Context: I'd like to walk through this, because this plot is sort of a Rosetta Stone of debunking bad takes.
First, Covid skeptics almost uniformly denied that cases were meaningless—up until they could snapshot a plot and blame the vaccines. They'd always claim that there are lots of "false positive" and that unnecessary testing created a "casedemic."
Well, Palestine had much less testing throughout. In fact, Israel was testing SEVEN TIMES as many people as Palestine when goddeketal tweeted. It still tests five times as many people. Goddeketal abandoned his narrative as soon as it allowed him to make an antivaxx theory.
Second, speaking of "false positives," where are they? The positivity rate in Israel is less than 0.2%. Whatever false positives exist must be less than that. This was always a bogus talking point.
Third, seasonality! Virus is gonna virus until the summer sun, right?
Wait, are Israel and Palestine experiencing different seasons? Like even before the vaccine? So it turns out human behavior alters the spread of the virus? Oh.
(Israel and Palestine aren't even the most mismatched counter-example of seasonality.)
Finally, yes, the vaccines work. Other mitigation played a role, but the positivity rates of Israel and the UK are absurdly low. Lower than seen since at least August; lower than anyone except countries that completely suppressed the disease.
This is our future.
It's bright.
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