COVID overview Part II: liberty and risk
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
If someone – say, Howard Hughes (to take one obvious example) – wants to become an eccentric isolate in an attempt to protect himself against disease or other mishap, I may think he’s misguided or even crazy. But it’s his right to live that way. However, if he began to demand that other people live that way, and if he tried to enforce that, then he would be a tyrant.
The current politicians and health officials who have been setting up the COVID rules are saying that they are necessary to protect us. Protect us from what? Measures that might be justified for some titanic plague that is about to kill half the population are not necessarily justified for COVID. But where should the line be drawn? I recall that in the early days of COVID some politicians were saying “one death is too many!”, which is compassionate-sounding but if actually carried out would put us all in Hughes-like isolation, with society grinding to a halt.
But isn’t that not so very far from what actually happened, and for way too long? And did the measures really help at all? It’s not at all clear that they did, and even if they did help somewhat, many many people believe the price was way too high. Very early in the COVID pandemic – mid-March of 2020 – I wrote a post on the subject. I think it holds up pretty well for the most part. Here are a few excerpts:
I grew up, as the somewhat-older author of this essay “Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances: Remembering the 1957 Asian flu pandemic” did, in an era when nearly all children got a series of diseases that are now mostly distant memories. The vast majority of us survived quite nicely, unlike in previous eras:
“Before the Modern Revolution child mortality was very high in all societies that we have knowledge of – a quarter of all children died in the first year of life, almost half died before reaching the end of puberty.”
Royalty was not immune; look at the record of the children of Peter the Great, for example. It’s horrific. It’s also one of many reasons people tried to have as many children as possible, although a lot of women died in childbirth or shortly after. Another terrible risk that was common in prior eras.
It was much much better when I was growing up. But still, in a few short years and while I was a toddler I had measles, mumps, German measles (is that racist?), and chicken pox, and that’s just what I remember. Polio was rather common, too, although a vaccine was developed when I was in grade school; I remember what a big big deal that was, and what a hero Salk was considered to be.
My only cousin had measles encephalitis when I was about two, and died a few years later of complications from it. I remember his death very very well, and his disabilities too. That’s the sort of thing that makes a deep impression on a child. My mother told me later that, when I had contracted measles not all that long after my cousin had them, she sweated it out because the risks were very clear to her. Another couple who were good friends of my parents had lost a child from measles even before I was born, and I heard about that periodically, too.
No one had to impress on me the seriousness of measles. I knew. And polio? We saw the photos of all those kids in the iron lungs, and we saw children walking around with braces on their legs.
But that personal knowledge is gone, along with those diseases and many others…It’s a wonderful thing that the incidence of most of those diseases has been remarkably reduced. Wonderful, fabulous, a great reduction in human suffering. But there’s been a cost, too, and it’s the increasing fragility of our psyches’ ability to withstand and endure even the prospect of an increase in disease and mortality that mirrors what my generation experienced.
[Why didn’t we close down more during the 1957 Asian flu pandemic?]…[W]e would have had to have closed down shop indefinitely. There were so many illnesses around all the time that there was no way to escape. You might say we were fatalistic, you might say we were resigned, you might say we were stupid, you might say we assumed the risk, or you might say we understood that the drawbacks of that sort of reaction were immense as well.
Of course, I wasn’t around in 1918. I wasn’t around when smallpox and tuberculosis or the Black Death killed far far more of the people on earth than any of the plagues of my lifetime have come close to killing. I cannot even imagine how terrible those things were; I don’t even want to imagine. And I doubt that people took them in stride at all. And I think a good part of the dread and fear now is that in the back of our minds – or for some people, even the front of our minds – we know that such catastrophes are still possible. Human beings know they are intensely vulnerable.
But COVID-19 is not shaping up to be that sort of event, and there’s no reason to think it will be. However, although many measures are prudent – handwashing, increased testing, hospital preparedness, some measure of social distancing at least for a while – the degree of fear I see and hear is far greater than anything I can recall in my lifetime around a medical event.
And now I’ll add a couple of things to that previous post. The first is that COVID was already heavily politicized even back in March of 2020 when I wrote it. But COVID went on to become politicized even beyond what I had expected or perceived at the time.
The second is that the whipping up of fear has continued longer than I imagined it would. I actually thought that a few months after Biden was inaugurated the authorities would be declaring COVID vanquished by Biden and company. But that hasn’t happened, and in fact things are clamping down again.
Which brings us back to the idea that the whole thing has been too valuable politically (I listed some reasons why in Part I) – although going on and on could backfire and perhaps is even already backfiring. But still, it’s already served a political purpose. Over the course of the COVID pandemic enormous numbers of people have already become more risk-averse and more comfortable with all sorts of restrictions that would have seemed like way much too much only a couple of years ago. This obviously serves the political needs of the left.
Liberty has been one of the casualties of the pandemic.
Discussed this with a self-described “moderate” (buys into the entire lefty program; thinks NPR is straight down the middle). He said that the pandemic is a uniquely dangerous thing and unprecedented measures are justified. I disagreed but said for argument’s sake it may have looked that way initially. At this point we know that it ain’t that bad, and keeping kids out of school, bankrupting businesses, etc. is no longer needed or appropriate.
I also asked-what happens next time? He seemed startled. I said of course there will be a next time.
Ultimately I said that we have lost something very important-we’ve conceded our constitutional rights to an ‘emergency’ and downgraded what constitutes an emergency which could possibly warrant such a thing. I said the burden of proof should be very, very high and is on the ‘emergency’ proponents. We as a country-the country for which freedom is supposed to be sacred-have lost that.
He actually said that I made a good point. A major breakthrough. Until the next time I talk to him, when I will have to deal with the next round of idiocy the MSM is putting forth…
Childhood mortality?
Grandfather’s sister died when her bedclothes caught on fire from woodstove.
My brother, Timothy, stillborn, 1960.
Next door neighbor’s youngest son choked on rubber balloon, in the car with siblings while mother was shopping in the commissary, Fort Belvoir.
Schoolmate in junior high died of unknown causes.
But the WuFlu, which does not seem to kill (essentially) any children, has caused the karens of today to loose their minds.
If I were absolute ruler of the United States of America, in the event of the emergence of some novel and highly contagious pathogen I would require a cost assessment before implementing any proposed policy that could cause a great deal of economic harm as well as considering deaths and human suffering. I wouldn’t need such an assesment to be super precise, just ballpark it for me. What is the cost/benefit of any major action or inaction in terms of lives and money?
For example, I’d want to have a pretty good idea how much any kind of proposed lockdown would actually cost the US economy per day as opposed to how many lives would be lost and how many hospital beds would be filled up ect. if such a lockdown wasn’t implimented. I realize that this might be difficult to know in the early stages of an emerging pandemic since we generally might not have a good handle on just how dangerous a pathegen truly may be over time, but I’d just need a rough idea of potential damage.
So many of the public policies that have been implimented with regards to this pandemic over the past 17 months were originated by a power hungry ruling class and have been driven by the a sensationalist mainstream media and social media that use panic and fear rather than by sober, careful, rational decision making that takes into account all the potential costs of a given policy. We’ve had so many highly dubious public policies have been implimented and sadly any criticism or questioning of such policies is often shouted down as heretical and/or silenced on many platforms. It feels like we’re living in a strange sort of high tech ochlocracy, where the loudest and most strident voices are the deciders.
In 2021 the US has about 48 million children 12 and under.
Auto fatalities averaged 1.37 per million miles in 2020.
If all US children under 12 are vaccinated, and on average they have to be driven 10 miles for each vaccination*, then 651 people** would be expected to die from auto fatalities due to COVID vaccination.
That’s roughly comparable to the number of children who could be expected to die of COVID if not vaccinated.
In other words, the risk to children for dying of COVID is so small that it’s comparable to the risk that someone dies in a car accident while driving those children to their vaccination.
*Assume a 5 mile round trip and two shots. Larger families probably don’t need one trip per child, but on the other hand a fatal car accident can kill more passengers too, and besides some people only get one shot. It probably is close enough to washing out to make the key point, that the two risks are comparable.
**It’s not just children who could die; could be drivers, pedestrians, etc.
My opinion is they are keeping up the scare only for political gain, keep everyone boxed up, vote by mail. Still think in 2022 the yearly all deaths from 2020 will not be hardly a difference from 2019. Someone dies a few months earlier than they would without Covid will not make a difference in statistics.
It’s the only reason I can come up with why the Blue State governments forced nursing homes to take in Covid was to drive up the deaths.
There is a quote from one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels that seems applicable here:
” “The prospect of freedom?” he said.
“Exactly,” said Lord Vetinari, “There is always a choice.”
“You mean…I could choose certain death?”
“A choice, nevertheless,” said Vetinari, “Or, perhaps, an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom, Mr. Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will, of course, protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”
“Going Postal” p. 15
Free people get to choose and live with the consequences of their choices. Subject have choices made for them.
neo,
Greatest mistake of modern times?
I know all the qualifiers and all but c’mon you have to be getting closer?
“Which brings us back to the idea that the whole thing has been too valuable politically”
There’s likely some truth to that but I think you can’t overestimate how much of all this boils down to people who think they are the “Masters of the Universe” finding out they’re not as smart as they think they are and the world is a lot more complicated than they thought it was. This is what it looks like when the elite class panics.
Mike
“Measures that might be justified for some titanic plague that is about to kill half the population are not necessarily justified for COVID”
I’d tell you a Covid joke but there’s a 99.75% chance you wouldn’t get it.
Griffin:
Actually, I’m getting somewhat further away, because I increasingly think it was more purposeful and less mistaken.
Whipping the dead horse, hoping it will rise up again to pull their wagon to more power forever.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/465289/
neo,
Yes, I think mistake fit in the beginning but then it morphed into something far more evil.
Crime against humanity?
This is what it looks like when the elite class panics.
Aye, but you also have obnoxious interest-group politics. See the teachers’ union hags.
The local weekly paper had an article stating that 37 county residents had died from COVID and that the vaccination rate was 39% for residents over the age of 12. There are approximately 19000 people in the county so the population death rate was about 0.19%. The mortality rate (dead/infected) which would be higher. Media reports would have you believe that it was the 1918 Spanish Flu all over again with bodies stacked in warehouses but for all the media screams of “cases, cases, cases” you didn’t see “caskets, caskets, caskets”.
The conclusion is simple: For the overall population the virus was a non-medical event. It was, however, extremely serious for certain segments of the population (the elderly and the obese). Oddly, the Public Health experts failed to discern who was most at risk and protect them.
I’m old enough to have experienced the 1976 Swine Flu debacle, and was one those required to get the vaccine (well after the virus had burned itself out), that likely cost Gerald Ford the Presidential Election. Go ahead, Google “1976 Swine Flu” and see if all of “Science” involved in the COVID pandemic isn’t “Political Science”.
This time around we have my state Texas where our governor restated last week that no state government entity can require vaccinations of implement mask mandates and if they try then there will be a $1,000 fine. Individuals and private businesses can set their own mask rules and of course the Federal Government has their mask stuff going. Our state and I understand at least six others are not buying into the mask stuff this time around, been that way since March 10th and we are not all falling dead all over the place.
Real life experiment on a large scale going on in the USA about the mask crap, three weeks ago I ask my doctor about COVID, he has large, mostly geriatric practice and he has not seen a COVID case for three months. Masks are also optional at his practice, if a patient wears a mask he is willing to put his on for them but not for the rest of us who don’t like the ‘mask life’.
ChrisS,
Not counting media reports I know of two people I actually knew who have died of Covid in 18 months and one of them was in late stage cancer and in his late 80s. On the other hand, I know a couple dozen or so including myself that have tested positive and not a single one of them had a case that was worse than a usual cold/flu and about half would have never known they had unless required to get tested.
I’m not discounting the people that have died or been sick but I think my experience is representative of a lot of people.
Social media has so warped people’s perceptions that most people have lost any sense of this.
It started out with a lack of definite information. The hopsitals were going to be overrun. he models (remember how wrong they were?) were showing millions of deaths. Lockdown to flatten the curve. In March 2020 that made some sense.
As more information became available, it should have been clear – protect the elderly, those with co-morbidities, and medical personnel. open up with caution – schools, businesses, government, etc. Pretty much the plan followed by Florida, Texas, and some other red states.
But the virus was politicized in the first weeks. The Democrats nit-picked every thing Trump did and said. The MSM followed suit. No rational discussions became possible. When Trump brought in Scott Atlas to lend his opinions to the Virus task force, he was crucified by the MSM and his fellow academics at Stanford. On the other hand, Cuomo was lionized, even though he made many stupid calls. The political posturing and jockeying for advantage could not have been more clear.
The Democrats have tried very hard to use the pandemic for their own ends. IMO, it isn’t working very well. A majority of people have mask fatigue and are tired of living constricted ;lives. My wife and I flew to Colorado a couple of weeks ago. The airports were packed. The planes were full. The bars and restaurants in the terminals were full. People are on the move again and I don’t think they are in the mood to be locked down again .
I think our governor, King Jay, is actually afraid to require masking up again. He’s not very bright, but if he gets out at all, he’s got to see the animal spirits have been released. People here in Snohomish County are pretty much doing as they please. And I don’t think the scare tactics work as well now. We’ll see.
Just came home from the grocery store here in East Texas and probably 70% of the people are wearing mask. Even though this is a Republican county, that grocery store is in a Democrat area within the county.
Read this thread all the way through. Unprecedented times…not so much.
https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1422243808536715265
Spoiler alert all these frantic hospital worker quotes are from 2018.
Yesterday at the Conservative big church I go to, there were very few people wearing mask, but more so than I have seen in previous weeks. The “ greeters” at the door were wearing mask, but the civilian and police security guys standing outside the doors, were not.
But the ethnic and political makeup of that church and the grocery store I went to today is vastly different.
J.J.,
King Jay has been tweeting about wildfires which is a good sign (not for the people in danger but for everybody else) and I have not seen anyplace requiring a mask that wasn’t before the latest panic.
I’m just not going to do it. Not going to cause a scene or anything but this needs to end.
I did suggest to my mother that she lay low for a while again with the local increase in cases….
Frederick @ 2:54- “In other words, the risk to children for dying of COVID is so small that it’s comparable to the risk that your kid dies in a car accident while you drive him to get vaccinated “
I love the analogy. I don’t know how exact that is, but I bet that it’s pretty close, and it expresses how pointless it is to vaccinate kids considering how low their risk is of serious health issues from contracting COVID or off transmitting it to others. I’ll check out the statistics but it’s a good way to start the discussion.
The next time someone talks about the need to vaccinate kids I’m going to say, “I read somewhere that the risk to children of dying from COVID is comparable to the risk that your kid dies in a car accident on the way to getting him vaccinated.” I’ll look up statistics bu that’s a good analogy to start with.
The number of things like this going around twitter lately is amazing. Twitter has to be one of the most destructive companies to hit the world.
https://twitter.com/FiveTimesAugust/status/1421917208226185221
So someone please explain to me where my facts or reasoning is flawed. Children are at nearly zero risk, correct? By now every adult in America has had the opportunity to get a free vaccine, correct?
The vaccines aren’t perfect but are touted as being highly effective in preventing Covid from killing the vaccinated, correct? No indication that the vaccinated who do get infected will suffer long term complications, correct? The vaccinated are also protected from serious complications from the Delta variant, correct?
So, if all of that is correct then the only people truly at risk from becoming infected by another infected person or carrier of the virus is someone who has decided to take the risk of not being vaccinated, correct?
If so, then other than unreasoning fear or malevolent politics, upon what basis are the ‘authorities’ and ordinary people demanding that the unvaccinated get vaccinated? The odds that a vaccinated person will get infected and die or even suffer serious complications has to be miniscule, correct?
Yet…
“They Want to Arrest and Jail All Unvaccinated Adults!”
https://generaldispatch.whatfinger.com/they-want-to-arrest-and-jail-all-unvaccinated-adults/
Only a few in church yesterday were wearing the WuFlu flag, after two or three weeks of being bare face naked, so the propaganda is working on the susceptible. The service is predominantly post 50s; and my guess is all are vaccinated.
Have been seeing more people out an about wearing the WuFlu flag.
I keep expecting King Jay to fall back into his default stupid mode.
Om:
“Loose” their minds? Surely you know the difference between “lose” and “loose.”
Why is this particular error so common, usually amidst otherwise flawless spelling and grammar?
“Shirley” I know the difference, but my spelling and grammar are rarely observed to be flawless. An unfettered mind is a terrible thing to lose.
At church yesterday here in Boerne Texas, mostly conservative instead of a half dozen masked up there were about 50 with the masks, some good friends of mine and I know they are the folks who watch TV news, especially FOX all damn day long. Older people but some in excellent health while my fellow usher friends, some in their 90’s don’t care to mask at all. This is totally media, stolen government theater.
Griffin, I’m astounded that King Jay hasn’t reinstated the mast mandates! But I’m with you…not gonna wear the dang thing again (except to visit my mom in assisted living in Oregon…and then not in her room).
J.J….I agree that King Jay doesn’t seem to be very bright.
gwynmir,
Well the hospital people are crying again about the full hospitals in WA so I predict King Jay will mandate masks tomorrow.
I especially like where the hospital guy says wearing a mask also helps with flu/cold season.
https://mynorthwest.com/3064599/health-care-workers-delta-variant/
Hahaha… you guys think you got it bad?
Read this estrogen-soaked Cluster-B Cluster$%^& of a Meltdown:
https://www.mamamia.com.au/frontline-nurse-covid19/
This woman should be chained in the basement of a Carmelite Nunnery for life. And plenty more like her.
Random datapoint on the state of nursing in Australia. My Relative, the Doctor (heh!) told me that the Nursing Union directs its members (100% — membership is compulsory) to allow frail patients to fall. They must not make any attempt to catch them as this will invalidate their (nurses’) disability insurance or coverage is not sufficient or something.. anyway no attempt must be made. So much for a Caring Profession.
Seeing these people state how that vaccinated people should wear mask so they do not give the virus to an unvaccinated person, whose unvaccinated body then produces another strain. Seems to me that if a vaccinated person could give the virus away, that person could also be the nursery of a new strain.
With that in mind, who is to say that the microscopic “ wet market” that is the inside of a mask is not going to give birth to a new , more deadly respiratory bacteria? Billions of mask being worn around the world could be it’s own gigantic gain of function experiment!
Saw a bunch of happy pictures of my Democrat-voting acquaintances partying at a nightclub in Manhattan (vaccinated, no masks) over the weekend. Just went back to work in person, plenty of people happy to be working in an office, no masks. You hear a lot about how workers are now looking for jobs where they can work 100% remotely, but a lot of people I know (myself included) are eager to be fully in-person again. Parents everywhere want their kids back in school full-time and that’s been a large catalyst for the mass exodus from the public school system. The people who are trying to drum up panic again are in the minority, and they’re not going to be able to lock us down again.
I personally know of only 3 people who got this latest go-around. All 3 fully vaccinated (2 Pfizer, not sure of the other one). One is my daughter’s close friend. She called my daughter to castigate her for not getting the vaccine and thereby being responsible for this present milieu. Science.
Can someone explain something, because this is something I am genuinely ignorant about and wish to understand better.
I keep hearing that the unvaccinated are the cause of variants emerging. I have zero knowledge of viruses, so it could be true. But…I think of antibiotics and how if you take them too much, you can develop infections that are antibiotic-resistant. Or I think of people who use too much hand sanitizer, which can lead to the development of “super germs” that are resistant to the sanitizer.
So wouldn’t it make sense that a virus would mutate because of the vaccinated? If no one is vaccinated, it doesn’t NEED to mutate because it can just infect anyone till it burns through the population, essentially. And wouldn’t this explain why new variants seem to be popping up more frequently since we started vaccinating? The virus has to mutate so it can keep infecting everyone, jabbed and non-jabbed alike.
Again, this is just my totally uneducated theory, and I don’t claim that I’m correct or know better than others. But I AM asking so that someone who understands this stuff better than me can either confirm my theory or correct me for having it backwards.
One other thing that mystifies me and I have complained about since Trump was treated for Covid-19 at Walter Reed. That is the resistance of the medical establishment to any therapeutic treatments before the patient gets pneumonia. Monoclonal antibodies were used to treat Trump, Ben Carson, and Chris Christy. There were probably many other high profile people who got that treatment. It works well if given before pneumonia sets in. Yet, it got no promotion or publicity. It costs $1200-$1500, but is cheap compared to ten or more days in the ICU. You can get it if you know where it’s being used in your area.
Then there is HCQ and ivermectin. Dismissed out of hand by the medical establishment. Why? A few doctors are using it and claiming good results. Why not set up some large studies of the results of using HCQ or Ivermectin for early treatment? I asked my health district about this. They refused to answer my e-mail.
Then there is the combination of vitamins C & D + zinc and Quercetin. Why not recommend this to elderly people who are well enough to take these simple supplements? Dr. Harvey Risch, Harvard epidemiologist, has advocated for them on the Ingraham Angle. Again, silence from the medical establishment. The very least they could do is give some reasoned arguments (other than the gold standard, double blind study) as to why they are not looking into all avenues of relief.
Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies
Overpaid and Overweight: “Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies”
Normie: “Bbbbbuuutttttt! I just wanna Grill!”
How many people died due to the resistance of any early treatment of Covid?
This makes my blood boil.
Along with the deliberate understatement of side effects of the mRNA vaccine.
One benefit (to some) of this maskarade is that commie thugs can riot with their faces obscured. Prior to the WuFlu some efforts were made to outlaw appearing in public masked, in an effort to combat Antifa.
J.J., it’s because you’re NOT supposed to have a choice in the matter.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/as_covid_surges_why_is_youtube_suppressing_skynews_for_its_reports_on_hcq_and_ivermectin.html
They started out by wanting to—by having to—control the Narrative(TM).
Now, they want to control everything. (Evolutionary totalitarianism?)
If citizens can take their health in their own hands, can find an effective alternative to the vaccine, then THAT endangers the regime. HCQ+, Ivermectin, etc. are a THREAT to the powers that be. (As was Trump.)
All such potential threats MUST be stopped in their tracks. All information about these alternatives MUST be nipped in the bud.
People are NOT supposed to have a choice. Period.
And therefore, people MUST die (and suffer)…because the Corrupt Democratic Party of the USA (and its gruesome add-ons) MUST maintain power now and forever.
Simple.
…which, CLEARLY, is also the reason for this:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/08/02/dhs-secretary-mayorkas-domestic-violent-extremism-is-the-greatest-terrorist-related-threat-we-face/
(Aha! Now one can understand why the highly esteemed secretary is “unable” to focus on the border catastrophe, AKA do his job….well, unless those trying to get in the country are Cubans, that is….)
The local news paper had a story about how everyone who works in the county hospital or is a service provider to it has to get the vaccine immediately. There are 22 patients in the hospital with covid and 4 are on ventilators. We have a county population of 132,000 people. Now really – that is a very, very small number and I will be willing to bet all of them are elderly with pre-existing conditions.
@NS:So wouldn’t it make sense that a virus would mutate because of the vaccinated? If no one is vaccinated, it doesn’t NEED to mutate
Viruses are always mutating. New mutations are not going to be radically different from existing strains, unless they can spread through a population easily enough that they have time to mutate further.
So new mutations have a harder time spreading the more people are vaccinated. A large population of unvaccinated people provides a space for new mutants to spread into and mutate further. Given enough room they could mutate into something that existing vaccines don’t help against.
That said, see my post above about how small the death-by-COVID risk is for unvaccinated children. Every choice involves tradeoffs.
And yet, and yet….
https://welovetrump.com/2021/07/31/highly-vaccinated-iceland-gibraltar-destroy-covid-19-vaccine-passport-narrative/?utm_source=PTN&utm_medium=mixed&utm_campaign=PTN
I think MBunge was close to mark. This is about the so-called “Masters of the Universe.” I don’t believe that they’ve realized that they’re not as smart as they think they are, though. I think they’re still madly twisting all the dials while using Trump and Trump supporters to rationalize their own failures.
That said, I really wish that more of us on the right could rise above the idiocy from the left and regain our sense of public-spiritedness. If every decision to vaccinate is based only on individual risk, the weak suffer. (In this case the weak are the elderly and young people at higher risk of COVID complications.) It is not just to ask the weak to suffer so that the strong can maximize their freedom. If we’re making that ask by refusing vaccination, we’re just playing into the hands of the “Masters of the Universe” types. The more that vaccine hesitancy is associated with the political right, the more the left will be able to use it to consolidate their power.
NS – So wouldn’t it make sense that a virus would mutate because of the vaccinated?
While viruses mutate as a survival trait, the notion that the vaccine “caused” the variant could have some merit when you consider the overwhelming lack of success seen from the Chinese version. Either by error or by design the Chinese vaccine provided a large number of hosts to incubate WuFlu 2, the sequel. I know, you’re saying “the Chinese didn’t develop COVID as a bio-weapon and they’d never develop a follow-up bio-weapon to perpetuate the economic destruction of the formerly free world. That’s not what Communists bent on global domination would do!”.
The push for a Vaccine Passport, and that’s really the basis of the unvaccinated talk, is about control. A vaccine is widely available, the unvaccinated can get it if they want. However, the alleged experts are telling them that the vaccine doesn’t work, that they’ll need repeat injections of the vaccine that doesn’t work, and that the tyranny will never end because the WuFlu will become the seasonal flu. IMO, if you’re in danger of dying from the flu then you should get the vaccine. Otherwise, it boils down to the upside of a vaccine that has no medical benefit (that would be no upside) versus the downside of an experimental vaccine (could be a lot of downside).
My daughter spent Friday through Sunday in a room with several other people working on a company project. Like many companies, hers has an ultra-woke CEO. On Monday, a company edict required them all to wear masks at all times. So there they are, still working, the same group of people in the same room, unmasked over the weekend and now masked. It’s insane.
Bauxite:
Public spiritedness is not keeping the young, Hispanic, and African Americans from getting vaccinated. Nor is public spiritedness, from the conservatives, in control of Dr. Fauci and the credibility of the CDC and the administration. Public spiritedness does not control the media. It wasn’t public spiritedness that compelled Biden and Harris to demagogue the Trump vaccines before the election and to continually hype the lie of systemic (white) racism; that white supremacist vaccine is going to kill you bro?
Public spiritedness is a concern, as is conservative wife beating.
“It’s the only reason I can come up with why the Blue State governments forced nursing homes to take in Covid was to drive up the deaths.”
One major reason in New York was that hospitals are paid by Medicare for those over 65. Nursing homes are paid by Medicaid. Sending sick Medicare patients back to nursing homes shifted the payment responsibility. Why that was important? I don’t know. Many NY hospitals, especially in NYC, are owned by the government. Maybe that was it. I wonder if we will ever find out ?
@ChrisS:If every decision to vaccinate is based only on individual risk, the weak suffer. (In this case the weak are the elderly and young people at higher risk of COVID complications.) It is not just to ask the weak to suffer so that the strong can maximize their freedom.
If the decision to eat peanut butter is based only on individual risk, the weak suffer. (In this case the weak are those with peanut allergies who go into anaphylectic shock.) It is not just to ask the weak to suffer so that the strong can maximize their freedom.
Vaccines are like peanut butter in that the decision about what does or does not go into your own body is highly personal. Vaccines are like seat belts in that those who refuse to use them primarily put themselves at risk, and others a very distant second.
COVID is not like pneumonic plague or smallpox. Only a few people are vulnerable, overwhelmingly adults. Those people should do whatever they feel comfortable doing to minimize their own risk.
COVID is not like diptheria or measles which primarily kill people too young to make decisions for themselves.
I think you can make a strong case for mandating vaccines for childhood disease, but for COVID the case is very weak. Mandating COVID vaccinations is a lot more like banning peanut butter than like mandating polio vaccinations.
Many NY hospitals, especially in NYC, are owned by the government.
I think a Downstate thing. There is a medical complex in Buffalo that’s a subsidiary of the state university and there’s a stand-alone state medical center in Syracuse. AFAIK, no other acute care hospitals owned by public authorities.
Sending sick Medicare patients back to nursing homes shifted the payment responsibility. Why that was important? I don’t know.
In New York, rehabilitation care offered in nursing homes is financed by Medicare for stints up to 60 days. If their care were charged Medicaid, that would implicate the state for a portion of the bill, so I don’t think the funding pipeline was the reason. It’s New York, so assume the business interests of insiders were at stake. In hunting for truffles, sniff for with whom the Cuomos have built patron-client relationships. My guess would be that the hospitals have been filling the campaign coffers and providing employment for quondam patronage employees and the nursing homes haven’t. Recall that the University of Chicago Hospitals were ca. 2006 paying Michelle Obama $300,000 a year plus bennies. Bet that cheesed the neurosurgeons working there.
If every decision to vaccinate is based only on individual risk, the weak suffer. (In this case the weak are the elderly and young people at higher risk of COVID complications.)
They aren’t suffering from other people’s discretionary decisions. They’ll suffer if they land a breakthrough infection, but that isn’t a consequence of other people’s discretionary decisions.
I got an email from someone I know in Manhattan who was ranting about all those irresponsible politicians and people in Florida. No masking and not enough vaccination. Seems to me that the vax rate among POC in the Bronx isn’t very high either.
But this Manhattanite had returned from a tour of Iceland about a month ago. So I found this news about Iceland interesting.
“I really wish that more of us on the right could rise above the idiocy from the left and regain our sense of public-spiritedness. …The more that vaccine hesitancy is associated with the political right, the more the left will be able to use it to consolidate their power.” Bauxite
And where is all your data following those who have received the vaccine? You know, those 60 and older who suddenly need hospitalizations and surgeries for conditions that never gave them problems before. (2 people I know ended up hospitalized because of a hernia that became a life-threatening issue post-vaccine. They didn’t connect the dots.) Or the “white noise” that Dr. Malone speaks of–death of the elderly who die of strokes and heart-attacks at that time of life. And of course it is impossible to have any data regarding long-term issues post vaccine. You have A LOT more confidence than I do in the “science” and pharmaceutical industry when it comes to the unknowns down the road. The mrna vaccines introduce a spike protein. The body responds with some kind of inflammation somewhere. You aren’t reading the resources that I am with regard to serious repercussions following the shot. And that is because the MSM and social media have a jackboot on the information. But go ahead and suggest that we all just trust these entities that are making money hand-over-fist and have proven themselves less than integrous about “fill in the blank”. I just heard today that Entrust (the company that is going to develop the Vax Passport system for the UK), is owned in great part by the wealthy heirs of the Nazis. Draw your own conclusions. Whichever commenter recommended Sebastian Haffner’s book, Defying Hitler, thank you. I just finished reading it and I could have written in every margin current events and circumstances of the last several months/years.
Art Deco – Your point of view might be different if you had children too young to be vaccinated who also happen to have a condition that puts them at a greater risk for COVID complications, or other friends or family at risk who can’t be vaccinated for whatever reason.
My frustration on that point is directed mostly at the scientific establishment, who have taken their own credibility and ritually burned it to the ground. I save a little frustration for the folks appealing to personal freedom, though, too. Freedom without responsibility creates pressure for freedom to be removed.
Bauxite, there are a number of scientists (not the ones with the MSM/social media microphone) who state it exactly opposite to what you are believing; That the vaccination is driving the variants and the vaccinated are the spreaders. We were kept from natural herd immunity (lockdowns) that in many places have proven to be most effective. If actual therapies were provided at the beginning, rather than people sent home or told to stay home, then there would have been less fatalities and there should be less now that oxygen, fluids and steroids would be provided before the cytokine storm ensues–therapies used since the 1970’s somehow off the grid in early 2020.
Sharon W:
One can find scientists who say it, but who are they and based on what data? Do you have some links I could take a look at?
I’ve read a lot about this – a lot – and I’ve seen nothing at all convincing that would indicate that. What I see consistently so far is that the majority of cases (and especially serious cases) are in the unvaccinated even when they’re in the minority in a population, and that the vaccinated MIGHT be able to spread it but that is merely a supposition and inference with no strong data behind it that directly indicates it (I covered this somewhat in a previous post).
In addition, the spike from Delta is just not that large at present, and if it follows the UK and Israeli pattern it will go down soon.
Lastly, regarding someone having a hernia problem after being vaccinated – in order to indicate a connection, there has to be a significantly greater than average number of people getting hernia problems after vaccination compared with those in the same age group (and with other similar demographics) who have gotten hernia problems without being vaccinated in a given year. Unless there is evidence of that – and I see none so far – the connection is merely apparent and not necessarily real.
Bauxite:
Consider this basic philosophy “hard cases make bad law” and consider that it may apply to politics and policies imposed on an entire nation. Ya’ think?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law
Guess what? Everybody vaccinated is going to die after getting the vaccination.
Also, everybody unvaccinated is going to die after declining it.
Neo, I would look at the Dr. Malone and Alex Berenson Twitter feeds. They link to data (as much as one can ascertain data). Here is a link to a non-MSM site reporting on CDC information:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/covid-hospitalizations-deaths-for-the-vaccinated-more-than-triple-in-one-month-cdc-reports/
Yes, my list is anecdotal since there is no real data follow-up once the EUA began. People aren’t being tracked. Every person I had the courage to ask, “did you receive the vaccine?” didn’t even think of it, let alone the doctors who treated them in the hospital. That’s just it. There is no formal follow-up. For those of us not trusting the CDC or the pharmaceutical providers, that is a red-flag. Dr. Malone is pro-vax, but in becoming aware of how what passes for data is being handled (mis-handled) by the CDC, has some strong opinions. Griffin linked to a Steve Deace Twitter feed that followed the US/UK/Israel and then India vaccinated/not vaccinated information that made a strong case for herd immunity having successfully resolved the outbreak in India. He makes the point that there were more fatalities that way, but wouldn’t those be explained by less availability of the fundamentals–oxygen, fluids, hygenic environment response to the disease? Because of what we experienced and the fact that we have the seriologically detected IGG antibodies and that is disregarded, I question the science and intentions. Additionally, we now know my husband has a serious reaction to the spike protein and I feel concerned about the next cold. So where are we headed? We could possibly be denied employment or concert-going or any number of things that are on the table if we don’t acquiese. And this driven in large part by the people that espoused “my body, my choice” as a fundamental right. The statistical proof that this was not the Black Plague is evident. I can see this as a precursor to totalitarianism. I don’t believe the people driving this care about my health at all. Here is a link to people’s stories, much like the “walk away” videos. https://1000covidstories.com/ Again, anecdotal, but that is really all we have, unless you believe the CDC, WHO, etc. I don’t.
Sharon W:
I have long respected Berenson but recently I watched one of his interviews and was surprised at some errors he was making in discussing certain facts in some research – where I had previously read the research myself. So I no longer think he necessarily knows what he’s talking about, unfortunately, although I haven’t lost all respect for him. Malone I do not especially trust on this topic; I looked him up at some length the other day and no longer remember all the details of why I decided not to put too much trust in what he said but one thing I do recall is that he holds himself out (or his supporters hold him out) to be the inventor of mRNA technology and he is not. He did research that contributed to it, but so did a lot of people.
The problem with getting information on this that is reliable and valid is that there are plenty of people on both sides willing to opine on things that are merely speculative and for which the data just isn’t sufficient to draw a conclusion, or who are willing to twist research and purport that it indicates things it does not indicate. It’s very hard to evaluate what’s what because for the most part the phenomena are relatively new and relatively unstudied, and the results are often contradictory as well.
I know you and your husband had an extraordinarily difficult experience, and I’m so glad that your husband seems to be doing so much better now. I also agree that it seems really wrong to not acknowledge that people who have had COVID are very likely to NOT need vaccination, although I know they are worried about how long immunity will last. But for now such people certainly seem highly resistant. And I also have said from the start (beginning with the cruise ship data) that this doesn’t seem as bad as all the scaremongers were saying. In addition, of course, the political use that’s being made of it is abominable and deplorable.
As far as people not being tracked, are you sure that’s not happening? Do you know of all research that’s currently being done? I don’t know, but I would bet there are some studies being done. But I know that research like that needs to be fairly massive and takes quite some time to do, and so it’s not easy.
These COVID vaccines are new kinds of vaccines, but the technology actually has been studied for years:
Here’s a lengthy article about the technology published in early 2018. And here’s an article describing why even these new vaccines are unlikely to have long-term effects, and also that the shorter-term effects have been studied and are known.
Now, a lot of people may doubt that’s the truth, and I don’t blame them because there’s been so much reason lately to distrust what medical authorities tell us. But I think these articles make sense. That’s my personal opinion.
Apparently there’s also some evidence that the vaccine can help with “long COVID.” Which would be good, if true.
Sharon W.:
One more thing –
“Anecdotal evidence” like WalkAway stories are not meant to be science. They are meant to be people’s stories, not about a scientific subject but about their own lives and their own thoughts and feelings and opinions.
“Anecdotal stories” about whether a vaccine caused a certain symptom that occurs quite a bit of time afterwards are stories that have no scientific meaning in terms of whether X really DID cause Y. If they are being used to prove that, it would be a false proof.
Art Deco – Your point of view might be different if you had children too young to be vaccinated who also happen to have a condition that puts them at a greater risk for COVID complications, or other friends or family at risk who can’t be vaccinated for whatever reason.
No it wouldn’t. The young are not in danger from this ailment. And your examples are not examples, merely your imagination working.
That the vaccination is driving the variants and the vaccinated are the spreaders.
For the layman, the logic of that observation is…inneresting.
neo,
Yes, Berenson has kind of gone off the rails the last few months. There are others doing pretty balanced work like Kevin Roche at his Healthy Skeptic site and on twitter people like Justin Hart are pretty fair I think on the whole thing with the vaccines.
It is becoming pretty clear they were either oversold or at the very least poorly messaged and that has greatly hurt the sell job.
Art Deco – I can assure you that I’m not making things up. Most young people are in very little danger from COVID, but that is not the case for all.
om – I’m very familiar with the idea that difficult cases make bad law. That’s actually the basis of my point. COVID is such a middling pandemic for most people that any legal precedent that it generates on vaccine mandates is likely to be terrible. If the mandates are upheld (and I suspect most will be) then the standard for state and corporate coercion will be lowered and the progressive know-it-alls who run government and business will start mandating vaccines or other medical intervention any time someone has the sniffles.
If bad facts make bad law, which they do, the wise strategy is to avoid making any law on bad facts. Here, that means we should just get vaccinated. It’s probably the right thing to do anyway.
@Bauxite:I can assure you that I’m not making things up. Most young people are in very little danger from COVID, but that is not the case for all.
I believe you, there are a few hundred children who have died of COVID. But there’s always small numbers of people with vastly higher risk than the average, just like some people are in severe danger from peanut or seafood allergy; if your risks are way out of the norm it makes sense to do extra. But it doesn’t make sense to demand that everyone else take the precautions they don’t need.
Bauxite:
Don’t talk about “we.” You do you. I did me. You take a worst case and try to guilt people to do what you think is best for someone else. Bad faith makes bad law too
Bauxite:
I think the vast majority of commenters on this blog who have not had COVID have been vaccinated.
I can assure you that I’m not making things up. Most young people are in very little danger from COVID, but that is not the case for all.
Non ci credo
If the vaccinated can get Covid, and pass on Covid, then the virus is replicating in their body. If the virus is replicating, then it can be mutated.
The real question should not be whether or not a vaccinated person could produce the next strain, but what are the odds, compared to an unvaccinated person?
And does a vaccinated bodies response to a particular virus tend to encourage or discourage the arise of a new strain?
At this point, I guarantee you there is no way anyone knows in which PARTICULAR person any previous strain has arisen. At best, they know which person it was first confirmed in. And given that the average vaccinated person may have less obvious symptoms than the average unvaccinated person, as the number of vaccinated grows the greater the chance a new strain has to move around before it is detected.
And one other thing, as I saw a doctor speak of today, what we really ought to know is how many people already carry the anti bodies, not how many have been vaccinated.
Knowing if a person already has the anti bodies is not convenient information for the “ everybody should be vaccinated” crowd.
@ Neo “Very early in the COVID pandemic – mid-March of 2020 – I wrote a post on the subject. I think it holds up pretty well for the most part.”
So do the comments.
Some folks here were more prescient than others, but the general consensus of “we can do this for 2 weeks but people won’t put up with more than that” clearly was way off; the skepticism of Democrats looking to Get Trump was warranted; the predictions of economic disaster were fulfilled; and the optimism over hydroxychloroquine and other effective drugs was dashed because of TDS and the “now’s our chance to take over” action by the Left.
Interesting to compare the predictions to the observed reality.
AesopFan,
I went back and read the comments and I got a lot right and some wrong because but if nothing else I have been consistent on this issue.
On a side note I saw a comment by parker who I haven’t seen here in a long time. Perils of internet familiar people just disappear.
parker is missed.
Neo, of course I recognize anecdotal and recorded data are distinct. But in light of the fact that the PCR testing cycles had been adjusted (pre and post vaccine) as designated by those in the power to do so; the declaration of died because of COVID-19 as opposed to with COVID-19 was altered the day of the vaccine roll-out (I saved many articles that prove such); the change in the definition of “vaccine” and “herd immunity” happening in concert with these EAU vaccines; the absence of any possible long-term data regarding mrna vaccines leads me to suspicion as to the value of statistics and information provided by the CDC, WHO and our own government (already proven liars in the ABC agencies prior to this debacle). The CDC was formed to create a pandemic response–they did not and still have not. A sad and expensive truth. People may criticize Alex Berenson but he has in plain language presented that fact. If Americans want to continue to believe that our government cares about us, is telling us the truth and can be trusted–fine. But reading your blog these many years has sadly proved the opposite to be true. My husband and I make quite a pair–he has a serious reaction to a spike protein and I have a serious reaction to breathing in my own respiratory refuse. That puts the 2 of us in a bad place when it comes to the present so-called solutions.
neo – I was referring to the right in general and not commenters on this site in particular. I would not be at all surprised to find that most commenters here are vaccinated.
Anti-vaccine rhetoric is a problem on the right in general, though. American Thinker has another anti-vaccine essay out this morning. The folks in my neighborhood who fly the Gadston flag and had the biggest Trump signs are the ones who are now the loudest about not getting vaccinated.
It’s a tough problem. It’s tough to tell people that their math is off by an order of magnitude when we just had lockdowns because the experts’ math was off by a order if magnitude, and so on.
Excerpting from my own post about Iceland above,
And it has come to light that vaccinated individuals can contract it [Delta] relatively easily and spread infection. Sequencing has shown us that the origin of most domestic infections can be traced to group events such as clubbing in downtown Reykjavík [sound familiar?] or group trips abroad.
OK, it is just another group of experts with an opinion. At least they are not U.S. gov. officials with zero credibility in my eyes.
Probably vaccinated people are getting infected and probably are spreading it to some degree. Israel has already begun a 3rd jab of the Pfizer vax. Some [I forgot where] have begun to add a Pfizer jab on top of the J&J jab.
From Part 1, I wondered how big the PCR detections from Barnstable Co., Mass were. The CDC Powerpoint slide deck indicated that they were big on average Ct in the range 18 to 21. A histogram chart would be much more informative than an average. Reading about Bear week in Ptown, I discovered that while snorting cocaine is not that common, snorting crystal meth is. So, not a great exemplar for the nation as a whole.
I do believe that the lab tests of vaccinated people’s blood serum shows strong neutralization of Delta. But it occurs to me that this is a respiratory disease that typically migrates from nasal passages, to the trachea and down into the lungs; and only later into the blood. PCR tests are taken from the nasal passages. How many antibodies are located there and how effective are they?
That bit about Iceland and other information says that labs are doing full genomic sequencing of the covid infections (thank you J. Craig Venter and shotgun sequencing) so that they can track which variants are migrating where and how. I think there are lots of things they know that they are not telling us.
I don’t think Delta is as dangerous as they are implying, on average. The latest push seems to be that children are much more at risk with Delta. At risk of infection. or risk being spreaders, or risk of getting really sick? Would you trust their answer if they gave one? Maybe, if it came from outside the U.S.
Do you trust the response of all of us if they gave us all the information? I’m not sure I do, though I’d like all the information please.
Funny looking back at March 2020. It will last about a month, I guessed. Ha!
I do think it is true that “flattening the curve” also prolongs the curve. While Sweden didn’t look so good for a while, I’ve read things look good there now. They have a bit higher than average elderly population. I read that the Swedish schools stayed open and kids that indicated a covid infection where sent home. Then they sterilized all the surfaces that that kid came in contact with.
If this is the article Bauxite is referencing
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/why_i_refuse_to_be_vaccinated.html
I could not more strongly disagree with Bauxite. The reasoning in this article is excellent and worthy of respect. As are the wishes of those of us who have determined we are not interested in participating in this vaccine experiment. Again, this is the kind of thinig I can relate to the Haffner book, Defying Hitler. Start by scapegoating those of us that choose to not receive these shots, threaten our livelihoods, and just go on from there.
Neo examines “liberty and risk” in these 2 posts. Lest anyone think I am over-reacting with regard to where the scapegoating will lead, I offer this little video. Despite the fact that the “Petitioner” uses the most onerous descriptions while encouraging the signers to join in, they are in fact all-in. Stunning.
https://youtu.be/TBRLUGMeBL4
Sharon W:
There is no question that the unvaccinated are being scapegoated and castigated. They are. It is pernicious. In addition, they are all being described as Trump supporters.
The left wastes no opportunity to make everything divisive and political. And the left would like to set up the conditions where ordinary people feel that others should be forced into being vaccinated.
In retrospect (that is, in hindsight) and if I’ve understood what’s happened correctly, then it seems that while protecting the weaker and more susceptible segments of the population the general populace should have been encouraged to contract the disease WHILE AT THE SAME TIME taking treatments to mitigate it (such as zinc + HCQ+ OR zinc + Quercetin OR Ivermectin OR other?; though I’m not certain if Ivermectin was actually mentioned as a possibility early on).
The rationale behind this is simply(!) that
1: Naturally acquired immunity is superior than any vaccine, and
2.Using the above treatments/or rather preventative treatments, the disease is not as fatal—i.e., it can be mitigated and overcome.
3. Therefore, natural immunity could have been achieved with far, far less pain—if the assumptions here are valid.
(This may be seen as closing the barn door after the horse has bolted—and yet, it’s not: because people are STiLL contracting the disease and variants of it.)
“Let them get sick” might seem like a cynical suggestion (IIRC it was actually made by a pundit, though possibly tongue in cheek); but the alternatives—getting sick without using those options AND, especially, the amount of power that the authorities have succeeded in amassing by REJECTING those treatment options—seem to be FAR, FAR WORSE.
To be more accurate, it’s actually “Let them get sick but in a controlled and supervised way”.
Note that this idea was prompted by the “Swedish” model; OTOH, I don’t recall Swedish virologist using (or recommending the use of) the treatment options above. One might wonder why this is so. Perhaps (or should that be, “NO DOUBT”?) the association of such alternative options to Trump, and the ridicule they therefore engendered, was too strong a hurdle to overcome.
Which means that scads of people suffered and died unnecessarily.
John Hayward aka Doc Zero –
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1420727736063168517.html
J.J. —
I have a good friend here in Seattle who has said — with an absolutely straight face — “dealing with the pandemic would have gone so much better if Trump hadn’t immediately politicized it.” I wonder what color the sky is on her version of Earth.
@ Bryan – to be fair, that’s what it looked like on her movie screen*.
The Democrat-Media-Propaganda Complex has a lot to answer for.
*For those not familiar with this idiom, it originated with Scott Adams of Dilbert fame.
Here is one of his posts on the subject.
https://www.scottadamssays.com/2017/03/13/two-more-movies-on-one-screen/
And the example continues.
The “recommendations” on the Adams post included this one.
Substitute “covid pandemic” for “climate change” and IMO it is one-hundred-percent applicable today. Excerpt is about midway in the post.
https://www.scottadamssays.com/2017/04/20/big-red-flag-for-cognitive-dissonance/
Another relevant post by Adams, only this time substitute “lab leak theory” for “climate change anecdote.”
https://www.scottadamssays.com/2017/09/11/when-to-trust-the-experts-climate-and-otherwise/
Final part of the Adams post on experts. Again, substitute the topic of your choice for climate change.
The Government answer to the resource question is always (1) tax the rich even more (which never delivers); and (2) print paper money (which delivers inflation).