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A new New York State Covid-19 Dataset was released a few days ago. I thought it was a good opportunity to see the progress of the vaccination campaign. I think it's great data for an attack on the performative ritual of getting 'vaccinated' to encourage others to get vaccinated as well (which is what a lot of people were convinced to do). Obviously, those who got vaccinated to "protect other people" stand on shakier ground now.
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-updates-new-yorkers-states-progress-combating-covid-19-467
First, let's establish something important. mRNA vaccines have a established, not fully understood connection to peri-myocarditis. mRNA can cause heart damage in a way that other vaccines seem to avoid. I would say this is an important explanation for the following data:
Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with completed vaccine series - 85.5%
We all know how this was done. OSHA directed mandate, NYC mandate, banning people from shows, restaurants, bars until they receive an EUA injection, healthcare worker mandate, bribing people 100$ a shot. Science communication and incentives couldn't get people to take a novel vaccination method. NYS is almost 20% unionized, and the mandate was really helpful in boosting the low minority vaccination rate, since so many of those individuals work unionized, mandated jobs.
Now that these incentives are gone, let's see what the uptake is:
**Percent of all New Yorkers who are up to date - 14.1%
**
Most New Yorkers ignore CDC guidance now. Covid-19 will be gone in a few years. Covid-19 will be retired as a word for "novel entry of pathogen SARS-2," SARS-2 will be renamed HC-391237 or OC-32871 (random examples) or something, and the "covid-19 vaccine" will be rightly seen as a genetic version of a "flu shot" like intervention.
Consumers who want "flu shot" like vaccines, will eventually come to prefer conventional, protein adjuvanted vaccination methods.
Why would a 19 year old ever get an mRNA injection, when they could get a shot of Covaxin? The main purpose of the shot being to end the harassment from the public health infrastructure, and gain employment or education.
**Percent of New Yorkers ages 0-4 with completed vaccine series - 7.9%
**
This makes me think the vaccine could be seen as dangerous to parents. Keep in mind that all high-risk (on ventilator) children have probably been vaccinated, but some likely have not.
The vaccine campaign was a performance. Young healthy people were asked by the CDC to pretend that genetic Covid-19 vaccination was completely benign and well understood, with the goal of ultimately getting high-risk patients to take the higher risk vaccine.
If 20-29 year olds were allowed to say "no, that vaccine causes heart damage, obviously not worth getting," skepticism would trickle up to individuals who should arguably take advantage of the more advanced vaccination method. May the benefits outweigh the risks. No one believes in "do no harm" in the age of state-mandated genetic injections.
Nope, and hopefully it stays that way.
There is good evidence that early in the pandemic when COVID was less contagious and our vaccines actually targeted the circulating strain that spread was significantly (though not completely) reduced in vaccinated populations. Here I wrote a brief summary of some of the evidence available in August 2021. I still believe the COVID-19 vaccines are very safe as written here, and reiterated in this space more recently. Overall I stand by most of what I've written, although I was too slow to update on how low-risk COVID was for younger folks and the implications that should have had on our public health response.
The other interesting angle to this that doesn't seem to come up very often is the idea that COVID actually was similar in severity to a cold/flu, but this is just what that looks like for a virus we've never been exposed to before. Namely, if you had somehow avoided exposure to influenza/rhinovirus/other coronaviruses before being exposed at the age of 70-80, would you have the same CFR as COVID-19 circa 2020-2021? Or did the evolution of COVID from 'less-transmissible, more-deadly' to increased contagiousness and decreased pathogenicity just happen on much faster timescales that we expected? My money is on mostly (1) with a small degree of (2), but I'm not an expert and I stopped caring about the literature over a year ago.
As for the vaccines, if they don't update them I'm not planning to bother unless forced to by my employer. Even if they do update them, I'd probably treat it the way I do the flu vaccine: If they run a clinic at my workplace and I just have to walk downstairs and wait for a few minutes I'll do it, otherwise not going out of my way.
Since @desolation asked: I still think Fauci is fine and well-intentioned. The public health response was bad at first due to obstructionists/defectors and bad later on in service of either stupidity or the gerontocracy - i.e. a fairly accurate reflection of the political factions with power in our system, and I likely made a mistake carrying water in support of it at least in some cases. Lab leak still seems like a toss-up, but China has acted fairly sus the whole time.
The vaccines never targeted the circulating variant (as far as I know, no COVID-19 variant has been deemed a "strain", though this is more semantics than biology). They targeted an early Wuhan variant, but by the time the vaccines were widely available we we well into the dominance of the Alpha variant, and unnamed variants containing the D614G mutation had long since replaced the Wuhan variant.
The data, I suspect, is mostly bad methodology and wishful thinking. SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates changed drastically for no apparent reason during the pandemic, so if you started an intervention during a high transmission period you were almost certain to see a drop in transmission.
This came up often early on -- comparison to the Russian Flu of 1889, which may have not been influenza at all but HCoV-OC43, was common. That sort of thing got kicked into the skeptic pit.
As for the evolution of COVID, I would not rule out a second lab escape (or deliberate release) for Omicron.
Agree with this.
I think Omicron is a large narrative tool.
Omicron is so much more deadlier than Delta because of its transmissibility, but this translates to less threat to each individual. I always grin when I see people "celebrating" omicrons rise, or remark how they avoided nastier variants, and now play host to the most transmissible pathogen in recent years. If you can catch a cold, once again, that means a 90 year old in a nursing home can catch it too.
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