A TRUMP CRITIQUE (and a joke at the end)

          I have criticized Trump’s COVID performance before, and it remains true that by failing to confront the worldwide totalitarian movement seeking to lock down and terrify America, he failed all of us.  He just never saw it coming because, to the end, he was a man who would not do his homework.  When Fauci and Dr. Oz and the CDC and Snoop Dog told him to lock down the country, he did it without really a second thought.  This was simply the modus operandi of a man of whom it was credibly reported that he never read a book as an adult.

 

          We now watch in horror as the COVID fascists (Biden, Johnson, Macron, Xi, Merkel, et al.), along with their corporate and media partners, proceed with their plans to transform the world into a prison for our children.  As President of the United States, Trump could have stopped this madness at its inception.  Instead, he embraced it all, including the destruction of the American economy and his own presidency.

 

          Though it was not obvious at the time, it is now becoming clear that the biggest mistake Trump made was Operation Warp Speed, the massive pharma-government operation that created COVID “vaccines” within a year.  With 10,000 vaccine-related deaths reported to the CDC on its VAERS website, the vaccines themselves are dangerous enough, but the use of vaccines as the primary tool of the fascists (through mandates, lockdowns and other punishments), has rendered whatever clinical effectiveness they may have insignificant by comparison.  COVID vaccines have done more harm than good.

 

          Of course, there was no stopping Trump from Operation Warp Speed.  We might just as well have tried to stop Herbert Hoover from building the Hoover Dam.  Like Hoover, Trump is an executive, a builder, a do-er of things who first came to prominence as the guy who built the Wollman Ice Rink for NYC.  He had to create COVID vaccines because that’s who he is.  And in his defense, he had no way to foresee that the vaccines would be used primarily as a political tool to create an underclass of people who could then be demonized, segregated, and ultimately purged, in order to unite the masses behind a totalitarian ideology.  I didn’t see that coming either.

 

          Now that the imagined “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is quickly becoming a “pandemic of the vaccinated,” we cannot know whether the accelerated development of these mRNA vaccines will be proven to be a plus or a minus, but our experience with HIV might have provided a lesson in how to deal with an unfamiliar and deadly new disease.  While a vaccine (a real vaccine, one that stops transmission), may be an ultimate goal, it can make more sense to focus initial research on treatments or ameliorative substances that keep people alive.  With COVID, the search for treatments was actively discouraged and even punished because the “party line” was that there was no treatment for COVID.  The result was that a majority of MDs across America simply would not treat COVID patients because clinical intervention of any kind was viewed with suspicion.  Patients were allowed to deteriorate, untreated, until they were put on a ventilator, when it was often too late to do anything.  Supplies of hydroxychloroquine were destroyed.  Vitamin D and Ivermectine were derided as pure quackery.

 

          This has changed now that Pharma giants have developed drugs to treat COVID, but the point is that there were always treatment options.  It is quite possible that opening up the entire field to clinicians and family doctors from the beginning would have been far more effective against the virus than the so-called vaccines have proven to be.

 

          Intelligent leadership would have at least considered this possibility, but Trump did not.  He saw the issue through the prism of his triumph with the Wollman Ice Rink.  He demanded his Hoover Dam.  The sad result is that those of us who haven’t swallowed the COVID ideology are now rereading “1984” and highlighting the relevant passages.

 

*********

 

          I called in sick today.  I told them I have asymptomatic flu.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki     

COVID News and Predictions

 

          Last night, I was primed to see the premiere of TikVAH, a new production from the Koresh Dance Company, which has not performed in public for eighteen months.  At the last minute, my wife, who films Koresh shows, called me and told me not to come.  The Susanne Roberts Theater had instituted a vaccination certificate requirement for everyone in the theater.

 

          We had known they were doing this, but we expected I could slip beneath the radar.  However, we never thought the theater management would display a North Korean enthusiasm for enforcement of the protocols.  There were new security cameras throughout the building, and the stage manager himself interrogated all the people who were working the show, including my wife.  After meticulously examining her vax certificate and her picture ID, he lectured her on her decision months before to have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.  He didn’t personally approve of the J&J vaccine apparently, and he warned her that its effectiveness was waning and that the next time Koresh put on a show, she would need to have proof of a booster shot.

 

          Later, she told me about the procedures during the show itself.  Everyone not on stage was required to wear a mask throughout the show (though everyone in the building was vaxxed, of course), and the bar was closed so people would not be tempted to sip a merlot with their nose and mouth exposed.  The 15-minute intermission was cancelled because such things encourage concert-goers to mill about in the lobby chatting; instead, there was a 5-minute break, allowing only a quick run to the loo.

 

          Much of this is explained by Philadelphia politics.  Of the various constituencies of the Democratic Party, the one in charge of Philly is the Woke Left.  They insist on their pronouns, they hate the police, they have clogged the streets with empty bike lanes and made the city undriveable, and they would immediately cancel anyone who suggested guys might be better “fire-fighters” than women.  Though they love diversity and indigenous people, and they are totally anti-racist, all of them are white.

 

          They love vaccine mandates, and they want them to be as harsh as possible.  They want Philadelphia to be just like San Francisco or Berlin, where the unvaxxed lose their jobs and are barred from restaurants, supermarkets, theaters and public transportation.  And the reason has nothing to do with the virus.

 

          What the Woke Left loves more than anything is their safe spaces, where no one is allowed to say anything that might challenge their beliefs.  Vax mandates, as at the Suzanne Roberts Theater, enable the Woke Left to insulate themselves from people they don’t like because people who are not vaccinated are exactly the sorts of people they never want to see.  The unvaxxed may have voted for Trump, they probably don’t trust “experts,” they may be black, they don’t always believe what they are told on television, and they are sometimes suspicious of government-sponsored propaganda campaigns.  And if the management of the Suzanne Roberts Theater never sees any of those categories of humans again, that would be just fine with them.

 

*********

 

          Once all the vaccinated people are approved for boosters, those who don’t get the next round will be deemed unvaccinated.  This will lead us into a new “pandemic of the unvaccinated” with increasingly brutal sanctions against those who won’t take the next step in the program.

 

          Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, announced on October 22 that the agency was not yet ready to change the definition of “fully vaccinated.”

 

*********

 

          There is a dark humor developing among the unvaxxed.  I see it on-line and also in conversations with the people I know who share my situation.

 

          Since we know there is no public health component to the vax mandates and other assaults on our freedom, we also understand there is no logical limit to what the New Normals will do to us.  Quarantine camps?  Of course.  Other countries already have them.  Arrest and imprisonment for mask or speech or quarantine infractions?  Sure---Canada does it today.  Forced vaccination, in the sense of being strapped to a table?  It’s not here yet, but why not?  Between 1907 and 1963, about 64,000 Americans (mostly women), were forcibly sterilized in accordance with the laws of thirty different states.  The practice was upheld 8-1 by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.  Mental defectives, you see---they are a threat to our precious gene pool.  And as Holmes put it, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”  Ironically, to support his view that forced sterilization was not a violation of that pesky 14^th Amendment, he cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the forced smallpox vaccination case you occasionally see mentioned today.  Under the 14^th, government can’t take your life, liberty or property, but I guess fallopian tubes are a different matter.  And so is your bloodstream.

 

          Once society, or a majority of it, accepts the premise that our very existence is at stake, there is no limit to the “emergency measures” that will be decreed and enforced in order to save us all.

 

          In the U.S., enforcement of vax mandates on the general public is still scattered and spotty, and is often limited to individual restaurants or businesses.  The one place where the heat is coming down is on our police, firemen, and military.

 

          In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered all police to report their vaccination status by October 15, and a third of the 13,000-person force refused.  So far, only 21 officers have been suspended without pay, but her threats continue, and the issue is unresolved.  Joe Biden, on October 21, though not specifically referring to the Chicago problem, stated that first responders who refuse a vax mandate should be fired.

 

          Biden, of course, had already ordered all 1.3 million active duty U.S. servicemen to be vaccinated.  The announcement was made by the Secretary of Defense two months ago.  Anyone resisting the mandate, they have announced, will be discharged from military service.

 

          Purging the police and the military of dissenters and the unvaccinated is a necessary first step before purging the general population.  If policemen and soldiers are going to break down the doors of their fellow Americans they must be true believers themselves.  This is Totalitarianism 101.  Authoritarian governments typically tumble only when their armed enforcers start having second thoughts about enforcing the orders they are given.  The Soviet Union fell at the moment its army refused to mow down civilians in the streets of Moscow.  By contrast, the Chinese filled the tanks in Tiananmen Square with young soldiers from rural areas who had no experience of Beijing and mostly did not even speak the same language as the protesters.

 

          The ideological cleansing of police and military in the U.S. is a particularly nasty business because many of the people in these positions have sacrificed career opportunities and accepted dangerous jobs in order to serve their nation and protect their fellow citizens.  Nevertheless, those committed to establishing the new COVID security state will show no mercy to police and troops suspected of disloyalty to the new regime.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki  

 

THE HANK AARON PROBLEM

           On January 5, 2021, Hank Aaron got his COVID shot at the Morehead School of Medicine, alongside a group of other respected black elders in the Atlanta community.  The purpose of this public event was to encourage reluctant black people to get vaccinated.

 

          “I don’t have any qualms about it at all, you know,” said Aaron.  “I feel quite proud of myself for doing something like this.  It’s just a small thing that can help zillions of people in this country.”

 

          On January 22, Aaron died in his sleep.  He was 86 years old and in decent health, though it was later reported that he had “prostate issues and a history of hypertension.”  (Like pretty much every 86-year-old guy in the world.)

 

          What followed was a textbook case of how the media wing of the emerging biomedical state handles a potentially embarrassing story, or one that may cause the public to question the fundamental “truths” of the COVID narrative.

 

          The first option for the media, as we have seen repeatedly, is to ignore the story entirely.  This is what is done with all reports of street protests against lockdowns, mask and vax mandates, and other authoritarian measures.  These protests occur every week in France, Australia, Italy, Ireland, the UK, Germany, and other countries where police state rule is further along (and more brutal), than in the U.S.  They sometimes bring out tens of thousands of people demanding freedom from the totalitarian rules being enforced upon them.  You will never see reports of these demonstrations in your newspaper, or film of them on the legacy networks, CNN, MSNBC, or other outlets.  (You rarely see them on Fox News either.)

 

          A second example of the blackout treatment is the subject of vaccination injuries or deaths.  The tiresome refrain on how “safe and effective” the vaccines are is something we see every day, but you will never see reports of people killed, hospitalized, or crippled by them.  Yet the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) website, which is run by the CDC and the FDA, has received reports of 14,798 deaths and 134,813 hospitalizations attributed to COVID vaccines (as of September 24, 2021).  The reports are generally not verified by the CDC, but there’s no reason to think they are bogus either.  In addition, a recent study by the CDC itself concluded that such events are under-reported by a factor of 8.3.  Yet neither VAERS nor the frightening number of vaccine injuries is ever mentioned in government-friendly media.

 

          But the Hank Aaron story was different.  Because of his fame, and the fact he had taken the shot publicly in order to dispel fear of the vaccines among black people, his death was a story that could not be completely ignored.  An otherwise healthy 86-year-old man gets the shot and dies 17 days later for no apparent reason?  Hank Aaron was perhaps the most famous person in the city of Atlanta, and he was a beloved figure in the world of baseball generally.  Questions about his death arose immediately.

 

          Four days after his death, the media response was in place.  Thereafter, the game plan was uniformly followed by broadcasters, journalists, on-line publications and “fact-checkers.”

          1) An explanation for Aaron’s death was presented by (unnamed) experts. 

          2) From the moment it was offered, the explanation was treated as definitive, and no further questions would be allowed.  Under no circumstances was further inquiry legitimized, or even mentioned.

          3) The safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines was touted in articles about Aaron’s death, strongly implying that any questioning of the official explanation was fundamentally illegitimate, and based in disinformation or conspiracy theories.

 

          Yahoo’s January 26 report is representative of the lot:

          “Major League Baseball legend and Atlanta entrepreneur Hank Aaron’s cause of death has been revealed.

          “The 86-year-old Hall-of-Famer and longtime Atlanta Braves right fielder died of natural causes, according to an investigator in the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.”

 

          The explanation from TV stations, newspapers and other outlets ALL cited the same statement from the Medical Examiner’s Office, often in exactly the same words.  Hank died of “natural causes,” as if this were an explanation, and that was to be the end of it.  People Magazine said it was “natural causes.”  Forbes said it was “natural causes.”  WKRG in Atlanta said it was “natural causes.”

 

          Factcheck.org also accepted the Medical Examiner’s “natural causes” as gospel, but, presumably in an attempt to flesh out its report, went back to Morehead, and wrote: “The Morehead School of Medicine, which is affiliated with the Atlanta clinic where Aaron was immunized, also said the vaccine was not a factor in his death.”  Note two things here.  First, schools can’t talk; people do.  This is another unnamed source.  Second, how would Morehead know Aaron’s cause of death?  There is no report, and no evidence, that they examined his body.

 

          Factcheck.org also dug up another sciency person (named this time), to corroborate the narrative.  Karen Sullivan of the Medical Examiner’s office is quoted as saying: “There was no information suggestive of an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to any substance which might be attributable to recent vaccine distribution.”  Not exactly the same as saying “the vax didn’t kill him,” is it?

 

          A few days later, Forbes Magazine checked in to wrap it all up.  Citing some of those “medical experts” at Morehead who never seem to have names, a journo named Marshall Shepherd wrote, “His passing was not related to the vaccine, nor did he experience any side effects from the immunization.”  Mr. Shepherd also dug out an old statement from the CDC to the effect that anaphylactic reactions to COVID vaccines are extremely rare, as if this had some relevance to Aaron’s death.

 

          And that was that.  I spent some time looking for a news story or broadcast item where somebody, anybody, sought to dig a half inch deeper into the story, and I found nothing.  Nobody questioned “natural causes” as a cause of death.  Did he die of cancer?  Did he have a heart attack?  A stroke?  Was he eaten by a frickin’ bear???  Somehow that follow-up question never got asked.  Also, nobody demanded that a NAMED public official come forward and report on the nature of the investigation into Hank Aaron’s death, and what the findings were.  After less than a week, the story was shoved down the memory hole.  These questions can now only be asked by us conspiracy freak, anti-vaxxer, transphobe, white supremacist MAGA-hatters in the darker corners of the internet.

 

          It is sad that Hank Aaron’s death, and the cause of it, is not important enough to justify breaking the ironclad censorship protocols protecting the COVID narrative.  Even in Atlanta, where he was an icon and a hero, the truth was so feared that we are not permitted to seek it out.

 

          Hank deserved better than this.

 

          When Aaron was pursuing Babe Ruth’s record for the most homers in major league history, he received dozens of letters and cards every day, for months, and while most of them were fan mail, a lot of them were laced with racial hatred for daring to challenge the home-run record of a white man.  Death threats were common.  For a time, he traveled separately from the team, protected by armed security.

 

          Aaron saved the ugliest mail.  They were in boxes in his attic, and he would occasionally bring out some of the nasty stuff to show a journalist he trusted, or a historian researching him.  Reportedly, he was not a bitter man, but he had no illusions either.  He came from nothing, he made himself the greatest power hitter in baseball history, and he didn’t let anybody stop him.  The haters faded away, but Hank never did.  His integrity and his dignity eventually triumphed.  For years, I have kept a list of the ten greatest living Americans, and up until January 22, Hank was always on there.

 

          Hank deserved better.

 

          The haters are different now.  Now they reside in government agencies and newspaper offices and TV stations, and the life and times of a great man like Hank Aaron means nothing to them.  He too must be used by them to tell “the narrative,” the COVID story that we all must accept, we all must believe, we all must embrace.

 

          The great, sad irony here is that, on January 4, Hank Aaron was trying to serve those people, the ones who demand we all believe the story and we all get vaccinated.  He believed in the program, and he was trying to help other black men and women by showing them the vaccine was safe, or at least worth the risk.  And I am not implying he was wrong to do that.  What is wrong is that, when he died, Hank Aaron was no longer useful to them, so any honest inquiry into his death had to be “managed.”

 

          And so the truth became secondary.  In fact, it was less than secondary.   For the Morehead School of Medicine and the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office and Forbes and WKRG and Yahoo and People Magazine and all the other journalists in Atlanta and around the nation, the truth didn’t matter at all compared to the importance of protecting the COVID story.   I view them much the same way I view those racists who wrote the letters to Aaron in 1974.  For both groups, Hank was not a man of any substance, and not a man worthy of their respect.  He was just a threat to what they believed in.  For both the crackers and the COVID establishment, Hank was just another inconvenient nigger.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki         

THIS & THAT XIX

 

          T-shirt on a large woman in my big-box store: UNLESS I AM SITTING ON YOUR FACE, MY WEIGHT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

 

***********

 

          The CDC records and reports flu cases week by week, and has done so for years.  Here are the numbers of flu cases in the US for the last five flu seasons:

2016-17:  29,000.000 

2017-18:  45,000,000

2018-19:  36,000,000

2019-20:  38,000,000

2020-21:            2038

 

(Source: USA Today, 5-10-21, reporting on flu cases from 9-27-20 to 4-24-21)

 

************

 

          As totalitarianism advances around the globe, and dissenters are increasingly segregated from society, and police state rule grows more powerful in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, New Zealand and other nations, those of us who are horrified by what is happening are horrified in part by the realization that most people just don’t seem to care.

 

          Natan Sharansky, the famous soviet refusenik, later a member of the Israeli Knesset, offered an explanation in his 2004 book, “The Case for Democracy.”  As a man who has seen evil both in the USSR and in the West, Sharansky wrote that evil can be difficult to confront no matter where it appears.  In the Soviet world, of course, the people had been disarmed, they could not easily communicate with one another, and all the power belonged to the state.  The people there had no difficulty identifying evil, but they were powerless to confront it.  When he was finally allowed to emigrate to the West, however, he learned to his surprise that the danger was just as great, but more insidious.  In the West, evil comes disguised as kindness, safety, fairness, community relations, compassion, or even public health.  Here, the danger is that Westerners don’t recognize evil.  And then it’s too late.

 

***********

 

          The best estimate is that about 388,000 African slaves were brought to America between 1525 and 1866.  Were any of them owned by Republicans?

 

          The number of slaves owned by Republicans is probably not zero, but it’s not much more than that.  Ulysses S. Grant, who became a Republican president, reportedly was given a slave in 1859, and promptly “fired” him.  Does that count?  Though I have spent about two minutes researching this question, I have been unable to find the name of another Republican who ever owned a slave.  The GOP was founded in 1854 by abolitionists and its purpose was to prevent the spread of slavery into newly forming States.  Then they nominated Lincoln for president in 1859 and, well, I think you know the rest of the story.

 

          All of which suggests a solution for one of the problems that always arise in any discussion of reparations for the descendants of slaves: who should pay them?  The obvious answer:  registered Democrats.

 

***********

 

          As the march toward a biomedical security state proceeds apace, occasional cracks appear in the enforcement regime.  They provide some hope.

 

          In Philadelphia, there is a change in the mask regime.  During the previous masking order, walking into a store without a mask would bring an immediate intervention from a clerk or security guard.  If the initial request was ignored, more attention and pestering would ensue.  In my big-box store, customers who refused to put on a mask would not be allowed to purchase anything.  After being followed around the store, cashiers would refuse to wait on them.

 

          Then, on June 10, the masks came off.  Well, not really.  Probably 80% of customers still wore them, but the city rescinded its indoor mask order, so there was no longer any enforcement.

 

          About two months later, on August 12, a new masking order was promulgated, again requiring mask-wearing indoors.

 

          In the seven weeks since, however, an important difference has emerged.  I now routinely walk unmasked into restaurants, supermarkets, and the like, and I am never accosted.  In government buildings like the public library, you will be told to slap the diaper on, but nowhere else.  The prior mask order was ruthlessly enforced, and this one is not.  For those who understand that masking is an obedience ritual and is otherwise pointless, the difference matters.

 

          “The law” is always two different things: 1) what it says in the statute books, and 2) the way it goes down on the street.  Mask laws are one example.  In Philadelphia, shootings are another.  It is against “the law” (as written), to shoot people, but a large majority of shootings are simply overlooked.  Only about 20% of shooters are ever arrested, and many of those who get nabbed never serve time in prison.

 

***********

 

          For our own health and safety, and that of our friends, relatives and society at large, Sandy and I have spent some time discussing the guest protocols we will need to enforce during the upcoming holidays.  Though these are subject to change, we will ask all visitors to our home between Thursday, November 25, 2021 and Friday, January 1, 2022 to produce evidence of the following:

 

          1) A negative PCR COVID test performed within 72 hours of your visit, along with a subsequent negative rapid antigen test confirming the PCR result.

 

          2) A paper or cardboard vaccination certificate and, depending on your eligibility on the date of your visit, an updated certificate of a booster vaccination.

 

          3) A BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9.  (For your convenience, if you do not have a notarized BMI Declaration from your doctor, we will have a scale, tape measure, calipers, and calculator at the door when you arrive.)

 

          4) A full report (with no redactions), of a polyp-free colonoscopy performed by a board-certified surgeon or gastroenterologist on October 1, 2021 or thereafter.  (Unfortunately, we are no longer able to perform this service in our foyer.)   NOTE: an 8 x 10 glossy photograph of your colon, even in full color, will not be sufficient unless accompanied by the hard-copy report.

 

          5) Copies of the previous five years of your Form 1040s, along with all attachments, and documentation of any audits (resolved or unresolved), performed by the IRS.

 

          6) A certified copy of your criminal record from the Philadelphia Police Department, the Pennsylvania State Police, or any other police district in a city, state or other locality where you have resided at any time in the previous twenty years.

 

          7) A DNA report from “23 and Me” or any similar commercial firm attesting to your racial and ethnic heritage.

 

          8) Your attendance record (K – 6), at St. Bridget’s Catholic Elementary School, signed and attested to by a church official of Monsignor rank or higher.

 

          During your visit, you will be required to wear two masks and a plastic face-shield at all times, even while eating, drinking, brushing your teeth, or performing fellatio.  Violators will be instantly ejected from the premises by means of a trebuchet we have constructed on the front lawn.

 

          Wassail!

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki  

THE UNVAXXED: WHY DON’T WE JUST KILL THE BASTARDS?

 

          As we saw throughout the 20^th Century, the segregation of dissenters is an essential piece of every totalitarian takeover.  This is because the propaganda and the fear campaign is never universally successful.  As long as the screws are tightened slowly and the pressure on the citizenry is unrelenting, a large majority will accept the new way of thinking.  But not all.  Even with opposing voices censored and silenced, there will be a small but significant number (10%?  25%?), who will look behind the curtain and see the contradictions.  As liberties disappear and the government enforcement apparatus grows more powerful, the dissenters may take to the streets, and become louder and more belligerent.

 

          The security apparatus cannot permit this to occur.  Whatever new reality the cult leaders or totalitarians wish to impose, it is never a worldview that can withstand much scrutiny.  The new ideology must simply be accepted without question and the dissenters must be made to disappear.

 

          One proven technique for doing this is to segregate them and make their lives miserable.  That is what is happening now, around the world.  In Paris, police walk through sidewalk cafes demanding proof of vaccination from the patrons.  If none is produced, the diners are arrested along with the owner of the café.  Unvaccinated people are also barred from concerts, malls, gyms, swimming pools, bars, supermarkets, and long-distance travel on trains, airplanes, and busses.  Restrictions on the unvaxxed in Italy and Germany are similar.  Those in San Francisco are worse.  The same type of program for vaccine passports is coming to New York City, though the enforcement mechanisms are not yet in place.

 

          Segregation serves several functions.  First, it creates powerful incentives to take the shots.  I can ride a bus!  I can go to a bar and meet girls!  I can visit my friend in the hospital!  The loneliness and isolation of being separated from society and being stigmatized as a “problem” can be very stressful.  Second, it isolates dissenters not merely from polite society (including friends and family), but also from each other, making any kind of organized protest more difficult.  And finally, the enforced difficulties in living their lives may induce the dissenters to resort to violence, and this would justify a brutal response from the government that would permit total suppression of the dissent.

 

          In addition to the discrimination now being visited upon the unvaxxed, they are constantly being vilified by the authorities.  Public debate used to be permitted in America, but the unvaxxed are supposedly doing something else.  They are spreading “misinformation” which endangers the lives of more sensible Americans.  Vaccines are “safe and effective,” we are told repeatedly (though there never seems to be much proof of this presented), so any questioning of vaccination must be coming from “conspiracy theorists” and Proud Boys and Q-anon-ers.  Forget that First Amendment you may have heard about.  It no longer applies to the unvaxxed.  They are a menace to public safety.

 

          And now, in addition to being wrong, and stupid, and Trump supporters, and white supremacists, and whatever else, they are dirty as well.  We are now experiencing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” you see.  They are carrying disease, so we must shun them.  The same phrase is used by President Biden, CDC Director Walensky, Governors Newsom and Tate Reeves, and all the editorialists on TV and in the newspapers.  The unvaxxed must be separated from those of us good vaccinated people who have embraced the new reality.  Eventually, for the rulers of totalitarian systems, it’s not enough that the despised people can’t go to a Billy Eilish concert.  They must be identified as different, vile, and disgusting.  They must be taken away and put behind a wall.

 

          Except…except….  What exactly does public health have to do with it?  How does the separation of the vaxxed from the unvaxxed serve any function other than to punish a portion of society that the government doesn’t like?  Vaccinated people can still get COVID and they can still transmit it to others.  So can unvaccinated people.  If your vaccination rendered you immune to infection, well, good for you.  You need fear no one.  But if your vaccination didn’t work that well, and you are still vulnerable, it makes little difference who is sitting next to you at the bar, does it?

 

          The current argument of the segregationists is that, while vaccinated people can still get COVID, and transmit it to others, these cases are infrequent and relatively mild.  When the unvaxxed catch the bug, however, they are much more likely to be hospitalized, or even die.  If this were true, it still would not constitute a public health justification for segregating the unvaxxed, but fortunately, it is false.

 

          Looking at the history of this story, it seems to have grown out of an attempt to explain the embarrassing fact that a LOT of vaccinated people were getting COVID.  After telling us all how safe and effective the vaccines were, the CDC was forced to admit, on April 30, 2021, that there were over ten thousand “breakthrough cases” among people who had been fully vaccinated.  They also noted that this was “likely a substantial undercount of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons.”  Oops!

 

          The CDC, once it discovered there were a lot of people still getting COVID even after taking the highly effective vaccines, decided it wasn’t all that interested in finding out how many such people there are.  Thus they announced that, as of May 1, they would no longer count breakthrough cases unless those victims became hospitalized or died.  If ever you wanted more proof of the politicization and corruption of the CDC, here it is.  CDC policy appears to be that if you don’t get the numbers you want in order to tell the tale you wish to tell, just stop counting.

 

          This is why, instead of data, we now get those anonymous “medical experts” telling us that most new cases in America are among the unvaccinated.  They cannot possibly know this since the CDC stopped counting COVID cases among the vaccinated almost four months ago.

 

          Other countries are reporting a very different story.

 

          In three of the most-highly vaccinated countries in the world, new cases are just as likely to appear in the vaccinated as in the unvaccinated.  In Israel, for example, about 60% of the population has gotten their shots and, as the Washington Post reports, most of the new cases are vaccinated people. The UK, where about 61% of the people are fully vaxxed, is similar.  Though the numbers and percentages change from week to week, a majority of new cases occur in the vaccinated.  In Iceland, with 86% of the population vaccinated, one would not expect to see a surge in cases if the vaccines actually stopped transmissions.  However, the government re-imposed restrictions (masks, distancing, capacity limits, etc.), in July following an uptick in infections.

 

          One oddball bit of data comes from the voyage of the Carnival Vista out of Galveston on July 31.  Of 4336 passengers and crew, all but 101 were vaccinated.  Yet when everyone was tested in Belize City four days later, there were 27 COVID cases found, and every one of them had been vaccinated.  Again, these are small numbers and not definitive of anything, but when the only people getting the bug are vaxxed, it doesn’t exactly support the party line being pounded into us every day, does it?  

 

          Looking around the world, it is very hard to find any evidence for the claim that most cases are happening to the unvaccinated.  As for the other scare tactic---the idea that the most serious infections are reserved for the unvaxxed---there is little to support that idea either, partly because the sheer numbers of serious COVID cases are so small now.

 

          In Israel, as of August 14, there were 514 people hospitalized with serious COVID problems and 59% of them were vaccinated (in a country where 60% are vaxxed).  (Source: Science, August 16, 2021.)  Uri Shalit, from the Israel Institute of Technology, summarized his statistical findings as follows: “One of the big stories from Israel [is that] vaccines work, but not well enough.”

 

          The UK, again, is similarly inconclusive.  With a very small number of serious cases, the percentage of them that are vaxxed (61%), is about the same percentage as are vaxxed in the entire country.

 

          In Iceland, with its tiny population, there were only twenty people in the hospital with COVID on August 10, and no one had died in the recent “surge,” so no conclusions can fairly be drawn.

 

          In short, it is only possible to invent this “pandemic of the unvaccinated” theory if, like the CDC, you don’t have any data.  In other countries, where they actually count breakthrough cases, the question of who gets COVID and who gets the most serious infections are very much open questions.  At the moment, there is not much to support the idea that unvaccinated people are more likely to get COVID or, if they do, are more likely to get seriously ill.  In fact, the more data you examine, the easier it is to conclude the opposite is true.

 

          There is an additional problem with the data used to concoct the US government’s vicious “pandemic of the unvaxxed” story, and it’s one that is common to a number of different vaccines and attempts to prove their effectiveness.  This is the problem of “healthy user bias.”  It is rarely discussed because it is a favorite of the anti-vaxxer movement, so to give it any credence would be viewed as providing support to people who are widely derided as lunatics.  However, it might be the best argument the anti-vaxxers have.

 

          When researchers try to evaluate the effectiveness of a vaccine by comparing the results for those who took it versus those who refused, the same problem always emerges.  Everyone who gets counted is self-selected, and there is no control group.  This means that the people who choose to take the vaccine are probably different from the people who choose not to.

 

          Flu shots are an excellent example of what happens.  We have known for years that people who get flu shots (who choose to get flu shots), have much lower morbidity than people who do not get flu shots, and this is true even in the summertime when there is no flu to worry about.

 

          The obvious inference is that people who get flu shots are more health-conscious than people who don’t.  Maybe they don’t drink as much.  Maybe they don’t eat as many potato chips.  Maybe they are not as fat.  Maybe they work out a bit and don’t watch as much TV.  Whatever the differences are, it is clear that people who get the flu shot every year are generally healthier than the people who don’t.  And they are healthier not because they got a flu shot but because they are the sort of people who will choose to get a flu shot. 

 

          And this is a problem with COVID vaccines.  There are people that hunted on-line for a shot at a drug store in another city and then waited in line overnight, and there are people who will only take the damn shot if you tie them down and stick the needle in their arm---these are two very different kinds of people, and whether they have been vaccinated is the least of the differences. Therefore, even if it is true that unvaxxed people who get COVID fare worse than vaxxed people who get COVID, the differences cannot logically be attributed to the effect of the vaccines.

 

          Of course, none of this logic and none of this data and none of this science stops the architects of our biomedical security state from tightening the clamps, segregating the unvaccinated, and arresting those who object.  They are not interested in these arguments.  They do not even hear these arguments.

             They just want us to be safe.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki     

A NOTE FOR TIME TRAVELERS

 

“When the history books are written about the use of non-pharmacologic measures during this pandemic, we will look as pre-historic and barbaric and tribal as our ancestors during the plagues of the middle ages.”   ---Vinay Prasad

 

“People should not be walking around with masks.  There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”  ---Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutes, March 8, 2020

 

           As I review the COVID rants I publish on this blog, I sometimes try to imagine what someone ten years from now will think, reading this tale of mass psychosis that occurred in 2020, 2021, and beyond.  In particular, I wonder what some future reader will make of this or that government action or command.  Why did people think that way in 2021?  Why did the government do that?  Or say that?

 

          For example, I began the article “Line Up For Your Booster!” this way:

           On July 27, 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a new policy.  The agency now recommends that people vaccinated against COVID wear masks when indoors.  Over two-thirds of the American people have had at least one shot, but the vaccinated are apparently in danger.

 

            In 2031, will this news item make any sense at all?  Or will readers ask, “OK.  The vaccines didn’t work very well.  Got it.  But why would the authorities want anyone to wear masks?  Did they really think mask-wearing would stop people from transmitting viruses?”

 

          And here’s the answer for you 2031 readers.  Most government officials did not really believe masks would protect anyone from catching COVID (though some probably did believe that).  But early on, in April of 2020, government mask mandates were used to frighten and dehumanize the populace, and set the reshaping of society in motion.  There never was any scientific basis or public health rationale for the mask-wearing, and in fact, public health authorities all over the world told people NOT to wear masks because they presented health and respiratory dangers of their own.  These scientists even cited (correctly), peer-reviewed studies in medical journals demonstrating the ineffectiveness or hazard of mask-wearing.  Then, suddenly, in April 2020, they changed their tune.  There were no new studies, there was no new science---but governments everywhere started issuing rules and regulations ordering the populace to wear the things.

 

          One would expect that such an abrupt change could only take place following an argument in the community of scientists about the wearing of masks, but no such argument ever took place.  Instead, the rules were issued, the public health authorities fell into line, and opposing voices were silenced.  Once the program was implemented, those who offered any objection or criticism of the new rules were de-funded, banned from TV and radio, and had their postings on the internet erased.

 

          In America, this happened on one day.  On April 3, 2020, the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams all announced that not only were masks beneficial in slowing the transmission of respiratory viruses, but they should be mandatory across the country.  Up until the previous day, they had all held the opposite position, as had the World Health Organization.  The WHO actually maintained its anti-mask advice until June 2020, when it too finally fell into line.

 

          Now, with mandates in place for the last sixteen months, there have been dozens of studies on the results.  These are mostly not peer-reviewed or published in reputable journals, and one can find a wide variety of them, but you cannot review this literature (as I have), and conclude that this extraordinary public health experiment has been a success.  There was never any reason to think that mask-wearing would prevent the transmission of respiratory viruses, and there still isn’t.

 

          Still, the official position of governments around the world, and the public health bureaucracy, is that masks “work.”  No discussion is permitted on this false proposition.  And that is why, when the Director of the CDC announces that the COVID vaccines are not very effective, she urges vaccinated people to wear masks so they don’t get sick.  For her to offer some explanation of the mask recommendation would suggest there might be some possible doubt about the effectiveness of masking, and the CDC cannot allow that sort of thinking.  Masks stop the transmission of viral diseases, and that’s that, as far as the authorities are concerned. 

 

          Lockdowns, meaning the closing of schools and government services and small businesses (but not large ones), were another measure with no precedents, lots of reasons to think they would do a great deal of harm, and no support in scientific literature.  And again, no discussion occurred on the question of whether they would prevent infections, save lives, or do any good at all.  They had never been tried in previous pandemics, and therefore there was no way of justifying them.  The only experience of lockdowns had been in Wuhan Province, China, at the outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020, and there was no evidence from Wuhan that the lockdowns had been anything but a nightmare.

 

          The other worldwide public health experiment has been “social distancing,” another safety measure with no precedents and no scientific justification.  Of course it is true that if you are two miles away from some infected person, they will not be able to make you sick, so there is some measure of truth behind the idea.  The distances used in the “social distancing” guidelines are completely arbitrary, however, and vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.  Three feet, six feet, one meter, two meters---take your pick.  And now, from studies done over the last eighteen months, it seems likely that the minimum effective distance for “social distancing” would be more like twenty feet, but since this would render any commerce or social interaction virtually impossible, these findings are never discussed.

 

          So my message to time travelers and historians revisiting this period and trying to understand what happened is this: we are not as pre-historic and barbaric and tribal as our actions might indicate.  Many of us, including many who are enforcing the restrictions imposed on us, 1) know that masks are ineffective in stopping the transmission of respiratory viruses, 2) know that lockdowns have no scientific justification as a disease-mitigation strategy, and 3) know that keeping people six feet apart when there’s a respiratory virus floating around is pointless.  But all of these societal interventions and rules have been imposed upon us from above, and any attempt to discuss the wisdom behind them is punished by the authorities.

 

          Masks work.  Lockdowns save lives.  Social distancing prevents infection.  All these assumptions are now treated as facts.  No dissent or debate is permitted.

 

Copyright2021MichaelKubacki