Ajax the Great is a young genius – his research is on point, his insights brilliant, his writing witty, great, sometimes funny – See below for THREE articles.  To see the illustrative studies, please go here, & see Ajax’s other articles:   http://truespiritofamericaparty.blogspot.com/2021/07/covid-is-endemic-zero-covid-is-pipe.html

 

 

Ajax the Great insights on con-vid

THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021

Who Are The Real Superspreaders?

 

DISCLAIMER:  The following article references third-party sources and is intended for general information only, and is NOT intended to provide medical advice or otherwise diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, including (but not limited to) COVID-19.  Consult a qualified physician before beginning any sort of treatment or prophylactic regimen and/or if you know or suspect that you currently have COVID-19.  Anyone who takes or does anything mentioned (or alluded to) in this or any other TSAP article does so entirely at their own risk and liability.  The TSAP thus makes absolutely no warranties, express or implied, and is not liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages resulting from any act or omission on the part of the reader(s) or others. Caveat lector.

See also our previous articles here, here, and here as well.  Also, special thanks to Bill Sardi, Dr. Gareth “Gruff” Davies, Dr. Dmitry Kats, Dr. Mikko Panunio, and Swiss Policy Research, et al. whose research this article draws upon and cites in the links throughout.

“You’re the superspreader!” “No, YOU’RE the superspreader!”  Alas, this is what passes for discourse these days, when people are literally now debating who are the biggest superspreaders of the COVID:  the vaccinated or the unvaccinated.  Technically, both can be, since the vaccines are “leaky”, and there are documented examples of both, but it is not clear who is more likely to be.

(Correction:  The CDC’s now-leaked unpublished data, that they are using to push masks once again, is a lot more nuanced than they miscommunicated, and apparently involves a vaccine in India that is not available in the USA, and also a study of a rather unrepresentative sample in Provincetown, Cape Cod.  Thus, while vaccinated people can indeed still spread the virus, they are still signifcantly less likely to do so than if they were not vaccinated, even if only because they are somewhat less likely to become infected in the first place.  And truly asymptomatic transmission, while possible, is not the primary way it spreads.)

Either way, this completely misses the point though.  The vaccines were never designed to prevent all transmission or all infections, just to make the disease less bad if one happens to contract it while vaccinated.  You know, kinda like the flu shot.  That alone is enough to largely defang the virus and reduce it to a mere nuisance like seasonal flu and the common cold, provided enough vulnerable people get vaccinated (which they all either a) already have, or b) they chose not to get it).  For the young and healthy, not so much.  And thus any benefit to the community that results from less transmission of the virus would simply be a bonus, as vaccines are primarily for self-protection.  And now that we are seeing that these vaccines may be just as “leaky” as flu vaccines (funny how no one seems to care about the latter), the whole specious argument for vaccine mandates or passports “to protect others” becomes as threadbare and useless as the most poorly constructed cloth mask.

Now, a nasal vaccine might actually produce “sterilizing” immunity enough to prevent virtually all transmission.  That is because of the mucosal antibodies and other immunological “dark matter” that they would generate at the usual point of entry and exit for the virus, the lining of the nose and throat.  But injections are unlikely to do that, only producing antibodies and T-cells largely in the bloodstream instead.  And while important, it is incomplete since it leaves the nose and throat wide open for a time before enough of an immune response is mounted to knock the virus out quickly.

But there are no nasal vaccines available currently, except of course the low-tech one, which is…natural exposure to the wild virus.  And the large chunk of the population that has already had the virus and recovered has a very low reinfection rate, much lower than the breakthrough infection rate for vaccinated people.  Yes, even for Delta.  Thus, we already know who the superspreaders are almost certainly NOT:  people who have already had the virus, whether vaccinated or not.  Natural immunity for the win!

So having established who the superspreaders are NOT, do we then know who they actually ARE?  Well, a study of influenza from 2008 provides some excellent clues.  It postulates that Vitamin D not only explains the seasonality of influenza, but also who is most likely to be what we would now call a superspreader, where one person infects dozens of others.  And most curiously, that is postulated to occur in a tiny number of people even in the absence of symptoms!  That is, Vitamin D deficiency can make one much more likely to spread it, and thus it not only endangers the deficient, but also those around them as well, in a sort of “second-hand malnutrition”. This is very likely true for COVID, and also very likely true with other nutrients as well, particularly Vitamin C, thiamine, niacin, zinc, lysine, and selenium.  A deficiency in the latter can even make one a “variant factory”, since selenium stops viruses from mutating.  Fortunately, we can very easily solve this problem even without appealing to (strong) altruism, since the benefits to the individual are at least as great as that to those around them.  Good nutrition and supplementation is a win-win-win for all.

Especially since, for the individual, it is painfully obvious now with COVID:  not enough D and you die.

 

Vitamin D also seems to be good at fighting that other pandemic that is raging even more these days:  substance abuse, especially opioid addiction.  Vitamin D deficiency apparently leads to exaggerated cravings for opioids and probably other substances as well.  And the same can apparently be said for Niacin as well, as AA founder Bill W. had discovered it as a potential treatment for alcoholism.  With America drowning in the bottom of a bottle thanks in no small part to the long-term after-effects of lockdown, such a rediscovery cannot come soon enough!

And of course, Niacin works wonders for COVID, as Dr. Dmitry Kats had discovered.

So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  See also here, here, and here for some good articles from The Daily Sceptic about the nuances of herd immunity.  And yes, it is very nuanced indeed.

POSTED BY AJAX THE GREAT AT 8:13 PM

 

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2021

If Masks Really Worked…

Once again, the witty Professor hits another homerun right out of the park here: 

That basically explains the TSAP’s evolving position over time.  Originally we were pro-mask since we honestly believed they worked based on some spurious observations in a few East Asian and Eastern European countries, plus a few sketchy studies, and thus they seemed like a safe pathway out of lockdown.  But as time went on, the evidence just kept on mounting against them.  And the past 18 months pretty much answers that question–if they worked, not only would it be so obvious to everyone that no one would have to be forced to wear them, but COVID would have been gone within a few weeks of (near) universal masking as the R value would thus drop well below one and even close to zero, and we would not still be having this debate to this day.

Are you old enough to remember when face masks were initially discouraged by nearly all of the experts as well as “experts”, including Dr. Fauci himself?  And then, seemingly out of the blue, the idea caught on that masks not only work, but work so well that if 80% (or is that 90%, or 95%, or 99%?) or whatever % of the population were to wear them, COVID would be practically wiped out, or at the very least 100,000+ lives would be saved?  Right?  And the logical implication being:  the sooner everyone would wear them for just a few weeks, the sooner no one would ever have to wear them again, because COVID would be gone!

Well, that didn’t really pan out, did it?  Look, you can cherry-pick the data all you want, but it’s pretty self-evident that masks made no practical or statistical difference overall in terms of COVID case, hospitalization, or death rates, even with the strictest mandates and/or very high compliance above 90% or 95%.  While no one can completely rule out modest benefits perhaps in very selected instances, the macro-level data supporting universal masking simply isn’t there.  Clearly, after 18 months, if a “signal” still cannot be boosted even with great effort, is was most likely just noise all along.

And all that applies a fortiori to children as well, as we have noted previously.  There is even less evidence in favor, and even stronger arguments against forcing kids to wear them, especially at this juncture.  

Thus, we are re-learning the hard way the painful lessons our ancestors learned in 1918.  There was clearly a reason they stopped wearing masks in 1919, after all.  And no, it wasn’t “selfishness” or “anti-science” sentiment, but a rather a good strong dose of reality that turned even their greatest enthusiasts against them in droves.  They simply didn’t work.

And now with some “experts” wanting to bring back mask mandates yet again at this stage (!), despite the obvious fact that they would even LESS effective still against the MORE contagious Delta variant, beware.  The following Tweet sums it why that is a very bad idea in both theory and practice:

Mask mandates are in fact the THIN end of a very long and thick wedge of coercion.  Slopes are indeed much, much slipperier than they appear.

QED

POSTED BY AJAX THE GREAT AT 6:34 PM 

 

SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2021

COVID Is Endemic. “Zero COVID” Is A Pipe Dream. Lockdowns And NPIs Are

Useless.

The following Tweet really wins the internet:

Pretty much sums it up.  The virus can be defanged and reduced to a nuisance, and indeed it largely has already thanks to herd immunity and attenuation, but it will never be eliminated.  It will continue to ebb and flow to one degree or another indefinitely.  Even smallpox took over 200 years to eradicate after the vaccine.  And it’s time we accept that fact and deal with endemic COVID like we do seasonal flu and the common cold.  That is, learn to live with the virus just like all other endemic viruses.  We know now that lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and stuff like that really make no difference to the course of the virus in the long run, and they come with their own set of problems, ultimately doing more harm than good.  And that applies a fortiori to endemic COVID.

That’s right, these restrictions are all pain and no gain.  And there is a name for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We know how to treat this disease now.  We know what to use for prophylaxis as well.  We know that the virus, while bad, was never the apocalyptic Big One that some had predicted.  We know who the risk groups are, and we have already vaccinated them (plus a good chunk of the general population as well) to a greater extent and faster than we have for any other disease in history.  So anyone who says we still somehow can’t go 100% back to normal yesterday because reasons is a LIAR with a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda.  And we thus must completely disregard their bluster.  Yesterday is not soon enough!

And this one as well, to which we would also add “and early treatment and prophylaxis for all who want it”:

 

UPDATE 2:  See also here and here for some good articles from The Daily Sceptic about the nuances of herd immunity.  And yes, it is very nuanced indeed.

POSTED BY AJAX THE GREAT AT 10:31 AM 

LABELS: CORONAVIRUS, LOCKDOWN, MASK, PANDEMIC