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Stupidity Reigns

By July 24, 2021Commentary

Andy Slavitt is an idiot, and I did not think that was the case before.  Now he is on CNN calling for the punishment of people who don’t get vaccinated, saying that among other things they should be forced to get tested everyday and pay for it out of pocket.  I am sure Andy’s ravings will really encourage people to get vaccinated.  He is a big part of the problem for why people don’t trust government and experts.  Government and the experts have repeatly lied to and misinformed the public across a range of issues involving the epidemic (not to mention government’s habitual lying as a matter of course on any topic).  I have no idea where they get the idea that the American public as a whole is stupid.  A large segment clearly is ignorant, and maybe a few are stupid, but there are a lot of people who can figure out when they are being lied to and misled.  You have to be stupid, Andy, to think the stuff you say is doing anything to address the problem.

So governments have only themselves to blame for vaccine hesitancy.  If they had just been honest and completely forthcoming from the start, they would have some credibility left.  Instead they have people suspicious about side effects and now suspicious about whether the vaccines even work.  And now we are fighting this binge of completely misleading information about the vaccines and cases, led by turncoat Alex Berenson, who apparently wants us all locked up and masked again.

We need, and I am doing everything I can to get this, clear information that shows 1) cases, hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status, with fully vaccinated people defined in two ways, one is 14 days after second dose, and the other is a month after second dose; 2) the age structure of those cases in each group, vaxed and unvaxed; 3) the distribution of cycle numbers in at least a sample of recent cases in each group; and 4) for hospitalizations, how may of these are actually people who got hospitalized and tested positive versus those actually admitted for CV-19 disease.  If we could just get this information on a regular basis we would be able to dispel a lot of misinformation.

The other thing we really need is for a big campaign to educate the public about what adaptive immunity is and that what we are seeing isn’t inconsistent with vaccines working.  People still haven’t been given a clear picture of how respiratory virus epidemics tend to work and what the effect of vaccines is.  They don’t and can’t stop exposure.  They can and do stop serious disease, with a lesser effectiveness among those with weakened immune systems.

And DD is doing some good work to graphically show that we are just seeing the same seasonality we saw last year, but at a lower level.  I don’t know how many times I can keep saying that this virus isn’t going away, it will be here, we will adapt to it and it will be similar to flu or even less dangerous.

Join the discussion 9 Comments

  • Colonel Travis says:

    Something like this should be dispassionate. We should be able to see what’s happening and make informed decisions.

    Nope.

    It’s a bleeping cluster-bloop all around. I trust so few for information. Too many people want power and the moral high ground over all else because they have no greater purpose.

  • DJ says:

    “Here’s looking at flu, kid”.

    With apologies to Mr. Bogart…

  • Darin Kragenbring says:

    Mr. Roche,

    Another clear-eyed post…Thank you! The four things you ask for should be readily available. Why aren’t they? Of the four, I still feel Ct values drive nearly everything else. How many of these “cases” are in people who are infectious? I read this morning that England wants to test their food service employees daily because of their “ping” epidemic. What will this accomplish in practice? A large portion of the world has thrown out much of what was previously known about respiratory viruses and seems intent on recreating the wheel. Please keep up your efforts. It helps and there is much work left to be done.

    Cheers!

  • Paul says:

    The people I know who do not want to get vaccinated point to two matters .The adverse reactions to the shot and the long term unknow effects of the vaccine. Can you address these again?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      The adverse reaction issue is grotesquely exaggerated by people like Alex Berenson. For anyone with any significant risk of serious illness, getting vaccinated probably makes sense, for younger, healthy people, different calculation. I always tell people to talk to their doctors, best place to get advice about your specific situation. the long-term unknown effects stuff is largely garbage. unless there is some clear physical mechanism by which an adverse event would only build up over a long period of time, if you give enough people anything, an adverse effect will show up in someone out of that group. So at this point hundreds of millions of people around the globe have gotten mRNA vaccines, I think the law of large numbers says we’ve seen what we are going to see.

  • Mike M. says:

    Keep telling it like it is. The public health authorities spent the last year and a half proving they are not to be trusted and now they are mystified as to why people don’t trust them. Last fall, leading Dems (Harris, Cuomo) threw shade on the vaccine. Then Biden tried to take all the credit for the vaccine. They ignored Republican leaders when promoting the vaccine. The Dems treated those with doubts like idiots. They blame Republicans for low vax rates, while ignoring the fact that blacks lag well behind everyone else. Then they moan about how terrible it is that Republicans have politicized the vaccine.

    You are absolutely right that making the actual data available would go a long way to restore trust. But they keep it secret. It is like they are trying to keep people from getting vaccinated. Maybe they figure that they can kill off all the Republicans.

  • Dan says:

    “ You have to be stupid, Andy, to think the stuff you say is doing anything to address the problem.”.

    Kevin. I think you are confusing the problem he’s really addressing. His wallet is too light and his comments are certainly making his employer happy.

    As far as most Americans not being stupid, I used to agree with you but if that is true why do Democrats keep winning elections no matter how far left they go?

  • Charles Carmichael says:

    For those of us who don’t know the inside baseball, who or what is DD?

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