Coronamonomania Thrives in Darkness, Part 69

I shouldn’t take delight in this, and it is very sad, because minorities and low-income people are the ones damaged by this lunacy, but the truly idiotic and completely incompetent Mayor of Minneapolis has noticed that there is rampant and unchecked violence throughout his city, with murders, assaults, carjackings and other serious crimes literally skyrocketing.  People don’t even bother to report a lot of crime, because the police can’t do anything.  No one in their right mind would go to downtown Minneapolis, even during the day.  Most neighborhoods are just not safe.  The residents deserve it for voting for so-called “progressives” who don’t know how to get anything done that actually makes peoples’ lives better.  Vote for morons, you will get moronic policies. Haven’t seen Little Timmy Walz or cop-hater Keith Ellison doing anything about this, too busy prosecuting the police.  Now the Mayor wants to find some alternative ways to tamp down the violence.  Good luck with that.  And this madness is occurring in every major city across the country.

The Department of Health just does an amazing job of stonewalling Scott Johnson on his questions.  If they were as creative in actually understanding and reporting the data, they might have handled the epidemic better.   Ask about what evidence they had to support mask use, what specific evidence, they deferred to the literature and guess what study they singled out?  The Kansas study that was completely debunked for cherry-picked time points and false data.  Then they were asked about the CDC lowering the threshold for what it considers a positive PCR test to 28 for variant testing.  No matter how DOH spins it, this is an implicit admission that there isn’t viable virus in most samples above that cycle number.  But DOH basically just ignores the fact that there may be an issue.

I really did bombard you with charts and animations the last two days and I will do this about once a week for a while, but I really hope the media and politicians stop putting the spotlight on the epidemic and let it fade from people’s attention.  It is frightening to me how many people I see still masked where they don’t have to be, when there clearly is no virus circulating and most of them are likely vaccinated.  What a fearful, cowering people we have become.  If you look at the national and state animations and charts, it is very clear that the vaccines are working and cases are dropping very rapidly.

Remember when people (i.e. Dr. Faustci) said that masks were as effective as vaccines?  But we never saw case reductions even with near universal masking.  With only around 50% of adults fully vaccinated nationally, we have seen a rapid decline in cases.  So tell me again how masks are the new vaccine.  What a load of crap.

If you want to read a bunch of information about the Pfizer vaccine, go here and click on Event Materials.  You can also crawl around the vaccine area on the CDC website and find other data.  (FDA Link)

Scientists are studying the effectiveness of the vaccines against variants.  This study tracked effectiveness of an mRNA against different strains for over 6 months.  While there was some variation in antibody performance against different variants, there was activity against all throughout the study period.  And, as usual, the T cell response was not examined.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Scientists have also been comparing the antibody response from an actual infection with that from vaccination.  (Medrxiv Study)   According to this study, people vaccinated with mRNA vaccines had a more diverse and more robust adaptive immune response than was found in patients who had been infected.  Other studies have not come to the same conclusion, but either way, people seem to be well-protected.

This paper followed a cohort of health care workers in Hungary who had become infected or who were vaccinated to ascertain durability of antibody response.  (Medrxiv Paper)   In both groups, a similar response was noted for several months, with declining levels, although the decline was lower in the immunized group.  Again, no T cell study, which I just don’t understand.  And in this study, a reinfection rate or infection after vaccination rate of around 15% was noted, although all were asymptomatic.  The reinfection rate was based on supposed increases in antibodies, not on PCR or other testing.  I am dubious that it reflects actual reinfections as opposed to mere exposure or even cross-reaction to other coronaviruses.

Another study indicating the problems with various kinds of CV-19 tests.  (Medrxiv Paper)   The authors were looking at the use of rapid antigen tests for saliva.  The tests were good at discriminating true negatives.  They were good at avoiding calling low, non-infectious results positive, when PCR tests called them positive.  But most interestingly, very few of the positives by PCR test actually cultured viable virus.  In fact only one of 15 did, and it was the one with the lowest cycle number.

You may recall a variety of studies trying to associate certain genetic or other biochemical factors with susceptibility to serious disease.  According to this pretty extensive paper, people with a certain version of HLA (human leukocyte antigen, which is involved in presentation of material to the immune system) have a dramatically reduced likelihood of serious disease.  If we can figure out exactly why, the information could be used for therapeutics.  (Medrxiv Paper)