Tag Archives: #COVID19

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Well, at least it isn’t the government trying to order it!

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.

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Americans never, never will be slaves!

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 19th, 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!

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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

Despite the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines appear to have little, if any, effect in reducing the transmissibility of the virus, especially the Omicron variant, the tinhorn dictators want to separate people from each other, want to impose restrictions on a segment of the population who haven’t Obeyed Orders. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    A new vaccine mandate is poised to impact Philadelphia’s restaurants next week

    How restaurant owners can prepare for new vaccine mandate rules in the new year.

    by Gene Marks | Tuesday, December 28, 2021 | 12:24 PM EST

    Starting Jan. 3 indoor eateries in Philadelphia will be required to see proof from patrons of vaccination against COVID-19.

    The rule doesn’t fully take effect immediately. Through Jan. 17, restaurants can choose to accept a negative COVID-19 test within 24 hours of entry instead of proof of vaccination. But after that date, only proof of vaccination will be acceptable.

I am, as I have stated previously, both fully vaccinated and have taken the booster shot, though the booster was not recorded when I took the photo of my vaccination record for this site. It is on my card now.

But I absolutely refuse to carry this vaccination record with me! I got vaccinated for my own protection, something wise since my wife is a hospital nurse who sometimes takes care of COVID patients, but I will not comply with the petty little bureaucrats who say, “Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!” “Ve need to see your papers!” The business which makes such a demand of me will not only not see my papers, but will never, ever, get a single penny from me.

Maybe that’s easy for me, here in the Bluegrass State, where we aren’t seeing such stupidity. I have already noted that while Kroger KR: (%) has masking requirements to enter its stores, most people ignore the signs, or at least the requirements, and shop without putting on a face diaper.

We’re now being told that cloth face masks are ineffective anyway, so the face mask requirements, which Kentuckians have naturally seen as ineffective anyway, are ridiculous.

    The rule also applies to employees. A restaurant’s staff as well as young patrons ages 5 to 11 will be required to have one dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Jan. 3 and to complete the series by Feb. 3. Exemptions apply to children under age 5, people with medical reasons and those with religious objections.

    Just about every establishment that serves food and/or drink will be affected by this rule, from cafes, bars and sports venues to movies theaters, bowling alleys, and food halls.Obviously, these new rules will add another strain on local restaurants that are already grappling with existing mandates, rising prices, and shortages of supplies and labor.And while these rules extend only to indoor dining, concerns have been raised that they will go into effect before new legislation can make permanent the outdoor dining structures that have sprung up during the pandemic.

So, Philadelphians are going to have to carry their supposedly private medical records with them if they want to eat indoors at a restaurant — and who wants to eat outdoors, in Philadelphia, in January and February — even though the Omicron variant, which is fast becoming, if it has not already become, the dominant variant in the United States, seems to slide past the vaccines with virtually no reduction in transmissibility.

Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) and Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole cannot be unaware of those statistics, and those facts, but they certainly do love them some authoritarian power, and are choosing to exercise it, as much as they can, without any reason to do so. If the vaccines do not reduce transmission, then there is no reason whatsoever to put in place vaccine mandates. If the vaccines do not reduce transmissibility, but only help to reduce the severity of symptoms for those who contract the virus, then the only people put at greater risk of serious illness are those who choose not to get vaccinated. At that point, it’s their risk, and their risk alone. If masks do not reduce the transmissibility, then there is no reason to require masks; there is no greater danger to the public from those who don’t wear masks than from those who do.

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Neither the vaccines nor masks have any effect on reducing Omicron transmission, so Joe Biden wants state governors to Do Something

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 27th, 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.

Also see: The Washington Post: With omicron, many vaccinated Americans will at some point test positive. Here’s what to do.

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.”

Also see: The Washington Post: Healthy, boosted people unlikely to develop severe omicron infections, but jury’s out on older, at-risk populations

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.

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As evidence mounts that the vaccines do not stop the spread of the virus, some people want to double down on #VaccineMandates

It seems that employers have been struggling with the vaccine mandates, but there’s an underlying, unwritten message in this. From The New York Times, not exactly an evil reich-wing source:

    Whiplash on U.S. Vaccine Mandate Leaves Employers ‘Totally Confused’

    Companies are struggling to figure out what to do as legal battles and rising Covid cases complicate their plans. Even up in the air: What does “fully vaccinated” mean?

    By Lauren Hirsch, Emma Goldberg and Charlie Savage | Monday, December 20, 2021 | 6:50 AM EST

    The marching orders from the Biden administration in November had seemed clear — large employers were to get their workers fully vaccinated by early next year, or make sure the workers were tested weekly. But a little over a month later, the Labor Department’s vaccine rule has been swept into confusion and uncertainty by legal battles, shifting deadlines and rising Covid case counts that throw the very definition of fully vaccinated into question.

    The spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has seemingly bolstered the government’s argument, at the heart of its legal battle over the rule, that the virus remains a grave threat to workers. But the recent surge in cases has raised the issue of whether the government will take its requirements further — even as the original rule remains contentious — and ask employers to mandate booster shots, too. The country’s testing capacity has also been strained, adding to concerns that companies will be unable to meet the rule’s testing requirements.

    “My clients are totally confused as, quite frankly, am I,” Erin McLaughlin, a labor and employment lawyer at Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, said on Saturday. “My sense is that there are a lot of employers scrambling to try and put their mandate programs in place.”

    No company has been spared the whirlwind of changes in the last week, set off by the spike in Covid cases that have, in some instances, cut into their work forces. Then on Friday, an appeals court lifted the legal block on the vaccine rule, though appeals to the ruling were immediately filed, leaving the rule’s legal status up in the air. On Saturday, hours after the appeals court ruling, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration urged employers to start working to get in compliance. But OSHA also gave employers some leeway, pushing back full enforcement of the rule until February, recognizing that for all its best intentions the rollout of the rule has been muddled.

There’s a lot more at the original, but the unwritten part is simple, and obvious: most employers don’t want to impose a mandate on their workers, not because they don’t believe in the effectiveness of the vaccines — most probably do — but because they don’t want to discipline or terminate workers who refuse. Businesses are already having problems finding workers, and losing some of those they have can seriously hurt production, and the bottom line.

The truth is simple: the vaccines have been freely available to everyone for about ten months now, and virtually every medium has been telling us about the availability. Politicians and business leaders and community activists and your neighborhood Karens have all been imploring people to get vaccinated. The number of Americans who haven’t heard the messages has to be vanishingly small. Those who want to get vaccinated have already done so; those who haven’t gotten vaccinated are almost universally those who do not want to get vaccinated.

The resistance is only getting stronger: as the government pushes harder to try to force the reluctant to get vaccinated, those who do not want to take the vaccines are pushing back harder as well. As William Teach noted, Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) is now pushing legislation which would mandate a booster shot as well as the initial two-shot vaccine to be considered ‘fully vaccinated.’

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced during a press conference on Thursday that she is planning to introduce legislation that includes a booster shot within the definition of being “fully vaccinated.”

    While the Democratic governor noted that the legislation needed to be more fleshed out and required more data to be collected, she signaled the change would happen eventually, saying that “at some point, we have to determine that fully vaccinated means boosted as well,” CNY Central reported.

    Hochul’s remarks come as the country begins to see an uptick of COVID-19 cases again and as health officials grapple with the spread of the omicron variant, which President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci warned on Thursday would likely be the dominant strain in “a few weeks.”

Also from The New York Times:

    A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

    All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal. But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world.

    The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows. And because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic.

    A global surge of infections in a world where billions of people remain unvaccinated not only threatens the health of vulnerable individuals but also increases the opportunity for the emergence of yet more variants. The disparity in the ability of countries to weather the pandemic will almost certainly deepen. And the news about limited vaccine efficacy against Omicron infection could depress demand for vaccination throughout the developing world, where many people are already hesitant or preoccupied with other health problems.

But here’s the money line:

    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. The results are striking, however.

So, there seems to be little or no effectiveness against transmission by any vaccines other than Pfizer and Moderna, and only if reinforced by the booster, and their effectiveness is based only on laboratory studies, not real-world data. Employers wanting to see more of their workforce vaccinated are having to deal with reality: reluctance on the part of some employees, a tight labor market, and data which show that getting vaccinated provides less protection from spreading the virus than we were originally told.

This is the conundrum: if the vaccines lessen the effects on those who contract the virus, but don’t seem to offer much protection from spreading the virus, the ‘logic’ for mandating vaccination vanishes. If getting vaccinated does not mean you can’t contract and spread the virus to others, choosing not to get vaccinated is a decision which only affects the person choosing not to get vaccinated!

I’ve said it before: I am vaccinated, and I took the booster shot as well. I think that’s the wiser choice, and I am perfectly willing to say that to anyone who asks. But it is none of my business, nor should it be the government’s business, nor the employer’s business, as to what other people choose to do.

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You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to note that actual conspirators wouldn’t do anything differently

I noted yesterday, in a comment on The Pirate’s Cove, that The New York Times, not exactly an evil reich-wing source, that Denmark and Norway have reported that the positivity rate in testing for the Xi Omicron variant is virtually the same as the percentage of the population which are fully vaccinated. Statistically speaking, full vaccination status appears to convey close to zero resistance to contracting the Omicron variant:

    Denmark and Norway Predict Drastic Spike in Omicron Cases

    Health authorities in Europe are warning of a sharp increase in Omicron cases, adding to an existing surge from the Delta variant.

    By Carl Zimmer and Emily Anthes | December 13, 2021

    Public health authorities in Denmark and Norway on Monday released grim projections for the coming wave of the Omicron coronavirus variant, predicting that it will dominate both countries in a matter of days. Although scientists don’t yet know how often the variant causes severe disease, they say its rapid rate of spread will lead to an explosion of cases and could potentially increase pressure on hospitals, even if it proves to be mild.

    The reports follow similarly worrisome findings from England released over the weekend, although researchers caution that the trend could change as the variant comes into clearer view. It’s not yet certain how often Omicron infections will send people to the hospital, or how many hospitalized patients are likely to die. And while Omicron can partly evade immune defenses, researchers have yet to determine how well vaccinations and previous infections will protect people against severe disease.

    The authors of both new reports also observed that swift actions now, such as booster campaigns and reducing opportunities for Omicron to spread, could lessen the variant’s impact.

    American researchers have yet to release models of Omicron’s rise in the United States. But experts point out that the country is similar to Norway and Denmark in terms of vaccination levels and certain Covid risk factors, like the average age of the population.

Further down:

    In the report released on Monday by the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, researchers estimated that Omicron cases in Denmark were doubling every two days. Omicron is spreading much faster than Delta, which means that the new variant will become dominant by midweek, the report found.

    Three-quarters of the Omicron cases are in people who have received two vaccine doses, which is about the same fraction of the entire country that’s fully vaccinated. That high percentage indicates that vaccines are providing little protection from infection, though most scientists believe that the shots will still fend off severe disease and death.

    The Danish data are consistent with a smaller report of Omicron infections in the United States. Out of 43 documented cases, 34 — or about 79 percent — were people who were fully vaccinated.

    “This thing can spread, and it can spread whether or not you were vaccinated,” Christina Ramirez, a biostatistician at the University of California, Los Angeles, said.

    In England, researchers also found that full vaccination provided low protection against a breakthrough infection. But they found that booster shots restored defenses to much higher levels.

There’s more at the original. Now comes The Washington Post:

    Omicron spreading rapidly in U.S. and could bring punishing wave as soon as January, CDC warns

    But federal and some pharmaceutical executives signal they do not currently favor revising vaccines, saying existing regimen plus boosters are effective

    By Lena H. Sun, Joel Achenbach, Laurie McGinley, and Tyler Pager | Tuesday, December 14, 2021 | 3:08 PM EST | Updated: 8:02 PM EDT

    Top federal health officials warned in a briefing Tuesday morning that the omicron variant is rapidly spreading in the United States and could peak in a massive wave of infections as soon as January, according to new modeling analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The prevalence of omicron jumped sevenfold in a single week, according to the CDC, and at such a pace, the highly mutated variant of the coronavirus could ratchet up pressure on a health system already strained in many places as the delta variant continues its own surge.

    The warning of an imminent surge came even as federal officials and some pharmaceutical executives signaled that they don’t currently favor creating an omicron-specific vaccine. Based on the data so far, they say that existing vaccines plus a booster shot are an effective weapon against omicron.

    The CDC briefing Tuesday detailed two scenarios for how the omicron variant may spread through the country. The worst-case scenario has spooked top health officials, who fear that a fresh wave, layered on top of delta and influenza cases in what one described as “a triple whammy,” could overwhelm health systems and devastate communities, particularly those with low vaccination rates.

    “I’m a lot more alarmed. I’m worried,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, who participated in the call. The CDC, normally cautious in its messaging, told the public health officials that “we got to get people ready for this,” he said.

    He noted that the omicron surge, if it materializes as forecast, would be taking place as delta continues its onslaught and during the time of year when influenza cases often peak.

Not noted here is that flu season was mostly skipped last winter, attributed to the coronavirus restrictions.

    Officials stress that early data shows that individuals who are fully vaccinated and received a booster shot remain largely protected against severe illness and death from omicron. But they worry about how few Americans have been boosted to date. Over 55 million people in the United States have gotten the additional shots, out of 200 million who are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

There’s more at the original, but you can count on several things:

Israel has already required that booster to be considered fully vaccinated.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to note that if there was an actual conspiracy to more greatly subjugate the population to greater government control, the conspirators wouldn’t do much differently than is already being done.

The vaccines weren’t doing that great a job in preventing COVID-19 infections, though they did seem to reduce the seriousness of associated illnesses. Now they seem to be doing nothing to stop the Xi Omicron variant from infecting people, and it may be that Omicron may be less virulent anyway.

My whole family have taken the vaccines, and my wife — who is a hospital RN — and I have taken the boosters as well. To us, that’s a wise decision. But my thinking that it’s a wise decision does not mean that I in any way approve of mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports; preventative measures should be voluntary, up to individuals, and not the government. ‘It’s for our own good’ is not, and never has been, a reason for people to surrender their rights.

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The left have internalized the ‘new normal’

As most people just want to get over COVID-19 and the ridiculous restrictions under which governments have put people, some have so internalized the messages of fear that they’ll never get over it.

The image to the right is a screenshot of a tweet by blue-checked Nicole F Carr. You can click on either the link in the previous sentence, or the image itself, to get to the original.

The obvious answer to her question is: producers want to be able to show their Christmas movies in more than just this year, and Christmas movies aren’t supposed to be downers. They’d like to show this in 2022, 2023, and so on.

But Mrs Carr, whose Twitter biography states that she’s “@ProPublica South covering criminal justice,racial inequity,COVID. @Morehouse journalism professor. 4x Emmy, #WSSU #Newhouse nicole.carr@propublica.org”, is obviously heavily invested in reporting on the virus.

Well, perhaps Mrs Carr really does believe that we’ll all be wearing masks for the rest of our lives, but let’s face facts: mask mandates are being honored in the breach almost every place they can be.

I tweeted a reply:

    Christmas movies aren’t meant just for one year; the producers want to be able to use it again in 2022, 2023, and so on. And let’s face it: Christmas movies aren’t supposed to be downers, and the restrictions are real buzzkills.

    We’d like to get back to our normal lives.

Well, while it’s still there, apparently Mrs Carr didn’t like it, because now there’s this, which wasn’t there previously:

Like so many other lefties on Twitter, Mrs Carr can dish it out, but she just can’t take criticism! I am not surprised.

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A few news items about excess government power

Lexington Catholic High School will drop its mandatory mask mandate:

    Beginning January 10, 2022, Lexington Catholic High School will switch to a mask “optional” COVID policy for all students and staff, principal Matthew George told families in a letter this week.

    “Lexington Catholic will closely monitor the health and safety of everyone in our building and throughout our community. Optional masking may be suspended at any time if the need arises and return to mandatory masking,” George said.

    For the short term, Catholic Diocese of Lexington Bishop John Stowe has extended the mask mandate through January 7, 2022.

More at this link.

This story was published on Friday, November 26th, so with the new panic over the Omicron variant, who knows if the mask mandate will actually be lifted. Even if the principal decides that it should, Bishop John Stowe could, and my guess is probably would, override it. There is no statewide mask mandate in Kentucky, because the General Assembly greatly restricted the Governor’s ’emergency’ authority under KRS 39A.

    Judge in Ky. blocks federal contractor vaccine mandate, granting AG Cameron’s request

    By Austin Horn | Tuesday, November 30, 2021 | 3:42 PM EST | Updated: 5:31 PM EST

    A federal judge in Kentucky issued a preliminary injunction effectively blocking implementation of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal government contractors and subcontractors on Tuesday.

    U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, who serves the Eastern District of Kentucky, issued the opinion and order Tuesday afternoon. It came in response to a challenge from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who joined many other state attorneys general in challenging the mandate.

    “This is not a case about whether vaccines are effective. They are,” Van Tatenhove wrote. “Nor is this a case about whether the government, at some level, and in some circumstances, can require citizens to obtain vaccines. It can.”

There’s more at the original. Judge Tatenhove’s ruling was on very narrow grounds, that the vaccine orders were not properly issued:

    One key argument of the U.S. government that received some pushback was President Biden’s use of a procurement statute to justify the mandate for contractors and subcontractors. Van Tatenhove wrote that “even for a good cause” like limiting the spread of COVID-19, Biden could not go beyond his congressionally delegated authority in implementing the statute.

    “It strains credulity that Congress intended… a procurement statute to be the basis for promulgating a public health measure such as mandatory vaccination,” Van Tatenhove wrote. “If a vaccination mandate has a close enough nexus to economy and efficiency in federal procurement, then the statute could be used to enact virtually any measure at the president’s whim under the guise of economy and efficiency.”

Sadly, things are worse in the Keystone State:

    Pennsylvania’s school-mask mandate will stay in place for now, state Supreme Court says

    The court granted a request from Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to keep the mandate in place while it appeals a lower court ruling striking down the requirement.

    by Maddie Hanna | Tuesday, November 30, 2021

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Tuesday that the state’s school-mask mandate can remain in place at least for the next week while Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration appeals a lower-court ruling striking down the requirement.

    The order followed a request from Wolf’s administration to keep the mandate in place while it appeals the Commonwealth Court ruling that faulted the state Health Department for how it imposed the requirement.

    Siding with Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R., Centre) and other parents, the Commonwealth Court said Nov. 10 that acting Health Secretary Alison Beam had overstepped her authority in ordering masking at the start of the school year by failing to follow the state’s procedures for implementing new regulations. The court later set Dec. 4 as the day for the mandate to be lifted, an action sought by Corman.

    The state’s highest court said the mandate could stay in effect pending consideration of the appeal, which is scheduled for oral arguments Dec. 8. “Nothing in this order shall be construed as a position regarding the merits of this appeal,” the court said.

    Had the mandate expired Saturday, school districts would have faced the decision of whether to require masking. Some, including Philadelphia, have indicated no immediate plans to lift masking, though mandates have remained a fraught topic in a number of area communities.

    Wolf said earlier this month that he expected to lift the state mandate Jan. 17. That announcement came prior to the Commonwealth Court ruling.

One of us is absolutely certain that Governor Wolf would have found some reason not to lift the order on schedule. Let’s face it: Democratic politicians just love to order people around!

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CDC doctor says that achieving ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely even with universal vaccination

The vaccinated Joel Embiid is out for the 76ers due to a positive test. Quarterback Ben Roethlisburger, who is fully vaccinated, is out today for the Pittsburgh Steelers due to COVID-19. Yet somehow, while everyone is trashing Aaron Rodgers, no one seems to note that fully vaccinated players are also testing positive. Now, the CDC are saying that ‘herd immunity’ is not an achievable goal:

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.

“We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said.

If such is the case, vaccination appears to be personally useful, but its societal usage is questionable. If none have proven “reliable at blocking transmission of the virus,” what is the justification for compelling vaccination? At this point, choosing not to get vaccinated puts an individual at greater danger, but it’s a danger for himself, without being a proven greater danger to others.