Writing again about COVID-19 was the last thing I wanted to do, but the widespread stupidity regarding the matter made me do it, being it only succinctly (or I hope so).

Cops are stupid

If not all of them, then most of them. CNN Opinion: Why are cops fighting vaccine mandates? The author, Sonia Pruitt, is a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain.

Because they’re stupid, that’s why. And unfair, unethical, immoral. Morons.

I was waiting in line at the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) in Maryland this summer when I noticed two state troopers posted inside. Despite a mask mandate in Prince George’s County, neither wore a face covering.

Out of curiosity, I called the Maryland State Police headquarters and asked a sergeant if their troopers are required to follow the Covid-19 protocols of the counties in which they work. The sergeant replied the troopers were state employees, and there was not a statewide mask mandate in place.

When I pointed out it was only reasonable to comply with the county rules, particularly when everyone else in the MVA was masked amid a Delta variant surge, the sergeant simply told me to take it up with the governor.

In one word: assholes. They are in a county that has some regulations, so who the fuck cares that they’re State employees, or even Federal employees?!

We have seen police officers resist Covid-19 precautions elsewhere in this country. Last week, a commuter in New York City said he was forcibly removed from a subway station when he asked two NYPD officers why they weren’t masked.

Motherfuckers.

Covid-19 has become the leading cause of death among police officers in the US. Since the start of the pandemic, 476 police officers have died from the coronavirus; about five times the number of deaths from gunfire in the same period. Despite these figures, many police officers have resisted the guidance of public health experts touting the importance of masks and Covid-19 vaccines.

While the reasons officers are refusing to be vaccinated parallel those found in the nation at large — distrust of science, belief that it impinges on civil rights and misinformation about the vaccines — another cause is deeply embedded within police culture: the politics of police unions.

Police unions are even covering up the murders committed by the “men in blue”; so what to expect from them? Civil rights? The police is the number one infringer of them!

Morons all the way down

The American Conservative Daniel Horowitz (which is this guy, friends with these guys, and not this guy) has a grotesque Twitter account, because what it tweets or retweets is so outrageously stupid that it can’t be qualified in words that are in the dictionary. This is, like with so many “contributions” on the social networks, a crime against humanity.

You already know I have some trust in hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in the early stages of the infection with SARS-CoV-2, because of the studies made before this pandemic, studies that explain its effect in preventing the so-called cytokine storm, phenomenon that can be triggered both by infectious and by autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and arthritis. Guess what? HCQ is used in lupus and arthritis too, not only, historically, in the prevention and the treatment of malaria! Also, there are pre-COVID studies highlighting the role of Vitamin D in preventing a cytokine storm. These are mechanisms that almost everyone can understand. But ivermectin (IVM) against SARS-CoV-2?

This cretinoid also retweets all kinds of other morons:

For once, there’s truth in that: on February 9, 2021, Haruo Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association, recommended the use of ivermectin and dexamethasone to prevent aggravation of mild or asymptomatic patients treated at home.

This world is on the brink of madness:

But let’s not forget that Horowitz doesn’t only praise the IVM, he’s an anti-vaxxer in the first place! A few recent tweets and retweets:

I won’t insist of how little people understand of statistics; I wrote about that a few times before. Also, the lockdowns didn’t do much good because they weren’t true lockdowns (the only true lockdown was the first one in Wuhan, but it was too late).

But when there’s a really useful information, such as “Vitamin D defficiency can aggravate the outcome,” this guy can only say “Wow”:

Remember Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and his theories (endorsed by other shameful retards, including, if I’m not wrong, Luc Montagnier)? Well…

“Half-baked” is a strange qualifier; and this could be said about all viruses, including the influenza one. Yet they only “saw” this mechanism in SARS-CoV-2!

The Wuhan virus

Now we finally know that what’s been said about the US funding “the Wuhan virus” seems to be true:

This being said, Dr. Fauci should be considered in the light of such facts, and adding references to some previous experiments on beagles is IMO irrelevant (not to mention that “torturing children” is a made-up accusation):

The everlasting misinformation

I’m so tired of those who, around the globe and throughout the social networks, keep wasting everyone’s time with such kinds of cretinoid conspiracy theories:

  • Because Big Pharma wants to make big money, and Big Pharma knows how to make big money, and the FDA would approve of anything made by Big Pharma, this is why people are encouraged to get vaccinated, sometimes with an extra booster and so on. Big Pharma wants to make money for the price of aggravating the pandemic, as vaccines are actually worsening the virus.
  • Because Bill Gates, and 5G, and whatnot… whatever.
  • Because the World Government wants to control us all (possibly via the 5G too?), they impose restrictions, curfews and lockdowns, and they put us in a huge database by recording all those who are tested or vaccinated.

A lower degree of misinformation includes the already traditional one that says:

  1. The vaccinated are spreading the disease just as much as the non-vaccinated.
  2. Therefore, the restriction of some public activities to those who are vaccinated, those who had the disease, and those who get tested, is a Nazi (or satanic) discrimination against the non-vaccinated, especially as the vaccinated are “as bad as the non-vaccinated,” remember?

¡Madre de Dios, que estupidez! If you know French, here’s a very recent Swiss article: A quel point les personnes vaccinées transmettent-elles le Covid-19?

In brief, the misinformation originated in this CDC publication: Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings — Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021. To contradict the CDC, we have:

  • A Singapore study (medRxiv 2021.07.28.21261295; doi: 10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295): “Despite significantly older age in the vaccine breakthrough group, the odds of severe COVID-19 requiring oxygen supplementation was significantly lower following vaccination (adjusted odds ratio 0.07 95%CI: 0.015-0.335, p=0.001). PCR cycle threshold (Ct) values were similar between both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups at diagnosis, but viral loads decreased faster in vaccinated individuals.”
  • A British REACT study: “Prevalence among those who reported being unvaccinated was three-fold higher than those who reported being fully vaccinated. However, in round 13, 44% of infections occurred in fully vaccinated individuals, reflecting imperfect vaccine effectiveness against infection despite high overall levels of vaccination. Using self-reported vaccination status, we estimated adjusted vaccine effectiveness against infection in round 13 of 49% (22%, 67%) among participants aged 18 to 64 years, which rose to 58% (33%, 73%) when considering only strong positives (Cycle threshold [Ct] values < 27); also, we estimated adjusted vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection of 59% (23%, 78%), with any one of three common COVID-19 symptoms reported in the month prior to swabbing.”
  • A more recent Dutch study, Vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 transmission to household contacts during dominance of Delta variant (B.1.617.2), August-September 2021, the Netherlands (doi: 10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959): “Effectiveness of full vaccination of the index against transmission to fully vaccinated household contacts was 40% (95% confidence interval (CI) 20-54%), which is in addition to the direct protection of vaccination of contacts against infection. Effectiveness of full vaccination of the index against transmission to unvaccinated household contacts was 63% (95%CI 46-75%). We previously reported effectiveness of 73% (95%CI 65-79%) against transmission to unvaccinated household contacts for the Alpha variant.”

In plain words: the vaccine’s protection against the risk that vaccinated people transmit the infection to unvaccinated people is 63% for Delta, and 73% for Alpha. It’s as simple as that.

The last study is also discussed in New Scientist: How much less likely are you to spread covid-19 if you’re vaccinated?

A recent study found that vaccinated people infected with the delta variant are 63 per cent less likely to infect people who are unvaccinated.

This is only slightly lower than with the alpha variant, says Brechje de Gier at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, who led the study. Her team had previously found that vaccinated people infected with alpha were 73 per cent less likely to infect unvaccinated people.

What is important to realise, de Gier says, is that the full effect of vaccines on reducing transmission is even higher than 63 per cent, because most vaccinated people don’t become infected in the first place.

UPDATE: However, here’s a fresh study (doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00648-4) summarized as follows: Jabs do not reduce risk of passing Covid within household, study suggests. To me, it makes sense that “People who are fully vaccinated against Covid yet catch the virus are just as infectious to others in their household as infected unvaccinated people, research suggests.” When people live together in a same dwelling, if someone is contagious even for a couple of hours, they can spread the virus to others. The only sensible approach is to have everyone vaccinated, but I’m sure the anti-vaxxers would reach the opposite conclusion.

Also, this thing doesn’t help much: Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial | The BMJ.

Instead of a coda

Quick info about how the Asia-Pacific area is doing these days:

  • Countries that are still fully closed to foreign tourists: Continental China (PRC without Hong Kong), South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Burma, New Zealand
  • Countries that are gradually opening to foreign tourists: Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, India
  • Countries that are quarantine-free for vaccinated people: Singapore, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Fiji
  • Countries that are easing the restrictions regarding foreign traveling of their own citizens: Australia

Transmission is between humans, you know.