‘Experts’ struggle to explain why the free state of Florida has half the COVID rate of masked and vax-mandated California

By Thomas Lifson, AM THINKER

It’s definitely embarrassing for “experts” when the people following their advice do worse than those who flout it.  But that’s currently the case when it comes to reining in COVID.  Leslie Eastman writes at Legal Insurrection:

Just ahead of the recall election that he survived, Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted that California “continues to lead the nation” as the only state to reach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s yellow “moderate” tier of community virus transmission. Meanwhile, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis was getting a media pounding for his state’s case rate.

Now California’s case rate is twice that of the Sunshine State’s.

Have you noticed that Sweden, which never locked down and which focused on protecting the most vulnerable — as has always been the approach taken to epidemics until China role-modeled total lockdowns to fight the virus it created — has virtually disappeared from the media?  Turns out that COVID is not exactly exploding as the winter months force people indoors, where virus transmission is more probable than outdoors:


Source.

Why, it’s almost as if we’ve been given bad advice and paid an enormous cost for measures that haven’t solved the epidemic and may have made it worse.  Children losing more than a year of in-person schooling.  Medical tests and procedures postponed or canceled.  Businesses destroyed.  Unbearable psychological stress and soaring suicide rates among children.  “Two weeks to flatten the curve” made sense at a time when hospitals might have been overrun, but the “two weeks” part lasted less than two weeks.

Eastman cites a University of California San Francisco expert who is trying to explain.  It’s herd immunity, even if that term is not used here:

California saw fewer coronavirus infections over the summer than states with lower vaccination rates as the Delta variant rapidly spread in unvaccinated communities.

But those who were infected now have immunity, meaning there are fewer people spreading the virus.

“These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates,” Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco, recently told The Mercury News. “But these people whose immunity comes from COVID are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time.”

Now, Dr. Wachter is incomparably better credentialed than I am, and UCSF is a top medical school, but I wonder why he is so certain that natural immunity will fade more than vaccines, which we already are told require booster shots.  This massive (2.5 million people) Israeli study found “that natural immunity is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccination, but also noted that a single dose of vaccine likely can offer additional protection from the Delta Variant to those who recovered from SARS-CoV-2.”

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November 11, 2021 | 7 Comments »
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  1. “Many physicians, patients, health journalists and politicians do not understand health statistics. This collective statistical illiteracy has resulted in serious consequences for health”

    Here is a very short, but effective explanation regarding the “efficacy” of the vax. Most people are unaware of what 95% effective actually means. Dr. Damasi does a good job describing this complex subject in a very brief manner. Please have as many people as possible read it.

    https://maryannedemasi.com/publications/f/covid-19-vaccine-benefits-exaggerated-say-experts

  2. From Business Insider via Yahoo News. Interesting how politics and even critical race theory determines what vaccines get approved, not either health or safety concerns. I don’t know whether this vaccine is safe or not. But safety concerns don’t seem to be why its manufacture and distribution was ended.

    As a result of the CDC’s decision to discourag the vaccines’ production and use,production use, the number of Lyme Disease cases in the U.S. has exploded.

    The US had a Lyme disease vaccine decades ago – but the CDC, lawsuits, and conspiracy theories derailed it
    Wed, November 10, 2021, 10:16 AM
    deer tick bites
    Black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks, can transmit Lyme disease. Photon Illustration/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
    Since 1998, confirmed Lyme disease cases in the US have risen roughly 40%.

    GlaxoSmithKline developed a Lyme vaccine in the 1990s. It went off the market by the early 2000s.

    A new anti-Lyme injection (not a vaccine) is coming. But it could take years to be fully approved.

    Lyme disease, transmitted by deer ticks and characterized by a hallmark bullseye rash, is an ever-present threat for hikers, hunters, and pet owners. If left untreated, it can cause temporary facial paralysis, shooting pain, arthritis, and speech and memory problems, according to the Mayo Clinic.

    Lyme was once considered a regional concern isolated to the Northeast, but climate change has broadened its territory to 44 states. Rising temperatures have expanded ticks’ habitats, studies show, and shorter winters may allow ticks to be active for longer periods during the year.

    In 1998, fewer than 17,000 Lyme disease cases were confirmed in the US. Two decades later, that yearly count has increased roughly 40%, with between 20,000 and 30,000 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of estimated yearly cases, meanwhile, has ballooned to 476,000 people diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease, according to the CDC. (That includes people presumed to have the disease and treated without an official diagnosis.)

    But the US had a Lyme vaccine more than 20 years ago: a shot called LYMErix. It seemed to ward off the disease among the small group of Americans who received it – until a perfect storm of dismissive public-health experts, conspiracy theories, a class-action lawsuit, and a lack of consumer demand drove it off the market.

    GlaxoSmithKline developed a safe, effective Lyme vaccine decades ago

    Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), known as SmithKline Beecham until a 2000 merger, developed LYMErix in the 1990s. The Food and Drug Administration approved the shot in 1998.

    Three deer in a grassy field in Iowa looking towards the camera
    Deer, which are common hosts for Lyme disease-carrying ticks, stand in a field in Winterset, Iowa, on October 10, 2019. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
    The three-dose vaccine worked by stimulating disease-fighting antibodies in human blood. If a black-legged tick bit a vaccinated person, the antibodies attacked the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria in the tick’s gut, preventing it from being transmitted to the human host.

    The vaccine was about 75% effective at preventing Lyme disease after three doses in clinical trials.

    But a CDC committee thought the vaccine was unnecessary

    Almost as soon as it was approved, though, LYMErix developed a reputation problem.

    Lyme disease was initially detected and most prevalent in New England, and cannot be spread from person to person. So those most at risk tended to be people with access to the outdoors along the coast. Some doctors, then, saw LYMErix as a vaccine developed for and benefitting rich, white people. During a 1998 CDC advisory committee meeting, Dr. Chinh Le of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center described the shot as a “yuppie vaccine.”

    Le suggested the shot was being marketed to suburbanites who “will pay a lot of money for their Nikes and their Esprit, and shop at L.L. Beans, will have no consideration for cost-effectiveness when they want a vaccine, because they’re going to travel to Cape Cod.”

    US health officials worried that the shot’s limited application and marginal health benefits didn’t justify its inconvenient three-dose course, which had to be completed in a year. Officials were also wary that recommending a personalized, discretionary shot would undermine public trust in vaccines in general.

    lyme disease
    A hallmark bullseye rash from deer ticks. anakopa/Getty Images
    The CDC ultimately gave a lukewarm recommendation about who should get LYMErix. People at high risk of contracting Lyme “should consider” the vaccine, the agency said, and people exposed to tick-infested habitats, but without frequent or prolonged exposure, “may be considered” for LYMErix shots.

    Those squishy definitions sowed confusion among doctors. Many never mentioned LYMErix to patients at all, The New Republic’s “The Politics of Everything” podcast reported, likely limiting the pool of people who might have been interested.

    Beset with lawsuits, GSK pulled the vaccine off the market

    Even some people who received LYMErix criticized the shot.

    “Some people who had been suffering from Lyme for a long time, when the vaccine was out, took it and thought that the vaccine had reactivated the bacteria in their body and created arthritic conditions in them,” Rebecca Onion, who wrote about the downfall of LYMErix, told “The Politics of Everything.”

    “This caused them to turn against the vaccine,” she added. “They were an important part of the groups of people who were lobbying for the vaccine to be taken off the market.”

    Tick on persons finger near dog
    A tick, commonly found outdoors in wooded areas. Chalabala/Getty Images
    Scientists, however, couldn’t find any evidence that the vaccine caused adverse health problems.

    The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System – a national monitoring system run by the CDC and FDA – received around 900 reports of adverse LYMErix events between 1998 and 2000. Though US health officials classified 66 reports as serious, CDC and FDA researchers said they didn’t find any unusual side-effect patterns.

    But those findings didn’t stop a handful of class-action lawsuits, later consolidated into a single suit, alleging that people had experienced significant adverse reactions to LYMErix. The suit additionally alleged that GSK had concealed evidence about the vaccine’s risk.

    As bad press about the vaccines poured in, demand fell from 1.5 million doses in 1999 to a projected 10,000 in 2002, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. LYMErix’s anticipated sales also plummeted.

    GSK maintained that the vaccine was safe and settled the lawsuit without paying any money to the plaintiffs. But the company was still on the hook for more than $1 million in legal fees.

    In early 2002, GSK voluntarily pulled LYMErix off the market.

    LYMErix is dead, but Lyme PrEP is giving researchers hope

    The quest to prevent Lyme disease isn’t over. A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s MassBiologics is working on a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) Lyme disease shot.

    The formula is a yearly injection, likely taken at the start of tick season, which would deliver anti-Lyme antibodies to the recipient. It’s different from a vaccine, which triggers the patient’s immune system to make antibodies itself.

    Lyme PrEP showed success in studies of mice and primates, and researchers received FDA approval in February to start human trials. If the results are promising, researchers will proceed to larger trials to determine whether Lyme PrEP works. That means Lyme PrEP could reach markets no sooner than 2023.

    Read the original article on Business Insider

  3. This is from today’s Yahoo News:

    Why COVID cases are surging in states with high vaccination rates — and what it means for the winter ahead
    Thu, November 11, 2021, 3:45 PM

    Coronavirus cases are surging in several U.S. states with relatively high vaccination rates, prompting concern among health officials who had hoped inoculations would help curb the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The current uptick — arriving exactly one year after last winter’s massive COVID wave — appears to be the start of a seasonal spike in places with cooler weather that were spared the worst of the initial U.S. Delta surge, which hit undervaccinated Southern states hardest this summer.

    Protesters at a rally in Los Angeles, one of therm holding a sign that says,
    A protest on Monday against the Los Angeles City Council’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city employees and contractors. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
    The question now is whether above-average vaccination coverage and continued mitigation measures in states such as New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont, Illinois, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Colorado — the seven states that have seen the largest increases in COVID cases during the past two weeks — can keep rising infections from turning into the kind of tsunami of hospitalizations and deaths that plagued the entire country last holiday season, before vaccines were widely available.

    If so, it could signal a new, less dangerous phase of the pandemic, particularly in areas with higher levels of immunity.

    If not, much of America could soon look like Florida over the summer, when more residents were dying of COVID each day than ever before.

    On paper, the latest case numbers seem ominous. In Vermont, which has the highest vaccination rate of any state in the country, new daily cases are up 49 percent in the past two weeks. More than 72 percent of Vermonters have been fully vaccinated, compared with 59 percent nationally.

    In neighboring New Hampshire, new daily cases are up 84 percent in the past two weeks (compared with a 7 percent jump over the same period nationwide), despite 63 percent of its population being fully inoculated.

    In New Mexico, new daily cases are up 46 percent in the same period, even though 63 percent of its residents are fully vaccinated.

    And in neighboring Colorado, new daily cases are up 42 percent, despite 62 percent of its population having received their shots.

    A member of the Thornton, Colo., Fire Department, wearing gloves, holds a handful of vials of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.
    A member of the Thornton, Colo., Fire Department distributes doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
    Cases are also up significantly in Minnesota (50 percent), Illinois (49 percent), Rhode Island (43 percent), New York (27 percent) and Massachusetts (24 percent) — states where more than 6 in 10 residents are fully vaccinated. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, more than 70 percent of the population has received all necessary vaccine doses. Even California is starting to see a rise in cases.

    Similar spikes started earlier this fall in European countries with corresponding vaccination rates — another worrisome sign for the U.S.

    Several factors are driving the sharp increase in cases, health officials say: colder weather forcing people indoors, sometimes without masks; the hypercontagious Delta variant, which can cause breakthrough cases; and waning protection against infection for those who got vaccinated early, especially seniors.

    “The first ones to vaccinate [are] going to be the first ones to experience the waning immunity,” Dr. David Scrase, New Mexico’s health and human services secretary, told the New York Times.

    (Even so-called natural immunity doesn’t guarantee protection. According to a new study, unvaccinated people who had a recent infection were five times more likely to be reinfected than those who were fully vaccinated and didn’t have a prior infection.)

    So far, new daily hospitalization numbers across the affected states have not shot up as rapidly as new daily case numbers, rising anywhere from 4 percent in New Hampshire to 20 percent in New Mexico during the past two weeks. (In New York and Massachusetts, hospitalizations continue to fall after summer Delta bumps.)

    If this pattern persists, it will be welcome news — a sign that substantial vaccine coverage (along with new therapeutics and safety measures such as public indoor mask rules) is helping to prevent severe outcomes, and that the virus is becoming the kind of threat that Americans can live with in the long term.

    People wear face masks upon entry from Mexico into the United States in San Ysidro, Calif.
    People wear face masks upon entry from Mexico into the United States in San Ysidro, Calif., on Monday. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
    But hospitalizations lag cases by several weeks, and deaths lag hospitalizations. A steep rise in one (and then the other) would suggest that too many Americans still lack the necessary immunity — even in states with relatively high vaccination rates — to keep COVID under control while normal life resumes.

    Going forward, boosters and childhood vaccinations are likely to make a big difference — though it’s unclear how much of a difference they’ll make this winter.

    At the moment, Americans over the age of 65 and others who consider themselves high risk are eligible for a third dose six months after receiving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, according to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Americans 18 years or older who received the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine are eligible two months after receiving the original shot.

    Numerous studies have shown that the vaccines become substantially less effective at preventing COVID infections over time and in the face of Delta, and that seniors tend to lose some protection against severe illness as well.

    In response, Pfizer said earlier this week that it is seeking emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a COVID-19 vaccine booster for all individuals 18 and older.

    At a briefing from health officials on the White House COVID-19 response team Wednesday, Jeff Zients, coordinator of the Biden administration’s coronavirus effort, said that more than 25 million Americans have received a booster, or about 800,000 a day — up about 50 percent from the daily average a month ago.

    “That’s real progress,” Zients said.

    Jeff Zients, the White House's COVID-19 response czar; White House press secretary Jen Psaki; and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at a press briefing in April.
    Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response czar, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during a press briefing in April. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
    Yet all told, more than three-quarters of the 36 million U.S. seniors who are now eligible for a booster still haven’t received one — a huge shortfall that could leave many of them vulnerable this winter (while also contributing to higher-than-necessary hospitalization and death rates in states where vaccine coverage is otherwise robust).

    Meanwhile, the CDC authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 last week, making about 28 million kids eligible for inoculation — the largest remaining bloc of unvaccinated Americans. So far, about 900,000 children in that age group have received their first dose, the White House said Wednesday.

    “Parents and families across the country are breathing giant sighs of relief — and we are just getting started,” Zients said.

    Still, the vast majority of younger kids simply won’t have time to get fully vaccinated before the holidays, so childhood inoculations are unlikely to immediately alter the trajectory of the pandemic. Unvaccinated children face less risk of serious illness than adults — but they can still transmit the virus to others.

    Ultimately, SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic, spreading seasonally around the globe in ever-evolving variations that might make a lot of people feel ill for a few days but would be ultimately much less damaging and deadly because everybody would have some degree of immunity through vaccination or prior infection.

    As Americans continue to inch back toward normalcy, and as cases continue to rise even in places where vaccine uptake is strong, this winter will become a test of whether the U.S. is as close to endemicity as many hope — or as far away as others fear.

    Explore how the Delta variant correlates with the national political landscape in this 3D experience from the Yahoo immersive team.

    For more immersive stories, click here.

  4. Very interesting study on obesity and autoimmune antibodies:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-01016-9

    SARS-CoV-2 infection induces neutralizing antibodies in all lean but only in few obese COVID-19 patients. SARS-CoV-2 infection also induces…autoimmune antibodies more in lean than in obese patients…Moreover, because the autoimmune antibodies found in serum samples of COVID-19 patients have been correlated with serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a general marker of inflammation, we also evaluated the association of anti-MDA and anti-AD antibodies with serum CRP and found a positive association between CRP and autoimmune antibodies.

    Excellent investigation into the relationship between the immune response and the patient’s level of obesity with some substantial associated findings. They established that obese patients are not benefited by their antibody response, as they are not neutralizing spike or virus, but rather they are targeted at the patient. Further reaching than this, the finding that the infection causes an increase in autoimmune antibodies in both obese and lean patients, but moreso in lean patients. Finally they found a biological marker(CRP) that correlates to the level of autoimmune antibodies. This means, if these findings are substantiated, that a simple test of CRP could qualify the level of autoimmune antibodies in patients, a very significant possibility. They summed up noting that

    similar autoimmune antibodies may also be secreted following COVID-19 vaccination.

    This could directly account for many of the neurological and immunological symptoms described in VAERS following vaccination, recall the antibody levels following vaccination is much higher than following infection.

    This was a small study and deserves to be fast tracked towards further investigation in broader studies that should specifically confirm these findings and include vaccine subjects in the study as well.

  5. Now California’s case rate is twice that of the Sunshine State’s.

    There is a prepackaged bias which ignores a greater reality in this. The bias is to contrast liberal centers from conservative centers, while ignoring the reality that we saw this same contrasting geographic reality last year. FL, GA, TX, etc were breaking with Covid and cases were skyrocketing and the world was going to come to an end because the south had the temerity to allow there citizens the ability to exercise their freedoms in late-summer 2020. It was shortly after this that northern states began breaking with cases as the southern outbreak subsided. And a year later the same geographic trends are being encountered while the same hysteria ignores the issue of seasonality as opposed to social behaviors.

    Seasonality implies the environmental factors(eg temperature/humidity) create regional differences in the spread of disease which are not controllable. If you look at the peak in cases[still based on the useless PCR which may be positive for people who do not have Covid and negative for people who do have Covid] for both Texas and Florida in 2020/2021 they peaked within 2wks year-over-year. This repeating reality is becoming apparent everywhere as you can see in this photo:
    https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1458249091402584069/photo/1
    Seasonality can only be influenced by mitigation strategies, it can not be defeated, especially by politically-motivated strategies.

    This is not the end of the story, however, it is only the beginning, unfortunately.

    A study last March showed that White Tail Deer had antibodies to Covid in 40% of the population and now that has increased to 80%(https://t.co/2HykFblb4F?amp=1). It is also in 80% of feral cats in Europe. These are each single studies, so the data may reflect a fair description of reality or not, but the underlying truth is that Covid is here to stay regardless of the actual levels. So, we need to accommodate to the virus without making the virus more dangerous.

    When comparing last year to this year, Covid cases are much worse. This is true with Covid deaths and all-cause deaths as well. This winter is expected to be the emerging moment for Delta+ which is impervious to the vaccine-induced antibodies, and is already present in Hawaii(5%) and England(8%).

    Vaccine-antibodies are driving the virus to mutate towards a more lethal, aggressive form due to their focal target of Spike, expected by basic virology as has been discussed several times. This is why the Case-fatality-rate in England has moved from 0.25% to 0.75%(see UK-surveillance reports) since June. This leaves people asking “you mean it isn’t a pandemic of the unvaccinated?” and others stating that “no, it is a pandemic of the vaccinated!” The reality is that the vaccines are creating the variants, but in truth, as India showed us, we are only suffering from a pandemic of a lack of treatment and and a lack of common sense. The virus will mutate towards a more virulent form due to the spike focused vaccine-antibodies, but treatment and supporting the immune system will prevent infections and mutations by preventing the viral reproduction without focusing on the spike as the vaccines do.

    We should all seek treatment and medical prophylaxis as possible, and support your immune system(good diet, regular exercise, regular sleep patterns, Vit. D/Vit. K2, Zinc, Magnesium, Selenium, N-acetylcystein, Quercetin, etc) and avoid part of the seasonal effects(drink more water, keep windows open, or least slightly, as temperatures and security allow, preventing indoors viral concentration rising, Vit. D again).

  6. Now, Dr. Wachter is incomparably better credentialed than I am, and UCSF is a top medical school, but I wonder why he is so certain that natural immunity will fade more than vaccines, which we already are told require booster shots.

    Anyone supporting this nonsense, including Dr. Wachter needs to look at these 122 studies and explain why they are all wrong. This is what a preponderance of evidence looks like. Such standards are old now that we have faked data and biased collections to produce single prejudiced authoritative single ‘studies’, but as in all things, this is a degradation of quality towards proving a desired result, a shell game where only the state wins, and reality is rewritten towards this pre-conceived victory, regardless of the cost of mounting deaths and sufferings:
    122 Research Studies Affirm Naturally Acquired Immunity to Covid-19: Documented, Linked, and Quoted

  7. Would there happen to be something nobody is talking about; at least not very much?
    Would that something happen to be called “Therapeutics”?
    Are they being used at all in some places? Officially or unofficially?