Tag Archives: Omicron virus

Does The Vaccine Actually Work?

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On Monday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a recent study of the effectiveness of the Pfizer–BioNtech’s COVID-19 vaccine against the Omicron coronavirus variant.

The article reports:

The protection afforded against the Omicron coronavirus variant fades quickly after a second and third dose of Pfizer–BioNtech’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the JAMA Network.

A Danish study published in the JAMA Network on May 13 found that there was a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibodies only a few weeks after the administration of the second and third doses of the vaccine.

The study evaluated 128 adults who were vaccinated, and of that number, 73 people received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and 55 people received three doses between January 2021 and October 2021 or were previously infected before February 2021, and then vaccinated.

“Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses,” an abstract of the study reads. “The observed decrease in population neutralizing antibody titers corresponds to the decrease in vaccine efficacy against polymerase chain reaction–confirmed Omicron infection in Denmark and symptomatic Omicron infection in the United Kingdom.”

The antibody levels, which are associated with protection against future infections, dropped within a few weeks of getting the vaccine doses. They were also much lower than the antibodies specific to the Delta and original COVID-19 strains, according to the study.

The article concludes:

Those antibodies (Omicron-specific antibodies) increased with a third dose, increasing 21-fold three weeks after the dose before dropping to eightfold at week four. But with the third dose, antibody levels dropped as early as three weeks, falling 5.4-fold between the third and eighth week, the researchers said.

They concluded that it may be needed to provide additional booster doses to combat the Omicron variant, which emerged last fall, primarily among older individuals.

However, a study from Israeli researchers published in early April in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a fourth dose, or a second booster, of the Pfizer vaccine, doesn’t offer strong protection.

“Overall, these analyses provided evidence for the effectiveness of a fourth vaccine dose against severe illness caused by the omicron variant, as compared with a third dose administered more than 4 months earlier,” the study’s authors wrote at the time, after analyzing data from the Israeli Ministry of Health. “For confirmed infection, a fourth dose appeared to provide only short-term protection and a modest absolute benefit.”

I really think that the only real protection against Covid is actually getting Covid. I realize that the disease can be dangerous for some people, but what good does continually giving shots to people only to receive a short-term benefit do? We have reached the point where most Covid cases are similar to the common cold. Finding a vaccine that will work against all of the variations of Covid is about as likely as finding a vaccine for the common cold. I think it’s time to accept the fact that Covid is now with us forever and simply learn to deal with it without creating a population of pin cushions.

 

An Interesting Perspective

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On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal posted an op-ed piece about vaccine mandates. The editorial pointed out some very obvious questions.

The article notes:

Federal courts considering the Biden administration’s vaccination mandates—including the Supreme Court at Friday’s oral argument—have focused on administrative-law issues. The decrees raise constitutional issues as well. But there’s a simpler reason the justices should stay these mandates: the rise of the Omicron variant.

It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening here.

Both mandates—from the Health and Human Services Department for healthcare workers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for large employers in many other industries—were issued Nov. 5. At that time, the Delta variant represented almost all U.S. Covid-19 cases, and both agencies appropriately considered Delta at length and in detail, finding that the vaccines remained effective against it.

Those findings are now obsolete. As of Jan. 1, Omicron represented more than 95% of U.S. Covid cases, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because some of Omicron’s 50 mutations are known to evade antibody protection, because more than 30 of those mutations are to the spike protein used as an immunogen by the existing vaccines, and because there have been mass Omicron outbreaks in heavily vaccinated populations, scientists are highly uncertain the existing vaccines can stop it from spreading. As the CDC put it on Dec. 20, “we don’t yet know . . . how well available vaccines and medications work against it.”

The article notes that mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission.

The article also notes:

As the World Health Organization puts it, “if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary to interrupt transmission chains and prevent harm to others, there should be sufficient evidence that the vaccine is efficacious in preventing serious infection and/or transmission.” For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence.

The article concludes:

It is axiomatic in U.S. law that courts don’t uphold agency directives when the agency has entirely failed to consider facts crucial to the problem. In many contexts courts send regulations back to the agency for reconsideration in light of dramatically changed circumstances. If the agency’s action “is not sustainable on the record itself, the proper judicial approach has been to vacate the action and to remand the matter back to the agency for further consideration,” as the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia put it.

Neither HHS nor OSHA ever considered Omicron or said a word about vaccine efficacy against it, for the simple reason that it hadn’t yet been discovered. In these circumstances, longstanding legal principles require the justices to stay the mandates and send them back to the agencies for a fresh look.

It is becoming very obvious that there is a severe lack of common sense among those who are currently supporting vaccine mandates.

The Tyranny Variant

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Because it has been done gradually, most of us have been slow to realize how many of the freedoms we had taken for granted have disappeared in the past two years. I am still hoping to see some of my grandchildren this summer without having everyone in their house go into quarantine because I am visiting from another state. Americans used to travel freely. I keep a mask in my car. I never know when someone will demand that I wear it in order to enter a building. Its effectiveness is questionable, but those in authority choose to ignore that fact. If a friend is in the hospital, I can’t visit them. In some situations I need a Covid test every week if I have not had the vaccine in order to go to work. Some college students, fully vaccinated, need a Covid test to return to school after Christmas break. Will we soon have vaccine passports that can be demanded by any authority at any time? (Papers, please.) Where are the freedoms our Founding Fathers fought for?

On Wednesday, American Greatness posted an article asking the question, “Will We Reach Herd Immunity Against the Tyranny Variant?” That’s a good question.

The article notes:

The good news is that the end of all of the COVID madness is apparently in sight. While low IQ pundits and hosts on MSNBC and CNN were doing their best to whip up one more frenzy of lockdowns and mandates over the “great and terrible” Omicron variant, the truth is Omicron, while highly contagious, is not evenly remotely deadly. It means most people, even the triple vaccinated (technically triple jabbed with a therapeutic medicine, as we don’t actually have a vaccine), multiple booster shots while wearing five masks Karens are probably going to get it—which means we’ll reach herd immunity and be back to normal within a few months. 

That’s the good news. The bad news? Once COVID fades into the background, most if not all of our major institutions will still be broken. The CDC and NIH need serious reform. Corporate propagandists will still be around, acting not so much as “news sources” but as outlets for administrative state narratives. Tyrants from the federal to the local level will be looking for the next fear tactic to scare Americans into abdicating more power to the state. Big Tech will still be censoring and shutting down anything it disagrees with as it tramples the Bill of Rights. 

The only hope is that enough Americans will have been inoculated after this bout of madness to be immune to, and deeply skeptical of, the next attempt to erode their rights. We will get some inkling of whether that’s the case in the coming elections. If Americans are acquiring a herd immunity to tyranny, look for them to actually demand their supposed representatives look out for and defend their rights.

Have Americans done enough to protect the integrity of our elections in the past year to be able to fight the tyranny variant? I don’t know.

Things That Just Don’t Add Up

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In an article posted Monday, WND reported:

The head of a $100 billion insurance company says all-cause deaths have spiked an astonishing 40% among people ages 18-64 compared to pre-pandemic levels.

It’s an unprecedented rate that is four times higher than a once-in-200-year catastrophe, said Scott Davison, CEO of Indianapolis-based OneAmerica, during an online news conference last Thursday reported by the news site Center Square.

…Meanwhile, the daily number of deaths from COVID-19, according to the state dashboard, is less than half of what it was a year ago.

…However, Dr. Robert Malone, who has three decades of experience at the highest levels of vaccine development, said in an interview Monday morning that the insurance CEO’s statistics point to vaccine injuries.

Davison, Malone told Steve Bannon on “War Room,” is talking about a working population of people “who are likely to be highly jabbed because they’ve been under employer mandates.”

“And what you need to do is compare that event rate that he is reporting to the event rate of death and COVID-related death in the general population,” Malone said.

Malone noted that the reported COVID death rate in Indiana was lower than the death rate for people with employee-based insurance.

“This suggests that these people that are under the insurance mandate, are highly jabbed, have an enormously increased mortality rate compared to the general population,” Malone said.

He cautioned that a causative relationship can only be inferred, but “there is no question that the federal policies are an abject failure.”

On Monday, Daniel Horowitz at The Blaze reported the following:

1) 96% of all Omicron cases in Germany among vaccinated

2) Omicron among vaccinated outpacing unvaccinated by 28% in Ontario

3) In Denmark, 89.7% of all Omicron cases were among fully vaccinated

4) Just 25% of the Omicron hospitalizations in the U.K. are unvaccinated

5) 33 of 34 hospitalizations in Delhi hospital were vaccinated

6) Vaccinated exponentially more likely to get re-infected with COVID

Please follow the link above to read the details. Either scientists know a whole lot more about the coronavirus than they are telling us, or they have no idea how the coronavirus works. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend rushing out to get your vaccine or booster real soon.

Actually Following The Science

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On December 21st, The New York Post posted an article titled, “Biden needs to tell the FDA to stop blocking lifesaving COVID treatments.”

The article lists a number of treatments for COVID that have been tested scientifically and proven to be effective:

Fluvoxamine, a commonly available medication, reduced COVID deaths by 91 percent in a randomized controlled trial conducted with impeccable methodology and recently published in The Lancet. This study affirms another trial on the drug published last spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The drug is safe, has a plausible mechanism of action, costs $10 and has no contrary studies that might challenge the breathtaking results published. Yet I’ve never heard our public-health officials mention fluvoxamine.

…Merck’s lifesaving drug molnupiravir received an up-vote from the FDA’s external experts three weeks ago, yet the agency has not authorized the drug. Pfizer’s Paxlovid drug cut COVID deaths to zero (compared with 10 deaths in the control group), yet in the five weeks the FDA has been sitting on the application the agency has not even scheduled an advisory meeting to review it. Maybe functionaries don’t want to change their holiday plans.

The article also notes that the outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID may actually contain some good news:

We also need straight talk when it comes to Omicron. Now 73 percent of new US COVID infections are from Omicron, a strain resulting in more mild illness. A University of Hong Kong study found that Omicron is one-tenth as infective in lung cells compared with the Delta variant. That explains why Omicron patients report far fewer cough and fever symptoms and far fewer people develop severe illness. Instead, the vast majority of Omicron-infected people get common-cold symptoms.

The fear headline is that Omicron partially evades antibody immunity. That’s true; so did Delta. But, also like Delta, Omicron does not escape existing T-cell immunity, according to a new Johns Hopkins study, which is consistent with mounting population data. Cases from the epicenter in Gauteng, South Africa, are plunging, down 44 percent Monday from the prior day. According to South African Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla, only 1.7 percent of COVID cases were hospitalized the second week of the Omicron-dominant wave, compared with 19 percent the same week of the Delta wave.

We now have laboratory data, epidemiological data and bedside observations to conclude that Omicron is a milder variant. We are witnessing how pandemics end — a virus mutates down and becomes endemic as population immunity increases.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but our government bureaucrats keep putting it out.

Good News Out Of Africa

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On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about what is happening in Africa with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Daily Covid cases in South Africa have fallen again by 22 per cent compared to last week’s figures, fuelling hopes that the country’s Omicron wave is over. 

South Africa, whose scientists detected the variant, recorded 21,099 new cases in the last 24 hours, down by nearly a quarter on the 26,976 infections confirmed last Wednesday.

A fifth fewer people were tested for the virus in the last 24 hours compared to the same period last week, but test positivity — the proportion of those tested who are infected — has been trending downwards for nine days.    

…The falling case numbers come despite only 25 per cent of South Africans being double-jabbed and boosters not being dished out in the country. 

It raises hopes that the UK’s Omicron wave will also be short-lived, with Britain also having a layer of protection in its booster programme.  

…The data from the country suggests the outbreak is fading around a month after it was first detected, while ministers and scientists in the UK are panicking about the impact the wave will have over the coming weeks.

…The rise of Omicron is out of step with gloomy Government modelling that predicted the mutant super-strain was doubling every two days and could lead to a million infections per day by the end of the year. 

Meanwhile, latest hospital data shows there were 813 admissions across the UK on December 18, marking an increase of just five per cent in a week. Deaths dropped 15 per cent week-on-week to 140. 

Hospital admissions are rising more slowly than in previous waves and a growing body of evidence suggests Omicron is causing milder illness. 

The article concludes:

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that Mr Johnson had made the right decision because cases ‘look like they’ve peaked’. 

He said: ‘It’s not all doom and gloom, it does look like Omicron has stopped growing. The numbers over the last few days seem to have plateaued and maybe even be falling.

‘It’s a bit too soon to be absolutely sure about that, but if it is the case Boris Johnson will breathe a sigh of relief. We have to be a little bit careful because it’s only a few days.

‘And because we’re getting closer to Christmas there is nervousness that people may not come forward for testing because they don’t want to test positive and miss out on meeting relatives.

‘Omicron overtook the other variants around December 14 so most of any changes from there on would be down to Omicron. So if it was still doubling every two days that would have shown and we should have been at 200,000 cases yesterday and certainly more than 200,000 cases today.

‘But the fact it has been around 91,000 raises the point that it might actually have peaked. But it will probably take until at least Wednesday to get an idea of a day that is not affected by the weekend. But I am more optimistic than I was a few days ago.’ 

There were 1.49million tests conducted today which is down from 1.56 million last Wednesday, but Professor Hunter said the ‘relatively small drop’ in testing would not hide a virus truly doubling every two days.

Test positivity is slowly increasing though with 13 per cent of samples positive for the virus by December 15, up from around 9 per cent the month before.

Latest hospital figures show there were 847 Covid admissions across the UK on December 17, up only 7 per cent on the previous week. There were a further 172 Covid deaths today, up 14 per cent.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a number of graphs illustrating the impact of the coronavirus in Britain.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough…

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On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about something the Biden administration is claiming as a success.

The article reports:

Are you better off than you were one year ago?

That’s the message the White House is trying to convey in a year-end memo to Democratic lawmakers and other supporters, according to a new report from Axios.

The memo — titled “2021: POTUS Delivered for Working Families” — illustrates in words and graphics what the Biden administration describes as a year of accomplishments, according to the outlet.

The two-page document touts the COVID-19 vaccination program, the widespread reopening of schools, and a decline in the unemployment rate and jobless claims. It also hails the passage of two major spending bills this year: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework last month.

“In spite of unprecedented crises and opposition from Congressional Republicans, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Congressional Democrats got an enormous amount done for the American people in 2021​,” the memo claims.

Well, let’s see. Unprecedented crises and opposition from Congressional Republicans are listed as the obstacles the Biden administration had to overcome. I may have missed something, but did the Republicans try to frame and impeach President Biden? Did the Republicans go behind his back to talk to China? The mess we are currently in has much more to do with the actions of the Biden administration than it does with any Republican opposition. President Biden unilaterally shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline and limited America’s development of its natural resources–ending our energy independence. That in turn caused the price of gasoline at the pump to double in a year, contributing to inflation. The runaway spending (of which the Republicans were a part) also contributed to inflation. The opening of the southern border was also done unilaterally. The crisis there is caused by the Biden administration. No one else is to be blamed.

The article notes:

Absent from the document is any mention of​ inflation, which is at a 39-year high. Nor is there any discussion of an increase in COVID-19 cases across the country as the Omicron variant becomes the dominant strain, the collapse of the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better plan after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) pulled his support, or the tragic aftermath of the botched US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I am not sure too many Americans are currently convinced that they are better off now than they were a year ago. Their grocery and energy bills are an everyday reminder that making ends meet is becoming more difficult.

Where Did Omicron Come From?

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about the origins of the new variant of the coronavirus. As usual, what we are being told does not necessarily line up with the actual facts.

The article reports:

Last year, Trump complained frequently that the only reason America’s COVID case numbers looked so grim on his watch is because we did so much testing. There was logic to that, of a sort: Obviously the less testing you do, the fewer confirmed cases you’ll find. If you’re dejected by the misery around you, just close your eyes and pretend like it’s not there. What if Omicron has been spreading in hot spots across the globe but South Africa is the only country with its eyes open, doing the testing needed to detect it? Like the UK, they’re aggressive about genomic surveillance. It’s no surprise that they would detect a case of a new variant early while the U.S. still has no confirmed cases despite the fact that literally everyone believes the variant is already here.

If the variant didn’t originate in Africa but was merely spotted there first, the travel ban that’s been imposed on the southern part of the continent is essentially a penalty for being diligent about surveillance. Not great.

The news today from the Netherlands bolsters the possibility that Omicron didn’t originate in Africa, although what’s described here isn’t the earliest known case of the variant.

The article notes:

Three different European countries had Omicron on their turf before South Africa’s experts knew about it, eh? And at least one case in Germany was found in a person who hasn’t traveled abroad or been in contact with anyone who has, a smoking gun of local community spread. Are we looking at a European origin for Omicron?

Well, hold on. The earliest known samples to test positive from the variant came from four people in Botswana who tested positive on November 11. Botswana is an African country, of course, one that borders South Africa to the north. But there’s a catch about the four people who tested positive: They were … foreign diplomats. And Botswana hasn’t said which country they were from or where else they had traveled. Did those diplomats bring the virus in from their home country or did they pick it up while they were in Botswana? Hmmmm.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes charts and graphs that create more questions than answers. The only good news here is that so far medical experts are saying that the new variant is much less severe than the variants we have seen so far. If that is true, we can end our panic and get back to life as usual.

Much Ado About Nothing?

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Big media is panicked over the new variant of Covid coming out of Africa. There seems to be some question as to whether or not they should be. Yesterday The Western Journal posted an article about the Omicron variant of the virus. I will mention at this point that someone on Facebook this morning pointed out that omicron is an anagram for moronic.

The article reports:

As panic circles the globe over a new coronavirus variant first reported in South Africa, the doctor who first noticed the variant is asking for a dose of calm.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee said that the unusual infections she was seeing in her private practice in Pretoria earlier this month presented “unusual but mild” symptoms, according to the Telegraph.

Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, said it was “premature” to say the virus was going to mushroom into a global health crisis, according to the Guardian. On Friday, the World Health Association dubbed the Omicron variant a variant of concern. President Joe Biden then slapped travel restrictions on multiple African countries.

The article notes the unusual symptoms:

Coetzee said she would like more people to get vaccinated.

“Unfortunately, it’s not only the responsibility of the government; it’s the responsibility of the public as well … You can only ask people so many times to go and get vaccinated, and if you don’t listen, then there’s consequences, and then you have to take the consequences,” she said.

She said that the patients she treated came from very different backgrounds and had intense fatigue. None had a loss of test or smell. A 6-year-old child she treated had a high pulse rate.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” she said, according to the Telegraph.

Coetzee said that after she treated a family of four who tested positive for the virus and had complete exhaustion, she alerted South Africa’s vaccine advisory committee.

As someone who has recovered from the original coronavirus, I can state that exhaustion was part of the the original virus. It took my husband and I almost two months to get our energy back. Exhaustion is not fun, but if that is the major sympton of the virus, we should be okay. Everyday living in today’s world is exhausting!