Covid + Three

For the most part we are not hearing much about Covid in the news these days.

We are more likely to hear about inflation, Ukraine, UFO's or Chinese balloons.

Several BeeLine readers reached out and asked that I provide an update on what I see going on with Covid.

Part of my daily routine for the last several years is to look at the most recent national Covid data as reported by The New York Times.

The good news is that confirmed cases have been trending down and we are at lower levels in the United States than at the same time in 2021 or 2022.

Source: The New York Times

Is this due to the vaccines or is it the result of increasing natural immunity?

Interestingly, a large percentage of the U.S. population seems to have decided that they are done with additional vaccine doses.

83% of the population have received no doses of the vaccine since June, 2022.

Only 16% have received the bivalent booster that is supposed to be effective against the Omicron variant.

Credit: https://twitter.com/Humble_Analysis/status/1623866871601844224

A large percentage of people have clearly reached their own conclusion that the vaccine is not going to prevent them from getting Covid or transmitting the virus despite what they were told when many were mandated to get it or lose their jobs.

Of course, we still hear that the vaccine will prevent severe disease and keep you out of the hospital.

However, the current data on hospitalizations raises questions about that assertion.

The highest rates of Covid hospitalizations right now are almost all in states with the highest vaccination rates.

Source: The New York Times

Is this merely a coincidence?

We have also recently seen Dr. Anthony Fauci co-authoring an article in a scientific journal which effectively admits that flu and Covid vaccines have proven to be very ineffective at preventing infection and disease.

Regarding the flu vaccines that Fauci and the CDC push every year.

“After more than 60 years of experience with influenza vaccines, very little improvement in vaccine prevention of infection has been noted… our best approved influenza vaccines would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases.” 

The best approved influenza viruses would be inadequate for licensure under the same standards for other vaccine-preventable diseases?

That does not inspire a lot of confidence in the benefits of the product. 

Fauci and his co-authors see the same problem with the Covid vaccines.

"As variant SARS-CoV-2 strains have emerged, deficiencies in these [Covid] vaccines reminiscent of influenza vaccines have become apparent."

 

This admission is coming from the same guy who once stated that if you got the Covid vaccine you became a "dead end" for Covid and was a leading proponent for mandates.

“When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community,” Fauci continued. “In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that’s when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community.”

How could someone that was supposed to know so much be so wrong?

And if Fauci knew all of this (or should have known based on prior experience) why did he push the draconian vaccine mandates so forcefully?

Last week also saw the release of a study by the Cochrane Institute---the gold standard of evidence-based reviews--- of 78 global studies involving the effectiveness of masks on preventing Covid.

The conclusion was that masks "made little or no difference" in Covid infection or death rates.

Surgical masks provided, at most, a 5% reduction in risk. That benefit was considered too small to be statistically significant. N95 masks offered best protection but did not consider possible harms.

Credit: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11702865/Masks-make-little-no-difference-Covid-infections-massive-cross-country-meta-analysis-finds.html

This suggests that if someone felt the need to wear a mask on their own there may be some marginal benefit.

However, there is no basis in science that widespread masking provides any community or societal benefit. 

If you want to see a real-life example of the considerable limitations in the vaccines and masks in preventing Covid you only need to look at the experience of Japan.

Japan is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.

Japan has injected 50% more vaccine doses into its citizenry than the United States.

It is also one of the most mask-compliant nations on earth. They have had almost 100% mask compliance indoors for over two years.

The odd thing is that Japan had relatively few Covid infections until after the vaccines were introduced.

What is worse is that 89% of Japan's Covid deaths have come after the introduction of the vaccines.

Unfortunately, deaths have been accelerating in Japan the last several months especially with its large, aged population.

There have been more deaths from Covid in the first five weeks of 2023 than there were in Japan for the first 15 months of the pandemic.

Recall that Japan was the first country outside of China to get global attention when the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama in February, 2020. 

Despite that early potential exposure to the virus it was not until after millions and millions of doses of the vaccine had been administered that it has seen the most ravaging effects of the virus.

Does any of this make sense based on what we were told by so-called "experts" like Dr. Fauci?

It seems to be no different than much of what has occurred with Covid over the last three years.