Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
New CDC guidelines on masks. We’re told it’s necessary because we must follow the SCIENCE. Let’s review how we got here:
In March of 2020, when the Covid panic really took hold, there weren’t enough test kits specific for Covid. States were told to count all deaths from respiratory illness (pneumonia, influenza, emphysema) as Covid deaths even without a test. And Congress passed the CARES act, which gave hospital administrators a financial incentive to over-count Covid cases to receive the 20% higher reimbursement rate. The number of deaths attributed to Covid shot up, giving rise to fears of a Surge which would overwhelm hospitals and morgues. It never arrived. The refrigerated warehouse sits empty.
House arrest, mask mandate and social distancing were imposed by Governor Walz with vague references to “science” but no scientific studies were cited to support the measures. The Peacetime Emergency remains in effect. Governor Walz retains the authority to ‘adjust the dials’ governing every aspect of life, at whim.
In July, the FTC approved RT-PCR test kits. Reported case numbers skyrocketed as more people tested positive but hospital admissions for confirmed cases of Covid did not. Instead, the graph of Covid resembled the graph of seasonal influenza – peaks in winter, gone in summer. The national charts of Covid cases versus mask mandates show mask mandates made no difference to Covid cases.
By the election, President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed had delivered results but mask mandates, social distancing and lock-downs remained in place as case numbers rose (following the same graph as seasonal influenza). Thanksgiving was cancelled. Christmas was moved outdoors. No studies were provided to support the orders. In December, the FDA issued emergency approval of Covid vaccines. It also withdrew its request for emergency approval of the RT-PCR test which some critics had said resulted inover-counting of cases to artificially inflate the numbers to justify extreme measures.
On April 14, 2021, Governor Walz extended his restrictions again but on April 29 he ended many of them. No new scientific studies were cited to support the change. Covid case numbers continued to fall, following the pattern of seasonal influenza.
On May 1, 2021, the CDC stopped counting ‘breakthrough’ cases of Covid among vaccinated persons The obvious result is Covid cases are only counted among un-vaccinated persons, which gives rise to claims that the vaccine is working when the truth is we have no numbers to support that claim because we stopped collecting those numbers.
The change is significant because it makes a year-to-year comparison impossible. In 2020, millions of Covid cases were reported but was that because there were millions of infected persons or millions of false positives? In 2021, far fewer Covid cases will be reported but is that because the vaccine works or because we no longer count Covid cases in vaccinated persons, making them the statistical equivalent of false negatives? And where are the scientific studies which justify mask mandates, social distancing and distance learning? Where is the SCIENCE?
It’s difficult to make public policy recommendations when the severity of the threat is unknown because the numbers are unreliable but as far as I can tell, the new CDC mask mandates make no sense and are not supported by any scientific justification. The verifiable evidence supports the conclusion that Covid is a bad flu and should be treated like one – quarantine the sick, liberate the healthy. The best Covid site on the web is Healthy Skeptic. This post from last April is a good summary.
Joe Doakes
If only there were a group – in or out of government – devoted to providing Americans (and their policymakers) reliable, unvarnished, unpoliticized information.
But I dream.
The Kung flu from an evolutionary perspective.
The inevitable future of COVID evolution favors strains that are more contagious but far less deadly, since killing your host is a losing strategy. Like the flu, this isn’t the end of the world. Despite the fear mongering this administration preaches.
It’s not a coincidence that hundreds of viruses have evolved to give us the exact same set of symptoms: those of the common cold. This is the optimal configuration for any virus: it makes us sick enough to shed virus but not sick enough that we isolate ourselves from others.
Covid will sooner or later end up as just another common cold. Probably a lot of common colds began as much more serious illnesses.
I would correct Joe Doakes on this point:
House arrest, mask mandate and social distancing were imposed by Governor Walz with vague references to “science” but no scientific studies were cited to support the measures.
I believe the CDC did cite some research in support of its recommendations (turned into mandates by power-mad governors), but the quality of the research was poor. It was based on models that were highly conjectoral, and lab tests on the effectiveness of masks that were based on ignorance of how the disease actually spread (remember the obsession with disinfecting surfaces?).
But we very soon began to get empirical data on the accuracy of the models and the effectiveness of social distancing mandates.
And that data was ignored.
We long ago reached the point where every word that Fauci and state health directors say is political, meaning it is not intended to convey factual information, it is intended to shape public policy.
I found this: the number of cases in the vaccinated– the boogeyman the media is trumpeting– is essentially nil. Something like 0.0004% hospitalized. Maybe the reason they are not reporting it is because it is insignificant.
Regarding all this, I’m still waiting for the NIH and CDC to read the riot act to the guys who sent COVID patients into nursing homes, and who are sending COVID-positive illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States. I’m thinking this is a far bigger deal in terms of disease spread and lethality than whether vaccinated people wear face masks or not.
In the meantime, FDA will be rushing through to officially approve vaccines. FUCK FDA. They are bought for. WE HAVE NO FUCKING GOVERNMENT WHO CARES ABOUT PEOPLE. KILL THEM ALL is their new motto. Science? What fucking science? It is just another word devoid of any meaning, another word for which definition had been rewritten to fit the narrative.
The hits just keep on coming. Even the Left is starting to notice.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-30/cdc-scaled-back-hunt-for-breakthrough-cases-just-as-the-delta-variant-grew
I’m still waiting for the NIH and CDC to read the riot act to the guys who sent COVID patients into nursing homes…
I don’t this project is worth your time. It’s never going to happen.
In related news over the weekend, DC Mayor violated her own indoor mask mandate (announced Thursday and went into effect Saturday, right after her big birthday bash Friday night), Mayor of Chicago holds and attends music festival in the midst of reinstating restrictions, and Obama expecting 700 to attend his 60th birthday party.
Man, it sure is easy to think that none of people who lecture you about masks and “we’re all in this together” and lockdowns have had to make a single adjustment to their lives. None of them.
The pandemic of the haves and have nots.
Those last two paragraphs are from Jesse Kelly.
JoeAnon said that Covid wasn’t a big deal. He told people not to mask up. He advised people not to get vaccinated.
Do you think he was right about these things?
JoeAnon thinks he was absolutely right. Otherwise he wouldn’t be amplifying and praising himself. It wasn’t that long ago when JoeAnon compared vaccination to the Holocaust.
Who is JoeAnon and why would I care what he said?
jdm; agreed, and I’m definitely not holding my breath. That said, admitting some pretty massive failures along these lines is the only way that the CDC gets credibility back. There is no other way to convince those who object to vaccines to consider it than to admit their mistakes.
jdm; agreed, and I’m definitely not holding my breath. That said, admitting some pretty massive failures along these lines is the only way that the CDC gets credibility back. There is no other way to convince those who object to vaccines to consider it than to admit their mistakes.
So, I’m not a doctor but it appears to me that the so called Covid vaccinations are really just a long term treatment plan. It’s not immunity like from actually having had Covid and recovering. It just provides some protection like any other drug used to treat symptoms. Why else do we now need to get booster shots? Why are the breakthrough cases so great in the ‘vaccinated’? Reuters has reported that 75% of new Covid cases in Singapore (where they track things) are breakthrough cases of ‘vaccinated’ people.
I agree with you, bike; both your original point and the latter one. I just don’t think our elites (aka the System or the Swamp) think that the CDC lacks credibility. Or maybe a better way to put it is that I don’t think our elites have used up all of credibility that the CDC ever had.
And then we’re at stage 4 of iowahawk’s leftist institutional takeover, to whit,
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
I liken Fauci to Thedoric of York….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
jdm, add FDA to that list.
bug, not a long term, – short term.
When it comes to credibility it is worth remembering that the CDC is part of the USPHS and while they didn’t initiate it they did eventually participated in the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study started by the USPHS in 1932. The study established an ethical baseline for the USPHS and subsequently the CDC that they make a show periodically of rising above but more often than not they they adhere pretty close to their ethical roots. The Syphilis Study is brutal evidence that the most frightening thing a citizen can hear from the US government is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”
You know, JPA’s comment about the FDA being implicated–and I’d the NIH and state health agencies–and the question arises “where the H*** were all the public health experts at Mayo, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland, Stanford, and the like in all this?” Why didn’t they raise H*** about all this? Are they so silenced by government money that they cannot speak truth to power anymore?
If you’ve had covid and recovered from it, why should you get the vaccine?
Here is what the CDC says:
Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19. That’s because experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19. Even if you have already recovered from COVID-19, it is possible—although rare—that you could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 again. Studies have shown that vaccination provides a strong boost in protection in people who have recovered from COVID-19.
This is kind of funny since the CDC is now saying that even if you are double jabbed, you can still contract and spread covid to others.
The last sentence — “Studies have shown that vaccination provides a strong boost in protection in people who have recovered from COVID-19.” is not given a cite so it should be ignored.
jdm wrote: /“Covid will sooner or later end up as just another common cold. Probably a lot of common colds began as much more serious illnesses.”/
Is anyone else getting their medical advice from Dr Twitter, Dr Google, Dr Facebook or Alex Berenson like jdm does?
MO, I was in the category of previously infected and then jabbed, and the logic I use is that if the FDA isn’t totally bull****ing us (up for debate), then the jab after the ‘rona further reduced my susceptibility, but did not eliminate it. The question that I cannot answer is whether what I did in getting the J&J did that much good for me and/or those around me. Until a few weeks ago, I was calculating that my mean contacts to infection was around 20,000 people–divide that by ten now–and of course that assumes the Janssen vaccine is effective against Delta.
Given the data on the vaccines, not getting vaccinated is not only harmful to all of us, it’s self-destructive. What do we do with self-destructive behavior? We stop it so people don’t harm themselves. It’s time to mandate vaccines for anyone to take public transportation, shop in stores, eat in restaurants, teach in schools, visit doctor offices, or work indoors.
Forget selfishness, since that argument isn’t effective. Mandating vaccination is saving the vax-resistant from themselves.
So Emery, you’re saying that I need to be vaccinated in order to protect fully vaccinated people from acquiring the very thing that they were fully vaccinated for?
Got it….
No, I’m saying more carrot and less stick.
Coronavirus infections are dropping where people are vaccinated and rising where they are not.
Virtually all hospitalized Covid-19 patients have one thing in common: They’re unvaccinated.
Government has the power to prevent individuals from engaging in self-destructive behavior under Article – which one is it, E? I can’t seem to put my finger on it.
But assuming you are correct, then we should expect government to target self-destructive behaviors which exacerbate the chances of dying from The Deadliest Virus Ever Known ™. Aggravating conditions include obesity from eating too much, which can easily be regulated at the supermarket checkout lane (“I’m sorry, sir, these items are not approved for your diet. You’ll have to put them back”) and at the hostess stand in the restaurant (“Table for Two? Certainly, ma’am, I just need to see your ID so I can show you an approved menu based on your BMI”). These simple, common-sense restrictions on fundamental liberties will certainly be welcomed by every sensible person.
Now, let’s talk about abortion.
It’s a personal decision like drunk driving is a personal decision.