COVID Deniers Look Forward to 2022
Two years into a pandemic that’s fundamentally altered the lives of individuals, the global economy, our healthcare system, and our political trajectory, it saddens me to say the anti-vaxxers have effectively won their campaign of denialism aimed at undermining public confidence in governance.
No, the government isn’t suspending mandates, and, no, they’re not giving up on vaccines. But, like a grain of sand in the cogs of a machine, the denialists have kept us out of the zone where high vaccination levels would be more effective.
Another 100,000 (or so) people will unnecessarily die this year, and we can expect to see a steady migration of those activists to other factually challenged causes, like book burning and transgender shaming. Or, maybe, they can bring back polio.
On Tuesday, the United States recorded a record high seven day average of new coronavirus cases blowing past the country's previous record of, set nearly a year ago on January 11. California's test positivity for COVID has exploded from 2.4% to 9.7% in the past 12 days, per @CAPublicHealth, a 304% increase. That's well past the delta surge peak of 7.2%
COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in our country, starting off 2021 in the #1 position in January 2021, falling to #7 in July, and climbing back to #3 in November. This is the first time in decades a communicable disease has been at or near the top causes of death. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health System Tracker estimates that 163,000 COVID-19 deaths since June 2021 likely would have been prevented with vaccinations
A miniscule minority of individuals, fueled by well-financed misinformation groups and conspiracy websites, have managed to make the difficult task of tamping down a pandemic near impossible.
On Monday, there were about 15,000 new cases of covid in New York Cityand only 38 in Tokyo.
Granted, pandemic waves don’t strike geographic areas simultaneously, but you have to respect what mask wearing and social distancing could be doing here.
Instead, we had a QAnon-inspired group storming a Burger King in New York City, demanding to be served without masks. (I think a fitting punishment might be making them eat Whoppers thrice daily for a few years…)
https://twitter.com/taliaotg/status/1476066196285964292?s=20
Some folks at the street level of these protests may think their concept of individual liberty has triumphed, but the reality will be the acceleration of our political system moving toward authoritarianism.
I’m not saying that the rest of us – a supermajority of Americans– should stop doing whatever it takes to protect ourselves and our families; get as many boosters as the science supports, wear masks, and avoid situations with limited ventilation relative to the number of people in a space.
https://twitter.com/NarcTranslator/status/1476201378057838600?s=20
One of the foundational lies told about COVID-19 vaccines by denalists is that they don’t protect “you” from getting infected. The kernel of truth there is that “some” people get infected with all vaccines when it is still prevalent in the population.
The contagion factor of the Omicron variant means that an increasing number of vaccinated people will test positive; some of them may have symptoms, a few may have a fatal infection. In every symptomatic case, those numbers will be less than those who have bravely opted to try to eat at Burger King or harass nurses and doctors,
By the time January is over, presuming that yet another variant doesn’t emerge, the numbers on breakthrough cases may seem astounding, and a common reaction in those cases will be a sense of shame, i.e., “what did I do wrong?”
The answer is nothing. You tried to be a good person but got exposed despite your efforts. For more on what will becoming an increasing common reaction, see this article in the Washington Post:
“It’s important to understand that with the omicron variant, we’re facing a virus that is more transmissible than delta, and in turn delta more transmissible than alpha and so forth,” says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Some people have misunderstood the role vaccines play in preventing illness, believing that they protect against any and all infection. That’s not the case. As Hotez points out, just two to three months after getting the Pfizer booster, protection against symptomatic infection from omicron drops from around 70-75 percent to 30-40 percent. “The bottom line is that getting infected with omicron could now happen to anyone,” he says.
The sense of shame that can come with a coronavirus diagnosis isn’t surprising, says Lynn Bufka, a senior director at the American Psychological Association and a practicing licensed clinical psychologist in Maryland.
“Shame has a history of being connected to various health diagnoses,” she says, such as HIV and even, for decades, cancer. “It comes from thinking that you’re being seen and judged by others, and gosh, look around. The reality is that there’s a lot of judging about people who have covid, so it’s understandable that they might feel some shame.”
Another comment about shame is that the anti-vaxxers are using stories about prominent refuseniks deaths as an excuse for martyrdom. My point here is that the many social media posts about these victims of the death cult aren’t effective. I continue to maintain that direct engagement with hard core anti-vaxxers is a waste of time.
Finally, It appears to me that the titans of industry have had their way with CDC, since they’ve lowered the threshold for quarantining people who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 but are asymptomatic from 10 days to 5. I’d be a lot happier with the recommendation if they’d used some peer reviewed science to back up that decision; instead they used a general statement about declining infectiousness.
From CNN:
With the sheer volume of new cases that we are having and that we expect to continue with Omicron, one of the things that we want to be careful of is that we don't have so many people out," Fauci told CNN's Jim Acosta.
"We want to get people back to the jobs, particularly the essential jobs, to keep society running smoothly," said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
That decision may not be “giving up,” but it certainly doesn’t do anything to increase the credibility of officials trying to instill confidence in preventative measures. It reminds me of the "don’t mask" guidance that changed overnight to "mask up" once masks were commonly available.
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On another front…
https://twitter.com/jeremynewberger/status/1476168167659610116?s=20
Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. I’ll be moving from Wordpress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com