I wanted to pass along the conclusion of Holman Jenkins’s Wall Street Journal column. After 700 words of summary and analysis of where we are and how we got there in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, he concludes:
Analysts have puzzled over why similarly situated countries, even Nordic neighbors, varied so widely in their actions, including mandates and lockdowns. The answer begins to seem obvious. Countries, each with their own conflicted electorates, went their separate ways because there was no successful standard solution or “best practice†to converge on, because none has been found. Once this particular virus began spreading outward from a major city in China, it was perhaps fated to take up global residence in human and animal populations regardless of what we hoped to do about it.
I guess that some will find that despairing but I would characterize it more as realistic. Even with the highest expectable rate of vaccination, continued social distancing, wearing masks, and even if various antiviral treatments are finally approved, the virus will continue to evolve and spread. People will continue to die.
I wondered if Dr Fauci and the whole country suffered deja-vu in the past couple of days.
Going on TV saying let’s wait and see, travel bans aren’t being contemplated to having the President overrule and impose a ban a few hours later. And with the same exceptions that were so criticized when Trump did them!
The deja-by extends to being on the cusp of another winter wave where a new scary variant has emerged (then alpha, now omicron), waiting for FDA approval of “silver bullet†treatments (then vaccines, now Paxlovid), Still bitterly divided on the best strategy on fight/living with COVID.
As to vaccine refusal, one of the reasons many people are skeptical is because the manufacturers are not financially liable for any side effects. Every other commercial for victims of some drugs, and many are followed by an advertisement for the very same drug,
Most people assume “long-term” os more than a few months. The idea that anybody knows what the side effects will be in five, ten, or fifty years is ludicrous, and sane people know it.
Furthermore, these are not vaccines, but in order to call them vaccines, the definition was altered. These are prophylactics, and hopefully, “the rubber doesn’t break.” Now, we have to wear three rubbers to be safe.
(NOTE: I was vaccinated in early February, and on my next visit to the VA medical center, I will get whatever booster they want me to take. In the Marine Corps, I got vaccines that most people do not know exist. Whatever, I am a Jarhead, and I dutifully roll up my sleeve.)
Obviously, masking does not work. I am sure that more than a few of the people who get infected wear their mask, religiously. NEWSFLASH: When mask mandates are removed, people leave their house. Prohibiting human contact is what reduces infections, not a mask.
(If your glasses fog up from wearing a mask, you are inhaling and exhaling infected air. Holding your breath would be more effective. Let me know how that works out.)
So, humans cannot affect a microscopic organism, but they are going to affect the planet’s climate. Let me know how that works out.
Seems to me what has changed is us.
Whether just a virus going around, or elevated to pandemic status, it’s now seen as something for the government to fix, when not long ago it was something that called for prayer and then endurance and then acceptance.
I am surprised that the market reacted to preliminary reports of a new strain in one man in one country.
Will people never become inured to reports of the falling sky?
These are vaccines. Instead of directly introducing the antigen the m-rna directs the body to make it. Educated people know that there has not been a late reported complication from any vaccine in over 60 years. Injuries are covered by CICP.
“when not long ago it was something that called for prayer and then endurance and then acceptance.”
And then people just died as we couldn’t make vaccines quickly and we had no drugs to effectively treat viral illnesses.
Steve
A good friend’s father passed away last year, after testing positive for COVID in the hospital. He was given remdesivir, after being refused his family’s request for ivermectin. Obviously remdesivir didn’t work. I think about her dad, Leo, when I see stories like the one below, wondering why people are being denied the treatment of their choice, unless they manage to get a court order.
https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-judge-stands-up-to-a-hospital-step
Standard of care. If a physician does not follow the standard of care and instead offers alternatives, it exposes the physician to suit for malpracice.
You can deviate from the standard of care as long as you can document evidence that your alternate care had a reasonable chance of working and that you had considered or tried the existing standard. This actually happens not uncommonly. Since there is no evidence, in the scientific sense, that it works it would be hard to defend using Ivermectin. Even the Ivermectin advocates say it needs to be given early for effect.
Monoclonal antibodies have been very helpful and have big hopes for the two new pills but they all need to be started early. This is an issue among the anti-vaxxer folk as they generally deny everything and then show up in the ED further along in the course of illness.
Steve