I Am Done With Coronamonomania, Part 1

I must report, quite honestly, that I have had it with the epidemic and the post-epidemic.  I still get a slight jolt of anger when I see people state lies about how dangerous CV-19 supposedly was and how justified the extreme public response was, but my adrenal glands just can’t get that excited.  So I am changing the name of anything I write on the topic to the above title.  If it gets to more than 25 parts you know I am one sick puppy who just can’t let go.  Please stage an intervention.

PCR testing showed its serious flaws during the epidemic when it was mis-used to identify supposed cases and to create quarantine periods and standards that were completely illogical and pointless.  The researchers behind the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine in England continue their outstanding series on epidemic issues with a discussion of this misuse of PCR testing and the problems it was causing.  (Substack Post)

This Lancet article reviews a number of studies on the impact of the epidemic on diabetes care and outcomes.  It is undisputed that the terror campaign around the epidemic caused people to miss care, often necessary care.  The review finds some evidence of emerging harms, like excess diabetes-related mortality.  It will be important over a longer period of time to continue to track the impact.  (Lancet Article)

The conspiracy theorists had a field day during the epidemic, partly because the government response was so bad and included providing misleading information and hiding facts around things like CV-19’s origin, which laid the groundwork for all kinds of nutso theories to abound.  One was that ivermectin use was being suppressed when it would prevent and limit infections and disease.  I always thought this was a load of crap because there is no plausible mechanism of action.  And well-done studies have uniformly showed no benefit.  Here is another one finding that relatively high-dose ivermectin given to outpatient CV-19 infectees did not shorten symptom duration or recovery time.  (JAMA Article)

And of course the vax safety nuts are out with their attention seeking lunacy.  This “study” has as authors such luminaries as Peter McCullough, who literally is making money selling mRNA vax detox snake oil and Steve Kirsch, who never met a piece of data he could understand, but loves his 15 seconds of fame.  I will only say for the one millionth time that there is no evidence from the gold-standard source of research data–large claim and EHR databases of any large number of deaths or other serious events resulting from use of the CV-19 vax.  The VSNs can twist whatever other made-up data they want, but they can’t change the lack of any real evidence.  (Cureus Article)

And there are equally nuts proponents of CV-19 vax effectiveness.  Here is a “modeling” exercise which claims that developing a universal coronavirus vaccine, which clearly isn’t even possible, would save trillions of dollars.  I think we should have learned from the general history of respiratory virus vaccines and from the CV-19 experience that it really is difficult to impossible to create a vaccine that prevents transmission and infection, although they may ameliorate disease.   Respiratory viruses are too omnipresent and have too many replication opportunities to be suppressed.  And vaccines are clearly not superior to infection-derived immune responses.  Among other problems with the model are an exaggerated attribution of harms to CV-19 and a failure to understand that most of the economic damage occurred in the epidemic was due to lockdowns and other government responses, not to infection by the virus.  (NBER Paper)