The CV-19 hysterics are almost desperately pleading for a new wave. There is an Omicron sub-variant, but it doesn’t seem any different. Meanwhile, there is still some interesting research flowing out.
This study from Israel finds that vaccination reduces viral load from an Omicron infection shortly after vaccination occurs, but the reduction lessens quickly from time of vaccination. On the other hand, a prior infection results in a reduction of Omicron viral load that is more persistent over time. (Medrxiv Paper)
The VA system treats a skewed population of generally older males, but has great data so good research occurs there. In that population, reinfection with CV-19 and subsequent hospitalization was fairly rare, but increased substantially over time, particularly during Omicron. There were even a small number of cases with third infections, a few of which resulted in hospitalizatons. This is consistent with the Minnesota data. (Medrxiv Paper)
Another study from Qatar comparing adaptive immunity from infection versus vaccination in regard to Omicron. Effectiveness against symptomatic infection over the study period was 46% among those with only a prior infection, zero for those with two doses of Pfizer, 52% for those with three doses of Pfizer, 55% for those who both had a prior infection and were vaxed with two doses, and 77% for the combination of three doses and prior infection. All forms of immunity showed greater than 70% effectiveness against severe disease. (Medrxiv Paper)
People did some crazy things during the epidemic, believing it would protect them, and they were goaded on by some truly bad advice from places like the CDC. Some of the craziest involved wearing gloves and wiping down all kinds of surfaces, including food packages, even though there was difficulty finding even a single case of transmission from a surface. This paper studied whether hospital patients with high viral loads could be made to contaminate surfaces which then retained viable virus. Even in the context of this study, such contamination was limited and the authors concluded that so-called fomite transmission was very unlikely in real life. (Medrxiv Paper)
This paper looks at the infection fatality rate over time and in different places. The infection fatality rate requires an estimate of undetected cases so has some uncertainty, particularly if the rate of undetected cases changes over time. These authors used seroprevalence surveys to create their estimates of total infections. As we know, the infection fatality rate is quite low for young people, rises slightly into middle age and accelerates sharply in old age. The rate was highly variable across countries, which is likely due to confounding factors, as accounting for age structure alone substantially reduced the variation. If you look at the supplementary material, you will notice that Florida, with a relaxed epidemic suppression regime, did as well or better than most states with restrictive ones. (Lancet Article)
And this study from the US finds a surge in overall mortality during the period 2017 to 2020, so in part predating the epidemic. Across the entire study period a lot of this increase in deaths is related to drug overdoses. This is one of those scolding studies which compares the US to Europe and claims they are doing so much better on preventing excess mortality. (Medrxiv Paper)
There is a lot of misinformation flying around out there about the vaccines causing sudden cardiac-related death in young people. This study looked at rates of cardiac-related death in persons aged 12-29 in England following either vaccination or CV-19 infection. There was no increase in such deaths in the six weeks following vaccination, but there was an increase following CV-19 infection. (Medrxiv Paper)
According to this paper, being infected was associated with a subsequent increase in the risk of hospitalization or death from a variety of causes, compared to persons with no infection. Not clear to me that adequate existing health status adjustment was performed and there is a substantial issue with the problem of undetected infections, but the general conclusion appears accurate. More severe CV-19 disease was associated with higher likelihood of such non-CV-19 hospitalizations or death. (Medrxiv Paper)
This large study, also from England, found that effectiveness against infection across all vaccines lessened substatnially in a few months and eventually reached zero. While effectiveness against hospitalization and death also lessened, in remained in place throughout the study period. (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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An opportunity for us to report ACTUAL misinformation that has been spewed by our overlords for the last 2+ years – misinformation used to destroy the lives of millions of Americans; masking, the mandate to herd vulnerable aged/sick persons together and away from loved-ones, keeping practically-immune children away from social interaction, all the data here that Kevin and Dave have formulated and shared.
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/health-misinformation-rfi/index.html
Kevin’s comment from the 6th paragraph – “…If you look at the supplementary material, you will notice that Florida, with a relaxed epidemic suppression regime, did as well or better than most states with restrictive ones. ”
As I previously noted, I ran a computation of the cumulative death rate for the 65+ age group for approximately 15 states through early Nov 2021. At that time the cumulative death rate per 100k for all the states was in a very narrow band 1100-1250 per 100k with no real differences between a red or blue state. (FL, MN WI, MI, OH, TX, CO, not CA, MA, CT, and a few others. ) My computation was hindered by my inability to obtain good data and/or data that I was reasonably comfortable with the data. I also ran the computation for a few blue cities and again the death rate per 100k for the 65+ age group was remarkably similar. Travis county / austin Tx had a very low cv19 death rate, with liberal blue austin bragged about, especially since the city had very restrictive protocols with a liberal population that believed in those mitigation protocols. Though the cumulative death rate for Austin Tx for the 65+ age group fell right in the middle of all the red and blue states – approx 1180 deaths per 100k.
Only a few states fell outside the range, NY was much higher 1300 cumulative deaths per 100k in the 65+ age group, while VT, ME, NH WA Ha were notably much much lower
Mr. Roche:
Ever since a large number of grocery stores made sanitizing wipes available for their carts (starting long before the scamdemic) I have been using them when available. Why?
I saw some reputable research at least ten years ago that looked at the levels of various biological contaminants on different surfaces. They looked at things like gas station pump handles, grocery cart handles, door knobs (inside and outdoors) among other things. The results followed pretty much common sense; anything that was outdoors and exposed to fresh air and UV (aka, “sunlight”) was biologically fairly “clean”. Note that they were NOT testing for viral contaminant, rather they were looking for bacterial. But the worst offenders were grocery cart handles, with the highest contaminant being human fecal coliform bacteria.
Yup, a lot of people take a poop, fail to wash their hands, and then grab a grocery cart. Blechh.
I was hoping that a positive result of all of the BS spewed might have been that people would actually wash their hands after using a bathroom, but that turned out to be unrealistically optimistic.