So, compared to a lot of other countries, Australia has done a pretty good job on Covid.
But they just had a Covid breakout in two major cities: Sydney and Melbourne. Those breakouts required them to then go back to shutdowns: closing and restricting businesses and movement.
Both outbreaks come from failures in the quarantine system: from hotel quarantine not working because hotels are not set up properly for quarantine due to not separately ventilating.
On July 7th I wrote that quarantine should be mandatory, with criminal penalties for violation, and…
We also do quarantine badly. Hotel quarantine is ridiculous in most hotels, because Covid is airborne and most hotels spread air between rooms.
This isn’t a difficult problem, however. Build a bunch of small huts in a field (you can even stack them), each with its own ventilation, and put people in there.
How has this been proved across the board in Australia?
The Morrison Government has stubbornly refused repeated calls to fix quarantine.
There have been 26 leaks from hotel quarantine and zero leaks from federal quarantine facilities.
It is a no-brainer. We can’t rely on hotels forever.
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) July 19, 2021
I am tired of living in societies where we know how to do the right thing and simply refuse to do so because our elites are psychopathic, selfish and greedy and our population refuses to discipline or control the elites.
We KNOW what to do to stop Covid. We KNOW how to do it. We just fucking refuse.
This is goddamn pathetic. It’s just like climate change, but on a faster timeline so you can see it in weeks to months rather than decades. We may go extinct, we are certainly going to kill and impoverish billions and probably wipe out half the world’s species (which will hurt us terribly, not just them) all because while we KNOW how to do the good, non psychopathic, non criminally insane things, we REFUSE.
You discipline your elites, or most of you and your children will die or be impoverished by their actions and lack of actions.
(My writing helps pay my rent and buys me food. So please consider subscribing or donating if you like my writing.)
metamars
In the UK
=========
60% of covid hospitalizations are from the unvaccinated, and 86% of the population 18+ years old has had at least 1 vaccine shot.
So, their risk of hospitalization compared to that of unvaxxed = (.14/.86)x40% / 60% = 11%.
In Israel
=========
using June 6 – July 3 data from the Israeli Health Ministry, related by Gilad Atzmon,
(treating “hospitalization” and “critical” as separate categories, as I have have done previously; I assume “critical” means ICU) and noting that 85% of Israeli adults are vaccinated, we see that the vaccinated have a relative risk of hospitalization(at least), compared to unvaccinated, of:
(.15/.85) (34) / 20 = 30%
OTOH, if “Critical” is a subset of “Hospitalization”, we find the relative risk is:
(.15/.85) (23) / 14 = 29%
In the US
=========
eyeballing data at usafacts.org, it looks like 61% of adults are vaccinated (at least 1 dose). Let’s pretend that we actually believe the CDC. Then, the relative risk in the US of vaxx/unvaxx is:
(.39/.61) 3% / 97% = 1.9%
Wow, isn’t that just amazing! The US must have gotten the absolute BEST batches of vaccines!
Curiously, if we apply the 5x fudge factor stated by the CDC whistleblower I refer to above re vaccine deaths, to 1.9%, we get close to the UK figure of 11% relative risk.
Also of interest, if we consider the previous month’s Israeli data, the relative risk was 7.4%. So, their situation has deteriorated rapidly (though I don’t have access to error bars, so don’t know how much confidence I can have in this statement).
So, we may have only 1 short month to wait before the UK data to be as bad as current Israeli data.
As for the US data, if it’s as fudged as it appears to be, we will have to wait forever to see data as bad as the Israeli data.
caveat: I made no attempt to consider the effect of scheduling differences between the US and UK vaccine rollout; nor any other factors, actually.
metamars
Oops. Meant to add this comment to the previous blog post.
Astrid
They don’t need to be new builds or Tyre festival “luxury tents”. Just retrofit a motel that has open air corridors with window unit AC or minisplits. The sheer amount of stupidity required to not recognize and address this simple issue suggests malevolence or deep corruption.
We’re stupiding ourselves to death as fast as our debt financed SUVs can move us.
Ché Pasa
I think the decision to let the virus rage pretty much as it wants to was made last year, probably in March when it was widely realized among the higher of the mighty that there was a real and deadly pandemic underway, and few, except those with a healthcare background, seemed willing to advocate for and do the hard things to get it under control. Even some with a healthcare background wouldn’t do what was necessary. Still won’t.
Reason? Well, how soon was it realized by the highest of the mighty who was really vulnerable and not likely to survive? How many leaders have gotten the disease (quite a few including Clown Boris, Trump, and Bolsonaro) and survived? Who among them didn’t? Why did they survive, though supposedly deathly ill? They would say, of course, because of their Divinity. But no, they received extraordinary treatments — details of which we really don’t know — that Ordinary People have little or no access to. In other words, they’re protected, even if they get the disease, whereas the rest of us aren’t and won’t be. Too bad, so sad, right?
We can fairly assume that everyone who is rich enough, important enough, and/or powerful enough is at least equally well protected as the leaders who have already been sick and recovered. As for the rest of us? No. Not gonna happen.
Even if we somehow discipline our elites. And I’m not sure how that is supposed to be done, as nothing so far tried seems to work.
Essentially nothing necessary to control the pandemic in most jurisdictions/nations — including the will to do so — exists. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done in the by and bye. But it can’t be done now. Right now there is a scramble among the lesser people for survival on the one hand as well as a “party on, it’s a crapshoot anyway” attitude of futility on the other. Not much different than attitudes during previous uncontrolled plagues.
The chances of getting it/dying are apparently highest among certain “useless” groups and “easily replaceable” groups anyway, aren’t they? So a decision to let it rage is perfectly rational, isn’t it?
Circumstances may act to discipline the elites but I’m not sure we can do so.
NR
Ian, I said this in your last post but it bears repeating here: while yes, the way elites have handled COVID has been either grossly incompetent or depraved (or both), one look at the comment section of any of your posts regarding COVID should be enough to show you that elites are far from the only reason COVID has raged out of control in the West.
Herman Cain
They didn’t let tell me ’bout no special treatment. Now I’m dead.
Mr Jones
quarantine should be mandatory, with criminal penalties for violation
There’s simply no way a thoughtful person with even a cursory sense of history would advocate such a thing. Particularly given said person’s knowledge of the power the elite currently have, how they accrued it, and how they are willing to use it.
That is an insane statement. The precedent it would set is so frightening that it’s unfathomable for me to think about on a level of sanity.
Ian, apparently, has no such qualms. Makes me wonder…
Mr Jones
Adding, I’m not a Repub. I don’t watch, nor am I on a first name basis with “Tucker” Carlson.
Oh, and Donald Trumps’ a piece of shit – just like Barack Obama, George Bush, and Bernie Sanders.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Hugh
Mr Jones??? Come on you can tell us. Is that really you, Rand Paul? Tell us about our God-given freedumb to kill our neighbors.
Mr Jones
I forgot to add the “libertarian” flavor. Paul, Massey, Hawley et al are all frauds, liars, and pieces of shit, too.
Hugh, stick to the BLS measures. You don’t do well outside your safely defined structures. “Donny, you’re out of your element!”
Astrid
So Mr. Jones is totally down for travelers to willfully spreading deadly diseases to susceptible populations…because the elites might abuse their quarantine powers?
Ian: The US government continues its stupid COVID policies, resulting in millions of excess deaths and trillions in permanently lost economic activity because this bad COVID policy is highly greatly beneficial to the US political donor class.
Mr. Jones: hold my branded alcoholic cider beverage…
Willy
Mr Jones, quarantining against the spread of illness used to be standard American policy back in the days when “America was great” and people trusted their leaders, more.
But yes, there are all those polls showing the low regard Americans have for their PTB these days. Our allowing big pharma (and all the other big interests) to buy political gain seems so normalized and trickled down to the common culture, that nobody trusts anybody anymore. Not even science or academia.
Hugh
One of things I have missed being discussed is age. The CDC does an analysis where it looks at covid in the US by age. It found that the age group with the absolute number of cases was the 18-29 age group. It used this as its reference group for comparison. It found that the rate of covid cases among other age groups was similar to the 18-29s. The differences in rates began with hospitalizations. They increased by age group. The rate of hospitalization among 58-64s was 4 times that of the 18-29s. This increased to 15 times more among those over 85.
But it was in the death rates where the age differences exploded. The rate of death among those 58-64 was 95 times that of the 18-29s. This increased to 600 times for those over 85.
Since older Americans are more likely to be vaccinated, there chances of getting covid are decreased and along with that there much higher chances of dying from it.
Younger Americans are far less likely to die from covid but they more likely to be unvaccinated. So they are still at risk of getting covid, spreading covid, creating new more infectious more lethal variants of covid, and suffering the debilitating effects of long covid for decades longer than their older cohorts.
Hope this information helps and helps explain too why public health measures like quarantining and vaccination remain important.
Hugh
I noticed a couple of there’s in my last comment should have been their. Sorry.
CDC
In the new millennium, the centuries-old strategy of quarantine is becoming a powerful component of the public health response to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. During the 2003 pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, the use of quarantine, border controls, contact tracing, and surveillance proved effective in containing the global threat in just over 3 months. For centuries, these practices have been the cornerstone of organized responses to infectious disease outbreaks. However, the use of quarantine and other measures for controlling epidemic diseases has always been controversial because such strategies raise political, ethical, and socioeconomic issues and require a careful balance between public interest and individual rights.
Hugh
Mr Jones reminds me of that old legal adage, “If the evidence is on your side, pound the evidence. If it isn’t, then pound the law. And if the law isn’t on your side, then pound the table.” Mr Jones must go through an astonishing number of tables.
Hugh
CDC, one in 550 Americans are dead from covid. In Australia, it’s one in 28,000. As far as I can tell they have not had a covid death there since October 2020, some ten months ago.
So looking at the two countries, where is that balance you refer to and who got closer to it?
Mr Jones
Younger Americans are far less likely to die from covid but they more likely to be unvaccinated. So they are still at risk of getting covid, spreading covid, creating new more infectious more lethal variants of covid, and suffering the debilitating effects of long covid for decades longer than their older cohorts.
The vaccinated are every bit as much at risk “of getting covid, spreading covid, creating new more infectious more lethal variants of covid, and suffering the debilitating effects of long covid…”
This is the point you are either inadvertently missing or intentionally obfuscating. Or something.
The vaccines reduce severe symptoms and thus hospitalizations. That’s it. And the recent data isn’t as compelling for those two all-important variables as it once was.
Jason
Ah yes, Australia as a comparison point. Excellent.
Deep thought, featuring Hugh.
Hugh
Not used to typing on a phone and switching screens. In my comment above, it should read that the covid death rate among 50-64s is 35 times that of 18-29s. It is 95 times in the 65-74 age group, and still 600 times for those 85+.
different clue
“We” are not the ones who refuse. In cases where it appears that some of “we” are indeed refusing, those “we’s” have been processed into a posture of refusal by several decades of trillion-dollar and multi-million-henchman-hour Information Operations and Psychological Operations waged against populations by operationalized and super-empowered minions of the OverClass.
Fox News is an example of a WarNest of such super-empowered minions. Tucker Carlson is an example of such. After decades of audience-sector-focused multi-brain processing, the Fox-Tucker audience will indeed quite democratically obstruct every effort to “do something”.
So it becomes up to us who see the need to do “something” to figure out what “us” can do routing around the damage which “them” essentially and existentially is. That’s where the Surviving Hard Times thread here, and other things like it elsewhere, becomes so important. ( And shame on me for not having contributed anything there lately).
If “us” can figure out how to preferentially survive what is coming and what is here, and if “us” can somehow withhold that survival information from “them” , then perhaps “them” will preferrentially die off faster and firster, thereby solving that part of the problem which ” thems’s” existence poses to “us” and to survival itself.
Let us hope the Tuckers and the Carlsons and the Murdochs and all their supportive audience are among the first to die.
metamars
faucisaliar dot com launches, I think very recently. This gem popped out at me:
“‘Tony Fauci has many, many vaccine patents,’ Kennedy contends, noting that Fauci now owns a patent on a special protein sheet made from HIV that helps to more efficiently deliver vaccine material throughout the body. Fauci didn’t develop this protein sheet himself, of course, but rather stole it from someone else who was relieved from duty after creating it. And that patent is now being used by some of these companies … to make vaccines for the coronavirus … that company has a 50/50 split with Tony Fauci’s agency … so Fauci’s agency will collect half the royalties on that vaccine and there’s no limit for how much the agency can collect.’”
Ramona
Hugh, the vaccines only prevent severe disease (and thus, hospitalizations and deaths). That’s what they were designed to do. Vaccinated people can still get covid and spread it just as easily as unvaccinated people. You and many others (Ian?) don’t seem to understand this basic point, which is both frightening and dangerous.
Viral load and how it relates to transmission is rarely mentioned in these discussions, which makes them all pretty meaningless, imo. But then that’s true of so much these days.
A group of people get together, all of whom are vaccinated except for one. Subsequently, one of the vaccinated people gets sick and tests positive for covid. Most people, it seems, would look first to the unvaccinated person as the culprit, when it’s much more likely it came from one of the unvaccinated, all other things being equal.
This basic premise is what people don’t seem to understand.
I post the link below not to make an argument per se, rather because it illustrates some of the variables involved. The general conclusion we come away with is that viral load is important in studies of transmission, but even properly measured and considered it’s nevertheless difficult to come to any definitive conclusions given all the interacting variables. In other words, par for the course!
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243597
Ramona
Sorry, I mistyped. The above should read:
A group of people get together, all of whom are vaccinated except for one. Subsequently, one of the vaccinated people gets sick and tests positive for covid. Most people, it seems, would look first to the unvaccinated person as the culprit, when it’s much more likely it came from one of the vaccinated, all other things being equal.
NR
Yeah, I’m gonna need a source on that, because all the data we have so far contradicts this assertion.
Willy
All that unleashing libertarian capitalism has proven is that living in a Dunning Kruger world sucks.
Ted Nugent before getting Covid: “It’s a dirty lying scam.”
Ted Nugent after getting Covid: “I thought I was dying. I literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days.”
Herman Cain before Covid: alive.
Herman Cain after Covid: dead.
The lesson should be clear. Don’t get Covid, don’t spread Covid. And if you’ve found a folk remedy that works, maybe send it through reliably credible testing procedures first before proclaiming its efficacy.
Hugh
A vaccine does not prevent exposure to covid except in the sense that in a more vaccinated population, there will be less covid and fewer carriers to be exposed to.
Because covid is an airborne virus, even a fully vaccinated person effectively immune to covid may take a few days to clear the virus after an exposure. This does not mean that they secretly had covid. It does mean that they could shed fewer copies of the virus, but the number of copies shed and the period of time over which they were shed would be minuscule compared to an unvaccinated person with symptomatic covid.
With viruses it is all and always about the numbers. The more unvaccinated, the more copies of the virus. The more copies of the virus, the greater chance for mutations which are more infectious, less susceptible to vaccines, and more lethal. The unvaccinated aren’t rolling the dice just for themselves but for the rest of as well. And as with most gambles, over time, the virus, like the House, always wins.
different clue
@Willy,
Let us hope that God and Fate reward Ted Nugent suitably for his good patriotic freedom work in exposing the Covid Scamdemic Plan prior to getting sick.
Let us fervently hope that Nugent spends several years with Long Haul Covid, and then spends the rest of his life with post-Covid microcellular cirrhosis of whichever organs hurt the most when you get that. Oh , and . . . . a long lifetime on dialysis.
Jason
Yeah, I’m gonna need a source on that, because all the data we have so far contradicts this assertion.
Have you been following the data out of Israel?:
https://twitter.com/itosettiMD_MBA/status/1413922415550291968
There is a good conversation over at Naked Capitalism:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/07/federal-judge-upholds-indiana-universitys-covid-19-vaccine-requirement.html#comment-3576826
Reconsider “all the data so far.” “All” is not correct to begin with. Data is constantly evolving, obviously. The statement never made sense, but is even more ridiculous now.
js
What use is contextless data supposed to be to anyone? The question asked was have a link to “vaccinated people can still spread covid just as easily as unvaccinated people”.
Instead we get a contextless twitter link about infections in the vaccinated and unvaccinated with no break down of percentage of the population vaccinated (but if it’s most of the population of course with sufficient testing, more cases will be in the vaccinated, this will happen even if cases are much rarer in the vaccinated just due to the math). And that’s cases, nothing about seriousness, and nothing about vaccinated people can spread covid just as easily as unvaccinated people.
Sheesh “I don’t know” would be a better answer.
Jason
An “I don’t know” is necessary and preferable to providing supporting information, in the absence of the always elusive definitive proof? Nothing would ever be learned.
What a silly comment. Please don’t waste my time.
js
I don’t consider that supporting information, I’m not sure how it supports or frankly even relates to the question.
NR
To say nothing of the fact that raw numbers are just as important as percentages in this context. If 100% of the population is unvaccinated, all cases will be in unvaccinated people. If 100% of the population is vaccinated, all cases will be in vaccinated people. But the total number of cases will be much lower in the latter scenario than the former.
Jason
…I’m not sure how it supports or frankly even relates to the question.
There is no question. The information provided was in support of the statement:
“Vaccinated people can still get covid and spread it just as easily as unvaccinated people. ”
If you are unable to see how the information provided supports that contention, you are incapable of inferring beyond perhaps a middle school level.
Ramona
If 100% of the population is unvaccinated, all cases will be in unvaccinated people. If 100% of the population is vaccinated, all cases will be in vaccinated people. But the total number of cases will be much lower in the latter scenario than the former.
No, the total number of severe cases will be much lower than the former. Which is really good. But the vaccinated will still get sick with mild to moderate cases. And they can spread it just as easily.
An important variable to consider now is viral load, which is most often highest just before the onset of symptoms and remains high while symptomatic, particularly early in the symptomatic phase.
js
Well I figured the relevant part was spread and in fact how easily it is spread and how this compares to how it is spread by unvaccinated people, since almost no vaccines entirely reduce infection, that’s not what vaccines do. One comes across some articles actually about spread like this, that are relevant to the question, but alas they aren’t brand new:
https://theconversation.com/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-this-work-160437
Mark Pontin
js writes: ‘What use is contextless data supposed to be to anyone? The question asked was have a link to “vaccinated people can still spread covid just as easily as unvaccinated people”.’
Okay. Let’s give this a shot, starting with this study —
‘Population immunity and vaccine protection against infection’ Published:April 23, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00870-9
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00870-9/fulltext
The COVID vaccines — like *most* vaccines, I believe — appear to NOT provide full sterilizing immunity. In the above paper, here’s the takeaway sentence: “However, since breakthrough cases among vaccinated individuals shed virus at lower levels, they are probably less infectious than unvaccinated individuals are.”
That’s footnoted with a link to this other paper: “Initial report of decreased SARS-CoV-2 viral load after inoculation with the BNT162b2 vaccine.”Nat Med. 2021; (published online March 29.)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01316-7
In other words, while the vaccines are (mostly) efficacious at reducing/preventing COVID symptoms and fatalities, vaccinated individuals who become infected can still shed virus. And we know this already — that’s the main reason we’re talking about vaccinating schoolkids, because we’re worried about them being spreaders, right?
BUT with the Delta variant, what now seems to be happening is that its transmission and reproduction rates are so much higher that individuals can carry viral loads of Delta one-thousand times greater than with the original coronavirus. Unsurprisingly, this matters. See forex –
‘Transmissibility of COVID-19 depends on the viral load around onset in adult and symptomatic patients’
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243597
Thus, with Delta we get increases in breakout cases, more spreading. So the question becomes: How big an increase in fatalities and Long COVID will accompany this in a vaccinated population?
Helpfully, the UK is currently making itself a petri dish to answer this question. See today’s WSJ —
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/opening-its-economy-as-delta-variant-surges-the-u-k-becomes-a-covid-19-test-case-1162688472
” Daily hospital admissions are currently averaging around 600 in Britain, and daily deaths around 40. In January, the deadliest period of the pandemic in Britain, daily cases peaked at around 60,000, hospital admissions reached 4,000 a day, and more than 1,200 people were dying each day … A sizable chunk of (current) admissions, around 14% on the latest available data, are people in their 50s who have been fully vaccinated, as are 45% of deaths.”
So: about 20 fatalities daily of vaccinated people in the UK, which has a population of about 65 million people. Small in the scheme of things, but not insignificant to those who lose loved ones.
As for Long COVID, we have no freaking idea yet.
Jason
Massachusetts reports 716 new COVID-19 breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals
Massachusetts public health officials reported 716 new COVID-19 breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals in the past week, data from the Department of Public Health shows.
A breakthrough case is when an individual tests positive for COVID-19 after they’ve been fully vaccinated against the disease.
Massachusetts doctors say the biggest cause is the arrival of the COVID-19 delta variant, which is twice as infectious than the original virus.
“We also know that people who have the Delta variant actually have 1,000 times the amount of virus in their nose, in their bodies,” Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett with Boston Medical Center said.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/massachusetts-716-breakthrough-covid-cases-vaccinated-individuals/37083279
You are going to see a continual rise in “breakthrough” cases over the next few months. “Breakthrough” is a misnomer as the vaccines do not – bearing in mind too that they weren’t designed to – provide sterilizing immunity. There is always a hope that some level of sterilizing immunity might occur as a happenstance, but that seems to be less and less the case as the data continues to roll in. We know from the Israeli data that the reported efficacy numbers are a joke, and we’re slowly learning that the overall effectiveness of the vaccines is less than has been reported.
Hopefully, severe cases, hospitalizations, and deaths will remain low. But hospitalizations are creeping up in some areas.
Ramona
Stop looking for proof. Question everything and constantly disprove things. In other words, practice science.
Jason
The article in “The Conversation” is from two and a half months ago.
Can you even begin to understand why that’s not relevant given the introduction of even one or two variables?
Or:
Much has transpired since then.
metamars
The “good conversation” linked to by Jason contains this comment,
Whatdoiknow
July 21, 2021 at 8:59 pm
Amen, exactly.
I know more people who got the vaccine and got serious issues in my entourage than people who got Covid.
One week after my sister got the vaccine, a normally healthy person in her mid 40 has been having crazy complications, first her leg was kind of paralyzed, Rushed to ER to check for blood clots, now her heart accelerates randomly to 200bpm and every time we have to rush her to ER with no solutions. Foggy brain issues as well. It’s heartbreaking as she has been in this condition for a month, taking beta blockers and nothing else. Doctors also refuse to consider anything to do with the vaccine as they don’t have any solution I guess. Questions asked by doctors go usually like this:
Did you do anything special in the last month, had a stress or other event?
No, only took the vaccine. Total silence from the doctor.
Would somebody be kind enough to point this person to the protocols at flemingmethod.com? One of them is for vaccine damage.
I probably still have an account at nakedcapitalism, but since they – or their algorithm – saw fit to censor a few of my posts on climate change, I refuse to post there.
Jason
<b/White House officials debate masking push as covid infections spike
Officials cautioned that any new formal guidance would have to come from the CDC, and they maintained that the White House has taken a hands-off approach with the agency to ensure they are not interfering with the work of scientists. But the high-level discussions reflect rising concerns across the administration about the threat of the delta variant and a renewed focus on what measures may need to be reintroduced to slow its spread.
President Biden exits the Oval Office to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 21, 2021.
President Biden exits the Oval Office to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 21, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
One idea batted around by some officials would be to ask all Americans to wear masks when vaccinated and unvaccinated people mix at public places or indoors, such as at malls or movie theaters, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
So far, leaders in the White House have been hesitant about any policies that would explicitly require Americans to show proof of their vaccination status, according to a person familiar with those talks. Depending on where discussions lead, that decision could ultimately fall to business owners who want to offer mask-free environments.
The conversations are taking place as the country is seeing more than 40,000 new cases of coronavirus infections a day, an increase from a low of about 11,000 cases a day in June. The uptick is largely driven by the delta variant, a far more infectious strain of the novel coronavirus. Moreover, the rate of vaccination continues to slow, with about 500,000 people a day getting shots now, according to The Washington Post’s vaccine tracker. And breakthrough infections also are cropping up among vaccinated sports stars and politicians who are tested regularly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-masks-delta-covid/2021/07/21/cba29774-ea3a-11eb-8950-d73b3e93ff7f_story.html
You can see what’s happening and how they’re maneuvering. They know the vaccinated are just as susceptible to getting and spreading it. And many will get sick to boot.
A sentient being might wonder how many severe cases and deaths among the vaccinated aren’t being reported.
Jason
White House officials debate masking push as covid infections spike
Officials cautioned that any new formal guidance would have to come from the CDC, and they maintained that the White House has taken a hands-off approach with the agency to ensure they are not interfering with the work of scientists. But the high-level discussions reflect rising concerns across the administration about the threat of the delta variant and a renewed focus on what measures may need to be reintroduced to slow its spread.
One idea batted around by some officials would be to ask all Americans to wear masks when vaccinated and unvaccinated people mix at public places or indoors, such as at malls or movie theaters, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
So far, leaders in the White House have been hesitant about any policies that would explicitly require Americans to show proof of their vaccination status, according to a person familiar with those talks. Depending on where discussions lead, that decision could ultimately fall to business owners who want to offer mask-free environments.
The conversations are taking place as the country is seeing more than 40,000 new cases of coronavirus infections a day, an increase from a low of about 11,000 cases a day in June. The uptick is largely driven by the delta variant, a far more infectious strain of the novel coronavirus. Moreover, the rate of vaccination continues to slow, with about 500,000 people a day getting shots now, according to The Washington Post’s vaccine tracker. And breakthrough infections also are cropping up among vaccinated sports stars and politicians who are tested regularly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-masks-delta-covid/2021/07/21/cba29774-ea3a-11eb-8950-d73b3e93ff7f_story.html
You can see what’s happening and how they’re maneuvering. They know the vaccinated are just as susceptible to getting and spreading it. And many will get sick to boot.
A sentient being might wonder how many severe cases and deaths among the vaccinated aren’t being reported.
Hugh
This thread, like so many others, illustrates that a lot of people are going to believe what they are going to believe. That they have no knowledge of viruses, vaccines, or public health and most of what they think they know is wrong doesn’t stop them for an instant. With them, it is always conclusions first and any fact or argument that contradicts these is treated as akin to heresy. Bad and crackpot science becomes the Real Science. I am sure our elites can profit off this quackery, but they don’t need to create it. There are plenty of people willing to create, buy into, and vociferously defend these fantasies.
bruce wilder
The pitting of the vaccinated against the unvaccinated in a morality play — something Hugh in his personal march to fascism cottons to naturally enough — is a part of the propaganda program I would ask commenters to abandon as foolish and counter-productive. If the vaccinated can harbor and transmit, and are the logical sieve of evolution creating vaccine-eluding variants, then we might as sensibly blame the vaccinated for making things worse.
I am not a scientist and I am not going to play one in comments. Watching a 7 minute spot on CNN does not make you a scientist either. I do know that well-grounded inference from observable facts is an art that human society has only a slippery grip on, even in good times.
When I see reports from highly vaccinated societies of rapid spread of COVID, I suspect that the vaccines have not been as effective as hoped or promised. In the U.S., it is true, the most explosive growth seems to across the South, a region of low rates of vaccination. But, I cannot ignore the data from Europe.
And, my already low levels of trust in officialdom declines further.
Hugh
I agree, bruce, you are not a scientist.
Mark Pontin
Update from the UK. On Tuesday, 46,558 new people tested positive and 96 people died — the highest daily death toll there in nearly four months. So that’s a serious uptick in one day.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/21/england-may-have-to-reimpose-covid-rules-in-august-scientists-warn
The BBC claims the following: ‘The latest Public Health England (PHE) figures show there were 92,029 confirmed Delta cases between 1 February and 22 June, most of which were identified in June.
‘Of these, 58% were in completely unvaccinated people and only 8% were fully vaccinated. For context, by the start of June more than half of adults in the UK were fully vaccinated. If the vaccines weren’t helping, we would expect them to make up more than half the cases….
‘The figures for hospital admissions and deaths are a bit more confusing. Of the 117 people who died with the Delta variant, first identified in India, 50 (43%) had been fully vaccinated ….’
‘But … the 43% figure relates to deaths only – so it misses all the vaccinated people who were exposed to Covid but did not catch it, or caught the virus but did not become very ill. And by now, almost everyone at risk of dying from Covid has been vaccinated (more than 90%).
‘No vaccine is perfect in preventing people from getting Covid and therefore a small number of people will still die. And in a world where every single person had been vaccinated, 100% of Covid deaths would be of vaccinated people. But the actual number of people dying would be much lower – a 20th as many as if no-one was vaccinated, according to PHE estimates. ‘
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57610998
I see that I’m broadly in agreement with Jason and some others here. If we’re wrong, someone — Hugh? — should be able to explain how and why, please.
Mark Pontin
Note that the UK is one of two countries with the highest-vaccine uptakes in the world because, whatever its other problems, people there trust the NHS.
Conversely, I’m afraid there’s no trust in US society. Why would there be? Black Americans recall things like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. The larger population recalls the Clinton administration signing GATT and NAFTA, and shipping off 4-6 million working-class jobs to China, so that elites who paid off the Clinton Dems could get richer. It recalls the Bush II administration going to war and flattening Iraq on false pretexts. It recalls the Obama administration forcing 10 million American homes into foreclosure while bailing out the financial industry responsible for the underlying fraud to the tune of $28 trillion, so the financial industry could use that money to buy up those foreclosed homes for cents on the dollar and hike up rents. It sees Washington — in the face of a global pandemic, FFS, and in defiance of the wishes of some 70 percent of the population, including Republicans — steadfastly preserving a rapacious, predatory ‘healthcare system’ that funnels off 7 percent of annual GDP to rich asset holders invested in that system.
And so on. There’s no trust.
I bring this up because, in general, human societies are bad at accepting change and those humans who particularly benefit from their positions in the existing status quo particularly resist it. And the CDC and Fauci have been terrible all through this: the early denial of airborne transmission, the failure to recommend vitamin D, the resistance to closing down airflights because it’s “racism.”
I’ve just had an exchange with a ‘scientist’ who thinks that not testing vaccinated asymptomatic contacts “because there seems not to be spread from those people … those numbers … are just fueling the misinformation campaign” is the way to go.
She — it’s a female, as it happens — has (a) been too lazy to follow the literature on the Delta variant and (b) is part of the problem. That’s because when those breakout cases of fatalities among vaccinated people keep emerging later this year — which they will — they may or may not be statistically insignificant. But many Americans will look at the attempts to sweep that information under the carpet and they’ll conclude that people like her — and the Biden administration and the MSM — were the ones spreading misinformation.
And they’ll be right about that, whatever other things they get horribly wrong. The Biden administration and the powers-that-be have bet the farm on the vaccines enabling a return to business-as-usual (BAU). It’s now clear that in the face of the Delta variant, the vaccines — the current ones, anyway — have been oversold. So, as Jason says, the Biden administration will have to walk the promise of maskless BAU back while mortgage and rent forbearance are ending — or are going to have to be extended. Simultaneously, there’s the general distrust in the country. More specifically, much of the middle of it is still pro-Trump, according to one of my brothers and his wife, who’ve just driven cross-country from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the SF Bay Area, where I am.
It looks like it’s going to be a long, interesting winter in America.
NL
@Hugh
You are not a scientist either, Hugh. Good science is a cautious science. It takes decades for a great discovery to win a Nobel prize, because the Nobel committee wants passage of time to assure that the discovery is real and not a fluke, an artifact or a fraud. A good investigator will tell you that before accepting and building on the work of others, their work must be reproduced in your own hands — that’s good science 101 for you. Coincidentally, mainstream science is experiencing a crisis of reproducibility. And vaccine is NOT science, it is a corporate product based on some science made for the purpose of profit-making. Theranos, Purdue pharma, and now Biogen with their Alzheimer’s drug — pharma not always behaves well. The vaccine seems to be further exploited by the politicians and social engineers for their own purposes. But I truly hope that those who believe in the vaccine practice what they preach, and that is that they are fully vaccinated, without any facial protection, attending crowded places, eating at restaurants, go to bars and clubs, etc, lead your normal life and more. A funny thing would be if ‘the vaccine believers’ have not actually left their home for months, getting all their grocery and stuff delivered to them, wearing a N95. That would be funny…
Seems to me, many of these debates will be moot in two or three years time from now — whoever gets it wrong (the vaccine believers or facial protection wearers, etc), they may just not be with us, in that some will die, others will become sick with long COVID and not able to work, others will suffer milder damage but will still experience loss in performance and forgo promotions and such, others still will have psychological issues, grief over the loss of relatives, etc, etc… This disease is personal. It will go away just like it came for reasons that we will likely not fathom. The unaffected and uninfected will come on top.
Willy
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-did-covid-vaccines-cause-the-delta-variant/a-58242263
I got fully vaccinated long ago so I could see my many new great nieces and great nephews. That demand came from former Trump supporter and former staunch conservative, my in-law the physician. Yeah, he’s laying a bit low when it comes to the politics, lately. Why not make life easier for yourself and quit the self-important conspiracy crap and move on with your lives. There are far worse problems on the way.
Joan
It does seem like motel-style quarantine facilities for travelers is the convenient option. Ventilation to the outside, window units for AC if needed, as I think Astrid mentioned above.
Plus it gets around my knee-jerk fear that I’m getting hauled off to a concentration camp. If the motel is attached to the airport, it’s just right there, that’s way less sketchy than “A bus is going to take you to an undisclosed location where you’ll be locked in from the outside and we might feed you.”
Still, even for a job, I’d be extremely wary of putting myself in that situation. Again, I think testing and quarantine of travelers is necessary, but I’m not going to travel till this is over.
Astrid
Joan,
Yup, that’s the point. When not quarantining travellers means exposing the rest of the people in a community to a deadly disease, the burden rightfully falls on the travellers and/or their employers to mitigate the risk. Covid changed the cost of travel from “just” the carbon footprint and possibly cultural erosion in travel hotspots, to something much much higher. Travellers should bear it.
metamars
In the brief PhD/MD/JD Richard Fleming interview that introduced me to his arguments, Fleming claimed that animal models suggested that the onset of spongiform encephalopathy and Alzheimer’s CAUSED BY THE VACCINE would take only 1-1/2 years. He didn’t state the percentage of people that would become be affected, or how long the disease would take to progress.
Well, I started listening to longer presentations by him, yesterday, and so I’ve learned that studies with rhesus monkeys that were sacrificed after 5 or 6 weeks ALREADY SHOWED the spongiform encephalopathy. The rhesus monkeys are believed to be most similar to us, in terms of reaction to the vaccines (if I understood, correctly).
So, if I understand correctly, if you’ve had either an mRNA or adenovirus vector vaccine, more than 5 weeks ago, you likely ALREADY have this type of brain damage, from spike protein fragments that went sailing through your blood brain barrier. You are probably not symptomatic for spongiform encephalopathy, as a catastrophe on that scale would be widely visible.
Ah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be symptomatic a year and a half after your vaccination, does it?
Strongly suggest everybody 1) consult flemingmethod.com for protocols to treat the these vaccines 2) discuss with your doctor 3) warn your relatives and friends about this and 4) look into Naomi Wolfe’s website https://dailyclout.io/ dealing with political activism. Apparently, she has a podcast on progressive radio network (prn.fm), and she’s also frequently interviewed by Steve Bannon @ pandemic.warroom.com. She’s largely been de-platformed by major media.
And if you have children and are concerned about mask requirements in schools, I’d recommend focusing instead on vaccination requirements. I judge the masks to be essentially a sideshow, compared to the danger of the vaccine.
Naomi Wolfe’s politics definitely learn toward the progressive side. Meanwhile, let’s not forget that Trump liked to be thought of as the sort of “father of the vaccine”. Even Shaun Hannity, Trump’s main media sycophant, is pushing for people to take the vaccine.
You irrationally ‘evaluate’ Fleming’s claims on a tribalistic basis, at your own peril.
js
“Why not make life easier for yourself and quit the self-important conspiracy crap and move on with your lives. There are far worse problems on the way.”
Yea kinda. Far worse problems on the way (or here but unevenly distributed – hello Lytton), may as well move on with your lives. The powers that be care about business. But don’t assume that’s what ordinary people care about necessarily except in that they must make a living. Some do, some of us don’t.
Some of us just care about having a life again, which includes not avoiding all other people and any situations that may involve other people forever. Even if I can catch Delta with a vaccine, I’m not sure anyone could explain to me why it would not be preferable to catch Delta with a vaccine, which will likely provide some if imperfect protection, and thus has a low likelihood of leading to anything serious and may be entirely asymptomatic, if covid is going to be with us forever anyway? It may as well just improve my immune system. Masking to protect vulnerable people who can get vaccines or for whom vaccines don’t work is a different story. I can accept that argument.
But if a mask of any quality is what we must do, or what we are forced to do by law, never mind if you just put a bandana around your face, as those who make masking mandatory never seem to care about the quality of the mask even to make recommendations, why isn’t it far more logical to do many other things, like only eat in a restaurant outdoors? That is a small sacrifice and will be forever more. But avoiding all life forever, or even a year, was a huge sacrifice.
Ché Pasa
Wow. The fear level is rising fast, approaching panic it seems, due to the delta and further variants spreading largely unchecked through the systems but focusing on the weakest links, the unvaccinated refuseniks and hesitators.
Suddenly the arguments for and against vaccines become sterile exercises in futility. As people become more frightened of the multiplicity of crises we face — not just the plague — the urge to lash out and blame someone, anyone, else for this situation takes over from rational thought, and the more people are forced into work or whatever else our Overlords demand of us, the more resistance there is, the more fear, the more lashing out.
The signs aren’t positive at all. Who is right and who is wrong barely matters in the midst of a catastrophe. The time for sorting those things out has passed. Now is the time for action, but it looks like actions are going to become uglier and uglier as the public becomes angrier and more fearful. Whatever anyone or any government does at this point will trigger that old flight or fight reaction in some significant portion of the population. How quickly will it devolve into even worse mayhem than we’ve already seen?
Better strap in, the ride is only going to get bumpier.
NL
@Ché Pasa
“focusing on the weakest links, the unvaccinated refuseniks and hesitators.” — This remains to be confirmed. The fear is rising precisely because the vaccine believers lack in faith, and when believers lack in faith, they demand from others to believe the same to validate their faith. The others in this case are of course vaccine neutral and vaccine ignorers.
“Who is right and who is wrong barely matters in the midst of a catastrophe. ” – It does matter a lot, for the simple reason that we need to recognize competent from incompetent. When your predictions fail to pass, you lose credibility. That’s why we no longer practice alchemy or magic or lots of medical quackery.
I have consistently wrote here and elsewhere — vaccine or no vaccine, one needs to have other lines of defense, vaccine can be the last line of defense but not the only line of defense. Some of the vaccinated throw out all caution to the wind, it is sort of sad, how many of these people will be disappointed in the next couple of months.
NR
Isn’t it funny how, whenever metamars posts claims from doctors promising dire consequences from COVID vaccinations, if you do just a little research into the doctors making the claims, you can usually find something sketchy about them, like they don’t have the background/credentials they claim they have, or they’re well-known quacks from other topics before COVID, or…. Well, let’s just take a look at this “Dr. Richard Fleming,” shall we?
On April 24, 2009, Fleming, the president of, and sole physician at, Fleming Heart and Health Institute, P.C. (FHHI), pled guilty to one felony count of healthcare fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1347 and 2, and one felony count of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1341 and 2. On August 20, 2009, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska entered a judgment of conviction against Fleming on these counts and sentenced Fleming to 5 years of probation.
…
Fleming admitted to knowingly executing and attempting to execute a scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid healthcare benefit programs in connection with the delivery of and payment for healthcare benefits, items, and services, namely by submitting payment claims for tomographic myocardial perfusion imaging studies that he did not actually perform. Fleming also pled guilty to one count of felony mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1341 and 2 for conduct relating to money paid him to conduct a clinical study of a soy chip food product for the purpose of evaluating health benefits. As Fleming admitted during his guilty plea, he received approximately $35,000 for conducting a clinical trial, but he fabricated data for certain subjects.
(Removed link to source because my previous comment got moderated, it was the first result when I googled “Richard Fleming”).
But it’s okay, I’m sure the guy with two felony convictions for fraud isn’t trying to defraud people again. No, that would never happen!
Hugh
I do not know why metamars keeps doing this. He cites one Richard Fleming as some hyper-credentialed god. But this is the same Richard Fleming who has a couple of felony convictions for healthcare fraud. His undergrad is from Northern Iowa. His physics PhD refers to some high school class he took. His JD he got online and has not passed apparently the bar anywhere. I think his medical license, he does have a MD, was suspended maybe because of his convictions. And he was debarred by the FDA for ten years. There is a site retractionwatch which went into Fleming’s supposed accomplishments, especially in the comments which Fleming longwindedly but ineffectively participated in. You can probably find it by googling retractionwatch Fleming convicted felon writes a paper.
NR
To reiterate, this is the guy metamars wants us to believe has found some secret horrible side effect of COVID vaccines that somehow, no one else has found.
Willy
Way back when metamars started promoting the Gateway Pundit as a source for anything besides comedy, I assumed that he was in reality, just a comic being provided here for our amusement.
But that was before I started commenting on conservative blogs from the perspective of ‘a layman who wants to discuss consensus science’.
It turns out there’s a lotta people like that out there. In that world scientism doesn’t mean an overreliance on scientists to determine our values. It means that all scientists are demonically possessed Satanists on a mission to destroy God. As such, any and all scientists and scientist-believing laymen who do not proclaim God as their lord and master must be met with total derision. A compassionate few though, seem to want to try and save us from science. Hence metamars.
I like science skepticism and even conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, sometimes. But other times you’ve just gotta draw the line.
Astrid
Metamar always struck me as a super sophisticated Turing bot. The way he goes about giving credentials for his experts was really robotic. The amount of effort he puts into his posts is pretty remarkable considering the reception they get here. Perhaps he posts the same comments to dozens of other sites? Or maybe there’s a subreddit that generates this stuff for people to post?
Anyways, the fear of Delta is at least getting my husband to switch to Airbnb in lieu of hotel for our upcoming travel plans, even though Airbnb is considerably more expensive. We will be refusing invitations to indoor restaurant dining for the foreseeable future. He may be accepting that Japan or Portugal is not doable this winter. We might have to settle for Hawaii or CA.
Oakchair
@ Willy, NR, and Hugh
I agree anything from an entity that has committed multiple instances of fraud should be completely ignored. Meaning Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and JJ need to be ignored because they’ve all been convicted in more fraud cases than Fleming.
Hugh
Big Pharma are no angels, but on vaccines they have to submit their data for government review. As long as Fleming doesn’t take government money, he can and does say anything he wants.
Oakchair
@ Hugh
So studies from a bunch of different scientists are to be ignored if they are simply reported by a guy who has committed fraud and who doesn’t have conflicts of interest.
Marketing spin from studies done by people who’ve committed fraud and have conflicts of interest are to be taken as truth.
Gee, maybe you should try engaging in a good faith discussion, address the research, and stop using logical fallacies, and double standards? Though if the science doesn’t support your faith based position the more effective strategy would be to do what you’re currently doing.
Hugh
Oakchair, you are going to believe whatever you are going to believe. Fleming has no credibility so you try to point fingers elsewhere. Even the drug companies have to play by some rules when it comes to vaccines. That undercuts your argument so you dutifully ignore it.
Willy
Personally, I trust the scientists from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and JJ far more than I do the people who actually run those companies.
NL
@Hugh
“Big Pharma are no angels, but on vaccines they have to submit their data for government review.”
Are you trying to tell us that the big pharma respects our much demoralized, ‘government is a problem and not a solution, revolving door, corrupted government? Or is this same government supposed to magically make things right? Look what happened with the Biogen Alzheimer’s drug — the scientists in a great majority were not convinced by the data, but the FDA went ahead and approved the drug using a watered-down process made into law by the 2016 21st Century Cures Act – boom – you don’t like the stringency of the FDA process, go to the Congress and have them adulterate it. The 21st Century Cures Act allows companies to present anecdotal evidence in lieu of clinical trial results! – I kid you not, go read the act. Hugh, are you taking us for schmucks? The vaccine is obviously not about the science, and it was approved via another watered-down adulterated process.
NL
@Willy
“Personally, I trust the scientists from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and JJ far more than I do the people who actually run those companies.”
Really? Are you serious? Have you ever worked in a corporation? I am sorry, but this seems as such an off-the-all comment. Scientists in a corporation are mere workers, just like the rest of us hired and fired at will with bills to pay and children to feed, do you really think that in the US since Ronald Reagan, workers have much say in the running of a corporation?
Oakchair
“Oakchair, you are going to believe whatever you are going to believe. ”
Projection
the attribution of one’s own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people
“(studies) Fleming (mentions) has no credibility so you try to point fingers elsewhere. (Fraudster drug corporations have credibility).”
Hypocrite
a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
Willy
NL, I worked for corporations as a scientist. I always found far more integrity with that relatively powerless bunch than I ever did with the political climbers who achieved power over the scientist. In the corporate world one does as power says if one wants to keep your job, and whistleblowers are typically dealt with severely.
Reread your comment again.
Willy
I really don’t have time for this shit.
An idea frequently seen around here is that big pharma prefers to not cure causes but to treat symptoms, because it’s more sustainably profitable in the long run. Very few regulars here believe that this is a good thing.
Do you seriously think that scientists came up with that concept? Or was it the MBAs who usually achieve power over the scientists? I have tried repeatedly to get others to explore the idea that MBAs (who tend to get into it for the money) may have different core temperaments than do scientists (who tend to get into it for the science). Yes, I do generalize. There are evil scientists and there are good MBAs. But generally speaking…
Along those lines, why is it not possible for pharma researchers to be spending all their energy doing the grunt work of research, while their superiors are out lobbying Republican sociopaths to create enough covid confusion amongst the rabble so that annual vaccine boosters will become neccessary to deal with the continuously mutating covid variants? Why could that not have been a plan?
NR
Hey guys, I found a video of Oakchair:
https://youtu.be/lA5UqUyFmT0
Hugh
Yes, it is all a conspiracy. Conspiracies everywhere about everything, and only you and your army of carnies can see the TRUTH. It’s like we were telling Ian. Elites don’t have to make up lies, fantasies, and conspiracies for you. Once they’ve got you going the way they want, you make up your own. You’ve been lied to so much that you can’t distinguish what’s real anymore. And yes, I realize that saying so will just set you off because that’s your standard reaction to a world you no longer understand.
NL
@Willy
Sure, I would agree with that. But the integrity of the rank and file does not matter for the present discussion. And even when ‘higher ups’ decline to compromise, everyone gets punished, as when the Pfizer neuroscience division – all 300 of them – got summarily fired. According to a WaPo article, they were sitting on a drug no less effective against Alzheimer’s than the one Biogen has but declined to pursue approval. These people found other jobs, but many suffered real economic and career losses. It is hard, I don’t know…
As to @Hugh, I don’t know whether he is talking to me or someone else. If he is talking to me, then seems like he chooses to cover his ears and eyes with mimes and ready-made defenses, so as to avoid having an unpleasant discussion. As to whether I have special knowledge – I don’t, I wish I did, but I don’t. Any half-competent technocrat with some experience knows all of this. I am just willing to discuss it in a forum. The problem with our understanding of the so-called common diseases is that in most cases we do not know disease etiology, i.e., we do not know what causes these diseases, we focus on and treat symptoms and pathologic processes downstream of the primary causes, and we claim that these downstream processes are what caused the disease, and naturally we fail to stop or cure the disease. Same for our society, we see and talk about ongoing pathologic processes but know nothing about the causes and therefore, we can’t do reforms but only wait for the inevitable.
metamars
During WW2, Von Braun was an SS Sturmbanfuhrer – equivalent to an army Major – who developed and oversaw the manufacture of the V-2 rockets, the world’s first ballistic missiles. His rockets, carrying a one ton explosive warhead, rained down terror and claimed the lives of thousands, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, in London, Antwerp, and other cities. After the war, he pretended to have been an oblivious scientist, too engrossed in his blueprints, calculations, and other pointy head work, to fully comprehend the horrors of the regime he served.
from “Wernher Von Braun Was a Space Visionary, and a War Criminal Who Got Slave Workers Killed by the Tens of Thousands”
To millions of Americans, Wernher von Braun’s name was inextricably linked to our exploration of space and to the creative application of technology. He was not only a skillful engineer but also a man of bold vision; his inspirational leadership helped mobilize and maintain the effort we needed to reach the Moon and beyond.
Not just the people of our Nation but all the people of the world have profited from his work. We will continue to profit from his example.
Jimmy Carter on von Braun’s death
I don’t know why hugh continues to shower us with logical fallacies. He has made me curious, though, about the specific reference(s) to prion disease demonstrated in rhesus monkey brains a mere 5-6 weeks after exposure to vaccine, or vaccine-like substance. I have NOT looked into the basis for this claim. Yet.
I can count on luminaries like hugh and NR NOT to be the least bit interested in proving or disproving the factual bases of Fleming’s claims.
BTW, I recently saw an interview of another anti-covid-vaccine doctor, Dr. Peter McColough, who said that he had trouble finding lawyers who would file paperwork for him. One lawyer he talked to wanted to show him how to do it, saying it was quite easy. Yeah, I guess he figured this doctor had lots of time on his hands.
But no, that wasn’t it, at all. It was FEAR. Let’s recall that even President Trump had lawyers quit on him; and had trouble finding them, to begin with. Robert Barnes, a lawyer, has remarked on this, actually advising young lawyers to get into serving underserved clients that have trouble securing lawyers from firms that don’t want to upset powerful figures.
As for scientists operating under fear, specifically in the context of covid, see my post “Immunologists Self-Censoring About The Non-Catastrophic Character of the Covid-19 Pandemic” in my vanity sub-reddit bad_science_culture. I quoted:
“some people hate when people just lie in
general and I know that in a corporate
world that I was in you know lies are
needed sometimes but one thing I can’t
tolerate is the technical truth that is
twisted for political purposes it always
drove me crazy from the first year of my
career and this here is obviously such a
big version of that I’m going crazy for
two and a half months now had an
immunologist a professor in Bern
Switzerland a video came out yesterday
of an interview that was stunning and he
actually covered everything and he said
at the end he went to all of what we
said about all the layers of the immune
system
he said it’s absurd what’s being said by
people that he would expect to know how
this works right so they’re all
cognitive bias but he also said in the
last few minutes that his students past
students who are now in careers in
immunology have privately said they
really appreciated his thoughtfulness
and they agree with him but they said we
CAN’T SAY IT BECAUSE OF OUR CAREERS AND …”
Synoptocon
Ian, if you want to live in a society that makes better policy decisions, maybe stop hosting a free floating petrie dish breeding conspiratorial, distrusting, bullshit.
You want to know why decisions are bad? More than anything else, because they are made in large part based on polling data, and public opinion is significantly influenced by venues like this. And please, don’t tell me otherwise – I’m a lot closer to these decisions than you are and I’ll believe my lying eyes.
I’ve read you for a very long time and you’ve never been shy about playing the “everyone more powerful than me is an evil moron” card. Easy writing, but as you’re seeing, real consequences.
Hugh
Skepticism is good even necessary in the world we live in. But it is not the same as the blank denialism we so often see here where any statement of our government, an institution, or science no matter how well supported can be instantly and categorically dismissed while the story of any grifter on the make no matter how goofy will be treated as gospel. And if anyone should question it, the subject gets changed. We get Werner von Braun and Alzheimers as if we don’t know already our government is imperfect. But its imperfections should not be a license to everyone else’s. Nor does it mean it is lying all the time. Our job should be to pick through this morass, not substitute our pet conspiracy theories for it.
Oakchair
Take away the ad hominems and logical fallacies and Hugh, Willy and NR’s posts become empty.
Hugh
Thanks Oakchair, for illustrating my point. With you it is conspiracy theories always and forever.
Oakchair
Strike Willy from my last comment his posts contain some substance.
Hugh you’re the one saying the only thing that can be listened to is corporate marketing because everything else is a fraud, a hack and in a conspiracy to make drug corporations look bad.
I don’t need a conspiracy to explain your inability to have a good faith discussion that isn’t entirely double standards, and logical fallacies.
study demonstrated that about 10% of patients, who had no visible axillary nodal uptake on PET imaging performed pre-vaccination, exhibited positive axillary lymph nodes after COVID-19 vaccination,
https://www.medpagetoday.com/radiology/diagnosticradiology/92800
Israel Finds Probable Link Between Pfizer Shot, Myocarditis
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-02/israel-finds-probable-link-between-pfizer-shot-and-myocarditis
Good thing people like you decided the “if we don’t test for it, it doesn’t exist and anyone who does is a fraud” strategy.
-Over 75% of those getting vaccines reported sustained muscle, joint or head pain.
-1.2% had a severe adverse reaction requiring some form of intervention.
Totally worth .8% of people not catching Covid but I guess you’ll now say pointing out exactly what the corporate studies say makes one a conspiracy theorist.
Hugh
600,000 Americans are dead because of people like you, Oakchair. You know the “Truth,” and believe every conspiracy, and take responsibility for nothing.
Willy
Would you rather have a scientist telling you about climate change or an MBA? How about a conspiracy theorist who cares about neither?
I know a lot of people who’ve been vaccinated, and heard nothing negative. But I’m feeling sore after my ditch digging exercise, which seems suspicious.
Maybe I’ll just stick to the most reasonable-sounding plausibility, until proven otherwise:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anti-vaccination_movement
Plague Species
Delta Dawn, What’s That Deadly Flower You’ve Got On
NR
What it makes you is ignorant of mathematical concepts like statistical sampling and relative risk, which I see you are proudly displaying here yet again. So, good job with that, I suppose!
KK
> So, compared to a lot of other countries, Australia has done a pretty good job on Covid.
In terms of number of covid dead, yes, but at what cost?
I am not sure Australians have thought this through. Given that the following points are by now pretty well established, 1) covid is here to stay (as a virus it will keep mutating and new variants will emerge on regular basis; however, these new variants will likely be less and less deadly – viruses generally become more contagious and less lethal), 2) current vaccines are non-sterilizing – they don’t prevent you from getting covid and spreading it (they reduce the severity of symptoms), and it is unclear it sterilizing vaccines can be developed, 3) Australia has adopted a 0-covid policy (they go into lockdown if even a single case appears), what is the exit plan?
Seems to me, they will be oscillating between a few-weeks of lockdown and brief opening up, then a case of covid will appear (see points 1-3 above), and then back to lockdown, rinse and repeat.
How and when will this end? Will it ever end?
NL
So much misplaced anger and bitterness, unnecessary confrontation, hurt feelings and confusion. It’ll be Ok, the unvaccinated and ‘conspiracists’ will not end the world — the world will go on, you will get through this… (in all honesty, they are the scapegoats but not your problem or a solution. You can take your anger on them, it may make you feel better but will solve nothing).
Talking about responsibility — some of us run businesses, departments, teams, etc — for some of us this interest in the pandemic is not academic or a curiosity. We can’t really require respirator wearing or distancing, but we can lead by example, by wearing respirators (and better still eye protection) ourselves, providing respirators and goggles to employees free and in abundance, ensuring good ventilation in the building, spread of workers in the office, promptly identifying those who exhibit symptoms and sending them home until they show a negative test (although the trick is to make sure that no one gets infected). Vaccines are one line of defense, but we can and must erect other lines of defense. N95 respirators filter out 99.7% of particles larger than 1um, the size of aerosols.
America is the country of personal responsibility. You and only you are responsible for yourself and the people who entrusted their livelihood to you. Screaming on and bulling others achieves nothing. It is what it is, deal with it. Some of us are preparing to go through the coming wave with minimal disruption of normal operation, while others are looking for scapegoats to blame for their failures.
NL
KK
“In terms of number of covid dead, yes, but at what cost?”
Obviously, whether the cost seems great or not depends on how one values human life. By choosing ‘the economy’ over human life we also send a message to the living that their lives are worthless, not necessarily good for social contract and trust in the ruling elite exactly at the time when the ruling class needs full support of the population (aren’t they there taking on China?).
Letting the virus run free is not an option. It will eat through production, logistics, family like rust and cause ceasing and fragmentation of industry and politics. It will change the population to make it younger, sicker and dumber. It will sap human vitality. Countries that choose this path will quickly find this out. Fixation on and fetishization of the vaccine will have to change to a more multilayered comprehensive approach. The virus is not the only thing that can evolve, people can experiment and create new practices and ways of living. Just like sanitation was critical to defeating the pathogens of early industrial age, air quality will be critical to defeating this virus. Measures to improve indoor and outdoor air quality could then be bundled up with ‘green’ economy. In a way, this may turn out to be good, it will force us to change and take certain things seriously. At present, a majority of people and especially the ruling class and high technocrats are not ready to change, but sooner or later a realization will come that this needs to be taken seriously, and proper measure need to be put in place.
So, the end game is continuous improvement in measures to halt virus spread and eventually to eradicate it.