There are no more experts. They know nothing. So, don’t listen to them. Okay, maybe that’s not actually fair—but the real experts are being ignored by the liberal media for a simple reason: they want the COVID panic to continue. They want more deaths to occur. They want a spike. They want to keep the nation locked down.
It’s partially out of spite. Blue states are still under Nazi-esque lockdown rules—and their cases are still bad. Not like last year, but Michigan is seeing a massive spike, whereas Texas, which nixed its mask mandate more than five weeks ago and reopened fully has seen no spikes—none. Florida has also been a state that has managed its COVID crisis better than the media gave it credit for, painting Gov. Ron DeSantis as the grim reaper. It turns out the entire media establishment ate it on that one—no shock.
The good news is that even though Democratic states cannot manage COVID, there is no fourth wave. A spike in one state—Michigan–does not make a wave no matter what the CDC says. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has said he doesn’t think there’s going to be a fourth wave. And alas, here is the circus. The CDC says there’s “impending doom,” which was voiced around spring break, though Fauci said, "Nah, that ain’t happening."
The messaging on COVID protocols has been a mess; the messaging on vaccines has been even worse. An MIT study gutted and cast immense doubt on the effectiveness and purpose of air filtration systems, indoor capacity caps, and even mask-wearing. Folks think they’re protected wearing a mask. Nope. It’s an airborne virus. If you’re inside with someone exposed, that mask isn’t doing much, whether you are six or 60 feet apart.
It’s all a mess, and now we have this garbage about not reaching herd immunity (via NYT):
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.
This ridiculous article is premised on the idea that “herd immunity” means being rid of the Covid virus. But that’s not what it means, which is that a large enough segment of a population has had it or been vaccinated to significantly reduce the risk. https://t.co/qllTm5BZ5V
— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 3, 2021
It's May 3, 2021 and the NYT still doesn't know the difference between herd immunity and eradication. pic.twitter.com/XotxZMeYTh
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) May 3, 2021
This framing is excessively alarmist https://t.co/vESFAbolmJ
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 3, 2021
We discussed this before, including medical doctors. Do you see what’s missing? There is a glaring omission: natural immunity. The coverage of COVID has become so bad that liberal data crunchers, like Nate Silver, are coming off as conservative on social media, as he’s taken a hatchet to some of the narratives being peddled out there. He recently said there were “a lot of bad takes” about how Florida handled COVID. Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins also weighed in, saying the article omits herd immunity. Others also noted that The Times doesn’t seem to know the difference between herd immunity and eradication.
One thing I find a bit weird is that discussion of how the herd immunity math might play out in the US often brushes past the role that natural immunity (from having had COVID) plays. Experts estimate that ~1/3 of the US population has had COVID at some point.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 3, 2021
You can't just add up the ~33% who had COVID and the ~45% who've been vaccinated because there is some overlap between those groups. But survey data etc. suggests less overlap than you'd think since unvaccinated people tend to have been taking fewer precautions against COVID.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 3, 2021
And, of course, there will be less and less overlap over time, since unvaccinated people are disproportionately more likely to get COVID going forward.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 3, 2021
The article dismisses natural immunity--fails to put any real number around it's prevalence which is upwards of half of unvax ppl. That factor changes the outlook. The article is correct that herd is not binary, and that CV will persist at low levels, as I stated in my Feb model. https://t.co/IXpwHJlKia
— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) May 3, 2021
Look, the vaccine is a choice. I got it. A ton of my friends have as well, but we also know that the messaging is terrible.
"Get the vaccine but stay locked up" is not going to get people to sign up. I can understand the hesitancy. Luckily, tens of millions are getting shots and ignoring the indirectly idiotic advice experts have doled out. They’re all bureaucrats and all bureaucrats have agendas, Fauci being the biggest of them all.
Almost every protocol they’ve come up with is either nonsensical or enforced and applied in ways that make no sense. The NCAA basketball tournament is a prime example. Players must wear masks and be socially distanced on the bench…but not while they’re playing on the court? This is a virus with a 90+ percent survivability rate. Is it contagious? Sure—it’s why, based on the data, Dr. Makary thinks that up to two-thirds of the US population might have already had the infection. Natural immunity is something that is never applied in these scenarios, which is malpractice. The reinfection rate for those who already had COVID is also immensely low.
The truth is we’re probably very close to herd immunity, but government doctors lie. And with the CDC being exposed for colluding with teachers’ unions to keep schools closed—do you still trust the experts? They’re political operatives that are no better than the ones who are on panels as guest hosts on networks like CNN or MSNBC.