OPINION/ANALYSIS
By Jeff Childers
07-23-22
Good day, C&C, and welcome to the Weekend Edition! In this morning’s roundup: Super-Dodgers; School board pays up after 1st amendment violations; Birx says she always knew; bad booster stats from Canada; Time for infinite boosters; four healthy Toronto docs kick the bucket; a new Monkeypox study provides useful statistics; Germans start to stink up Europe, and Nancy Pelosi terrifies the world again.
🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞
🪖 At long last, after an excruciating committee review of a super-competitive crop of entrants, I am pleased to finally announce the winners of our youth “letters to the editor” contest:
1st Place Youth Editor – Parker Anderson, 13, Brooklyn Park MN Read letter here
2nd Place Youth Editor – Lauren Herrick 17, Portland OR Read letter here
3rd Place Youth Editor – Hailey Keller, 14, Snohomish WA Read letter here
Honorable mention: Rhodri Miot, 11, our youngest contestant.
Congratulations Parker, Lauren, Hailey, and Rhodri! I might ask you to guest-host the blog sometime, you never know. Great job!
And congratulations to ALL of our entrants, every single one of which was good enough to be published in “real” newspaper. C&C will be recognizing each of you.
🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 The Washington Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “Meet The Covid Super-Dodgers.” The sub-headline explains, “The no-covid club gets more exclusive every day. And some members have no idea how they’re still there.”
Hey! That’s me! I’ve never had it, although my family’s gone through it twice.
Anyway, the WaPo story is a long, rambling series of anecdotes about reckless people — gamblers — who live life in constant amazement they haven’t gotten covid yet. Three of the people used as examples in the story had tested positive by the time the article went to print, according to a little postscript, so I guess they weren’t such super-dodgers after all.
Here’s the real key to super-dodging: don’t take the test. It’s been working for me so far.
School Board Settles
🔥 Several parents sued the Pennsbury School Board last year after board members cut off their microphones and ordered them removed from a public meeting. Last week, the school board voted to settle the case for $300,000.00. So.
Karen, I mean Christine Toy-Dragoni, Pennsbury’s school board president, had sent an unconstitutional letter to parents explaining that one speaker’s public comments “contained micro-aggressions as well as explicitly-racist ideas that connected the black community to several commonly-held, stereotypical beliefs that are harmful.” Tellingly, and very helpfully for the lawsuit, Toy-Dragoni (what a mouthful) apologized to the parents for not shutting the speaker down soon enough.
Here’s one of the spicy speakers that the school board snowflakes apparently had a problem with, who also illustrates some nifty techniques for addressing school boards, for all you podium warriors out there: (Click here)
Brix is back…
🔥 Birx is back, this time in a Fox News interview. Fauci must not want to go there or something. What she said will make you want to stick vaccine needles into a Deborah Birx voodoo doll.
NEIL CAVUTO: The 20% or so of Americans who have not been vaccinated are going to look at [Biden’s infection] and say, why bother?
BIRX: If you’re in the middle of this wave, what’s going to save you is Paxlovid … I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines… [so get vaccinated anyways because it’ll prevent hospitalization and death] … but let’s be very clear, 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older and vaccinated.”
Wait, what?
First of all, she said she “knew” the vaccines weren’t going to stop infection. She KNEW. So … why didn’t you SAY ANYTHING, Deborah?
Second, you “overplayed the vaccines”? Does that bother you?
Third, she says Paxlovid will “save you” in this wave. Why not other waves? Why won’t the jabs save you in this wave, if you’re uninfected? I thought you took Paxlovid AFTER infection?
Finally, and most worst, she explicitly admits “50%” of people dying are jabbed. We could quibble about that percentage, since U.S. hospitals are using funny numbers, but never mind. Let’s say “at least” HALF. Which leads us to the most significant unanswered question: if jabs prevent “serious injury and death” — if we know that for a FACT — then HOW MUCH do the jabs prevent “serious injury and death?”
I mean, EXACTLY how much? It the number predictable, repeatable? Is it consistent between countries? And, how did you figure it out? Where are the studies? Please tell me it’s not just based on the awful raw numbers that the hospitals and blue states are reporting — like where they count “unknown” jab status as “unvaccinated” — but please tell me that you did some kind of controlled clinical study before you started organizing our entire society over that particular statistic.
From Scott Morefield on Twitter:
Dr. Deborah Birx: “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines …” Claims vaccines “protect against severe disease and hospitalization” before saying that 50% of those who died via Omicron were older & vaccinated.
💉 Paging Dr. Birx! Manitoba, Canada’s May 2022 data doesn’t look too good for the jabs:
(The jab-happy will argue that admissions and deaths are weighted toward jabbed because there are MORE jabbed than unjabbed. But note the chart compares RATES not gross numbers.)
In all three scenarios, the combined rates of jabbed admissions and deaths exceed the rate for unvaccinated. In the case of regular hospitalization, and DEATH, the added vaxxed rates FAR exceed the unvaccinated rate. Like in the case of death — which we can all agree is a poor outcome — in this data, jabbed Manitobans were THREE TIMES as likely to die from covid as the un-vaxxed.
So.
💉 On Thursday, Time Magazine ran a mushy-headed article with the headline, “Why You’ll Need to Get COVID-19 Boosters Again and Again.”
No, thanks!
The writers — “covid experts” — sum up their rationale like this: “people don’t complain about having to get their 60th dose of the influenza vaccine [so] We should think of COVID-19 vaccines the same way.”
Um, just speaking for myself, I WOULD complain if I had to get 60 doses of flu vaccine, and I sure hope the writers haven’t done that.
Why so many boosters? Is it because the vaccines don’t work well or at all? No, silly! The writers dumb it down for us. The first two shots, they explain, are like HIGH SCHOOL. It’s pretty good, but you’ll miss out on the “college experience.” If you want your immune system to go to college, then you’ll have to take more classes, which are the booster shots. Then, the college graduates need to take continuing education refresher classes to stay current, which are, you guessed it, MORE boosters.
See? It makes COMPLETE SENSE.
Except it doesn’t really. In this analogy, every booster shot is exactly the same as the first two shots. So it’s less like going to college and more like taking ‘introduction to algebra’ sixty times in a row. True, practice makes perfect, but after a while, the kid isn’t paying attention anymore. And he isn’t getting any better at math.
The most hilarious thing is, you can see they DESPERATELY want to compare covid directly to flu — they’re practically begging in between the lines — because it would be so perfect — what with the annual shots and everything — but they can’t, dammit. All they can do is sort of hint, because — ha ha — that’s not part of the narrative! You can NEVER say covid is like the flu!
The article’s most ominous section was the conclusion, which the writers start by saying, “Researchers and industry are furiously working on developing next-generation vaccines.” The bare notion of “better” covid vaccines makes my blood freeze to ice in my veins.
Hard pass.
More on this at https://www.coffeeandcovid.com by clicking below…
🔬 A new study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine titled, “Monkeypox Virus Infection in Humans across 16 Countries — April–June 2022.” The researchers compiled lots of interesting statistics.
They reviewed 528 confirmed infections from 43 clinics in 16 different countries. 98% of the infected were gay, 75% were white, 41% also had HIV, they averaged 38 years old, and transmission occurred through sexual contact in almost all (95%) of the cases.
Almost all (95%) of the patients presented with a rash, most (64%) had fewer than 10 lesions, most (73%) had anal/genital lesions, about half (41%) had mucosal lesions, and about 10% only had a single genital lesion. The study mentioned that single lesions can be easily confused with STI’s.
Out of 377 patients who were also tested for STI’s, in 109 cases additional infections besides monkeypox were found. 29 out of 32 patients whose semen was tested using PCR showed positive for monkeypox.
The authors don’t know whether semen is an agent of transmission or not. But it seems like you might want to assume that it is, at least for the time being.
The study includes some helpful images that are too gross to include in a family-friendly blog. I warned you.
One of the problems with an outbreak of this type is that the people most likely to be infected are already people who are comfortable with high-risk activities, and might even seek out high-risk activities on purpose, BECAUSE they enjoy the thrill of the risk.
The experts are performing just as poorly with monkeypox as they did for covid; it’s just that they are failing in the exact opposite way. But both times, the experts gave the worst possible advice, almost like it was designed to spread the diseases rather than actually contain them.
Utterly useless.
🔥 Yesterday, ZeroHedge ran a story headlined, “Germans Taking Fewer Showers In Response To Cost Of Living Crisis.” It should have read, “Germans Take Fewer Showers as Sacrifice for Elite’s Russia Sanctions.”
A Bild newspaper poll found the majority of Germans are getting smellier by the minute: 62% of respondents said they’d recently reduced their time in the shower, and are also showering less often. Almost half of the respondents (45%) said they were preparing for a difficult winter, like stocking up on firewood, or buying wood-burning stoves and generators.
Earlier this month, Hamburg’s environmental minister warned Germans about mandates if they don’t get their energy usage down voluntarily: hot water could be rationed, and maximum room temperatures could be set by the government. Another minister said Germans should just try turning off the heat and wearing sweaters.
Frans Timmermans, European Commission vice-president, recently suggested EU citizens should “support Ukraine” and help Russia sanctions by taking fewer showers, by not driving their cars, and by airing their clothes out instead of washing them. I’m not making that up.
Remember, Germany is in the midst of a heat wave.
From DW Politics on Twitter:
The heat wave has reached Europe, and Germany is also affected by high temperatures. The German Weather Service reported that the 40° C mark could be cracked in western Germany this week. The previous temperature record in 2019 was 41.2° C.
https://www.dw.com/en/europe-heat-wave-uk-records-hottest-ever-temperature/a-62522077
It’s a very sweaty time in Germany right now. No showers? Just “air out” clothes? It must be a European thing.
Earlier this month, Summit News ran a related story headlined, “Germany’s Largest Residential Landlord to Impose Heating Rationing For Tenants.”
That would be illegal in the United States. Just saying.
The article says Germany’s largest residential landlord — which owns a half-million properties — has notified tenants it will impose energy rationing this winter, which will automatically cut tenants’ heating at night, because of falling gas imports from Russia.
Heater temperatures will be strictly limited to a maximum of 62 degrees.
So. No showers, no heating. These Ukraine sanctions are really teaching the Germans a lesson they won’t forget!
A fascinating development…
🔥 In a fascinating development, the US military opposed a proposed Nancy Pelosi trip to Taiwan this week following Chinese threats of some kind of retaliation. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday reporting on the story carried the headline, “Nancy Pelosi’s Possible Trip to Taiwan Unsettles China—and the White House.”
On Tuesday, the Financial Times cited six sources saying Pelosi planned to lead a new delegation to visit Taiwan next month. Then Wednesday the AP reported that, when reporters asked him to comment on Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, Biden said, “Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.”
Then on Thursday, at her weekly press conference, a reporter asked Pelosi to respond to Biden’s comment, and she said, “I think what the president was saying is maybe the military was afraid our plane would get shot down, or something like that, by the Chinese.”
Shot down. And she still wants to go.
You might recall that Pelosi had planned a trip to Taiwan back in April, but, amidst criticism over the trip, was forced to cancel after she allegedly got covid.
The Speaker sure is trying hard to get over there, without a very clear explanation of the point of the trip. I wonder if she has to pick something up. Like a check or a bag of cash or something.
Anyway there’s some kind of disagreement between the branches about the trip and it’s spilling out into the papers. Should be fun to see how it plays out. Hopefully it won’t play out into a kinetic military experience!
It’s weird how Nancy Pelosi’s decision to go or not to go to Taiwan could determine whether a world war starts. Could you possibly imagine a worse person to hold that kind of power? I can’t. If YOU can, tell me in the comments.
Have a terrific weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Monday to jump start the new week.
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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
