☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, September 30, 2021 ☙ Florida Man Redux 🦠

Fauci moves the “fully vaccinated” goal posts, which isn’t news but, you know; Fauci warns us about an impending Dark Winter, again; YouTube announces its new digital book-burning policy ...

On this fine Thursday, we’re headed for another beautiful weekend here in Florida. I have a great roundup of news for you today: Fauci moves the “fully vaccinated” goal posts, which isn’t news but, you know; Fauci warns us about an impending Dark Winter, again; YouTube announces its new digital book-burning policy; sports figures sound off about the Covid injections; I share some awesome tweets; Messianic Governor Hochul comes up with an awesome plan to solve the healthcare worker shortage that she created; a new study finds NO DIFFERENCE between viral loads in injected and uninjected folks; El Gato Malo discovers and intriguing correlation between boosters and deaths in Israel; the IOC locks down the winter games; and Governor DeSantis wonders why we’re still allied with Australia at this point.

And some links for you link nerds!

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🪳 Well, we saw this one coming for a while now, didn’t we? In a fatuous puff-piece interview, the Atlantic posed this question to Tony Fauci:

“Put another way, can you be “fully vaccinated” without [a booster shot]?

Fauci responded, just as you would expect:

“It is likely, for a real complete regimen, that you would need at least a third dose.”

At least a third dose! And, this would be the “third dose” that the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee just recommended against 16-3, right? Just asking.

So get ready, injected folks. You thought you were “fully injected.” The Magic Eight Ball says, “all signs point to no.” So … the big question is, will injected people also face termination if they don’t have their boosters under the new mandates? When, exactly, does it ever end?

🪳 In a CBS interview earlier this week, Tony Fauci warned that, if we don’t get everyone injected soon, we will be in for a “dark, bad winter.” A dark winter? That phrase seemed eerily familiar, so I searched my C&C archives and found this, from December 19, 2020:

After telling us we were in for a “Dark Winter,” Fauci is now warning of a “surge on top of a surge.” He’s ranting about a new Christmas “surge on top of” the Thanksgiving surge. You have to give the guy points for his vocabulary. When will Fauci run out of doom-and-gloom catch phrases? He seems to have an unlimited supply.

I think I answered my own question. A year later, Fauci has finally run out of doom-and-gloom catchphrases. He’s recycling them now.

So … we didn’t have a dark winter last year in spite of all Fauci’s hysterical warnings. But this year, POST INJECTION, we’re going to have a “dark winter?” Uh-huh. For real, when is that guy going to retire? Is he technically even still alive?

🔥 You probably saw this one coming, too. On Tuesday, social-media giant YouTube announced it’s going to ban any videos that, in its opinion, are “anti-vaccine.” No criticism allowed. Note that reports describing the decision say “the social media company has come under increasing threat from government regulators.”

Oh, of course. Why would YouTube want to pull down ANY popular videos bringing eyes to its website? Because of strings. The strings attached to federal regulators. Strings, pulled.

In the first round of digital book burning, YouTube has removed Robert F. Kennedy, who heads a vaccine skeptic organization, and Joseph Mercola, an alternative medicine entrepreneur. So. Buckle up.

💉 Professional tennis player Jeremy Chardy, formerly ranked 25th in the world, said his 2021 season is over now, due to a “series of problems” he experienced after getting Pfizer’s vaccine. “Since I got my vaccine, I have a problem, I have a lot of problems. As a result, I can’t train, I can’t play,” Chardy told AFP.

Chardy seems to feel that the injection-induced disabilities will be permanent. “I turn 35 in February so for the moment I’m maybe a little bit negative, but this is the first time the idea that next season might be my last has crossed my mind. I’m thinking about it… It’s difficult because I was enjoying myself and I wanted to play longer,” he said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, tennis pro Stefanos Tsitsipas , ranked No. 3 in the world, expressed some reluctance about getting vaccinated.

“The Covid-19 vaccine has not been tested enough because it is new and has some side effects,” Tsitsipas said in August. “I know some people who’ve had them. I’m not against it, I just see no reason for someone in my age group to be vaccinated.”

🔥 In a recent Rolling Stone article, NBA player Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic said he wasn’t planning to take the Covid injection anytime soon. In a tweet responding to online backlash against the comment, Isaac said, “Misrepresentation only allows for others to attack straw men, and not reason with the true ideas and heart of their fellow man. It helps no one! True journalism is dying! I believe it is your God given right to decide if taking the vaccine is right for you! Period! More to follow.”

🔥 Yesterday, Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal challenged reporters over his decision not to get the injection. It’s a fun colloquy:

BEAL: Every player, every person in this room is going to make a decision for themselves. I would like an explanation from people with the vaccines, why are they still getting Covid? If that’s something that we are supposed to be highly protected from? You know, it’s funny. It reduces your chances of going to the hospital. It doesn’t eliminate ANYBODY from getting Covid. Right? So, is everybody in here vaxxed? I would assume, right? So you all can still get Covid, right?

REPORTER: But we are less likely to die or go to the hospital.

BEAL: Okay. But you can still get Covid? Right? And you can still pass it along — with the vaxx, right? I’m just asking questions.

REPORTER: Sure. (Unintelligible) … But did having it change your opinion one way or another, like, did it kind of re-emphasize, like, I’ve had Covid so I don’t need the vaccine?

BEAL: No. No, no, no. Nah, that wasn’t the case. I mean, yeah I had it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get it again. You know? It’s no different from somebody with the vaccine. Like, yes, I developed antibodies for it, so my chances would be less likely now, as well, right? But, it’s still a possibility. I may get it, right? Just like there’re players, and coaches, and staff that are vaxxed and missing camp right now. So.

He actually finished with ‘so.’ That wasn’t me. I think I might have a new favorite sports celebrity.

🍭 But my favorite tweet this morning was a comment about how U.S. progressives have long had a love affair with the “socialist” Scandinavian countries. Not so much at the moment, now they’re lifting all their Covid restrictions and ending the pandemic, though, huh?

🔥 The messianic interim Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, is expanding her emergency plans to fix the emergency she made by mandating the state’s healthcare workers get injections or be fired. In a new emergency order responding to the manufactured crisis, Hochul says she will let all vaccinated, licensed physicians anywhere in Canada and the United States practice in New York, and allow registered nurses from other countries to work in New York. But even better than that, she’s going to let practically anyone practice medicine there, even if they haven’t finished medical school or even attended a credentialed medical school or even have a license to practice medicine:

“To the extent necessary to allow graduates of foreign medical schools having at least one year of graduate medical education to provide patient care in hospitals, is modified to allow such graduates without licenses to provide patient care in hospitals if they have completed at least one year of graduate medical education.”

I am not making that up. This is the very best that the smartest experts in New York could come up with. Apparently, the experts believe letting unlicensed, untrained, foreign healthcare workers treat Americans is going to result in better patient outcomes than letting licensed, credentialed New York doctors and nurses who’ve already recovered from the virus treat patients. Brilliant! What would we do without experts?

For me, I’d be cautious about going in to the hospital in New York for treatment anytime soon. You might want to be sure you have a really good reason.

🔬 A new preprint study published in MedRxIV yesterday has the intriguing title, “No Significant Difference in Viral Load Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Groups Infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant.”

Uh-oh.

So, the researchers concluded that injected people need to go back to testing and masking: “Given the substantial proportion of asymptomatic vaccine breakthrough cases with high viral levels, interventions, including masking and testing, should be considered for ALL in settings with elevated COVID-19 transmission.”

Now, experts ASSURED me that post-injection breakthrough cases were “rare.” We were seeing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and stuff like that. So what on earth are these researchers going on about? A “substantial proportion of asymptomatic vaccine breakthrough cases with high viral levels?” That doesn’t sound right.

And guess what? They’d even excluded folks from the study that had only one dose of the injection or were tested within two weeks of the second dose. They still found no statistically significant difference between injected and un-injected people: “There were no statistically significant differences in mean Ct-values of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated samples.”

So, here’s the bad news for injected people who were hoping to “get back to normal:”

“The data gathered in this study during the surge of the Delta variant strongly support the notion that neither vaccine status nor the presence or absence of symptoms should influence the recommendation and implementation of good public health practices, including mask wearing, testing, social distancing, and other measures designed to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. “

Oh, well. Thanks for playing anyway, suckers!

Everyone facing a “vaccinate or terminate” policy at their work should immediately provide a copy of the new study to their employer. Here’s the link.

🔥 Popular online data analyst Gato Malo has been reviewing Israeli booster data again, and has identified an intriguing correlation between booster shots (per million) and deaths (per million). The charts are the most interesting part.

🔥 The International Olympic Committee announced yesterday that NO international spectators will be allowed to attend next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. And only fully-injected athletes will be allowed to participate. Because Science! The IOC says that next month, they will release a “package” of additional measures to protect everybody from dropping dead the instant they walk into the games, or something.

🦸‍♂️ On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis delivered some remarks at the International Boatbuilders’ Exhibition. After pointing out that, if Florida hadn’t reopened when it did, the whole U.S. would still be on lockdown, he questioned whether the U.S. should maintain diplomatic relations with Australia at this point. He said:

“Look what’s going on in Australia right now. They’re enforcing — after a year and a half! — they’re still enforcing lockdowns. By the military. And that’s not a free country, not at all. In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that? Is Australia freer than China? Communist China, right now? I don’t know. The fact that that’s even a question tells you something has gone dramatically off the rails.”

Then, he compared Fauci’s recent lockdown advisory to the draconian Australian lockdowns:

“I can tell you, especially growing up in Florida, this idea that Fauci says, ‘Stay in your house and never leave,’ – that is so disruptive to people’s overall wellbeing. The fact that we had people out fishing, boating, doing all that stuff was much better off for our state and for the people and their individual circumstances.”

So.

📰 The Tampa Bay Times penned an op-ed this morning, titled, “Stop abusing Florida’s school board members over COVID mask decisions | Editorial.” Well. The paper says that school board officials are being subjected “to abuse and harassment that is way out of line” over the mask issue. What abuse and harassment? One example from the editorial describes the horrifying, warlike conditions this way: “In Pinellas County, new board member Caprice Edmond has had to listen to speakers accuse her family of ‘criminality’ because she has pushed for a mask mandate.”

Oh dear. That DOES sound bad.

But wait a minute … let me see if I understand this right … the Department of Health said that parents must have an opt-out in their “sole discretion.” But the Pinellas board decided not to follow the law. Okay.

Remind me, what do we call people who break the law? I can’t remember. It starts with a “c,” I think. Cramillas? Crominals? Something like that.

🔥 Finally, for your viewing pleasure, and for all the people who wonder about why Floridians aren’t scared of Covid, here is a perfect illustration of how we roll down here. In sandals. Link: https://tinyurl.com/ydxeczuy.

Have a terrific Thursday! I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

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