☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, October 19, 2021 ☙ FOREVER MASKS 🦠

We check-in on the great influenza heist of 2020; more evidence the public health experts have created the greatest mental health pandemic in human history; A late August study from Qatar...

Happy Tuesday, C&Cers! Today’s roundup includes: a check-in on the great influenza heist of 2020; more evidence the public health experts have created the greatest mental health pandemic in human history; A late August study from Qatar explains a lot about how the government agencies are acting lately; sports news about a coach trading $12M to not take the shot; and Jen Psaki gives me an opportunity too good to pass up.

🚀 *BACK TO THE FUTURE* 🚀

From October 26, 2020, lightly edited for brevity:

“Headline in the Daily Mail (UK) this morning: “Has Covid killed off the flu? Experts pose the intriguing question as influenza cases nosedive by 98% across the globe.” I hardly know where to start. First of all, official NIH birdbrain Fauci virtually guaranteed we’d have a catastrophic Fall flu season as Covid and Flu ‘overwhelmed’ the hospitals. He said it would be a ‘flu-pocalypse.’ However, it seemed to many of us ‘non-expert’ observers that Covid has already claimed all the susceptible cases and we suspected a light flu season. It turns out that we overestimated even the optimistic forecast: there is NO 2020 FLU SEASON. It’s vanished. The experts were wrong—mind-bogglingly wrong. Again.”

First, when will anybody call Fauci out for being wrong all the time? But second, where are all the “missing flu” stories THIS year, in 2021? Are we over it now? We’re all just like, ho hum, flu must have decided to head out or something, it’ll probably come back when it gets hungry. Is that it?

A year of investigations later, how is the CDC doing on the missing flu case? Have they cracked it yet? Figured out where the flu went? Can we at least get an update on the search?

If I were the flu, I’d go to Sweden, where people are still mostly sane.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

😷 The delicate public health geniuses have done it again. By “done it,” I mean they’ve managed to fumble the main objective and haplessly kick the ball into the exact opposite result of anything anybody ever wanted.

I am referring to a new study out of Northeastern University. The researchers surveyed more than 20,000 folks across all 50 states, and asked them about their masking habits and injection status. They also asked folks about how much they “trust” various institutions. Here’s what they found about masks and injections:

10% of respondents were uninjected and don’t wear masks. Rebels. 19% were uninjected and do wear their masks. I’m guessing it’s workplace regulations.

11% of the folks reported they got the jabs and now don’t wear masks. But SIXTY PERCENT of all respondents — the largest group, by far — said they were injected but STILL WEAR MASKS. How about that? Most of them (82%) were democrats, so political affiliation seems to be a strong predictor for obsessive masking. The researchers also said this group skewed toward higher income levels. So.

Now check this out. The researchers asked, “how concerned are you about getting coronavirus yourself?”

Unmasked: In the unmasked+uninjected group, only 17% said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about catching the virus. In the unmasked+injected group, only 36% were very or somewhat concerned about getting the disease.

Masked: In the masked+uninjected group, 62% were VERY or somewhat concerned about catching Covid. But the group reporting the highest fear of catching Covid, by far, was the masked+injected group. THREE QUARTERS (74%) of them expressed concern about getting the disease. In other words, masked+injected people are FOUR TIMES more worried about GETTING COVID than other groups.

Do you see what this means? A clear majority of folks who got the shots don’t believe they are protective enough to take off their masks, and they STILL worry about catching Covid. And they’re clinging to those masks, despite that they’ve been told, over and over, that the masks don’t protect THEM. The fact that they think the masks protect them somehow is a fantasy completely disconnected from reality.

So. Paranoia, schizophrenia, etc. Thanks, public health experts!

If these folks won’t take their masks off after getting the injections, what is it going to take? Maybe when the CDC tells them it’s okay? A full 85% of the masked/injected bunch reported that they trusted that agency “a lot” or “some.” Gosh I would love to interview these folks and ask them what the CDC did to earn their trust. I know it would probably just frustrate me, but I am dying to know.

🔬 An under-reported preprint in MedRxIV, published at the end of August, bears the headline, “Waning of BNT162b2 [Pfizer] vaccine protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in Qatar.” Here are the results, which explains a LOT about how the public health agencies have been acting lately:

> “Estimated [Pfizer] effectiveness against any infection, asymptomatic or symptomatic, was negligible for the first two weeks after the first dose, increased to 36.5% in the third week after the first dose, and reached its peak at 72.1% in the first five weeks after the second dose. Effectiveness declined gradually thereafter, with the decline accelerating ≥15 weeks after the second dose, reaching diminished levels of protection by the 20th week.”

So, first, we see why they’ve been wanting to call recently-injected folks “uninjected,” because it takes two weeks for the body to have a measurable antibody response (the effectiveness is “negligible” during that period). So, the injections don’t start working until week three.

Second, the study shows injection efficacy starts to fall within four weeks after it starts working, beginning at week five. So, according to the study, you only get about 30 days of good protection and then it starts to drop off.

Third, it says effectiveness declines “gradually” between weeks 5 and 15 and then drops off fast. I made a little chart so you can see this, just for the period after the second dose. I rounded the numbers and estimated weekly drops based on a smooth decline, which, granted, is an assumption, but I think a safe one. Here’s what the effectiveness looks like after the second injection:

WEEK……Symptomatic….Asymp.
====……=========….=====
Week 1………80%……………63%
Week 2………78%……………61%
Week 3………76%……………59%
Week 4………74%……………57%
Week 5………70%……………55%
Week 6………68%……………53%
Week 7………66%……………50%
Week 8………64%……………45%
Week 9………62%……………40%
Week 10……..60%……………38%
Week 11……..58%……………35%
Week 12……..56%……………32%
Week 13……..54%……………30%
Week 14……..52%……………28%
Week 15……..50%…………….0%
Week 16……..48%…………….0%
Week 17……..46%…………….0%
Week 18……..44%…………….0%
Week 19……..42%…………….0%
Week 20………0%………...0%
Week 21………0%………….0%
Week 22………0%………….0%

The study describes Qatar as having “the highest mRNA vaccine coverage worldwide,” with over 80% of children (12+) and adults fully injected. Yet, the study reports that “[d]espite the high vaccine coverage, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been slowly increasing in recent weeks[.]” Weird.

The silver lining is that the study found sustained protection against severe or fatal Covid:

“Estimated BNT162b2 effectiveness against any severe, critical, or fatal disease due to any SARS-CoV-2 infection, was negligible for the first two weeks after the first dose. It increased rapidly to 67.7% in the third week after the first dose, and reached a peak of 95.4% in the first five weeks after the second dose. Unlike effectiveness against infection, there was no evident decline in this effectiveness over time. However, at ≥25 weeks after the second dose, there was a hint of a decline in effectiveness, but the case numbers were small.”

Overall, this study makes a good case for a person who has not already survived Covid to consider the injection if they are in a high-risk group. But it DESTROYS the case for mandates.

What we still don’t know is, what happens after 25 weeks, when the numbers begin to fall for protection against severe disease? You know who does know? Pfizer. Could this explain the huge push for boosters? Are they concerned about waning efficacy against severe Covid and death after 25 weeks?

Just asking. Don’t cancel me!

🏈 In sports news, Washington State fired its head football coach Nick Rolovich for “refusing” to take an unwanted, unneeded Covid injections. Four assistant coaches were also shown the door, for the same reason. Rolovich had told media he’d planned to notify management of his religious beliefs, which apparently were ignored. Seems like a good Title VII case to me, once the dust clears.

I googled Rolovich’s salary. The 42-year-old coach was the highest paid state employee in Washington, earning more than three million dollars a year under a contract that ran through 2025. So, there was over $12M more dollars left under his contract. All he had to do to keep the money was take the shot.

I guess he REALLY didn’t want the injections. For some reason. Looks like he had sincerely-held religious beliefs after all.

Good luck, Washington State!

I am starting to suspect the feds have offered big companies some huge incentives to achieve high injection rates. That would explain a lot, and it would be the easiest way to do it. We’ll see.

🚀 In the bottom story of the day, Biden spox Jen Psaki was asked about China’s pointy new hypersonic nuclear missile that took U.S. military officials by surprise. Psaki, contemplating the missile, said “we welcome the stiff competition.”

I have a lot of options here. I could just say, “that’s what she said!” I could make a joke about Psaki riding the missile like Jane Fonda in Vietnam. I could speculate about who “we” is and whether “we” are all 100% in on the plan to “welcome” China’s stiff “competition,” or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

They’ve GOT to stop setting me up like this.

📊 *COVID IN FLORIDA AND ALACHUA COUNTY* 📊

There’s new data out on Florida and it shows the continued decline of Covid in the Sunshine State. I’ll break the numbers down for you tomorrow.

Have a terrific Tuesday! We’ll grab some more coffee together tomorrow morning.

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