With Omicron now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant in the United States, the time has come to accept defeat in the country’s medical Vietnam.
We were never going to win this thing no matter how much Anthony Fauci insisted that vaccines would vanquish the pathogen that causes the disease known as Covid-19.
“Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated,” he declared in December 2020. “If we do that, if we do it efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that as we get to the end of 2021, we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.”
At least 75 percent of the country has now had at least one shot and infections are at record levels. Vermont, which never saw more than 180 cases per day (peak weekly average) during the first two years of the pandemic, according to the Worldometer tracker, had 79.4 percent of its population vaxxed by the end of the year, according to the Mayo Clinic vaccine tracker.
The result?
Vermont cases peaked at 1,800 per day (weekly average) in the middle of January. That’s more than 10 times higher than the peak number of cases at any time in the previous 30 months
Sadly, even though the Omicron variant is not as deadly as the Delta or Alpha variants before it, the huge number of cases led to a peak death rate, too. It hit four per day (weekly average) on Jan. 24. This was a 33 percent increase over the previous peak in December 2020 despite the strong evidence that vaccines help hold down serious cases of Covid-19 and deaths from the disease.
Mutating mutants
That SARS-CoV-2 outmaneuvered vaccines came as no surprise to anyone who had followed the development of the pathogen from the beginning. It was always a rapidly evolving virus.
There was no reason – no reason whatsoever – to believe it would prove any less capable of vaccine avoidance than the influenza virus, which has proven pretty good at vaccine avoidance, and plenty of reasons to believe that SARS-CoV-2 would be even better at vaccine avoidance.
The vaccines did cut down on deaths. But we only won a battle on our way to losing a war that nature won.
Thankfully, this isn’t an inherently bad thing because in the process nature changed the dynamics of the disease and put everyone in position to kill the horrible and corruptive, sociopolitical divisiveness spawned by SARS-CoV-2.
If they want.
Because it’s clear with Omicron that masks and vaccines aren’t doing much to protect anybody from infection anymore. The variant is making its way through both barriers. The idea that people should wear masks and get vaxxed to protect their neighbors is dead.
It is clear now the pandemic is an individual issue, not a group issue.
If you are old – or over 40, overweight and out-of-shape – you’re going to want to get vaxxed and later boosted because the evidence is good that doing so protects you from serious disease.
But if you want to take your risks with Covid-19, it’s your life. You’re not going to be killing your neighbors by going unvaxxed.
Same with masking. An N-95 worn and handled correctly (this being as important as wearing it) appears to offer some self-protection, but the idea of some sort of community protection powered by maks has been shown wrong by the Omicron data.
The new normal
Some countries have already recognized and accepted the shift. England this week revoked the requirement National Health Service employees get vaxxed.
“Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said, ‘We continue to strongly encourage all our members to take up the offer of Covid-19 and flu vaccinations as the benefits to both them and their patients are clear, but we also believe it is important that this remains a free choice.'”
The Danes made a broader decision.
This is the acceptance that SARS-CoV-2 is a new pathogen the human race is going to have to live with as it has learned to live with so many other pathogens. And there are a lot of them out there.
A team of scientists who used computers to comb through 5.7 billion old genetic samples reported on Wednesday that they had managed to identify more than 130,000 previously unknown viruses. Nine new coronaviruses were among them.
Nature is always trying to find new ways to kill us because nature is driven by life and by death. The Danes seem to have accepted this.
AFP reported restrictions are being lifted in Denmark even as it registers around 40,000 to 50,000 new Covid-19 cases per day, a number equal to almost 1 percent of the country’s 5.8 million inhabitants.
The Danes are counting on vaccinations and natural immunity to limit the severity of the disease despite the high number of infections. More than 60 percents of Danes are now fully vaxed and given the people with immunity from having been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, Danish authorities are of the belief that 80 percent of the population is protected from serious Covid.
Natural selection
Omicron’s less deadly nature – in the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated – appears the result of natural selection, the process that determines whether evolution’s mutants survive or fade away.
Natural selection tends to moderate the deadliest mutants nature produces. This is especially true of respiratory pathogens. They are unlikely to flourish if they kill quickly because that makes it very difficult to move from host to host.
The most successful viruses in the world are arguably those involved with the “common cold” which is always infecting someone but kills at a very low rate. Several of these viruses are coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2.
Some evolutionary biologists believe that over the course of human history they might have gone through the same process of rapid mutation and natural selection that is now underway with the new coronavirus.
“However, we should remember that the annual mortality burden of influenza, in non-pandemic years, is estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths, with up to 650,000 all-cause deaths globally, comprising around 2 percent of all annual respiratory deaths (two thirds among people who are 65 years and older). This is an extremely important health burden and equates to a relatively ‘optimistic’ view of the future of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Health burdens are an interesting topic.
That is a total of nearly $157 billion in 2008 dollars, which a national inflation calculator puts at $203 billion in 2008 dollars, and that’s without calculating the obesity-related costs of the pandemic.
The National Institutes of Health in March reported “that nearly two-thirds of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. could be attributed to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure.” And a huge number of studies have tied obesity to higher rates of diabetes, hypertension and heart failure.
Though these sorts of healthcare costs have long been accepted, some now appear to want to blame the unvaccinated for pushing up Covid-19 costs.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health lobby, in December, calculated that costs of treating the unvaccinated during the June to November 202`1 surge of the Delta variant was $13.8 billion.
Be that as it may, given that the obese are now the country’s largest minority and might soon constitute a majority, nobody is going to be taxing the fat folk or, it seems, putting much effort into turning the tide on obesity in this country.
Fitness is far less an American priority than vaccination, though even in the midst of the pandemic more deaths are linked to the lack of fitness than to the lack of vaccination. and that reality will only, once again, become more so as the pandemic fades as pandemics always do.
The Bubonic Plague or “Black Death” raged for more than five years in Europe in the 1300s and left half the people on the continent dead, but it eventually faded, though the World Health Organization (WHO) reports the bacteria that sparks the disease still causes about 500 cases per year. It is now easily treatable with anti-biotics as SARS-CoV-2 might one day be easily treatable with anti-virals
Omicron has made it clear vaccinations are not going to eliminate the virus though they could significantly lower the number of deaths among the old and medically compromised.
Still, SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay.
It is too adaptable to kill. It has jumped to mink and white-tailed deer and hamsters in Hong Kong where officials just executed 2,200 of the animals and banned the import of anymore after tracing a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak to a worker in a shop where 11 hamsters tested positive, according to a Reuters report.
White-tail deer to human infections have yet to be identified, but the Danes in 2020 found a mink variant spreading in that country and ordered the deaths of 17 million mink.
The kill did not eliminate the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Denmark, though the country did an excellent job of controlling its spread from the February 2020 arrival of the disease there until November of last year.
As the infection rate started up, masks were required. Danes were encouraged to work from home. Primary schools were shut down and children educated virtually. Nightclubs were closed. People were required to show Covid vax passes to get into bars, restaurants and other businesses.
None of those things made a difference. The infection rate continued skyrocketing.
The Worldometer tracker put the infection rate at 7,583 cases (weekly moving average) on that date. It had more than doubled by the end of the month and nearly tripled by Jan. 16 and was still rising.
But the Danes said to hell with it anyway and went back to living their lives.
England is about to do the same though an even more infectious variant of Omicron – BA.2 – has appeared on the scene. There appears a consensus that it is even more infectious than the original BA.1, but the jury is still out on whether it is less serious; it does not, however, appear more serious.
Categories: Commentary
It is kind of like this: Does anybody actual think this Obama liar actually “mispoke”? And we are told to believe these MISINFORMATION fools?
https://www.foxnews.com/media/d-ezekiel-emanuel-apology-false-covid-claim-msnbc-interview-misspoke
“Accept thy neighbor”
Most important headline of this era .
Make Chest Colds Great Again…
Well said.
How many people own a TV? seems like the dumbest place in the world to get sound scientific information. Just saying. To be honest since I don’t watch tv maybe am missing something and there is now a channel called
“peer review what is it good for?” but am guessing no by the fact that folks suggest I am getting my news from cna. certified nurse assistant? met a few, but not my first choice for peer review science news. Like I said Trump and Biden and ever president before them has been a racist. Read the constitution much? oy vey
Science!!! https://twitter.com/i/status/1487302991174672385
I guess this is satire. Yes they are liars…. https://twitter.com/i/status/1488233832214114310
“Be that as it may, given that the obese are now the country’s largest minority.”
…Really!!!
Too many in our society seem to believe that “Better Living Through Chemistry” is easier and better that going to all the effort and calorie intake discipling required to stay in shape.
Why go to all that work and deny oneself life’s delights when one believes that doctors will come up with a pill or procedure to solve any medical problem that has its origins in sloth.
The extremes on both sides of the covid issue need to come to the realization that their absolutism does not help anyone, it certainly doesn’t help themselves in any way. Vaccines work, they aren’t a cure all that will even keep you from catching covid. Vaccines work by prepping your immune system which helps prevent serious illness and death, much like the influenza vaccine they aren’t perfect. Masks, actual masks, like the N-95 work to protect the person wearing it when worn properly and as designed hence the term Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Cloth masks never helped protect your neighbor, never.
Our elected officials and their appointed bureaucrats lie to us, they’ve always done so and always will, this is nothing new. Take what they say with a grain of sand or with a whole bag of sand, think for yourself and don’t automatically believe someone who you know lies to you.
Steve o , keep on lying 🤥. These are not vaccines in the traditional sense . They are gene manipulation doses. They are not working. They encourage the spread of disease. You and your balony gets people killed. Incorrect usage of a tool is dangerous. These shots have major adverse effects and should have been used on a limited doctor prescribed basis. Refer to what Mr Medred suggests who should get them . Masks ! You are still beating that debunked drum ? Not wise steve . N-95 masks are not made to control respiratory virus. Period. Stop promoting failed methods that got huge numbers of people killed. You are free to use whatever mask or gene shot you choose but your promotion of failed policy is just dishonest disgraceful and dangerous. Stop using the the wrong tools and methods to control a hazardous virus.
Fitness has fewer adverse effects, higher chances of success and all kinds of health related benefits. ( steve o says some people cant get fit – i says thats a pitiful excuse for pushing gene shots. Gene shots should have been doctor prescribed while under supervision.. highly vaxxed Israelis ( quadruple shot) keep on dying of covid. The shots are prooven not to work and correlate with higher rates of disease within countries. Fitness doesn’t have that correlation. You said Omicron wasn’t a hazard to Israelis and hadn’t killed any ? You were wrong steve o . Its now killed thousands and counting. Your failed suggestions puts peoples lives at risk.
DPR,
The problem you have is that the data does not support your opinion. There are somewhere around 25 approved vaccines worldwide, and they are in fact and by definition (pre or post covid) vaccines. We’ve been over the Israeli information, simply put you are ignoring the data to push your narrative, the unvaccinated in Israel (and elsewhere worldwide) make up a disproportionate number of the sick and dead. Why are you fixated on Israel anyways, why not use America or Alaska? Israel isn’t one of the most highly vaccinated countries, as you’ve previously claimed, in fact it is somewhere around 65th worldwide with about 65% of the population vaccinated. For reference the US has about 63% of the population vaccinated and Alaska has about 60%. Why do you think it is that you are fixated on Israel?
You are antivaccine, I get it, just get some real data to support your view. Don’t completely disregard data that goes against your view. Find actual information to form your opinions, do not rely upon the opinion of others to form your opinions, use information and data to guide your opinions.
Steve o , the whole article discussed how vaccines failed and it barely touches the iceberg. The problem you have is the data doesn’t fit your narrative nor your opinion so you just keep lying over and over . Fitness works, you know it . Isralis are dying despite the vaccines, you know it , the pandemic rages despite the vaccines, the vaccines failed- you know it but refuse to recognize it . If they had been used appropriately on a limited basis they would have been effective for some people. Your claim im an anti vaxxer is just lies . I love vaccines. Carefully tested vaccines used appropriately for the right people. These are not traditional vaccines and haven’t been fully tested and lack transparency. Keep lying steve o it suits you well. What a joke you are. You claim the data doesn’t back the fact exercise has fewer adverse effects and all kind of benefits. Your relationship with the truth is hilarious steve o . Or did i get your name wrong- its actually steve zero 😉. Steve zero you are now complicit with a failed pandemic response. You and Fauci . Birds of a feather. ( im never wrong i just change my position and move on ) what and embarrassing joke you two are
DPR,
How very sad for you that all you have is name calling, sad. Try to bring information and data to support your opinions, if you are incapable of doing so please stop calling me names and please stop replying to my comments.
Good day to you.
Steve o , you cant refute the fact you are lying habitually so you fixate on complaining about being called out for lying and having zero facts that correlate with truth to back your narrative. Nearly everything you says gets disprooven over time . Mr no deaths in Israel from omicron. I will give you a break from my replies as you Wish if you stop promoting a failed pandemic response and twisting what i say into something its entirely not. I called you out for lying about my statements and the facts surrounding covid procedures. I didn’t simply call you names. I hope you can understand that . Shall we bury the hatchet and work together in a more positive fashion? That means you cant unjustly attack others either . That means you would have to avoid unjustly twisting other people’s words as best you can and respecting their opinion within reason. ( you used to have a tendency to follow certain commentators around the Internet like steve stine ect ect while twisting their words. If you can refrain from such activity I would be pleased to work with you in a more positive fashion. Truce and constructive dialogue.
DPR,
Since you are obviously opposed to information and data, here’s some that illustrates the fact that the vaccines are working.
According to AK DHSS, in Alaska from July through December there were 1,670 covid related hospitalizations, 340 (20%) of those were in vaccinated people thus 1,330 (80%) were in unvaccinated people, during that same timeframe somewhere between 50-57% of eligible Alaskans were vaccinated. If you break it down by age group those between 5-49 the vaccinated made up 7.4% of hospitalizations while 92.6% of the same age group were unvaccinated, 50-64 made up 15.1% of hospitalizations while 84.9% of the same age group were unvaccinated, in those 65+ the vaccinated made up 32.2% of hospitalizations while 67.8% of the same age group were unvaccinated…these are disproportionately large numbers that illustrate the point that the vaccines work at keeping people from being hospitalized. While the vaccinated are still getting covid, they are also less likely than the unvaccinated to do so, in December the unvaccinated case count was 13.8 times that of the vaccinated this is a disproportionately large number that illustrate the point that the vaccines work at keeping people from getting covid.
https://dhss.alaska.gov/dph/Epi/id/siteassets/pages/HumanCoV/COVID_monthly_update.pdf
DPR,
You do you, name calling and ignoring information and data. I will do me and continue to provide information and data without the name calling. If you are incapable of doing so, which you’ve proven time and again to be, then please stop responding to my posts.
I am all for constructive posts, I hope you can start adding some.
steve o , i will fix your statement for you . You do you which is twisting peoples words and lying. You cant get through a first paragraph without lying and twisting. Peoples words and the data surrounding a conversation. When confronted with the truth you get all defensive.. first paragraph you had to open with “since you are obviously opposed to information and data” wow . Lying about my stance before you present any information. What you don’t get is every one thinks the vaccines work in a limited fashion. You are tilting at windmills arguing with yourself when we have all mooved on . I do think the gene shots correlated with infection rates which caused massive spikes in deaths and were a failure as were not used in the appropriate cases . The vaccinated either spread the disease killing thousands or maybe less likely the vacine places accidentally spread the disease because healthy and sick mingled during vacination in some form. You should take the evening and consider what I said regarding how you twist peoples words and related data to create a lie and support your narrative. Im offering you an olive branch thats a great opportunity for you. I love data and would embrace your data if took the next step and searched for the truth not just search for a way to proove you look right in your own eyes. “ proove pigs can fly” so what say you ? Interested in more functional dialogue? Its win win . Think about it.
DPR,
I’m hopeful that you are finally interested in functional and constructive dialog, please join me in the conversation. Just to be sure, your last few posts are not examples of functional or constructive dialog, they are an attempt to change the subject at hand.
There is a mountain of evidence that these vaccines protect people from getting covid, from hospitalization, and from death. To claim otherwise is willful ignorance.
DPR,
Oh about that gene manipulation devil voodoo,5g implant, bill gateschinese/fauci inside my head stuff…
https://www.axios.com/car-t-immunotherapy-cancer-leukemia-cure-8938ecf2-9540-48e2-84b7-7c8c80149b47.html.
This (gene therapy)has been going on for some time,and has always(in modern times) been the holy grail. What you fail to consider with regards to the. Rona,is we(they big Pharma) were tasked with coming up with a solution in less than a yrs time.Over 8billion doses delivered to date, and a few 100k with serious side effects.Of course if your one those few 100k you life may suck.In a statistically cold world, the risk is very minimal.
You and Craig both want a one and done sip of elixir,where all the coodies are gone, and one side of the leger says 0.A nice black and white outcome, good luck with that….
Steve o , you don’t seem genuine in your serch for the truth. You focused on pushing your narrative only . I would have worked with you but you persist in your gas lighting. .when you speak more genuinely and honestly we can talk again. You missed a chance.
Dave mc , you misunderstand my opinion.
DPR,
No worries friend, I get it. You don’t like to be challenged, you’d rather I simply accept what you are saying as truth…the problem is what you are saying is demonstrably not true. You can’t work with someone who dares challenge your narrative and you’d prefer to change the subject or call names, you do you. I welcome you to join in a functional and constructive dialog, you will always be welcome to do so and I hope at some point you start to contribute in a meaningful manner. Try bringing something, anything, that resembles a cognitive argument to support your beliefs. Bring information to support your opinion, bring data to support your opinion, bring something other than name calling and trying to change the subject by attacking me. The reason I repeatedly point out how you use these crutches is because you repeatedly use these crutches, stop using them and I won’t have a reason to point it out…it’s entirely up to you. If you want to continue to use these crutches, please stop replying to my comments.
While you continue to try and change the subject, the fact remains that these vaccines protect people from getting covid, from hospitalization, and from death.
DPR,
No actually I dont misunderstand almost any of your opinions.You prefer to live in a world of mirrors.At any time you could draw a certain facet to project a narrative.And when convenient, drop that facet.
Much like Bryan and a few others.Your spoonfed your narrative,which is the nature of propaganda.And to be fair, that happens on both sides.But whats happening on the right is happening on a meteoric speed.The right is literally reshaping itself in less than a generation,maybe even a decade.Jay Hammond and Ronald Reagan would look like leftist in this decade.
Does that sound like a party of solidarity and pillar?And if the Right represents on a national grid less than 51% of the popular vote, what does that smell like??
It was the Right that sold away the middle class wages to overseas manufacturing,(yes signed off by B Clinton).It was the Right that turned America into crack heads,heroin addicts, lack of decent jobs all for sake of my various IRA accounts….
Dave mc, when you have carefully studied the word understand I would be interested to discuss some of these thoughts with you . Currently its clear you only understand your world view. Your projection. When you turned it into a right versus left instead of comprehension of ideas you made it clear you don’t understand my opinions. Study carefully the word understand and all its synonyms . Then we might make an understanding.
Steve o, when you stop lying, gaslighting, windmill tilting and uncomprehending narrative pushing and righteous mindset we might make headway towards the truth and have a pleasant enlightened conversation. Anyone can look up data but are you wise enough to use it with accurate perspective?
So many dimensions to the recent idiocracy – No one gets all the blame, but the stupidity & greed seems rather well dispersed. Eisenhower navigated the 1957 pandemic completely differently with vastly better results. But Ike didn’t have transactional corporate “science” and a grossly uneducated public to deal with. Ike didn’t serve National Corporate Socialism. In broad terms a choice was made – either amplify fear of a natural process and profit from that fear, or accept our individual and collective fates with dignity, strength, and rational decision making. As a group our culture accepted the impoverishment of many for the benefit of a few. Any results achieved are almost certainly hidden in the noise of a sparse data. Long story short – individual fears of illness and death have been weaponized against us, we fell for it and they’ll do it again.
True
Bryan,
We are all liars. That said as a scientist by trade I have published data and interpretations, and later after producing more data, revised my interpretations-and published those. That in itself does not make me a liar.
Craig-Very good piece. However, always an however, there is a societal cost to be over 50 and unvaxed, as there is for smoking, or choosing to be obese (there are rare exceptions). Hence, it is not every person for themselves. Flooding our hospitals because of a philosophy it is your choice to get sick or not is pretty irresponsible. It is why the air is poisonous in meth-la-ham-I mean North Pole-the every person for themselves is fine unless you want live with and benefit from the infrastructure of society.
Jeff, when you create and pay for Corona in collaboration with the Chinese and then lie about it, that makes one a LIAR…
you may be correct or you may not be:the evidence of origin supports both a “natural” lab and both a “natural” bat source. But if the facts support a bat “natural” source that does not make you in itself a liar. Though of course we all are. If you want to make the case that the US government-including Trump and Biden are purposely deceiving the US public you need an actual evidence based examples-which none of your’s mentioned so far are. Trump used tax payer $ to fund the moderna vaccine-fact with no rights to profit or formula. Trump is a rich old white racist creep-fact. Biden is a rich old white racist creep-fact. Senile? likely. None of that proves they are deceitful-though am sure you can come up with examples where every president has been. we can do better-even in internet discourse-in our line of logic and reasoning.
Jeff, you obviously missed all Fauci’s emails and Gain of Function reasearch? COVID-19 was 100% lab made with very pointed objectives. The only bats were in soup. Wet market was all a lie as well.
Of course our government is lying. If they weren’t lining their pockets with so much Big Pharma and Chinese money they’d be forced to go to war with China because of what they did. We can’t rock that boat now can we? I mean even our Mott’s Apple Juice comes from China. Not to mention our PPE, Covid Test Kits, etc.. Total disgrace. You’re a smart man, everything you quoted came from CNN. We both know what garbage CNN is.
Bryan you really need to read higher level material. There is strong evidence covid-19 originated from the “wild” and there is strong evidence covid-19 originated from a lab. Since you have demonstrated an inability to use the scientific method and accept the strength of evidence from both sides: we are done here. Enjoy the show.
Jeff, and you voted for Biden/Harris? Speaks volumes about one’s intellect and insight. The Democrat Party of slavery, Jim Crow Laws, lynchings, segregation, anti-Civil Rights, anti-women/black voting, slavery through entitlents, AND Trumps a “racist”? That’s a good one.
At least one paper in Oz last week blamed COVID on the US rather than the CCP. Rationale was Fauci’s funding of gain of function research at Wuhan. Interesting reframing, that. Cheers –
Jeff your sense of moral equivalence is misleading and misinformation. . If you are a scientist as you say then use a bit more discernment when isolating the differentials.
Out today 2/1/2022:
“A Johns Hopkins University literature review and meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns on mortality stemming from the Chinese coronavirus found that “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,” and have “imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.”
“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the authors of the Johns Hopkins University review wrote.
“In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument,” they added.”
Fauci – ” the vaccines have a 95% efficacy of STOPPING and PREVENTING the virus spread”
Rachael MadCow – “once vaccinated the virus STOPS with you”
Joseph “The Big Guy” Biden: “The vaccines prevent you from getting the virus and spreading it”.
In other words utter liars.