Tag Archives: #COVID19

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To the surprise of absolutely no one, Philly is reinstating its indoor mask mandate The question is: who will obey it?

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

As we predicted on Aprilth, authoritarians gotta authoritarian, and the City of Brotherly Love is reinstating its indoor mask mandate. But there’s a catch:

    Why Philly is bringing back its indoor mask mandate

    by Jason Laughlin | Monday, April 11, 2022 | 2:50 PM EDT

    By resuming the indoor mask mandate, city officials hope to stave off another surge in hospitalizations and deaths that could accompany the current case increase that appears to be caused by the BA.2 omicron subvariant.

    “If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations and a wave of deaths, it’ll be too late for many of our residents,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said during a briefing Monday.

Why, that almost sounds like ‘two weeks to flatten the curve!’

    Bettigole noted that 750 Philadelphians died in three months over the winter during the omicron wave.

    “We don’t know if the BA.2 variant in Philadelphia will have the kind of impact on hospitalizations and deaths that we saw with the original omicron variant this winter,” Bettigole said. “I suspect that this wave will be smaller than the one we saw in January.”

    Hospitalizations may be the key in determining how long the masks will stay on, Bettigole said.

    “This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic, to put our masks on until we have more information on the severity of this variant.”

But there’s a catch:

    The mandate announced today won’t go into effect until April 18, city health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said, to give businesses time to adjust. The move came amid rising COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia in recent weeks.

So, the virus will go ahead and wait a week? If it’s serious enough to infringe on people’s rights, then shouldn’t the mask mandate be reinstated immediately?

The Inquirer article was illustrated with this photo of a worker, a masked worker, removing a “Face Coverings Required” sign just last month; the city rescinded its indoor mask mandate on March 1st, just six weeks ago. After over a year and a half of the mandate, and only six weeks of it being gone, just how much adjustment is needed? Isn’t virtually every indoor business in the city already very familiar with the protocols?

In January, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” Why, I have to ask, is the city imposing restrictions on people when the supposed experts are telling us that it doesn’t matter, almost everyone is going to contract the virus?

As has been the case in the past, the people who will have to enforce the mask mandate are going to be cute college girls working as hostesses in restaurants, shop keepers and bodega owners. The hoitiest and toitiest restaurants in Center City will put up their signs and make the waitresses mask again, but the small cell phone shops and payday loan sharks and bodegas in North Philadelphia? The last thing that they’re going to want to do is piss off an unmasked customer who’s probably packing heat!

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COVID restrictions are for the plebeians, not the Patricians The autocrats who demanded that you mask up partied hearty without them, even though their servants had to wear face diapers

My good friend — well, good internet friend, anyway; I’ve never actually met him — William Teach noted with some amusement that the hoitiest of the toitiest got together for a Washington party, and BAM! a bunch of them contracted the virus:

    Oops: Big COVID Outbreak From Gridiron Club Dinner

    by William Teach | April 8, 2022 | 6:45 AM EDT

    There are all the people who screeched at people for refusing to be OK with masking and lockdowns and such, who were in favor of government tyranny:

      After Gridiron Dinner, a covid outbreak among Washington A-list guests

      Raimondo, Schiff, Castro, Garland and several other officials or journalists tested positive after the elite Gridiron dinner

      By Paul Farhi, Roxanne Roberts and Yasmeen Abutaleb | Wednesday, April 6, 2022 |Updated: Wednesday, April 6, 2022 | 5:29 PM EDT

      More than a dozen guests who attended Saturday night’s Gridiron Club dinner — including two Cabinet members, two members of Congress and a top aide to Vice President Harris — have since tested positive for coronavirus, sending ripples of anxiety through a city on the cusp of restarting its traditional social whirl after a two-year pause.

      A-list guests were asked to show proof of vaccination but not negative tests, and many mingled freely without masks at the dinner at the downtown Renaissance Washington Hotel.

      But by Wednesday, Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo had announced they had tested positive. They were soon followed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who requested a test Wednesday afternoon after learning he may have been exposed — and discovered that he, too, carried the virus. Thus far, none have reported serious illness.

Gina Raimondo Moffit, as you may recall, when she was Governor of Rhode Island, ordered checks first of all New Yorkers, and then all people from out of state, at the beginning of the COVID-19 scare. She even sent the National Guard door-to-door in coastal resort areas to order out-of-state visitors to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Mrs Moffit, as you might have guessed, grew up in privilege.

Gina Marie Raimondo was born in 1971 in Smithfield, Rhode Island, where she later grew up. Of Italian descent, she is the youngest of Josephine (Piro) and Joseph Raimondo’s three children. Her father, Joseph (1926–2014), made his career at the Bulova watch factory in Providence, Rhode Island. He became unemployed at 56 when the Bulova company decamped operations to China, shuttering the factory in Providence. Raimondo was a childhood friend of U.S. Senator Jack Reed. Raimondo graduated from LaSalle Academy,[1]Current tuition for Grade 12: $16,625. While financial aid is available for ninth through twelfth grades, it is not for middle schoolers. This isn’t a school for poor people. She did veto a … Continue reading in Providence, as one of the first girls allowed to attend the Catholic school, where she was valedictorian.

Raimondo graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in economics from Harvard College in 1993, where she served on the staff of The Harvard Crimson. While at Harvard, she resided in Quincy House. She attended New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where she received a Master of Arts (MA) degree and Doctor of Philosophy in 2002 in sociology. Her thesis was on single motherhood and supervised by Stephen Nickell and Anne H. Gauthier while she was a postgraduate student of New College, Oxford. Raimondo received her Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1998.

Following her graduation from law school, Raimondo served as a law clerk to federal judge Kimba Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Later, Raimondo acted as senior vice president for fund development at the Manhattan offices of Village Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and backed by Bain Capital and Highland Capital Groups.

Raimondo returned to Rhode Island in 2000 to co-found the state’s first venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital. Point Judith subsequently relocated its offices to Boston, Massachusetts. At Point Judith, Raimondo served as a general partner covering health care investments; she retains some executive duties with the firm.

A strong advocate of authoritarian COVID-19 restrictions, Mrs Moffit apparently saw those restrictions as being for Other People, not for her.

Mrs Moffit was hardly the only one. The Washington Post original lists many of the guests, and if the Post’s paywall stops you from reading it there, Mr Teach included the link to the same story on Yahoo!, which is free.[2]Yeah, I’m paying for a subscription to The Washington Post.

    Tom DeFrank, a contributing columnist for National Journal and president of the Gridiron Club, said that as of Wednesday afternoon, the group knew of 14 guests who had tested positive.

    “There is no way of being certain about when they first contracted covid,” he said in a statement. “But they did interact with other guests during the night and we have to be realistic and expect some more cases.”

    About half of the cases appeared to have been clustered at three tables, he said, and the club was taking steps to notify anyone who sat next to or across from the infected guests.

    How many of the infections began at the dinner and how serious the outbreak will prove to be remains unclear. Many of the guests have jobs that require regular testing that catches some asymptomatic cases. Castro and Raimondo said they are suffering only mild symptoms while Schiff said he is “feeling fine” — and touted the value of vaccinations and boosters.

    But the outbreak at the Gridiron — where some of the comic skits featured actors dressed as the coronavirus, like large, green bouncing balls with red frills — highlights the personal risk-benefit balancing act much of the country will be negotiating as the pandemic subsides.

Mr Teach again:

    Not that wearing a mask really would have made much difference, but, these are the Elites, so, even if masking was required, only the servants would have been required to wear one. . . . .

    Who wants to be they had no masks on? Oh, wait, what’s this?

      The dinner was supposed to reflect a return to normalcy after being canceled the past two years because of the pandemic. Few guests wore masks or observed social distancing, according to people in attendance. Only the serving staff was consistently masked throughout the evening. While organizers asked attendees to show their vaccination cards at the door, there was no requirement to be tested.

    Who’s surprised that the peons were forced to mask up?

Emphasis Mr Teach’s.

Here we had an “A-List” event — my invitation was apparently lost in the mail! — in which everybody was required to show their papers, their vaccination cards[3]Yes, I have been vaccinated, but I absolutely refuse to carry my vaccination records, and anyone who demands to see my papers, “Papiere, bitte,” will receive an unpolite response., though not required to show the results of a recent test — I wonder if the latter included the servants — yet still the virus apparently propagated from vaccinated person to vaccinated person.

And now, as I predicted three days ago, The Philadelphia Inquirer is projecting that the City of Brotherly Love will reimpose its indoor mask mandate:

    Philly’s indoor mask mandate likely to return next week, as city COVID-19 cases creep upward

    Masks may soon again be needed in public indoor spaces next week, according to a city official.

    by Felicia Gans Sobey, John Duchneskie, and Jason Laughlin | Wednesday, April 6, 2022

    Philadelphia is poised to reinstate its indoor mask mandate next week as COVID-19 cases climb again.

    An Inquirer analysis showed the most current COVID case counts and the percent increase of cases both meet the city’s benchmarks that would trigger the return of the mask mandate for public indoor spaces. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health agreed with the analysis.

    “What we see and know is cases are rising,” said James Garrow, a spokesperson for the department. “People should start taking precautions now.”

    The Inquirer analysis isn’t predictive, and it is possible that key metrics triggering the return of the mask mandate could decrease by Monday. It’s “certainly possible,” Garrow said, but the city has not yet reached the peak of the case increase that appears to be building now. The city will review Monday’s hospitalization numbers and the last seven days of case counts to decide whether to change policies.

    The COVID data are not alarming enough to warrant an immediate change in the city’s mask policies, though, he said. The city has said it would announce changes to its COVID safety requirements on Mondays, and an announcement on whether mask requirements would return would likely come then, Garrow said. If the COVID metrics stay around where they are now, or increase, the health department could choose not to resume mandating masks indoors, he said, but it’s unlikely.

There’s more at the original, but I have to ask: after five weeks of freedom from the odious mask mandate, just how many Philadelphians will obey a new one? After all, even Dr Anthony Fauci is predicting that almost everyone will contract the virus anyway:

    FDA Head: ‘Most people are going to get COVID’

    By Ralph Ellis | January 13, 2022

    With a record number of COVID-19 cases being reported, two top U.S. health officials made a stark prediction on Tuesday: Most Americans eventually will be infected with the virus.

    “I think it’s hard to process what’s actually happening right now, which is most people are going to get COVID,” FDA acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.

    Woodcock had been asked if the United States needed to change its COVID strategy. She said people need to accept the reality of widespread infection so the nation can focus on maintaining “continuity of operations” in crucial sectors.

    “What we need to do is make sure the hospitals can still function, transportation, you know, other essential services are not disrupted while this happens,” she said. “I think after that will be a good time to reassess how we’re approaching this pandemic.”

    Anthony Fauci, MD, chief White House medical adviser, said COVID will infect “just about everybody.”

    “Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody,” Fauci said in a virtual fireside chat with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

There’s more at the original, but note: this was prior to the BA.2 variant making its appearance.

The obvious question becomes: if almost everybody is going to contract the virus anyway, why should we impose onerous personal restrictions on people? Full disclosure: despite an illness last December, which my wife, an RN who works in a hospital treating COVID patients, said appeared to be COVID, I tested negative for the virus twice around that illness; either the tests were inaccurate, or I had some other bug. If I have ever had COVID, I was completely asymptomatic.

References

References
↑1 Current tuition for Grade 12: $16,625. While financial aid is available for ninth through twelfth grades, it is not for middle schoolers. This isn’t a school for poor people. She did veto a bill that would have harmed charter schools in Rhode Island.
↑2 Yeah, I’m paying for a subscription to The Washington Post.
↑3 Yes, I have been vaccinated, but I absolutely refuse to carry my vaccination records, and anyone who demands to see my papers, “Papiere, bitte,” will receive an unpolite response.
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Philadelphia, which ended its indoor mask mandate on March 2, is looking at a new one

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

We have noted Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole and her desire to control, control, control people’s lives. We pointed out that even as countries around the world, and many American cities and states were loosening or dropping restrictions on people that had been imposed due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typo — the lovely Dr Bettigole, on Groundhog Day, said that Philadelphia is likely “several months” away from being able to drop its current restrictions.

Exactly four weeks later, on Wednesday, March 2nd Philadelphia ended its indoor mask mandate, and the Commissioner was forced to say said that she hoped that there is “enough immunity in the city that we really are at an end point.”

Now, not quite five weeks later, we find this:

With COVID-19 cases inching up in Philadelphia, city urges a return of masks indoors

As cases start to rise, Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said “now is the time to start taking precautions.”

by Rob Tornoe | Tuesday, April 5, 2022

COVID-19 cases have once again started to increase in Philadelphia, and health officials are encouraging residents to consider wearing masks indoors in public spaces.

As of Monday, Philadelphia was averaging 94 new COVID-19 cases per day over the past two weeks, an increase of more than 50% over the past 10 days, according to the city’s health department. Test positivity rate has also inched up to 3.1% from a low of 2% in the beginning of March.

The city said 48 patients with COVID-19 are being treated in Philadelphia hospitals, five of whom are on ventilators.

Also see: William Teach: Raleigh To Charge Un-Vaxxed Employees $50 A Month Health Surcharge

The slight uptick in cases comes as Europe has seen a wave of new infections brought on by a subvariant of omicron — known as BA.2 — which now accounts for nearly three-quarters of new COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to the CDC.

“As we see more cases of COVID-19 in the city, everyone’s risk goes up. That means that now is the time to start taking precautions,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a statement. “It’s not required yet, but Philadelphians should strongly consider wearing a mask while in public indoor spaces.”

Philadelphia’s COVID-19 response level remains “all clear,” meaning there are no restrictions or vaccination requirements across the city. The city will require masks in indoor public places if two or more of the following are true:

  • Average new cases per day are more than 100 (currently at 94)
  • Hospitalizations are more than 50 (currently at 48)
  • Cases have increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days

There’s more at the original, but it seems inevitable: Philadelphia will reimpose its mask mandate, and Dr Bettigole will be happy and dancing, though she might at least do the latter behind closed doors, where the people can’t see her glee. I do have to wonder, though: after two years of the city’s bovine feces, just how many Philadelphians will obey a new mask mandate?

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Fear is the career killer

A libertarian styling herself Freckled Liberty on Twitter has been adamantly opposed to taking the COVID-19 vaccine, and mocking, daily, Joe Biden’s statement, “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated — for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.” She has been counting down, every day, ‘day 88 of unmasked and unvaxxed “winter of severe illness and death’: still not vaxxed, still not masked, still not ill, still not dead. 💃🏼”

Now it seems that her friends and family won’t attend her wedding ceremony, because they’re just too scared. If her friends and family are vaccinated, and can obviously choose to wear N95 masks if they feel the need, there’s just no need to be fearful, but after almost two years of fear messaging, it seems that a lot of people have internalized it. From The New York Times:

    As Offices Open and Mask Mandates Drop, Some Anxieties Set In

    Using local guidelines, many companies are loosening Covid safety rules, leaving workers to navigate masking and social distancing on their own.

    By Emma Goldberg and Lananh Nguyen | Friday, March 18, 2022

    Employers are embracing a workplace atmosphere reminiscent of prepandemic times — elevators jammed, snack tables brimming, face coverings optional — even as a new subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus spurs concerns about health and safety. Across the country, office occupancy has hit a pandemic high, 40 percent, reached just once before in early December, at the same time that indoor mask mandates drop.

    Also see: William Teach: NY Times Is Super Excited By Things We’ll Keep In Post Pandemic Life

    After several false starts in calling workers back, company leaders now seem eager to press forward. A flurry of return-to-office plans have rolled out in recent weeks, with businesses including American Express, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft calling some workers back to their desks. Many of those companies followed state and local governments in easing Covid-19 restrictions, arguing that ending mask mandates could make workplaces more pleasant. But some workers, especially those with compromised immunity or unvaccinated children, feel uncomfortable with the rush back to open floor plans.

    “Masks have created a real psychological barrier to getting back to office culture,” said Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City, a business group. “As long as things are going in a positive direction with Covid, I think the relaxation of mandates will work for the vast majority of people. As soon as we see a reversal, I think we’ve got trouble.”

    The Partnership’s January survey of New York City employers found that 38 percent expected to have more than half of their workers back in the office on an average weekday by late March. As employees come back, they’re facing a patchwork of Covid safety protocols. Just one-quarter of U.S. workers are covered by vaccine mandates in the workplace, according to Gallup data from last month.

    This has left many workers to navigate masking on their own, making Covid safety measures a matter of office etiquette rather than protocol. Some have negotiated new remote work arrangements with their bosses as rules have eased, or even left their companies in search of jobs at workplaces that made them feel safer.

It would seem obvious: if a worker is afraid that he will contract the virus, he can voluntarily get vaccinated, as most people are, for free, and he can continue to wear a face mask, even an N-95 mask.

That palpable fear seems almost measurable, given that 38% of NYC employers anticipate having more than half of their office workers at heir desks by the end of March, when that number should be 100% anticipate having 100% of their workers back. If, as the Times stated, just a quarter of workers were covered by vaccine mandates on their jobs, such still doesn’t mean that most workers aren’t vaccinated. From USA Facts:

  • In New York (state), 17,370,136 people or 89% of the state has received at least one dose.
  • Overall, 14,759,477 people or 76% of New York’s population are considered fully vaccinated.
  • Additionally, 6,556,874 people or 34% of New York’s population have received a booster dose.

From the more sensible New York Post:

    When it comes to masking, New Yorkers still choose fear over facts

    By Heather Mac Donald | Saturday, March 19, 2022 | 8:08 AM EDT | Updated: Sunday, March 20, 2022 | 2:45 AM EDT

    Just when you thought the abyss between red-state and blue-state sensibilities could not grow wider comes post-pandemic America to reveal further cleavage.

    Residents of my 34-story Manhattan apartment building are still wearing masks in the elevators, halls and lobby, even though the building’s internally imposed mask mandate has been lifted. At least half of my neighbors in Yorkville wear masks outdoors, even though Gov. Hochul suspended the indoor mask mandate for New York City weeks ago.

    It has always been the case, no matter the rate of indoor transmission, that inhaling a large enough viral dose outdoors to become infected is almost impossible. One might have imagined that even progressives would be ready to say: “Enough of this! We’ll take our chances. Let’s get back to normal life!” But it turns out that many people have a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for fear and risk aversion, especially when linked to control.

    COVID metrics are, from a blue-state perspective, depressingly low when even the New York Times has given up on frontpage crisis-mongering. For weeks, the Times has buried its COVID stories deep in the paper, if it prints them at all, because there is only good news to report. Currently, an average of five people per day are hospitalized with or from COVID in New York City, out of a pre-pandemic population of 8.5 million. That is essentially zero risk. Deaths with or from COVID are too negligible to mention.

We already know that:

  • Vaccination does not prevent a person from contracting or spreading the virus;
  • Vaccination does seem to lessen the severity of the disease if one does contract the virus; and
  • The cloth masks that most people wear do not prevent the transmission of the virus.

It would appear that New Yorkers have learned the first lesson, but not the second or third.

But at some point there will be some obvious results: workers who cower in fear, whether in a masked-up cubicle in the office, or working remotely over Zoom and the internet, are going to get left behind. They will miss out on ‘networking,’ they will miss out on sales and new clients, and they will miss out on promotions. What office business would promote a worker who won’t come in to the office? What business would promote a masked-up employee over one who isn’t hiding his face? What office business can return to normal if its employees refuse to return to normalcy?

Fear, Frank Herbert wrote, is the mind killer, but in business, fear is the career killer.

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Show me the money!

Jerry Maguire was a 1996 film starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding, Jr, which made memorable the phrase, “Show me the money!” Now Moderna is shouting the same thing.

    Moderna seeks FDA authorization for 4th dose of COVID-19 shot

    Drugmaker Moderna has asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a fourth shot of its COVID-19 vaccine as a booster dose for all adults.

    by Zeke Miller, The Associated Press | Friday, March 18, 2022 | 8:29 AM EDT

    WASHINGTON — Drugmaker Moderna asked the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday to authorize a fourth shot of its COVID-19 vaccine as a booster dose for all adults.

    The request is broader than rival pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s request earlier this week for the regulator to approve a booster shot for all seniors.

    In a press release, the company said its request for approval for all adults was made “to provide flexibility” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and medical providers to determine the “appropriate use” of a second booster dose of the mRNA vaccine, “including for those at higher risk of COVID-19 due to age or comorbidities.”

    U.S. officials have been laying the groundwork to deliver additional booster doses to shore up the vaccines’ protection against serious disease and death from COVID-19. The White House has been sounding the alarm that it needs Congress to “urgently” approve more funding for the federal government to secure more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, either for additional booster shots or variant-specific immunizations.

And there you have it: those ‘free’ COVID-19 vaccine shots were all paid for by someone, and, as we all know, it was the federal government. The vaccine manufacturers, naturally, want in on the government’s distribution of electrons distributed from government accounts cash, and Moderna one-upped Pfizer. But while Moderna went straight to the boosters for everyone in their application, Pfizer’s Chief Executive Officer laid the groundwork for his company to do the same:

    Pfizer’s CEO says a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose is probably necessary for everyone

    The Pfizer executive said a fourth dose would provide long-term protection. But not all public health experts agree it’s necessary for everyone.

    by Jason Laughlin | Monday, March 14, 2022

    Another round of shots will be needed to provide more long-lasting protection against COVID-19, vaccine-maker Pfizer’s chief executive said in a weekend interview, but opinions vary on who really needs that fourth dose.

    “Right now, the way that we have seen, it is necessary, a fourth booster,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, in an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, explaining that another dose could protect against future variants and waning immunity, which is why people who are fully vaccinated and boosted have been getting mild cases of COVID.

In other words, “Show me the money!”

    Some health experts have questioned whether it is realistic or necessary to have a vaccine that prevents even mild illness — when from the start the main goal of the vaccine has been to prevent serious cases and hospitalizations.

    Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee, has said people who have had the existing vaccine series likely won’t have to worry about serious illness and death from COVID for years, even if they skip additional shots. Preventing serious illness and death should be the goal of the country’s vaccination program, he said, not staving off COVID entirely.

It’s simple: if the CEOs can keep “staving off COVID entirely” as the goal, it will mean more revenue for their company. More, it’s risk-free money! 42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22 states that “No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.” The law continues to require that the vaccines covered must have proper paperwork — meaning: documents warning patients that side effects can occur — and that manufacturers must use proper care of the production cycle to remain immune, or, in other words, do not deviate from proper procedures.

What vaccine producer wouldn’t love this?

Then there’s the third problem for the vaccine producers:

    Millions still haven’t gotten COVID shots. What does that mean for the future of the vaccination effort?

    The slowdown raises questions about how long resources should be spent on outreach and whether the strategies of the last year are still effective in persuading the unvaccinated.

    by Justine McDaniel and Erin McCarthy | Friday, March 18, 2022

    It’s 2 p.m. on a Wednesday in Chester, and nurses Susan Pollock and Carol Von Colln are inside a Delaware County vaccine clinic doing what they spend a lot of time doing these days: waiting.

    Last spring, Americans were in a frenzied rush to get the COVID-19 vaccine; this spring, business has slowed to a crawl. Now, whenever someone walks in, “we’re ready to throw a party,” Von Colln said.

    That day, they vaccinated eight people in six hours.

    It’s a scene playing out across the region and the United States as the number of shots being given each day is at an all-time low — even though a third of Americans are still unvaccinated.

It was the subtitle that got to me, “The slowdown raises questions about how long resources should be spent on outreach and whether the strategies of the last year are still effective in persuading the unvaccinated.” “Persuading the unvaccinated”? No, the “strategies of the last year” were primarily to try to force people to take the vaccines, by threatening them with the loss of their jobs if they declined vaccinations, and imposing requirements for people to show their vaccination records to enter some public spaces. President Biden said, “The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.” Of course, the mask mandates that existed took no distinction between those who were vaccinated and those who were not.

Full disclosure: I have been vaccinated myself, a choice I took freely, and I believe that others should take the same decision I did. While no vaccine is 100% without risk, the benefits of being vaccinated outweigh the risks. But I respect the right, and yes, “right” is precisely the word I mean to use, of other people to choose whether or not to take the vaccine. That’s a right that the left, and neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, don’t seem to want you to have.

Remember: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

There’s a lot more at the original, but it shows why the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna want another booster: almost all of those who have thus far chosen not to get vaccinated are unlikely to change their minds, so more money from the government to those producers depends upon getting those who have taken three shots so far to get a fourth.

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“I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”

Remember the halcyon days of 2020 and 2021, in which Philadelphia, among most major cities, allowed restaurants which had been otherwise closed to indoor dining, to expand, where they physically could, to outdoor dining facilities? A challenging problem in a city which experiences severe winters, outdoor dining and increased carry-out ordering enabled many restaurants to survive.

Philly quietly added surprise fees and ‘burdensome’ rules for restaurant streeteries

“It’s a bureaucratic mess,” said Councilmember Allan Domb. “This is basically the administration saying ‘we don’t want outdoor seating.’”

by Max Marin | Tuesday, Match 1, 2022

Philadelphia city officials quietly released regulations governing the city’s new streetery law after months of anticipation, and some restaurant owners say the proposed red tape could spell doomsday for outdoor dining across the city.

Read more: Hundreds of restaurants got excluded by Philly’s new ‘streetery’ zones — some by less than a block

Many restaurant owners realized new rules passed by City Council in December would require them to clean up access-blocking patio structures and get designs approved by the city for outdoor dining structures built over parking spaces.

But in implementing that law, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration is adding new regulations that create significant and unexpected hurdles for restaurateurs still struggling to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

There’s a lot more at the Philadelphia Inquirer original, but the new regulations all boil down to one thing: the city charging more money, for permits, for bonds, and for construction requirements.

The timeline:

  • March 16, 2020: City orders all non-essential businesses closed
  • September 8, 2020: Indoor dining allowed at a maximum of 25% of seating capacity
  • November 20, 2020: City again bans all indoor dining in restaurants
  • January 16, 2021: City again allows indoor dining at a maximum of 25% of seating capacity
  • June 2, 2021: City removes seating capacity restrictions
  • August 12, 2021: City imposes mask mandates for all indoor businesses
  • January 3, 2022: City requires proof of vaccination for all restaurant employees and patrons
  • February 16, 2022: City drops vaccination proof requirements, continues mask mandates

All of these restrictions were either imposed or relaxed as the city saw surges in COVID-19 infections, the original, the Delta variant, and lastly, the Xi Omicron variant. Omicron peaked very rapidly, and with a far greater number of cases, than either Alpha or Delta, with more than thrice the average number of daily cases in Philly — because vaccinations and masks were virtually useless against Omicron — but one thing is obvious: if COVID-19 has been going through all of these mutations, there is no particular reason to think that Omicron will be the last. The odds are that there will be a Pi variant — though maybe some will call it the Putin variant, given today’s news — which may or may not be serious, but if another serious variant arises, wouldn’t the availability of outdoor dining be something Philadelphia would want?

Even without a new variant, there are still plenty of people panicked by COVID-19, and would choose to dine outdoors if the option is available. Given that the city believe that masks are still necessary indoors but not outside, why wouldn’t the city want to encourage the continuation of outdoor dining where feasible?

But nope! The city are going to go for the dollars rather than make it easier for the outdoor dining areas to continue. There’s a reason why, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” is dismissed as a skeptical meme.
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Update: 3:15 PM EST

Philadelphia ends its indoor mask mandate

“The metrics that we’re following have reached the level where the Health Department feels it is safe to stop enforcing the indoor mask mandate,” a health department spokesperson said.

by Jason Laughlin | Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022 | 3:00 PM EST

The end of Philadelphia’s indoor mask mandate came Wednesday with a promise to ease virtually all remaining COVID-19 safety rules in the city in the coming days, signaling a big step toward normalcy in the city after almost two years of lock downs and restrictions.

Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole hesitated to say COVID had reached an endemic stage, but acknowledged that Wednesday’s announcement marked a new stage in the pandemic.

“I think talking about regaining as much normal life as we can … is better framing for me,” she said. “I’m hoping we have enough immunity in the city that we really are at an end point.”

Philadelphia was the only place in the state still maintaining a general indoor-masking requirement.

There’s more at the original, but it sure sounds to me like Commissioner Bettigole didn’t approve of the decision, but was overruled by Mayor Jim Kenney.

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Philly continues the tyranny

The heavily politicized Center for Disease Control have finally eased some of their masking guidelines, but, of course, the petty little dictators in the City of Brotherly Love want to keep Philadelphians wearing the symbols of authoritarian control.

CDC loosens COVID-19 masking guidance, but Philly is keeping its mask mandate for now

The city’s health department said it would review the CDC’s new guidance, but the safety restrictions in place in the city are based on local conditions and “months of data specific to Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin and Kasturi Pananjady | Friday, February 25, 2033

A change in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for mask-wearing Friday means federal authorities no longer recommend indoor masking as a COVID-19 precaution for much of Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia.

Whether that will change masking policy set by the health department in Philadelphia, the only place in the region with an indoor mask mandate, is uncertain.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which loves mandates and dictatorial control of the plebeians, illustrated their article with a photo of sheep “guests at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall last December,” all dutifully masked up.

We have previously reported on the city’s Health Commissioner, Dr Cheryl Bettigole, saying, on Groundhog Day, that Philadelphia lifting COVID-19 restrictions was “probably several months away.”

“Our team is actively discussing what an off-ramp looks like,” Bettigole said when asked about easing restrictions. “If you think about where we are with this particular wave and case rates right now, we’re probably several months away from a place where we will have the kind of safety to drop all the current restrictions.”

The city did end its vaccine mandate for indoor dining on the 14th, but retained the mask mandate. To me, it’s obvious: the city was depending upon cute college coeds working as hostesses to enforce the vaccine mandate, and who can know how reliable that was, especially if confronted by a large, scary man. But masks? It’s obvious to anyone who can see whether someone is wearing one; they are the very visible symbols of submission.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health said it would review the CDC’s new guidance, but the safety restrictions in place in the city are based on local conditions and “months of data specific to Philadelphia,” said Matt Rankin, a spokesperson for the department.

“At this time we plan to continue the implementation of these current response levels as the pandemic unfolds,” he said. . . . .

The CDC changed its guidelines for masking Friday because easy access to vaccines and testing, better treatments for COVID-19, and widespread immunity have “moved the pandemic to a new phase,” the agency said in a news release. The agency’s recommendations were also being widely disregarded, with states increasingly ending COVID precautions despite 95% of U.S. counties falling into the CDC’s old definition of substantial or high transmission. The new guidelines break COVID-19 risk levels into categories of high, medium, and low by county. Indoor masking is recommended only at the high risk level.

Very widely disregarded. I have previously noted the masks required sign at the entrance to the Kroger grocery store on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky, and, shopping there just Friday morning, I saw what has been the case all along: significant disobedience to the sign. I certainly wasn’t wearing a mask, and neither were at least three-quarters of the other shoppers. Why should they? We already know that the face masks most people use just don’t stop Omicron, and the so-called experts recommend a N-95 mask. That recommendation was on January 10th, and now, just 46 days later, the CDC are relaxing their masking guidance? One wonders if they listen to each other?

Of course, elected politicians do listen to their constituents, and they know that the public are just plain tired of all of the authoritarian decrees, and those decrees were subject to widespread disobedience; that’s why so many places had weakened or dropped their mandates well before the CDC decided that they must find their people, so they could lead them.

Philadelphia? Completely controlled by the Democrats, to the point where the last Republican mayor left office while George VI was still King of England, so the Democrats running the city aren’t in the least bit worried about losing in the general elections; any real action comes in the Democratic primaries. In 2008, there were 57 entire precincts in which Republican presidential nominee John McCain didn’t get a single vote; in 2012, there were 59 entire precincts in which Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney didn’t get a single vote. In 2020, Joe Biden carried Philadelphia with 81.44% of the vote. You can see why Democrats in Philly aren’t concerned.

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The left cannot tolerate dissent.

Since the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court invalidated Governor Tom Wolf’s in-school mask mandate, local school boards have been — albeit slowly — relaxing their COVID-19 restrictions, not because the local school boards really want to do so, but because much of the public demand it.

    More Philly-area schools are ending mask mandates, but the question of how and when is dividing communities

    The shifting landscape — in absence of any unified standard — has brought new tension over how to move beyond pandemic restrictions that have shaped the last two years.

    by Maddie Hanna | Sunday, February 20, 2022

    As a group of students walked out of Conestoga High School a little more than a week ago in defiance of mask requirements — banging lockers and shouting “Freedom!” along the way — they set off a social media feud that reflected a broader debate.

    With omicron retreating, and mandates at the state and city level being rolled back, suburban schools that have maintained universal masking in line with public health recommendations now find themselves asking: When, and how, can they move beyond the restrictions that have shaped the last two years?

No, they “maintained universal masking” in line with state government orders; many districts were ending or at least reducing the restrictions last fall, before Governor Wolf stepped in. He had previously said that he would not impose such a mandate, leaving it up to local authorities, but when they didn’t do what he wanted voluntarily, he used a trick to get around the voter-passed constitutional amendments limiting his power. The reporter, Maddie Hanna, knew this; she was one of the three reporters credited with the story noting the Governor’s mask mandate!

    But not everyone agrees on the right approach.

    While a growing number of health-care professionals have called for school mandates to end, the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have continued to endorse universal masking in schools given still-high transmission levels. (The CDC said last week it’s considering a change to its mask guidance, though it was unclear how that might apply to schools.)

The Inquirer, which editorially favors all of the restrictions, and even more, that have been imposed on the public, illustrated the article with a photo of people holding up signs in favor of universal masking in a Havorford Township school board meeting.

But the most important passage of the story might not have been one Miss Hanna intended, but I spotted:

    In Wallingford-Swarthmore, one mother, believing the district has moved to optional masking too quickly, started crying while describing her fear that parental discord would now be reflected by children; others worried about risks to immunocompromised or disabled students, concerns that have spurred lawsuits.

    In West Chester and Downingtown, residents are petitioning to remove school board directors for ordering masking, while in Tredyffrin/Easttown — where threats following the Conestoga walkout prompted the high school to close for a day — a father was banned from district property after giving a fiery speech in the boys’ wrestling locker room encouraging defiance of the mask mandate: “They cannot defeat you if you stick together. Do not let them f— with your minds.”

Nothing in the current referenced story, or the ones internally linked, stated that this unnamed father advocated violence, or issued or was connected with any threat, but Conestoga High School banned him from school property for a “fiery speech”. But the father was right: if the students stick together, and ditch their masks en masse, they will win . . . and the school board cannot tolerate that.

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Could Philly be ending its COVID mandates soon?

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

We noted, on February 3rd, that Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner, Cheryl Bettigole, said that lifting the city’s COVID-19 mandates would likely be several months away.

Of course, Dr Bettigole has an appointed position, not an elected one, and it seems that the elected Democrats who control the City of Brotherly Love might be moving somewhat faster than she would like:

The vaccine mandate for dining inside restaurants was being enforced by restaurant hostesses, and one has to wonder just how diligently these minimum wage workers were doing so. As we have previously noted, there was a theft of some 5,000 blank vaccination cards from the Penn Medicine Clinic in Philly’s Center City, and two nurses in Amityville, New York were arrested for selling faked COVID-19 vaccination cards. How could anyone expect poorly-paid restaurant hostesses to scrutinize vaccination cards, and spot fakes? And how would anyone not think that a $20 bill, presented when the hostess asked, “Ihre Papiere, bitte,” would often get prospective diners through?

The city government was depending on people who were not their employees, and encouraging a black market in faked cards at the same time. And I will be honest here: I absolutely support people forging vaccination cards, and hope that there are thousands upon thousands of those black marketeers, and that no more of them get caught.

    And if cases continue to decline, the mask mandate could also lift some time later.

    The benchmarks would create a novel system where restrictions could ease when overall illness falls and be reimposed in the event of a COVID-19 resurgence. The effect could ease the bite on hotels and restaurants, which have lost significant business during the pandemic, while also protecting people’s health and reducing the burden of illness on hospitals and caregivers.

    Relaxed mandates won’t be welcomed universally in the city. Jennifer Kolker, associate dean for public health practice at Drexel University, said last week she thought states were moving too quickly to end their vaccine mandates. “I would love to see them maintain the vaccine mandate,” she said before the city’s plan came to light.

Well, of course she would; the Karens of our society always want stuff like that.

Further down:

    Business was down 37% in Philadelphia’s leisure and hospitality industry through the second quarter of 2021 compared to the same time in 2019, before the pandemic began, according to a report last week by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That’s greater than the national drop over the same time period of 13%. The industry is the city’s fourth-biggest job sector and 76% of its workers live in Philadelphia.

    (Ben) Fileccia (director of operations & strategy for the Philadelphia Restaurant and Lodging Association) and others in the industry said there have been hotels that have lost events and conferences to competitors in the city’s suburbs because those areas did not have mandates.

In other words, people are tired of the mandates and restrictions, and have been voting with their actions, and their wallets, against them. The greatest victims? The hospitality industry’s workers, three-quarters of whom live in Philly, the poorest of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, and the only big city with a poverty rate above 20%.

Of course, for highly paid people like Commissioner Bettigole and Dean Kolker, for people like Mayor Jim Kenney, the struggles of the working class are abstractions, something that they can neatly measure against the probabilities of contracting the virus. To them, the need to put food on the table is no different from the goal of not contracting the virus, but to the single mother with hungry kids to feed, the need to feed her children is far more immediate than the probabilities of contracting COVID-19.