Vaccine

....Brought to you by the people who penned such classics as "Serious questions about the way election votes have been counted" and "Serious questions about the way Holocaust victims have been counted".
....Brought to you by the people who penned such classics as "Serious questions about the way election votes have been counted" and "Serious questions about the way Holocaust victims have been counted".
You can find countless articles peppered through the NY Times, WAPO, NBC, dem politicians asking about vote counts etc. Refer back to 2016, 2018 and even leading up to 2020. So stop your foolishness.
 
A lot of the folks you talk to, whether online or in real life, have a superficial and uninformed opinion of the virus, what works, and what we ought to do.

To this day many if not most people still think the numbers go up and down according to people's behavior. When the numbers go up, that means people are misbehaving. When they go down, people must have started listening to public health officials again.

The fact that people in completely different states with completely different policies see their numbers go up and down at exactly the same time doesn't faze them at all, because they don't bother to inform themselves about what's actually happening.

As if this needed refuting for a thousandth time, I present to you the hospitalization graph for the southern states around the time of the recent spike:


View attachment 11698


Can you tell which of these states has had a mask mandate during this time?

Can you tell which one has the highest vaccination rate? The lowest?

Of course not: the trajectories and in large part the lines themselves are all the same.

You would think we would be having a discussion about why this should be. Why do these states look exactly the same despite their varying policies implemented at varying times?
Tom Woods
 
Between January 26, 2020–February 27, 2021, 545,600–660,200 more persons than expected died in the United States from all causes. Even more remarkable, about 50,000 fewer people died from influenza during that period for obvious reasons. How do you explain an extra 600-700k deaths that 13 month period? Let me guess. There is a conspiracy on top of a conspiracy....All the deaths listed as Covid-19 deaths were really gunshot wounds and such, except when you add up all the deaths and realize that makes no sense, in which case you claim no one died at all. Right?
I heard COVID cured cancer and heart disease. No wonder they employed draconian SIP's andNPI's.
 

Some other interesting charts:

Washington state, which has had all kinds of irrational restrictions but also heavy vaccination, has seen death numbers that look like the following, recently surpassing the height of their worst spike:
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Since it's fashionable to blame Florida governor Rob DeSantis for everything, Ian looks at this chart and jokes, "Why did Ron DeSantis not do more to promote vaccinations in Washington?"
 
Now let's check in on Maine:
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Miller writes:

"98% of everyone over 65 in Maine is at least partially vaccinated, 93% are fully vaccinated, yet hospitalizations are nearly as high as they were last winter. Let’s see, do we blame this on Ron DeSantis, Sturgis, or college football fans in the South? So many tempting choices!"
 
Between January 26, 2020–February 27, 2021, 545,600–660,200 more persons than expected died in the United States from all causes. Even more remarkable, about 50,000 fewer people died from influenza during that period for obvious reasons. How do you explain an extra 600-700k deaths that 13 month period? Let me guess. There is a conspiracy on top of a conspiracy....All the deaths listed as Covid-19 deaths were really gunshot wounds and such, except when you add up all the deaths and realize that makes no sense, in which case you claim no one died at all. Right?
Fair question, first of all its an estimate of expected deaths, not an increase in actual deaths from year to year. Furthermore the study specifically admits it doesn't differentiate from direct Covid deaths and indirect Covid deaths, which are due to a disruption of health care caused by fear, lockdown and restrictions as follows:

Finally, estimates of excess deaths not associated with COVID-19 might represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths or deaths indirectly associated with the pandemic (e.g., because of disruptions in health care access or utilization). For example, a previous report described declines in emergency department visits for heart attack, stroke, and hyperglycemic crisis in early 2020 (4). The excess death analyses presented here cannot distinguish between excess deaths that might have been misclassified COVID-19 deaths or those that might have been indirectly associated with the pandemic.

Zero deaths is your claim so you have something to argue against while drinking partisan kool-aid. I suspect deaths from Covid are in the 100,000's. Wouldn't be surprised if it were in the neighborhood of 300,000, but I'm very skeptical that its in the 600,000 range. Of course, we have overwhelming data on the groups that are susceptible to serious health impacts from Covid and its a very narrow and limited population.
 
A lot of the folks you talk to, whether online or in real life, have a superficial and uninformed opinion of the virus, what works, and what we ought to do.

To this day many if not most people still think the numbers go up and down according to people's behavior. When the numbers go up, that means people are misbehaving. When they go down, people must have started listening to public health officials again.

The fact that people in completely different states with completely different policies see their numbers go up and down at exactly the same time doesn't faze them at all, because they don't bother to inform themselves about what's actually happening.

As if this needed refuting for a thousandth time, I present to you the hospitalization graph for the southern states around the time of the recent spike:


View attachment 11698


Can you tell which of these states has had a mask mandate during this time?

Can you tell which one has the highest vaccination rate? The lowest?

Of course not: the trajectories and in large part the lines themselves are all the same.

You would think we would be having a discussion about why this should be. Why do these states look exactly the same despite their varying policies implemented at varying times?
That point seems to escape people all the time.

Despite mandates, distancing, etc. Around the world we see roughly the same graphs, outcomes. It is almost like the gov solutions really have little bearing on the actual outcome of what the virus does.
 
I bet some of you on this forum didn't know you were part of the "fun police".

MORE COVID-19 HYPOCRISY: San Francisco Mayor London Breed Partied Maskless at a Jazz Club.

The video makes it look like a really hopping time. But notice that there isn’t a mask in sight, even though Breed’s own COVID-19 orders require bar, restaurant, and club customers to wear masks when not actively eating or drinking. A local news channel asked Breed about this, and here’s what she said:
No, I’m not going to sip and put my mask on, sip and put my mask on, sip and put my mask on, eat and put my mask on. While I’m eating, and I’m drinking, I’m going to keep my mask off,” Breed said.
In response to getting up and dancing without the mask on while at the Black Cat, she said she was sitting at her table with her drink but got up to dance because she was “feeling the spirit” and she “wasn’t thinking about a mask, I was thinking about having a good time, and in the process, I was following the health order.”

Breed is right: It is ridiculous to require vaccinated people to mask up under such circumstances. But the obvious solution here would be to rescind the mandate. Breed shouldn’t have to follow it, because no one should have to follow it.
“Feeling the spirit” and “thinking about having a good time, and in the process, I was following the health order,” should be every vaccinated person’s cri de coeur when the mask nazis come in 2021.
 
… is from page 83 of George Will’s hot-off-the-press 2021 book, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 – a collection of many of his columns over these years; (the column from which the quotation below is drawn was originally published in the Washington Post on August 9th, 2019) (original emphasis):

Screen-Shot-2021-09-17-at-7.05.55-PM-300x166.png



What socialists are so fond of saying, national conservatives are now saying: This time will be different. It never is, because government’s economic planning always involves the fatal conceit that government can aggregate, and act on, information more intelligently and nimbly than markets can.
 
President Ronald Reagan noted, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. … It must be fought for, protected and handed on [to our children] to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like … where men were free”.

“Show me your papers” is only ever merely the beginning. Vaccine passports, the limiting of certain rights to only those who are vaccinated, the freedom of movement and the ability to travel unimpeded, the ability to remain gainfully employed and to provide for one’s family–by their very nature, the restrictive systems being adopted by the Australian government, our various states, and many of our country’s business leaders are inherently discriminatory, for they will, in no uncertain terms, serve to exclude members of our community from participating fully in our society.
 
Today the risk of death from COVID-19 for children and most vaccinated adults is no greater than other routine risks we accept in our daily lives without thought. Fewer than 500 American children under 17 have died from the disease since the start of the pandemic, while a few thousand die in car accidents each year. For children and vaccinated adults, the New York Times recently summarized the situation by writing, “For the vast majority of people, the virus resembled a typical flu, rarely causing serious illness.” However, the incentives of health bureaucrats will be to continue to propagandize us by inflating the risk in order to maintain their own authority, prestige, and budgets.

For example, the federal mask mandate on airplanes that was set to expire on Sept. 13 has been extended to Jan. 18, despite the low risk of severe cases for most Americans. Although the Delta variant undoubtedly played a role in that decision, we should be concerned that health bureaucrats will frighten Americans with new variants to get us to continue to accept their “inconveniences” based on false claims of the safety they provide — much as the TSA has done with terrorism over the last 20 years.--Ben Powell
 
Natural immunity to covid is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so. People making decisions about their health deserve honesty from their leaders.

So, the emerging science suggests that natural immunity is as good as or better than vaccine-induced immunity. That’s why it’s so frustrating that the Biden administration has repeatedly argued that immunity conferred by vaccines is preferable to immunity caused by natural infection, as NIH director Francis Collins told Fox News host told Bret Baier a few weeks ago. That rigid adherence to an outdated theory is also reflected in President Biden’s recent announcement that large companies must require their employees to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing, regardless of whether they previously had the virus.

Downplaying the power of natural immunity has had deadly consequences. In January, February and March, we wasted scarce vaccine doses on millions of people who previously had covid.
If we had asked Americans who were already protected by natural immunity to step aside in the vaccine line, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. This is not just in hindsight is 20/20; many of us were vehemently arguing and writing at the time for such a rationing strategy.
 
Dr. Gottlieb is much kinder to his friends and former colleagues at the FDA. My view is that the FDA shares in the failure. The FDA does not have authority over laboratory-developed tests, so in ordinary times a lab can develop a test without seeking FDA approval. But the FDA, using the Covid-19 emergency as a pretext, asserted that any SARS-CoV-2 test needed its approval before it could be deployed. Thus the logic of emergency was inverted. Instead of lifting regulations and giving priority to speed, the FDA increased regulation and slowed test deployment.

‘Uncontrolled Spread’ Review: Tested and Found Wanting

One general lesson that I draw from facts such as this one is about the unfortunate but largely unalterable reality of government. Government has a nature no less than does any virus. It’s therefore not only pointless, but dangerous because distracting, to make declarations about what interventions government ‘should’ have pursued, and should pursue in the future, to better protect us from contagious pathogens as if government’s nature is amenable to good intentions expressed by persons adequately informed about science. Much of the disagreement among people about Covid policy springs from the different assessments different people make about the amount of knowledge to which government can reasonably be supposed to have access and the ability to process, and about the likelihood that government officials will act in the public interest when acting in this manner runs against these officials’ own interests. If our earthly affairs were governed by a supernatural power akin in both knowledge and motivation to the Christian God, then even I would trust this power with the authority to lock humanity down if and whenever this power deemed such a move to be the best. But of course the state is a power categorically and dramatically inferior on all dimensions to any such supernatural power. While no one directly and expressly denies the truth of the previous sentence, a shockingly large number of people endorse government policies as if the previous sentence were untrue. Among the many surprises of the past 18 months has been the number of people who, pre-Covid, understood that the state is not a godlike institution, but who, once Covid appeared, joined ranks with those who believe that the state is both capable of being, and eager to be, godlike.)
 
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