearly showed that they were wrong at the time. Then, it was claimed, the data was wrong, when really it just reflected the truth, accurately enough, if imperfectly, as it does now.
"Our studies demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-based vaccination of humans induces a persistent germinal centre B cell response, which enables the generation of robust humoral immunity."
On paper, our team should win the Stanley Cup! Too bad, on ice, they stink!
Steven said...
The assertion that vaccines do not reduce transmission is false. They do, in fact, reduce transmission.
1. Vaccinated people are less likely to be infected, therefore reducing the fraction of potential viral vectors.
2. Vaccinated people who do become infected are more likely to be asymptomatic. Asymptomatic people are about 1/20th as likely to infect another person as a symptomatic person.
Bzzt, thank you for playing, but you are wrong.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
Feel free to provide us with a study that looks at data as widespread, and tie periods post Sept 1, that comes to different results.
Until you have that (and it doesn't exist), you've got nothing.
2: Asymptomatic people don't know they're infected. Because they don't know they're infected, they keep on going out and interacting with other people, getting them sick.
If I had symptomatic Covid, I would be at home, in quarantine. It wouldn't matter how many virus particles I shed, because there wouldn't be anyone around me to get them.
The creation of more asymptomatic cases is most likely the reason why the Covid shots don't cut the infection rate. But, whatever the reason, it is quite clear, and has been for months, that the shots do NOT cut teh infection rate.
Arguing otherwise is ignorance or dishonesty. Which is it in your case?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34980198/
Viagra for Covid treatment
Robby Starbuck
@robbystarbuck
·
4h
"The overwhelming number of death, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least 4 comorbidities. So really these are people who were unwell to begin with."
- Biden’s CDC Director
Now that more people have died under Biden than Trump, they admit the truth.
---
So cynical!
Arturo Ui said...
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Great. Then STFU about the government having the right to force us to do things "for our own good".
A vaccine mandate can be justified when the purpose is to stop the spread of a disease. the Covid "vaccines" do not do that.
*******************
LOL, you can't keep your principles straight. Vaccine mandates are evil government overreach if they're used to keep hospitals from overflowing with dying patients, but they're just fine if they're only used to "stop the spread of a disease"? That's a totally inconsistent position, hard as you try to seem like some pillar of libertarian freedom.
It's now time for another round of "stupid, or dishonest?"
If a shot prevents you from harming other people, then the government might have the right to try to force you to take the shot.
If the shot "is for your own good", then you, as an adult and sole legitimate judge of what qualifies as "your own good", get to decide whether or not you wish to take it.
This is not "libertarian", it's the belief system held by everyone who isn't an authoritarian thug.
And I note you made no response to the "condom mandate". We all agree that condoms prevent the spread of disease. ADIS came close to overwhelming our health care system, and would have been completely stopped by an effective condom mandate.
So, can we tell every gay male that hem must wear a condom any time he's putting his d!ck in another man?
Or is it that "that 's different!"?
Yes, different.
A condom is temporary. Maybe a more apt analogy would be tubal ligation and vasectomy.
PfiDerna might consider giving postmenopausal women the joy of bleeding a sort of youthful reinvigoration.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
If a shot prevents you from harming other people, then the government might have the right to try to force you to take the shot.
If the shot "is for your own good", then you, as an adult and sole legitimate judge of what qualifies as "your own good", get to decide whether or not you wish to take it.
***************
Nope, wrong again. If my daughter can't get a bed in a hospital because they are overflowing with unvaccinated Covid patients, then the decision to not get vaccinated is now impacting other people, not just the unvaccinated person. And it's a severe impact; there are already people who have died waiting for treatment due to Covid-overwhelmed hospitals. So the government DEFINITELY has a legitimate interest in mandating vaccines. No question about it.
As to your AIDS analogy, since you appear obsessed with this particular angle, I would like to hear how you think a condom mandate would be enforced, lol. Seems much more difficult for obvious reasons than enforcing a vaccine mandate, which can rely on state health dept records and individual vaccine cards.
1/10/22, 3:08 PM
"How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid? You keep ignoring that part."
Don't move the goal post. Answer my question; what part of the science behind the human immune system don't you understand? Did you skip biology 101?
But to answer your question: Every year the hospitals fill up in the winter due to airborne respiratory diseases. Every year the regular flu kills and hospitalizes more children than covid. Yet somehow we've never felt the need to mandate flu shots.
But not every year do the morons in charge fire their staff!
If your daughter can't get a bed because healthcare workers (previously "heroes") that cover beds are being fired due to refusing the jab..
Hmmm. Now why would that be?
walter said...
If your daughter can't get a bed because healthcare workers (previously "heroes") that cover beds are being fired due to refusing the jab..
Hmmm. Now why would that be?
************************
You're talking about less than 1% of healthcare workers being let go due to vaccine mandates. That's not why she wouldn't get a bed. It's because of unvaccinated people overwhelming the hospitals. It's also due to a lot of healthcare workers leaving the industry due to burnout from 2 years of battling this nightmare. Many of them cited watching an endless string of foolish people kill themselves by refusing vaccination as a major contributor to their burnout.
Arturo Ui said...
Nope, wrong again. If my daughter can't get a bed in a hospital because they are overflowing with unvaccinated Covid patients, then the decision to not get vaccinated is now impacting other people, not just the unvaccinated person.
And if my wife can get HIV from a blood transfusion because you didn't want to wear a condom, then I can force you to wear a condom, and have the State hit you with really harsh punishments if you refuse.
Oh, and if she can't get a bed in a hospital because you're fat, and your fatness is causing co-morbidities that lead to more hospitalization, so I get to decide what you're allowed to eat.
Oh, and you getting an abortion means there's fewer future taxpayers to pay into Social Security, which threatens my retirement benefits, so I can outlaw abortion for that reason.
Shall I keep going, mr authoritarian thug?
I can understand watching patients given useless/harmful Remdesivir and thrown on vents to die would cause burnout.
The assertion that vaccines do not reduce transmission is false. They do, in fact, reduce transmission.
1. Vaccinated people are less likely to be infected, therefore reducing the fraction of potential viral vectors.
2. Vaccinated people who do become infected are more likely to be asymptomatic. Asymptomatic people are about 1/20th as likely to infect another person as a symptomatic person.
3. Vaccinated people who become infected clear the virus faster, therefore reducing the time that they are contagious. Additionally, clearing the virus faster lowers the chance of generating new variants, so that new variants are introduced at a slower rate.
Nice theory. Just doesn’t work that way in real life. For example, while there is some symptomatic spread, by now, it probably isn’t significant for a couple reasons. Most obviously, because most people who are symptomatic aren’t walking around coughing all over everyone. They are more likely in bed, trying to recover from the virus. And, that, btw, is also one of te reasons that mask mandates are ludicrous - because the masks used only really work with symptomatic carriers. The masks can stop water droplets, expelled through coughing, but are near worthless against aerosols, which is how the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic, spread the virus.
The other reason appears to be that the number of virons being cast off apparently drops considerably once a person’s immune system kicks in, and that, not coincidentally, is when they start showing systems (the symptoms are a result of a body’s immune system kicking in). That very likely means that the pre-symptomatic differ very little from the asymptomatic, in terms of spread of the virus, because in both cases, they are spreading the virus, through aerosols, up until the time their immune systems fully detect to the virus. This ay be even more true now with Omicron, which seems to be centered higher in the lungs than at least the ancestral version.
Does your 1/20 figure pass the smell (reasonableness) test? I would suggest that it doesn’t, given the speed that Omicron has flown trough the vaccinated population. Maybe, possibly, you could argue the 1/20 figure if a large percentage of the population were unvaccinated, and spread was fairly random. But it isn’t. You have to be around people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic spreaders, and vaccinators tend to clump, by education level (highest in college educated without doctorate degrees) and racially (higher in White and Asian, lower in Black and Hispanic). That means that the vaccinated tend to spend time around the vaccinated, and the unvaccinated around the unvaccinated. Yet, somehow, magically, the infection rates between the two groups appear to be roughly similar to their respective proportions of the population.
We have known since the P Town Superspreader event in early July that the vaccinated can, and do, pass on the virus and infect others. Of course, that time, the virus was probably spread more through deep kissing strangers, than through the air, though masks were apparently not in heavy use, since most there were apparently vaccinated, and presumably safe from infection. But, of course, they weren’t.
If you think that I am wrong here, please try to convince me of the errors in my thoughts, through citation to credible sources, but don’t bother to resort to arguing by authority, since many of the authorities have lying through their teeth all along, and esp the heads of our public health bureaucracies. I am, in particular, looking for hard numbers, and not models fueled by wishful thinking.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Arturo Ui said...
Nope, wrong again. If my daughter can't get a bed in a hospital because they are overflowing with unvaccinated Covid patients, then the decision to not get vaccinated is now impacting other people, not just the unvaccinated person.
And if my wife can get HIV from a blood transfusion because you didn't want to wear a condom, then I can force you to wear a condom, and have the State hit you with really harsh punishments if you refuse.
Oh, and if she can't get a bed in a hospital because you're fat, and your fatness is causing co-morbidities that lead to more hospitalization, so I get to decide what you're allowed to eat.
Oh, and you getting an abortion means there's fewer future taxpayers to pay into Social Security, which threatens my retirement benefits, so I can outlaw abortion for that reason.
Shall I keep going, mr authoritarian thug?
*********************
You sound unhinged and quite silly right now. Maybe go take a walk. Feel free to answer my question about how a condom mandate would be enforced whenever you catch your breath.
Arturo Ui said...
As to your AIDS analogy, since you appear obsessed with this particular angle, I would like to hear how you think a condom mandate would be enforced
I'm hitting this "angle" because you leftist scum routinely take the other side on this one. So I'm trying to get through to your pinheaded brain that your demands are not "free".
It's very easy to enforce: If you get an STD, and can't prove it was part of intentionally reproductive sex, you get fired from your job, your health insurance doesn't have to cover the cost of your treatment, and neither does the State.
You don't like that? Then stop aiming it at people who don't want the Covid shot
I know that Mayo indicated last week that the people it was letting go made up about 1 percent of its workers.
Although if we were truly in the midst of hospitals being overwhelmed, you wouldn't want to lose even one percent.
And curious that no one (to my knowledge) identified who makes up that one percent: docs, nurses, PAs, janitors, administrators? I'd be interested to know that because it would be informative in terms of impacts on care, but also because if it's docs and nurses, that would suggest that vaccine "hesitancy" (hate that phrase) is not limited to people who don't understand medicine. Because I've come to expect the worst from our health bureaucracies, I suspect they don't want you to know that there are doctors working for prestigious institutions who are choosing not to be vaxxed.
Something else with far-teaching social effects: the decision not to have children. Fewer children=fewer future taxpayers, which obviously affects all of society even more dramatically than a shortage of healthcare workers (more accurate to lay the problem here than "shortage of beds," it's my understanding) now.
So let's mandate that every woman have at least 3 children, shall we, since you can't actually have the 2.1 children or whatever the fractional amount is that's needed to achieve replacement rate. And since fertility is greatly reduced after 35 and moderately reduced after 30, let's say every woman has to have the first child while under 30, unless she's demonstrated to be infertile.
Let's also mandate sperm donation for every male over 18, with a very detailed personal profile, so the women who don't want to marry or partner with someone have the ability to choose a worthy genetic father.
Since these mandates will obviously burden women (and some men, even if we don't also mandate that every man whose sperm is used to fertilize an egg pay child support for the next 26 years, to be in line with what we now do for health insurance for "children" in their 20s), we now must have government-provided daycare for all, which means maybe we'll need to at least encourage if not mandate 4 children per woman, since that's a huge taxpayer supported program.
Or, maybe there's a less modest-proposal solution to meeting our societal needs than this universal and incredibly intrusive one.
Arturo and Steven must be Sonia Sotomayor's law clerks. Not a single thing either or them has written is really true any longer, and hasn't been since last March.
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/new-signs-of-the-covid-regime-exit?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0NjI1MDk2NywicG9zdF9pZCI6NDY5MDY2MzgsIl8iOiIzSWIrVyIsImlhdCI6MTY0MTg0MzE0MywiZXhwIjoxNjQxODQ2NzQzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNDczNjc5Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.PsT84aM6MBcVmQyCjRejEjq1EcAHPdHFOS6Xq31PQOA
Change Of Strategy
For anyone interested in solid data about the vaccines effectiveness over time, you can go here as a lead.
The British keep the best data on vaccines status, infections #s, infection rates, death #s from COVID, and death rates from COVID. The vaccines started out really well in the Spring and Summer, but their effectiveness waned quickly, and boosters didn't really reverse the course for more than a month or two in the Fall. In summary, for all age groups except for those 18 and under, being vaccinated has negative efficacy for testing positive. Deaths come predominantly from the vaccinated cohort in gross numbers, and it is only the death rates where the vaccines still perform well, but you have to take this caveat to heart- almost all the people over the age of 65 in the UK are vaccinated and boosted, and the ones who aren't either can't be vaccinated for medical reasons or are in hospice care and already dying.
Arturo and Steven please use the red courtesy phone... your talking points have been abandoned by the CDC. Stand Down!
And just use your fucking common sense- a place like New York city is highly, highly vaccinated already, and boosted. The explosion of new cases, hospitilizations, and the more modest rise in deaths in the city are almost all vaccinated people by a simple process of elimination. There simply aren't that many unvaccinated people left in New York City, and increasingly not allowed to anywhere even if they are. This wave is being driven by the vaccinated almost exclusively.
And this is also a good and worrying read- more pessimistic than I am.
Increasingly, as the weeks pass, you will see "unvaccinated" redefined as people with only 2, and then with only 3 doses of vaccine.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Arturo Ui said...
As to your AIDS analogy, since you appear obsessed with this particular angle, I would like to hear how you think a condom mandate would be enforced
I'm hitting this "angle" because you leftist scum routinely take the other side on this one. So I'm trying to get through to your pinheaded brain that your demands are not "free".
It's very easy to enforce: If you get an STD, and can't prove it was part of intentionally reproductive sex, you get fired from your job, your health insurance doesn't have to cover the cost of your treatment, and neither does the State.
You don't like that? Then stop aiming it at people who don't want the Covid shot
1/10/22, 3:40 PM
**************************
The fact that you have to keep relying on these absurd hypotheticals that would never happen in a million years just to prove your "point" about a very real pandemic that has killed over 800,000 Americans within the last 2 years says everything we need to know about its merits. But to entertain your silly hypothetical one last time, while there is not a condom mandate in place, the government certainly has implemented some pretty rigorous contact tracing requirements for STDs. Every state in the country requires doctors to report most confirmed STDs (including HIV) to the state department of health. That dept then contacts the infected and proceeds to contact every single recent partner of the infected to inform them of what has happened. So there's clearly existing governmental interest in suppressing any possible STD pandemics.
Howard said...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34980198/
Viagra for Covid treatment
More proof that virtually everything works against covid- if given early enough. And virtually nothing works with a patient in an ICU on a ventilator. Almost like covid is similar to the vast majority of other diseases. Early treatments are best. But solely in the case of covid early treatment is prohibited and discussion of same is censored- with government approval.
We now have rabies survivors. Because one whole entire doctor said “We know all the symptoms and how they progress. Why don’t we treat the symptoms before they are?” Nobody listened to his foolish advice- rabies is 100% fatal. Then he got a rabies patient. Treated symptoms before they arrived. The patient survived.
By now we know the progression of dreaded covid symptoms. And no treatment is given until patients are headed to the ICU. We, there are some monoclonal antibodies that were being successfully used in FL and TX before the feds stepped in and started rationing doses…
"....pandemic that has killed over 800,000 Americans within the last 2 years..."
Well, no. Covid hasn't "killed over 800,00 Americans", 800,000 Americans have died with or from covid and we don't know how many are in which category.
CDC admitted that today.
But thanks for playing the panic card.
Responding to some arguments
About asymptomatic transmission - This comes from contact tracing studies. A good source is the MMWR reports published by CDC. There are others in medical journals. (Google them yourselves if you actually want the citation and it's not just rhetoric. I'm only willing to devote so much time to arguing with 'people who are wrong on the internet'.)
In any case, it is a fact that asymptomatic transmission is less important than symptomatic. I understand the logical argument that asymptomatic people don't know they're sick so they spread the virus. But that's not what happens in reality. What happens is symptomatic people are walking around with colds and lying about it. Unvaccinated people are particularly doing this as they are also less likely to be tested and dismiss any symptoms as a cold compared to vaccinated people.
The 1/20th number came from a study looking at household transmission. So, even when family members were in the same room as a covid-positive vaccinated person for long periods of time, the vast majority didn't get covid.
Point being - you're not going to get covid from an asymptomatic person on a 10-minute busride or whatever. It's the symptomatic people you need to watch out for.
The argument that New York proves the pandemic is being "driven" by the vaccinated - No, it's not. You are making a base rate error. Case rates in New York are 6x larger among unvaccinated than among the vaccinated.
Lastly
What do you people arguing with me think you're gaining politically by insisting that vaccines are bad? It's clearly motivated reasoning, what is the motivation? We are either going to have masks and NPIs or we are going to have vaccines. You may say "we want neither" (the leftists will say "we want both"), but that's not an option.
Steven --
Covid's dramatic resurgence is mostly due to waning effectiveness of the current vaccines (or natural infection over time), anti-vaccine sentiment or low vaccine coverage and the evolution of the Covid virus to escape protective immunity. But that doesn't mean asymptomatic transmission from vaccinated individuals isn't contributing to the omicron surge. There could be tens of millions of vaccinated people out there with just a minor cough or no cough spreading this disease without knowing it.
I just think it's nice to blame the vaccinated once in a while instead of constantly dumping on the goons who refuse to get vaccinated...
Steven said...
Responding to some arguments
**********************
All well stated, thanks.
Gospace said, "We now have rabies survivors. Because one whole entire doctor said..."
Care to share your source? I'd love to read up on it. Thanks.
I do a fair amount of reading on the internet every day (including WaPo NYT). But isn't it odd that I have more confidence in the info from this blog (partly Althouse, but mostly frequent commenters) than I have in the info coming from CDC and official experts?
"More proof that virtually everything works against covid- if given early enough."
The patient was in a coma and near death.
"There simply aren't that many unvaccinated people left in New York City,"
A small percentage of a large number can still be a large number.
Mattman26 said...
I know that Mayo indicated last week that the people it was letting go made up about 1 percent of its workers.
The $64,000 question is? How many nurses "retired" because they didn't want to be vaxed.
And THAT, we will NEVER Know; because they won't tell us
Arturo Ui said...
Tons of reporting out there stating that 90%+ of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated.
here's iowa's numbers https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/
81.7% in covid patients in ICU aren't Vaxed. 73.6% of patients hospitalized with Covid aren't Vaxed
73.6% is NOT 90%+
plus, the Fun Thing is; iowa's unvaxed numbers have been going steadily down
gilbar said...
Arturo Ui said...
Tons of reporting out there stating that 90%+ of those hospitalized for Covid are unvaccinated.
here's iowa's numbers https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/
81.7% in covid patients in ICU aren't Vaxed. 73.6% of patients hospitalized with Covid aren't Vaxed
73.6% is NOT 90%+
plus, the Fun Thing is; iowa's unvaxed numbers have been going steadily down
********************
The links I posted reflected the 90% number in Pennsylvania, but sure, Iowa having *only* the large majority of its hospitalized Covid patients being unvaccinated (only 73.6%! barely anything, right?) is a real sick burn on me, good job.
of course, last year, the numbers were:
100% of icu cases were unvaxed (because there Were No vaxes
then, as the year went; the numbers slowly dropped...Because they are total numbers
how many people in the icu's are unvaxed; right now? They won't say. i wonder why not?
Arturo Ui: “ How many times do you have to be told that the hospital system is in collapse, and that it's due to hordes of unvaccinated people showing up with severe Covid? You keep ignoring that part.”
Assume, for the sake of argument, the hospital system is in collapse. That must mean you have decided our bodily autonomy must be sacrificed on the altar of hospital capacity. Which is more valuable, bodily autonomy, or spending more over time to increase capacity to deal with rare surges?
Since a, if not the, primary rationale for all manner of intrusive and costly mandates has been hospital capacity, then it sounds like you aren’t addressing the problem upon which your argument rests.
And that is before we get to marginal utility. Accept as true that some 800,000+ people have died because of C-19, despite all the mandates. How many more would have died if policy at all levels been “keep calm and carry on”?
But wait, there’s more. How many C-19 lives did hospital care save? Clearly, not everyone showing up at ER with C-19 symptoms would have died without intervention, and at least some would have died regardless. If you can’t tell us how many lives hospital care saved, then you can’t possibly make any informed judgment as to whether the capacity for care has been worth the measures to preserve it.
You are the local example for a wider failure. These are fundamental questions to which the health authorities have no a answers.
Regarding vaxxed v. unvaxxed rates:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20211118&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
Scroll down a ways.
Unvaxxed are about five times as likely to get Rona, and about 13 times more likely to die of it. The very significant problem with this these stats is the implicit assumption that, aside from vax status, the populations are identical. As someone (Yancey, Bruce?) has noted above, that can’t be automatically assumed.
What happens is symptomatic people are walking around with colds and lying about it.
I coordinate a large group of volunteers at my kid's high school. Since returning from the holiday break, I've had to find subs to cover almost half of the normal volunteer shifts - and no one who's asked me to find a sub for them says they have COVID (one person says she is in a contact trace because she was exposed, but everyone else is calling out for some other non-COVID reason). Sure...
Gosh. Could it be that no one wants to admit they have COVID because the Left has spent two years saying that those who get it are the Dirty People?
If you cough in public, you immediately declare you swallowed wrong, or have allergies, or at any rate took a test that morning and it's DEFINITELY NOT COVID. Think maybe the vilification of those who get COVID as nasty ignorant toothless (probable Trumpist) country-music-loving double-wide-dwelling hicks who, to a man and woman, have refused the vaccine because they believe it will infect them with demon seed, might have to do with why no one is just freaking admitting they are sick?
I received two Moderna shots and a booster, because I decided to. I wear a mask wherever I am required to, though everyone following the Actual Science knows that masks are silly theater. And I know I'll be getting Omicron in time. But of course I'm already one of the Dirty People because I think a vaccine mandate is not only unconstitutional -especially in this instance - but stupid.
third person in U.S. to survive rabies on googling rabies survivor
tim in vermont said...
"More proof that virtually everything works against covid- if given early enough."
The patient was in a coma and near death.
I had read that- and that's actually more damning for the pro-vaxxers. If treatments are available for diseases, it's much harder to get vaccinations approved.
NEWS FLASH.. vaccines do not 'stop' the spread of anything.
Vaccines make your body strong enough to FIGHT OFF THE INFECTION when you do get infected... I.E. EVERYONE will get covid.. sooner or later.
We know from day one the covid does not even get most people sick. We know from day one that some, with underlying conditions like obesity, copid, and other heath conditions, make them more vulnerable. We also know that virtually all viruses, in time, mutate and actually get less 'deadly'. Hence Delta and the newer Omicron. It seems these variants now mostly just get you some aches and pains for a few days!!!
Vaccinations have their place but .... everyone is gonna get this virus. A low percentage will die, a low percentage will get sick. Most will not.
Dang how f*cking stupid people are... they just don't get it. I suspect the government is just using this thing to control... votes.
So.. GET A LIFE FOLKS.. the pandemic is OVER!!
"though everyone following the Actual Science knows that masks are silly theater."
That's a good reason to NOT wear a mask anywhere you can possibly avoid it.
Gospace
Last I heard, the availability of effective therapeutics invalidated the Emergency Use Authorization under which most of the jabs were legal absent FDA approval.
WRT masks: The Stuff masks "prevent" transmissing all over the place doesn't disappear into an alternate universe. You don't "trap" something and have it disappear.
In fact, your Stuff is trapped in the mask and stays there, refreshed with each warm, moist exhalation. For hours. And whatever external Stuff drawn toward your lungs with an inhalation is likewise trapped, if if doesn't escape the magical fibers.
Eventually--like every five or ten minutes--you touch your animated Petri dish of Stuff--yours and others'--and get a hefty ratio on your hands. The surfaces in public spaces where you put your hands are designed for people to put their hands; doorhandles, stair rails and so forth. So the studies telling us that the Stuff will die on surfaces after maybe nine hours or something--presuming against sense but for the sake of argument they are true--are irrelevant. It's how much of the Stuff on the door handle dies in ninety seconds.
It's like the Little Libraries. Take a bug, leave a bug.
Masks work if they're surgical level, worn tightly, never, ever touched with the hands until, after possibly two hours, they are to be disposed of into a hazmat facility and the hands then obsessively washed.
Some months ago, Houston Methodist lost 150 employees over the jab. If that's one percent, it must mean they employ 15,000 people. We sure about this?
Isn’t that the thing w/masks, though? People were always touching them/ yanking them up - wiping them b/c of their itchy noses…
The whole point was lost w/that. Even pulling them off… and using the same one repeatedly- shoved in my pock…et….
Steven said...
In any case, it is a fact that asymptomatic transmission is less important than symptomatic.
Bzzt, wrong, thank you for playing, now pull your head out of your ass.
We do not have universal every day testing for Covid
This means we don't know how many asymptomatic Covid carriers are out there
Ballpark guess: Take to Covid positive rate for the "unvaxxed". Compare it to the Covid positive rate for the "vaxxed". If the first is greater than the second, assume that the difference between teh two is the low end bound on the number of "vaxxed" asymptomatic carriers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
You can push any BS your heart desires, but the reality is this:
Getting people the Covid shots does not cut down on the number of people catching symptomatic Covid
So, either the shots don't cut your individual likelihood to give someone else your Covid infection, or else the shots create a large number of asymptomatic people who spread it like Typhoid Mary
Pick whichever story makes you happier. But the ky point can not be denied.
If you'd like to deny it, you're welcome to come up with non-cherry picked data from October or later where higher "vaccination rate" leads to lower Covid infection rate. Until you have that graph, everything else is BS
Arturo Ui said...
The fact that you have to keep relying on these absurd hypotheticals that would never happen in a million years just to prove your "point" about a very real pandemic that has killed over 800,000 Americans within the last 2 years says everything we need to know about its merits.
That's an amazingly stupid word salad. I think what it means is "stop bothering me with hypotheticals that blow up my stupid dreams"
But to entertain your silly hypothetical one last time, while there is not a condom mandate in place, the government certainly has implemented some pretty rigorous contact tracing requirements for STDs.
Why yes, they have. because that's about keeping you from giving it to other people / letting other people know they were harmed.
It's NOT about "we know best for you, so we're going to force you to do something to make your life better"
Which authoritarian impulse is the only "justification" you have left for your mandates
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