Despite President Asterisk’s warning about a “dark winter” with COVID, things are instead much brighter than the media and the Administration* would have you know. Information out of Israel which is way ahead of us in vaccinating their citizens (they were well on the way to creating a coronavirus vaccine before COVID hit) has encouraging news. They used the Pfizer vaccine, but the Moderna vaccine is almost identical, so their figures can be extrapolated to those who receive either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Two weeks after the second dose, the vaccine was:
95.8% effective at preventing infection
98% effective at preventing symptoms
98.9% effective at preventing hospitalizations or death
99.2 % effective at stopping serious illness
These figures are not from a study of 3,000 or even 30,000 individuals, but rather real world figures from millions of adult Israelis. Furthermore, such figures show that the danger of vaccinated citizens to those who have not been vaccinated is miniscule if not non-existent. Thus, there is no need to wear a mask or social distance once you have been vaccinated. Even if you were one of the 4.2% who were vaccinated but still caught the virus, the antibodies in your system, while not enough to prevent infection, would be enough to prevent you from passing the infection to others. You simply wouldn’t have enough virus in your system.
Even more good news comes from Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University. He is confident that the virus threat will be pretty well gone by April and life for us will return as much to normal as Democrats allow. He has several reasons for this prediction. Cases of COVID-19 have dropped by 77% during the last six weeks, despite the fact that we are in the middle of winter—the primary season for viruses. In an interview with Fox News, Dr. Makary explained, “You, as a scientist, have to ask why (the extreme drop in cases when they should be increasing). We cannot explain that by vaccinated immunity. We can’t explain it by a sudden change in behavior. It is natural immunity and it’s now over 50% of the population.”
Given the fatality rate, Makary estimates that about two thirds of the population has already contracted the disease, most before we began testing for it, and many afterwards with symptoms so mild that they barely realized they were sick. About 1 in 600 Americans died of the disease, a fatality rate of 0.15%. The reinfection rate of those who we know had COVID is less than 1% and those cases are always mild, again indicating that natural immunity has been conferred to those who have had the virus. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he explained that his prognosis is based on “laboratory data, mathematical data, published literature, and conversations with experts.”
The problem, of course, is that Democrat leaders, the CDC, Dr. Fauci, governors, teachers’ unions, and even local school boards have become intoxicated with the power that they have over people. They continue to order mask wearing and lockdowns which are mostly followed in blue (Democrat-controlled) states, even though we now have concrete evidence showing that these mandates do not work to slow the spread of the virus. California has been totally locked down for months and masks are mandated everywhere, yet their rate of infection and death toll is no better and in fact, much worse, than that of Florida which has not followed the draconian lockdown measures.
And their safety measures seem to have hit Christians harder. In many blue states churches were forced to close and then, when opened, to only have 10 people inside at a time! Our little church in Redmon, IL combined services with a church from Brocton, IL and held the services on the porch of the church, broadcasting through the radios of the cars in which the parishioners sat, windows closed. An Edgar County Health Department assistant administrator called us to complain that the cars were not parked six feet apart! Pastors were fined, congregations were forced to hold services among the grocery aisles of Walmart, and President Trump’s DOJ were forced to step in since in some states, churches were closed while casinos and marijuana stores were open.
Teachers’ unions have coerced the current administration, who is largely beholding to them for their huge donations, into keeping schools closed. As a result, hospitals are reporting double the number of suicide attempts and successful suicides as in 2019 among teenagers. Some school boards have wisely opened their schools, but in areas like San Francisco, the city is suing the school board in order to force them to open schools.
Twenty-two million Americans are out of work and have been for months and many businesses have closed their doors for good. The outlet mall, located in Tuscola, IL, looks very much like a ghost town, with only a handful of businesses left. At least two are closing down this month and no one knows how soon the rest will follow.
We have also been told that even after we have been vaccinated against the virus, we will need to wear masks. In western Tennessee, a writer compiled information from contiguous counties between October, 2020 and December 21, 2020. Those with a mask mandate in place 2020 had 4.7% of their population infected while those without a mask mandate had 4.6% of their population infected. Justin Hart and his team at Rational Ground did a similar study of masked and unmasked counties in Florida. Here is what they found:
“When counties DID have a mandate in effect, there were 667,239 cases over 3,137 days with an average of 23 cases per 100,000 per day. When counties DID NOT have a countywide order, there were 438,687 cases over 12,139 days with an average of 22 cases per 100,000 per day.”
In other words, counties where people were forced to wear masks actually had more cases than counties in which people did not wear masks. So what good are masks? They are really no good at all, and the experts know this. Dr. Fauci himself first told us that we didn’t need to wear masks. Then, when they decided to force masks on us, he reversed himself, excusing his earlier statements as an attempt to save masks for hospital personnel. But that is a bogus argument, since they suggest cloth masks or even kerchiefs pulled over your nose and mouth as being appropriate protection. If those cloth masks are fine now, they were fine when Dr.Fauci told us we didn’t need masks at all.
Now, of course, after a study done with mannequins (not real people), the authorities tell us we should probably wear two masks since one is not effective alone. (As many of us have been saying all along.) But the study clearly states that its findings are not transferable to the real world since they used mannequins as their subjects and mannequins cannot become infected with COVID.
So, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that the vaccines work as does the immunity gained by those who have already had COVID. By April, with at least 40% of Americans vaccinated, COVID may be pretty much gone and life will get back to normal. The bad news is that Democrat officials may still continue to demand social distancing, masks, and lockdowns as a way to control us even when they are not needed.
I am basically a follow the rules person. But when I have my shots, the masks come off, and if a store harasses me for not wearing one, I’ll shop elsewhere. In the meantime, I am starting to wear my mask below my nose so I am not inhaling those fine mask filaments and so that I, who suffer from sinus congestion, can actually breathe. It is my first step of defiance against those who refuse to “follow the science” yet claim that they do. Why don’t you join me?