I spent Spring Break in Texas with my family last week and I can report that Team Apocalypse has lost the war.
Flights were 100% full with many families. In-flight food and drinks have returned. Airports packed on both ends - a world of difference from just a few months ago.
Everything is open in Texas and (outside of Austin), you'd be hard pressed to recall the "pandemic". Restaurants are crowded, people were friendly, there's live music, tourist areas are packed, there's no sanitation theater, and masks are rare.
Even in places that ostensibly require masks (Walmart, H-E-B), less than 20% of people were actually wearing a mask - and no one made a big deal about it, either way.
In fact, I never wore a mask for a single second outside of the Austin airport.
Outdoors, no one wears a mask in Texas (a world of difference from Washington). The parks are so popular that they have a reservation system and most are booked solid through May.
We also visited multiple museums, a zoo, the Riverwalk and the Alamo - fully open and maskless.
Overall, people are much friendlier in Texas. In Seattle, it is common to see people jump into the bushes and turn their backs on my family. In Texas, strangers started conversations with us every single day and no one was afraid of children.
Finally, I have to say that Texans sure love Texas.
I've never seen so many state flags; it seems like every home flies the Texas flag.
Texas was vibrant, alive - happy. A far cry from the tangible feeling of despair and the fear evident in Seattle (and other blue cities).
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50K person study by Cleveland Clinic finds that the more doses of covid vaccine you've received, the more likely you are to become infected with covid.
Is this normally the way a "vaccine" works, by making you more susceptible to infection?
From the study:
"During an Omicron wave in Iceland, individuals who had previously received 2 or more doses were found to have a higher odds of reinfection than those who had received fewer than 2 doses of vaccine."
Also from the study:
"receipt of two or three doses of a mRNA vaccine following prior COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of reinfection than receipt of a single dose"
Australia has released all-cause mortality data for 2022 and the results are the worst since WWII with 13% excess mortality.
Australia vaccinated their entire vulnerable population in 2021 and boosted them all in 2022.
At best, Australia is proof of vaccine failure.
While there were 10K covid deaths recorded in Australia in 2022, 3K of those covid deaths merely displaced other expected respiratory disease deaths.
In other words, 67% of excess deaths in Australia can not be blamed on covid.
So, why are so many Australians dying?
While covid deaths in Australia followed a predicable seasonal pattern, non-covid excess was much more stable, averaging a consistent ~1000 excess deaths per month and showing no signs of decline.
New Zealand, having vaccinated 80% of their population, boosted 52% and double-boosted 16%, experienced a dramatic uptick in mortality during 2022, most of which has been attributed to covid:
Sadly, excess mortality in New Zealand has continued into 2023 (during their Summer) with no sign of slowdown, yet:
The massive excess mortality experienced by New Zealand in 2022 did not display the normal seasonal waves of excess seen elsewhere - instead, NZ saw a persistent, week after week, 5% to 10% more deaths than expected.
Excess mortality in Europe during covid hysteria is more strongly correlated with national income than with vaccination rates - and not all correlated with lockdown or masking policies (obviously).
Did Switzerland due better than Bulgaria because of vaccines or wealth?
During the most recent 12 months in Europe, vaccination rates have a weak negative correlation with excess mortality.
In fact, most of the excess mortality gap in Europe occurred before widespread adoption of vaccines (2020 & early 2021).
So, the answer is wealth, not vax.
For example, here are all-cause deaths in low-vax Czechia, by year. Notice that the excess occurs in 2020 & 2021 but there was no excess mortality in 2022.
Essentially, all the vulnerable people in Czechia died before the vaccines were even available.