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The Futility of Suppressing a Respiratory Virus

By April 27, 2022Commentary

A new CDC publication should clarify for everyone what was always true–you can’t stop a respiratory virus.  Despite the warnings of some scientists, who were pilloried then and who should be apologized to and applauded now, the United States and most other countries undertook an absurd exercise in hubris.   We were told by our public health experts that through testing and tracing, use of plastic barriers, social distancing, closing schools and businesses, wearing masks, even vaccination, we could limit the spread of CV-19.  This was expensive and damaging to all aspects of our population’s lives.  And it turns out it was completely useless.   (CDC Study)

The study is based on seroprevalence work–that is, attempting to ascertain rates of infection by the presence of certain antibodies in the blood.  There are several groups which have done ongoing surveys of this type.  CDC compliled data from a few of these sources.  An astounding 75% of children up to age 11, 74% of children aged 12 to 17 and 64% of adults aged 18 to 49 have been infected.  50% of those aged 50 to 64 and 33% of those over age 65 have been infected, according to this data.  I would suspect undersampling of the older age groups, but the lower rates are consistent with generally lower social contact rates in those age groups as well as a likely much higher use of avoidance tactics, such as social isolation.

Looking at the childhood exposure rates makes it clear that it really is completely unnecessary and foolish to push for vaccinations of young children, especially given the risks of adverse events in these ages compared to the risks from CV-19.  Research continues to show that CV-19 infection provides a superior adaptive immunity to that from vaccination.

But the big takeaway, which we probably won’t learn, is that we need to completely overhaul our public health agencies and we need to have a much clearer focus on total public health and well-being when addressing a respiratory virus epidemic and a greater appreciation of the limits of our abilities to impact the course of an epidemic.

 

Join the discussion 9 Comments

  • Debbie M says:

    Your last paragraph, Kevin is right on! In contrast to the CDC’s last paragraph in their paper;

    “These findings illustrate a high infection rate for the Omicron variant, especially among children. Seropositivity for anti-N antibodies should not be interpreted as protection from future infection. Vaccination remains the safest strategy for preventing complications from SARS-CoV-2 infection, including hospitalization among children and adults (4,5). COVID-19 vaccination following infection provides additional protection against severe disease and hospitalization (6). Staying up to date††† with vaccination is recommended for all eligible persons, including those with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

    I guess the CDC is gonna CDC even in the midst of defeat. BOO HISS

  • Fred says:

    Kevin, you make the mistake of thinking this was about public health. The politicians quickly co-opted it to practice suppressing freedoms and controlling the populace.

  • JT says:

    I wish it was just the US politicians who naively swallowed the Covid cool-aid, this would be a relatively easy problem to solve. However, this was a global cabal who installed a compromised individual into the white house to then select a cabinet of their design; DOJ, CIA, FDA, CDC, NIH, etc. C19 was created and used by them to entrench deeper control schemes into free populations around the world. This stuff is from Philip K. Dick novels !!

  • Harley says:

    CDC had a $6.6 billion budget in 2021. Given their limited value the last two years, appears to be a giant sinkhole of waste. But probably a wonderful source of comfortable incomes for all the political operatives working there. Something to keep in mind on November 8th.

  • DM says:

    I’ve been curious on how many of the public health epidemiologists do most of their real work on animal epidemics (hoof and mouth, avian flue, etc)? For livestock they can be tested and isolated (and also eliminated) fairly easily. You have good statistics and your population is homogeneous and well controlled. I suspect they get overconfident in their inputs and the effectiveness of responses. This didn’t help the Imperial College crew in UK who spectacularly got several animal epidemics wrong, but I think the overconfidence is the cause.

    Pharmaceuticals have the same issue of comparing clinical trials vs population compliance, but it is better understood

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