We’ve been fooled – two jabs won’t buy you holiday freedom after all - "it was our only exit strategy from this vicious circle of lockdowns at home. But new evidence has thrown all this into doubt. Anti-vaxxers will delight in this latest development: that being jabbed won’t stop you spreading the extra-infectious delta variant after all. It certainly protects you personally, to a high degree, from serious symptoms and death – but the vast majority of us weren’t at risk of that anyway. What it won’t do, according to an increasing body of evidence, is prevent you from being a carrier and thus a danger to others. This somewhat defeats the whole point – and is certainly the only reason international travel has resumed of late... Many will feel cheated by this. Certainly, the reason I rolled up my sleeve in the first place was not because I was afraid of Covid, but solely to get my freedoms back. I really did not want to get jabbed; for the same reason I’ve never got the flu shot, because personally I’d rather take my chances on catching the illness. Based on the Government’s own QCovid risk calculator tool, my risk – as a reasonably healthy 34-year-old – of being hospitalised with Covid-19 is 0.0218 per cent, and my risk of dying is 0.0007 per cent. This should have been my gamble alone to take, but it has been a deeply unpopular and ‘selfish’ stance. Since the early days of the drive, it’s been rammed down our throats that in getting vaccinated, we were doing a public service to others. It was our only chance to reach ‘herd immunity’, we were urged – (a notion that has since been branded an unattainable ‘mythical’ goal by the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group). Lo and behold, as data from the UK, the US and beyond is proving, the vaccines might well save you, but they won’t save everyone else. The messaging has thus changed... The warning signs were there months ago, when the countries with the highest vaccination rates in the world were also recording enormous surges in case counts. Many of these, heavily reliant on tourism for their GDP, had rushed to inoculate their entire populations as a matter of urgency purely for this reason: to reopen for visitors. The Seychelles, for example, had by mid-May double-jabbed more than 80 per cent of its population, but regardless, its case count was 67 times higher than ours. According to Telegraph's live tracker, it has now vaccinated over 92 per cent of its citizens and its current infection rate is still a massive 336 per 100,000. Fat lot of good their drive did them, as the islands continue to languish on our red list... all those with a saviour complex who had their jabs in an evangelical quest to ‘protect others’ should dismount their high horse. And all those who did so purely in pursuit of an easier holiday have every right to feel grumpy."
Why I will refuse to quarantine after my amber list holiday - "The only way a nation can reliably prevent new cases from entering from abroad is to funnel every single arrival (not just from red-listed countries) into state-supervised quarantine hotels, and even that method isn’t watertight, as the Australians will tell you. The amber list is a prop; there to indulge the fearful, paranoid echelon of society that Boris somewhat reluctantly helped to create with Sage’s relentless fearmongering. In truth, the vaccine drive has already worked, better in fact than anyone expected, and we’ve got more than enough evidence to prove it. The Indian variant, just like all the others, has not stopped the jabs from doing their job. There’s no evidence to suggest that other variants in amber-listed countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and France present a hazard to us... to do any damage, the strain would need to be capable of beating the jabs and hospitalising the vaccinated. No such variant has been found anywhere in the world, so for now at least, it doesn’t exist, and certainly not in Greece.Even if I did contract Covid on the shores of an island that has all but eradicated the disease, there would be less than a 1 per cent chance of me being infectious after testing negative before departure, according to a recent study conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute. Of the 600 travellers who underwent a pre-flight PCR test, only 1 per cent tested positive and therefore didn’t board, while just 0.4 per cent of the remaining passengers tested positive in the five days following. Positive, let’s not forget, for a virus that had a 99 per cent survival rate even before we vaccinated the vulnerable.The odds of me being dangerous to society by not self-isolating following this trip are minuscule. Imagine the lives we would lead if we approached every activity with this level of hyper-caution. We certainly wouldn’t be driving, never mind getting on planes."
John Robson: Hypocrites suddenly realize blockades are wrong when they disagree with the protest - "I’ve opposed illegal obstruction all my life. I’ve always said the right to protest is important but there’s no right to do it standing on someone else’s head, in their doorway or amid the smashed remains of their place of business. Which oddly makes me retrograde and uncivilized, because on Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, pipelines or Caledonia, the smart set are all, “Yay direct action!” Then when it’s something they don’t like they pivot without hint of shame to pomposities about the rule of law. No wonder people are mad... On COVID, as with so much in the modern world, virtually everyone seems to have lost their minds. On one side are those who smugly insist that every flip and flop in official advice is “following the science” and we must all do as we are told and never ask questions or count costs, and on the other are those apparently determined to prove that anyone who does ask questions is a dangerous lunatic."
If not for double standards, the left would have none
Meme - Sarah Reese Jones: "Trump is pushing for a "second opening of the economy." Just a reminder, Trump doesn't have the ability to reopen the economy. That power rests with the governors."
Sarah Reese Jones: "Biden calls Ron DeSantis a bully and vows to use his power as president to get Republican governors out of the way to protect students and teachers from COVID."
Judge overturns order that banned unvaccinated mother from seeing son - "Judge James Shapiro is allegedly the first jurist to use non-vaccination as a punitive measure. However, Judge Shapiro has now reversed his decision that banned an Illinois mother from seeing her 11-year-old son, after she claimed he had made the decision due to her not being vaccinated. Rebecca Firlit, 39, said she was perplexed as a recent hearing was “just supposed to be about expenses and child support”... Ms Firlit explained that her decision not to take the vaccine was for medical reasons: “I’ve had adverse reactions to vaccines in the past and was advised not to get vaccinated by my doctor.”... This isn’t the first time Judge James Shapiro has been accused of bringing vaccination statuses into an unrelated case."
Unvaccinated parents with medical exemptions being prevented from seeing their kids is proof that all the people with concerns about the moral panic against the unvaccinated leading to grave human rights violations are paranoid far right conspiracy theorists,
As a Doctor, May I Refuse to See Unvaccinated Patients? - The New York Times
So much for the Hippocratic Oath
Little Faith In the Jab: NSW Premier Says She Wouldn't Want to Be Anywhere Near An Unvaccinated Person - " New South Wales Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has seemingly admitted she has little confidence in the vaccine’s ability to protect double-jabbed people from COVID-19... “You have been warned,” Berejiklian threatened. “If you’re not vaccinated, come forward and get the vaccine, otherwise you won’t be able to participate in the many freedoms that people have at 70 percent vaccination.” The aim, according to the Premier, is to ensure only vaccinated people are allowed to interact with each other when the state partially re-opens in mid-October."
Apartheid is good
Randall Denley: Keeping the unvaccinated at bay won't aid the vaccinated - "There is a misguided idea that keeping the unvaccinated at bay is going to help the vaccinated. It’s difficult to see how that will happen. Fully vaccinated people have an exceptionally low risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19... what rational person would shut down the economy or close schools when 76 per cent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, 83 per cent have one shot and the numbers are rising every day? Economic and school shutdowns were a blunt tool when no one was vaccinated. They would make no sense now... If Ford was being completely frank, he would have admitted that it was just easier to give into growing pressure from hyper-cautious public health officials, political opponents and the significant portion of the public that reflexively endorses any public health measure that offers the illusion of safety. Let’s face it: People want to see the unvaccinated get a kick in the pants, and here it is in the form of excluding them from any activity that could be remotely described as fun. The potential upside is that it might make the unvaccinated less likely to make each other sick if they stay home or get vaccinated. That’s far from a sure thing. It’s easy for people to get together and socialize, even with the new rules. If the fear of death from COVID hasn’t persuaded them to get vaccinated, this week’s new restrictions probably won’t either... The vaccine certificate regime is likely to be with us for a long time to come, given Ontarians’ sensitivity to perceived risk. In the meantime, get used to not leaving home without your papers in order."
Direct your anger at the lockdown obsessives, not the unvaccinated few - "Interestingly, however, the Public Health Act 1984 – the statute used to underpin the lockdowns – specifically states that any legislative protections “may not include provision requiring a person to undergo medical treatment”, which includes vaccinations. So a measure used (wrongly, in the view of some eminent jurists) to stop healthy people leaving their homes or visiting relatives cannot be the basis for compulsory vaccination. That would require another Act of Parliament and the Government does not want to go there."
More anti-vaxxer hospital protests cause a scene on Toronto's University Avenue
Being against forced / mandatory vaccination and/or coerced vaccinations / vaccination coercion means you are an "anti-vaxxer" now"
Wake Up, Singapore - Posts | Facebook - "Anti-Vaxxers are now plotting to harass @hossanleong . They are also, unsurprisingly, homophobic bigots. Hossan Leong should file a police report and the police should investigate each and every one of these people who threatened him. The authorities should do more to monitor such groups and, where necessary, clamp down. Especially when they do things like run sponsored ads, use incendiary language or conspire to harass and doxx others. Despicable."
Apparently you are not allowed to criticise covid hysteria. But of course covid hystericists can run sponsored ads and use incendiary language all they like
Meme - Biden eating ice cream to masked NPC: "I'm taking all of your rights away until you do what say
Masked NPC to normal person: "Why are you taking all my rights away?"
Keywords: my freedoms, why are you taking away
One Third Of Vaccinated Americans Have Cut Ties With The Unvaccinated, Poll Finds - "33% of vaccinated respondents had in some way “cut ties or ended relationships with” at least some unvaccinated people in their lives. Of those, 8% said they “do not intend on socializing with them again,” 11% said they’ve cut ties but would see them again if they get the shot and 14% still speak to the unvaccinated person, but will not see them in person. A further 27% said they haven’t cut ties but it “upsets” them that the unvaccinated person won’t get the shot, while 39% haven’t cut ties and believe it’s a “personal choice.”... The most prominent person so far to say she’s cut unvaccinated people out of her life is actor Jennifer Aniston, who said in an August interview with InStyle magazine she had “lost a few people in my weekly routine who have refused or did not disclose” their vaccination status."
Did covid hysteria turn them into twisted hateful people or were they already strong liberals before covid came along?
It seems many covid hystericists don't believe their vaccines work
Chris Rock on Twitter - "Hey guys I just found out I have COVID, trust me you don’t want this. Get vaccinated."
Why doesn't he believe the vaccine works?
Dr Adam Aneevit on Twitter - "It is not the responsibility of the Unvaccinated to protect the Vaccinated. That's the Vaccines job."
Brian Bird: It feels a lot like the early days of the pandemic again. But should it? - The Hub - "Something strange happened this summer. Almost overnight, it felt like we were transported back to the early days of the pandemic — to that month of March we will never forget... Many of us seem as anxious today as we were at the start, if not more so... colleagues of mine have voiced a significant degree of anxiety over being back on campus and in the classroom again. I have every reason to believe these colleagues are vaccinated. Almost all the students we teach are vaccinated. We know the vaccines are superb at preventing severe illness and hospitalization. With these facts in hand, I was not particularly anxious about returning to campus. So why are my colleagues worried? Fear of COVID-19 appears to have resurged during the Delta chapter. Contrary to what one might expect, this fear does not neatly align with vaccination status. I suspect we all know vaccinated persons who remain very afraid of the virus. The Delta variant poses unique challenges, but we have pulled too many fire alarms in too many places. We need to take a breath and regain our bearings, or else — in a certain respect — this pandemic will last far longer than it should. Over the past 18 months, many of us have embraced an unrealistic and even utopian expectation of safety from COVID-19... The pursuit of near absolute safety from COVID-19 has steadily intensified over the course of the pandemic in part because questioning this pursuit, even mildly, is often considered politically incorrect. It seems fair to say that being publicly and scrupulously cautious of COVID-19 — opting to go above and beyond on this front — has become, to some extent and at some level, a marker of being enlightened and progressive. As a result, in pandemic parlance, it often seems like there are only two types of people in the world: the COVID-conscious on the one hand and the dangerous denialists on the other. Framing the discourse on COVID-19 in this way has likely impeded our ability to tackle this pandemic as thoughtfully as we otherwise could have. To our detriment, little space has been made for the moderate middle."
Vaccinated Man Just Wishes There Was Something That Could Protect Him From COVID | The Babylon Bee - "“I took my vaccine to show I’m one of the group,” said Kyle Howard, who had the Pfizer vaccine, “but I’m out there alone, with COVID still lurking about. The government needs to take measures to protect me and my precious vaccinated blood from the virus.” There have been pushes to put masks on “dirty, grubby, unvaccinated children” to help protect all the essential vaccinated adults, but some worry masks simply won’t be enough. “The government needs to round up all those deranged, unvaccinated lunatics and take them far away from us,” said Benjamin Reed, who had the Moderna vaccine. “They have the COVID and could give it to us. I spend all my waking hours worrying about us elite vaccinated people being tainted by the COVID.” It’s generally agreed that the unruly unvaccinated must be isolated from vaccinated society to protect the vaccinated and the science-blessed vaccine from the virus."
Vaccine hesitancy: Obituary of Candace Ayers blames unvaccinated people for woman’s death - "Ayers’s family said she caught Covid in July when she went to visit an unvaccinated friend, whose husband had died from Covid."
This is getting richer and richer. Even professional contact tracers can't always be certain how someone got infected, much less rank amateurs faced with an environment with many cases. Not to mention how they are ignorant about the science on vaccination not stopping transmission
At least stoking hatred and division fulfils their need for tribalism
Pingdemic ‘threatens food supplies’ amid warnings app is ‘losing social consent’ - "Concerns have been raised that the increasing number of pings sent by the NHS Test and Trace app could potentially cause food shortages as workers are forced into self-isolation... Due to shortages of staff, trains have been cancelled, and councils across the country have warned residents that garden waste and recycling bins would not be emptied for weeks to prioritise the collection of normal household rubbish... Fomer health secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Saturday that there is a risk that the app could “lose social consent”, and suggested that the government should “make it less sensitive or move to a system where you have to get a test when you are pinged”.He added: “The risk is that if people are deleting the app then you can’t even ping them to ask them to have a test.”" Better for everyone to starve to death than less than 1% die due to covid
Martin Kulldorff: Vaccine mandates are unnecessary and will sow distrust - The Hub - "A huge problem with mandates, however, is that we have many people who have had COVID. They have immunity. We have known for over a year that if you’ve had COVID you have strong lasting immunity to this disease. And we now know more recently that the immunity from having had COVID is stronger and more durable than the immunity you get from vaccines. It’s also an issue of global public health, because we are now forcefully vaccinating a lot of people who don’t need the vaccines, while there are many people in the developing world, in South America, in Africa, in the Middle East, in South Asia and so on, who are desperate to get the vaccine because they haven’t gotten it. They are old people, and they are higher risk. Mandating vaccinations in the rich countries to people who don’t need it results in a situation where there is less supply in the developing world. When you mandate vaccines to people who don’t need it in one place, then unfortunately, that means that there’s less supply for poor people in Brazil, in India, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Nigeria, and so on. So it’s a very unethical, immoral, and selfish thing for us in the United States to give it to people who don’t need it when there are a lot of people around the world who do need it and who are not getting it. Mandating people who have had COVID to get vaccinated makes zero sense from a scientific point of view, and it makes zero sense from a public health point of view, but it’s worse than that. It actually creates problems because when people see that they are forced to take a vaccine when they don’t need to, it creates a lot of distrust in public health. And we have seen during this last year and a half that all the hard work we’ve done over many decades to build trust in the vaccines are now disappearing because we are introducing mandates that makes no sense from a scientific or public health perspective."
Meme - ""I DRANK WATER AND STAYED HYDRATED LAST WEEK"
CNN: JOE ROGAN DRINKS DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE, A SOLVENT USED TO COOL NUCLEAR REACTORS!"
Mr. Snrub on Twitter - "Remember when Kristi Noem didn’t want to ban mandates in her state because she was afraid it would invite Biden to overstep in his power? Lolol"
The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "First they came for the unvaccinated, and I did not speak out— because no one is coming for the unvaccinated, you whiny paranoid performative-nonsense crybabies. just get the shot and you'll be fine." - The Other 98%
"Now that we have a vaccine mandate, where's the website for me to start collecting my bounties?" - The Other 98%
"4 hours apart! (Not to mention the first meme contradicts itself) They’re not really hiding their views at this point."
Leana Wen, M.D. on Twitter - "No one should tell you what to do with your body. Planned Parenthood is fighting against these bans on abortion care with everything we have — because everyone has the right to make decisions about their own bodies. #BansOffMyBody"
Leana Wen, M.D. on Twitter - "What I wished the new Biden #covid19 strategy would contain: Vaccine requirements for interstate travel, mandates for schools (as we do for other immunizations), and a national proof of vaccination system. Cajoling isn’t working. It’s time for drastic action."
Mikel Jollett on Twitter - "Being against a vaccine that is rushed to market WITHOUT ADEQUATE TESTING isn't being anti-vax, it's being pro-science. There's a reason it takes a long time. The reason is: improperly vetted vaccines KILL people."
Mikel Jollett on Twitter - "Just so we’re clear: Republicans believe it’s perfectly constitutional to require vaccinations for polio, small pox, chicken pox, rubella, the measles, diptheria, tetanus and hepatitis b, but it’s FASCIST to require a vaccination for covid."
Opinion: Mandated Vaccinations — Who is responsible for their risks? - "If I am mandated to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in order to keep my job, and subsequently experience an adverse event, who is responsible? Who is responsible if I have neurological complications, a heart attack, or a stroke and am never able to work again. Who is responsible if I die?... Correlation does not equal causation, they say. But when you are counted as a COVID-19 death, correlation ALWAYS equals causation... for each doctor, government official, and layperson to claim that these vaccines are safe, the risk of death needs to be zero. The risk of an adverse event needs to be zero. If that is not the truth, then the truth needs to be spelled out in black and white. Where is it? Informed consent. Where is it? I’ve heard the following argument for getting the vaccination a nauseating amount of times. The argument is that the deaths and risks from the vaccine pale in comparison to the deaths from COVID-19. If you knew ahead of time that you or your child were going to die from this vaccine would your heart be comforted by the fact that “so many more people died from the virus?” This debate is illogical on a personal level. This is a decision that should be based on each and every one of our own personal risk and benefit analyses. Speaking of children, in the 2017-2018 flu season 643 children died. To date, 332 children have died from COVID-19. Mass vaccinating children with an experimental product, who are at little-to-no risk of harm from this virus, is in my opinion, grossly negligent... Another argument is that the unvaccinated are getting sick more often and taking up hospital bed space. I’ve heard the opposite as well. The truth is elusive. To this I say, 78 percent of those who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 are overweight or obese. As many as 95 percent of those who die are obese. So before we blame the unvaccinated for hogging up all of the hospital bed space, let’s first blame the obese. But that’s not appropriate to mention. It’s much more acceptable to call those that are concerned about the side effects of the vaccine, selfish and deserving of death... For some reason natural immunity through infection is all of a sudden questioned. You aren’t being forced to get the vaccine, they say. You just can’t have a job they say. Well if that’s not medical coercion, then please tell me what is. Most people need to make money to eat."
The Saturday Debate: Are passport mandates the best way out of the pandemic? | The Star - "convenience is a significant driver of behaviour, and as social psychologists have known for 65 years, people will readily change their attitudes to match their voluntary actions, even when this behaviour is externally induced. How can we use this knowledge to protect schoolchildren, LTC residents, and hospital patients? Every employee could be given the choice of vaccination or reassignment to a drab cubicle farm, populated by masked, unvaxxed colleagues doing less stimulating administrative work than they were trained to do. This would keep them away from those who need protecting, and away from the job that most would likely prefer. I expect we’d lose some of our front-line staff this way, but we’d gain positive commitment alongside compliance in the vast majority. Our growing embrace of mandatory vaccination and the rise of mobs protesting at hospitals and throwing stones at politicians is not a coincidence. We place ourselves in great social peril when we underestimate how many will turn to violence when they perceive a loss of agency coupled with a perception of injustice. Wars on terror produce more terrorists, and forcible vaccination produces more hardened anti-vaxxers. Vaccination policies, deftly based in nudging, could solve three problems at once: our children and elders would be safe, our vaccination rates would be high, and the anti-vax mob would dwindle. “Nudge” was aimed at influencing libertarian Americans, but Canada has a far-right wing too: “Nudge” should be required reading for anybody working on public COVID-19 vaccination policy."
Notorious-celt on Twitter - "2 weeks to flatten the curve is now 3 jabs to feed your family.."
Eva_IRL on Twitter - "NEW - Kamala Harris: "The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is not negotiable. The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is their decision, it is their body.""
"Cool. And I’ve made a decision about my body to not get the jab. Glad that debate is settled."
Jesse Kelly on Twitter - "Oh I discriminate. If I was an employer with over 100 employees I’d fire every single person who voted for Biden today. Discrimination must go both ways now."
Meme - Caitin Johnstone: "We're a few months out from seeing American libertarians angrily sharing around a video of police beating an unvaccinated Black person for noncompliance with some new authoritarian law and seeing liberals in the comments cheering on the police."
The Masks Were Working All Along - The Atlantic
Mask fetishists are very happy with this study, but in reality if they read it they'd realise it's proof of how useless they are. The fact that a journalist swallows the spin wholesale and even spreads fake news about the study is shocking: "For cloth masks, we find an imprecise zero [for relative reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence]". Plus, the effect of surgical masks on symptomatic seroprevalence by age group was statistically insignificant for everyone younger 50 and below. The fact that there is only an effect for older people suggests that some other mechanism might be at play: for example, mask use is not double blinded (others can see that you're wearing a mask), so perhaps seeing more people wearing masks makes older people more cautious
Wuhan Lockdown Started A Year Ago: Residents Look Back With Pride, Anger, Pain - "Her 39-year-old son died from the coronavirus in Wuhan last year. Her son, an elementary school teacher, came down with a fever in early February. But the severity of the lockdown meant no one could drive him to any of Wuhan's strained hospitals to look for care. Eventually, her son hitched a ride on the back of an open truck in freezing rain looking for an open hospital bed. He finally found an open hospital spot, but no one attended to him for two days. He texted desperate messages for help to his wife before he died several days later... Zhong asked that only her last name be used because authorities have arrested people who documented how local governments struggled to provide care in the onset of the pandemic. Others who spoke out about what have been imprisoned. Zhang Zhan, a lawyer-turned-blogger, was sentenced to four years in prison last month for "fabricating lies." Until her arrest in May, Zhang walked around the city and uploaded videos to YouTube about the desperation of Wuhan's residents throughout the lockdown. Now behind bars, Zhang is on a hunger strike to protest against her sentence, according to one of her lawyers who requested anonymity as his law license would be revoked for speaking to foreign media. Ren Quanniu, another lawyer who represented Zhang, had his license revoked this week for taking on politically sensitive cases, including Zhang's... "The lockdown created a run on medical resources and a sense of panic. Many people with conditions other than the coronavirus could not get care as a result and died during lockdown.""
Black Texas women filmed 'attacking NYC restaurant hostess' say they were racially profiled
Which will win? Covid hysteria or anti racism?
Offspring Drummer Booted From Tour for Not Getting Vaccinated, He Says - "Pete Parada, the drummer for the Offspring, has found out the hard way that some businesses — and even bands — are drawing a hard line on requiring vaccinations to come back to work. He posted on his social media Tuesday that he’s been ousted from the group because he won’t agree to get the COVID vaccine. Beyond being replaced on an upcoming tour, Parada says he’s been told not to show up at the studio, either, even though he claims to have a legitimate medical reason for not getting the jab."
Weird. We were told that there would be medical exemptions
