CORONA---Immunity Deniers

          There is endless speculation about immunity now.  Has New York achieved immunity?  Has Italy?  The UK?  Sweden?

          Well, of course they’re immune.  There is no other reason that Rona fatalities are almost non-existent in these communities, which once reported hundreds of deaths per day.  There is no other explanation for the fact that all the ventilators are in storage closets.  Yet the same voices (the ones that have been wrong all along), dominate the airwaves.  “Immunity only exists when 80% of the people have survived the pandemic, or 50%, or 20%, or whatever, whatever!”

          Sorry, immunity deniers.  When the death toll drops to the floor and the people who test positive don’t actually get sick, it’s over.  It’s a fact.  The population has become immune, or perhaps was largely immune from the get-go, even if your theories will not admit the possibility.

          There are obvious explanations for what has occurred, and they make the politics of immunity denial and the politics of Rona even more absurd than they have been up until now.

          Take Andrew Cuomo, for example, who has now written a book about what a great leader he has proven to be despite his state having the second highest COVID death rate in America.  (Only New Jersey is worse.)  While it is true that deaths in NY are in single digits now, part of the reason is that he sacrificed all of his most vulnerable people, the 85-year-olds with co-morbidities, by shutting them up in nursing homes with other infectious 85-year-olds.  In New York, thanks to Cuomo, there’s nobody left for the virus to kill.  Good job, Andrew!  Governor Murphy, in New Jersey, did the same thing, with the same results.  It’s one way to immunity---the hard way---but it worked all right.  New York and New Jersey are certainly two of the places where the pandemic is dunzo.

          Other areas, including many US states and most of Europe, have also arrived at the end of their pandemic even though they didn’t kill off all their old people.  And that’s because this coronavirus was never “novel.”  One of the most terrifying bogeymen of those who demanded lockdowns and mask laws was that this “novel” virus would sweep through a completely helpless population and kill millions.  (This was one of the assumptions made by the computer modelers who predicted two million deaths in the U.S.)  And yet, none of that happened.  When this is all over, there might be 25% of Americans who will have tested positive (or would have tested positive), a tiny percentage of whom would die.  The rest, the other 75% or so, when faced with the virus, responded to it with an immune reaction.  Sure, COVID-19 was a “new” virus, sort of, but it had to be related to earlier viruses because there are just too many people who didn’t get it, and didn’t get sick, and didn’t die.  Immunity that had developed to earlier coronaviruses was sufficient to protect MOST people from COVID-19.  There is no other possibility.

          This should have been obvious the moment we discovered that children rarely got the Rona and, except for the rare and anomalous immune-compromised child, never died from it.  While the tiniest babies may be vulnerable to various infections, little kids start acquiring immunities from a very early age.  That’s why they generally have snot running down their noses from the age of two onward.  They are fighting various coronaviruses and developing antibodies to them.  That’s why, once we learned children were not at risk from COVID-19, we should have realized this virus was not “novel,” and that most healthy humans could mount a defense to it.  With that realization, imposing a lockdown of schools, businesses, culture, sports, and virtually all public life became the equivalent to nuking the city of Philadelphia in order to suppress an infestation of spotted lantern flies.

          But, of course, the lockdowns had already been imposed, and stopping them would have meant that those who imposed them would have had to admit their error.  That is something they couldn’t do.  It is something they still can’t do, even though there is now no possible justification for the restrictions we have had to endure for five months.

          On Monday, 8-17, in Manhattan, there were 34 new cases of the Rona, and no deaths among the 1.6 million residents.  Yet the streets remain empty, the theaters are closed, the city is dead.  Why?  If now is not the time to remove the masks, open the taprooms and high-five your neighbors, when will it be?

          In Philadelphia, with a population about the same as Manhattan’s, the numbers are slightly higher, but comparable.  There is about one fatality reported per day, with possibly a hundred new cases, and the city remains shut down.  There is no sign that the restrictions will ever be lifted.  There is no stated criterion for when people will be permitted to attend a Phillies game or when children will be allowed to go to school.  No one will say what has to happen before restaurants will open.

          Because there are cases, you see.  There is even a rising number of cases in some areas, and this “casedemic” is the reason all freedom and economic life must remain shut down.  The deaths have stopped, the new Rona victims don’t really get sick, the population is clearly immune, but there’s all these new cases, you see, and we’re about to be overwhelmed again, right?

          Well, no.  The new cases being reported are a natural outgrowth of the massive number of tests that are now being administered.  In addition, these now include a large percentage of PCR tests, which can register as positive when the debris of dead virus (the nucleic acid) is detected.  In other words, many of these new positive tests are likely NOT actual infections.  And even the people with real infections among this casedemic are not becoming seriously sick, and are not showing up in hospitals.

          There are places in the world, like the Southern Hemisphere, where COVID continues to kill.  There are even some areas of the U.S., in the West and the South, where the curve of fatalities is just now heading downward.  But much of the world, including all of Europe, has passed through the curve and is now immune.  Pennsylvania and the other northeastern Atlantic states are done as well.

          There has never been any sense or science behind the lockdowns and the mask edicts, but now there is no longer even an argument for them.    Whatever is happening in Philly right now, and most of America, does not fit any reasonable definition of "pandemic" or "epidemic." 

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki

Update:  Philadelphia announced on August 19 that some indoor dining at restaurants would be permitted 20 days hence, sort of, if we behave ourselves.  Here are the rules.

Indoor Dining Update: Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced today that the City will permit indoor dining to resume effective September 8, 2020, the day after Labor Day. Indoor dining will be permitted under specific restrictions that are largely consistent with indoor dining restrictions statewide.

The City’s new indoor dining restrictions include, but will not be limited to, the following:

• Restaurants cannot be filled to more than 25 percent capacity.
• No more than four diners per table.
• Tables must be arranged so that diners at separate tables are at least six feet apart or have an impermeable barrier between them.
• Servers must wear both masks and face shields for additional protection.
• No bar service. Alcohol can be served only for on-premises consumption when in the same transaction as a meal.
• Last call for all indoor dining orders will be at 11 p.m. and establishments will be required to be closed for service by midnight.
• Restaurants must install physical barriers such as sneeze guards or partitions in restaurant kitchens and at cash registers, host stands, and food pick up areas where maintaining physical distance of at least six feet is difficult.
• Restaurants must screen every employee for symptoms before every shift and prevent them from remaining on-site if they have cough, shortness of breath, fever, chills, muscle pain, or new loss of taste or smell.

Restaurant owners are also being urged to increase ventilation in their establishments to further decrease the risk of transmission. “We are announcing this change now in order to give restaurant operators sufficient time to prepare,” said Dr. Farley. “However, we move forward with an abundance of caution. Between now and September 8, should we witness an increase in the rate of COVID-19 case counts in Philadelphia, we will reconsider whether this change is still viable.”