The Emergency Must Be Ended, Now; Public-Health Officials Have Trouble with the Truth with COVID-19, and other C-Virus related stories

Colleen McGrath/The Herald-Mail via AP

The Emergency Must Be Ended, Now:

The time has come to terminate the pandemic state of emergency. It’s time to end the controls, the closures, the restrictions, the plexiglass, the stickers, the exhortations, the panic-mongering, the distancing announcements, the ubiquitous commercials, the forced masking, the vaccine mandates.

We don’t mean that the virus is gone—Omicron is still spreading wildly, and the virus may circulate forever. But with a normal focus on protecting the vulnerable, we can treat the virus as a medical rather than a social matter and manage it in ordinary ways. A declared emergency needs continuous justification, and that’s now lacking.

Over the last six weeks in the United States, the Delta variant strain—the most recent aggressive version of the infection—has according to the CDC been declining in both the proportion of infections (60 percent on Dec. 18 to 0.5 percent on Jan. 15) and the number of daily infected people (95,000 to 2,100). During the next two weeks, Delta will decline to the point that it essentially disappears like the strains before it.

Omicron is mild enough that most people, even many high-risk people, can adequately cope with the infection. Omicron infection is no more severe than seasonal flu, and generally less so. A large portion of the vulnerable population in the developed world is already vaccinated and protected against severe disease. We have learned much about the utility of inexpensive supplements like Vitamin D to reduce disease risk, and there’s a host of good therapeutics available to prevent hospitalization and death should a vulnerable patient become infected. And for younger people, the risk of severe disease—already low before Omicron—is minuscule. --->READ MORE HERE

Shawn Thew - Pool via CNP / Aval

Public-health officials have trouble with the truth with COVID-19:

Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have omitted uncomfortable truths, made misleading statements and advanced demonstrably false assertions.

No doubt, officials and organizations promulgating them had a range of motivations — including honorable ones, such as wanting to encourage salutary choices. Yet the subsequent loss of institutional trust may result in harm that far outweighs any short-term policy objectives.

Consider some messages the field has promoted to the public over the last two years and their shaky relationship with the truth.

Any mask is better than no mask. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky asserted that “any mask is better than no mask.” This statement was factually incorrect when she said it. The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during COVID-19 — performed in rural Bangladesh — found that surgical masks reduced the spread of COVID-19 among villages assigned to wear them, while cloth masks were no better than no masks at all. In an umbrella review of masking that I coauthored, we found no good evidence to support cloth masking. Two days after Walensky’s statement, the CDC conceded that cloth masks are inferior to other masks. Notably, however, this is still misleading because cloth masking is not just less effective — it is entirely ineffective. --->READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:

"A Catastrophic Moral Crime" - Bari Weiss & Bill Maher 'Say The Quiet Part Out Loud' On Leftist COVID Policies

Doctors Diagnose Problems With Nation’s COVID-19 Response

USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates

WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates

YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates

NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest

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