As a presidential candidate last year, Joe Biden told us he was “going to shut down COVID”. In a speech to the nation on September 9, he told us again that he has a new plan and that it promises certain things, such as: keeping kids safe in school, reducing the spread of COVID, saving lives, and protecting the economy while keeping businesses open. He said specifically: “we can reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans, decrease hospitalizations and deaths, and allow our children to go to school safely and keep our economy strong by keeping businesses open.” He also told us his plan would: “increase the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.”
The speech itself was not persuasive in any way. For example, his simple plea to parents like me to vaccinate our teenagers was totally unconvincing. He provided no compelling evidence to change our minds and addresses none of the concerns I’ve raised in prior posts. He does provide one actual data point, saying that kids in lower vaccinated states are four times more likely to be hospitalized, but that number is very, very low to begin with, and I’m a bit dubious about the data point as well (I think, perhaps, he is using a stat which applies to the population as a whole, but not necessarily to kids). He also asks adults to please get vaccinated as well, but provides no facts or data to convince them, does not seek to understand why they might be hesitant, offers no persuasive argument, and then disparages them for making their vaccinated neighbors angry. He even offers absolution for you who get angry with your foolish unvaccinated neighbors. He says his own patience with the unvaccinated is wearing thin, as if he is the adult in the room and the rest of us are recalcitrant children who just won’t listen to reason. He is clearly no disciple of Norman Vincent Peale.
Biden is also unwilling to admit, as I pointed out in a recent post, that during the last eight months we’ve vaccinated on average 1.4 million Americans per week, well exceeding his own goal of 100 million in 100 days. How about giving Americans some credit for taking the vaccine seriously and surpassing your original goal? He also makes no mention of natural immunity or that as many as one-third of all Americans may have already contracted COVID and be well-protected from re-infection because of it. Why does the administration continue to ignore such a significant factor which forms a substantial basis for future herd immunity? Is it because Biden would rather attack political opponents and blame anti-science Republicans for continuation of this pandemic?
The speech’s tone is divisive as Biden openly attacks the unvaccinated as well as his political rivals, saying they are undermining life-saving measures and bullying others who are trying to do the “right thing” (apparently Republicans have no heart and only Democrats care about saving lives). If the intent was to unite Americans in this fight against COVID, it missed the mark dreadfully. It was on par with his equally dreadful speech on Afghanistan the week before.
Approximately 400,000 Americans died while Trump was president. Candidate Biden said Trump was responsible for every single one of those deaths, a remarkable and patently false statement which his sympathetic media conveniently (for him) never challenged. I found this statement absolutely despicable, and it tells me much about the character of the man (as well as the character of our liberal one-channel media, who mostly gave him a pass). Even Nancy Pelosi, who is rarely right about anything and the consummate political animal, called out Biden for this statement:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12712683/biden-nancy-pelosi-outrageous-trump-blame-covid-deaths-us/.
Well, now we are approaching nearly 300,000 Americans dead under the Biden Administration’s watch and Biden’s conscience appears to be totally free from responsibility for even a single death. Who does he now blame instead? Red state governors and you, the unvaccinated, were the main targets in his COVID speech. At one point, earlier in the year, Biden also blamed social media: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/they-re-killing-people-biden-blames-social-media-for-covid-vaccine-misinformation/ar-AAMf0Sc, but now that social media is doing his bidding and censoring his political opponents (in violation of our First Amendment rights), he has not listed them as villains.
So, who is the one playing politics with COVID policy? Who is the one bullying others into following his mandates? Who is the one dividing Americans against each other for the purpose of political gain?
But, let’s put aside the nastiness and divisiveness of the speech as well as the lack of facts, data, and any real science. Instead, let’s ask the question is the Biden administration (and its cohorts) sincere about wanting to save lives, keeping our kids safe, keeping businesses open, and slowing the spread of COVID? If their intentions are good, maybe we should give them a bit of slack for at least trying to do the right thing.
In my last post, I pointed out the latest round of mandates on government employees, the military, and businesses of more than 100 employees had some big holes, like the 650,000 post office employees and the almost 4 million public school teachers who are exempted. These exceptions, are made, of course, because public school teachers and postal employees are represented by left-leaning unions, who, in many cases, are opposed to vaccine mandates. Biden will do nothing to upset his political base.
Biden, in his speech, claims that 90% of all public school teachers have been vaccinated already. I was unable to find any supporting evidence for this claim and I am dubious that public school teachers have a significantly higher vaccination rate than American adults in general. In addition, I found counter evidence that shows that among two of the nation’s largest school districts there is a good bit of resistance among public school teachers:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/vaccinated-teachers-chicago-teachers-union-cps
I cannot prove beyond a doubt that Biden’s claim is an outright lie, but it appears highly suspect. Even if the 90% claim is true it would still mean up to 400,000 public school teachers are unvaccinated. Mr. President, if your goal is to keep our kids safe, why do you exempt such a large body of individuals while pressuring (i.e. bullying) small businesses with just 100 employees? If public school teachers are vaccinated at rates comparable to the general public (which I believe is more likely the case) that would mean there are as many as 1 million unvaccinated public school teachers, all exempted from this new policy.
But there are more exceptions yet. Just as with Obamacare a dozen years ago, the rules do not apply to our lawmakers. They and their staffs don’t need to live under the same rules as the rest of us. If this is the right policy, why are these folks in leadership not leading by example?
https://news.yahoo.com/congress-exempt-biden-covid-19-145520977.html
The lack of a Congressional vaccine mandate is telling but not a huge hole in the vaccination policy. On the other hand, the lack of vaccinations and, in some cases, testing for migrants coming across the Mexican border is an overwhelming exception of vaccination policy. The numbers coming across the border are massive and have been increasing month after month since Biden took office in January reversing a significant decline experienced in the last couple years of the Trump Administration.
Breaking: Record 210,000 Illegal Aliens Apprehended at US Southern Border in July – During COVID Pandemic – A 21-Year High
In the city of Del Rio, Texas there are literally 12,000 Haitian immigrants camped under an overpass right now and more on the way. Haiti is a country with a 1% vaccination rate, so you should assume that none of these people are vaccinated and likely a large number are infected with COVID (and God knows what else). Yet, the Biden administration wants them to keep coming.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/04/thousands-of-covid-positive-migrants-pass-through-texas-border/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/18/haiti-migrants-us-texas-violence
The COVID positivity rate for migrants coming across the border has been 10% or more the entire year, yet the Biden administration continues to encourage them to come across, and each month a new record for border crossings is set and immigrants are resettled across the country. More than 1.5 million have across the border just this year. We are quite literally importing COVID across our border. While American companies of 100 or more employees are being bullied into vaccinating or firing their employees, we have a hole big enough for an aircraft carrier to get through.
When asked about this very discrepancy, the White House Press Secretary pushed the question aside, refusing to take it seriously. Note also that the author of the article below sympathizes with Psaki implying that it is better to vaccinate American workers than migrants because there are more of them, while at the same time ignoring the fact that the Biden administration is welcoming across our border millions of migrants of whom a large percentage have COVID; Peter Doocy asks a legitimate question and it is quite troubling that the White House is not held accountable for refusing to address it:
Doocy, apparently unable to discern that 100 million Americans getting vaccinated will help end the pandemic faster than vaccinating migrants crossing the border, pressed on.
“But it’s a requirement for people at a business, with more than 100 people and it’s not a requirement for migrants at the southern border,” he stated.
“That’s correct,” was Psaki’s response, shutting down to nonsensical line of questioning.
“Go ahead,” she told the next reporter.
Do you remember when Psaki refused to answer another COVID related question by asking the reporter: Why do you need that information? They were able to dodge the question then and they will continue to dodge similar questions until we, the American people, demand they be held accountable: COVID: Why Do You Need that Information? – Seek the Truth (seek-the-truth.com)
What’s happening at the border is a tragedy few are talking about: migrants enduring horrible conditions to come to the U.S., being horribly exploited by those on the other side of the border, and enduring inhumane conditions once reaching our border, exacerbating the spread of COVID in the U.S., and the importation of massive quantities of drugs, crime, and human trafficking into the U.S.
Last month, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said in an interview that county officials in the Lone Star State are asking him for more body bags to keep pace with the death toll.
“I sit in front of them and I go, ‘If I can do one thing for you, what would that be?’ And this is the ask I’m getting,” Gonzales told Newsmax. “They go, ‘Tony, we need more body bags.’ And I’m going, ‘Body bags? Why do you need body bags?’ They go, ‘Migrants are dying at record numbers, and we don’t have body bags to handle the situation.’ That’s what is happening on the ground.”
The Biden response in addition to ignoring legitimate inquiries into the tragedy that is playing out along the U.S./Mexico border is to stop our media from sending drones to capture the mania at the border: https://dailycaller.com/2021/09/17/senator-john-kennedy-drones-grounded-biden-administration-border-crisis/stopping drones.
If people don’t see how bad it is, then they won’t be so upset about it. Hear no evil, see no evil. A mostly compliant media plays along and will do nothing to elevate the opposition to this administration (God help us, if any of you figure out the Trump administration actually had some of this right and the Biden administration has been an unending disaster on front after front). Please do not let them get away with this travesty to humanity!
In summary, the Biden administration is showing its true colors; they care about imposing their COVID policy only when it suits their political interests. Potential new Democratic voters overrunning the border: exempted. Powerful, pro-Democratic teachers unions and postal unions: exempted. Our buddies in Congress who we do not want to offend because we have to work with them regularly: exempted. Red state governors who disagree with tactics on combatting COVID: undermining life-saving policies. Please don’t be fooled by these people. That are counting on deception to keep public opinion in check.
Meanwhile, back in the halls of power we have folks like Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez whooping it up last week at the Met Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hardly a mask is to be seen among the guests at the gala (although, of course, all the help is appropriately masked).
It appears the mask-less AOC isn’t taking the COVID threat too seriously these days. More rules for thee, but not for the political elite. You would think maybe AOC would be concerned about the humanitarian crisis at the border instead of hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities at a gala which has a hefty $35,000 entry price (also, a potential ethics violation as it is unlikely she paid the price for entry herself). After all, she traveled to the border to condemn President Trump when the number of migrants were a fraction of what they are today. Surely, someone as empathetic as her would choose to focus the spotlight on such a tragedy instead of living the life of the rich and powerful? She wants to tax the rich and tear down the systemically racist institutions of U.S. power while she herself is currently one of the biggest beneficiaries of that system. How are so many people fooled by this dim-witted hypocrite? Please see through her charade. Please see that people like her are motivated by nothing but their own power and the diminution of their opponent’s power. She is not deserving of the position of power that she holds.
The question I asked at the beginning of this post should be easily answered now: is the Biden administration (and its cohorts) sincere about wanting to save lives, keeping our kids safe, keeping businesses open, and slowing the spread of COVID? To be fair, in principle they may actually want to save lives, but unfortunately, they have demonstrated they couldn’t care less about saving lives when it comes at the expense of their political power. But read on. The story gets worse. The venality, vindictiveness, dishonesty, and I think, the downright malevolent nature of the current U.S. administration shines through even more.
Monoclonal Antibody Treatment:
Up until recently, treatments for COVID had been downplayed by the one-channel media and censored by social media. I included in my last few posts information on the drug ivermectin as well as monoclonal antibodies which are treatments currently proving to save lives. The one-channel media doesn’t like this narrative because they see it as an alternative to Biden’s vaccination policy. Just two weeks ago, I mentioned popular pod-caster Joe Rogan used both as treatments in overcoming COVID and then was immediately attacked for using a “horse drug” and unproven treatments being pushed by Republican anti-vaxers (https://seek-the-truth.com/2021/09/05/covid-retrospective-vaccines-masks-treatments-natural-immunity-herd-immunity-and-more/ ). The “horse drug”, ivermectin, turned out to be one that has been prescribed 4 billion times to humans and was the winner of the 2015 Nobel prize for medicine. Still, the New York Times, led the vanguard attacking Rogan (along with Trump) saying: “They Shunned Covid Vaccines but Embraced Antibody Treatment”, and the rest of the one-channel media piled on and on and on; Rogan became persona non-grata for giving aid and comfort to the their political enemy; he was now on par with Trump.
But a good drug is hard to find, and it becomes problematic to argue with actual success on a large scale. The one political leader who has actually been pushing for more COVID treatments has been Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. More than a month ago, DeSantis began stockpiling and then distributing monoclonal antibodies for citizens in Florida.
You want to know what real COVID leadership looks like, then listen to the DeSantis press conference in the link above. Facts, data, and science, not politics, lead the way for DeSantis, in sharp contrast to the Biden policy.
Well now, our story gets a bit more interesting last week as the Biden administration suddenly awakens to the fact that monoclonal antibodies are proving to be an effective treatment, and that Governor DeSantis is looking like a visionary. They need to find a way to jump in front of this parade.
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/09/16/watch-live-desantis-speaks-in-fort-lauderdale/
Indeed, Biden does, in fact, get on-board. Point six of the Biden plan laid out on September 9, calls for more monoclonal antibody treatments (finally, they are on track with something, although as we shall see, they will mess this up as well):
Additionally, we’re increasing the availability of new medicines recommended by real doctors, not conspir- — conspiracy theorists. The monoclonal antibody treatments have been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization by up to 70 percent for unvaccinated people at risk of developing sefe- — severe disease.
We’ve already distributed 1.4 million courses of these treatments to save lives and reduce the strain on hospitals. Tonight, I’m announcing we will increase the average pace of shipment across the country of free monoclonal antibody treatments by another 50 percent.
It was leaders like Florida Governor DeSantis who have distributed these treatments the last month, not the federal government, but be that as it may, the Biden administration is finally focusing on something more than testing, masking, and vaccinations. Yet, this inept administration finds a way to turn this good news to bad. Less than a week after taking control of the drug’s distribution and promising to increase supply by 50%, the Biden administration announces a cut of more than 50% in the supply of monoclonal antibodies to Florida:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-monoclonal-antibodies-florida-desantis
Let’s recap here. DeSantis was clearly ahead of the curve, ahead of Biden, Fauci and the CDC who have not pushed treatments and have hitched their wagon to vaccinations. By the time Biden’s plan is to roll out on September 9, it is clear that COVID treatments are proving effective in Florida and elsewhere. The Biden team jumps on the DeSantis train and promises a 50% increase in the drug’s distribution. Finally, it appears we have unity with the two political rivals coming together to save lives as they agree on the effectiveness of this particular treatment! Unfortunately, DeSantis is one of the bad guys who doesn’t want mask mandates and is undermining the Biden administration, remember? So, just days after announcing this plan, Biden, through HHS, cuts the supply of monoclonal antibodies to Florida, claiming it is all about equity. A promised 50% increase in supply becomes a more than 50% decrease for the state of Florida. How is that? Right now, Florida has one of the highest needs for this life-saving drug; need, not equity, should determine where the drug is distributed. If you need a medical procedure today, you are not asked to wait while someone in a distant state gets the same treatment so we make sure that treatment is equitably distributed.
Again, the Biden administration can’t help but play politics here. Governor DeSantis has been leading the charge against unconstitutional mandates (Biden also specifically targeted DeSantis in his September 9 speech saying “there are elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19. “) and DeSantis is now leading the way on saving lives with effective treatments. DeSantis is the most popular and most effective Republican in office extant, and the Democrat party’s number one goal for 2022 is to stop him from being re-elected. DeSantis must be attacked, must be discredited, and cannot be allowed to share in any credit for saving lives. Should DeSantis be re-elected next year and should Trump step aside in 2024, DeSantis is the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. This is the threat that the Biden administration is battling more than COVID itself. Politics is an ugly business and the politics of this administration are as ugly as they get. Why else, but politics, would you undermine the success Florida was having and cut the state’s supply to half of what it was the week before? Political expediency wins out over saving lives and that is unconscionable.
Jen Psaki was confronted with a question about why this effective treatment is being denied to Florida at this time. This woman with the pretty face, calm demeanor, and nice smile lies as well as her boss:
There are two questions in this exchange between Psaki and Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson. The first question regards boosters which the Biden clearly wants to push on the public, but is having trouble lining up its scientists behind their policy, including some in the FDA, the CDC, as well as the WHO.
The second question is regarding the cut in the distribution of monoclonal antibodies to Florida. Psaki says that one of the reasons is equity: Oklahoma needs their fair share, despite the fact that Florida has a bigger need at the moment. The other reason, according to Psaki is that states like Florida and Texas have acted irresponsibly and not done a good job vaccinating their citizens. In other words, they have been bad and need to be punished. Only that last statement about low vaccination rates is not even true. Florida has fully vaccinated 56% of their citizens; they have the 18th highest rate among the states, not the best, but in the top twenty. Texas has vaccinated 50% of their citizens, about the middle of the pack. But even if both were dead last in vaccination rates does that justify cutting off a supply that they have been depending on the last few months and knowingly let people die–and then not even acknowledging the consequences of such actions? The fact is that all the states that had supplies cut were those with Republican governors. I don’t know what to make of this other than to believe that the Biden administration would actually prefer citizens in Republican run states die. This is something that the media accused the Trump administration of doing with ventilators, but that concern never actually materialized. Now it is has actually happened and the media doesn’t care. It is a downright malevolent explanation but what other banal explanation can there possibly be?
Protecting the Vaccinated
Then we have another in the Biden administration, the inimitable, Kamala Harris opening her mouth and saying something ridiculous as well.
“By vaccinating the unvaccinated, increasing our testing and masking, and protecting the vaccinated, we can end this pandemic. That’s exactly what we are committed to doing,” Harris tweeted.
https://www.newsmax.com/us/kamala-harris-covid-pandemic-vaccinated/2021/09/13/id/1036149/
When I went to school a long time ago, I was taught the purpose of the vaccine is to protect me against a disease. After I am vaccinated, I do not need protection from the unvaccinated. If anyone were telling the third-grade version of me that I needed to be protected from unvaccinated people, I would have told them that makes no sense. Someone should tell this to the VP.
In addition, the more people we vaccinate, the less chance the virus spreads to the small unvaccinated population (at least in vaccination theory). That is the point of large vaccination programs. Yet, our VP has this all jumbled up; she thinks “protecting the vaccinated” in other words, protecting the protected, is a key. It is the same kind of logic the administration used in deciding to protect and evacuate our military from Afghanistan while leaving thousands of stranded civilians behind to fend for themselves. Isn’t the purpose of the military to protect they way of life for our American citizens? Where do we find these politicians?
The thinking of folks like Biden and Harris is so wrapped up in politics, that they can’t see the logic in what they are actually saying. They think the vaccinated did everything right. They did what they were asked and they must be rewarded for being faithful to our dictates, and doubly so if they engaged in all the new COVID rituals (masking, lockdowns, social distancing, etc.). These folks also rightly criticized the unvaccinated, the unmasked, and the skeptical, so they need to be supported by us and they need to be distinguished from those who opposed us. The vaccinated are still getting sick and they are being hospitalized at an increasing rate, but Harris says that is the unvaccinated folk’s fault, mainly the unvaccinated conservatives who have been trying to spread misinformation online. So, please just unite behind her and Joe and follow along with all their COVID rituals and this will all go away–and if it doesn’t go away just blame Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot because they don’t care about you. How ridiculous and inane.
This type of thinking defies logic, but it’s what passes for critical thought among our political leaders and their groupies in the media and the public at large. Here we have the family of a vaccinated person blaming all of you unvaccinated for her death.
If you just want to lash out at someone, why not blame Biden for killing your family member after providing a welcome mat to tens of thousands of unvaccinated Haitian refugees?
But let’s look at this logically. First of all, vaccines are not 100% effective and have never been advertised to be so. Secondly, their effectiveness is starting to wane (as I show more below), third you can get the virus from the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated, and fourth we are all going to die for one reason or another; we shouldn’t spend our lives blaming each other for the deaths of all who died before us.
Risk to Kids:
I reached out to my kids school board and the principal at our school recently because school policy has been to send kids home for two weeks due to an “exposure” to COVID. Mind you, kids stay home for two weeks even if there are no symptoms, even if there is no positive test. In my opinion, keeping them at home for two weeks is a bigger problem than the risk from COVID. I say let them go back to school until there is a reason (positive test, actual symptoms) for keeping them at home. Putting them in the car twice a day to ride to and from school is a bigger risk than the risk posed by COVID, yet we willingly accept that risk daily. Many more kids have died from pneumonia than COVID in the last two years. More have died of the flu than COVID. We’re all willing to accept these other risks, but we balk at the COVID risk. Why? The principal at our school had no real answers. He wants kids to be safe and to be in school as much as possible–as we all do, but that is not a justification for this policy.
The top number was calculated this way: 360 / 74,000,000 = .00000047 = .00047% (360 children COVID deaths out of 74 million kids in the U.S. as of early August). The number has increased to .00054% in the month since this tweet.
The Biden administration too gives us the same line as our school principal, but unlike our principal, our political leaders are aware of the numbers, and are actually driving the policy. There is no need for these extraordinary measures at any school. Perhaps, it was understandable out of abundance of caution at first, but now it is counter-productive. Vastly more kids have been hurt by COVID policy than have been impacted by COVID itself. It’s really not about protecting the kids. If it were, they would be looking at these same numbers and making more rational decisions.
Our principal told me they basically have no leverage in determining policy and they are simply following guidelines from the NC Public Health Department. It is the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are determining the policy at our school, and I really have no way of influencing them. I would like to share with them, our Governor-King, Dr. Fauci, and all the rest, the latest study from The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, certainly more prestigious than the NC Public Health Department:
Daily contact testing of school-based contacts was non-inferior to self-isolation for control of COVID-19 transmission, with similar rates of symptomatic infections among students and staff with both approaches. Infection rates in school-based contacts were low, with very few school contacts testing positive. Daily contact testing should be considered for implementation as a safe alternative to home isolation following school-based exposures.
source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01908-5/fulltext
I do not like the idea of daily testing either, but it is clearly preferable to keeping kids out of school for two weeks for an incidental exposure. But this result doesn’t fit the agenda, doesn’t fit the narrative, so it will be ignored by the Biden administration, school boards, and departments of health across the country. How is that we get people to begin “following the science”?
Not only is nothing likely to change with this policy, I will have to continue to listen to Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci continue to blame me and my kids and the tens of millions of the other kids between 12 and 17 who have not been vaccinated. We are the bad guys, not them. They claim to be following the science. Which science is that exactly?
Why the Vaccine Mandate?
I am really wondering why the Biden Administration decided to issue a vaccine mandate at this time. First of all, I believe mandates to be unconstitutional, although that is debatable and the matter is working its way through the courts now. But also, they are not very popular among the general public. In fact, a majority or Republicans, Democrats, and Independents oppose them:
- 87% of Republicans, 67% of Independents, and 59% of Democrats Say Taking COVID-19 Vaccine Should be a Personal Choice
- Only 7.2% of Republicans, 27% of Independents, and 33% of Democrats Say Vax Mandatory
Interestingly enough, Biden, Harris, Fauci, and Pelosi all opposed the imposition of vaccine mandates in the last few months. Listen to this short minute-and-a-half clip: https://grabien.com/file.php?id=1324773. Why did they all flip in the last month? It is a puzzlement. Did the science change or maybe just the politics?
Putting all our Faith in the Vaccines
The vaccines still appear to be effective at holding down deaths. I’ve done the analysis below several times and the results remain consistent. Deaths have been rising everywhere, but the lower vax’d states still have the higher death rates. There is not so big a difference between states with a 60%+ rate and a 50%+ rate, but there is a very big increase in deaths as you fall below the 50% vaccinated rate. The 11 states in the upper tier (60%+ vax’d) have a death rate one-fourth that of the 11 states in the lowest tier (40-45% vax’d): 2.48 per 1 million versus 11.24 per 1 million.
| Vaccination rate | Total Population | 7-day moving average deaths | Deaths per 1M | 7-day moving average cases | Cases per 1M | |
| 60+ % | 58,938,216 | 146 | 2.48 | 17313 | 293.75 | |
| 55-59 | 106,861,392 | 298 | 2.79 | 38587 | 361.09 | |
| 50-55 | 41,358,111 | 159 | 3.84 | 16873 | 407.97 | |
| 45-50% | 81,234,834 | 575 | 7.08 | 48312 | 594.72 | |
| 40-45% | 37,912,562 | 426 | 11.24 | 24723 | 652.11 |
However, there are some trends we need to continue to watch. Will the vaccines continue to shine?
- 88% of Vermont adults have been vaccinated (it’s the highest rate in the nation), yet COVID cases are as high as they’ve ever been.
- Maine is the fourth highest vaccinated states; its cases have also hit a record peak this week.
- Washington state is the ninth highest vaccinated state; its cases and deaths are at new record highs.
- Except for Florida (trending down the last two months) and Hawaii and California (trending down the last month), COVID cases over the summer have risen in all of the top 20 most vaccinated states
- Duke University last week reported 365 new COVID cases. 98% of the student body is vaccinated, and all but 4 of the new cases were among the vaccinated.
- In early September, cases in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world (including 26% who are triple-vax’d), hit an all time high. Deaths are also up to 25 per day after falling to near zero for two-and-a-half months.
- It was previously reported that 99% of hospitalizations were among the unvaccinated, but that number is falling. Last week, in Broward County, Florida more than half of hospitalizations were among the vaccinated.
- Michigan reports three times more hospitalizations among the vaccinated in the last month than the rate established earlier in the year.
The opportunity for herd immunity is lost because this is dependent on the vaccine stopping the spread among the unvaccinated. The original goal of “flattening the curve” is now a joke that nobody remembers. What is it we are trying to do with our policy? What is the number of vaccinated that we need to reach for all this work? Nobody in that government will give you that number because they don’t want to be pinned down once the number is reached, so the goalposts are always moving. However many are vaccinated, it will never be enough. Unless you remain in lockstep with every government COVID policy, you will always be the target for not doing enough.
President Biden asked us what more are we waiting for before getting vaccinated? Here are five reasons to wait:
1. You have natural immunity and that is good enough for now.
2. You value your liberty and want to make your own medical decisions in conjunction with your doctor.
3. You are not certain about the effectiveness of vaccines and want to wait a little bit longer to see how things turn out.
4. You are not certain of the safety of the vaccine and want to wait a little bit longer to see how things turn out. There are some risks. See the final section below.
5. You don’t trust a government who has lied to you repeatedly. Mr. Biden you have only yourself to blame for this one.
Risk from Vaccine
How many have died from vaccines themselves? This is a question I think we all need to know. The answer is anything but certain. The CDC maintains the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS). One caveat that must be stated regarding this system is that anyone can report an adverse impact. A claim of an adverse impact is not verified by the CDC, so it could be suspect. The reverse can also be true in that a number of adverse impacts are never reported to VAERS, so there could actually be more deaths than has been reported. I think what is known out to be shared and openly discussed. It is not unreasonable to weigh these risks against your risk from COVID before getting a vaccine for yourself.
This data is two-months-old but these numbers give a flavor of the kinds of impacts being tracked:
In the U.S, 328.9 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of July 2. This includes: 134 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 182 million doses of Pfizer and 13 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.
Of the 9,048 deaths reported as of July 2, 22% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 15% occurred within 24 hours and 37% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
This week’s data for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
- 13,385 total adverse events, including 801 rated as serious and 14 reported deaths among 12- to 17-year-olds. Two of the nine deaths were suicides.
- The most recent reported death includes a 13-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1431289) with a previous history of COVID who suffered cardiac arrest and died 17 days after vaccination with Pfizer. Other reports include a 13-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1406840) who died two days after receiving a Pfizer vaccine, three 15-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1187918, 1382906 and 1242573), four 16-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1420630, 1426828, 1225942 and 1386841) and three 17-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1199455, 1388042 and 1420762).
- 1,934 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds with 99% of cases
- attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 1.1% to Moderna and 0.2% (or four cases) to J&J.
- 347 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 343 attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 57 reports of blood clotting disorders, 56 attributed to Pfizer and 1 attributed to Moderna.
This week’s total VAERS data, from Dec. 14, 2020 to July 2, 2021, for all age groups show:
- 22% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
- 50% of those who died were male, 45% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
- The average age of death was 74.7.
- As of July 2, 2,678 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 994 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- Of the 4,456 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 59% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 39% to Moderna vaccine and 7% to J&J.
- 398 reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, with 47% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 40% to Moderna and 19% to J&J.
- 121,092 reports of anaphylaxis with 46% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 46% to Moderna and 7% to J&J.
- 8,256 reports of blood clotting disorders. Of those, 3,959 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 2,699 reports to Moderna and 1,552 reports to J&J.
- 1,796 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 1,177 cases attributed to Pfizer, 563 cases to Moderna and 52 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.
We need to remember these adverse impacts are in the thousands while the number of vaccines administered is in the hundreds of millions, so the numbers are relatively small compared to the total number of vaccines, but again I have to ask how many have been unreported? We also know that every medication, vaccine, pain-killer, antibiotic, or whatever, comes with some risk.
At the least, I think we can say this vaccine appears to be a little bit more risky than other medications. How much riskier isn’t so clear, but the U.S. government has pulled vaccines from the market for far fewer adverse impacts. Earlier this year the J&J COVID vaccine was pulled for a period of several weeks when just six adverse cases were reported.
I’m not saying any definitive about vaccine safety. I’m not qualified to do so in any case. But does it not warrant discussion? There are those who would say discussion is bad because it will be misunderstood by so many and discourage vaccinations. Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men, said to Tom Cruise: “You can’t handle the truth!” But I think we can handle the truth, and I think we deserve the truth. Are these vaccines actually causing more deaths or not? Let us know our true risk from COVID and our true risk from the vaccine. What I have heard so far isn’t enough to prevent me and my wife who are at higher risk of COVID due to age from getting the shot, but it is certainly enough to prevent us from vaccinating our teenage kids. I would like for our kids to eventually get vaccinated, but I just want to be more certain about the risks, and I want to know more about the long term impacts, before we take that step. Mr. Biden, can’t you please help us obtain that information so that we can make informed decisions? Isn’t that what you were elected to do?
Seek the Truth 
Hi from the UK
Good post! I have written about the various Covid 19 issues and who is behind it. You might like to look at my page on vaccines from which you can access the Covid 19 Summary.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/?s=vaccination
Kind regards
Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson
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