☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, March 8, 2022 ☙ EPIC LEVELS 🦠

A blockbuster announcement from Florida; Congress' New Hope; the WSJ explains better-performing low-jab countries, kind of; Biden finds a way out; The CDC says everything looks great; and more...

Happy Tuesday, C&C! Today’s roundup includes: an epic roundtable and announcement by Florida Governor DeSantis and Surgeon General Ladapo; CDC stats confirm the Governor’s argument; Congress works on a new hope; New Zealand’s Covid-zero plan officially fails, surprising no one; the WSJ tries to explain why low-jab countries did better; Ireland drops Covid entry requirements; the White House sets up Republicans to take the blame for ending the pandemic; the CDC publishes a study showing the jabs are safe and effective, don’t worry; and a minority report on an interesting J6 discussion.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 Just when you thought the best was already behind us, Governor DeSantis has done it again. Within two weeks of Dr. Ladapo’s formal confirmation as Florida’s new Surgeon General, they just triggered the entire left and shattered the information monopoly on the jabs. DeSantis and Ladapo held a virtual roundtable on YouTube (and Rumble) yesterday, along with a giant panel of eminent and highly-accomplished scientists and doctors including Dr. Malone, Dr. Traci Hoeg, Dr. Jill Ackerman, Dr. Chris D’Adamo, Dr. Shveta Raju, Dr. Harvey Risch, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Joseph Fraiman, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta from Oxford.

https://rumble.com/vwposh-the-curtain-close-on-covid-theater.html

The roundtable was named, “The Curtain Close on Covid Theater,” a title designed to troll the media. And, they NEEDED a giant group of experts for what they were about to do. Governor DeSantis knew that if he didn’t prime the pump with a significant volume of expert testimony, he’d have been ridiculed in the national media as a lunatic. But by assembling all the experts and interviewing them at length, he defeated journalists’ ability to easily dismiss him as “a science denier.”

DeSantis used the same technique back when he announced outlawing mask mandates. He has figured out the formula for beating the media’s silly dismissive argument that someone should be ignored because “they aren’t following the science.” Well, after hearing all those experts you can’t say DeSantis isn’t following the science, he literally just asked a dozen scientists for their opinion. It leaves journalists with only the unpleasant option of doing the hard work of distinguishing or differentiating all the stuff DeSantis’ experts said during the roundtable, which is WAY more work than most journalists are willing to do.

After hearing from all the experts, the Governor and Surgeon General made a modest announcement that amounted to a political nuclear meltdown bigger than Chernobyl: as its official policy, Florida does NOT recommend jabs for healthy kids.

BOOOM.

The response from the usual suspects was immediate and totally predictable. Rather than engage with the ideas and facts discussed at the roundtable, they just unleashed the most common logical fallacy used during the pandemic: the appeal to authority. CNN’s TV doctor and former infant executioner Leanna Wen tweeted: “Unbelievable. Florida Governor DeSantis is recommending AGAINST covid vaccines for healthy children. This completely goes against CDC guidance.”

Leana Wen, M.D. @DrLeanaWen

Unbelievable. Florida Governor DeSantis is recommending AGAINST covid vaccines for healthy children. This completely goes against CDC guidance & recommendations from American Academy of Pediatrics. Vaccines are safe, effective, and prevent severe illness.

washingtonpost.comFlorida’s top health official says healthy children should not get coronavirus vaccineThe pronouncement by the state’s surgeon general was condemned as “reckless” and “dangerous” by medical experts.

It’s unbelievable. She can’t believe it. And it doesn’t just “go against” CDC guidance. It COMPLETELY goes against CDC guidance. And you can’t have that, no, not COMPLETE going against. Or something.

In a story about the roundtable, the Washington Post quoted “experts” who — again — did NOT argue with the merits behind DeSantis’ announcement, but just appealed to the authority of the government agencies. For example, WaPo’s pet professor Peter Hotez reportedly scolded, “It’s terrible. To be at such distinct variance from the hundreds of physicians and scientists at the CDC and the FDA is reckless at best and dangerous at worst.”

Terrible! A “distinct variance.” Meaning, according to Peter Hotez, it’s terrible and probably “dangerous” just to say something different from the CDC/FDA. He doesn’t say why. It just IS.

Reporters rapidly asked Jen Psaki what SHE thought of Florida’s new policy. Psaki scoffed and said the White House follows science, not like Florida. She then called Dr. Ladapo a politician spreading a conspiracy theory, even though he’s a Harvard-trained doctor who just conferred with a dozen world health experts.

Wen and Psaki are morons. Even the FDA’s panel recommended AGAINST approving the vaccine for kids. And it was FULL of comments by even MORE experts — aggressively pro-jab ones — who agreed with the Governor:

— FDA adviser Dr. Cody Meissner: “I’m just worried that if we say yes, the states are going to mandate administration of this vaccine to children in order to go to school. And I do not agree with that. I think that would be an error at this time.”

— FDA adviser Dr. Mark Sawyer: “We’re all concerned about the myocarditis issue and I do think the model has overestimated the hospitalizations prevented… I do think we need it as a tool for high-risk children.”

— FDA adviser Dr. Michael Kurilla: “For children who have undergone a delta infection, does now vaccinating them with a strain that goes back now nearly two years, does that actually help or hurt their current immune system with regard to ongoing variants? We have no idea.”

During DeSantis’ roundtable yesterday, Dr. Franier pointed out that there has not been ONE SINGLE confirmed death of a healthy child from Covid. Not one. So, how can the jabs possibly improve on that? There’s no amount of deaths less than zero. So protecting a child from dying is clearly NOT a benefit from the shots. Dr. Kulldorff noted that for children who haven’t had Covid yet, we don’t know the benefit of the shots, but we know there’s a risk of myocarditis, and there might be other risks we don’t know about yet. He said it’s “unethical to mandate vaccinations for children.”

Dr. Risch made one of the greatest points I’ve heard in a long time. He said that the media — and people in government — have deliberately confused “things that are plausible” with “things that are scientific.” He gave the example of lockdowns, which seem plausible, but have never ever worked on population scale and were scientifically known to cause enormous damage.

Wow, that is exactly right. The government and its media sycophants have been peddling armchair theories as science for two years now.

🔥 The Florida announcement is huge. It is hard to exaggerate how big it is. Don’t be deceived that it’s just words, that it’s just Florida’s Surgeon General’s opinion. It is now the official policy of the State of Florida that healthy kids should not be required to get Covid vaccines, making Florida the ONLY state in the country to embrace that policy.

Before this announcement, the CDC had a total lock on vaccine policy in this country. Not one state disagreed. But now, there’s a chink in the CDC’s armor that will widen to a Grand Canyon that will ultimately put the CDC back in its remote location where no one can hear it again.

Florida citizens can now push back on pediatricians who say “we recommend your healthy child gets the Covid vaccine.” They can now say, “but the policy of the State of Florida is the opposite. No thanks.” Florida schools are now completely safe from Covid vaccine mandates to attend school, which were already outlawed by state law. And other governors, seeing Florida’s leadership, might follow.

🔥 The CDC Wonder database, which reports mortality from all causes by state, shows that in Florida there were THREE TIMES as many deaths in kids from drowning in 2021 as there were from Covid (kids with comorbidities, not healthy kids). So.

🔥 Seen on Twitter yesterday:

🔥 The CDC issued a travel advisory yesterday about travel to New Zealand due to the catastrophic failure of the little island nation’s zero-Covid policy and resulting sky-high Covid infection rates. According to its dashboard, 95.2% of New Zealand’s eligible population is “fully vaccinated” and 72.5% are boosted. But now subject to a travel warning for its rocketing Covid rates.

In an article about the development yesterday, the Times of India reported that “New Zealand [is] at its worst point yet in the pandemic and [is] coming to terms with the fact the virus would remain in the country permanently.”

Whoopsies! I wonder how the New Zealanders feel about those national lockdowns and draconian travel restrictions?

🔥 On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal ran an article this weekend with THIS remarkable headline: “Hybrid Immunity Kept Omicron Deaths Low in Countries Where Millions Aren’t Fully Vaccinated.”

Hahahaha! They’re trying to explain why low-vaxx countries did better than high-vaxx countries, such as most of Africa (13% vaccinated), or countries like Nigeria (4% jabbed). Guess how the journal explains it. You’re going to love this. The answer, the Journal patiently explains, is that since everybody in those countries hadn’t been jabbed, they all caught Covid, which then made them all immune to Covid. So then they did better than jab countries.

Don’t try to think about that too hard.

Case closed on the jabs then, right? No. The Journal says that this amazing development just buys those countries extra time to get everyone vaccinated. I am not making that up. The new term is “epic protection:”

[Expert professor Dorry] Segev said the durability of natural immunity, alongside active vaccination campaigns, bodes well for countries like India and Indonesia. “We know the strongest immunity is hybrid immunity. Previous infection plus vaccination gives you epic levels of protection,” he said.

Epic is a technical term.

🔥 NBC News reported that “sources” say that Congress “hopes” to unveil a plan in the next 2-3 weeks for a phased re-opening of the Capitol. They hope! Somebody once said that hope is not a plan.

💉 According to the Irish Times, effective last Sunday all regulations imposing Covid vaccination requirements for people entering Ireland have been cancelled. Under the new policy, arrivals in Ireland will not have to show proof of vaccination, recovery or even a negative PCR test, nor will they have to fill out “passenger locator forms.” So.

🔥 Saturday, NewsMax published an article headlined, “White House: Congress Must Act Soon to Replenish COVID Funds.” The gist is that the White House says it is running out of Covid relief money for testing and treatment. “From the COVID side, the bank account is empty,” said COVID-19 deputy coordinator Natalie Quillian.

The White House personnel quoted appear to urgently want Congress to vote some more Covid money, almost $23 billion dollars, to refuel the Covid response machine. So it would seem that, just after the SOTU, the White House now really does want some more money, to pay for free Covid tests and free Covid treatments.

But I wonder.

I wonder if this isn’t a way to shift blame for shutting down the pandemic onto Republicans. The article quotes Republicans as being skeptical of the White House’s request. “Oh no, that’s too much,” Alabama Senator Richard Shelby reportedly said. Newsmax reported that 36 GOP senators just wrote Biden a letter insisting that before supporting new money, they want “a full accounting” of how the government has spent funds already provided.

If the White House can say stingy Republicans wouldn’t give it any money, then it had no choice but to discontinue free testing and free treatments. What else can he do? Biden’s hands are tied. This would be helpful with the hardcore Dem base that isn’t too happy about wrapping up the pandemic.

💉 The CDC just published a study in the Lancet concluding that it couldn’t find any correlation between deaths and vaccines. The CDC says all it could find were links to myocarditis and allergic reactions, which it insists were already well-known. You can definitely trust this study because the CDC has always been right about everything else it declared about the virus and the vaccines since the start of the pandemic.

Oh, wait.

🚀 **THE MINORITY REPORT** 🚀

🔥 Yesterday, a Senate hearing from earlier this year featuring Senator Ted Cruz and FBI assistant executive national security director Jill Sanborn came back in the news, where Cruz asked Sanborn a few interesting questions.

[UPDATE: This story erroneously cited the interview as occurring yesterday, but it occurred on Jan 11, 2022. It came back up in news items yesterday due to events in the J6 cases.]

Cruz: ”Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of January 6th? Yes or no?”

Sanborn: “I can’t answer that.”

Cruz: “Did any agents or CIs commit crimes of violence on January 6?”

Sanborn: “I can’t answer that, sir.”

Cruz: “Did any agents or CIs actively encourage crimes of violence on January 6?”

Sanborn: “I can’t answer that.”

Cruz: “Ms. Sanborn, was Ray Epps a fed?”

Sanborn: “I can’t answer that.”

So.

Have a terrific Tuesday, I will see you back here tomorrow morning for more.

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