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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 81

By January 5, 2022Commentary

I don’t know if we really are at a tipping point for the public’s tolerance of the inane and pointless approach we have taken to the epidemic.  But when the New York Times is writing articles about the damage to children something may be going on.  Democrats thought the handling of the epidemic was their big winning issue and it is apparent that everything they push only makes things worse and they are now deeply underwater on even this issue.  So again, I will expect at some point some real leader of that brain-dead party will come out and call for a reversal of direction.  It is as simple as declaring victory and moving on, stop the testing, stop the reporting, end all the restrictions, let children have a normal life.  And boom, it’s over.

Meanwhile the Omicron variant zips through the population like, well, like a seasonal coronavirus.  While it is revealing the weakness of the vaccines and masks to prevent community spread, it’s apparently milder impact may help provide that justification for declaring the epidemic over.  We have to get out of this.  Don’t take my word for it, here is a physician saying basically the same thing.  (RCS Article)

So I don’t know how well these links will work because of paywalls, but here is the New York Times with an opinion piece on how we are just damaging children to protect adults, by which they mean the teachers’ unions.  (NYT Story)  It follows other Times stories finally noticing what we are doing to children, like this one.  (NYT Article)  And The Atlantic continues to astound me with other stories that Alex Berenson could have written.  Here are two, one that echoes my pleas to stop the idiotic testing we are doing.  (Atlantic Article)  And this is an older article, but worth re-reading, on how masking is actually bad for children.  (Atlantic Article).   If these mouthpieces for the pro(re)gressive, woke wing of the Democrat party are publishing this, you know change is in the wind.

And the CDC comes clean, partly, on hospitalizations in young people.  This study demonstrates that almost every child who has died had serious health problems.  Two-thirds of the older children were obese, a clear risk factor for more serious illness.  The younger children frequently had other viral infections, typically RSV, which were more likely the cause of admission.  Many of these children were severely ill with conditions that had nothing to do with CV-19.  It is pretty apparent that healthy children basically never are hospitalized for treatment of CV-19 alone.  (CDC Study)

Why is Omicron so transmissible?  A couple of studies describe possible contributors.  This one identifies a change in the process by which the virus enters a cell, enabling it to inject it’s RNA hijacking machinery.  The study also finds that infection-derived adaptive immunity is superior to two doses of vaccine in limiting Omicron transmission, but three doses is better.  I doubt that latter finding will hold up over time.  (Medrxiv Paper)   And this paper similarly identifies changes likely allowing infection of more cell types.  It also describes a likely scenario in which CV-19 will have more animal reservoirs.  And some people still think we can control this virus.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Yet another study demonstrates that the focus on neutralizing antibodies prompted by either vaccination or infecton is misguided.  T cells may be more important and tend to be more responsible for the overall immune response.  In this research, T cells prompted by vaccination continued to have strong reactivity to and action against Omicron.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study from Norway describes the typical Omicron outbreak–almost all among the vaccinated and at most they all caught a cold.  (ES Article)

Is asymptomatic transmission a serious problem?  I am dubious.  Here is an article doing a meta-review of studies on asymptomatic spread.  Somehow the authors find that while only a quarter of a percent, yes 1/4% of tested cases were asymptomatic, 40% of all cases were likely to be.  Just so you understand, that would be a 160 times ratio of undetected cases.  Simply not credible.   (JAMA Article)

 

Join the discussion 6 Comments

  • Colonel Travis says:

    I’m trying to understand how that JAMA study finds 40%+ asymptomatic infections (almost 53% in air or cruise travelers!) out there in the world, but when they do their own tests they are only finding a sliver of a fraction of that. I read through the study and still don’t understand.

  • JR Ewing says:

    Asymptomatic spread has been the lynchpin of this panic.

    We have known for at least a hundred years – at least as long as modern epidemiology has existed, perhaps longer – that asymptomatic spread is extremely rare and why it is extremely rare.

    But without asymptomatic spread, you can’t convince people to wear masks or be scared to go out in public or be suspicious of their neighbors. Terror works much better if the danger is hidden.

  • Rob says:

    Re: The NYT and Atlantic articles

    You can count on the American medical bureaucracy to do the right thing after first exhausting all other possibilities.

  • LA_Bob says:

    I agree with you the “winds are changing”. COVID may be deadly to only a small subset of the people, but it is potentially catastrophic to the party now in power.

    I have a friend in Ohio who is now having a rough time with Omicron. Way worse than a “mild cold”. But she is a stereotypically vulnerable person: 71, heavyish, diabetic, heart issues for more than two decades, terrible problems with her teeth…

    It will be a shock to the @dianaberrent ‘s and @EbonyJHilton_MD ‘s of the world when such people no longer tweak the heartstrings of the Covidocracy, who will increasingly find other things to do to stay relevant.

  • joe Kosanda says:

    In response to JR Ewing & Asymptomatic spread.

    Kevin – feel free to comment in response with any insight you may have

    there was some early commentary (summer 2020) that 80+% of transmissions were from less than 20% of the infected. anedoctally, I have had two infected employees with covid who were in the office for extended periods of time, 3 days and 6 days respectively who infected no one else in the office. Both employees were infected months apart.

    there have been several studies published that found, that 50% of transmission were from asymptomatic individuals and pre – symptomatic individuals, then other studies claimed near 50% of transmissions were from asymptomatic individuals.

    None of those studies seemed credible to me. Especially in hindsight with the 80/20 commentary and my personal observation with the two employees.

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