No, lifting lockdowns isn't hiding the success of the vaccines.
Brief words on a stupid argument that just won't go away.
Every time you point out that post-vaccination Corona hospitalisations and deaths are the same as or worse than pre-vaccination Corona hospitalisations and deaths, you hear the same thing: It’s because we raised the lockdowns. People are circulating a lot more now. Imagine how bad it would be without the vaccines.
This is massively disingenuous.
Even at 20 weeks out from vaccination, the biggest studies (like this one from Public Health England) put vaccine efficacy against hospitalisation and death very high, between 78% and 90%. At the same time, the UK is reporting 2 Corona deaths per million people every day right now. On this day last year, that number was about 0.6. Despite near universal vaccination in those cohorts most likely to die of Corona, UK deaths are up more than threefold.
Ending lockdowns cannot be the reason, because lockdowns never really did much for mortality. You had to have highly subtle modelling studies to tease out all the invisible proofs that lockdowns were saving lives. More straightforward analyses found no effect. Just nothing. And this makes sense: Take any lockdown enthusiast, give him an unlabelled graph of the mortality curves of different countries, and ask him to determine, on the basis of these curves, who locked down and when. We all know he would fail. To that comes the natural experiments of Florida, which ended restrictions before anybody was vaccinated; and Texas, which ended them when hardly anybody was. Both jurisdictions had average cases and deaths with very few restrictions, until the vaccines came.
In summary: Lockdowns were basically worthless from the start, official statistics continue to claim massive victories for the vaccines, while overall hospitalisations and deaths are the same or worse as before. This is what a mild Marek Effect looks like.
Shorter piece today. Working on some things for later.
On my first medical rotation in the 3rd year of medical school, I was caring for a 43 year old black woman in Jamaica, Queens, NY. She was suffering from thyrotoxicosis and needed her thyroid partially ablated. 3 of her relatives had the same condition and after ablation had put on significant weight. So, she refused the ablation for that reason.
I spent more than 2 hours discussing this with her. Attempted every line of reasoning I could muster and she was adamantly opposed. In the end, she could see that I cared and that I was frustrated... she put her hand on the back of my hand and said to me:
"Dear, don't you know... You can't argue with ignorance."
That was a moment of clarity that has clung to me for 40 years now. It is my reaction to Eugyppius' argument. We are in a time of both mass delusion, and a time of Great Evil. There is a malign force that has preyed on the most Amygdaloid Fears of each and every soul. It has poured in through the appetures of Media, mesmerized Physicians and Power-Hungry Politicians. We must fight this fight. We cannot let the "Darkness Roll Back In" and mangle the lives of our fellow humans, and shred the edifice of Western Civilization.
WE MUST FIGHT THE IGNORANCE, THE INTRANSIGENCE, THE MALIGNANT EVIL OF THE ELITE LEADERSHIP CLASS.
THANK YOU EUGYPPIUS FOR PROVIDING THIS FORUM.
The lockdowns are the isolation piece of the fear cycle that caused this mass psychosis. Ebbing in and out of increased panic, then isolation. Return some freedoms and let people feel the slightest hint of normalcy and then bring back the panic and isolate. It is highly effective. I have to acknowledge the brilliance in the design, even while noting how evil it is.
We all know someone (likely many) in our lives who we once respected, who stood out as the most intelligent in our social sphere, who fell victim to the fear cycle. Another piece to the isolation aspect of this plan. Those of us who have remained unmanipulated, unafraid and with open eyes, have to mourn a different kind of loss.