I strongly suspect the Biden administration was recently planning to open up the pandemic playbook, using the approach first taken by President Donald Trump: Role out the experts, focus on the cases, issue mandates, and insist on lockdowns.
The trouble with this game plan is that Americans now have had over 18 months of data and experiences with COVID-19, and they find the conclusions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) senseless, baseless, and devoid of scientific rationale.
First, as I have noted in a previous post, the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus infections will be cyclic as more variants evolve. Eventually, everyone is likely to get an infection and either evolve natural immunity (or get a vaccine and be spared the worst effects of this particular pathogen). Ultimately, the virus will probably join the rest of the strains that cause our common colds.
As we now have over 18 months of data, people are beginning to wonder about the focus on cases…rather than hospitalizations or deaths. After all, all of us will get sick with some disease at some point. Therefore, the worry should be whether there are treatments that are effective. However, it is being noticed now that neither the press nor the current administration is interested in these more important numbers.
Here is a graph showing the level of hospitalizations in this country over the course of the pandemic.
And here is a graphic view of the number of deaths:
With this in mind, people are challenging the CDC on its use of an outbreak of COVID-19 in Provincetown, Massachusetts in July to justify the new mask guidance. The agency asserts that vaccinated people will transmit the virus and spread disease, so it is primed to bring back all the rules that have already failed to eliminate the virus.
The CDC is meeting with a great deal of pushback from Americans who researched why the outbreak occurred and what it really meant about vaccinations.
To start with, gay rights activist Peter Staley described the activities at Provincetown that weekend. Let’s just note that those activities were conducive to the spread of all sorts of pathogens.
Nate Silver, an analyst who is not exactly unfriendly to big government types, reviewed data released by the CDC that led to the new mask guidance (which was based on the Provincetown event). He determined that the agency failed to account for the fact asymptomatic people were less likely to get tested and did not address the fact the cohort was substantially male. Silver notes that the CDC incorrectly drew conclusions related to the general population based on faulty data.
Finally, how truly scary are the “breakthrough cases” that led to Team Biden and the CDC to begin trial ballooning lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine passports? In the case of Provinceton…not terribly.
Alex Morse, town manager of Provincetown, said on Twitter that of the some 900 cases now linked to the cluster, “there have been no deaths, 7 hospitalizations, and the symptoms are largely mild.””Our positivity peaked at 15% on 7/15 and was only 4.8% yesterday. The outbreak is contained and Provincetown is safe,” Morse added.
Breakthrough cases elsewhere confirm that the vaccines at least are providing good protection from the worst impacts of SARS-Cov-2.
Today, the New York Post Editorial Board came to the same conclusion many Legal Insurrection readers have reached: Ignore the hysteria: It’s time to move past COVID, America.
Let’s face it: The CDC and its public-health peers have been disaster shows all pandemic long (recall the test it insisted was the only acceptable one, until it turned out to not work?), but the failing has reached the level that the only rational thing to do is to not take its hopeless advice as gospel. Be sensible, but don’t let the scaremongering stop you living your life.The risk of death or hospitalization for anyone who’s gotten jabbed remains very, very low. Kids under 12 are also extremely safe. And, yes, even a single shot of the two-step Moderna and Pfizer jabs does a world of good.
Clearly, we have reached the point of “consensus,” and it is time to move beyond COVID.
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