But only if nations go full Woke

COVID-19 health emergency could be over this year, WHO says

The worst of the coronavirus pandemic — deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns — could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said “we may never end the virus” because such pandemic viruses “end up becoming part of the ecosystem.”

But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.

WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.

See, it’s so easy. All these rich countries which spent oodles of money developing vaccines, and already give a lot of aid in money, goods, and services, should simply give up their vaccines (which are already being sent in quantity to 3rd world shitholes developing nations). Further, it’s mostly 1st world nations, and some 2nd world ones, that are getting nailed with Omicron right now, and the vaccines have been shown to not stop infections. The 3rd world is mostly safe.

Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic — involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.

“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.

But, being still in pandemic gives some in government more power to control citizens.

Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the “enormous urgency” of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being “hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.”

You know, it’s interesting that none of them are aiming any barbs at China, which released this virus, and is putting out completely BS reports on infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among their citizens.

In a separate press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant “continues to sweep the world,” adding there were 18 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week.

China is simply absolved. How about demanding China gives their vaccines to the developing world?

Remember 2020, and how various state Governors were trying to order people not to gather for Thanksgiving? We previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) orders to the people of the Commonwealth that “Beginning on Friday, November 20, 2020, and lasting through Sunday, December 13, 2020:

• All restaurants and bars will close to indoor dining services. Outdoor dining is still allowed, with some limitations.
• Gyms are limited to 33% capacity, and no group classes or indoor games are allowed. Masks are required.
• Indoor gatherings should be limited to two families, not exceeding a total of eight people.
• Attendance at wedding and funerals is limited to 25 people.

I am proud to say that the Pico family broke that indoor gathering limit for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

As latest COVID-19 surge grips the Philly area, doctors warn: Stay home for New Year’s

Hospitalizations of children are rising in Philadelphia, cases in New Jersey are skyrocketing, and Delaware plans to declare a state of emergency with strained hospitals.

by Justine McDaniel and Jason Laughlin | Thursday, December 30, 2021 | 6:20 PM EST

The number of people being infected with the coronavirus continued to break records in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as the country crawled toward the new year, with the two states combined logging more than 43,000 cases in one day, according to numbers reported Thursday for the previous day.

Hospitalizations of children were also rising in Philadelphia, mirroring a national increase. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has had 10 to 25 inpatients a day with COVID-19 this month, compared to five to 10 in November.

And Delaware’s hospitalization rate jumped to the third-highest in the nation, according to New York Times data analysis, though the state’s daily case and hospitalization totals remain lower than those of larger states.

Starting Monday, Delaware will be under a state-of-emergency declaration, which will allow the state to mobilize National Guard troops for medical care and move patients between facilities, Gov. John Carney said Thursday.

“There’s a really simple solution to this dilemma — if you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, be careful and wear a mask when you’re indoors,” Carney said at a briefing.

Of course, we already know that vaccinations only lessen, not eliminate, the chances of becoming infected with the older variants of the virus, and when it comes to Omicron, vaccination seems to reduce the intensity of the disease once the virus has been contracted, but does not have any power at all to prevent contracting or spreading the virus. If you’re not vaccinated, going out and getting the jab now means that you won’t be “fully vaccinated” until around St Valentine’s Day.

Public health officials said people should avoid New Year’s Eve gatherings and take precautions to minimize risk — including wearing a mask, even at outdoor events — if they decide to socialize. The Philadelphia Health Department strongly recommends residents not gather with other households.

I have no problem with people making recommendations; our freedom of speech covers that. But it seems that Our Betters have learned something: the American people don’t like being told what to do, and they aren’t going to obey illegal and unconstitutional orders.

In January of 2021, the Coronavirus vaccines were first being used, under emergency authorization, with only the elderly, teachers and health care workers eligible to get the shot. According to CDC data at 6:00 AM EST on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 a total of 205,420,745 Americans had been fully vaccinated, or 61.9% of the population. The Washington Post reported, on December 19^th, that some 60.2 million booster shots had been administered, meaning that roughly 29.3% of the fully vaccinated population have gotten the third jab.

How is it, then, that the number of new cases is now higher than before the vast majority of the population had been vaccinated?

The U.S. hits a record number of new COVID cases

by Deepa Shivaram | December 29, 2021 | 3:01 PM ET

The omicron variant is spreading rapidly all over the country, but hospitalization and death rates remain relatively low.

The seven-day average of COVID-19 cases topped 280,000 this week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. It’s a record number of new cases in the country; the last time the number of cases hit a peak close to that was January.

Public health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky say the new variant appears to be less severe than ones in the past but still emphasize the need to follow public health protocols like getting vaccinated and wearing a mask to curb the spread of the virus.

Note that the reference is to an article which tells the reader that cloth masks are almost useless, and that people need “to upgrade to an N95 or similar high-filtration respirator when you’re in public indoor spaces.”

Data from the White House provided at a briefing Wednesday shows the seven-day average of hospitalizations is about 9,000 per day — which is a 14% increase in hospitalizations from last week. However, there was a 60% rise in cases over the same time frame. The seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths is down from last week, at about 1,100 deaths per day.

Officials say the difference is in part because omicron causes less severe symptoms for those who are vaccinated and especially for those who are boosted.

Simply put, getting the wholly mischaracterized ‘vaccines’ does not seem to prevent anyone from contracting, or spreading, the virus, but does appear to lessen the seriousness of coronavirus symptoms. In effect, it means that taking the ‘vaccine’ does nothing to lessen community spread, but does help the individual who does contract the virus.

So, naturally, some people want to change the definition of “fully vaccinated.” From The New York Times:

As Omicron Spreads, Officials Ponder What It Means to Be ‘Fully Vaccinated’

The contagious new variant has companies and government officials wondering whether Americans can really be considered vaccinated without booster shots.

By Emily Anthes and Noah Weiland | Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | Updated 7:57 PM EST

Goldman Sachs and Jeffries, the investment banks, are demanding that employees get booster shots. The University of Oregon and other institutions are requiring that students and staff members get boosters. New York State has said it plans to stop considering residents fully vaccinated unless they’ve gotten the shots.

As the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads from coast to coast, corporations, schools, governments and even sports leagues are reconsidering what it means to be “fully vaccinated.”

Now federal health officials, too, have taken on the question. Although top policymakers want to encourage Americans to get three doses, some would like to avoid changing the definition of a phrase that has become pivotal to daily life in much of the country, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview on Tuesday that she and other health officials were “working through that question” now.

Further down:

Redefining “fully vaccinated” could lead to enormous logistical challenges, as even supporters of the idea concede, and it is likely to incite political backlash. Tens of millions of Americans who thought of themselves as vaccinated might discover that without boosters, they could lose access to restaurants, offices, concerts, events, gatherings — any place where proof of vaccination is required to enter.

Moreover, the change risks undermining trust in public health officials after two years of shifting recommendations, experts said. Some Americans may feel that the goal posts have been moved again, and too suddenly.

You think?

We have already noted that more and more places, notably in large, Democrat-controlled urban areas, have been imposing requirements that indoor patrons at several types of venues must show their papers, their vaccination records, to be allowed entry. Now, other government “officials” want to change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to force millions to comply with boosters, which have shown no measurable effect on reducing transmission of the virus, just to eat at a restaurant.

The left have changed their tactics. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin exemplified the issue, trying to divide the nation into two groups, the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and proclaiming, “The problem, as always is the case, is the unvaccinated.” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that it was no longer science, but politics, saying, “It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.”

The science had become the political science!

The authoritarians are learning, to their dismay, that Americans don’t take well to dictatorship, and they are seeing, both in the United States and abroad, broad resistance to these mandates. Reduce the isolation from ten days to five, and maybe, maybe! they can get fewer people to resist.

Sort of like just fifteen days to flatten the curve, right?

The actual numbers, with daily new cases having set another record, would indicate a nationwide shutdown was in order, but “they” know that such an order would never be obeyed again. So, now the elites have to try something, to show that they are Doing Something, but have to temper it with the knowledge that the people will take only so much.

In the British patriotic song Rule Britannia, one of the lines of the chorus is “Britons never, never will be slaves!” Our fearless leaders are now discovering, to their utter dismay, that Americans never, never will be slaves!

The lovely Alyssa Milano, whose most notable work was as Phoebe Halliwell in Charmed, isn’t exactly a go to source for scientific information, but her tweet on Boxing Day, reproduced as an image file to the right — you can click on the image, and it will take you to her original tweet — is instructive.

“90% of the people I know have covid,” she said, and “100% are triple vaxxed & thankfully they have mild symptoms.” While one can’t really attribute her statistics to more than an impression — did she really count up the people she knows, which, presumably, number in the thousands, and take the statistics from them on whether or not they have the WuFlu? — impressions do stem from reality. On Monday, December 27^th, according to a screen chyron on the NFL Network, 106 players were put on the league’s Reserve/COVID list.

This chart is from Sharp Football Analysis, and you can click on it to see the full sized version, but the upshot is that, in just two weeks, the number of players on COVID restrictions has shot up from fewer than 50 to 275, all in a league in which 94.6% of the players, and almost 100% of other league personnel, are fully vaccinated. As we previously noted, 97% of NBA players are fully vaccinated, but the NBA is seeing serious player losses to COVID restrictions.

The evidence is becoming more and more clear every day: vaccination does not prevent either the infection or transmission of the virus, at least not the Omicron variant, and the readily available cloth or paper masks do virtually nothing to prevent transmission, either. Even the claims that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines do help prevent infections are based not on real world studies, but laboratory tests:

Most evidence so far is based on laboratory experiments, which do not capture the full range of the body’s immune response, and not from tracking the effect on real-world populations.

And now, as William Teach noted, President Biden has thrown in the towel, saying that there is no federal government solution to COVID-19.

Joe Biden Off to the Beach After Admitting ‘No Federal Solution’ on Coronavirus

by Charlie Spiering | Monday, December 27, 2021

President Joe Biden left Monday for his beach vacation in Delaware after admitting in a video call with U.S. governors that there was no federal solution to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Thank you very much. Look, there is no federal solution,” Biden said as he began speaking to the governors. “This gets solved at a state level.”

The president appeared with his coronavirus team on the artificial White House video conferencing set. He indicated that only governors could end the pandemic by leading the charge.

“It ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road,” Biden said, referring to state government. “My message to the governors is simple. If you need something, say something.”

He said the omicron variant of the virus is a “source of concern” but urged Americans not to panic.

The president acknowledged the long lines for people trying to get coronavirus tests before the Christmas holiday. “Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do,” he said.

He claimed that if he had known there would be a shortage he would have acted.

“It’s not enough. It’s clearly not enough,” Biden said. “If we had known, we would have gone harder, quicker if we could have.”

There’s more at the original.

So, what does this mean? It means that drunk-with-power Democrats like Governor Katy Hochul of New York, and many big-city mayors, will try to force vaccine mandates, even though vaccination does not seem to prevent the spread of the virus, and indoor mask mandates, which also do not seem to lessen the spread, because they want to be seen as Doing Something, and because too many of the sheeple have acquiesced to authoritarian dictates, because they have allowed fear to dominate their lives. But it appears that we are going to be living with some variant of the China Virus for a long time. The greater danger is not to our health, but to our freedom and liberty. When people tolerate tyranny, for our own good, don’t you know, all they get is more tyranny.