View from the right: Vaccines fell short of expectations, let COVID-19 run its course

Americans counting on government bureaucrats and politicians to beat COVID-19 are putting their trust in people who are sandbagging the doors while floodwaters are pouring through the windows.

Yes, the COVID waters keep rising. The recent advent of the Omicron variant prompted President Biden this past week to ban travel from several African countries. That edict came from a man who called President Trump’s 2020 COVID-19 China travel ban racist and xenophobic, and who simultaneously declared that diseases don’t respect borders. Travel bans didn’t work for Trump, and they won’t work for Biden.

Meanwhile, state leaders like New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochel immediately announced plans to invoke emergency powers (i.e., lockdowns and business restrictions) whenever they feel the necessity. While the Biden administration moves illegal aliens freely around the country, with no vaccine requirement despite an estimated 20-25 percent positivity rate among them for COVID-19, the administration has ordered a hundred million American workers to be vaccinated and is considering a seven-day quarantine requirement for all overseas travelers returning to the US.

The Democrats’ approach to the Omicron variant suggests they have learned nothing in the past 20 months.

In the same way that Democrats steadfastly refuse to admit they were wrong about the Russia collusion hoax, they refuse to reconsider the approaches that did nothing to keep the virus from invading the US and killing 770,000 of its citizens. Most of those deaths have occurred during the presidency of Joe Biden, after anti-COVID vaccines were widely offered to, and largely accepted by, the public.

With vaccines created during the Trump administration clearly visible on the horizon, Biden boldly stated during the 2020 campaign that as president he would “beat the virus.” It may be only a matter of time before he starts blaming his failure on “Trump’s vaccines,” returning seamlessly to the vaccine reluctance he and his future vice president, Sen. Kamala Harris, expressed during the campaign.

To say those vaccines have fallen short of expectations would be an understatement. We were told they were over 95 percent “effective,” which last year signaled that almost all recipients would be immune. Even when variants began cropping up, we were told breakthrough infections of the vaccinated would be rare. Today “effective” has been redefined to provide cover to those who promoted those ideas, in particular Biden. “Effective” now means you still have a very good chance of getting infected and spreading the virus (even if you are asymptomatic), but you might not end up in the hospital. And, by the way, boosters every six months may be needed in perpetuity to give you even that modest level of protection. That is the definition of a therapeutic treatment, nothing like the immunity conferred by smallpox and polio vaccines.

Vaccinated people who get COVID-19 (myself included, 3.5 months after my second dose of Moderna’s supposedly extra-strength version) are often told they might have otherwise died. But surviving the virus is highly likely, vaccinated or not, as rates for people under age 65 are around 99.99 percent, and rates aren’t much lower for older people who have no significant medical conditions.

So, Democrats, once believing they had been left the key to COVID salvation by the Trump administration, are left struggling to explain the persistence of the virus and its attendant deaths. Their natural response is, of course, to blame Republicans, who are somewhat less likely than Democrats to be vaccinated. That blame game was a favorite pastime for months. A column by two Yale deans,published in Fortune magazine last August, judgmentally compared the case surge at that time in Florida, led by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the then-sharply declining case numbers in Connecticut, led by Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont. The authors, using charts and graphs to illustrate their point, ultimately determined the big difference in transmission was the cynical political ambitions of DeSantis. They said he was willing to adopt “anti-intellectual” positions that ultimately killed Florida citizens, while Lamont followed expert advice with the goal of saving “the lives of his constituents.”

All summer, Democrats pointed hysterically to dramatic surges in open-for-business states like Florida, but now Florida, still fully open for business with the same governor and the same rules, has the lowest rate of infection in the country and Democrats have fallen silent on that subject. The summer increases in cases among Florida children dropped to virtually zero once schools reopened, mask-less by order of the governor. Bars, restaurants and other inside businesses remain fully open, with no mask mandates or social distancing requirements. Connecticut, by contrast, is now experiencing under Gov. Lamont the worst spikes since last spring. So much for the Yale deans’ conclusion that virus spikes are due “principally to differences in leadership.”

Democrats, whose mantra is “follow the science,” chose all summer to selectively ignore how heat and cold, driving people indoors, have been major factors in virus transmission since 2020. It was more politically expedient to blame Republican ignoramuses obsessed with personal freedom.

Democrats are so wedded to vaccine promotion above all else that they have sabotaged promising therapeutic candidates like Ivermectin (which is a highly effective anti-parasitic developed years ago for human use, not for horse deworming as its detractors claim). They also refuse to acknowledge that natural immunity, as demonstrated by 135 studies completed around the globe, is likely far more durable than immunity by vaccination. Solid natural immunity to SARSCoV-1, which is very closely related to SARSCoV-2 (COVID-19), has been shown to last up to 18 years. The vaccines, by contrast, have been shown to fail consistently in less than six months.

With the supposed experts having been wrong at almost every turn, a practical approach for people who really “follow the science” might be this:

The virus will likely fade away only when 70 to 90 percent of the population has actually contracted it, knowingly or unknowingly. Vaccines reduce the risk of this inevitable infection, so vaccination is likely a wise course of action for those who have no natural immunity, especially the elderly, and younger healthy people who want to minimize their relatively low risk of hospitalization or death. Young adults face little risk from the virus, and they should not be condemned for choosing not to accept the risk profile of vaccination, which is not fully known. The risk of the vaccine to children under age 12 is likely greater than the risk of infection, and they are notably poor vectors for transmission. Those children should not be forced to accept a minimally tested vaccine to placate the fears of their elders.

Martin Fey is a member of the Quiet Corner Tea Party Patriots.