87.3% of Americans haven’t gotten an improved booster shot? I would have found that hard to believe had I not gone to the Post Office Friday and witnessed a complete lack of concern on so many faces. Masks were scarce, spacing nonexistent, my swearing profuse.
Harvard / Yale Project Stokes Complacency
“By November 9, 2022, 94% of the U.S. population were estimated to have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 at least once,” states the Nov. 23, 2022 preprint, which concludes “Effective protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe disease in November 2022 was substantially higher than in December 2021.”
Substantially higher? With so few new shots and so many basically expired old ones? The study assumes what seems to me a higher amount of protection from prior vaccinations and infections than is warranted: “For protection against severe disease, we assumed immunity declined at 1% per month and stayed constant for hybrid exposures.” [ Hybrid defined as people with both a prior covid infection and some level of vaccination. ]
Assuming or estimating that 19 of every 20 Americans have had covid allows the Harvard study to use the “hybrid” numbers of another preprint study posted Oct. 24, 2022, which gathered estimates from 26 other studies to come up with grand estimates that the Harvard study apparently used to make more estimates and assumptions.
Conclusions from churning out numbers from those inputs led to that sunny prognosis of “substantially higher” “effective protection” for the U.S. as of November 2022.
Covering One’s Posterior
But the Harvard study concluded with four caveats:
“Despite this high level of protection, a more transmissible or immune evading (sub)variant, changes in behavior, or ongoing waning of immunity could lead to a new SARS-CoV-2 wave.”
And yes, today we have all four of those:
1) “more transmissible” variants (BQs and XBBs),
2) which are also more “immune evading,” and
3) plenty of “changes in behavior” with sparse masking, no distancing, plus
4) severe “waning of immunity” every day with just 12.7% (1 of every 8) Americans getting the latest vaccines—which are far better than we’ve had before.
So the study has covered its butt with four “I-told-you-so” clauses.
Covid Clobbered Over 23 Million Americans
I have absolutely no proof that either study is at all wrong. I hope their protection numbers are correct. I applaud the effort and expertise in assembling a landscape framework that can be used over and over in future.
I simply have major skepticism for estimates and assumptions about an enemy that has already killed at least 1 million Americans, wounded at least 15 million other Americans (Long Covid), and disabled at least another 7 million more Americans (Disabling Long Covid, DLC) — far more damage than any other foe has done to us in our nation’s long battle-heavy history.
World War Three goes On, and On. . .
We are just short of three years into World War Three against an implacable enemy that has outflanked and eluded us at every turn, growing stronger as it preys upon our weaknesses and destroys our bodies from within.
Grit will win this war, not valor. The brave defy precautions and die, killing their families with them.
There is no glory in getting sick, wilting like a flower. Covid will never die unless we kill it, and to do so we have to starve it, deny it our bodies to feed upon.
The win will go to determined defense against infection. Patience, perseverance, and science will win, if we win at all. We can’t rely upon some stroke of wisdom, discovery, or luck—we have to grind this war down, or die. Simple Darwinism.
I heartily recommend you bolster your personal defenses. When we first had vaccines available, we rushed out and got them. Please do so again; the new vaccines are much better than the old ones and they’re Fresh. You’re going to need that strength to last the winter.
The best way to avoid covid’s very bad / terrible effects is to Not Get It. We’re down to one treatment now. Paxlovid’s the only treatment that’s standing up to the newest BQs and XBBs. And newer variants fester everywhere.
It’s no time to leave the door open while a pack of wolves roams outside. Protect your nose, wear a mask.
Start of the Spike
If you haven’t noticed, the reported covid case level is way up. So is hospitalization and test positivity reported by The New York Times’ Coronavirus Tracker, which states “Since January 2020, at least 1 in 3 people who live in the United States have been infected” [ which is quite a few less than 94% ].
On Nov. 20, daily average reported cases was 41,737, which rose to 51,995 by Dec. 4, up 28%.
On Nov. 20, test positivity was 8.2%, which rose to 12% by Dec. 4, up 40%.
Hospitalization on Nov. 4 was 27,868, which rose to 35,733 by Dec. 4, up 28%.
Intensive Care Unit patients number 4,143, up 21%.
Deaths were down on both dates, but what’s happening is that covid does so much damage to all parts of the body, that after people are discharged from the hospital—they die from other physical failures, such as heart attacks, brain strokes, and cardiovascular events, and so are not counted as covid deaths. So even though covid ravaged so much of their bodies to cause the fatality, their deaths are ruled as “caused” by failure of something other than covid.
That has been going on since early covid days, and will only get worse as people get repeated bouts with covid, since covid damage is cumulative.
Apathy in the Face of Contagion
Meanwhile, the percentage of people who have gotten the new, much-improved vaccination shots [ I prefer Moderna ] is at a pathetic 12.7%.
That updated booster shot, and the “mornings-after” Paxlovid pills are apparently the only drugs that can significantly help you now, since the voraciously contagious BQ variants now dominate the U.S., and they are practically immune to other treatments, most of which have been taken off the market. The even-more-immune monster XBBs are rising slowly but surely—doubling in the past two weeks. BA5 is fading fast, and BF7 seems to be stalling in fourth place.
Just as I warned weeks ago, the Thanksgiving spike has started, and it will keep going up. A late-December holiday bump will follow, and it’ll be a long, coughing, gasping winter, since hospitals are already stressed.
“Fully Vaccinated” is Fully Foolish
And if you think you’re “fully vaccinated” with the first two shots (according to the CDC’s ridiculous definition), those 2021 jabs have long since worn off, and the BQs and XBBs can even go right past the late-2021 boosters because those old antibodies can’t even see those new variants, they’re so different.
You need to get the new, improved “bivalent” shot, and test yourself at the first covid symptom, so you can ASAP get Paxlovid for an ounce of prevention.
Because if you wait, you might not get even a quarter-pound of cure, only a makeshift bed in a makeshift ward. Or a cot in an auditorium. Or stacked like firewood in a freezer truck.
That’s what being “brave” and “free” and “proud” can get you. 23 million American casualties could confirm that—if they were alive with working brains. And that’s the “at least” number. The high-end casualty number was 44 million dead, wounded, and disabled, and that’s rising fast every day now.
Don’t be one of those numbers. Wake the F up!
P.S.: If you sign up at restless2024.substack.com you get free access to all my writing, including poetry, fiction, and climate-change essays. You can also buy me some coffee if you want.
Before covid stifled our coffeehouse Meetups, another member of my writer’s group startled me by astutely defining my writing process: She hand-glazed a coffee cup for me printed with “Coffee, Write, Edit, Repeat.”
That still works on Zoom, and my coffee fund would appreciate your help.
LINKS: [ So you can fact-check me yourself. ]
< https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.19.22282525v3 >
< https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.22280610v2.full-text >
< https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html?name=styln-coronavirus®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=LegacyCollection&variant=show&is_new=false >