The Wholesale Banishment of Reasonable Doubt: Peter Smith
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2022/01/the-wholesale-banishment-of-reasonable-doubt/
Daniel Andrews wants ‘fully vaccinated’ redefined to require a booster. National cabinet didn’t go along last week. It will. And can a second booster — the fourth jab overall — be far behind? No, it can’t. Notice, too, that the interval between the second and third shot is now down to three months. Anyone for two months? Boosters for your five-year-olds anyone? Get one at your local 7-Eleven.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that Omicron is mild. Of that you have to be disabused with extreme frighteners. NSW health minister Brad Hazzard is on the job. “The numbers of boosters are not where we need them to be to keep people safe,” he said. Personally speaking, I think we need to be kept safe from Hypodermic Hazzard. Bar the doors and lock up your children.
In spruiking three doses, Andrews reportedly said, “We can all be proud, as a Victorian community, that 93 per cent-plus of us have had two doses.” Well, strictly speaking, Dan, only 93 percent-plus can be proud. The rest are mongrels with a penchant for disobeying orders; orders which, as you well know, must be obeyed or we’ll all die horribly.
There’s now a coronavirus unity ticket between NSW and Victoria. Perrottet in league with Despot Dan. Birds of a feather. What a disappointment Perrottet has turned out to be. Really, expectations of politicians of whatever complexion should be kept extremely low.
There, for example, is ex-IPA free-marketeer Tim Wilson the other day gifting $37 million of taxpayers’ dollars to yet another renewable-energy boondoggle. If they’re not boondoggles, why do they need handouts? How about another $1 billion to save an extremely healthy reef. Money’s no object. And just think. It’s never so bad that it can’t get worse. Albanese and Adam Bandt are lurking in the wings, stage left.
Enough of this rhetorical stuff. To vaccine data and the UK, where the data is better than can be obtained here or in the US. Up to a point, it’s comprehensive, up-to-date, and trustworthy, I think. Mind you, best to ignore the surrounding spiel, that’s skewed by the agenda.
The UK Health Security Agency issued its latest report on January 27, covering the four-week period from the last week in December to the end of the third week in January. A number of data points of interest below.
It is reported (in table 3) that the effectiveness of two doses of the vaccine, after 25-plus weeks, against symptomatic disease from the Omicron strain (the original not the new twist) lies between seven and ten per cent. In other words, close to zilch. Not materially effective at all.
Is also reported that after two-plus weeks, three doses are 63 percent effective. Sounds good. However, I ponder sceptically, how about after 25 weeks? Of course, they don’t have sufficient data to say. I’ll predict. Ineffective too. Else why are the Israelis onto number four?
It’s all becoming a circus. Can most of the people be fooled and frightened by hobgoblins all of the time? Yes, they can. Look around you at your willingly masked fellow men and women rushing for boosters.
Other interesting data for the four-week period (in Table 11). Of those aged sixty-plus hospitalised in emergency care within 28 days of a positive specimen, 1,873 had received two doses (22%), 5,119 three doses (60%); while, in comparison, the unvaccinated numbered just 1,292 (15%). And, by the way, the older the patients, the more skewed the data. Of those aged 70-plus, over 64 per cent were triple vaccinated; of those aged 80-plus, 66 per cent were triple vaccinated.
You can explain this data all you like. And, yes, we know the official explanation. A high proportion of people have been vaccinated so you’d expect more of them to be in hospital and to die. But so many? Seriously folks, of 8,516 people aged 60-plus brought into emergency care, would you expect that 5,119 were triple-vaccinated? Questions would be asked, surely, if the infectious disease were not the dreaded Wuhan virus and the vaccines hadn’t become sacrosanct; and medicos cancelled for questioning them.
Note also the absence of any useful interrogation of the data; at least any made public. For example, among the older unvaccinated, it seems plausible that there is a significant cohort who think themselves too frail to have the vaccine. They end up in hospital but would have been there vaccinated or not. This is really important to understand.
At one extreme, it could potentially show that the vaccines are ineffective in protecting those vulnerable to the virus; or least protecting them for very long. To wit, maybe the old and very sick succumb to severe illness and often death whether vaccinated or not. That doesn’t seem like an impossible hypothesis to me. Let me put it this way, how many people particularly vulnerable to the virus, those aged, say, seventy-plus with three or four comorbidities, has the vaccine saved? And, are being saved right now from Omicron?
Cut to the chase. Suppose you’re an 85-year-old obese diabetic with high blood pressure and a dicky ticker who comes into contact with the Omicron. Will the vaccine confer benefit? How much benefit? A detailed profiling of those infected by their age, health condition, vaccination status and outcome might be enlightening. I’m whistling Dixie.
The vaccines and multiple boosters of them are inviolate. Too much political capital has been invested in them to ever have them doubted. Imagine how silly Andrews, Perrottet, Hazzard, et al, and their counterparts overseas, would look. Unthinkable.
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