“You can’t build a wall high enough to keep out a vaccine”
The State of the Union is clear: we have a narrative over facts problem.
The worst kept secret in the United States was that the pandemic was officially ending March 1st during the State of the Union speech. Polling showed Americans were tired, frustrated and the lead up to the speech saw lots of coordinated narrative pivots.
New York, Washington D.C, Chicago etc have all walked back their citywide mandates and vaccine passports. Amazon announced it would no longer require it’s workers in the warehouse to wear masks. Many health care workers are no longer required to have boosters, as medical providers acknowledged that it would make a staffing shortage even worse. So basically, Democratic states and big Tech companies run by Democrat backers decided to do what Republican states have being doing for the last year.
From an agency standpoint, the much maligned CDC changed their algorithm for “risk assessment” for COVID on Friday February 24th, and miracle of miracles, the terrifying “map of death” changed.
Even mainstream left wing media got in on the act and pretended to be journalists seeking the truth again. The New York Times ran a the story that the CDC had withholding data it was collecting, specifically around vaccine and booster effectiveness in younger people, which at best is deceitful and at worse… I mean it’s bad.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman of the CDC, said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data 'because basically, at the end of the day, it's not ready for primetime. Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted.”
I recall that in mid 2020 I made a rhetorical ask on LinkedIn a very simple spreadsheet: data on every person in the hospital with/of COVID with age, weight (BMI), co-morbidities and the number of times they had visited the hospital in the last 5 years. Seemed like it could be useful, and identify who was truly at risk. LinkedIn banned the post. Now we know why.
Even comedy returned when John Mulaney retuned to host Saturday Night Live and the cast was allowed to make fun of the “extremists” and acknowledge that maybe… just maybe…. Masks didn’t work, lockdowns didn’t work, it wasn’t a pandemic of the unvaccinated and people had legitimate personal reasons to not get vaccinated. The first 2 minutes are definitely worth it.
So the stage was set for the State of the Union address. If you didn’t watch it, you should. Here’s the transcript for quicker processing if you like that sort of thing.
After addressing Russia and saying ‘we stand with the Ukrainian people’ as in “Right on your NATO allied borders so that when you collapse, we will be ready to implement more meaningless sanctions, the President pivoted to COVID:
We have lost so much to COVID-19. Time with one another. And worst of all, so much loss of life.
Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: A God-awful disease.
Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we really are: Fellow Americans.
We can’t change how divided we’ve been. But we can change how we move forward—on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together.
In the theatre that is the SOTU with standing, sitting, clapping and booing, the camera pans to Justice Sotomayor, who attended the event maskless. It was remarkable to reflect how much had changed in the previous 6 weeks.
It was only January, as the OSHA vaccine mandate case made it to the Supreme Court and after providing cover for the firing of tens of thousands of health care workers, police officers and employees, that Justice Sotomayer was terrified of COVID. In fact, she requested that all her colleagues wear a mask for her and when Justice Gorsuch said “no dice,” she did the hearing from her office.
And herein lies the problem. I remember when I was banned from social media for daring to go against the narrative. I remember when the vaccine was 93% effective and we could “stop the spread.” I remember when it was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. I remember when my son’s school made him eat at a table outside by himself that he lovingly called “the table of shame.” I remember when last week the study came out of John Hopkins that said lockdowns has virtually no effect. I remember the study that shows the vaccine was 12% effective in 5-11 year olds. In fact, I remember all of the narrative points that led us here. And the funny thing is, I never had to pivot. Not once. I’ve been consistent in my messaging since March of 2020, a position that can be summed up by the phrase “you do you” that relies on personal responsibility.
So I’d love to treat my fellow Americans not as enemies. Sadly, I wasn’t the problem. An apology would be nice, but the resignations of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky would be a meaningful first step. An honest discussion about climate change would be second. But a pivot and a “let’s just forget the last 2 years and start fresh?” Well. That is a wall high enough to keep a lot of things out, the least important of which is the vaccine.
Just remember what changed
1) Positivity rate dropped from over 30% in January to less than 5% today. 5% is a key indicator because that means the spread is less than 1-1
2) Hospitalization rates dropped to their lowest level since the virus started spreading 2 years ago
3) In Colorado its been estimated that the combination of vaccinations plus those who got sick with Omicron is now over 90% of the population, ie Herd Immunity..
4) We now have wide available of testing and soon to be oral medication for those that test positive going forward to avoid trips to the hospital. Keeping our hospitals from being overrun if/when future variants spread.
That's what is driving the change in status and the dropping of the mandates and masks. And puts us on a timeline in line with what we've seen historically with virus like the Spanish Flu.
So, where is our beloved oh so imminent Dr. , the Fauci??? Seems he has been totally awol for two weeks now. Maybe a long ago scheduled vacation but more than likely his message is no longer needed or effective for the progressive government control freaks. He
said, “ follow the science “ and we did. Not sure what cdc was following.