Yesterday, the state reported 256 new CV-19 cases. The cases mostly come from the weekend, so those typically are lower, but we are experiencing a substantial decline. (Amazing how the virus knows how to infect people less on the weekend.) We are finally getting to the place where we may have fewer cases than we did before the mask mandate was issued. I must apologize to the IB, I thought the mask mandate would make no difference. I just misunderstood how long it took for the intervention to work–apparently ten months. And then, just when it starts working, he takes it off. I guess cases will skyrocket now.
Speaking of mask mandates, more research showing just how effective they are. Now, I am not sure why these researchers even bothered to do this study, since I thought it was 100% clear that mask mandates and use were proven beyond any doubt to reduce transmission, but they plowed ahead to see if they could detect any association. (Medrxiv Paper) Let’s have the authors state the findings: “Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates, and surges were equivocal. Mask use predicted lower case growth at low, but not high transmission rates. Growth rates were comparable between states in the first and last mask use quintiles adjusted for normalized total cases early in the pandemic and unadjusted after peak Fall-Winter infections…. Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID- 19 growth surges.” Really, you don’t say, neither mask mandates nor mask usage made any difference. Please, don’t tell the IB, he would be heartbroken to find this out so soon after his mask mandate finally seemed to have reduced cases.
Nothing sickens me more than what has been done to children, for no reason, and it is even worse to hear people say crap like “don’t worry, they are resilient”. No, they aren’t that resilient. Here is yet another sign of that. So many children in Colorado have serious mental health problems that hospitals there are overwhelmed. (Colo. Study) The director of the Children’s Hospital there said it was literally a state of emergency.
Vaccines can help the body fight off pathogens beyond the specific ones targeted by the vaccine, by boosting general immune responses. Two recent studies highlight this. The first looked at two common childhood vaccines, MMR and TdaP, finding that individuals who had been vaccinated had a higher likelihood of avoiding severe CV-19 disease. (SSRN Study) The vaccines prompted T cells that recognized and acted against CV-19 and interestingly also showed a reaction to mRNA vaccination. The second study used the typical tuberculosis vaccine to see if it could act as a preventive against CV-19 infection. People at high-risk for becoming infected following hospitalization were vaccinated or given placebo in a randomized trial. (Medrxiv Paper) Vaccination supposedly led to a 68% reduction in the risk of infection.
Some people are claiming CV-19 had been around for a couple of years before it was recognized. I don’t think that is accurate, I think it began spreading in the fall of 2019, maybe late summer at the earliest. This study took samples collected from over 4000 hospitalized patients in Spain from the 2018-2019 flu season, and samples from around 1800 patients from November 2019 to March 2020, and tested them for CV-19. No positives were found from the 2018-19 flu season and the earliest positive was in March 2020, suggesting low community circulation at that time. (Medrxiv Paper) I don’t trust China at all, but the notion that this virus was circulating without detection for an extended time is just nonsense.
And as usual, no basis for variant terrorism. Two doses of mRNA vaccine are basically as effective against the variants of concern as against the original strain, although those infected after full vaccination were somewhat more likely to be infected by a variant. (Medrxiv Paper)
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Was visiting with a client the other day. His daughter (10-12) had a liver transplant a few years ago. Her WBC was low and she was sent to hematologist/MD in Mlps. She went in all masked up. Dr. told her the only thing the mask did was keep her from putting her hands in her mouth. Client (who is a teacher) said their school in SD was only out for 3 days with COVID. Sign on school says “Masks and social distancing encouraged,” but hardly anyone wore masks. He said whole county was pretty lax about covid & they didn’t do any worse than counties that had more stringent rules & in some cases much better. In this client’s family, their 15 yr old son had covid, but no one else in family including daughter who is immuno compromised got covid. Makes one think there’s something to this minimal exposure and innate immunity. Almost homeopathic in a sense, if I can use that word 🙂
The way I interpret the ‘they’re resilient’ is it’s aa way for adults to justify projecting their fears onto kids. I also don’t like when doctors say ‘Covid caused’ a mental health crisis. No it didn’t. Our response did.