Briefly Noted: Today In Covid

Today we'll briefly compare information coming out of the UK and Israel with the official US narrative regarding where we stand with the Covid Panic.

First from the UK:

Either 60% or 40% of currently hospitalized Covid patients were fully vaccinated

That's my made-up title, but the real subtitle says it all:

Even the implied 40% figure affirms a worldwide trend showing high rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths among the ‘fully vaccinated.’

A worldwide trend--except in the US? That's if you're one of those people who believes the regime's media narrative. According to that narrative, the US is totally setting that worldwide trend on its ear. The article closes with this wet blanket for the regime narrative:

This phenomenon of rising cases occurring in association with high vaccine uptake, is not isolated to just a few countries, but has become a universal trend. 

Dr. Robert Malone, M.D., M.S., the inventor of the mRNA technology behind at least two of the experimental COVID-19 gene-therapy vaccines, recently expressed grave concern regarding widespread data indicating that the most “vaccinated” countries in the world are experiencing surges in COVID-19 cases, while the least vaccinated nations are not. 

Indeed, this correlation has been noticeable since at least April when, in an interview, Yale University professor of epidemiology, Dr. Harvey Risch, stated clinicians he had consulted “estimated that more than 60% of the new cases that they are treating— COVID cases—have been people who have been vaccinated.” 

There seems to be some conflict in the Covid media: Should we pay attention to Israel or not? Israel is about the most vaccinated country in the world (excluding a few other small places like Malta), and there have been a spate of stories coming from the Israeli media that are also a collective wet blanket for the gene therapy enthusiasts. There are two angles coming out of Israel. The first concerns the Dread Delta scariant. I'll excerpt a significant chunk of this post, because it raises interesting issues--such as skewed testing protocols:

Israel Finds Pfizer Jab Only 39% Effective At Stopping Delta Variant

Over the past month, Israel, the world's most heavily vaccinated country (with leading mRNA jabs, no less) has seen the number of positive COVID tests has risen by more than 30x as the number of active infections in the country has surpassed 10K.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Health Ministry, which has previously estimated the true efficacy of the Pfizer jab against the delta variant at only 64% (while still more than 90% effective at preventing serious illness and death), just released new data purporting to show that while the Pfizer jab is still 88% effective at preventing serious illness, it's only 39% effective at preventing infection with delta.

Alex Berenson, a former NYT journalist who has often reported on scientific findings that don't support the official narrative on masks and vaccines, shared the findings in a tweet, and speculated that the true efficacy in offering protection against the Delta variant might be even lower - perhaps as low as 30%.

Israel now says the Pfizer vaccine is down to only 40% protection against #Covid infection in the last month.

That’s the good news.

The bad news: the real number is probably below 30% at this point since the 40% number includes two weeks when effectiveness was notably higher. pic.twitter.com/XD3iFRZPPj

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 23, 2021

Even Bloomberg acknowledged that the Israeli data "could be skewed because of different ways of testing vaccinated groups of people versus those who hadn't been innoculated, according to the report.

"The heavily skewed exposure patterns in the recent outbreak in Israel, which are limited to specific population sectors and localities," means the analysis may not be able to take all factors into account, said Ran Balicer, chairman of Israel’s national expert advisory team on Covid-19 response. "We are trying to complement this research approach with additional ones, taking additional personal characteristics into account. But this takes time and larger case numbers."

Thank goodness our country, the good old USA, would never skew testing procedures for vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Oh, wait.

The second angle coming out of Israel is also of significant interest, and it tends to confirm something Karl Denninger wrote yesterday about the overall effect of these gene therapy medications on the human immune system--Denninger maintained that the effect is to make humans more susceptible to viral infections they would ordinarily fight off. Bear in mind that respiratory viruses don't simply disappear during the summer, but they are weakened by factors such as increased heat and sunlight, while the human immune system is strengthened (more Vitamin D). OK, this is somewhat speculative, but disturbing--because it highlights how many questions went unaddressed in the gene therapy rollout:

COVID-19 might be over, but viral infections in Israel are surging

The corona crisis might be over, but all over Israel adults and children are getting sick with viral infections in a phenomenon that is unprecedented for this time of the year, according to several medical professionals.

 

“We have never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Tal Brosh, head of Infectious Disease Unit at the Samson Assuta Ashdod Hospital. “We’ve been monitoring viral infections in the hospital, which of course is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in the community, as for each hospitalized patient, there are many more out there. Since the spring, we have been seeing an increasing number of respiratory diseases, and since May there has been a surge in RSV cases.”

 

RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, usually appears in the winter together with the influenza, and is especially serious for very young children and older, vulnerable adults.

 

“We usually see it disappearing in the summer, but if we consider the numbers now, it looks like winter in previous years,” said Brosh. “During the winter 2020-2021, we did not see one individual case of RSV.”

Finally, as we know, the Dems don't want to declassify information about Covid origins--the Wuhan Connection. However, at Powerline this morning, there's a lengthy quote from Josh Rogin's article in the WaPo. What's notable is that Rogin, while speaking in "nuanced" language, maintains that Dr. Rand Paul kicked Fauci's butt in the recent Senate hearings--as Dr. Paul usually does. Specifically, this had to do with Covid origins:

Both men were playing to the cameras, but many scientists think Paul actually does know what he’s talking about. One of them is Rutgers University microbiologist and biosafety expert Richard Ebright, whom Paul quoted as saying this research “matches, indeed epitomizes the definition of gain of function research.”

Other scientists, even those who believe the lab leak theory likely, argue that Fauci is technically correct, although they note that the official definition is so narrow it enables anyone to avoid the review process Fauci himself helped to establish. In other words, if the oversight system for reviewing risky research is almost never used, what good is it?

Which makes the review process a bit like a gene therapy injection, I suppose.

 

But it doesn’t matter which “gain of function” definition you prefer. What everyone can now see clearly is that NIH was collaborating on risky research with a Chinese lab that has zero transparency and zero accountability during a crisis — and no one in a position of power addressed that risk. Fauci is arguing the system worked. It didn’t. Even if the lab leak theory isn’t true, what’s clear is that we need more oversight of this risky research, both in the United States and in China.

This next paragraph addresses another issue raised by Karl Denninger yesterday (linked above):

 

Fauci also told Paul there’s no possibility the research in the paper Paul cited directly led to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but Paul correctly called this out as a straw man. That specific project was only one element of the U.S. government multiagency effort that for years pumped U.S. money and know-how into these Wuhan labs, via the EcoHealth Alliance, including NIH, USAID and the Pentagon. According to an intelligence fact sheet released by the Trump administration and partially confirmed by the Biden administration, the WIV took our help and used it to build another, secret part of the lab, where they worked with the Chinese military.

Rogin concludes in touchingly naive, old-style Liberal fashion: 

This is ultimately not about Fauci or Paul or even gain of function research. This is about getting to the truth of how this pandemic started so we can adjust our policies to prevent the next one. That means avoiding politics, not quibbling over semantics and pushing forward without bias or pre-conclusions. This is an urgent issue for our national security and public health.

So I guess this is somehow different from the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings--which the Dems are once more trying to resurrect--or all the other liberal causes in which we were told that it's the narrative that counts, not the truth. How does Rogin not get that? How does he not get that this is part of the Big Plan of controlling the deplorables who stand in the way of the Great Reset?

Oh, one other post at Powerline from yesterday. We all know that Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are pretty much total wastes of space. Paul Mirengoff dissects their recent testimony, focusing on their claims to be non-political, while being political.