Beautiful piece by Berenson.
The key word being almost.
March is the season for Covid remembrances. On Sunday the Times ran a honker. Three reporters, 2,100 words. When I worked there, the Times internally called this kind of article an “All Known Thought” piece. Maybe it still does, I don’t know.
The piece’s headline was “How a Pandemic Malaise Is Shaping American Politics.” Its thesis was that although no one talks about Covid anymore, everyone is still furious:
Public confidence in institutions — the presidency, public schools, the criminal justice system, the news media, Congress — slumped in surveys in the aftermath of the pandemic and has yet to recover. The pandemic hardened voter distrust in government…
The article went on to list the reasons people are angry: how school closures hurt kids and lockdowns hurt cities, the stress families endured, how differing views on shutdowns exacerbated tensions between Democrats and Republicans.
Yet the piece never mentioned the most truly corrosive factor, even as three little words deep in the piece gave the game away:
[Dr. Mary Elizabeth Christian’s] parents, who were vaccinated, broke their isolation for a dinner to celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary in July 2021. Within three days, they both tested positive. They died within two days of each other that August.
Dr. Christian’s parents were vaccinated. They got Covid and died anyway.
Because the mRNAs failed.
At best, the two-shot regimen provided a few months of protection in 2021 against the original variant of Covid (ignoring the fact the first shot temporarily increased the risk of infection).
The first booster added, perhaps, a few weeks of protection.
Everything since has been useless, the drug version of the mask mandates and lockdowns and test-and-trace public health theater that made 2020 unbearable. At a high price, too. The mRNAs seriously injured or killed many people who received them. How many? I don’t know, and I won’t guess, but the number is not trivial. They caused many more people to suffer for days or weeks with severe side effects.
And they do not work.
They do not provide lasting protection. Across the mRNA countries, the biggest Covid wave came when Omicron hit in early 2022, long after most adults were jabbed.
By 2023, Omicron had infected nearly everyone, vaccinated or not. It made Covid endemic, a contagious but relatively mild infection most of us will get several times.
Omicron’s relative lack of virulence did the world - and the vaccine fanatics - a great favor. As overall Covid deaths dropped, vaccinators argued the mRNAs helped against serious disease even after they failed against infection. That theory is almost certainly untrue, and the studies that show it are hopelessly tainted by a statistical artifact called “healthy vaccine user bias.”
What would have happened if Delta or similarly virulent variants had continued to circulate in 2022 as the mRNAs failed? We will never know, but based on fragmentary evidence from late 2021, I suspect deaths would have remained so high that even mRNA fanatics had to admit the complete failure of the jabs.
In any event, the grand promises the vaccinators and public health authorities made the world in 2021, when they claimed the mRNAs would defeat if not eradicate Covid, were wrong. Even they can’t dispute that fact, so they simply ignore it. My tweet of Aug. 28, 2021, the infamous post that got me knocked off Twitter, couldn’t have been more accurate:
Everyone knows this now, which is why so few people took the mRNAs in 2023, not just in the United States but in countries like Australia and Japan that had near-complete compliance with the initial regimen.
In most other countries, the vaccinators have come to partial terms with this failure. They may not have admitted it openly, but they have modified their recommendations to discourage or even ban most adults under 65 from getting more mRNA shots.
Only in the United States have the vaccinators refused to bend to reality. Last fall, the Centers for Disease Control tried to press mRNA boosters on everyone over six months old - a bizarre recommendation, given Omicron’s mildness in children.
Until the CDC and other public health authorities come clean about the fact that the jabs did not work as promised, confidence in all government institutions is likely to continue to erode.
But of course the Times cannot admit this fact, much less properly investigate the mRNAs. It has been carrying water for the vaccinators for three-plus years.
So it will continue to look around, puzzled, as its credibility erodes alongside the institutions it supposedly covers as a watchdog.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...6a-9472-4cbb-9c74-f9e123856cfd_1170x1105.jpeg
Four years in, the New York Times ALMOST tells the truth about Covid and the mRNAs
It admits all the reasons Covid made everyone so furious. Except the most important one. So close, yet so far.
The New York Times was almost honest about Covid yesterday.The key word being almost.
March is the season for Covid remembrances. On Sunday the Times ran a honker. Three reporters, 2,100 words. When I worked there, the Times internally called this kind of article an “All Known Thought” piece. Maybe it still does, I don’t know.
The piece’s headline was “How a Pandemic Malaise Is Shaping American Politics.” Its thesis was that although no one talks about Covid anymore, everyone is still furious:
Public confidence in institutions — the presidency, public schools, the criminal justice system, the news media, Congress — slumped in surveys in the aftermath of the pandemic and has yet to recover. The pandemic hardened voter distrust in government…
The article went on to list the reasons people are angry: how school closures hurt kids and lockdowns hurt cities, the stress families endured, how differing views on shutdowns exacerbated tensions between Democrats and Republicans.
Yet the piece never mentioned the most truly corrosive factor, even as three little words deep in the piece gave the game away:
[Dr. Mary Elizabeth Christian’s] parents, who were vaccinated, broke their isolation for a dinner to celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary in July 2021. Within three days, they both tested positive. They died within two days of each other that August.
Dr. Christian’s parents were vaccinated. They got Covid and died anyway.
Because the mRNAs failed.
At best, the two-shot regimen provided a few months of protection in 2021 against the original variant of Covid (ignoring the fact the first shot temporarily increased the risk of infection).
The first booster added, perhaps, a few weeks of protection.
Everything since has been useless, the drug version of the mask mandates and lockdowns and test-and-trace public health theater that made 2020 unbearable. At a high price, too. The mRNAs seriously injured or killed many people who received them. How many? I don’t know, and I won’t guess, but the number is not trivial. They caused many more people to suffer for days or weeks with severe side effects.
And they do not work.
They do not provide lasting protection. Across the mRNA countries, the biggest Covid wave came when Omicron hit in early 2022, long after most adults were jabbed.
By 2023, Omicron had infected nearly everyone, vaccinated or not. It made Covid endemic, a contagious but relatively mild infection most of us will get several times.
Omicron’s relative lack of virulence did the world - and the vaccine fanatics - a great favor. As overall Covid deaths dropped, vaccinators argued the mRNAs helped against serious disease even after they failed against infection. That theory is almost certainly untrue, and the studies that show it are hopelessly tainted by a statistical artifact called “healthy vaccine user bias.”
What would have happened if Delta or similarly virulent variants had continued to circulate in 2022 as the mRNAs failed? We will never know, but based on fragmentary evidence from late 2021, I suspect deaths would have remained so high that even mRNA fanatics had to admit the complete failure of the jabs.
In any event, the grand promises the vaccinators and public health authorities made the world in 2021, when they claimed the mRNAs would defeat if not eradicate Covid, were wrong. Even they can’t dispute that fact, so they simply ignore it. My tweet of Aug. 28, 2021, the infamous post that got me knocked off Twitter, couldn’t have been more accurate:
Everyone knows this now, which is why so few people took the mRNAs in 2023, not just in the United States but in countries like Australia and Japan that had near-complete compliance with the initial regimen.
In most other countries, the vaccinators have come to partial terms with this failure. They may not have admitted it openly, but they have modified their recommendations to discourage or even ban most adults under 65 from getting more mRNA shots.
Only in the United States have the vaccinators refused to bend to reality. Last fall, the Centers for Disease Control tried to press mRNA boosters on everyone over six months old - a bizarre recommendation, given Omicron’s mildness in children.
Until the CDC and other public health authorities come clean about the fact that the jabs did not work as promised, confidence in all government institutions is likely to continue to erode.
But of course the Times cannot admit this fact, much less properly investigate the mRNAs. It has been carrying water for the vaccinators for three-plus years.
So it will continue to look around, puzzled, as its credibility erodes alongside the institutions it supposedly covers as a watchdog.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...6a-9472-4cbb-9c74-f9e123856cfd_1170x1105.jpeg
