With the arrival of the Northern seasonal wave upon us, we are approaching a critical and crucial clarification about the Covid vaccines and their efficacy as it relates to public policy. In this thread I will attempt to approach the matter as fair as I can.
First, let me reset a few things. Public policy is my area of expertise. And since nothing is impacting that more than Covid these days, that's why I've spent so much time researching, reporting, and opining on it.
However, whether to actually get a Covid vaccine is a decision for each of you, based on your Covid risk profile versus the risk of adverse vaccine side effect. That is for you, and your healthcare provider, to navigate. Not me, anyone else, and certainly not government.
Second, I am not Covid vaccinated. I had a confirmed Covid infection/recovery in May. There are MULTIPLE studies that show the superiority and effectiveness of natural immunity. Thus it makes absolutely no sense to me to risk adverse effects like anaphylaxis from the vaccines.
Third, I am not dogmatic on vaccination either way. Our kids have all had the traditional vaccines, but beyond that we haven't seen the need to inject them with everything that comes along. I updated my vaccinations/boosters in 2014 for a missions trip. Never had a flu shot.
Fourth, I recommended my immuno-compromised mother get Covid vaccinated back in January. She gets everything, including H1N1. Numerous times this year I have recommended others I know who are heavily immuno-compromised take their chances with the therapeutics as well.
Of course, someone's preexisting view shouldn't determine whether the data they share is true or not. But since the soft-headed look to use that as an excuse to dismiss that which contradicts their narrative, I decided to address that up front.
Final disclaimer: if not for the current authoritarian effort to mandate these as a condition for full American citizenship, I would likely spend little to no time on the matter. But again, since we have plunged into public policy, ALL OF US have a right to examine this now.
As we begin, we need a start date. Unlike the failure known as "15 days to flatten the curve" we now know actually began weeks if not months before that cosmic mistake was launched.
For this exercise, we will choose May 25th as our start date. And I don't do so arbitrarily. For it was the day the White House announced 50% of Americans had become fully vaccinated with the Covid therapeutics.
cnn.com/2021/05/25/pol…
cnn.com/2021/05/25/pol…
I chose this date because that's probably earliest most will agree a majority of Americans had some form of immunity to Covid -- either via these therapeutics or naturally like me. It's also right between the two major seasonalities: North (fall/winter) and Sun Belt (summer).
The primary driver of Covid surge is seasonality. If you look at any long-term data chart, you see surges usually happen in regions during seasonality. In the cold without the sun and stuck indoors in the North, and in the heat going indoors to avoid the sun in the Sun Belt.
From this point forward we will use data archived and provided by the World Health Organization's dashboard for the United States, unless otherwise noted. covid19.who.int/region/amro/co…
The following week after the WH announcement, you'll see we had roughly 25k FEWER Covid cases than at the same time last year, and 56% fewer deaths, too. Things were looking good.
In fact, on August 16th I noted we had reached our 131st consecutive day with fewer than a thousand daily Covid deaths, which had reduced it to just the 7th most likely way to die in the U.S.
https://twitter.com/SteveDeaceShow/status/1427622820650135554
Furthermore, we were trending lower in overall cases compared to 2020 from the time of the WH vaccine benchmark announcement until July 19th. Pretty much all of our data looked great until late July-early August.
Why? Two things occurred then almost simultaneously: the Sun Belt wave hit, and Delta Variant became ascendant. Since this convergence, our data has been in a reverse free fall.
In August 2021, cases were 211% higher than August 2020, while deaths were also up 18%. In September 2021, the trend line was even worse. Cases were up 216% compared to September 2020, while deaths skyrocketed 153%.
Keep in mind, NO ONE was vaccinated at this time in 2020. Much of the country was also out of full throat lockdown, too, though we are permitting more large gatherings now. As of October 13th, CDC is reporting 56.6% of Americans fully-vaccinated, too.
As an aside, it seems increased threats of job loss, and other forms of shunning isn't helping to explode the vaccine numbers. We reached 50% in 5 months with little coercion. Going on a third month now of threats and tyrannies moved the needle just a few percent. But I digress.
Back to the Covid data, and October is also off to a bad start. Cases are up 93% compared to this time last year, while deaths have escalated 97% compared to first week of October 2020. Obviously, this isn't the way the trend line of a vaccination program is supposed to look.
There are three possibilities as to what is happening here. One, the Sun Belt is loaded with low vaccination rate states that drove these terrible numbers. And 7 of the 10 lowest vax rate states in the country would be in a Sun Belt wave.
beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/…
beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/…
Two, the Covid vaccines were once about as effective in real-time as was boasted in the self-reported trials. But Delta showed up and changed the game. The CDC director admitted on August 5th the vaccines were no longer effective against transmission.
realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/…
realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/…
Three, we have what is called a "leaky" vaccine. In a leaky vaccine, the vaccinated can actually store high viral loads that turn them into super-spreaders, as this 2015 PBS article discusses.
pbs.org/newshour/scien…
pbs.org/newshour/scien…
In 2019, a follow-up study on this phenomenon noted that leaky vaccines "could allow more virulent (or more severe) versions of a virus to survive."
healthline.com/health-news/le…
healthline.com/health-news/le…
Leaky vaccines can eventually lead to what is called "antibody dependent enhancement." A full explanation can be found here: chop.edu/centers-progra…
However, the simplest way to describe it is the vaccine in your body no longer blocks the pathogen as intended, but binds it instead. This creates a more virulent virus, and the vaccinated end up carrying higher viral loads.
We will look at each of these three options now individually.
On a national level, our institutions are anywhere from unwilling to incapable of providing real data between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Combing through state dashboards recently I found the following:
A lot of states don't provide this data, so we don't have a definitive handle on it. But we can say that while the unvaccinated made up the majority of these numbers, it wasn't the exclusive "pandemic of the unvaccinated" we were once told.
The UK provides the best data in the world right now. And what it shows is fully vaccinated makes up the majority of all Covid cases for all age groups except those under 30, who were doing well with the virus before we had vaccines.
The headline of this recent BBC article is misleading. If you read it, you see there are 89% more Covid hospitalizations in Wales among those who have received at least one dose of vaccine than the unvaccinated.
bbc.com/news/uk-wales-…
bbc.com/news/uk-wales-…
We also hear "of course cases and deaths are rising among the vaccinated, it was inevitable the more people got vaccinated." And this makes sense, until you look at the sheer volume of Covid we're dealing with now.
For example, if our case and death numbers were decisively lower, it would make no difference the vaccinated were statistically significant in such a sample. Because overall the decisively lower numbers show the vaccines are working.
However, the sheer volume here of skyrocketing cases AND deaths both here and in the UK destroys this talking point. In both countries, a clear majority are vaccinated. The NYT reported last month 75% of American adults have had at least one vaccine dose.
And yet still, look at the sheer volume of Covid. If a vaccine cannot thwart mass transmission, then even if it maintains efficacy for an individual from a clinical severity standpoint, there is no moral and ethical reason to mandate it. Especially experimental tech like this.
Which brings us to the Northern seasonal wave. A recent AP article noted the states with the highest vaccination rates in the northeast are already seeing pandemic highs in key criteria.
apnews.com/article/corona…
apnews.com/article/corona…
And while AP attempts to blame this on the unvaccinated, it offers no actual data to make that case. Just generalizations and quotes from officials. Vermont, the most vaccinated state in the Union, was setting case records BEFORE seasonality started.
vtdigger.org/2021/09/24/cov…
vtdigger.org/2021/09/24/cov…
At this point, the talking point "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is DOA. It's still open for debate how much increased vaccination will help alleviate it, which brings us to our second point to ponder -- the vaccines have waning efficacy.
This seems to be what elected officials across the world have glommed onto now, after the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" talking point failed to register. Canada has ordered four years of Pfizer boosters, Israel is doing Pfizer boosters now, and the UK is offering boosters, too.
In the U.S. the White House overruled a 16-2 vote against boosters by the FDA to begin pushing them. If I had posted here in the spring you would need a third Pfizer or Moderna shot by Christmas, let alone Halloween, I may have been banned for false information. But here we are.
It is at least possible to consider that if you are in what is now a vaccination program, you will be asked to get reoccurring boosters at this point. Barring the introduction of a superior therapeutic or an actual immunization.
If that is the case, then we should all be demanding far more transparency about side effects by officials and media than we are currently granted. Far, far more. Because with increased shots comes increased risk.
It's just math. While it is true the rate of Covid vaccine side effect is very low, it's also true we have more Covid vaccine side effects than any other vaccine. Why? Because of volume. We're injecting this into so many more people.
Now let's imagine we need boosters every six months or so, or less. Now you are multiplying those risks by reinjecting the population over and over again. Therefore, our health/public officials have a MORAL OBLIGATION to provide better side effect data than we currently receive.
Finally, this brings us to the third option -- the possible leaky vaccine. And this is where upcoming Northern seasonality will help to guide us here.
The Northern states that are about to see seasonality have had months of high vaccination rates to prepare them for what's coming. If we see a surge as bad or worse than last year, like we saw in the Sun Belt, it will be hard to dismiss we have a leaky vaccine.
However, if the Northern states are stable to better during the upcoming seasonality, then that will point us back to the need to vaccinate/booster more people -- while at the same time providing more honest and transparent side effect information.
If we do have a leaky vaccine and devolve to ADE, that is an outcome potentially worse than what we've already seen. And will require some true courage by those making decisions to admit and navigate.
Let us hope it doesn't come to that. Let us also hope a superior vaccination product from both an efficacy and safety standpoint emerges that sells itself, and doesn't provoke a medical apartheid that turns us against each other.
Finally, a Japanese study last month warned about the possibility of ADE from the current Covid vaccines.
nature.com/articles/s4156…
nature.com/articles/s4156…
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