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Biden and COVID

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of things puzzle me, and one of the big ones – although I should know better than to be surprised by it – is why anyone would have believed candidate Joe Biden when he said, in October of 2020:

It was an obvious absurdity, a rhetorical boast that not only was untrue, but had to be untrue. He didn’t offer anything much that he would do to accomplish this magical feat other than things Trump had already done – except for maybe a mask mandate (I seem to recall him shifting back and forth on that), which was never going to “shut down the virus” and everyone knew it.

And yet, people believed. They believed because they wanted to, but mostly because they had bought the “It’s all Trump’s fault!!” garbage. I have long been stunned by the susceptibility of even intelligent people to propaganda, but it cannot be denied.

By the way, whether more Americans have died of COVID (or “with” COVID) under Biden depends on when you start counting. But at any rate, the numbers are close and the gap will almost certainly be closed if such a gap exists, and of course under Biden we’ve had vaccination whereas under Trump there was no vaccination.

Now we have the Omicron variant, which is starting to become common and now accounts for most of the newly-diagnosed cases in the US, especially in certain regions. That could be a really good thing, if Omicron is as mild as some reports indicate. But we simply don’t know yet – although I think we should know, since Omicron has been around in some countries for over a month. I keep reading articles that say we don’t have enough data, and then go on to scaremonger. So I’ll just say the jury is out on it, but indications are somewhat encouraging so far.

Today Biden gave a COVID speech. I don’t watch his speeches, but here’s a report:

Most notably, the government plans to buy a half-billion at-home COVID test kits and mail them to people who want them, with deliveries beginning in January…

In January, the government will also start a website where people can order at-home tests to be delivered for free.

That makes a certain amount of sense. Why wait with other possibly-infected people in order to be tested?

I spent several hours last night trying to get some objective facts about Omicron. Other than the fact that it was becoming much more common in the US, there was really very little. It’s clear that it doesn’t spare the vaccinated. There also seems to be a trend towards milder cases. But are they milder in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated? That was true for Delta, but I can’t find any indication of whether it’s true for Omicron.

Biden urged people to get vaccinated, of course. I have no problem with urging people to do that; it does seem to mitigate severity for previous variants, on average. As I’ve stated many times before, I’m against vaccine mandates.

Interestingly, Trump announced the other day that he’s had a booster. I assume he’s also had two previous vaccines, despite also having had COVID. Apparently, indications are that having had COVID plus vaccination yields even more protection.

An aside: I personally know four unvaccinated people fairly well. One would like to be vaccinated but has a serious medical condition which means she cannot be. The other three are all on the left politically, and are rather extreme health nuts of the sort who won’t eat genetically altered food and who won’t drink tap water. Make of that what you will.

[NOTE: By the way, I don’t give much credit to results from the UK on Omicron or other variants, because a significant number of people there had the rather ineffective AstraZeneca vaccine, which wasn’t ever given in the US.]

Comments

Biden and COVID — 62 Comments

  1. It is unlikely that the senile buffoon will ever admit that the number of deaths from the Wuhan-virus seems to be larger on his utterly incompetent watch than under that of his evil predecessor, not that the official numbers are trustworthy. Meanwhile, New Yorkers appear to have gone completely insane over fear of Omicron, with long lines of hysterical and irrationally frightened persons afflicted with CDS (Covid Derangement Syndrome) waiting to be tested. The evil plan of the Democrats to instill abject fear and foolish panic in as much of the citizenry as possible continues apace.

  3. “Make of that what you will” is proud to present:

    “FDA Prepared To Authorize Merck, Pfizer Pills Imminently”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/fda-prepared-authorize-merck-pfizer-pills-imminently
    (And of course it’s been carefully, dutifully and sufficiently tested….)
    Key word:
    “imminently” (maybe that should be “immanently”?)

    Guess it’s never too late to produce warmed over Invermectin (e.g.) out of your hat….

    File under: Ta daaaa….

    And from the “We-Really-Ought-To-Be-A-Lot-More-Like-Europe” files:
    “Europe On Edge Of Energy Disaster As Power Prices Smash All Records”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-energy-crisis-rapidly-intensifies-power-prices-scream-higher

  4. It’s also not just South Africa but now Denmark a heavily vaxxed country with big explosion in cases and almost no increase in hospitalizations.

  5. you can assume that they exaggerated the death number when trump was president and having been suppressing the number for Biden, so the gap can actually be a lot larger than reported.

  6. You can buy a package of two at home test kits for $14 at Sams. I wonder how much those of us that pay taxes will be paying for the Gov’t test kits.

    Paper today had articles on Omicron. Yes, all scare scare scare. And yes they powers that be will not stop the scaring. Gives them power. It will continue until enough are replaced.

  7. Here are some Substack pieces you may or may not have encountered in your previous research. I have no idea what’s true and what’s not.

    https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/omicron-is-not-normal

    FYI and BTW, OAS = Original Antigenic Sin…
    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/is-original-antigenic-sin-starting?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web

    https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/omicron-as-a-bioweapon-thoughts-and

    https://alexberenson.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile

  8. The President of the United States of America makes an address to the American people at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon? I thought this sort of thing customarily takes place in the evening hours. Probably not a big deal, but it struck me as odd. I was out all day doing various things that needed to be done thinking I might watch it this evening, Then, when I looked up to find the time it would be broadcast, I found out I missed it. Nothing lost, time gained, I am sure.

  9. I spent several hours last night trying to get some objective facts about Omicron.

    Objective facts would utterly spoil the narrative.

    See also why they spend endless amounts of money on studying covid, but nothing on studying if masks work. They know the result.

  10. T-Rex,

    ‘2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon’

    Sundowners. Biden does virtually nothing official later in the day.

  11. Give him a break, he’s power napping.

    And while he’s napping he’s no doubt planning his upcoming speech bemoaning the terrible and tragic tragedy of America’s fentanyl victims—sorry, I mean COVID victims:
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/fentanyl-overdoses-leading-cause-death-adults
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/?s=fentanyl

    (Or maybe he’s dreaming about how he might be able to ignore and conceal the fentanyl disaster that his policies are doing everything to encourage….)

  14. I think these “free” home tests will begin arriving in US mailboxes about the time the Omicron wave is receding and most of us have acquired immunity.

  15. In the UK they are doing more tests than they can physically process. They are doing something on the order of twice as many tests today as they were on this day last year.

    Test more get more cases.

    40% of ‘cases’ (at least) are asymptomatic and 80% of symptomatic ‘cases’ are mild to moderate.

    Mass testing is the easiest way to guarantee this will go on forever.

  16. Dilbert creator Scott Adams announced this morning that the US would stop obeying anything related to Covid on February 1. He said it is time tor mass civil disobedience, the government has lost the ability to let go. He said he would try to get other influencers to join him.

  17. I heard the speech on the radio, maybe missed the first few seconds. Deeper into the speech, he specifically said that there were three things different now than from 2020. One was the vaccines. Noticeably and I bet deliberately absent from the “three” was that millions of Americans have made first contact with the enemy, survived, and most will have some level of acquired immunity, your individual results may vary. From a societal point of view, if a third of your population, or whatever the huge number may be, has survived the virus between 2020 and now, and has some acquired immunity, that is huge. It should not have been left out of the differences between then and now unless you are manipulating people.

  18. Griffin:

    I agree that the more testing, the more cases. But that only is a problem if cases is your metric. I look at it differently – although I’m certainly aware of the way the government and the MSM and the Democrats use cases to stoke up fear.

    I was recently quite sick with some sort of nasty flu. Three weeks later, I’m still not 100% recovered. When I first came down with it, I naturally wanted to know whether it was COVID. This was for several reasons. One was curiosity. Another was to be maybe take some extra supplements to try to lessen the effects. Another was to stay away from vulnerable people (or people in general) if I had it. Another would be to know, for future reference, whether I had the extra immunity conferred by actually contracting COVID and surviving intact.

    I think most people would, likewise, want to know, so I think most people who are sick would go out for a test at this point if they could. I was about to do that, but some relatives of mine had very effective home testing equipment, so I did that instead. My test was negative. It was great to have that option.

    I also think that the more people who are tested, the more data we have – if it’s used properly, which is of course a big “if.” But it is very possible that the Omicron variant is mild, and the more data we have the more clear that might become.

  20. neo,

    I guess I should have clarified that I meant the more testing of asymptomatic people the longer this will go on.

    For example, the NFL has had something like 175 positives in the last week and according to their head doctor 2/3 of those positives are asymptomatic. In other they are only sick because the test said so.

    My fear is so many of these sick, broken hysterics will just get tested over and over because they get off on it so much and it will just feed the beast with more young, asymptomatics.

    The problem is there is no way the media will abandon cases as there gold standard (until they go down then they drop them for some other fear porn idea) so it will be breathlessly reported that cases are going up up up.

    So, sure, if you are sick get a test although I never will again I’ll just stay home like last time and not feed the beast.

  21. Jon Baker…glad to see you using the term ‘acquired immunity…I am very un-fond of the term ‘natural immunity’, which sounds like something a hippie would buy at a health food store.

  22. neo,

    “I have long been stunned by the susceptibility of even intelligent people to propaganda…

    Intelligence has little to do with it, as the impulse to accept propaganda is based in emotion. Whether innate bias or virtue signaling the result is the same.

    Wherein intelligence does enter is when the individual places a higher value upon reason than upon being ‘right’. At base, ‘being right’ is all about pride.

    And you provided the why of it; “They believed because they wanted to”

    OMICRON
    https://youtu.be/hYzXjFsIcGw

  23. Talking about Covid, the vaccinations, the testings, quarantines, closures and openings of schools and restaurants and travel, on and on, is boring us to death. Its better to get the disease and be over with it.

  24. Dnaxy,

    Millions of us have got it and been vaccinated and got it again and they are still talking about it so I don’t think that makes us ‘be over with it’ which is kind of the point.

  25. So it should be clear now that the COVID vaccine has been oversold as a solution. It’s a great risk-reducer, especially for those that are old and/or suffer from comorbidities – those at risk should definitely weigh the risks and consider having it administered.

    But what has also become clear is that it is far, far from being a panacea, and in some cases, the imposition of mandates on those who should be given a waiver is causing harm.

    To me, it looks like the COVID vaccine is a lot like the seasonal flu shot. It might work to varying degrees, and it might not work at all, depending upon the variant. But its efficacy certainly seems to be more on the level of annual flu vaccines.

    When will the NIH and CDC admit this? When will the vaccines be taken off their golden-pedestal, protected status as Emergency Use Authorization drugs? When will the adult press – as opposed to the Corporate Press – start reporting on it and drawing embarrassing comparisons?

    This has been a sorry spectacle of a Public Policy disaster. And the unfortunate thing is, much of the rest-of-the-world looks to the USA for leadership. Too bad we have mostly incompetence and ambitions-within-the-institutions to offer. The latest FOIA email release showing the targeting of ‘fringe’ heretical epidemiologists, including Jay Bhattacharya, is truly revealing.

  26. Aggie,

    +1

    Totally agree.

    But I fear they never will admit the vaccine isn’t what it was sold to us because that would be admitting they were wrong and they never do that.

  27. That’s easy, because he lied and claimed he stopped Ebola. The MSM didn’t point out it was a lie and twitter didn’t take it down as medical misinformation. (It’s still up btw) When he got away with a bald faced lie like that the average person is going to think it’s true.(Since how much about medicine do they know?) All they’re going to think is “Scary disease A got stopped, scary disease B didn’t so I should vote for the guy who stopped scary disease A.” If you want I can go into why it’s a complete and utter lie but the fact it never got corrected says leagues about the MSM and twitter.

  28. “I spent several hours last night trying to get some objective facts about Omicron. Other than the fact that it was becoming much more common in the US, there was really very little.”

    Read Kevin Roche here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/

    I haven’t found a better resource for COVID information than Roche.

  29. Look up a Youtube channel, Dr. John Campbell. He’s a British medical instructor (his anatomy videos are quite good) who has been doing near daily updates on COVID since this started. Mostly going point by point through published studies and the official government data.

    He’s got correspondents in South Africa, where Omicron cases are falling, hospitalizations barely rose and most of the population is unvaccinated.

    They keep saying vaccines offer severe COVID protection, but provide no hard data, but Omicron is very mild in almost all cases. In SA and the UK it is estimated half the Omicron hospitalization are people who tested positive after being admitted to hospital for non-COVID reasons. So actual medically assisted cases of Omicron are half the small numbers resported, such something like 140 people in the UK in hospital with Omicron, so 70 under treatment.

    Dr. Campbell is a big proponent of aspirating the vaccine shots, to ensure they aren’t injecting into a blood vessel. But so far the UK and US refuse, but very good results Denmark. Might be why they are giving heart problems to kids

  31. Covid: a disease so serious you have to get a test to know if you have it. So deadly that its “vaccine” has to be mandated.

  32. “When will the NIH and CDC admit this?”
    Aggie, it’s not as easy to steal an election by weaponizing a flu vaccine…
    (In other words, the vaccine Narrative(TM) must go on at least until Nov. 2022 and most likely 2024 (unless “Biden” can somehow figure out a way ram BBB or NH1—or whatever they’re called…I’m losing track here—down the country’s throat)….
    – – – – – – – –
    “Might be why they are giving heart problems to kids…”
    JK, not just kids. Professional athletes, too. (And others….)

  34. neo, I am picking up your desire to believe these mRNA injections did something, besides diminish our cellular immunity.
    Especially wanting your booster to have been worth the known risk of introducing more spike into your body as the spike itself was mutating, making the antibody production unlikely to be particularly helpful (arguably, UNhelpful–original antigenic sin theory).

    We’ll see—but I have yet to see any real documentation of that helpfulness, and they sure seem to be utterly useless in the face of Omicron.

    Try to understand that saying the jabs “decrease severity of disease” in the face of Omicron may well can be nothing more than than a face saving slogan at this point in time.

    Even if more uninjected people are dying, short of a controlled study matching people based on age and disease and weight, serum vitamin D levels too, there is NO WAY that means the vaccination status is the reason for that.

    In medicine, we have a test question where the correct answer can be TRUE, TRUE, unrelated. Don’t fall for that kind of information.
    The streets have puddles. Many people are carrying umbrellas. Umbrellas cause puddles.

    Maintain your immunity. Decrease viral load with gargling and nasal lavage:

    https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FLCCC-Alliance-I-MASKplus-Protocol-ENGLISH.pdf

  35. The latest obscenity to emerge from this corrupt administration:
    “Police State: New Hampshire Fights To Remove Children After Parents Treated Them With Ivermectin”—
    https://twitter.com/AmyMek/status/1473465412692054018

    Keeping in mind one of the original obscenities…
    “New Emails Reveal Evidence of Government Efforts to Suppress Free Speech”—
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-emails-reveal-evidence-of-government-efforts-to-suppress-free-speech_4171310.html
    H/T Hans Mahncke twitter feed.
    Key grafs:
    “A previously unseen Oct. 2020 email from Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to his colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci is raising concerns about government-sponsored suppression of free speech—a direct violation of the 1st Amendment.
    “The email…shows the behind-the-scenes efforts from Collins and Fauci, who were pushing a fresh round of lockdowns, to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration and disparage its authors.
    “The Great Barrington Declaration was an Oct. 2020 letter that ran counter to the efforts of Fauci and Collins by declaring a unified opposition to broad-based lockdowns, and choosing instead to focus on the protection of vulnerable groups.
    “That declaration has been signed by many notable medical and epidemiological experts, including Harvard University epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff, University of Oxford epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Stanford Medical School epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Michael Levitt….”

    Conclusion: Do it our way or die.

  36. Lee:

    No need to be so condescending about how I’m deceiving myself because of my desire to believe something.

    I’ve done my research and made my decision long ago. I have seen plenty of evidence that the vaccine confers some benefits, and none that it has the drawbacks you state, and I’ve read many articles that try to prove the thesis you are promoting. I’m quite familiar with it.

  37. I think Biden and Democrats were caught out by the nature of the vaccines. They knew over the summer of 2020 that the vaccines were on the way. With four (or so) in testing, the odds that at least one of them would be effective probably didn’t look that bad at the time.

    I think they bet the house that the vaccines would end the pandemic shortly after the election. That would explain their inexcusable demagoguery blaming Trump for every COVID death and Biden’s claim that he had a plan to shut down the virus. The plan was always just to deploy Trump’s vaccines. As it has become clear that the vaccines are not going to end the pandemic, I think what we’re seeing from the administration is a combination of denial and panic.

    Democrats and the left have been extraordinarily lucky with events in the 21st century. They weren’t in office on 9/11. Almost all of them supported the 9/11 wars initially, but Bush was available to blame when they went south. Clinton’s policies were at least as much to blame for the financial crisis as any Republican policies, but the crisis occurred on Republicans’ watch. A once-a-century pandemic also hit on Republicans’ watch.

    I think Biden and company thought they were going to exploit COVID the same way that they exploited the other “good crises” of the 21st century. I think they expected “Biden licked COVID” to be their 2024 battle cry, just like “Obama got bin Laden” in 2012. We all know what they say about karma, though.

    It’s probably too much to hope that there are at least a few grown-ups in the Biden administration who can keep it from going completely off the rails.

  38. Even if more uninjected people are dying, short of a controlled study matching people based on age and disease and weight, serum vitamin D levels too, there is NO WAY that means the vaccination status is the reason for that.

    I understand that’s what you mean, but a prudent person would mean that absent controlled studies, the effect of vaccines is not demonstrated.

  39. neo, I am picking up your desire to believe these mRNA injections did something, besides diminish our cellular immunity.

    Does anyone pushing this meme have a clue how that mechanism is supposed to work?

  40. The President of the United States of America makes an address to the American people at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon? I thought this sort of thing customarily takes place in the evening hours. Probably not a big deal, but it struck me as odd.

    The dementia patient I’ve known best would have a daily meltdown around about 4:30 in the afternoon. They don’t call him Sundown Joe for nothing.

  41. But it is very possible that the Omicron variant is mild, and the more data we have the more clear that might become.

    Using an 18 day delay in comparing case counts with death counts in South Africa, it would appear that the ratio of new deaths to new cases identified is about 0.0025. Britain’s in the midst of a case spike right now. To date the value of that ratio there appears to be 0.

  42. Time for another repetition of Aubrey’s Weeping Cheerleader mystery.
    Decades ago, in a local paper, I saw a picture of a high school cheerleader in bitter tears because her team had lost.

    Not too much later, having done more history and anthro, it occurred to me that, having spent a million years coming up the hard way, H. Sap’s ability to contemplate and deal with immediate perils and order the importance of those lurking just outside the fire light must be pretty impressive. It’s not as if we’re a mid-sized herbivore with an IQ of twelve.

    What if this capacity needs to be fed?

    There was a minor kerfuffle a couple of years ago when some guy wrote a local paper and said women shouldn’t wear yoga pants. Big deal. Demos in front of his house. I noted, to a FB friend, that if this is as bad as it gets for women, they’re really lucky. She unfriended me.

    I may be imposing my attitude upon my perception, but some of the most avid worriers about the kung flu seem to be enjoying it. If it disappeared, what would they do?
    For them, the purveyors of the Great Barrington Declaration are enemies of humanity…although my acquaintances’ acquaintance with the relevant science would be minimal on a good day. Because the GBD says, in effect, don’t worry, there’s nothing you can do and it’s not so bad anyway. That won’t help the State force people to do stupid stuff and it won’t feed the need to be worried. And it won’t allow the worriers to scorn and accuse those who don’t DO THINGS, the right things. And feel good about themselves.

    And it won’t feed the ancient capacity to deal with looming catastrophe.

  43. There was a minor kerfuffle a couple of years ago when some guy wrote a local paper and said women shouldn’t wear yoga pants. Big deal. Demos in front of his house.

    This?

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dude-tells-women-to-stop-wearing-yoga-pants-gets-rightfully-trolled_n_580a2702e4b000d0b1561e7e

    I noted, to a FB friend, that if this is as bad as it gets for women, they’re really lucky. She unfriended me.

    Like a bank assessing its sour loan portfolio, sometimes you just gotta recognize what your friends are really worth.

    Yoga pants wouldn’t be my priority in re women’s fashion. Women need to wear clothes which fit their figure, whatever it may be. If they’re overweight, well they’re overweight. I don’t think as a society the demise of the girdle and the corset is something to be mourned. What women need to avoid is (1) coloring their hair, (2) bad haircuts and excessive styling, (3) bad eyewear, (4) makeup above and beyond clearisil, (5) excess jewelry, (6) impractical shoes, (7) an excess of color and poor color combinations, and (8) overexposure. He addresses only this last.

    This is a dame who gets it right:

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/94/6b/12946b3aa1a4e62392de1d12deb561a9.jpg

  46. FWIW:
    “World Council for Health Reveals Spike Protein Detox”—
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/12/22/spike-protein-detox.aspx
    While there are no promises, some may find this helpful. (And some of this information is already fairly widely known…)
    Key grafs:
    “…The World Council for Health has released a spike protein detox guide, which provides straightforward steps you can take to potentially lessen the effects of toxic spike protein in your body.
    “Spike protein inhibitors and neutralizers include pine needles, ivermectin, neem, N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and glutathione.
    “The top 10 spike protein detox essentials include vitamin D, vitamin C, nigella seed, quercetin, zinc, curcumin, milk thistle extract, NAC, ivermectin and magnesium…”

  48. My problem with Roche at Healthy Skeptic is his confidence that the govt data is accurate and meaningful despite the fact that we know it’s garbage. Of course, without accurate data he can’t offer any worthwhile analysis. So he has to pretend it has value.

    I have very serious doubts about any official proclamations, studies, etc. 1) Because they have lied relentlessly. 2) Because we know the vast majority of science studies are wrong. 3) because we know that the govt and licensing boards have used money and threats to silence any dissent. 4) because we know that doctors and hospitals are so cowed (or woke) that they are choosing to kill people rather than use HCQ or Ivermectin.

    In an environment this poisoned and dysfunctional, I would suggest that it is basically impossible to know anything definitive about vaccines and their efficacy. Too much lying, too much incompetence, too much politics.

  49. stan,

    Roche is constantly complaining about the gov’t data (usually about Minnesota where he lives) but also nationally and he and his data guy are always trying to pry out more accurate data especially about actual date of infection and or death not the report date that most gov’ts want to push.

    They are also doing good work on sussing out the truth about ‘breakthrough’ and who they are and have then been vaxxed, prior infection, both, neither.

    I don’t agree with everything he says but he is very skeptical of gov’t data.

  51. Sundowners. Biden does virtually nothing official later in the day.

    As one wag I know put it, he needed to done in time for ‘Matlock.’

    It’s also not just South Africa but now Denmark a heavily vaxxed country with big explosion in cases and almost no increase in hospitalizations.

    And as I understand it, S. Africa is not heavily vaxxed (more like 20 or 30 percent), so that’s evidence of mild cases regardless of vax status.

  52. An aside: I personally know four unvaccinated people fairly well. One would like to be vaccinated but has a serious medical condition which means she cannot be. The other three are all on the left politically, and are rather extreme health nuts of the sort who won’t eat genetically altered food and who won’t drink tap water. Make of that what you will.

    What I make of it is that Biden and the Democrats still try to push the lie that the unvaxxed are all alt-right white trash, while the reality is that skeptics span the spectrum of ideologies, and are disproportionately black (and presumably Biden voters). Biden trashing all these people will not wear well.

  53. Jimmy It appears a surprising number are health workers. At one point, the gov of NY was going to call out the NG to cover for those fired or quit over non-vaxxing. Houston Methodist lost 150 over the issue.
    Wouldn’t you like to know what they’re thinking/

  54. AstraZeneca vaccine was not “rather ineffective”. It had a slightly lower efficacy than the mRNA vaccines at preventing initial infections, but it may actually prove better at stimulating a longer-lasting T-cell response which seems to be more important in preventing serious cases.

  55. I have read that the second largest largest group of unvaxed after “less than high school” are PhDs.

    Immune suppression from mRNA injections, particularly repeated ones:

    https://jessicar.substack.com/p/the-bnt162b2-mrna-vaccine-against

    Immune vulnerability induced by original antigenic sin:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33692194/

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772613421000068

    Current data from Denmark shows higher Omicron infection rates in vaxed and vaxed and boosted than unvaxed.
    (yes, could reflect bias re: who presents to get tested.)

    Calling something a vaccine that does not prevent infection, allows transmission and does not last seven months is creating a whole new meaning for the word vaccine.
    The mRNA injections are an experimental genetic therapy.
    Saying it is effective when it doesn’t last seven months—the three here–is a real stretch.

    Injecting more of it (calling for boosters) when there is no data showing it will have any beneficial effect, or may even enhance infection with the Omicron variant, involves decision making that eludes me.

    I am unaware of any health system that has required boosters for staff. Cleveland Clinic, HCA, and Advent systems have all recently rescinded their two injection mandates for their staff.

    I question how the data to date favors continuing to inject immune suppressing mRNA in the face of Omicron, particularly in light of the severe problems it causes with clotting, myocarditis, neurological injuries and death in far too many. Higher absolute deaths this year over last. Highest infection rates in states and countries with the highest vaccination rates.

    If we are lucky, Omicron will end this discussion by infecting enough of us who will mount a broad immune response that will lead to effective herd immunity. As we see from Israel, Iceland, Gibraltar, mRNA injections haven’t.

  56. Lee:

    I am really tired of people posting assertions and then not posting the links that supposedly prove those assertions. For just one example (there are many): your assertion that “Current data from Denmark shows higher Omicron infection rates in vaxed and vaxed and boosted than unvaxed.” I can find nothing of the sort.

    What I do find is that vaccinated people and unvaccinated people run the same risk of testing positive with Omicron (see this), and that those who have also received a booster run a lower risk of such infection. None of that is especially relevant to the most important question: how many serious (or deadly) cases of Omicron are there, and are they more likely in the unvaccinated than the vaccinated (as is true of other variants). Until those questions are answered, positive testing rates are meaningless except as an indication of how fast something spreads.

    One more thing about any European data about vaccines: it doesn’t apply well to the US because many European countries have a significant part of their population who were vaccinated with AstraZeneca, a less effective vaccine that was never used in the US. Denmark is no exception. Unless we know the percentage of their infected people who were vaccinated with AstraZeneca, it’s hard to know what the data means in terms of its relevance to the US.

  59. Griffin:

    I’m not sure why you linked that.

    The study is here, and it doesn’t address any of the questions we are discussing here. It is also not peer-reviewed yet.

    The study says this:

    …[E]arly estimates from Danish nationwide databases of vaccine effectiveness (VE) against the novel SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) up to five months after a primary vaccination series with the BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines. Our study provides evidence of protection against infection with the Omicron variant after completion of a primary vaccination series with the BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines; in particular, we found a VE against the Omicron variant of 55.2% (95% confidence interval (CI): 23.5 to 73.7%) and 36.7% (95% CI: -69.9 to 76.4%) for the BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines, respectively, in the first month after primary vaccination. However, the VE is significantly lower than that against Delta infection and declines rapidly over just a few months. The VE is re-established upon revaccination with the BNT162b2 vaccine (54.6%, 95% CI: 30.4 to 70.4%).

    In other words – as we already know – people who have been vaccinated can get Omicron. How seriously they get it, and what their risks are of infection (and in particular serious disease) compared to the unvaccinated is unknown and no light is shed on that by this study. Also, we already know that vaccine effectiveness lessens over time elapsed, and we already know (as the study points out) that a booster helps with that.

  61. Looks like I’m eligible for the Pfizer booster in early January. All you troll-phobic anti-vaxxers, cross yer fingers! 😀

    With any luck, I’ll liquefy and explode like that old woman in Brazil and do so before Chinese New Year so as not to have to hand out any red envelopes to the undeserving poor.

    Omicron does seem to be a bit of a fizzer so far. I wonder what they’ll dream up next.

  62. @ Bauxite > “Democrats and the left have been extraordinarily lucky with events in the 21st century. They weren’t in office on 9/11. Almost all of them supported the 9/11 wars initially, but Bush was available to blame when they went south. Clinton’s policies were at least as much to blame for the financial crisis as any Republican policies, but the crisis occurred on Republicans’ watch. A once-a-century pandemic also hit on Republicans’ watch.”

    This is easily explained by analogy to an anecdote from a company AesopSpouse worked for.
    “Joe” was a pet protégé of one of the top execs, and was made head of department A. During that time, he made disastrous decisions, and the staff worked mightily to limit the damage from them. Eventually, Joe was moved to department B, but the weight of his mistakes was by then so great, department A finally showed the horrible results.
    At department B, the same thing happened; Joe was once again moved laterally to C just before B finally collapsed.
    Then the same thing happened again.
    At this point, his sponsor and the other top managers explained to the employees that, obviously, Joe was the only thing holding their incompetent departments together, because after he left them, everything fell apart.

    The staffs were not persuaded.

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