I said in a post earlier this week that it is winding down. The ending of many mask mandates is seen by many as an important milepost in recovery from the epidemic and from the self-inflicted lockdown wounds. But it isn’t over and it may never be over, as long as we allow the authoritarians, the fearful and the “experts” to have any power. Real recovery will mean passing laws to ensure that no one ever is able to exercise this kind of power again.
I have tried throughout the epidemic to encourage people to recognize complexity and avoid simplicity. As vaccination proceeds apace, I would remind everyone to understand what that means. First, the data and the research suggest that full adaptive immunity following vaccination likely takes at least a month. Even one dose of a two-dose vaccine helps limit infection and infectiousness, but it takes time to get the full benefit. And adaptive immunity, once more, is not some physical barrier to infection. People will be exposed and some will be infected to some degree. Some will have fragile immune systems that even vaccination can’t help, so there will be hospitalizations and deaths. Life goes on and this is part of it, humans have always been plagued by infectious agents. We have to accept this basic truth, CV-19 isn’t going away forever.
I strongly believe there are meteorological factors that interact with many others to facilitate or hinder viral spread. In the upper Midwest, we are heading to a low period. In the Southeast and Southwest, I would expect even with high vaccination levels, we may see some slight case bump as we get into mid-June to July. Next fall, I would expect to see the same bump in the Northeast and Midwest, spreading southward as we get to winter. So we will see rises and dips. But what I really hope for is that we stop tracking CV-19; we stop breathlessly reporting case and death numbers. That would be the single best thing for the population; to de-emphasize CV-19. It was great for the media while it lasted, but terrible for the nation’s mental health.
And we have to repair the damage that reckless and futile suppression measures have inflicted on so many in our population, especially children. No more masks or restrictions of any type for children and special efforts to assure them that the world is a safe place and to help them recover lost learning. This is particularly important for low-income and minority students, who just have been devastated by loss of educational opportunity. We need to get people’s health and health care repaired; we caused so many to miss needed services due to the terror campaign.
I will do everything I can to fight to end the current formulation of emergency powers and to help fix the damage and I hope you all will as well. Meanwhile, the motto is be vigilant against continuing abuses and “accept and adapt” in regard to CV-19.
I can never express my thanks to you for keeping me sane during this insane inaccurate, non-science following time in history,
Thank you Mr. Roche
Kevin, i may have asked for your comment on a couple of linked articles too soon. You seem to have answered my question in a subsequent post. However, I would ask if there are studies out there that give us an idea of what the ongoing reinfection rates for COVID-19 will probably be. How does that compare to the seasonal flu? Does the new super vaccine hinted at by Fauci signal a cure for the common cold?
The reinfection rate for people who got infected appears incredibly low, 1% or less. The risk of infection after vaccination is also extremely low, but it is going to happen, predominantly in people with fragile immune systems. If forgot to comment on testing in the what comes next post, but we have to stop the nonsense testing, we are just going to get huge proportions of false positives.
The most important thing we can do is make sure this never happens again. I’ve already begun to contact my legislators and am fully prepared to make this a personal crusade.
One of a very limited number of occasions that I find a disagreement with you. We need to repair the damage done to children, but it cannot begin until we repair the damage to
parents. Without an unafraid role model children will remain terrorized. I see adult men put masks on toddlers and preschoolers to ride bicycles. We have parents spreading fear to children, without ending that, children can never leave this fear behind. I think the we need to focus on parents to have any chance of helping this generation of children.
I completely agree with you, the parents who facilitate and go along with this are equally to blame and could have stood up to the politicians and the “experts”
I echo the sentiment – you always made your position through science. Our government made lip service to science only. Thank you so much for your efforts. You deserve a Pulitzer prize for reporting and that is no joke
Thank you so much for your sanity and rational scientific examination during this whole pandemic. It is sad that we did not have more people of courage like you in leadership.
I agree with Douglas Krause`s post above !!!!!! So many parents are so scared. So sad for their kids.
Regarding massive testing, I get the feeling from DOH bureaucrats that “Well sure there are false positives but there are false negatives too so it all evens out the more testing you do.”
To me that is about as informative as saying “the average person has one testicle.” Mathematically correct but scientifically useless for health care.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You’ve been a voice of reason in a chorus of fear, misinformation, lies and corruption.
You’ve given me confidence to speak to others about this topic, and I’ve pointed many in your direction.
If it hits the fan (again), I’ll be back!
Hear the valiant ones begging the school board. The kids were also amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK2uavbR75E&t=18876s