Category Archives: COVID

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Tomás Ó’Cualáin is very angry that he contracted the virus!

Tomás Ó’Cualáin tells us that he is a physician and a neuroradiologist, and very much a supporter of vaccination against #COVID-19.

Yet, despite his precautions, Dr Ó’Cualáin has contracted the virus, and he’s angry, very angry, about it:

Dr Ó’Cualáin[1]His last name might actually be Folan. has told us that he has done everything, everything! by the book, gotten vaccinated, wearing not just the cloth or cheap masks most people get, but the supposedly more protective N95 masks, avoided unnecessary social contact, and his wife even got vaccinated while she was pregnant, despite the fact that while some health care professionals recommended it, we don’t know yet if the vaccines cause problems with the development of unborn children.[2]Note: the Tweet to the left is actually a screenshot of his original, but it is linked to his original; if you click on it, it will take you to the original.

He continued:

The rules just seem completely made up and arbitrary as to who is allowed to get boosters and when.

Meanwhile peoples lives & their chronic health hangs in the balance.

Don’t even get me started on the people who refuse to get vaccinated. My thoughts on them aren’t fit to post.

Dr Ó’Cualáin tells us that his thoughts on those who refuse the vaccines aren’t fit to post, but, actually, he did post them, in an earlier tweet:

Nurse fired for not being a proponent of science in a science-based field which necessitates that you science.

Makes video about how she is a victim.

Her patients would have been the victims.

Get out of Medicine & Nursing if you don’t science.

You don’t belong here.

Quote Tweet
Gillian McKeith @GillianMcKeith · Oct 30
Nurse fired for not accepting the you know what. Religious exemption denied.. Freedom is everything and you must never give it up #coercion https://twitter.com/HiDearZaki2/status/1454386707378417666/video/1

It would seem that the good physician is gleeful that a nurse got canned for sticking to her principles and beliefs.

It seems that the good doctor really, really doesn’t like unvaccinated people, which turns out to be a bit on the ironic side, given that he retweeted this image. Hypocrisy, anyone?

Now I don’t know what regulations kept the doctor from getting a COVID booster, but that can be what happens when governments are allowed to write the regulations. But we also don’t know from whom he contracted the virus. We already know that vaccinated people can contract the virus — Dr Ó’Cualáin did! — and that vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

But, while I am wryly amused by the doctor’s hypocrisy, his self-attested story tells us something else: despite being vaccinated, despite isolating himself from others as much as possible, despite wearing all of the personal protective equipment that he can, despite doing everything that the ‘experts’ have told us we just have to do, he still contracted the virus.

Yet, throughout the United States, actual cases of COVID-19 have declined dramatically, even though vaccinations have plateaued, even though most people have long since given up wearing masks, and even though many people are simply ignoring mask requests in places in which they are made. Why, it’s almost as though all of the restrictions that have been placed on people haven’t actually worked, haven’t actually done anything to prevent or lessen the spread of the virus.

References

References
↑1 His last name might actually be Folan.
↑2 Note: the Tweet to the left is actually a screenshot of his original, but it is linked to his original; if you click on it, it will take you to the original.
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Mask mandates in the Bluegrass State They don't seem to have made much difference

The Lexington Herald-Leader does not publish a Saturday edition, but at least subscribers can get some updated content on Saturdays. In a story from Friday, we find out that the Bluegrass State’s COVID-19 vaccination rate isn’t as high as previously reported:

    Data duplication error means Kentucky’s COVID vaccination numbers just went down

    By Alex Acquisto | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 9:31 AM EDT

    A major pharmacy chain unintentionally logged a few hundred thousand COVID-19 vaccinations twice, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday, which means many fewer Kentuckians than previously thought have received their first dose.

    Kroger locations across Kentucky, where vaccines are administered through its pharmacies, reported 431,100 duplicate doses to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal vaccine database. Those doses — 252,500 of which are thought to be first doses — will be removed Thursday evening and final numbers will be released Friday.

    “The CDC has confirmed in their system that some COVID vaccination data has been counted twice,” the governor said Thursday in a news conference, adding, “This was not intentional by anyone,” but “What it does to our numbers hurts a little bit.” Three other states have made similar errors, Beshear said, but he declined to say which ones.

There is more at the original, but I will admit to being amused.

Jerry Tipton, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters — and it’s the coverage of University of Kentucky sports which keeps the paper alive — had an article this morning on the mask mandate for entrance into Rupp Arena for UK’s exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan.

    As fans waited for players to make a “Blue Carpet” entrance to this year’s Big Blue Madness, a security guard noticed Pamela Buboltz’s mask had slipped off her nose. The guard motioned for her to pull it up.

    Buboltz made eye contact with an onlooker (blush). Her gaze seemed to convey a mix of annoyance and can-you-believe-this? She shook her head from side to side after adjusting her mask.

    “No one is wearing a mask,” she said when the onlooker asked about the exchange. “Look around. I see five people (wearing masks). They don’t work anyway.”

There’s more at the original, and Mr Tipton cited examples which ran the gamut.

I noted, on Twitter, on October 5th:

Both signs are still up, the one on the right “strongly encourag(ing)” fully vaccinated shoppers to wear masks beside the outer doors, and the one with no option other than to wear masks beside the inner doors. This is at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky. And while there looked to be roughly 80% compliance three weeks ago, yesterday it was down to, by my guesstimate, 50%. Even a few of the employees, along with a non-employee vendor, weren’t wearing masks, or had them below their chins, where they were of no use.

I, of course, did not wear a mask, and there was no one from the store entrance either encouraging people to mask up or inquiring about vaccination status.

But this was the most important story:

    Two school districts in counties near Lexington are lifting their mask mandates

    by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 1:05 PM EDT

    Two Kentucky school districts in counties adjoining Lexington have announced that they are lifting their mask mandates.

    In Nicholasville, Jessamine Superintendent Matt Moore said that masks in school will be optional starting Wednesday.

    Moore said several factors went into making the decision including county data, student and staff cases and quarantines, the number of vaccinations in the community, and the success of the Test to Stay Program, which allows students who test negative for COVID to stay in class even if they have been exposed.

    “I also communicated that, if the data does not trend in the desired direction, JCS would transition back to requiring masks,” Moore said.

    Beginning Monday, Nov. 8, masks and face coverings will be optional for students, staff, and visitors in Madison County Schools at Richmond.

There’s more at the original.

Thanks to the Kentucky General Assembly overriding Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) veto, the decisions on mask mandates in the public schools are the province of local school boards, and not the state. The Governor lamented that he lacked the authority to issue a mask mandate now, and said that, if he had the authority, he would “immediately implement” an indoor mask mandate. The Governor also said that he hoped businesses would put in place mask mandates themselves. Well, Kroger has the signs up doing just that, but Kentuckians are not complying, and the store is not attempting to enforce the requirement.

But the most important sentence in Mrs Spears article is this:

    In recent weeks, Madison County Schools has seen a significant decline in the number of active cases and quarantine cases among students and staff. That decline is in line with the number of cases in the county, officials said in a statement.

If the Madison County schools, which had a mask mandate since the beginning of school, is seeing a decline in cases “in line with the number of cases in the county,” where there is no mask mandate, doesn’t that say that the mask mandates have made no difference?

On September 1st, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford was shocked and appalled that UK football games was inviting Mr Delta to a tailgate party:

    Then UK announced its COVID protocols for the football season at Kroger Stadium in an Orwellian orgy of double speak: The rules say if you are not vaccinated, you have to wear a mask at all times, even outside! Pinky promise you’ll abide by our honor system! You do have to wear a mask in indoor spaces. Maybe. If we check. Wouldn’t you like to see a UK usher knock on the door of a luxury box to ask some poobah UK donor enjoying a nice bourbon to pull up their mask?

    I’m not sure how to rank science versus football in the SEC, but it seems that UK could have followed the lead of a peer like Louisiana State University. The Tiger Stadium can seat 103,000 people and they’re asking for vaccination status or negative test results. Yes, there will be lines, but also less likelihood to turn games into superspreader events. Then again, maybe LSU has a slightly more celebrated football history and can afford to turn away a few irate fans.

Except the ‘superspreader’ event Mrs Blackford feared never happened. As this graph from The New York Times shows, the South has the lowest “average daily cases per capita” of any region in the country.

On September 1st, the day Mrs Blackford published her column, Kentucky had a moving seven day daily average of 4,320 new cases per day; on October 29th, that average had dropped to 1,214. That’s a 71.90% drop, with UK football games featuring only a small percentage of fans wearing masks, with the vaccination numbers lower than previously reported, and with Kentuckians mostly ignoring masking mandates and requests.

Yes, while I am vaccinated, I have been mostly ignoring the ‘safety protocols’, and I have criticized them. But I can also get kind of numbers geeky, and this article was about the actual numbers. What the worry warts have been telling us has simply not been the case!

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Black lives don’t matter in St Louis! "The truth is not always a pleasant thing." -- General 'Buck' Turgidson

Tishaura Jones, the Mayor of St Louis, Missouri, is very, very worried about “gun violence.” “Gun violence” is the euphemism that the left use to describe people shooting and killing each other, without blaming bad people, but blaming inanimate objects, as though firearms simply levitate and fire at people all by themselves. From CNN:

Gunshots rang out as St. Louis mayor was discussing gun violence prevention. She didn’t flinch

By Raja Razek and Jennifer Feldman, CNN | Saturday, October 30, 2021 | Updated: 5:43 EDT

Tishaura Jones, from her campaign website.

Gunshots rang out Friday as St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones was discussing gun violence prevention during a news conference — and she did not flinch.“My son and I fall asleep to the lullaby of gunshots in the distance every night,” Jones said, responding to a question on whether she felt safe. “It’s a part of my life now and that shouldn’t be.”

Before the news conference, Jones and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas were participating in a roundtable on how gun violence is affecting their cities.

Lucas later shared Jones’ sentiments regarding the prevalence of gun violence.

“The sound of gunshots is a regular occurrence in too many areas of my city as well; something I grew to know from youth. Today’s shots reminded us of the reality so many of our sisters, brothers, and babies face each day and the need for change,” Lucas wrote in a tweet.

National gun violence rates were 30% higher during a 13-month pandemic period when compared with the same period the year before, a study published last week in the journal Scientific Reports showed.

“We found a strong association between the Covid-19 pandemic time frame and an increase in gun violence in the U.S. compared to the pre-pandemic period,” wrote the authors from Penn State College of Medicine.

There’s more at the original, but I would also note that the lawlessness following the death of George Floyd, on May 25, 2020, also occurred during the same time frame. How the study ‘corrected’ for that factor is not explained.

However, if there is a “strong association” between the COVID-19 pandemic time frame and an increase in “gun violence”, might we not conclude that the lockdowns and other measures ordered by people like Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) led to that increase in “gun violence”? When you have some people thrown out of work, and others forced to work while wearing masks and under a continual drumbeat of fear, when you have people barred from visiting extended family, churches closed, weddings cancelled, are you not ripping at the entire fabric of society?

But there’s more, and it takes an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me to mention it. While we have noted the skyrocketing homicide rates in our major cities, Mayor Jones’ St Louis provides data most cities do not; the St Louis Metropolitan Police Department breaks down homicides by race. The chart at the left, reproduced by this author from the SLMPD figures, shows that, as of October 29th, 149 out of 161 total murder victims in the Gateway City were black; that’s 92.55%! As far as #BlackLivesMatter is concerned, it seems that black lives don’t matter as far as other black people are concerned, not in St Louis. If Mayor Jones’ “son and (her) fall asleep to the lullaby of gunshots in the distance every night,” maybe it ought to be a problem she recognizes and understands.

The first seven columns of this chart are from the Police Department’s report. The Population column is from the 2020 census figures and the murder rate column is calculated by the current number of homicides, multiplied by 1.20065789, to get homicides in 304 days up to 365, divided by the population, and calculated in the standard fashion, homicides per 100,000 population. The calculations were done via Microsoft Excel functions.

The population figures in the census data I found were not broken down by race and sex, but if we assume that black males make up 49% of the total black population, 63,609, and the annualized number of homicides of black males will wind up at 146 (it works out to 146.480263), black males in St Louis are subject to a homicide rate of 229.53 per 100,000 population! White males, on the other hand, are subject to a homicide rate of ‘just’ 7.78 per 100,000 population.

Mayor Jones got it wrong: the problem in the Gateway City isn’t “gun violence,” but black people, primarily black males, killing each other.

Me? I’m retired, so I can’t be ‘canceled,’ can’t lose my job because someone doesn’t like my political positions. I suppose that some will call this racist, but it’s just simple math; the numbers are the numbers. I could, perhaps, see my website listed as a ‘hate site,’ and lose links that way, but it’s a potential loss I am willing to bear, because I am doing something radical like telling the truth. But, as General ‘Buck’ Turgidson said in Dr Strangelove, “the truth is not always a pleasant thing.” and the left just can’t handle the truth.

The homicide rate is a huge problem, but the left pretending that it’s just “gun violence,” that the availability of guns is the problem, ignore the disparity in “gun violence” between the races. If it was simply the availability of firearms, then the homicide rates between the races should be almost identical; St Louis shows that those rates are widely, widely different.

You cannot address a problem if you are unwilling to properly identify the problem, and the problem is that there is something in the urban black culture in the Gateway City which leads to violent behavior. We’re not allowed to say that, of course, because it is massively politically incorrect, but it is true nevertheless.

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The left really, really don’t understand conservatives Today's American left believe that the needs of the State outweigh the rights of individuals

My good friend, William Teach, wrote something that our friends on the left just really cannot understand:

Despite what you might think from posts, I’m very much pro-vaccine. I’m anti-mandate. I got the vaccine the minute I was eligible to protect myself. And I will get the booster to continue protecting myself, so, this is good news, as I’d like something different from Pfizer if possible.

If Mr Teach is “very much pro-vaccine”, why, so many on the left wonder, doesn’t he believe in requiring everybody to get it?

The New York Times, a much bigger voice on the left, decided to tell us why vaccine mandates are such a good thing:

    Their Jobs Made Them Get Vaccinated. They Refused.

    The willingness of some workers to give up their livelihoods helps explain the country’s struggle to contain the pandemic.

    By Sarah Maslin Nir | October 24, 2021 | Updated: October 25, 2021 | 5:22 PM EDT | Print edition: October 25, 2021, Section A, Page 1

    Under the threat of losing their jobs, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers finally got a Covid-19 vaccine. Teachers, nurses and home health aides accepted their occupations’ mandates. The mass resignations some experts had predicted did not occur, as most workers hurriedly got inoculated.

    Josephine Valdez, 30, a public school paraprofessional from the Bronx, did not.

    Failing to meet the New York City Education Department’s vaccination deadline, Ms. Valdez lost her job this month. She is among the 4 percent of the city’s roughly 150,000 public school employees who did not comply with the order.

There’s more at the original, but 4% of 150,000 employees works out to 6,000 people.

    Ms. Valdez, an anti-vaccine mandate activist who has been involved in protests against vaccines and masks in the city, is also part of a sizable, unwavering contingent across the United States whose resistance to the vaccines have won out over paychecks, or who have given up careers entirely.

Much of the article is devoted to individual stories of the reasons given for some people refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccines.

    Their resistance goes against reams of scientific data showing that the Covid-19 vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective and have reduced hospitalizations and deaths.

    To public health officials, and the majority of Americans, the defiance is unreasonable and incomprehensible. Who would jeopardize their families’ financial security over a shot that has been proven safe and effective at preventing death?

Yup, that’s the liberal line, that “defiance is unreasonable and incomprehensible.” The Times Editorial Board, very much in favor of vaccine mandates, wrote:

    As incursions on bodily autonomy go, this is pretty mild stuff. No one, the Times columnist David Brooks wrote in May, is being asked to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima.

An odd statement, given that the Editorial Board is very, very concerned about bodily autonomy when it comes to abortion, even though getting an abortion kills a living human being. But, of course, to the left, that’s different!

The article author included the worst part:

    And the mandates appear to be working. About 84 percent of adult New Yorkers have now received at least one vaccine dose in the face of state and city mandates, as well as requirements imposed by some private companies.

Translation: under the threat of hunger and homelessness, many people knuckled under and complied, even though they did not want to do so. Many people surrendered in the face of government and its brute force.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was even more gleeful about this:

    In the study, researchers found that people were more likely to say they would get a vaccine if they were told the vaccine was mandated than if they were told they were free to choose to get vaccinated. This held true across racial and ethnic groups. Even people with a tendency toward psychological reactance — people who tend to balk at being told what to do — were more likely to say they’d get the shot if they were told it was mandatory.

The left, who are pro-choice on exactly one thing, are very happy when the government tries to give people no choices. To them, the belief that everyone should be vaccinated translates to everyone must be vaccinated, and they are perfectly willing to use government power to run roughshod over individual rights and choices to achieve their goals. More, they simply don’t understand that conservatives would put people’s individual rights over the goal of getting everyone vaccinated; it is simply outside their conceptual framework.

When it comes to the vaccines, the left simply believe that the needs of the state outweigh the rights of the individual.

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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

You don’t have to be as old as I am to remember when the horrible, evil, authoritarian dictator named Donald Trump was called a fascist by the left. Now that he’s no longer President, it seems that the left have no real problems with fascist and authoritarian control. Nicole Wyglendowski, a special education teacher with the Philadelphia School District is “passionate about the long-lasting effects education has on social justice,” so passionate that she thinks the order, “Ve need to see your papers!” is a great idea!

There’s more at the original.

How concerned is Miss Wyglendowski about COVID-19? In an OpEd published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on March 8, 2021, she provided a photo of herself teaching online, to an empty classroom, and she is, all by herself except for someone to take the picture, in an empty classroom, wearing a face mask!

The first several paragraphs of her newest OpEd piece express concern that the School District of Philadelphia is not doing enough to get booster shots to teachers, which is, I suppose, something a union member would demand, as opposed to going to a clinic or doctor’s office or Walgreen’s Pharmacy and getting on her own initiative.

But then there’s more. Miss Wyglendowski not only strongly supports the School District’s vaccine mandate, but wants to add to it, requiring that teachers get the booster shots now that they have been approved. Considering that, with her first paragraph, in which she stated “we will most likely need additional COVID-19 shots throughout our lifetimes,” it can only mean that the author wants a requirement that all teachers and other school personnel present their papers to keep their jobs.

Her statement was deemed important enough by the editors of the Inquirer that they enlarged it and put it in a text box, which I have screen captured to the left.

    The district acknowledges that the vaccine is a vital layer of protection for educators. It approved a vaccine mandate for its staff on Aug. 25, and staff who do not comply have to complete two COVID-19 tests per week. If the vaccine is so important that it is mandated (which has my full support), then why are boosters not also being mandated as they come out? Anything else is a show of thoughtlessness, a lack of follow-through, and a grim decision for the community.

What does she want, for school personnel to be forced to either get the shot every six months or have a nasal swab jammed up into their sinuses twice a week for the rest of their lives?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, when asked by a reporter if she was creating two classes of people, with the vaccinated receiving special privileges, confirmed, “That is what it is, yep”. It appears that that is what Miss Wyglendowski believes the same thing.

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You know that the #COVID19 #VaccineMandates are nothing but politics when they won’t allow medical exemptions

DeAnn Stephens Cox has been a television reporter for WKYT-TV for 27 years, a long time to be at one station in local news, but, as of now, she’s toast.

THE highlight of my professional career has been my genuine love for the people of Kentucky! YOU make my work every day feel like an expression of friendship. Every day I have been “Out & About” has brought me the honor of meeting some of the kindest Kentuckians!

DeAnn Stephens Cox, from her Facebook page.

But I am writing this post in response to inquiries I have received over the last several hours and an announcement by WKYT-TV, Gray Television that some of you have heard.

Gray required all employees to be vaccinated against COVID. Unfortunately, due to my medical history, my physician has told me I am NOT a candidate for the Covid Vaccination. I have explained my medical history and provided my doctor’s records and her opinion to Gray.

But sadly Gray has terminated my employment instead.

This is NOT about being FOR or AGAINST vaccinations! This is about following my Doctor’s recommendation to NOT get it because my past medical history and current medical issues.

Here’s where I stand: If you want to get the vaccine and you feel that’s best for you and your family, then I say get it!

I also feel that those, like me, should also be accommodated.

Out of respect for everyone’s differing views, I will not be responding to comments on any social media platform.

So after 27 years with WKYT, that’s a WRAP!

But don’t forget, the radio comes in loud and clear on 98.1 The Bull AND you will definitely be seeing me ‘Out & About!’

I’ve been so incredibly blessed by all of your love and support over the years!! Thank you for that!

‘Trust in Jesus with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.’ Proverbs 3:5

I’m listening Lord!! I’m listening!!

I love you guys so very much.

Now, why would Gray Television discharge Mrs Cox for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine when her doctor told he that she was not a safe candidate for it, and she provided her physician’s records to her employer? She wasn’t a public, or even private, anti-vaxxer, but someone with a valid medical reason, and the documentation to prove it. That can’t be anything but political mindlessness, because Gray’s lawyers must surely have warned them that they were making themselves vulnerable to a lawsuit.

Given that all other employees were vaccinated, it would have been simple to provide Mrs Cox with what the law would refer to as a reasonable accommodation. Mrs Cox needs to file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her former employers.

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The increase in ‘breakthrough’ infections

The Philadelphia Inquirer is all about pushing COVID-19 vaccinations and editorially supports vaccine mandates, mask mandates, all sorts of mandates, so it was with some surprise that I read the following:

The latest on breakthrough cases

Plus, vaccine mandates at Penn State and for the Philly Marathon

by Anthony R Wood | Wednesday, October 13, 2021

The gist: The delta variant has been driving case numbers for months, but evidently another obstacle to ending the pandemic is emerging — waning immunity. Available figures indicated that vaccinated people accounted for more than 25% of the COVID-19 positive tests and hospitalizations in Pennsylvania during the last month. And state Department of Health officials said that was in line with national rates. That said, despite the breakthrough cases, data show that the fully vaccinated people are still less likely to get sick with the virus, and less likely to be hospitalized or die if they do get infected.

Vaccines continue to protect against COVID-19, but latest Pa. data show signs of waning effectiveness

The latest Pennsylvania figures are a change from numbers released last month covering the entirety of the vaccination effort. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 4, the state reported just 9% of COVID-19 infections were breakthrough cases, and just 7% of those hospitalized had been vaccinated. By contrast, in the past month, out of 4,989 hospitalizations, almost 1,300 were fully vaccinated people. One factor in driving up those numbers likely would be the fact that more people have been vaccinated.

The author, Mr Wood, then references an article from five days previously:

Vaccines continue to protect against COVID-19, but latest Pa. data show signs of waning effectiveness

The majority of people infected or hospitalized by COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but waning immunity appears to be playing a role in a growing number of vaccinated people ending up sick.

by Jason Laughlin | Friday, October 8, 2021

Pennsylvania’s latest data on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations show vaccines continue to provide a significant defense against the virus, but also includes signs that waning immunity may be one factor in the virus’ spread.

More than a quarter of all COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations reported in the state over the past month were among fully vaccinated people, a number Pennsylvania Department of Health authorities said was in line with national rates. Out of 4,989 hospitalizations, almost 1,300 fully vaccinated people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the past month.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in September that the Pfizer vaccine’s protection against hospitalization waned significantly after four months.

The state’s figures are a big change from the numbers first released last month covering the entirety of the vaccination effort. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 4, the state reported just 9% of COVID-19 infections were breakthrough cases, and just 7% of those hospitalized had been vaccinated. Looking at all data from January to present conceals the recent effect of the highly transmissible delta variant and the vaccines’ reduced effectiveness, both relatively new developments.

The Inquirer report tells us that 26.06% of the hospitalization cases were among those fully vaccinated. You have to be careful reading, because when it states that “Out of 4,989 hospitalizations, almost 1,300 fully vaccinated people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the past month,” a too quick reading might have readers believing that there were “almost 1,300” cases among the vaccinated and 4,989 cases among the unvaccinated. When dealing with numbers, professional journalists have to be careful in how they phrase things, to avoid misleading people.

LFCHD data, October 13, 2021. Click to enlarge.

The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department likes to update its statistics, and has (sort of) good graphs. According to the city government, using CDC data, 74.2% of the county’s population 12 years of age and older are fully vaccinated, with 75.6% of those 18 or older. In a hard to read bar chart, the Health Department stated that about 85 fully vaccinated and 210 unvaccinated/partially vaccinated people were hospitalized with COVID-19 during September, if I’ve managed to read the chart accurately enough. That yields a 28.81% breakthrough rate in hospitalizations. Interestingly, the number of fully vaccinated hospitalizations slightly increased over August, but but significantly decreased among the unvaccinated, from roughly 255 to 210.

LFCHD Covid cases, October 13, 2021. Click to enlarge.

The number of breakthrough cases is increasing significantly, from 1,746 to 1,994, a 14.2% increase, while the non-breakthrough cases decreased from 4,051 to 3538, a 12.66% decrease. The total for Fayette County shows a 36.0% breakthrough rate for September, and the beginning data for October — which may be incomplete — is showing a 37.6% breakthrough case rate.

Overall, numbers are dropping, but now the experts are telling us that, at least with the Pfizer vaccine, virus resistance is showing a significant decline after about four months.

Back to the Inquirer:

The CDC reported people 65 and older are particularly susceptible to waning immunity. The agency authorized boosters of the Pfizer vaccine for vulnerable people and people in some high-risk professions last month.

Johnson acknowledged that people who are not eligible for boosters have been getting them anyway. There isn’t any health risk to doing that, she said, but she didn’t recommend it, saying she didn’t want people to get doses they didn’t need.

It’s too soon to tell, she said, how booster shots are affecting infection and hospitalization rates among the vaccinated.

The risks associated with taking the vaccines are small, smaller than the risks of contracting the virus, but they are not zero. Yet President Biden and the Democrats want to compel people to get vaccinated, even though the vaccinated can contract, and spread, the virus. We don’t know, yet, whether the government will try to force those fully vaccinated to get a booster shot. But we do know one thing: the politics of vaccination have run far ahead of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

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Fully vaccinated Harvard graduate school seeing surge in ‘breakthrough’ #COVID19 cases

You just can’t make up this stuff! 95% of Harvard University’s students, and 96% of its staff, are vaccinated against COVID-19, but this happened anyway. From CNBC:

Harvard Business School temporarily moves some MBA classes online to curb Covid outbreak

by Robert Towey | Monday, September 27, 2021 | 1:19 PM EDT | Updated

  • Harvard Business School is switching to remote learning through Oct. 3 to try to suppress the virus, which is mostly infecting the university’s fully vaccinated graduate students.
  • The university is requesting that students avoid unmasked indoor events, group travel and gathering with anyone outside their households.
  • The business school is also mandating Covid testing three times a week for all students regardless of vaccination status.

Harvard Business School moved all in-person classes for first-year MBA and some second-year students online this week, and increased its Covid-19 testing requirements to try to curb a recent surge in breakthrough cases on campus.

The school, located in Boston, is switching to remote learning through Oct. 3 to try to suppress the virus, which is mostly infecting the university’s fully vaccinated graduate students, according to the institution’s website. Roughly 95% of the university’s students and 96% of its staff are vaccinated. More than 1,000 students are enrolled in the business school’s class of 2023.

“Contact tracers who have worked with positive cases highlight that transmission is not occurring in classrooms or other academic settings on campus,” business school spokesman Mark Cautela said in a statement. “Nor is it occurring among individuals who are masked.”

Really? The virus is completely invisible, save under a microscope, and while ‘contact tracers’ can guesstimate when someone might have contracted the virus, they don’t know and can’t know. They are crediting their safety protocols, and apparently blaming other situations, but they don’t actually know anything.

Cautela added that the university is requesting that students avoid unmasked indoor events, group travel and gathering with anyone outside their households.

There’s more at the original.

The article points out that facemasks had been mandatory in all Harvard indoor settings, which would include all classes.

So, in a situation in which as high a percentage of the population as one could ever reasonably expect to be vaccinated is vaccinated, and in which everyone is and has been required to wear face masks indoors, the virus is still spreading. From the oh-so-serious Harvard Crimson:

‘We Are a Complete Outlier’: HBS Moves Some Classes Online Amid Covid-19 Outbreak

By Claire H. Guo and Christine Mui, Crimson Staff Writers | Monday, September 27, 2021

Harvard Business School moved classes for all first-year and some second-year MBA students online for a week beginning Monday, following a spike in Covid-19 cases the school attributed to off-campus social gatherings.

In an email to all MBA students on Thursday, four HBS administrators wrote that the school has counted 121 cases among MBA students since July 1, with close to 60 students in isolation that day. First-year students made up roughly 75 percent of those positive cases.

“We are a complete outlier among Harvard schools in our numbers. MBA students comprise roughly 9% of the student population at the University, but have accounted for more than two-thirds of total student cases in September. Our positivity rate is 12 times that of the rest of Harvard,” wrote HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar, Executive Dean for Administration Angela Q. Crispi, Executive Director of the MBA and Doctoral Programs Jana P. Kierstead, and Senior Associate Dean Jan W. Rivkin.

The University’s Covid-19 dashboard shows that over the past seven days, 60 of the 74 positive reported cases have been graduate students.

“These distressing figures are so high that they have attracted the scrutiny of local public health officials. Our community can and must do better,” the email continued, urging students to halt all unmasked, indoor social activities.

There’s more at the original, including the statement that Business School administrators wrote that there’s something about the way that HBS personnel interact that makes the people therein more likely to contract the virus. As in, acting like human beings?

“We sincerely believe that every student group is one event away from an outbreak cluster like those we’ve begun to see,” the school leaders wrote Thursday.

Translation: don’t act like human beings, don’t interact with each other, and for God’s sake, don’t fornicate.

We have been told that vaccination is the way out of this polidemic[1]A polidemic is a pandemic with a strong political component. No, don’t look it up; I coined the word myself., yet, in an almost fully vaccinated community, they are seeing ‘breakthrough’ cases among the fully vaccinated, who have been interacting primarily with other fully vaccinated people. The vaccinated are transmitting the virus to the vaccinated!

If, in a 95% vaccinated community, in which indoor mask wearing is mandated, the virus is spreading, one has to ask: what more can they do, mandate masks outdoors as well, and require everyone to stay two meters apart? Thank God that the General Assembly restricted Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) authority on this, because he’d probably try to impose such restrictions! He has already whined, “If I had the ability to do it right now, we would have a masking order when you are in public and indoors.”

Yet, in a nearly fully vaccinated population, entirely populated by neat, clean Harvard graduate students, with that public and indoor mask mandate in place, the virus is still spreading. Why, it’s almost as though everything the experts have been telling us has been wrong!

References

References
↑1 A polidemic is a pandemic with a strong political component. No, don’t look it up; I coined the word myself.
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Aren’t reporters supposed to ask relevant question?

I had previously thought that reporters, at least good reporters, weren’t supposed to simply accept what they have been told by government, but to ask questions. Apparently, I was wrong about that.

Only a third of Philly city employees and half of Pa. state health workers have reported being vaccinated

City officials believe the number vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting workers who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards.

by Justine McDaniel and Erin McCarthy | Friday, September 24, 2021 | 5:41 PM EDT

Most city and state employees who were asked to get vaccinated against the coronavirus have not yet reported doing so, according to numbers released this week.

Only 31% of Philadelphia city employees have provided proof of vaccination as of this week, according to the city, though all were told to be immunized against the coronavirus by Sept. 1 or begin double-masking at work.

Translation: the rules aren’t being enforced. If people had to start double-masking, starting over three weeks ago, if they were not vaccinated, those who were already vaccinated would have taken the effort to get their vaccine cards entered into the system, to keep from having to wear that repugnant face diaper!

And just under 50% of Pennsylvania’s 23,000 workers in health and congregate care facilities had provided proof of vaccination as of Friday, said a Wolf administration spokesperson. The state mandated that state health and congregate care workers be fully vaccinated by Sept. 7 or undergo weekly testing.

Odd how the Inquirer didn’t mention that all health care workers in the city had to be fully vaccinated by October 15th. While there were potential exemptions for medical or religious reasons, there was no ‘get tested’ option.

Philadelphia officials believe the number of city workers vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting employees who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards. In Philadelphia, 69% of all adults are fully vaccinated, which would indicate the rate among the city’s more than 25,000 workers is likely higher than reported.

Is this a reasonable belief? Since city workers face greater and more annoying restrictions — double-masking and weekly testing — wouldn’t those who were vaccinated but hadn’t filed their cards have done so, to avoid those odious restrictions?  I suppose it could be true .  .  . if supervisors were not enforcing the masking/testing requirements.

As for Philadelphia workers, those who aren’t vaccinated are required to wear a cloth face mask over a surgical mask while working. The city has lists identifying all such employees; Garrow said supervisors are notified and required to ensure employees are double-masking.

There was much more to the article than I quoted, but nowhere in the article did the reporters raise the question I asked: why would already vaccinated workers not report that, to rid themselves of the doubled masks? Nor did I see any questioning of how strictly supervisors were enforcing the orders; would unvaccinated supervisors have been willing to ignore the requirements for their subordinates, so that they could get away with it as well?

Good reporters would have taken the information they were given, and then head out onto the streets, to check out city work crews and see for themselves. As far as I can tell, that did not happen, or, if it did, such was never mentioned in the article.