Vax Passport Nonsense: The Spectator Catches Up

E-mailed to me by a friend this morning, I read the first paragraphs of the following article from the November 20 issue of the Spectator with a distinct sense of deja vu, as though re-reading my November 10 blog post -- Covid Vaccination to Promote the Spread.  

Still, the old original Speccy has, in its own good time, reached the right conclusion about the preposterous vax mandates issued by the lockdown Nazis from Ottawa to Austria, and from Washington, DC to New South Wales. So, for any who may have missed our own decisive assessment, here is the Spectator`s worthy reprise.

The absurd theatre of vaccine passports

By Lionel Shriver:

The Spectator, November 20, 2031: When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the urge to make the same point again is irresistible.

In August, Public Health England released data which shows that vaccination does not appreciably guard against Covid infection and transmission and protection worked out at around 17 per cent for the over-fifties. As I observed then, this would mean the vaxxed and unvaxxed pose a comparable danger to each other. All Covid apartheid schemes are therefore insensible.

Fresher information has fortified this conclusion of the summer. In every age group over 30 in the UK, the rates of Covid infection per 100,000 are now higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed. Indeed, in the cohorts aged between 40 and 79, infection rates among the vaccinated are more than twice as high as among the unvaccinated. PHE’s fruitlessly rechristened body, the UK Health Security Agency, frantically clarifies that the data ‘should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness’, a caveat which I include for the sake of accuracy. But the differences in the infection rates are drastic enough for you to draw your own conclusions.

As for the comparative contagiousness of each group, the data is mixed. A study published in Nature early last month confirmed PHE’s finding that the Covid-positive vaxxed and unvaxxed carry nearly identical viral loads; hence they should be similarly infectious. But viral load turns out to drop more quickly in the vaccinated, making them infectious for a shorter period. The study shows that ‘people who become infected with the Delta variant are less likely to pass the virus to their close contacts if they have already had a Covid-19 vaccine than if they haven’t’.

The myth of ultra-contagious anti-vaxxers dispersing plague like rats has fostered gratuitous rancour

That’s the good news. Now for Nature’s bad news: ‘But that protective effect is relatively small, and dwindles alarmingly at three months after the receipt of the second shot… Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time.’ Three months after vaccination, your chances of passing on the Delta variant are ‘on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus’.

Mercifully, the vaccines’ protection from hospitalisation and death is slumping slowly and remains considerable. Stress on healthcare systems and excess deaths are the only reasons Covid is a concern of government.

All this information is in the public domain. Yet due to doublethink, idiocy, mulishness, duplicity, derangement or all of the above, policy-makers are refusing to act on its implications. The absurd theatre of vaccine passports in continental Europe is worse than pointless. Gatekeeping of pleasure palaces promotes the wrong impression — statistically, the lie — that the unvaccinated riff-raff exiled to the pavement pose a far graver threat of communicable disease than the diners in the nearby banquette who, like you, have righteously got the shot. In truth, the double-jabbed airline passenger in 24A can be just as risky a seat-mate as the great unwashed banished from the flight.

Officialdom’s stubborn refusal to register that vaccination does not rule out Covid infection or transmission has catastrophic consequences. As England’s adult social care sector has more than 100,000 vacancies already, the compulsory sacking of unvaxxed care-home staff could close up to 500 facilities that the nation can’t afford to lose. A vaccine mandate for NHS employees will likewise lead to significant staff attrition, when the service also suffers from about 100,000 unfilled jobs.

Stopped for now by the courts, Joe Biden has bullied on with his edict that all American businesses with 100 or more employees require their whole workforce to be vaccinated, or submit to onerous weekly testing, with a whopping $14,000 fine per unvaxxed hire. Austria has just implemented a lockdown for its entire unvaccinated population of two million. Already barred from restaurants, hair salons and cinemas, now these poor pariahs can barely leave the house.

The myth of ultra-contagious anti-vaxxers dispersing plague like rats in the Middle Ages has fostered gratuitous rancour and division. A friend in New York declared recently that she hoped all the unvaccinated would simply die.

By spearheading the vaccine drives, governments have attached themselves to a product. They’re implicitly in league with the pharmaceutical industry, not by means of a conspiracy, but because of perceived common interest. Successful vaccine? Successful government. The mainstream media and swaths of the medical establishment have also attached themselves to the product. All these parties are in cahoots to maintain a Manichean social partition: you must be all in, or you’re all against. Any appreciation for the risks or limits of vaccines casts you as a dreaded anti-vaxxer. So any feel for nuance makes you stupid. Any short-of-fanatical devotion to the perfect benevolence of vaccines makes you crazy.

Yet the product is a bit of a disappointment. It reduces death and hospitalisation, but can’t stop Covid from spreading. The virus continues merrily to sweep through heavily vaccinated populations. What we have here, then, is an advertising problem. The purveyors of products are inclined to overpromise. Adverts for a hair-loss treatment tend to boast not ‘Stimulates some minor follicular growth’, but rather ‘Cures balding!’ Having oversold their adopted elixir, governments won’t retreat from the cures-balding pitch. ‘Won’t keep you from getting sick or even from making other people sick, but prevents dying a lot of the time!’ makes for a lukewarm slogan.

I’m double-vaccinated — gladly so, on balance. But I’ve no fear of vaccine virgins. As the medical case for shunning the unvaccinated is unconvincing, vax passports and employment mandates function purely as blackmail. As a judge decreed when staying Biden’s edict: ‘The mandate’s true purpose is not to enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any means necessary.’

Much western public health policy is now irrational. Governments need to detach from the product. Instead, they’ve detached from the facts.

Related:

mRNA inventor stands with Archbiship Viganò’s call for alliance against ‘fundamentally evil’ COVID tyranny: Global Totalitarianism Is a Bigger Threat Than the Virus

CALGARY, Alberta: The head of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) says Canadian universities with COVID jab mandates are violating the Nuremberg Code by “punishing students who exercise their legal right to bodily autonomy.”

“Universities are blatantly violating the Nuremberg Code, as well as the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights by pressuring students to get injected,” John Carpay said in a JCCF video posted Monday titled “Universities violate Nuremberg Code with vaccine coercion.”

“When you tell a student, get injected or get expelled, there is no free and informed consent to this vaccine.”

Carpay said in his video that the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights provides that any “preventive diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention” should only be carried out with the “prior free and informed consent of the person concerned based on adequate information.”

Read more

Covid Clampdown Pushback Across the EU

Hidden Camera Footage from Inside Forced Internment Camps in Australia

Discrimination against unvaccinated Canadians not based on science

Wadderyer expect from a government headed by an airhead with fantasies about being a dictator?

The case for compulsory vaccinations is dead…Omicron killed it 

Facts have never bothered the vax Nazis yet. Why would they now? Still, a good review of the "self-contradictory supposed “facts” of the schizophrenic covid story"

Eugyppius: UKHSA Efficacy Stats Death Watch: Week 48

British Government's Incompetent and Sadistic Covid Advisory Committee, SAGE, calls for five more years of work from home plus vax passports in face of Omicron wave which has killed exactly no one

Spanish Investigation Finds Vaccine Passports Have No Impact On Infection Rates

How surprising is that? Evidently surprising enough that some Spanish "experts" were dumb enough to investigate the question.

EU Leader Calls For Throwing Out Nuremberg Code In Favor of Forced Vaccinating All Dissenters Why is it that Germans, for all their native genius, have an affinity for low IQ Nazi leaders

Most of England's Omicron cases are double-jabbed

Italians mourn those who gave their lives for the vax

All US Omicron cases of known vax status fully vaxxed

“The COVID-19 Vaccines DO NOT Prevent Transmission of the Disease” – Judge Doughty’s Ruling Destroys Biden’s Vax Mandates

Even the WHO Belittles the Boosters 

First case of US covid Omicron is fully vaxxed

If this doesn't persuade the anti-vaxers to get vaxxed, what will?

Amer. Assoc. Physicians and Surgeons: Biden's Incentive for Hospital Covid Treatment Failure

Otherwise known as an incentive to, um, commit euthanasia, except that Covid is not incurable and the lethal treatment hospitals provide is neither painless nor received voluntarily.

Scapegoating the Unvaccinated

The vaxxed know in their hearts that the vax doesn't work. So naturally they blame anyone but themselves, which is to say the unvaxxed, for their having fallen for the vax scam.

Over 50 People at All-Vaccinated Company Christmas Party Get Covid

So everyone must be made to get the vax. But wait a minute ...

If COVID Omicron Variant Is as Mild as Indicated Why Not Let It Run Its Course and and Protect the Vulnerable with Therapeutics?

Warning: Dangerous common sense outbreak. If we all get natural immunity, there'd by no basis for the mandatory jab.

Does China Have the Covid Cure?

Most people already have a cure: it's called an immune system

Unvaccinated Austrians Face Prison Time, Huge Fines For Non-Compliance

Adolph would have been proud to see his native land lead the world in forced mass medical experimentation. 

Coronavirus will be with us forever, Sage scientist warns

Yeah, that's what the top scientific experts on the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases, plus over sixty thousand medical researchers and practitioners said at the outset. But better coming to grips with reality late than never.

Australia Captures and Arrests Three Quarantine Camp Escapees (They had all tested negative the day before they broke out)

Not to worry: Although the Australian leadership has a severe Covid psychosis, they only deploy full Nazi tactics against the aborigines 

Children as young as five with bad asthma should be given a Covid vaccine because they face six times higher risk of being hospitalised, study finds

Note to Daily Mail Headline Writer: Studies find facts (sometimes, anyhow), they don't specify moral imperatives. That said, sure, if my kid had severe asthma, I'd be OK with giving them the vax

Prince Harry compares Covid pandemic to HIV

Further evidence that Queen Victoria passed a low-IQ gene to every one of her thousands of descendants

Time to think about mandatory vaccination' across the ENTIRE EU, Ursula von der Leyen warns after Austria and Germany announced plans to force jabs on all adults

Good idea except that, according to Bill Gates,  the vax stops neither infection not transmission

Most Omicron cases are 'mild' or show no symptoms

If they "show no symptoms," how does anyone know they've got it?

Greece To Fine Elderly $114 For Every Month They Remain Unvaccinated

Germany's New Chancellor Says Mandatory Covid Jabs "Necessary" To Contain Fourth Wave

"Vee vill not be out-Covid-Nazied by de Gotdamned Greeks."

Image source: Think Carefully About Accepting The Concept Of Vaccine Passports

This Pivotal Moment, vaccine passports

A Different Perspective: How Threat-Free Are Americans From COVID-19?

Dr. Science Fauci, America's Mengele

*** Paul Kingsnorth: why I changed sides in the vaccine wars ***

Moronic Biden Cabinet Member Abolishes Motherhood

You Have to Read This Letter

  New York father pulls his daughter out of Brearley with a message to the whole school. Is the dam starting to break?

Bari Weiss Apr 16 1,478 534

I was planning to publish a roundup today of the many thoughtful responses to Paul Rossi’s essay. I’m going to save that post for Sunday, because I was just sent this letter that has my jaw on the floor. It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann.

If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It costs $54,000 a year and prospective families apparently have to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission. (In the course of my reporting for this piece I spoke to a few Brearley parents.)

Gutmann chose to pull his daughter, who has been in the school since kindergarten, and sent this missive to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week. Among the lines:

If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

I’m pasting the whole thing below.

Read More: If you hate bullshit, you'll surely enjoy it

(with thanks to the Maverick Philosopher)

Related:

DM: 'This is not a rich person issue, this is not a NYC issue, this is an American issue': Parent and teacher who spoke out against 'woke' antiracist doctrine in their expensive NY private schools warn it is infecting all US schools

Headline of the Day: April 29, 2020

The Corona virus response will go down as one of the world’s most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly & irrationally inflated & outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in world history Source

These are the facts: COVID-19 is a real disease that sickens some, proves fatal to others, mostly those with comorbidities, — and does nothing to the vast majority.

Thats it.

That, in a nutshell, is it.

Or, in the words of Dan Erickson and Artin Massih, doctors and co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California: Let’s get the country reopened — and now.

“Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. … [T]he data is showing it’s time to lift,” Erickson said, in a recent interview.

He’s right. They’re right.

The data to keep America closed and Americans closed in simply doesn’t exist.

If truth be told, it’s questionable it ever did.

The scientists leading the coronavirus shutdown charge predicted in March that in America, between 100,000 and 250,000 would die. They based those estimates on computer modeling.

But at the same time they were basing those estimates on computer modeling, they were acknowledging that computer modeling is inaccurate and errs on the side of hype.

“I’ve never seen a model of the diseases I’ve dealt with where the worst-case actually came out,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, during a CNN interview in March. “They always overshoot.”

Catch that? Fauci’s message: Computer models are flawed and inaccurate and always overestimate the problem.

But from these faulty overinflated computer figures came all the constitutionally questionable actions by government anyway — from ordering businesses closed to quarantining-slash-house arresting American citizens to doing some quick and pitiful and economically painful income redistribution schemes via stimulus funds’ legislation.

Since, about 56,000 have died in America due to coronavirus — or have they? Again, the facts are flimsy.

Quote of the Day, No. 79:

Matt Taibi:

Untitledgate: When I was 20, I studied at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, in the waning days of the Soviet empire. Most of the Russians I met were amusingly free of stress caused by following news. Why would they bother? Bull-factories like Rossiskaya Gazeta and Leningradsaya Pravda were basically collections of dreary government news releases rewritten to sound like news reports.

I saw newspapers in Leningrad shredded into slivers of toilet paper, used in place of curtains in dorm rooms, even stuffed into overcoat linings as insulation. But I can’t recall a Russian person actually reading a Soviet newspaper for the content. That’s how useless its “news” was.

We’re headed to a similar place. The cable networks, along with the New York Times and Washington Post increasingly act like house organs of the government, and in particular the intelligence agencies.

The Question Nobody in the MSM is Asking About Jeffrey Epstein?

Over at the Unz Review, one Eric Rasmusen, a self-proclaimed expert in game theory, writes of the fate of Jeffrey Epstein under the title: Questions Nobody Is Asking About Jeffrey Epstein.

Amazingly, one unasked question that Rasmusen the game theorist fails to ask is: Did Jeffrey Epstein really die? In this respect, Rasmusen exactly echoes the mainstream media: Epstein is dead, the only thing to question is whether he killed himself or was he murdered?

Which, obviously, is not the only thing to question.

Epstein was with intelligence, so Alexander Acosta — Trump’s Former Secretary of Labor and the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who negotiated Epstein 2008 plea agreement — claims to have been told. 

The result? Acosta gave Epstein a sweetheart deal in accordance with which he was incarcerated under conditions barely distinguishable from total freedom for a minimal amount of time.

So what happened this time around. Did intelligence just decide to let justice, or possible injustice, if Epstein was indeed murdered, take its course?

Not likely, is it?

So what would “intelligence” have done?

They would surely remove Epstein from the scene by a fake murder or suicide and recycle him under another name with a modified face, and probably in another country.

How?

Easily:

pay the jailers to look the other way;

give Epstein a non-lethal dose of a paralytic drug, maybe some leftover Novichok from the Skripal caper;

wheel out the “corpse” for the media to photograph;

substitute a look-alike corpse on the way to the autopsy;

and Jeffrey’s free to pursue his interest in Ugandan Affairs with under-aged prostitutes, while snaring people of interest to “intelligence.”

That the author of this Unz Review piece, who claims to be an expert in game theory, doesn’t even think of the above scenario tells ya something.

Related:

State of the Nation: EPSTEIN-BARRgate: The Pedogate Scandal Behind the Deep State Conspiracy

What do IQ Tests Test?

If you think IQ tests test intelligence, you might ask yourself: How do you know?

What is intelligence?

Give us your definition.

Or by intelligence do you just mean IQ, in which case your understanding of intelligence is tautological: intelligence is performance on an IQ test, which is measured by performance on an IQ test.

IQ and wealth at low scale (outside the tail).
Mostly Noise and no strikingly visible effect
above $40K, but huge noise. Psychologists
responding to this piece do not realize that
statistics is about not interpreting noise.
From Zagorsky (2007) via Nassim Taleb.

Fact is, the IQ testers never have defined intelligence. Instead, they came up with a set of puzzlers and declared your score on this test is the measure of your intelligence.

Trouble is, the IQ-ists have never attempted to show how IQ test results relate to what is understood by the term intelligence as manifest by, say, the creative work of a poet, a painter, a composer, an architect, or a scientist, or the more mundane endeavors of a politician, a policeman, a prostitute or a peddler of illicit drugs. Their strongest claim is that IQ tests predict "career success", except as anyone who looks into the matter will find, the correlation is trivial.

The best that IQ tests can do is provide an indication of academic aptitude, but even in that case they don't work well, not even as well as traditional academic exams, which is why Harvard and other such places use a SAT test with a mathematical component and a verbal component, the results of which are by no means closely correlated

Better still, obviously, would be to break things down further, e.g., SAT Physics, SAT Biology, SAT English, SAT music, etc. Except that would be giving up, since it would be an acknowledgement that the whole idea of intelligence as unitary feature of mind measurable on a single linear scale is nonsense.

Related:
Nassim Taleb: The psychologists' construct, general intelligence, is based on a statistical error.

Bullshit Debunked, No. 79: Race Is a Social Construct

The Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, quotes a correspondent on the claim that "Race is a social construct":

What do they even mean? ... What could it mean to say that race is a "social construct"? Do they mean that there are no biological or ancestral differences at all between Whites and Blacks and Orientals? That's just ridiculous -- like saying there are no biological differences between human beings and gorillas.

I think in most cases they don't mean anything much. They haven't thought about it. It's a smart-sounding phrase they picked up from PBS or from some half-wit university lecturer. It's the kind of thing the bien pensant people say. So they say it too. And they know that, whatever it really means, it must be true and morally right to say it. They know that only Nazis disagree. I've talked to some educated intelligent Leftists who say stuff like this. They usually just retreat to Lewontin's fallacy—more differences within races than between, and all of that. Again, it seems they just don't want to think about it and they use these dumb phrases as a way to avoid thinking. The dumb phrases change once in a while. I guess in earlier decades we'd hear more about how "There is only one race, the human race". But it may be a mistake to expect any clear or coherent meaning behind these propaganda phrases.

Related:
Edwards, A.W. 2003: Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy. Bioessays. 2003 Aug;25(8):798-801.