There is a new movement afoot. Even though Operation Warp Speed has delivered two highly effective vaccines and several very promising therapeutics, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), wants you to know it won’t really change anything in response to COVID-19. His Twitter statement defies the management of any virus, ever. And it only works if you believe COVID-19 is some super-virus that behaves in a way fundamentally different from all other viruses, even other coronaviruses. There is no science to support that.
Remember when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said we could never reopen until we had an effective vaccine? Now that is not even good enough. Dr. Anthony Fauci was the first I heard to say that a vaccine would not allow us to drop masks and social distancing. Now Dr. Tedros is saying it:
Initial supply of #COVID19 vaccines will be limited, so #healthworkers, older people & other at-risk populations will be prioritised. That will hopefully reduce the number of deaths & enable health systems to cope, but the virus will still have a lot room to move. #EB147
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 16, 2020
A vaccine on its own will not end the #COVID19 pandemic. We will still need to continue:
-Surveillance
-Testing, isolating & caring for cases
-Tracing & quarantining contacts
-Engaging communities
-Encouraging individuals to be careful #ACTogether #EB147— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 16, 2020
Forgive my incredulity at this statement. It makes no sense at all. First, as of November 12, 2020, 92% of deaths have occurred among those 55 and older. Only 0.2% have occurred among those under 25. With what we know about preexisting conditions, this makes sense.
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What is also important to note is that you are still far more likely, no matter your age, to die of something other than COVID-19, even in the most severely impacted age group, those over 85. Here are the numbers beginning in February of 2020:
It also turns out that some percentage of the population has T-cell reactivity due to exposure to common coronaviruses. These are people who will come in contact with the virus and have a normal, healthy immune response and may never have symptoms or develop a viral load. This is how our immune system deals with the viruses we come in contact with all the time in our environment. If it didn’t, we would be ill more than we are well.
According to Cell Magazine, the understanding of how this specific immune response works influenced vaccine development and should guide our pandemic response. They have identified the specific markers that generate the response in response to COVID-19. Just as they do population testing in blood banks and other labs for COVID-19 antibodies, some population testing for this reaction would be very informative.
The vaccines on the list to receive an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA are between 90 and 94% effective. This is approaching the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. This exceeds the expectations Dr. Fauci expressed earlier in the pandemic:
“The best we’ve ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “That would be wonderful if we get there. I don’t think we will. I would settle for [a] 70, 75% effective vaccine.”
Those who are vaccinated and those with an effective immune response act like brakes on infection in communities. They come in contact with the virus and do not develop the illness or transmit it. It would seem if we had a highly-effective vaccine, knew what the high-risk populations are, and knew approximately what percentage of the population may have reactive immune responses, we could have highly-informed vaccination recommendations annually.
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Why are the “health experts” telling us we will need to continue all the mitigation efforts we are currently using? Probably because this is all information they have successfully suppressed. The best example is when Dr. Scott Atlas corrected congressional testimony made by Dr. Redfield and was immediately suppressed. Redfield had asserted 90% of the country was still susceptible to COVID-19. Atlas provided the information on T-cell reactivity:
"I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there. The immunity to the infection is not solely determined by the percent of people who have antibodies."
Scott Atlas smacks down @CDCDirector's testimony saying 90% of the country is still "susceptible" to the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/LGgtDW1VLm
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 23, 2020
Dr. Fauci, Patron Saint of the Democrat media, immediately made the rounds and even deflected direct questioning from Senator Rand Paul during subsequent congressional testimony. The corporate media and experts in the bureaucracy also keep calling all positive tests “cases.” They do this despite relying on needlessly sensitive tests that rely on an elevated-cycle threshold, which picks up viral RNA that is not replication-competent. We should be worried about hospitalizations and deaths, not positive tests.
No virus in history had a 99% survival rate in the productive population that we have taken such extraordinary measures to control, such as isolating people, destroying businesses, failing children by closing schools, and imposing face coverings. We hear spotty reporting of lingering effects in younger patients. It is high time for the experts to provide information about how many and how severe the cases truly are. Otherwise, it is just panic porn from isolated cases.
Should we take precautions with the elderly and frail? Of course. Should health care workers get vaccinated? Certainly, just like it is encouraged for the flu. Should citizens over 65 get access first? According to all data. Do children even need it? It’s hard to make the case in the absence of a preexisting disease. Should everyone continue to stay home, not work, and cover their faces in public? There does not seem to be evidence for it.
We would need roughly 100 million vaccines to provide one to every American over 65. That happens to be exactly how many the government agreed to buy from Pfizer through Operation Warp Speed — with an option for more. We are very close to being able to protect the most vulnerable. At that point, it is time to return to normal. And I wonder why our “health experts” are so bent on ensuring we don’t.
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