☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, December 27, 2021 ☙ ASHAMED 🦠

A fascinating WaPo article explains pro-injection psychology; the FDA approves Merck's Covid drug; vaxx passports in Boston; a study finds Covid less risky than jabs for some; and more...

Happy Monday C&C, it’s that awkward week between Christmas and New Year’s, when you want to keep celebrating the holidays but — unless you’re taking vacation or retired — there’s still stuff to do. Hang in there! Today’s roundup includes: the FDA approves another new Covid therapeutic; Boston’s mayor orders a mark to allow people to buy or sell; a study finds injection risks for some exceed infection risks; a study finds Omicron to be mild; Dr. McCullough’s iodine formula; Florida pushes healthy preventative medicine and okays off-label use; Omicron hysteria strikes Florida; and an amazing WaPo article that gives insight into the psychological damage experts have created.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY UPDATE* 🗞

🔥 My resolution for 2022 will be to help advance the time-tested values of freedom and individual liberty, the supporting pillars of this great nation, which are rooted in the most successful civilizations in history, are steeped in the most admired philosophies and theology, and are most admired and cherished by all right-thinking peoples throughout the ages.

How about you?

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 In another crazy, amazing, Covid coincidence, the FDA approved Merck’s Covid therapeutic for emergency use — within 48 hours of approving Pfizer’s pill. Wow. The Merck medicine is called molnupiravir and is supposed to be taken twice a day for five days. Already-known side effects include interference with bone growth in young people and potential harm to babies in the womb from any exposure to the drug, so it’s not recommended for pregnant women or people trying to conceive.

I mean, how lucky are we? What are the odds? TWO Covid therapeutics that navigated the long, difficult journey through preliminary trials and FDA approval — ending within two days of each other. And, in another amazing coincidence, they’re coming out right when the case for the injections is falling over like a poorly-maintained hi-rise condominium.

The U.S. has already bought 3.1 million doses. Because, I guess, it suspected the FDA was going to approve its drug, Merck says it will already have manufactured 10 million doses by the end of this year, and 20 million more in 2022. A good gamble!

🔥 Boston’s new mayor, Michelle Wu, announced a new executive order as one of her first acts in office — a mandate for businesses to require proof of Covid injections in order to allow people to buy (customers) or sell (staff).

“There is nothing more American than coming together to use the power of government to force other people to do what we want them to do,” Wu said. Or something like that.

Wu’s hobbies include raising Dalmatian puppies, smoking long-stemmed cigarettes, and collecting furs.

🔥 Dr. Peter McCullough, whose paper on Covid-19 early treatment remains the most-cited scientific paper on Covid, is a big proponent of using an iodine rinse to stop the virus from reproducing in the nasal passages, and swears by it. Here’re his instructions, in case you know anyone who’d like to try his simple formula: https://tinyurl.com/4fm3vc6p.

🔬 A new (updated) pre-print study titled “Risk of myocarditis following sequential Covid-19 vaccinations by age and sex” concludes that, for males under 40 years old, the risk of myocarditis from the injections is HIGHER than the risk of myocarditis from Covid infection. So.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/4ww9snpj

You know, if we had a well-funded government agency devoted to studying safety and efficacy of drugs, this study might generate some interest. Oh well. Maybe next pandemic.

🔬 Another pre-print study published in MedRxIV titled “Increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection associated with emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa” finds that it can break through both natural immunity and injected immunity. But the good news is, the symptoms of Omicron infection appear MILD and BRIEF. The researchers also found that some pulmonary involvement rarely occurs, but when it occurs it is easily treated.

It is reasonable to assume that the risk of hospitalization and death will be very low with Omicron.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/5t2v4hdu.

✈️ It seems like my anecdotal experience of lots of recent new Covid infections is not unique. Over the weekend, more than 3,800 flights worldwide were canceled largely due — apparently — to flight crew testing positive and being unable to fly. There were over 1,000 flights canceled in the U.S. alone on Christmas day.

United Airlines, one of the first carriers to impose a vaccine mandate, canceled more than 200 flights over the weekend.

The Epoch Times reported that in China — which the New York Times says completely beat Covid using super-strict lockdown policies — Chinese carriers accounted for the largest number of worldwide cancellations. Weird. It’s like those lockdowns didn’t work or something. But that can’t be right, can it, New York Times?

Maybe the airlines need to go to an NFL-style policy of only testing symptomatic folks? Just asking.

🔥 The Omicron media hysteria has begun in Florida. Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Times breathlessly printed an article headlined, “Florida’s second COVID Christmas marred by 320% infection hike.”

Marred! I have to say I’m impressed with all the new synonyms they’re coming up with for this latest wave. It does show SOME creativity. Well, a little.

Anyway, you have to read way down in the article to find what should have been the real headline: “The surge in infections has not yet resulted in a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted at local hospitals.”

Oh!

Gosh, something is nagging at my subconscious … wasn’t the whole original problem supposed to be overwhelmed hospitals or something? Something about a curve, and twisting it or bending it or something? I can’t remember. Who cares. Cases!

🔥 Well, you knew THIS was coming. New York’s replacement governor Kathy Hochul, who gives Jim Jones a run for his money in the competition over messiah complexes, signed a new law late last week criminalizing fake vaccination cards. It’s now a misdemeanor in New York to “falsify” a Covid vaccination card, and a felony to alter computer records of vaccination.

So the hackers were already working on this, huh?

New York State Senator Anna Kaplan told CNN, “Countless employers, schools, small businesses, and communities are relying on genuine proof of vaccination status. It’s never been more urgent that we protect this process from fraud.”

It’s an emergency! People are RELYING on injection cards. Lock those fakers up!

💊 Last week, Florida’s surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo issued a statewide public service announcement supporting commonsense prevention strategies like optimizing vitamin D, staying active, eating nutrient-dense foods, and boosting the immune system with supplements.

The CDC could not be reached for comment.

Florida’s Health Department’s HealthierYouFL.org website now says that “Physicians should use their clinical judgment when recommending treatment options for patients’ individualized health care needs. This may include emerging treatment options with appropriate patient informed consent, including off-label use or as part of a clinical trial.”

Finally! Somebody said it. Patients are individuals, and off-label use is not some bizarre conspiracy theory. Good news for Florida docs, at least those outside corporate hospitals. This makes it very hard for licensing boards to punish doctors for prescribing “emerging” alternative treatments.

It only took two years.

🔥 In a remarkable article that unintentionally gives the game away, last week the Washington Post published this remarkable headline: “Thousands who followed the rules are about to get covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed.”

The article begins with an anecdote about “Aline,” whose name was anonymized to protect her from … something … maybe other pro-vaxxers? Anyway, after explaining that Aline did everything right, took her jabs, wore her masks, and distanced, she STILL GOT COVID. And she’s not too happy about it:

“I feel very embarrassed and dumb,” she says, and upset that she’s causing her family stress. “It’s eye-opening that I feel so much shame from it. I’m realizing how much judgment I was secretly harboring against people who got it before.”

Well. At least she’s developing some new self-awareness. But the point is, and this is a really important point, pro-injection folks feel SUPERIOR until they get Covid, and then they feel ASHAMED.

The WaPo quotes a clinical psychologist, Jessica Stern, who explains how the game was set up from the beginning to punish non-compliance:

“Because the narrative is so closely connected to our behaviors, I think there’s this implication, or this assumption, that if you get sick, you must have done something wrong to bring it onto yourself.” That’s not true, she stresses, “but unfortunately it’s inherent in the way we’ve been thinking about and talking about covid.”

Read that carefully. Psychologist Stern isn’t saying that it was WRONG to make people feel ashamed to get sick. She’s saying that’s just an unfortunate side effect. In other words, it’s unavoidable collateral damage.

Stern defines “shame” as “the combination of embarrassment or guilt and identity — one of the most visceral emotions.”

So this shame they’re feeling isn’t just a transitory or fleeting unpleasant emotion, a passage through one stage to another. Instead, the shame undermines people’s basic identity, their core recognition of self and their place in the world.

The Washington Post blames this tragedy on misinformation: “Some people have misunderstood the role vaccines play in preventing illness, believing that they protect against any and all infection.”

I wonder where people could have gotten THAT misunderstanding, the crazy idea that the vaccines were supposed to stop any and all infections? Maybe from Rachel Maddow? https://tinyurl.com/yrkakkvf. Or, from Fauci, Biden, and Walensky? https://tinyurl.com/2p95s672. Dangerous misinformation! Misunderstandings!

The article quotes Lyn Bufka, described as a “senior director” of the American Psychological Association, and a clinical psychologist — meaning she treats patients. The WaPo says Bufka follows a twitter thread memorializing people who died from Covid. The Senior Director told the WaPo that, while she is looking at the faces of the deceased, it’s “easy” to start judging: Was that person vaccinated? How and why did they get sick?

It’s easy to judge.

Finally, the WaPo wraps up by offering ashamed Covid-getters some practical advice. We can’t just leave them hanging out there. They used to be one of us! One of the clean ones. So here’s what WaPo suggests:

1) Acknowledge you were feeling judgy and perfectionistic: “it makes sense that you might be feeling, well, mortified at the idea that others will think you behaved carelessly.” It makes sense! To the WaPo, anyway.

2) Don’t hide your condition. Comparing getting Covid to getting HIV — a recurrent theme throughout the article — the WaPo says you still need to get proper treatment even though you can’t stand the idea of telling anybody that you got Covid.

3) Don’t try to talk your way out of it. Psychologist Stern says you probably feel overly defensive, but nobody wants to hear all your excuses. You got it, deal with it. Instead of rationalizing, try to deflect with humor, saying something like — and I am not making this up, this is what the article really suggests — “I’m super careful, but it got me!”

4) Learn from your mistake; quit partying so much; mask up. You screwed up, okay? But the important thing is, what can you LEARN from your mistakes? WaPo says — again, not making it up — “As psychiatrist Sue Varma puts it: ‘Maybe not going to the nightclubs anymore, right?’”

Or, and I really wish I was making this up, ORDER MORE MASKS:

“Bufka suggests: Go online and order a whole bunch of masks, and then ‘put them everywhere’ — in your car, in your purse, in a coat jacket, on the table where you set your keys and mail.”

Now … why would you order more masks if you ALREADY HAD COVID??? The issue of immunity — the ACTUAL bright side of their shameful infection — never ever comes up in the article. Not once. Fascinating, isn’t it?

5) Turn your shame inside out. Use your shame as a new reason to feel prideful about yourself. “It could be that you’re very diligent and very conscientious, and that’s why you’re taking this so hard,” Varma says. “That just means you’re a thoughtful, considerate, caring human being trying really, really hard.”

See how easy it is? Just substitute one reason for feeling prideful for another.

Finally, way, way down at the very bottom of a very long article, in case somebody reads the whole ridiculous thing all the way through, the WaPo assures its shamefaced readers that “you’re not a failure!”

Can you imagine living in a state of mind where if you catch a cold you think that means you are a FAILURE? Failed at what exactly? Mask wearing? Jabbing? Hand washing? What exactly about the idea of “bending the curve” somehow morphed into a kind of class-signaling virtue of avoiding illness? When — how? — did they start thinking Covid was like HIV? That you can only catch it if you do something unclean or socially unacceptable?

I’m thinking the psychological fallout from this pandemic — the media-generated version of the pandemic — is going to last a long, long time. If you are looking for a new career with bright prospects, consider counseling.

Thanks, experts!

Have a marvelous Monday and I’ll see you again tomorrow as we count down the last few days of 2021.

---

Help us spread optimism and hope! https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-
You can also find me on MeWe, mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.