Killing the Pandemic

A new variant of the COVID 19 virus has been identified – Omicron. It is just the latest mutation thus far identified. It is said to be more transmissible than either the original COVID 19 virus or the Delta variation. However, like the Delta variation we do not know whether its morbidity level is higher or lower than that of the original. And quite frankly the morbidity level is simply the most important information we need before the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and its National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) go flailing about unburdened by even the briefest science and/or logic.

Whatever we are doing isn’t working. But we are being ignored by the government in general and the CDC and NIAID in particular. So, in an age when we are asked to be precise about “pronouns”, let’s first settle on the appropriate pronouns for the federal government in general and the CDC and NAIAD in particularly – the pronouns are “they”, “them”, “their” and “morons.” – the victims are “we”, “us” and “the ones who pay their salaries” I’d like to blame President Joe Biden for this mess but he is just a doofus listening to another doofus – the latter one being Anthony Fauci.

Please understand that when the pandemic first struck no one knew what to do – and I mean absolutely no one. So they seized upon washing your hands, social distancing and wearing a mask. The first two of those had some logical measure to them in that distance impeded the ability of the virus to travel from one host to another, and washing your hands is just good hygiene for any number of infectious diseases. But the mask wearing was just a bonehead virtue signaling of compliance – unless you were wearing an N-95 mask with filtered ventilation, those cloth masks and plastic shields did more to retard halitosis than transmission of the virus. But these were the steps recommended and then mandated by them – the government in general and Mr. Fauci in particular. You might remember that they (the morons) were preaching these steps as “two weeks to flatten the curve” – well that never happened. It’s been two years now and we still haven’t flattened the curve.

They didn’t work. The virus kept spreading like a prairie fire. People died – some 385,000 in 2020 according to them. Of course that is just as bogus as their advice because they counted as a COVID death anyone who was diagnosed as having had COVID at the time of their death even if they were run over by a light rail car or attacked by a shark. According to WebMD approximately ninety-seven percent of people diagnosed with COVID during 2020 survived and recovered – and that doesn’t include the tens of thousands who have had such a mild case that they did not seek medical help and therefore remained undiagnosed. If you eliminated those diagnosed with COVID AND a co-morbidity (heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, etc) the number who died from COVID as a primary source would be substantially reduced. Despite the millions of dollars spent by them (CDC and NAIAD) their guidance did virtually nothing to retard the spread of the disease and even less to assist those who were infected – and that will be an important part of this.

But the biggest mistake they made was appointing Mr. Fauci as point man for addressing the pandemic and as a spokesperson. They should have known it was a mistake because they did the same thing when the HIV/AIDS epidemic first occurred. Mr. Fauci was given the lead and he made the same mistakes then as he has made and continues to make in dealing with the pandemic. He put all of their efforts in to developing a vaccine to prevent HIV/AIDS to the exclusion of developing remedial treatment for those who had contracted the disease. They failed – no vaccine has been produced to prevent HIV/AIDS. However, once the scientific community began to focus on remedial measures (including existing drugs) dramatic advancements were made to the point that no one contracting HIV/AIDS should ever die from the disease. But that was private enterprise, not them – the government.

Nobody should die from the disease. That should be the first and primary response. But not so for them. At Mr. Fauci’s direction virtually all of the government focus was on immunization rather than treatment. And with the development of the “vaccines” last Fall, they misled the public by claiming that taking the vaccine would immunize the population. No, they insisted that the vaccine would immunize the population; they used it as a pretext to first encourage and then to mandate all to take the vaccine to reach “herd immunity.” The creators of the vaccines never said they would immunize the population; they said that vaccines reached a level of ninety-five percent efficacy – not immunization. “Efficacy” as used by the scientific community means something entirely different than “effectiveness.” According to an August 16, 2016, article in PEDIAA :

Although the two terms Efficacy and Effectiveness have the same meaning in popular usage, there is a distinctive difference between these two terms in the field of health and medicine. In general parlance, both efficacy and effectiveness refers to an ability to produce a desired or intended result. But in medical parlance, effectiveness refers to a result acquired in an average clinical or a real world environment whereas efficacy refers to a result acquired under ideal or controlled conditions. This is the main difference between efficacy and effectiveness in the field of medicine.

They knew this but allowed us to believe that efficacy and effectiveness were interchangeable as they are in their ordinary use. The new vaccines were never going to immunize patients from COVID. The vaccines may make it more difficult to get the virus but not impossible – and we have observed the COVID 19 virus routinely makes its way into the bodies of vaccinated people. But importantly, what the vaccine does is make the severity of disease significantly less and morbidity rare. And again we should focus on the morbidity. Most of us take a flu shot each Fall. It doesn’t necessarily immunize you from that season’s strain of the flu virus but it regularly dampens the effect of the virus should you contract it. The same is true for the COVID-19 vaccines.

But the whole effort by them (the CDC and NAIAD) has been to obfuscate the real facts of the pandemic which in turn caused the highest level of fear with the resulting extraordinary damage that that fear has caused to people and the economy. The last thing in the world that they cared about was our jobs, our businesses, our schools and our financial well-being. After all economic calamity has little effect on bureaucrats and virtually no effect on senior bureaucrats – their jobs are secure, their incomes continue, and their financial well-being remains unaffected. And even more so if they can continue to scare the hell out of us so that we obey without resistance even their most foolish demands.

Look, Mr. Fauci is a bureaucrat. His ludicrous statements about “attacking him, is attacking science” or that “he represents science” are absurd on their face. If Mr, Fauci was half as smart as he thinks he is, he would be out their inventing the cures and treatments instead of sitting behind a desk directing federal financing to scientists who knuckle under to his biases. Mr. Fauci was wrong to have focused singularly on immunization from HIV/AIDS to the exclusion of remedial treatments and he is wrong to have done the same on immunization from COVID-19 to the exclusion of remedial treatments such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, etc. People died unnecessarily of HIV/AIDS as a result and people have died unnecessarily of COVID-19 as a result.

Last weekend, Holeman W. Jenkins, Jr. produced a thoughtful commentary in the pages of WSJ (the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal) which I would commend to you in its entirety. One of the significant points made was as follows:

“Numerous were the complaints about how Delta spoiled the summer even for vaccinated people, but it’s not clear why this was so. Vaccination takes away COVID’s deadliest property, its novelty to the human immune system, turning it into the equivalent of a cold or flu. Nobody lets the prospect of a cold or flu spoil their holiday (though perhaps they should for the sake of their elderly in-laws).

“The point is not frivolous. It suggests why, rather than a dark new chapter, the Omicron variant may be our last big wallow in hysteria, from which we will awake slightly red-faced in the morning.”

* * *

“This speed of transmission is what keeps throwing the world for a loop; moreover, it seems indisputable in retrospect that we squandered our best point of leverage by failing to focus on protecting the elderly and those at highest risk.

“Indeed, so much of what we became hysterical about—mask wearing and vaccine hesitancy as applied to the low-risk—was a poor substitute for communicating about and acting on distinctions in risk.”

Look, there is no easy way to say this. The pandemic that existed beginning in 2019 and extending through the Spring of 2021 was real and until the vaccines by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson&Johnson were distributed there was no widespread ability to combat the virus. The remedial methods were shunned and dismissed by the CDC in deference to the desire to create an immunization and barred from use for treatment by the Food and Drug Administration FDA. But the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson&Johnson vaccines do not immunize, they are simply a means of reducing the probability of getting the virus and MORE IMPORTANTLY they substantially reduce the likelihood of morbidity should you be infected – the most important fact. The pandemic that exists today is more political than it is medical. The fear that is created every time there is a new variant – Mr. Fauci races to the microphone to give yet another dire warning and the liberal/progressive politicians race to the microphone to announce yet more restrictions – more vaccination mandates, more masks (indoors and out), more restrictions on schools and gatherings, and more and more control without constitutional authority – is what it prolonging the “pandemic.” The best thing that you can do to end the media/political pandemic is to stop wringing your hands, ignore the media and the politicians and get on with your life. You should do this knowing the following:

1. There is not today and there is not likely ever to be an immunization for COVID-19. The best we can expect is that the vaccines will dampen your susceptibility to the virus and substantially reduce the symptoms and likelihood of morbidity. The same is true for people who have developed natural immunity as a result of a previous exposure to the virus.

2. If you believe you have had the virus previously and have developed natural immunity, get tested. You cannot make an intelligent decision on whether to be vaccinated if you do not have that information. If you have been tested and found not to have have the COVID antibodies and you still do not want to get vaccinated, that is your choice and despite the musing of morons like Mayor Bill di Blasio (D), Govs. Kate Brown (D-OR) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Mr. Biden (D), and Vice-President Kalamata Harris (D) you are free to make that choice.

3. Even if you are vaccinated or have developed natural immunity, you may still get the virus. If you have been vaccinated for the flu (an annual event) you may still get the flu. If you are vaccinated or have developed natural immunity to COVID you may get sick but you are not likely to die. If you have been vaccinated for the flu (an annual event) you may still get sick but you are not likely to die.

4. If you have not been vaccinated or developed natural immunity you may still get the virus. If you do, you may get sick – very sick – but you are not likely to die. And while your chances of dying from the virus are significantly higher among the unvaccinated, there is still only about a three percent mortality rate. On the other hand virtually all of the hospitalizations from COVID are due to the unvaccinated. The remedial treatments improve everyday and thus the morbidity rate for the vaccinated, the naturally immune and the unvaccinated continues to drop.

5. And most importantly if you want your quality of life to improve dramatically stop wringing your hands, stop listening to the media dopes, and stop believing the politicians and bureaucrats. Get on with your lives and remember those who have made you miserable at the next election.