My Op-Ed ran in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
Omicron is a game changer. It is 70x more contagious than Delta, the vaccines cannot stop people from getting it, and it has a fatality rate similar to the flu.
It’s time to accept that Covid is now endemic like the flu, and to move on.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the wheels coming off the Covid bus when CNN medical analyst and former head of Planned Parenthood, Leanna Wen, doubled down on national television saying cloth masks are mere theater against aerosol biological viruses like SARS-CoV. That sentiment is now reluctantly acknowledged universally by the medical community.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is now calling on the federal government to buy N95 masks for everyone, including children to wear to school, in spite of the fact that the FDA says “N95 respirators are not designed for children or people with facial hair.”
First, the mask science is settled. Stop questioning the science, you denier! Then the science evolves. Stop questioning our new science, you denier! Repeat. We cannot let the “cloth masks totally work” crowd simply move on to “better quality masks” with no discussion of their lying this entire time.
Meanwhile, contra the science, blue state politicians (which includes Moscow School Board members) are still mandating cloth masks. Fascinating that the “trust the science” mob doesn’t trust the science. But masks for Democrats are like MAGA hats for Republicans.
We have known since last summer that the viral loads in the vaccinated and unvaccinated are similar and that the vaccinated can get and spread Covid. But recall what Biden also promised six months ago:
- “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
- “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.”
- Vaccinated health care workers “are protected from Covid and cannot spread it to you.”
These promises were as untrue for the Delta variant as they are for Omicron.
Since Omicron arrived on the scene, liberals have learned that regardless of how vaccinated and boosted they are, they can still get Covid. Whoopi Goldberg described being shocked when she learned she tested positive for coronavirus during the show’s break. Goldberg said she was surprised when she received the positive test result because, according to her, she had been taking every necessary precaution to avoid contracting the virus. Goldberg stated that her shock came from the fact that she was fully vaccinated, had received the vaccine booster shot, and hadn’t gone anywhere outside her house. Regardless that the vaccinated can spread and get Covid, she blamed the unvaxxed.
If I had gotten three smallpox vaccinations in 2021 and then came down with smallpox, I’d start blaming someone, too. But this is the first time in history that the vaccinated are blaming the unvaccinated rather than the pharmaceutical companies.
Historically, a vaccine protected you from infection. No longer. In August 2021, the CDC changed the definitions of vaccination and vaccine. Previously, the definition of vaccination was “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” They changed the word “immunity” to “protection.” The CDC also changed the definition of “vaccine” from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
The CDC said the reason for this change was that no vaccine is 100% effective in providing immunity. True. The measles vaccine is only 97% effective against measles.
But this definitional change was necessary because mRNA vaccines do not provide immunity the way that polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, etc., vaccines do. Despite not being able to provide immunity, the government sought to build community trust by ensuring that these vaccines would be our saviors. They even went so far as to insist we call vaccinated cases “breakthrough Covid”, as though these cases are rare or even shocking. However, “breakthrough Covid” is shocking no one anymore.
The CDC changed the definitions of vaccine and vaccination as the Covid vaccines’ effectiveness plummeted. In six months, Pfizer’s effectiveness against infection dropped from 86.9% to 43.3%, Moderna’s from 89.2% to 58.0%, and J&J’s from 86.4% to 13.1%.
I am fatigued by the government’s response to Covid. Fortunately, Omicron has shifted from pandemic to endemic, and now we can focus on bigger things, like fixing the economy that the government sacrificed on their altar of Covid lies.
