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Delta is evading the vaccines; the next variant will render them obsolete. A vaccination goal therefore cannot be our way out – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara
The skyrocketing Lanka cases have led to the usual chorus to reflexively urge lockdown. However, based on very evident data, certain professionals disagree that it would aid the current situation in any way. They wonder how bringing economic activities to a jolting halt would, this time, help curb the rapid spread of the virus.
Senior Professor Sudantha Liyanage makes this case. He is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura which has been at the forefront of vital research and studies on SARS Cov2 and its variants.
We already know from overwhelming local data that decades of hard work and capital accumulation has been lost for too many in earlier episodes of freezing economic life as we know it. Several months ago, when harsh measures were imposed, cases stayed high, deaths refused to measurably plateau, and not much changed when restrictions were lifted, not for some time anyway. Our incoming Health Minister has observed the same. He too has pointed out the economy would collapse.
Professor Liyanage stresses that what works against this pandemic ‘is nothing but vaccines.’ He goes on to say, “We tried lockdowns, we tried travel restrictions, but the numbers did not change that much.” Here, he is quite right.
WHO in another of its infamous medical flip flops has changed the definition of herd immunity or population immunity as coming primarily through vaccination and minimising the previous definition of natural immunity as being developed through prior infection (though given how late in human history vaccines appeared, if such natural immunity did not exist, we would not have survived long enough to avail of their benefits). WHO though, states its concern that if the disease were to spread uncontrolled through any segment of the population, it would result in unnecessary deaths.
The article also points out that the Army Commander is making preparations for a third dose booster shot even as WHO last week urged nations to halt such programs. Israel just did such a booster shot and 14 of those people had an outbreak of reinfection hot on its heels!
Professor Liyanage adds, “Let’s be honest about the lockdowns and curfews. With the crushing social and economic costs that lockdowns bring…small businesses didn’t survive at all…it only adds to the economic misery and affects the livelihoods of many who barely survive with wages.” He concludes, “We should remember, it was the countries and localities with high vaccination rates that have shown low numbers of hospitalisation and death.”
Having consulted global specialists Sunetra Gupta, Oxford’s leading epidemiologist, Martin Kulldorff, Harvard University Epidemiologist, Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, early treatment champion and leading global COVID researcher Dr. Peter McCullough, and Professor Harvey Risch of Yale among others, on these points, we have the following conclusions in response to Professor Liyanage’s opinion:
Basic herd/population immunity
It has been clearly demonstrated that vaccines in fact do not protect us, it is our immune system’s reaction to the vaccine that protects us. Natural infection typically confers better and broader protection. Though, sometimes at a cost to those most acutely vulnerable to severe illness and death. Hence the strategy is not ‘let it rip,’ but let the hardy and not at risk become immune and protect and temporarily isolate or preferentially vaccinate the vulnerable.
But to ignore the scientific fact that natural recovery from infection given how age stratified the risk is (a 1,000 times risk differential between young adults and those above 60 with pre-existing conditions), demonstrated anew in study after study recently, and which confers long lasting future protection for those millions who have had and recovered from COVID, is absurd.
It is also therefore irrational to ask those who have recovered from COVID to get vaccinated, and those not at risk such as children, to be pointlessly jabbed with experimental therapies whose safety trials will not in fact be complete until the end of 2022.
In the 18th century, milkmaids were considered ‘fair of face,’ the prettiest girls in all the land. They did not have common face marks from smallpox. With their close contact with cows, they were exposed to and infected by cow pox, a mild disease that generates immunity to smallpox. In 1774 a Dorset farmer named Benjamin Jesty purposefully inoculated his wife and two sons with cow pox and vaccines were born. The Latin vaccinus means ‘from cows’.
The best we could have hoped for from these current gene therapies being touted as ‘vaccines’, these leading specialists tell us, now confirmed by their clinical experience successfully treating COVID, is that they provide protection against severe disease in the short term. There has never been any assertion even during clinical trials that they would protect against transmitting or getting reinfected.
As I wrote in a recent article: Professor Andrew Pollard who led the Oxford vaccine team recently confirmed it was clear that the Delta variant could and did infect the fully vaccinated. He has pointed out the number of global vaccine doses, about 4 billion, should be enough to stop the expected 65,000 global deaths per week, but they are continuing. Moreover, PHE, Public Health England and the CDC confirm vaccinated people, when reinfected, carry a similar viral load to unvaccinated people.
He says, “We need to start moving away from just reporting infections or just reporting positive cases, start reporting the number of people ill because of COVID. Otherwise, we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that don’t translate into disease burden. And then we’ll be in this mad spiral of continually boosting and revaccinating the population.”
Let’s dip back briefly into history again. Thucydides writing about the Peloponnesian War wrote of the Great Plague which hit Athens in the middle of its war with Sparta. A quarter of the inhabitants of Athens were wiped out before the disease was reined in. He describes how, “More often the sick and dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered.” He continues, “For no one was ever attacked a second time or not with a fatal result. All men congratulated them, and they themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment, had an innocent fancy that they could not die of any other sickness.”
Variants and global death rates
When Delta came knocking on the door, Professor Harvey Risch of Yale, along with one of the leading researchers on COVID treatment and globally renowned cardiologist, Dr. Peter McCullough, both said it would be ‘highly infectious’ and ‘mildly lethal.’ And therefore, would expedite our way to community immunity.
It is not true the countries with the highest vaccination rates have done best over Delta. The US States data cited by the Professor as a demonstration of COVID success, date from early January. The collapse of COVID numbers pre-dated any vaccine effect by several months in the US. And South Dakota, for example, with no masking and low vaccination, has the same results (exceptional ones, in fact slightly better) than North Dakota. From the year it has been fully open, despite an elderly population, Florida has done better than California in terms of population and age adjusted mortality. Sweden has about 40% vaccination and 9% mask mandate, and it’s COVID ‘ascribed’ mortality over the Delta months has been about 0.5 per day.
UK has had soaring ‘positive tests’ close to 26,000 a day, and ‘deaths’ between 100 to low 30’s, no excess mortality. No differential in mortality really between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Israel has had recurring fresh spikes of cases, very modest lethality, but significant enough with close to 85% adult vaccination to realise vaccines are ‘leaky’ and people are ‘shedding.’ In the UK, CFR has been 0.2% versus close to 1.9% for Alpha. So, this is not more lethal as a variant per se. We are seeing this in the US as well. This is what is concerning about the Lanka numbers which we address below.
India is barely 6% vaccinated. They applied early treatment protocols in key states. Government seroprevalence studies show above the age of 6, close to 70% have antibodies. That’s ‘real immunity’ if so!
Delta is evading the vaccines; the next variant will render them obsolete. A vaccination goal therefore cannot be our way out.
Lanka case and death rates
So, why are our numbers so high? Various hypotheses:
The percentage of ‘deaths’ this last week vs ‘positive tests’ is revealing:
14 August 2021
US: 71,135 positive cases, 258 deaths on the day:
0.36% nationally
Texas (no masks, low vaccination): 9,959 positive cases, 89 deaths on the day,
0.89%
Florida (no masks; elderly population, elderly vaccinated): 25,991 positive cases, 27 deaths on the day,
0.10%
India (used early treatment protocols, high natural antibodies): 36,217 positive tests, 491 deaths on the day,
1.36%
UK: 29,520 positive tests, 93 deaths on the day,
0.32%
South Africa: 13,020 positive tests, 238 deaths on the day
1.82%
Bangladesh: 6,885 positive tests, 178 deaths on the day,
2.58%
Malaysia (using early treatment protocols): 20,670 positive tests, 260 deaths on the day,
1.26%
Sweden (9% mask compliance, 40% vaccination): 0 positive tests, 0 deaths on the day,
0%
Japan (32.9% vaccination overall, above aged 60, 81%, a model of focus): 20,332 positive tests, 25 deaths on the day,
0.12%
Pakistan: 4,786 positive tests, 73 deaths on the day,
1.53%
Israel (high reinfection post-vaccination, low mortality): 6,383 positive tests, 12 deaths on the day,
0.19%
Sri Lanka: 3,263 positive tests, 160 deaths on the day
4.9%
There are inexpensive, efficacious and safe treatments that we can avail of to turn this tide as well.
The illness goes through three phases: viral, inflammation and thrombotic. Doctors have ample remedies to address these phases, the trick is to start treating at the first onset of symptoms. The Government has now published an excellent outpatient protocol for those with mild symptoms. For those who develop more serious symptoms, particularly oxygen deficits, Dr. Shankara Chetty, who has successfully treated over 6,000 patients with no need of oxygen, hospitalisation and with no one dying, bases his breakthrough protocol on the insight that those who worsen around the 8th day (around the 20-30% who are vulnerable) have a hypersensitivity reaction, a type of ‘allergic’ reaction to the spike protein.
Hence a simple treatment of antihistamines, steroids, montelukast and aspirin (for anti-coagulation), has immediately led to dramatic recovery, with oxygen saturation rebounding from say 75% to 95% in less than 24 hours. It is easy to demonstrate, the stats are there, and I continue to plead with our specialists to allow us to make a presentation with Dr. Chetty, as it would remove oxygen/ICU pressure profoundly, and there is clearly no downside.
Vaccine passports make no sense
If the ‘vaccines’ worked, the compulsory use of them would make no sense, as long as everyone who wanted to be vaccinated could be. So, the vaccinated would then be safe, the others would be choosing to assume the risk, and it is a very small percentage of the population at active risk, anyway.
If the vaccines don’t work, the ‘passports’ make no sense, as why would we want to have everyone vaccinated with something ineffectual?
As we now know we are still spreading and getting infected, these are actually ‘therapeutics.’ As the President said, focus them on the most vulnerable. Why mandate a therapeutic?
And if truly sterilising immunity comes from natural immunity, let’s let those who are not at risk (the vast majority), be backed by early treatments for those who nevertheless get symptomatic.
No more mass testing, use early treatment, focus on the symptomatic. And we all move on.
You hear the weirdest things
I was on a podcast with some eminent friends in California, making a point about the insanity of masks, given the particle size of the COVID virus, especially as it is primarily airborne. Evidence is not hard to locate. A 98% mask compliance in Hawaii, and close to 85% adult vaccination (at least one dose), has not inhibited a surge of not just ‘positive tests’ but hospitalisations that are overtaking the earlier established winter thresholds.
All over the world, there is no correlation between mask mandates and sustained COVID results. Anyway, clinician Dr. Richard Urso was pointing out that he had challenged people to find any data based, randomised trial showing mask efficacy, against a sizable dollar amount. He is yet to have anyone come forward.
Enthusiasts of muzzles tend to say, to be against masks was to be ‘racist.’ This, took me a tad by surprise. It was explained the Hopi Indians are in difficult circumstances, cannot readily avail of healthcare, and we must not ‘fumigate’ them with our viruses.
Well since the masks don’t work, putting a plastic bag on your head would be about as helpful to the Hopi Indians. Moreover, most of that tribe live in Arizona?
I was told being against lockdowns was also racist. This fascinated me. I would have thought, the more affluent ‘sheltering in place,’ while the less affluent delivered their personal needs, and food, and distractions to them, and who exposed themselves to stock and deliver these and other requirements, and were not sheltered, as an indefinite arrangement, was a lot more ‘racist’ or prejudiced or self-absorbed or whatever.
With a clearly age stratified illness, not of mortal risk to the overwhelming majority, and with early treatments aplenty, surely the less racist or prejudiced act would be to get out there with them, and build natural immunity, a wall of immunity. This would then shelter our elderly, vulnerable, and indeed too, the Hopi Indians, but also all those unable to work from home to keep us in our Uber Eats and Netflix supported stupor.
Saving our lives
It has been sagely pointed out that when we feel ineffectual, hopeless, overwhelmed, the great activists remind us that all we have to do is to ensure the lies don’t pass through us. Those lies, as I’ve written before, are parasitic and need human hosts on which to feed and through whom to multiply. And when we decide not to harbour them, make room for them, defer to them out of some misguided politeness or pseudo community, they hit an impasse. They begin to shrivel and die.
I was interviewing PANDA’s passionate and insightful chairman Nick Hudson and made this point. When he posted it on his Twitter feed, I was deeply moved to read one of the comments from a lady who said essentially, “One ordinary person reached, who will not let the lies pass through her.” Well, that is everything.
We cannot even apply the precautionary principle. Have you seen one single government have the audacity to put up a cost benefit analysis with both national and global repercussions of locking down society indefinitely over an influenza strain which, based on global seroprevalence studies, has an IFR of 0.15%?
Instead, anyone who does this, like that sainted man Anders Tegnell, Chief Epidemiologist of Sweden, is savaged with unabated venom, and Sweden floats through. Taking 2019 and 2020 together its mortality compares very well, even with its Scandinavian neighbours, its economy never shut and is rebounding, its society has none of the psychosis of long-term paralysis, its 2021 mortality is below five-year averages, and here in this summer of the Delta variant, Sweden has effectively had a month of virtually no COVID related mortality! In any sane world this would be studied, not shunned.
The precautionary principle would also tell us that when 25,000 children die of hunger every day, there may be bigger humanitarian concerns. When in India, which has approximately one-sixth of the COVID deaths per million of the US and EU, but 1,200 die of TB daily and 2,000 a day from diarrhoea, again, we should stop strutting around claiming that we are acutely sensitive to human mortality and suffering.
So, folks, the clown show, is coming apart at the seams. Jackboots on our faces forever, or our civil or uncivil disobedience eventually provides a straw that breaks this frothing camel’s back. Time to reclaim our lives. We just can’t be this pliable. Australia on a seventh lockdown now? South Africa with 500 days of lockdown and some of the worst, population adjusted mortality, to show for it.
Glorious art, music, culture, travel, exchange, interaction, dissipated, centres of civilisation, converted into depressed, dystopian shadows of themselves. Lockdown over what?
For those of us not at serious risk, demand the right to be infected, we are ‘infected’ by life in so many ways already. And we have prophylactics and treatment even for this largely ineffectual viral strain. Youngsters aren’t at risk from this pathogen, invite them to galvanise a response, fortify our defences with their immunity, and via insisting on the right to be represented rather than manipulated, pick the planet they want to live on.
