☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, December 30, 2021 ☙ TOLERABLE 🦠

Four astounding CDC admissions; Twitter cancels the inventor of mRNA technology; CMS sets a new deadline to fire uninjected nurses and doctors in 26 states; and more...

It’s Thursday, the second-to-last day of the year. After tomorrow, 2021 will be history. If 2020 was the year of confusion, and 2021 was the year of frustration, what will 2022 be? This year we watched the Narrative get shredded into slaw, and saw the timely arrival of a game-changing variant. What gifts will 2022 bring?

Today’s C&C news roundup includes: Dr. Malone gets kicked off Twitter; FOUR major CDC admissions: the CDC admits what we already knew about how Covid policies are calibrated, the CDC admits a major error about Omicron, without explanation, of course, Walensky admits Covid hospitalization figures are overstated for kids, and she admits that PCR tests are too sensitive; CMS reactivates the “vaccinated or terminate” mandate for healthcare workers in half the states — during a spike in hospitalizations; and we check in on rising hospitalization data in Florida — what does it mean?

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

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🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 Canceled! Yesterday, Twitter permanently banned Dr. Robert W. Malone, the inventor of mRNA technology, for a tweet critical of his invention’s use in vaccines. There probably aren’t many people the world who know more about mRNA vaccines than Robert Malone. At least, nobody at Twitter knows more about mRNA vaccines than Dr. Malone does, that’s for sure.

So … somehow … a tweet from Malone that linked to a site critical of the mRNA vaccines was “misinformation” — even though the link came from one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject — a subject very few people understand in any kind of detail.

Malone’s tweet — the one that got him immediately suspended without warning — shared a link to Canadian doctor’s group that analyzed the Pfizer FDA-approval data and argued that the data shows the injections cause more harm than good. The article is summarized in a video, https://tinyurl.com/2crdc4sw, and a PDF, https://tinyurl.com/h8mnwjza.

But … was it misinformation? Really? The data came directly from Pfizer. The doctor’s group summarized Pfizer’s data into a nice presentation and then expressed an informed opinion about it. Dr. Malone, who knows more about mRNA vaccines than almost any other independent commenter, tweeted a link to the presentation. What’s the misinformation?

Obviously, it WASN’T misinformation. But that doesn’t matter any more.

Twitter should just say, “our rule is, non-government actors can’t say anything critical about the injections, true or not.” That would be more honest than the self-aggrandizing word salad Twitter uses instead, to loftily describe its rule as “preventing dangerous misinformation from spreading” or whatever. Liars.

Still, the controversy might have the opposite effect and actually help promote the scientist. Already, Joe Rogan is interviewing Dr. Malone today. We can expect to see that interview in a few days. I’ll let you know when it comes out.

I’ve met Dr. Malone several times now. He’s smart (of course), polite, quiet, and pretty intense one-on-one. His presentations at live events are always the ones you want to be fully caffeinated for, because he definitely doesn’t water down the science.

🔥 Boom. A gigantic admission emerged yesterday, when CNN interviewed Rochelle Walensky, asking her to say why the CDC shortened the isolation period from 10 days to 5 days for asymptomatic cases. The CDC’s director caused a twitter firestorm when she answered, “It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.”

Science!

I bet you already knew that pandemic policy was always based on what they thought we would tolerate. That’s why pushing back against the masks last year was so important: had we waited, the U.S. might look a lot more like Australia or Austria right now. Or even worse … Canada!

Or maybe … instead of “people” … it was based on what the NFL and Delta Airlines could tolerate. Just saying.

🔥 That’s not all! The CDC admitted a huge blunder yesterday, when the agency issued a rare “correction,” reducing its estimated proportion of Omicron variant cases. A few days ago, the CDC said 73% — three quarters — of new cases were Omicron. But yesterday, the agency revised that figure. Now, the CDC says only 22% of new cases are Omicron. In one day it went from MOST cases are from Omicron to only a FEW cases are from Omicron.

Whoops! That’s kind of a big mistake. But why? How’d they get it so wrong? Don’t count on getting an answer anytime soon. They’re baffled.

Reporting on the story, the Hill quoted former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer executive Scott Gottlieb making the obvious point. “Set[] aside the question of how the initial estimate was so inaccurate, ” Gottlieb mused. He’s setting “the question” aside because there’s no answer. But, do we HAVE to set that question aside? Don’t you think it would be helpful to know how the CDC got it so wrong?

Oh well. Apparently the CDC doesn’t have to explain itself. The gold standard IS the standard. Even if it changes around. Deal with it.

🔥 But wait, there’s more: the CDC admitted Covid hospitalizations are overstated! Yesterday, Walensky made ANOTHER announcement, this one even more interesting than the thing about what we’ll tolerate. She was commenting on a small increase in Covid hospitalizations in kids, and she actually went out of her way to DOWNPLAY the numbers, pointing out that many of them are admissions WITH Covid and not FOR Covid.

“Many of them are actually coming in for another reason. But they happen to be tested when they come in and they’re found incidentally to have COVID,” Walensky told MSNBC.

Wow! You mean, the hospitals are counting patients as “Covid patients” just because they tested positive — and even if they aren’t actually sick WITH Covid? This is shocking. Shocking and appalling.

And if that didn’t reassure you, Walensky ALSO pointed out that it’s cold and flu season, so naturally you expect kids to be passing stuff around. So just relax already.

Then, on the Today show, vaccine expert and FDA advisory panel member Paul Offit did the exact same thing, downplaying the increased figures for kids, blaming increased numbers on testing. “We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason to see whether or not they have COVID, and we’re definitely seeing an increase in cases. However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for COVID or in the intensive care unit for COVID,” Offit said.

So.

The closer you’ve been paying attention, the more remarkable these statements seem. Kids have ALWAYS been weaponized as a fear tactic. The CDC has never before admitted that hospitalization figures are overstated. The fact that the officials — in what appears to be coordinated fashion — seem to be switching to “reassure” mode from “scarify” mode is significant.

🔥 In the same interview, Walensky also admitted that the PCR tests are TOO SENSITIVE. She was justifying the new 5-day quarantine rule, explaining that someone can stay positive for 14 weeks on a PCR test. In other words, tests don’t really help much. ”So we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs,” Walensky said.

Gosh, the CDC is making a lot of new discoveries lately. It’s too bad they didn’t figure this out earlier. It could have saved a lot of people unnecessary quarantines.

🔥 Do you think all these admissions are designed to help protect the injections? I mean, the CDC has a big problem on their hands: -whether or not to outright redefine the terms “Covid hospitalizations” and “Covid deaths”.

If they don’t, folks may start thinking that the injections are a huge failure.

If they do, a lot of folks will start to realize they have been lied to for almost a year now.

What to do?

💉 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in another policy reversal, announced Tuesday that it will start re-enforcing its vaccine mandate in half the U.S. states where the mandate hasn’t been judicially enjoined. CMS set a new thirty-day deadline, conditioning hospital Medicare funding on whether employees receive their first shot within the next 30 days — that is, no later than January 27.

Great timing, don’t you think? While hospitalizations are spiking in New York and other states, CMS is forcing hospitals to fire up the layoff engine again. Makes perfect sense. Big government at its best.

Hopefully the Supreme Court can weigh in before the new deadline arrives.

📈 Hospitalizations in Florida continued creeping up, with HHS reporting about 3,800 patients in Florida today, and with 7.22% of beds in use for Covid patients. That’s still very low, but it’s rising.

The good news is, hospitalizations aren’t rising anywhere near as fast as cases. The RATIO of cases to hospitalizations and ICUs keeps falling, and fast. So, even though there are more folks overall admitted to the hospital, the RATE of admission is plummeting. Just last month, 14% of cases resulted in hospitalization, and 17% of hospitalizations resulted in an ICU case. But the most recent data suggests cases to hospitalizations is down around 2%, and only 9% of hospitalizations are becoming ICUs.

That’s not all. The latest data shows the average length of stay (ALS) for a Covid patient is dropping fast, too. In September 2020, the ALS was about 8 days. That’s been cut in half in the most recent data to only about 4 days, and is still trending down sharply. This is a great sign relative to mortality, too.

📈 But in New York, hospitalizations are still spiking. While still well below the spring peak, they are about double Florida’s hospitalizations and headed up rapidly, with no sign of stopping.

💊 Finally, even though the CDC now says only 22% of new cases are Omicron, the Biden Administration is withholding monoclonal antibody treatments from Florida — explaining they don’t work against Omicron. So…

Have a terrific Thursday! I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning for the final update of 2021 — the year in review.

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