Opinion
By Jeff Childers
01-20-23
Good morning C&C, it’s Friday! Our excellent roundup includes: another monstrous variant afflicts Great Britain; new study finds high myocarditis rates right after jabs, raising an ethical dilemma; Trump doubles down on vaccines; Musk drags the World Economic Forum; and McCarthy delivers on another promise.
🗞*WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 The covid fear game has entered an exciting new round. Earlier this week, the Daily Mail UK ran an alarming story headlined, “Is ‘Orthrus’ in YOUR Area? Time-Lapse Maps Show New Covid Variant’s Rapid Spread Through England With Strain Now Behind One in Five Cases – Amid Fears ‘Kraken’ Could Spark Virus Resurgence.”
It’s not a ‘real’ covid story unless you can work the word “worry” or “fear” into the headline somehow. Check.
Journalists, impatient with the boring, dry, and unimaginative scientific names for covid variants, have decided to take matters into their own sticky fingers and come up with their own terrifying variant nicknames. First it was The Kraken. Now they’ve named a new variant circulating in England, CH.1.1, after ANOTHER mythological monster from Greek legend, a two-headed dog called Orthrus. In Greek mythology, the virulent mutant canine was Cerberus’ brother.
They must be saving Cerberus for a better variant. Before I get to the next part — the Daily Mail’s most creative innovation, we must note the usual disclaimer, where late in the article, the Mail concedes that neither the Kraken nor Orthus are really anything new:
Neither Covid variant has been escalated to being declared a ‘variant of concern’ by the UKHSA. This suggests there are no signs they cause more severe disease than other, similarly mild Omicron strains, nor are sufficiently genetically divergent as to cause Covid vaccines to be less effective.
Haha, that last bit reassuring people about the jabs is a hilarious self-own. Think about it. In an article fear-mongering scary new covid variants named after mythological monsters, two years into the jab campaign, they STILL have to throw in a gag line about how well the vaccines work. Whereas the whole point of the article is that the vaccines DON’T work, because you’re supposed to be making some time in your busy day to worry about all the monstrous new variants they’re yammering about.
To this point the article appeared like a cookie-cutter kid’s game called name the next variant. But I guess they realized that, after a while, people are going to wander aimlessly in their growing pantheon of historical demons. Let’s imagine how this plays out:
SALLY: How are you Bertie? Staying safe?
BERTHA: You betcha. You can’t be too careful with the Cyclops going around.
SALLY: Cyclops? I think you’re behind, dear. The latest one is the Minotaur.
BERTHA: No, no, the Minotaur was just before the Bridge Troll. Then came Ogre, and now we’re on Cyclops.
SALLY: But wait, I thought Ogre came AFTER Hill Giant?
BERTHA: My dear, you are hopelessly confused. You need to order a CDC variant organizer. You can get it on Prime. I’ll text you a link.
PS: The C&C Shop is proud to announce our new Covid Playing Cards! Every card face features a full-color, original illustration of each variant’s namesake, for your amusement and education! Play solitaire a few times with these babies and you’ll have it all down pat. If you live that long.
See? All these confusing monster names are no bueno. The Daily Mail gets it, too, so they’ve creatively added a unique innovation: discussing the individual genetic characteristics of the new variants. For example:
Orthrus has a mutation called P681R — which was also on the Delta variant — and is thought to make it better attack cells and cause more severe illness. Scientists have also spotted it has R346T, which is thought to help the strain fight-off antibodies that were generated in response to vaccination or previous infection.
And Kraken has one called F486P, which helps it to bypass Covid-fighting antibodies. Another mutation — S486P — is thought to improve its ability to bind to human cells.
But in the very same article, they JUST said the strains don’t make the vaccines less effective. So which is it?
That CDC organizer is going to be critical for Daily Mail readers to keep up with all the new variants and their individual genes. It’ll be like fun, Pokemon! Orthrus has the P681R gene, which defeats Kraken’s F486P mutation, and so on, down the line. Play with your friends, win collectable cards, and try to keep up with all the new variants!
Seriously, though, can you imagine if they’d done this with influenza every year? This is a hypochondriac’s fantasy.
Anyway, notice that both Kraken and Orthrus are (1) more infectious and (2) vaccine evasive. Which is exactly what Geert Vanden Bossche predicted two years ago would happen, if you tried a mass vaccination campaign in the midst of an ongoing pandemic.
🔬 The Canadian Medical Association’s journal published a new study in late November titled, “Observed versus expected rates of myocarditis after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination: a population-based cohort study.”
The researchers studied 10 million doses of the shots and found an overall average rate of new myocarditis cases in people who got the mRNA vaccine, at a rate of 141 per 100,000, or 1 in 6,500 — just within the first 21 days following injection.
That is insanely high.
Worse, they found the highest rate of heart damage among young males aged 18-29 who got Moderna, which features a higher mRNA payload than Pfizer.
The study authors counted myocarditis cases based on hospital admissions and ER visits. In other words, they DIDN’T count subclinical cases not requiring a hospital visit within the first 21 days, or cases diagnosed outside a hospital. So the numbers are almost certainly understated.
But of course, the authors covered for the jabs. They had to, to get published. Here’s how they justified the risk:
According to a US analysis, 11,000 COVID-19 cases, 560 hospital admissions, 138 ICU admissions and 6 deaths from COVID-19 could be prevented per million-second doses of mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine administered to males aged 12–29 years, compared with 39–47 expected cases of myocarditis after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
So, take one for the team! It’s the classic ethical dilemma. Assuming those numbers are accurate, is it morally permissible to intentionally give 50 people permanent heart disease in order to prevent six deaths?
We know what the CDC would say. What do YOU think?
Link: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/194/45/E1529
🔥 Earlier this week, Newsweek ran a breathless story headlined, “Trump Dismisses COVID-19 Vax Safety Claims, Says He Saved 100 Million Lives.”
Corporate media LOVES this kind of story, it gives them a chance to boost the vaccines AND drag President Trump.
The article reported on an Trump interview on a conservative podcast called The Water Cooler. Host David Brody asked Trump if he’d admit that the vaccines were not as safe or effective as they were originally promised. Here’s now Newsweek described President Trump response:
“You have to understand, there are the pros and cons,” said Trump. “Some reports [say] that it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened and we saved tens of millions of lives. Then you’ll read other reports [that] say there were some problems with the vaccine…but relatively small numbers. But you know, you have many reports that say the vaccines save tens of millions of lives,” he continued. “That without the vaccines you would have had a thing…where perhaps 100 million people died.”
So. Trump did point out that he never ordered mandates.
As far as I know, this is the first time President Trump has acknowledged ANY problems with the vaccine, but it’s still similar to other curious pro-jab remarks Trump has made over the last year, which have provoked outrage and vows to never to vote for him again among Trump supporters.
The whole thing is extremely curious. For a moment, let’s set aside the factual question of whether the vaccines are dangerous or not and just focus on the President.
The first odd thing is that — apart from this issue — Trump inarguably has the greatest political instincts of any politician since Reagan. Trump MUST know that lots of his supporters hate the jabs. Even if he didn’t know, his advisors must have told him. We can take it as a fact that Trump knows.
But even though he surely knows about the awful conflict, he has never directly addressed unhappy supporters.
I’m not the only person who’s noticed this odd discongruity. Many people have speculated that it’s Trump’s pride; he just can’t admit he was wrong. Or a more nuanced version: Trump calculates he’ll be more damaged politically if he admits the jabs are problematic than if he continues to insist they are fine.
Perhaps. But neither of those explanations are satisfying. They both presume Trump couldn’t find a third way, a way to exploit the crisis to his own advantage, which after all is his specialty. We’re talking about a man who survived the “grab them by the p***” video released days before his 2016 election.
What I find most interesting is that there is a manifest upside to Trump’s stubborn recalcitrance. It is perfectly clear that, if Trump ever does attack the vaccines’ safety and efficacy, then the leftwing media will immediately, rabidly, and irrationally defend the jabs to the death. They would use Trump’s opposition to the jabs as evidence — in and of itself — that the jabs are the most brilliant invention since Alexander Fleming accidentally sneezed his prized fungus-spore collection right into his bacteria dish.
Trump’s opposition to the jabs would mean the democrats and the media would never back down.
So while it is vexing, it is also helpful that Trump defends the jabs. He is making it much easier for the truth to come out. It’s like he’s almost daring them to blame him for vaccine injuries.
Just something to think about.
🔥 This week, Elon Musk positioned himself against the World Economic Forum:
He makes an interesting point. The WEF is kind of turning into something like a replacement United Nations. Except there’s no voting, it includes big corporations, and everybody is somehow already on the same page.
🔥 The Washington Examiner ran a story yesterday headlined, “McCarthy Marks End of Proxy Voting: Lawmakers Have to ‘Show Up’ for ‘Their Vote to Count’.”
Following through on another promise, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the new rule change, as part of the package of rules negotiated with House conservatives.
The old rule, a covid pandemic accommodation, was widely disliked by conservative lawmakers. Democrats favored the law, which allowed one lawmaker to show up and vote for lots of others who could relax at home in the bathtub while binge-watching Netflix reruns of The West Wing and snacking on fried crickets.
Now the poor darlings have to get dressed and come to work. The horror.
Progress!
Have a fabulous Friday! I’ll see you back here tomorrow for the Weekend Edition.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
Published with author’s permission.
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.
