Are the Vaccines Failing? (II)

Kevin Roche, the Healthy Skeptic, has compiled the most recent Minnesota data on covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths. First the chart, then some comments:

Breakthrough Cases 10-11-2021

The numbers jump around wildly from week to week, and the Minnesota Department of Health deliberately makes them, to some degree, opaque. But during the last week, covid deaths among the non-vaccinated were down 7.6%, while deaths among the vaccinated were up 96%. Smoothing out the data a bit, over the last three weeks there have been 305 “covid deaths,” of which 38% of decedents were fully vaccinated and 62% were not. The percentage of vaccinated deaths undoubtedly will continue to rise over time.

Does that mean that the vaccines don’t work very well? I think part of the explanation is that “covid deaths” don’t necessarily have much to do with covid. Hospitals get paid extra if the word covid appears on a death certificate, and you get what you pay for. However, Kevin thinks the more important factor is that covid deaths continue to be overwhelmingly among the elderly. One thing that happens when you get old is that your immune system doesn’t work as well as it once did. Thus, the vaccines don’t stimulate immune responses among old people as effectively, or for as long, as one might hope.

While numbers like these don’t necessarily discredit the vaccines–I was among the first to be vaccinated, and I encourage others to do likewise, as Kevin Roche does–they certainly do cast doubt on the appropriateness of forcing others who would prefer not to be vaccinated to get the shots. People like the Southwest Airlines employees and Kyrie Irving have a defensible point of view, I think.

Finally, if you don’t read Healthy Skeptic daily, you should. This commentary is from yesterday:

[T]he Minnesota [Department of Health] had another briefing last week and it really is torture to listen to this one. The focus was terrorization around cases in children and hospitals being overrun with CV-19. Neither is true, but the DOH intentionally does not release the data which would show just how misleading their terror campaign is. CV-19 patients are cases at the margin, most of the patients in hospitals are not CV-19 patients, they are just a modest percent. We as a nation chose to reduce hospital beds over the last several decades, due to their expense. Hospitals, and ICUs in particular, typically run as full as they can. So a few extra CV-19 patients can seem like it is the source of the problem but why not blame the heart attack patients or the cancer patients?

Here is why I am so cynical about the DOH’s messaging. They never, ever tell you the full truth. They don’t tell you how many hospitalizations are really for CV-19 treatment. They let slip in one briefing that half of breakthrough hospitalizations were not for treatment of CV-19. They never give information about observation stays or admissions for remdesivir or length of stay trends. They make it sound like the hospitals are overwhelmed by seriously ill CV-19 patients. They aren’t. They have a lot of patients with typical needs; in fact even more than usual due to the terror campaign causing delays in care; leading to more serious heart disease, cancer cases, and other conditions. The hospitals get paid a lot of extra money to treat CV-19 patients, so they want to find as many as possible with positive tests to generate revenue. Love to see the cycle number thresholds hospitals are using and the distribution of tests. So I don’t accept the bullshit they are spinning about hospitals being overwhelmed and why.

And when it comes to children, it is even worse, because, as one speaker today acknowledged, we had a horrendous, out of season RSV wave (which incidentally was caused by masking, closing schools and other nonsense we did to children, weakening their immune systems and making them more vulnerable). That disease does cause serious illness and many hospitalizations in children and I am certain that most pediatric hospitalizations being attributed to CV-19 are only incidental positive tests. By the way 21 pediatric beds are being “used”. And again, pay attention to every word. “Used” means something different than being treated for CV-19. So don’t expect me to buy that bag of crap about children and hospitals either. 3000 cases a week in children under 12 they say–how many were even symptomatic and what are the cycle numbers. Think it is an accident that age limit was used–no, they are setting up for a school vaccine mandate. Keep testing like crazy among asymptomatic children and I am sure you can find even more false and low positives.

Bracing stuff that I am sure applies equally in most states.

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