America is averaging 682,374 Covid cases per day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, a 12 percent drop over the past two weeks. In Pennsylvania case rates are down 39% in two weeks.
Since last Thursday, the government of the United Kingdom is no longer requiring work from home. Covid passports for large events won’t be renewed when it expires tomorrow. Most importantly, indoor mask-wearing will no longer be compulsory anywhere in England. The requirement for school students to wear masks during class and in communal areas has been removed from the Department for Education’s national guidance.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "As Covid now becomes endemic, we will need to replace legal requirements with common sense advice and guidance, urging people with the virus to be careful and considerate of others."
TAKE HOME
The declining cases should be a signal that it is time to start lifting pandemic-related restrictions. The mandates are a slippery slope towards more restrictions. In Australia, citizens face $4,000 fines every three months for remaining unvaccinated. America should follow England's lead. Masks in schools and vaccine mandates are particularly divisive restrictions that don't have societal or medical benefits and they should go.
TWO
On Friday the CDC issued a new report on Covid-19. They reported that the Omicron variant now makes up around 99.5 percent of Covid cases in the U.S.
They wrote: " People who were unvaccinated and did not have a prior COVID-19 infection remained at the highest risk of infection and hospitalization, while those who were previously infected, both with or without prior vaccination, had the greatest protection. Persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone."
Additional data from the U.K. from Aug. 16 to Dec. 5, 2021, showed people who had been vaccinated accounted for four of every five COVID-19 deaths. A U.K. briefing on Covid found that as of Dec. 29, the fully vaccinated makeup 74% of patients who were hospitalized due to infection from the omicron variant.
TAKE HOME
The superior protection in individuals who have had Covid compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection has been repeatedly denied by all the major medical and media institutions until Friday's CDC update. Decades of fundamental immunology science support this superiority. We should conduct a national immune status study to identify who has strong immunity from previous Covid infection, so that we can have a policy of vaccination that’s educated, using the right vaccines at the right time for the right people.
THREE
The British Medical Journal has called for the immediate release of data which is not being shared regarding the development and testing of Covid Vaccines and treatments.
The data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are scheduled to remain that way for years. Pfizer will not begin entertaining requests for trial data until May 2025! 24 months after the primary study completion date. This lack of access to data is consistent among all of the vaccine manufacturers.
To quote from the editorial-
"Big pharma is the least trusted industry. At least three of the many companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars. One pleaded guilty to fraud. The covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue. The BMJ supports vaccination policies based on sound evidence. As the global vaccine rollout continues, it cannot be justifiable or in the best interests of patients and the public that we are left to just trust “in the system,” with the distant hope that the underlying data may become available for independent review at some future time. Data must be available when trial results are announced, published, or used to justify regulatory decisions. The public has paid for Covid-19 vaccines through vast public funding of research, and it is the public that takes on the balance of benefits and harms that accompany vaccination. The public, therefore, has a right and entitlement to those data, as well as to the interrogation of those data by experts. Pharmaceutical companies are reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims. The purpose of regulators is not to dance to the tune of rich global corporations and enrich them further; it is to protect the health of their populations. We need complete data transparency for all studies, we need it in the public interest, and we need it now."
TAKE HOME
This delay in reporting data which is affecting public health policy around the world and affecting every American is scientifically and morally indefensible.