A Little Rationality, Please

Okay, Biden calls Putin a killer.  Putin says “nanabooboo, you are one too.”  Then Putin says let’s have a live, emphasize the “live” discussion on TV.  Uh-oh, think anyone else has noticed that the prez is senile and can’t even read a teleprompter?  Biden is in tune with reality in one respect; he again yesterday referred to “President Harris”.  It is embarrassing and a mockery for our country to have this puppet president.  Meanwhile our new secretary of state gets totally owned in his first meeting with Chinese counterparts.   Funniest part is how both Russia and China use our own “woke” bullshit against us.  While this international competition is deadly serious, it is hard not to find humor in the constant box canyons the so-called progressives put themselves in.

The panic purveyors are all worked up about another case surge, caused by “variants” and occurring despite vaccination.  I will repeat what I have said several times, so each of you can hopefully talk to other people who will in turn talk to other people and maybe we can spread some rationality.  Adaptive immunity, which is an immune response directed toward a specific pathogen, doesn’t develop overnight, whether from infection or vaccination.  The immune system is astoundingly complex and very variable from person to person.  If you were inclined not to believe in evolution, you would point to the immune system as an example.  It is miraculous that such a complex system has evolved as it has.  It is a very balanced system that is prepared to tolerate pathogens of all types as long as they don’t do much damage, and some are beneficial, like the microbes in our digestive system.  It is extremely good at recognizing dangerous pathogens.  But it can take weeks, even months, for the full, rigorous response to a specific pathogen to get baked in.  So just because people have one dose, or even two doses, of a vaccine doesn’t mean they are magically immediately protected against infection.  So a little patience would be good.

And I constantly am trying to point out that nothing is simple, everything has complexity.  Even with a strong adaptive immune response, you are going to be exposed, you may inhale some of the virus, you may even have an “infection” in the sense of a few replication events.  But it is very clear from the data that either being infected once, or being vaccinated, makes it far less likely that you become infected, and also makes it very unlikely that you develop any illness if you are infected.  You are also highly unlikely to be infectious.

What is happening now with a plateauing, even slight increase, in cases is twofold.  One is that in some parts of the country we are back to the meteorological and other factors that favor transmission.  We are right at the same place where we saw the wave start last year.  When the conditions are right the virus will do its thing no matter what.  The second is that people are rightly getting fed up with the restrictions and the constant lies they have been fed and the campaign of terror about the virus’ risks.  A year of this crap is enough and people want out from under it.  So mobility and contacts are up. The confluence of these events will cause more cases.  And this is all exacerbated by a testing regime that is 100 times greater than last year and is leading to huge numbers and proportions of low and false positives that aren’t actually cases.

As I observed in a post a couple of weeks ago, the new administration is in a bind of their own making.  On the one hand they want to claim victory and say that their response to the epidemic has been so much better than the previous one’s.  On the other hand they are full of ignorant nut jobs like Dr. Osterheimlich Maneuver and Andy Slavitt and Dr. Slouchy who love the limelight and are now conditioned to spread fear and panic.  Hard to retrain those pigeons when the bell rings.

My best guess, as I also stated a few weeks ago, is that this spring will be marked by tension between favorable spread conditions and ongoing vaccinations which will kick in with greater protection over the next weeks.  We will see some more cases, but no huge rise and I strongly suspect the rate of hospitalizations and deaths will be much lower.  So my advice to you is the same as always, go out and live your lives, they are pretty short to begin with, use your own best judgment about the risk you face and what you should do about it; and most importantly of all, fight back against all the garbage we have had to live with.