Category: Health & Medicine

If this is happening in the U.K., why would you think it’s not happening here as well?

Hyping the Covid Burden on Hospitals.

A Doctor Writes: The NHS Is Concealing Important Information from the Public

On Thursdays, the NHS release the weekly summary data in relation to Covid patients. Normally this is a more granular version of the daily summaries – it has some hospital level detail and figures on non-Covid workload for comparison. Usually interesting but not especially informative.

Yesterday was an exception. Placed down at the bottom of the page, almost like a footnote, was a “Primary Diagnosis” Supplement. Graph One shows the information contained in that spreadsheet. I find it astonishing. In essence, it shows that since June 18th, the NHS has known its daily figures in relation to ‘Covid inpatients’ were unreliable at best and deliberately untrue at worst.

The Yellow bars are what the NHS has been informing the nation were Covid inpatients. The Blue bars are the numbers of inpatients actually suffering from Covid symptoms – the difference between the two are patients in hospital who tested positive for Covid but were being treated for something different – where Covid was effectively an incidental finding but not clinically relevant.

For example, on July 27th, the total number of beds occupied by Covid patients was reported as 5,021. However, until today, we were not permitted to know that only 3,855 of those were actually admitted with Covid as the primary diagnosis. There has been a fairly consistent overestimate of the true number by about 25% running back to mid June – figures before that date are ‘not available’.

Why does this matter?

Well in one way it doesn’t matter very much. Whether the burden of Covid inpatients is 5% of the available beds or 3.5%, isn’t massively significant – it’s still a relatively small proportion. NHS managers are already arguing that even patients with Covid being treated for another condition still need isolation procedures and present an extra burden on the system. They may argue that the NHS is still under strain from staff absences, stress levels and the waiting list backlog – so it doesn’t really matter if the published figures are somewhat inaccurate.

But it matters hugely.

Firstly, it clearly shows that the NHS has been exaggerating the burden of Covid on hospitals by 25% since at least the June 18th and almost certainly for longer. All the senior NHS leaders and politicians quoting the number of Covid inpatients for the last six weeks have been painting a seriously exaggerated picture, significantly worse than the true position. Were they in ignorance about the true numbers, or were they deliberately misleading the public?

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Toddler-Masking Biden Says Governors Are ‘Playing Politics With the Lives of…Children’
The president bemoans the incivility of politics while accusing Republicans of being “cavalier” about the potential for dead kids.

On September 10, President Joe Biden lamented to a group of Washington, D.C., middle schoolers that political disputes in 2021 have become far too nasty.

“One of the lessons I hope our students can unlearn is that politics doesn’t have to be this way,” Biden said. “Politics doesn’t have to be this way. They’re growing up in an environment where they see it’s…like a war, like a bitter feud….I mean, it’s not how we are. It’s not who we are as a nation. And it’s not how we beat every other crisis in our history. We got to come together.”

When an elected executive complains that politics is too much like war, the prudent thing to do is to do reach for your flak jacket. And sure enough, literally in the preceding paragraph, the president implied that some GOP politicians don’t care overmuch if their constituents die.

“Look, I’m so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities,” Biden said. “We’re playing for real here. This isn’t a game. And I don’t know of any scientist out there in this field that doesn’t think it makes considerable sense to do the six things I’ve suggested” as a path out of the pandemic.

Table that “I don’t know of any scientist” whopper for later, and fast forward to last night. Perhaps because his previous accusations didn’t attract much attention from the nodding-along media, Biden again trained his rhetorical howitzers onto GOP electeds.

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14 fully vaccinated residents in French nursing home develop COVID-19.

Sept. 13 (UPI) — Fourteen elderly residents of a French nursing home developed COVID-19 during an outbreak at the facility, despite being fully vaccinated against the virus, a study published Monday by JAMA Network Open found.The outbreak affected one in five of the fully vaccinated residents of the facility and also included two who were partially vaccinated — they had received one dose of the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — and one who was not vaccinated, the data showed.Of the 17 total residents infected, eight developed severe illness, two were hospitalized and one — the person who had not been vaccinated — died.

All of the cases involved the Alpha, or “U.K.,” variant, researchers said.

RELATED
Study: Nearly 69K COVID-19 cases, 17K deaths at nursing homes went uncounted

 

“The immune response to this vaccination is likely diminished in nursing home residents due to aging and [chronic conditions] that impair immune function,” study co-author Dr. Joël Belmin told UPI in an email.

“Although some studies have shown that the antibody response to [COVID-19] vaccination is quite good, the duration of this response and the cellular immune response are poorly known in this population.,” said Belmin, a professor of cardiovascular and geriatric services at the Sorbonne in Paris.

A study published in April by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that nearly one in three adults age 60 and older who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 had no detectable antibodies against the virus.

Antibodies are cells produced by the immune system that fight off infections.

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Comment O’ The Day

Some things that stand out about the new vaxx mandate.

If it were genuinely vital that everyone be vaccinated, then everyone should be required to get it.
Why, then, are postal workers exempted?
Why, then, are illegal aliens exempted?
Why, then, are companies having fewer than 100 employees exempted?
Why do the exemptions seem to all be attached to union labor who support the party in power?
If it was truly vital, then they wouldn’t be letting anyone out.

If you’re vaccinated but are vulnerable to infection from the unvaccinated; you’re not actually vaccinated.  Having the CDC change their definitions doesn’t change what a vaccination means and has meant for more than 200 years.

Of course, most people probably don’t know why it’s “vaccinate” in the first place.  Hint: cows.

Completely ignoring natural immunity is the epitome of unscientific.  Many of us are immune from simply catching it and surviving.

I think it will eventually be proven, and those at fault forced to admit it, that it is an escapee from a Chinese lab, and its development was funded by US tax money.

When that happens, one more reason to never trust politicians and their lackeys.  Because without Kissinger and Nixon, China would be Cuba with a lot of land.  Half of it would probably be Russian now if we hadn’t opened up to them.

The juvenile ‘It’s horse paste!’ critique of ivermectin.

The Nobel Prize in medicine in 2015 went to two scientists whose experiments on a type of bacteria and subsequent modifications produced a compound that led to “a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases,” in the words of the Nobel Prize committee.

That compound is ivermectin, which “turned out to be highly effective in both animals and humans against a variety of parasites, including those that cause River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis.” The FDA approved the drug in 1996.

That’s why U.S. doctors wrote more than 100,000 prescriptions a year for ivermectin, which comes in tablets but also in a lotion. In 2020, the FDA approved one ivermectin lotion as an over-the-counter lice treatment.

So why does the major media want you to believe that ivermectin is simply a “horse paste”?

The answer is probably because the media are more interested in scoring cheap points in the game of culture-wars by mocking rednecks and conservatives than they are in informing their readers.

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Forbes Deletes Article by Education Expert Asserting That Forcing Children to Wear Masks Causes Psychological Trauma

Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma after the piece began to go viral.

The article (archived here) was written by Zak Ringelstein, who has a a PhD in education from Columbia University and founded Zigadoo, an educational and development app aimed at helping children.

Ringelstein explains how he worked hard to remove standardized testing from schools but that this was derailed when the pandemic began, a process that “transformed the American public education system into something unrecognizable: a system of restrictions and mandates far more repressive than standardized testing ever was.”

Ringelstein attacked the notion that “kids are resilient” and can overcome the onerous COVID rules imposed on them by asserting, “Masks and social distancing induce trauma and trauma at a young age is developmentally dangerous, especially for children who are experiencing trauma in other parts of their lives.”

He went further, noting how the new measures were creating classrooms full of lonely, atomized kids.

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ACLU: Forced vaccine passports is a win for civil liberties
“We care deeply about civil liberties and civil rights for all – which is precisely why we support vaccine mandates.”

Forcing people to use vaccine passports to access everyday freedoms is apparently protecting their civil liberties, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The organization’s opinion was, for obvious reasons, criticized as part of its continued recent decline into politicalization and moving away from values it once supported.

The ACLU expressed its controversial opinion in an op-ed in The New York Times. According to the civil liberties groups, there is permissibility for COVID-19 vaccine passport mandates because: “The disease is highly transmissible, serious and often lethal; the vaccines are safe and effective; and crucially there is no equally effective alternative available to protect public health.”

The ACLU added: “In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable among us, including people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated and communities of color hit hard by the disease.”

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60% of Those Older Than 50 Who Die From COVID Are Double Vaxxed

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • As of August 15, 2021, 68% of COVID patients admitted to hospital in the U.K. who were over the age of 50 had received one or two doses of COVID injections. By mid-August, 59% of serious cases in Israel were also among those who had received two COVID injections, mirroring U.K. data
  • Only in the 50 and younger category were a majority, 74%, of British COVID patients unvaccinated. Those claiming we’re in a pandemic of the unvaccinated fail to differentiate between age groups
  • The same applies to COVID deaths in the U.K. Unvaccinated make up the majority of deaths only in the under-50 age group. In the over-50 group, the clear majority, 70%, are either partially or fully “vaccinated”
  • We cannot rely on U.S. data to get a clear idea of how the COVID shots are working, as the CDC has chosen to only track breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization and/or death
  • Reanalysis of Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and Janssen’s COVID trial data using the proper endpoint show the shots are hurting the health of the population, and if mass vaccination continues we face “a looming vaccine-induced public health catastrophe”
  • A new study shows that vaccinated individuals are up to 13 times more likely to get infected with the new Delta variant than unvaccinated individuals who have had a natural COVID infection

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The FDA did NOT grant full approval to the Pfizer shots

You may have heard that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot received FDA approval this past Monday.  Politicians, national health officials, and journalists are breathless with excitement about how this approval will finally induce the remaining “vaccine-hesitant” into stepping forward to receive their jab.  The FDA even has a press release on its website about it.

There’s just one problem.

If you read the actual letters that the FDA sent to Pfizer on August 23, 2021, you’ll see that the FDA did no such thing.  In the sense that the term “FDA approval” is generally understood, this drug is not approved by the FDA.  It is still under EUA (Emergency Use Authorization).  It is still an experimental drug.

The FDA sent two letters.  The first one was a letter of BLA (Biologics License Application) approval, and the second was a letter of EUA extension to COMIRNATY.

The BLA approval letter approves Pfizer’s application for a license to label its COVID-19 drug with the brand name COMIRNATY.  This letter also spells out the terms and requirements for nine additional clinical trials over five years, and yearly status reports, to study the acknowledged occurrences of myocarditis and pericarditis that have followed the administering of the Pfizer shots.  This license to label and manufacture is not a full approval of the drug, which clearly is still subject to many years of clinical trials.

The EUA extension letter extends the term of the EUA for the current drug and authorizes (licenses) the experimental use of the brand-name drug COMIRNATY.  In the first paragraph on page 2, this letter references the license approval letter.  In the second paragraph on page 2, the August 12 EUA is re-issued to include the name-branded drug in the emergency use authorization, and to add “language regarding warnings and precautions related to myocarditis and pericarditis.”  In the last paragraph on page 4, the EUA nature of the drugs is re-iterated, and COMIRNATY is additionally authorized for use for individuals aged 12 through 15 years.

The mRNA gene therapy shots are still experimental.  Mandating them is still wrong — by a wide variety of ethical standards.

Dr. Meryl Nass, M.D. found the truths that the FDA buried in the blather of these letters and offers a theory about why it was done this way.  The drug-manufacturers were granted immunity from liability for the drugs produced under the EUAs.  The granting of the license re-applies the customary liability for injury and death caused by the product.  Pfizer, the health officials, and the politicians get to take a fictitious victory lap for the “approval,” while Pfizer-BioNTech continues to stealthily enjoy immunity from product liability because there are many millions of the unlicensed doses on the shelves and in the manufacturing pipeline that will be administered first.  The licensed version will not arrive on shelves or be jabbed into arms for many months to come.

Of great concern, considering the factual content of the FDA EUA letters to Pfizer, is the breezy way the press release on the FDA website repeatedly uses the words “approve” and “approval” in reference to the Pfizer drug.  If only there were a word for intentionally saying things to the public that do not match reality…

COMIRNATY seems like an unusual name for anything, much less a cutting-edge-technology gene therapy.  Out of idle curiosity, I ran the name through an anagram solver.  For a result, it gave TIROMANCY, which is divination or prophecy by examining how curds form during the coagulation of cheese.  How apropos.  That’s something I’m willing to try for forecasting the results of the next election!

BLUF:
About the only thing that people are consistently sick of is the everchanging government mandates that seem to ignore data that doesn’t support their narrative.

52% of Southern Nevada COVID-19 Deaths Were Fully Vaccinated? That’s What This Data Says

Despite the media’s 24 hour-a-day, 7 day-a-week marathon in attempting to convince Americans of the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, constant reports of breakthrough cases have gone a long way to undermining that effort.  US Health Officials have been adamant that the effectiveness of the vaccines remains high, even though the CDC does not collect data for breakthrough cases, eliminating the possibility for national health officials from even weighing in on the matter.  In the UK, at least 40% of new COVID hospitalizations have been of vaccinated people, and many jurisdictions make no distinction anymore between vaccinated and unvaccinated people when it comes to COVID-19 mandates.

In a few states, they do gather breakthrough case data, but oftentimes it is lacking in data or format to which it can be compared.  For instance, some states count breakthrough cases, but not hospitalizations or deaths, which makes it hard to determine the number of vaccinated patients that are being treated for, or potentially dying from, COVID-19.  This morning, in reviewing data out Southern Nevada, I came across data that I could actually compare that told a story that doesn’t line up with the “98% of deaths and hospitalizations are unvaccinated” narrative.

“The Southern Nevada Health District was created in 1962, following statutory authorization from the Nevada State Legislature to combine the county health department and the health departments of several surrounding cities,” according to the SNHD website.

From the Website:

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The vaxx isn’t working. So tripling down will not work

BOMBSHELL UK data destroys entire premise for vaccine push
The media can read just as well as me (maybe), but somehow it is left to me to report this.

This is an absolute game-changer.

The UK government just reported the following data, tucked away in their report on variants of concern:

Less than a third of delta variant deaths are in the unvaccinated.

Let me say that another way – two-thirds of Delta deaths in the UK are in the jabbed.

To be specific:

From the 1st of February to the 2nd of August, the UK recorded 742 Delta deaths (yes, the dreaded Delta has not taken that much life).

Out of the 742 deaths, 402 were fully vaccinated. 79 had received one shot. Only 253 were unvaccinated.

The report is here.

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Comment O’ The Day

A couple of things

*****

I am not and have not ever said that COVID is a fake illness.

Where we need to be spending our scientific efforts is in discovering why some people suffer more than others, and why some have problems recovering fully. So why aren’t we doing that?

Because of the real problem. Some people in and out of our government have discovered that this crisis can be used to create fear, and with that fear, they can take more power and money for themselves. Now that they have that money and power, they are not likely to give it up.

Some doctors quietly secretly came up with a plan that if they ran out of ICU beds, then vaccinated patients would get priority. After this was reported, [likely because one, or more, of the doctors involved realized how morally and ethically corrupt this was, and spilled the beans to the newspaper] the doctors backed down. Good, but not good enough.

An idea like this should never have been even imagined in the first place.

So, someone goes to the hospital for whatever.  The staff there check and find out the patient is unvaccinated and then give them a low priority for treatment?

I can guarantee, with Metaphysical Certitude™, if that happens, an angry parent or spouse will seek treatment for their sick ones at gunpoint. And making medical staff into the arbiter of who lives and who dies, based on social status, is one of the worst things that a society can do.

We must be able to trust doctors because we put our lives in their hands.
If doctors decide that “those people” don’t deserve the same level of care then that trust is destroyed and bad things will happen. Those medicos made the right decision this time because of public pressure after it was aired to the public.

But if crap-for-brains shenanigans like this continue, the medical community is going to rue the day such an idea popped into their pinheads.

North Texas doctor’s group retreats on policy saying vaccination status to be part of care decisions
This would have been a big change in health care, and it was all outlined in a memo obtained by the Watchdog.

Updated at 8:15 p.m. Aug. 19, 2021: After this story was posted, Dr. Mark Casanova gave interviews to local media and revised his story. He described the memo to the task force as a “homework assignment.” In a reversal, he told NBC-5 that vaccinations should not be among the factors hospitals should consider when making critical care triage decisions.

Original story published Aug. 19, 2021: North Texas doctors have quietly developed a plan that seeks to prepare for the possibility that due to the COVID-19 surge the region will run out of intensive-care beds.

If that happens, for the first time, doctors officially will be allowed to take vaccination status of sick patients into account along with other triage factors to see who gets a bed.

A copy of an internal memo written by Dr. Robert Fine, co-chair of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force, was sent to members of the task force — and leaked to The Watchdog. It summarizes the latest work by the task force, a volunteer group that periodically updates medical guidelines for hospitals in our region. There are about 50 members from various hospitals in the group. Although their recommendations are not enforceable, the guidelines are generally followed.

The one-page summary memo is a “heads up” alert in the event things get worse, says Dr. Mark Casanova, director of clinical ethics for Baylor University Medical Center and a spokesperson for the task force. After Monday’s meeting, doctors had yet to make plans to inform the public.

“We’re trying to decide how to explain this addition to the public,” Casanova said.

But after studying the memo and interviewing doctors involved in the decision for two hours this week, The Watchdog can explain it to you.

Although doctors make triage decisions all the time, the proposed guideline addition is significant. Casanova predicted that if this change were copied by others medical care, for as long as the crisis persists, “is going to look and feel different for everybody who is alive right now in the United States of America.”

Yet a leading medical ethicist who studies how COVID-19 affects communities says he worries that adding vaccination status to the triage of patients will unfairly harm low-income people and people of color. These groups are historically disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining proper medical care.

SloJoe believes POTUS possesses powers that he doesn’t have

Biden threatens action against governors who refuse to force masks on school children

During a speech given by President Joe Biden on Wednesday regarding COVID-19 response and vaccination programs, Biden slammed states that have banned the requirement of masks in school, announcing that government action will be taken against these states and their governors.

Fauci: ‘Put Aside All of These Issues of Concern About Liberties’

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Sunday that unvaccinated Americans need to shift their focus from “concerns about personal liberty” to combat the “common enemy” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated, but you also have to do mitigation, and that gets to the controversial issue of mask wearing, and the mandating of things. Mandating vaccines, for example, for teachers and … personnel in the school,” Fauci said during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Fauci went on to say that, while vaccinated individuals have become infected with the coronavirus, the unvaccinated are the ones with more severe cases. He also took the stance that personal liberties should be put on the back burner in favor of mitigating the spread of the virus.

“It’s the unvaccinated that are doing that, so we have a lot of tasks,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to do mitigation. Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus. And we really have to go together to get on top of this. Otherwise, we’re going to continue to suffer as we’re seeing right now.

Now, I will be the first to opine that education doesn’t necessarily equate to intelligence, or even ‘common sense’, but there is a lot to said by the fact that a lot of the highly educated, with access to a lot more information than most, is like this.

Most vaccine-hesitant group is those with PhDs, research shows.

Most skeptical and least likely to change their minds, findings reveal

A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh researchers found that vaccine hesitancy is highest among those with a PhD.

The online survey of more than 5 million adults was conducted between January 6 and May 31. People who said “probably not” or “definitely not” when asked if they would get the vaccine were considered vaccine hesitant.

“There was not a decrease in hesitancy among those with a professional degree or PhD,” the paper states.

A news release regarding the results explained further: “Hesitancy held constant in the most educated group (those with a Ph.D.); by May Ph.D.’s were the most hesitant group.”

The graph (below) provided in the survey charted the results. The line in yellow represents those with PhDs. It shows that their vaccine hesitancy rate rose slightly over the five-month survey period to end at the top of the chart.

“Most of the coverage would have you believe that the surge in cases is primarily down to less educated, ‘brainwashed’ Trump supporters who don’t want to take the vaccine,” Unherd reports. “This may be partially true: the areas in which the delta variant is surging coincide with the sections of red America in which vaccination rates are lowest.”

But “this does not paint the full picture,” Unherd noted:

People with a master’s degree had the least hesitancy, and the highest hesitancy was among those holding a Ph.D.

What’s more, the paper found that in the first five months of 2021, the largest decrease in hesitancy was among the least educated — those with a high school education or less. Meanwhile, hesitancy held constant in the most educated group; by May, those with Ph.Ds were the most hesitant group.

So not only are the most educated people most sceptical of taking the Covid vaccine, they are also the least likely the change their minds about it…

Read the paper here and the Unherd analysis here.

‘Lots’.

Massive New Analysis Confirms Just How Many COVID-19 Cases Are Truly Asymptomatic.

Within months of SARS-CoV-2‘s emergence as a global catastrophe it was becoming clear that many who spread the disease did so unwittingly, experiencing not so much as a tickle in their throat to alert them of the danger within.

Distinguishing those who are truly asymptomatic from those who are simply yet to show signs of the virus has made it hard to calculate a precise figure on the risks of succumbing to the illness.

Now an analysis by a group of US medical researchers on more than 350 studies has found just over 35 percent of all COVID-19 infections don’t proceed to a symptomatic phase.

Early estimates ranged from just 4 percent of infections being asymptomatic, all the way up to 81 percent. Even as the pandemic ensued, figures conservatively estimated fewer than 20 percent of people might be infectious without showing any signs.

Confidently nailing down a number is harder than it might seem. Without the fever, loss of smell, sore throat, aches, and cough to encourage a trip to a clinic, few people bother lining up for a test.

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New data on coronavirus vaccine effectiveness may be “a wakeup call”

A new preprint study that raises concerns about the mRNA vaccines’ effectiveness against Delta — particularly Pfizer’s — has already grabbed the attention of top Biden administration officials.

What they’re saying: The study found the Pfizer vaccine was only 42% effective against infection in July, when the Delta variant was dominant. “If that’s not a wakeup call, I don’t know what is,” a senior Biden official told Axios.

Driving the news: The study, conducted by nference and the Mayo Clinic, compared the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the Mayo Clinic Health System over time from January to July.

  • Overall, it found that the Moderna vaccine was 86% effective against infection over the study period, and Pfizer’s was 76%. Moderna’s vaccine was 92% effective against hospitalization and Pfizer’s was 85%.
  • But the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection dropped sharply in July, when the Delta variant’s prevalence in Minnesota had risen to over 70%.
  • Moderna was 76% effective against infection, and Pfizer was only 42% effective.
  • The study found similar results in other states. For example, in Florida, the risk of infection in July for people fully vaccinated with Moderna was about 60% lower than for people fully vaccinated with Pfizer.

Why it matters: Although it has yet to be peer-reviewed, the study raises serious questions about both vaccines’ long-term effectiveness, particularly Pfizer’s.

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The neo-feudalism of Obama’s maskless ball.

I lost my invitation and, besides, the pilot of my private plane was on holiday, so I had to miss the intimate, scaled-back get-together that Barack Obama convened to celebrate his 60th year gracing our planet with his awesomeness.

I didn’t feel too badly, though — no paralyzing waves of ‘FOMO’ — because all my friends in the media made me feel I was almost there. There were all those leaked snaps and videos, for one thing, showing the Prez dance-dance-dancing the night away, nary a mask in sight.

In truth, that was the one thing I liked about this obscene, Gatsby-esque spectacle. The Obamas, and presumably their guests, had been vaccinated. They therefore knew that they were not at any meaningful risk of contracting THE WORST DISEASE SINCE THE BLACK DEATH — I mean, the nasty little respiratory virus bequeathed to a grateful world by the ChiComs. They just weren’t, and neither are you — always assuming you are vaccinated and under the age of, say, 80.

The only thing that would have made this aspect of Obama’s Feast of Trimalchio more delicious would have been a couple of candid snaps of St Anthony Fauci doing the twist with Chrissy Teigen. Maybe the Daily Mail will eventually come through on that.

Let’s just set the record straight on a couple of matters. When it was first revealed that His Highness was planning this illustration of Thorstein Veblen’s thesis about conspicuous consumption, there were some plangent noises among the patter of adulation. Four hundred guests and 200 peons — er, servants? A teensy bit over the top, Barack?  So the Obamas said they scaled it back — look it up: it was all over the court press. But it is clear that they didn’t. Possibly, the Cuomo Bros had their invitations yanked, but that was only because — Ecce Cuomo — shares in Cuomo preferred had just taken a sharp dive. This, incidentally, provided a good illustration of the irrationality of this part of the market. Stock in the Cuomo Mafia deserves to be rated a zero — bankruptcy time — but not because Andrew is the Luv Gov and can’t keep his pinky off the pink bits of the ladies. That’s what the media outrage machine would have you believe. But the real reason he deserves to go can be adduced in the number 15,000, approximately the number people whose deaths he caused by forcing nursing homes to take patients suffering from COVID. Anyway, the ‘root cause’ of Cuomo’s defenestration is the threat he poses — make that ‘posed’ — as a possible alternative to the gibbering, geriatric wing of the Democratic party going forward.

The second thing that needs to be corrected is the calumny that the Obamas occupy a pad worth $11-$12 million on Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, that 30-acre estate is worth about three to four times that much, but some lingering sense of propriety (I won’t call it shame) caused them or their PR flaks to lowball the assessment.

All in all, the Obama Odeon was an excellent illustration of Joel Kotkin’s thesis in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Western societies, above all American society, is lapsing back into a sort of stratified, feudal arrangement with some a tiny hyper-rich elite at the top and a vast pool of ‘deplorables’ kept in check by the police power of the state — what Joe Biden memorably apostrophized as ‘F-15s and some nuclear weapons’. Mediating the two like a layer of fat is a sort of clerisy that is treated to varying crumbs from the table as it explains, flatters, and cajoles.

There is a lot to be repelled by in the Spectacle of Barack Obama’s exercise in brazen self-indulgence, also a lot to be angry at.
I think it is important, though, to look at it as a learning experience. Pretend you were Aesop. What moral would you draw from this exercise in exhibitionism?

Doubtless there are several learning experiences to be had. But I thought that Rep. Jim Jordan perfectly articulated an important lesson in a tweet.  Now we know, he wrote, that

‘#COVID19 spreads at:

-Church
-School
-Trump rallies
-Motorcycle rallies

It doesn’t spread at:

-“Peaceful” protests
-The southern border
-Democrat wedding receptions
-San Francisco hair salons
-Governor Newsom’s dinner
-President Obama’s birthday party’

Really, I hadn’t know that before and I am grateful for the enlightenment.

Running out of candidates to infect is the normal end state for a pandemic, in other words, it creates herd immunity all on its own.

Delta Spreads So Quickly It ‘Runs Out Of Candidates’ To Infect, Says WHO Expert

A World Health Organization (WHO) expert said the Delta variant of COVID-19 spreads so fast that it runs out of people to infect, but also warned that while infections could decline just as fast as the infections increase, “there may be more to come.”

Epidemiology expert Larry Brilliant explained that based on models of Delta variant outbreaks in New York and San Francisco, the variant is spreading in “an inverted V-shape epidemic curve.” He told CNBC that the models suggest Delta infections are increasing fast, but the infections will also decline very quickly.

Brilliant’s projection of the variant’s spreading, if it turns out to be true, means that the virus continues to spread so fast that “it basically runs out of candidates” to infect, but it will also start receding following high records of infection.

There have already been apparent scenarios of Delta infection recessions in India and the United Kingdom. India peaked at more than 390,000 COVID-19 cases in May, but as of late June, cases have remained below 50,000. In the U.K., there were around 47,700 infections, but come July 29, there were only about 26,000 confirmed cases.

Brilliant, who was part of the WHO team that worked on smallpox, said that based on the Delta variant’s recent activity, the probability of a “super variant” evolving is low, although it could not be ruled out. He added that the Delta’s activity could be as short as “a six-month phenomenon in a country, rather than a two-year phenomenon” due to its quick spreading and quick recession.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 situation in some Southern states has started to frustrate healthcare workers as they begin to see a repeat of history from last year’s devastating pandemic situation, CNN reported. Chief of Staff at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, Dr. Joseph Varon, said “this is a déjà vu of what we had last year,” adding that it was “preventable” but some people “are not doing the right thing.”

The U.S. is averaging more than 100,000 new cases daily, marking the highest numbers in the hard-hit country in the last six months. Some 50.1% of the total American population has been fully vaccinated, recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed.

So far, the United States remains the hardest-hit country in the world. Data from Johns Hopkins University revealed that the country has logged 35,762,751 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Sunday. The U.S. has also recorded 616,827 deaths linked to the disease. India follows behind with nearly 32 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 427,000 deaths.