Who do you believe? For every position on Covid, there are leaders, papers, ‘experts’, apologists, conspiracies, etc., all supporting every shade of every facet of public policy regarding Covid. Personally, I’m pretty clear on which ones I support – detailed progressively in approximately a dozen+ articles on Covid found here on NER, but how would anyone that’s unsure or confused by the latest iterations of Covid news come to a conclusion? I believe it’s possible to at least narrow down who’s telling the truth, by viewing some macro data –big picture views, examining a few aspects that are commonly agreed on, and then using basic reasoning. No experts will be cited to prove anything, because how can you rely on them when one army of them is pushing one position and another army of experts is pushing the diametrically opposite position? We’ll put on our thinking cap.
For data (in the form of charts), I’ll refer you to the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Dashboard. View the graphs associated with the United States. I’ll also mention some widely reported news factors.
What is agreed on, to include widely reported trends in the news:
A lot of people died, people are still dying, everyone knows somebody who has died from covid at this point. The death rate is higher than other common infectious diseases in the United States.
Mask mandates which attained near a universal adoption by early fall 2020 did not prevent the huge spike in Covid cases which peaked at the end of the year into January 2021
A dramatic drop in cases which started by about February 2021 began before vaccinations were widely distributed to the public. That drop appeared to signal significant control of Covid by June of 2021.
By midsummer, when over half of the country had been fully vaccinated, Covid cases began to rise again and that rise only recently peaked, now again falling quickly. Democrats blamed that spike on the unvaccinated, resulting in brutal sanctions against them that are still mounting even now.
The spike which occurred in 2021 when approximately 60% of the country was fully vaccinated, was roughly as dramatic as the spike in 2020 when no one was vaccinated.
Approximately 10% of the country has been documented as having contracted Covid which creates immunity stronger than the vaccine. Combining the vaccinated along with the natural immunity, the total percentage of immune people should be close to 70%, which is traditionally understood as the threshold for herd immunity. That level of supposed immunity did nothing to prevent the spike of 2021which was as severe as the one in 2020.
The unvaccinated have higher rates of Covid infection and death but the vaccinated may also contract Covid, just not as often – that we know of, or in a way that cannot be documented, and it is rarely as severe as with the unvaccinated.
Synthesis
A macro view of both the 2020 and 2021 spikes in Covid cases corresponds to both wider mask use and greater numbers that are vaccinated, respectively. At the same time, the unvaccinated are still more vulnerable to infection and death. The very old and the very sick are still the most likely to die from Covid once infected. Covid and age-related illnesses are co-morbidities.
There is no credible reading of the charts to suggest that non-surgical grade masks widely used by the public have any positive effect whatsoever on contracting Covid among populations. Clinical studies of cloth masks confirm this.
Vaccination appears to dramatically improve the protection from both the severity and the lethality of Covid.
Viewing the charts, vaccination has only limited or no efficacy against the transmission of Covid.
Questions moving forward
Are vaccinated people really the super-spreaders of Covid and are their symptoms so suppressed that they freely mingle with the unvaccinated not having a clue that they could have Covid? This would absolutely explain the 2021 spike that is only now receding.
Is it possible that everyone will eventually get Covid at some point, vaccinated and unvaccinated?
Is it possible that populations and geographic areas with higher natural immunity will ultimately fare better than areas with vaccine immunity?
Why are these questions important?
Public policy is being imposed based on either a gross misreading of the macro data or it is being purposely ignored. The vaccination mandates now being implemented are the most thorough instance of disenfranchisement in the United States since slavery and are akin to the incremental persecution of Jews and others by Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. These are being done in the name of ‘public health’ but as laid out here, this is a false pretense. Conservatives cannot stand by idly and acquiesce to massive civil suppression formed out of bad science.