Joel S Hirschhorn, PhD<\/p>\n
Americans may not be mentally prepared to hear the really bad news.\u00a0 The COVID pandemic is not going to end.\u00a0 What the government is doing (and not doing) will ensure no end to the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Just released is a new forecast<\/a> of the coming COVID death toll on March 1, 2022.\u00a0 It comes from the group that has been doing the most thorough studies and modeling of the US pandemic.\u00a0 It is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington.\u00a0 It forecasts a total of one million COVID deaths by that date.<\/p>\n That means in about 3.5 months there will be another roughly 250,000 COVID deaths.\u00a0 That is over 70,000 deaths a month.\u00a0 That compares to about 65,000 a month since the pandemic began.\u00a0 Does that sound like progress?\u00a0 Does that sound like the mass vaccination effort is the solution?<\/p>\n Their projection may underestimate what will be happening because \u201cThat forecast may be optimistic because we have not yet built into the modeling that we are releasing right now the explicit analysis around waning immunity for vaccine-derived immunity.\u201d\u00a0 And there is now a strong consensus among medical experts that current vaccines lose their effectiveness in about six months.\u00a0 That is why booster shots are now being pushed so hard.\u00a0 An endless pandemic will mean billions of dollars going to big drug companies for vaccines and a new group of expensive pills announced by Merck and Pfizer.<\/p>\n Here is the crucial point to keep in mind.\u00a0 Current vaccines, including booster shots, do not kill the virus and do not prevent spread of the virus from fully vaccinated people.\u00a0 And the loss of effectiveness, especially for variants like delta, explains why countless more people will get breakthrough infections that are killing some people, like what happened to Colin Powell recently.<\/p>\n Breakthrough deaths fit into the category of COVID deaths.<\/p>\n This is the ultimate truth: We cannot vaccinate our way out of the pandemic.\u00a0 When more reliable data in other countries are considered, compared to awful data from the CDC, we see that very large fractions of people being hospitalized or dying from COVID are fully vaccinated.\u00a0 Booster shots just create the illusion of doing something really effective.\u00a0 Mostly, they just postpone bad health impacts.<\/p>\n The entire emphasis by our government on vaccines is the biggest mistake in the history of medicine and pandemic management.\u00a0 As many recent analyses have shown, the CDC data are undercounting both adverse health impacts of vaccines and deaths.<\/p>\n Steve Kirsch has done a good summary<\/a> analysis of CDC data undercounting.\u00a0 Here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n \u201cThe COVID vaccines are the most dangerous vaccines in human history. \u00a0They are 800 times more deadly than the smallpox vaccine which was the previous record holder. \u00a0The vaccines have killed over 150,000 Americans and permanently disabled even more. \u00a0They don\u2019t make sense for anyone of any age. \u00a0The younger you are, the worse it gets. \u00a0For kids, it is estimated that we kill 117 kids for every COVID death we prevent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo we are \u2018saving\u2019 fewer than 10,000 lives at the expense of over 150,000 (vaccine) deaths. \u00a0In short, we kill 15 people to save 1. \u00a0That\u2019s incredibly stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n Full details defining the vaccine dystopia we have entered are available<\/a>.<\/p>\n The eminent Dr. Peter McCollough has emphasized<\/a>: \u201cYou are about five times as likely to die of the vaccine than you are to take your risks with COVID-19. \u00a0Therefore, those who \u2018chose not to get the vaccine,\u2019 in fact \u2018made a smarter choice.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Another point made is that those who have recovered from the disease and have natural immunity have a 56% greater chance of severe side-effects should they afterwards take the jab.\u00a0 When such a recognized medical expert says these things, the anti-mandate movement receives credibility.<\/p>\n A recent medical research article<\/a> said: \u201cA novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.\u201d\u00a0 It was also noted that several studies: \u201chave shown independently that the deaths following inoculation are not coincidental and are strongly related to inoculation through strong clustering around the time of injection.\u201d\u00a0 \u201dOur independent analyses of the VAERS database confirmed these clustering findings.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Zhang has recently made some incisive observations<\/a> about the never-ending pandemic.\u00a0 Here is what she said:<\/p>\n \u201cThe coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. \u00a0But what we don\u2019t know\u2014and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for\u2014is how we are supposed to get there.\u201d\u00a0 But talking about an endemic just means a constantly maintained level of COVID-19 infections and transmissions.\u00a0 It means living with the pandemic, but just calling it an endemic.\u00a0 It is a poor semantic solution.<\/p>\n Here are more words of wisdom:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Delta variant and waning immunity against transmission mean herd immunity may well be impossible even if every single American gets a shot. \u00a0So when COVID-related restrictions came back with the Delta wave, we no longer had an obvious off-ramp to return to normal\u2014are we still trying to get a certain percentage of people vaccinated? \u00a0Or are we waiting until all kids are eligible? \u00a0Or for hospitalizations to fall and stay steady? \u00a0The path ahead is not just unclear; it\u2019s nonexistent. \u00a0We are meandering around the woods because we don\u2019t know where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the level of COVID-19 risk we can live with is also not an entirely scientific question. It is a social and political one that involves balancing both the costs and benefits of restrictions and grappling with genuine pandemic fatigue among the public.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Delta variant and waning immunity against transmission mean herd immunity may well be impossible even if every single American gets a shot.\u201d<\/p>\n Accepting the ugly reality that the pandemic will not end is consistent with the findings of a recent medical research article<\/a> titled \u201cIncreases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.\u201d\u00a0 The clear meaning is that mass vaccination does not work effectively to eliminate COVID impacts.\u00a0 Here is a main conclusion: \u201cThe sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta variant and the likelihood of future variants.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, it is clear that a number of countries, including Gibraltar, with high vaccination rates are still fighting serious COVID outbreaks and impacts, including Israel now pushing booster shots.\u00a0 When Israel rolled out boosters in August, they also saw spikes in infections and deaths.<\/p>\n Should everyone get booster shots?\u00a0 Especially, those with natural immunity from prior infection and vaccine immunity from full vaccination?\u00a0 This is called hybrid immunity.\u00a0 Here is what MedPage Today said<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cWith a COVID-19 booster shot available for a segment of the U.S. population, an emerging group may wonder if they really need it — those with “hybrid immunity.”<\/p>\n These are the people who are fully vaccinated but have also recovered from a case of COVID-19. \u00a0Mounting evidence is clear: a bout with the virus does provide extra immunity, making a booster shot helpful but not necessary, experts say.<\/p>\n If you have hybrid immunity, “I would call yourself a victor,” said Paul Offit, MD, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. \u2018Call it a victory and bow out.\u2019”<\/p>\n Yet many groups seem on the verge of saying that without a booster shot people will not be considered fully vaccinated and booster mandates are being discussed.<\/p>\n What the government has failed to do is promote valid alternatives to COVID vaccines.\u00a0 It has not used a flexible policy<\/a> using personalized medicine principles that would support use of generic medicines to treat and prevent COVID infection.\u00a0 For example, using fluvoxamine that a recent journal article<\/a> said was effective, as well as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.\u00a0 Nor has the government fully recognized and given mandate credit for natural immunity obtained from prior COVID infection, and that considerable data have shown is better than vaccine immunity.<\/p>\n This should be clear: Vaccine mandates will not end the pandemic.\u00a0 But there is no hint that government leaders are interested in taking a new fresh approach to addressing the pandemic.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of people will die unnecessarily in the US and even more globally.\u00a0 More deadly than the virus are feckless government officials.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder<\/a> and many articles, podcasts and radio shows on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. \u00a0His work is available on Substack as the Pandemic Blunder Newsletter<\/a>.\u00a0 As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine.\u00a0 As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings.\u00a0 He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years.\u00a0 He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America\u2019s Frontline Doctors.<\/p>\n