Behold the dual pandemic of the vaccinated

The British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book, the Selfish Gene, to describe “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation“. Dawkins characterised memes as “viruses of the mind”, spreading from person to person within a culture – and now, in our highly connected world, between cultures.

In the COVID-19 era, we have seen mind viruses propagate at an astonishing rate. Who could forget “Build Back Better”, the vapid slogan that spread from campaign podium to podium like a herpetic rash:

… and vomited forth from the mouths of bollockticians, corruptocrats, corporate presstitutes and other random celebritards across the world:

Then there was the Orwellian “the new normal”, the oxymoronic “social distancing”, and the eye-poppingly hypocritical “we’re all in this together”:

And then the mother of all mind viruses erupted. The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” meme originated in the US back in July, and rapidly spread across the nation:

Having infected the minds of millions of Americans whose psychological immune systems have been disarmed by corporate media propaganda for the past 20 months, it globe-trotted to Australia, erupting from the lips of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, his ironically-titled “health minister” Martin Foley, Victoria’s “COVID-19 commander” – yes, that’s really a thing – Jeroen Weimar, and random talking heads such as Michael Pascoe.

There’s just one teeny-tiny problem with this “pandemic of the unvaccinated” meme. It’s a lie. Not just a little white lie, or a “misspeak”, or a creative interpretation of the facts, but a giant, humungous whopper.

That’s not news to anyone who has been examining the dominant narrative with a critical eye:

No, what’s news is just how fast the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative is unravelling as increasingly detailed data on breakthrough infections, hospitalisations and deaths related to SARS-CoV-2 infection come to light.

The latest instalment of that unravelling is a presentation of data on 5.6 million US Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 or older, analysed by an AI-powered Department of Defense program named Project Salus.

It’s worth studying the entire presentation in detail, but here are some of the highlights:

VE stands for “vaccine effectiveness”. So the COVID-19 injections are only 41% effective at preventing infection with SARS-CoV-2 in people aged 65 and older, 62% effective at keeping people 65+ out of hospital, and less effective still at protecting those aged over 75.

By the way, the comparison of hospitalisation and death rates in the post-vaccine vs pre-vaccine era is disingenuous, as data from Public Health England (which leads the world in genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2) clearly show that the Delta strain of SARS-CoV-2, which became dominant after mass vaccination began, is less virulent (capable of causing serious disease) than the pre-vaccine era strains:

As you can see from the above tables,

1. The risk of hospitalisation for people aged over 50 who are found to be infected with the Delta strain of SARS-CoV-2, is roughly half that of over 50s with the Alpha strain. So the vaunted one-third reduction in hospitalisation rates for breakthrough infections is actually less than the reduction in hospitalisations that would be expected with the shift to predominance of the Delta variant.

2. The case fatality rate of the Delta strain is 84% lower than that of the previously-dominant Alpha strain. In this US Medicare population, the case fatality rate fell from 12% in the pre-vaccine era to 2% in breakthrough infections in the post-vaccine era – an 83% decline which, extrapolating from the UK data, could be explained entirely by the shift from more to less virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Here’s how that shift in variants looks in the UK:

And in the US:

Further on in the presentation, we see that the percentage of SARS-CoV-2 infections that are classified as breakthrough cases (infections that are diagnosed at least 14 days after the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna products) has risen precipitously since the Delta variant gained predominance, such that “in this 80% vaccinated >=65 population, an estimated 71% of COVID-19 cases occurred in fully vaccinated individuals”:

Meanwhile, “in this 80% vaccinated 65+ population, an estimated 60% of COVID-19 hospitalizations occurred in fully vaccinated individuals” in the week ending August 7th:

That’s disappointing enough, but now take into account the definition of a “breakthrough case”:

“New COVID-19 diagnosis (by COVID-19 ICD-10 code) occurring no earlier than 2-weeks post the second vaccine dose.”

[Effectiveness of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Against the Delta Variant Among 5.6M Medicare Beneficiaries 65 Years and Older – slide 4]

In other words, people who were hospitalised for COVID-19 at any point up until two weeks after their second shot are not counted as breakthrough cases.

The Medicare data also show clear evidence of waning vaccine effectiveness over time, for prevention of both infection and hospitalisation, with the eldest (and most vulnerable) people gaining the least protection against serious disease:

Finally – no surprises here – you’re most at risk of being hospitalised for COVID-19 despite being “fully vaccinated” if you’re really old, really sick, really fat, or from a minority ethnic group, whereas having natural immunity from prior infection keeps you out of hospital:

So, are we really experiencing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”? Apparently not… and it seems our corruptocrats are admitting it:

Not only are the “fully vaccinated” missing out on the promised protection against COVID-19, they’re also suffering a pandemic of serious, unexplained and uninvestigated illness.

As the overall numbers of COVID-19 hospitalisations decline, US hospitals are now bulging at the seams with non-COVID cases. An NPR article describes the daily hellscape in a Michigan hospital: an emergency department overflowing with people suffering from serious acute conditions such as “abdominal pain, respiratory problems, blood clots, heart conditions and suicide attempts, among others… strokes and heart attacks”. The article even mentions a man whose “arm has been tingling and painful for over a week now”.

What do these conditions all have in common? Every single one of them is a reported adverse event associated with one or more COVID injections. Yet, just like Voldemort’s name, the NPR staffers could not bring themselves to utter the words “COVID vaccine” even once in their lengthy piece.

Even the redoubtable Alex Berenson danced around Voldemort’s name while discussing with Tucker Carlson the rise in non-COVID-related mortality across Europe and the US that coincidentally accompanied the mass vaccination drives in those countries (although to his credit, Alex gets his Harry Potter on far more on his Substack):

Speaking of Substack, the mysterious Substack author who goes by the sobriquet “el gato malo” (the bad cat) points to similar spikes in presentations for acute non-respiratory conditions in Germany, which coincide with the COVID-19 injection roll-out in that country:

What is the real “pandemic of the unvaccinated”? It’s an infection of common sense. Its symptoms are healthy scepticism of illegitimate authority, a reflexive distaste for bollocktics, high levels of self-efficacy and suspicion of anyone who prefers censorship, ad hominem attacks and unpersoning to reasoned argument on the basis of verifiable facts.

Oddly enough, one catches this infection by building one’s psychological immune system. The primary steps for doing so are:

1. Consume a diverse information diet, preferring authors who link to source documents so that you can examine them for yourself rather than being condescendingly told what they say, as if you were an ignorant child.

2. Exercise your critical thinking capacity, every single day. Remember that one doesn't "follow the science", because "science doesn’t lead anywhere. It can illuminate various courses of action, by quantifying the risks and specifying the tradeoffs. But it can’t make the necessary choices for us. By pretending otherwise, decision-makers can avoid taking responsibility for the choices they make on our behalf."

3. Judiciously supplement your varied information diet with regular conversations with people who hold a wide range of viewpoints, so that you can practise honing your skills of argumentation and reasoned debate. The greatest opportunity for clarifying and refining your own viewpoint on a topic occurs when you engage in calm and respectful discussion with someone with a different viewpoint. Those who refuse or are unable to engage in calm and respectful discussion are not worthy of your time and energy; keeping a healthy distance from them is important for maintaining your well-being.

The truth is out there. Are you brave enough to face it?