Hindsight Is Literally 2020

Hindsight is quite literally 2020.

Four years ago (roughly) today, the world lost its marbles and began to shut down.  And as we have noted before, it was effectively all for naught.  In the end, the lockdowns, masks, and jabs did more harm than good on balance. 

From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article last year, in a nutshell:

"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.

"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/23/5029

That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"

Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in.  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc.  Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.

And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again.  And again and again.

Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.

It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic.  And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections.  And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons.  A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.  

Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.

What should have been done?  "Letting it rip", that is, "adopting the flu strategy", ultimately would have in fact been the least-worst alternative in the long run, all things considered.  That is precisely what a properly right-brain dominant person would have advocated from the get-go, at least if they were properly informed and NOT bombarded 24/7 with fearporn news media.

Looks like "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be renamed "Melbourne Syndrome" because #SwedenGotItRight.  The verdict is in.  In terms of cumulative all-cause excess mortality, Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and masks and such, actually came out as one of the best in Europe, and not very different from their much stricter neighbors in the long run.  Ditto for other countries and US states that largely ignored the plandemic, but did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors.  Lockdowns, masks, and jab mandates were thus worse than useless.

On March 12, 2020, interestingly enough, the band The Killers released the song "Caution".  The song, while not about the virus, is nonetheless basically about the theme of "throwing caution to the wind".  And in hindsight, that is ironically pretty much what should have been done in regards to the virus, at least for the vast majority of the population who was at relatively low risk overall, whose resulting "herd immunity" would have thus ultimately protected those who were truly vulnerable to the virus.  Lockdowns, on the other hand, merely dragged things out and ultimately put the genuinely vulnerable at greater risk.  The science of epidemiology and public health didn't really change, but the politics sure did.

And failing that, once those who were genuinely fooled (including myself somewhat as well, regrettably) had wised up early on, the second least-worst policy would have been to, as the same song says, "go straight from zero to the Fourth of July" in terms of reopening and ending all restrictions at once.  That's right, ALL at once, all the way back to 2019 normal, period, and don't look back. 

But instead, the unholy "public health" trinity of collective action problems, prevention paradox, and precautionary principle had all been turned on their heads and weaponized against We the People.  Benjamin Franklin spins in his grave.

Moral of the story:  NEVER give up any rights "temporarily", that you are not willing to say goodbye to forever.  Or at the very least, you will not get them back without a fight. 

Indeed, hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.

What Was The Cruelest April Fool's Joke In All Of Recorded History?

What was the absolute cruelest April Fool's joke in all of recorded history?  "Two weeks to flatten the curve".  After all, had it actually been true, it would have literally ended on April 1, 2020.

And as The Who (not to be confused with the WHO, the World Health Organization!) famously sang:

"We won't get fooled again!"

Over 400 Studies On Our Side

BREAKING NEWS:  According to Dr. Paul Alexander, here are now over 400 studies that expose the utter failure of all of the COVID-related mandates and compulsory restrictions in the real world, and ZERO studies of even halfway-decent quality that show the opposite with any real confidence.  Once you exclude all of the fatally-flawed and poorest quality studies, and look at enough real-world data points, one can firmly conclude that all of these measures have done far more harm than good on balance.  And they should NEVER, EVER, EVER be repeated.  Like, ever.

Dr. Alexander's article discusses compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns, shelter-in-place, school closures, masks and mask mandates, etc. and essentially debunks them all.  Scratch that, he debones, fillets, slices, dices, and juliennes each and every one of these sacred cows, and pretty much lays waste to their remains.  However, his article does not touch on the most recent addition to the mix:  the now ubiquitous "vaccines" and the disgustingly tyrannical mandates and passports of same.  That is where the ever-insightful Steve Kirsch comes in, noting that these jabs literally kill more people than they save, and a fortiori for children to the tune of 117 to 1.  And that data was largely before the boosters became widely used, so that is most likely a lower bound for the adverse effects going forward if we continue on the path we are on.  They are also known to be very "leaky" (i.e. they don't stop transmission), and are thus NOT fit for the purpose of mass vaccination even if they were somehow perfectly safe (which they're not).

Thus, to put it in medical terminology, "the therapeutic window is closed" for all of these mandates and restrictions, period.  We must scrap the whole lot of them, cold turkey, never to repeat them again.  And the same is clearly true for these "vaccines" themselves, with maybe the exception of some extremely vulnerable and high risk individuals who still have yet to receive them for whatever reason.  Plenty of early treatments and prophylactics exist that completely obviate any need for these jabs, we just need to stop denying and censoring them, and start using them.  And yesterday is NOT soon enough!

FINAL THOUGHT:  If anyone still thinks that vaccine mandates or passports are somehow necessary OR sufficient to prevent another lockdown, well, we've got a nice bridge over the Danube River we'd like to sell you.  As they are now learning the hard way in Europe, you cannot bargain with the devil and hope to come out in one piece!  Cold turkey is the only way out of this mess for good, period.  When you try to meet insanity and tyranny in the middle, you will always lose, each and every single time.

UPDATE:  Looks like Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates, has ultimately been vindicated after all.  Their cumulative all-cause excess mortality per capita (by far the best indicator of all) was well below the European average, and believe it or not, not very different from their neighbors when you include all of their neighbors.  And Brazil, who had a reputation for being lax, and even Belarus, Nicaragua, and Tanzania, who largely ignored the pandemic, also fared quite similarly to their much stricter neighbors as well in terms of excess deaths.  And here in the USA, we see that Florida's excess death rate was roughly equivalent to California's despite the latter being much, much stricter overall than the former, AND despite the former also having a much older and fatter population as well.  Game. Set. Match.

Another study finds that babies born during the pandemic have stunted development compared to babies born before the pandemic.  Interestingly, no significant difference was seen between babies born to mothers who contracted the virus during pregnancy and those who did not.  Rather, it was the mothers' stress from all of the panic and lockdowns that had a toxic effect on the babies across regardless of the virus itself.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Now add in all the ubiquitous antisocial distancing and masks they experienced during early childhood as well, and it gets even worse still.

As for the Nu Xi Omicron variant, it is looking more and more like an intellectual checkmate for the purveyors of the official narrative.  Both "Team Vaccine" and "Team Zero Covid" are about to eat some serious crow, while the inevitable transition from pandemic to endemic has been greatly accelerated.

And now, the CDC has finally decided to pull the plug on the fraudulent PCR test, effectively December 31, 2021.  Because they know that the gig is up, the narrative has been completely laid waste, and effectively ending PCR testing is literally the only way they can declare "victory" over Covid at this point.

Don't forget to check out this deep dive by the ever-insightful Julius Ruechel too.

WTF Happened To The Left ?

That is the trillion-dollar question we should all have been asking all along.  From the moderate liberal left to the progressive left to the socialist far left, we saw far too many were either silent or went along with the neoliberal pseudo-left in pushing these illiberal, authoritarian, totalitarian, dystopian, and technocratic restrictions--lockdowns, shutdowns, school closures, mass quarantines, mask mandates, travel restrictions, gathering restrictions, and now even vaccine mandates and "passports".  That was one of the most shocking observations in history. 

There is literally nothing progressive or "woke" about these draconian measures that arbitrarily revoke individual human rights and civil liberties, destroy economies, destroy family and community cohesion, disproportionately harm the poor and people of color, disproportionately harm women and children, and quite frankly don't even work to stop the virus in the long run.  Up until March 2020, it was largely a consensus even in the medical community that doing these worse-than-useless things would do far more harm than good on balance, thus blatantly violating the Hippocratic oath of "first do no harm", and the left generally felt the same way.  So what changed?

From the ACLU to Vox to Noam Chomsky to the UN to the WSWS to Jacobin to Ms. Magazine to the AMA to the AAP to the AARP to nearly every left-wing or left-leaning political party in the world (outside of Sweden, Belarus, and Nicaragua), some of the last people one would expect to carry water for such a horrible agenda of the oligarchy and Big Pharma ended up doing exactly that.  Was it simply fear?  Was it generous payola from the oligarchy and Big Pharma?  Was it manipulation and coercion from them?  Was it blindly taking orders from Beijing, like the WHO is known to do?  Was it activation of some latent (or not-so-latent) authoritarian tendencies estimated to be present in 20% of the general population?  Was it what started as a merely silly "Orange Man Bad" political take that simply metastasized throughout the entire body politic?  Or perhaps a deep-seated desire to destroy capitalism (and/or industrial civilization) once and for all at any cost, regardless of the collateral damage?  

Most likely, it was all of the above.  Either way, the vast majority of the Left has SOLD OUT.  

The Democratic Party is beyond repair now.  News Flash:  The ubiquitous hashtag #DemExit is trending, and going viral.  Somebody needs to answer the Clue Phone, and fast!  Otherwise, 2022 and 2024 will thus be a bloodbath at the polls for the Dems.

Meanwhile, the ever-insightful British organization Left Lockdown Sceptics has consistently been a prinicipled beacon of sanity and reason on the genuine Left, no matter how far off the rails and utterly unhinged the rest of the self-proclaimed "Left" (whether (neo)liberal, progressive, or radical) have become lately.  They have truly stood the test of time, and their integrity will not be forgotten.

The time for the increasingly compromised and increasingly phony "Left" to genuinely repent cold turkey and make amends is yesterday.  Scratch that, the best time was 21 months ago.  The second best time is RIGHT NOW!  What are they waiting for?

UPDATE:  We would be remiss if we did not also note how egregiously ableist (in addition to being racist, sexist, ageist, adultist, eltist, and classist) these draconian measures have been, and still are in the places that continue to impose them.  People with disabilities and chronic illnesses have clearly gotten the brief end of the stick in countless ways, from worsening isolation to denial of services to interference with communication to denial of freedom of movement and more.  And it created a truly massive and persistent mental health crisis on top of it all.  All while the zealots who promote these measures have cynically and disgustingly used such vulnerable members of society as a fig leaf for these measures, with all of their empty rhetoric about "protecting the vulnerable", a promise that has been utterly broken time and again.  Thus, the overall intersectionally oppressive system known as the kyriarchy has clearly only gained strength all the more since from the very same "woke" pseudo-left who hypocritically claims to be dismantling it.

Also, it seems that organized labor (which has historically been quite left-leaning) has sold out as well, or at least some unions in the USA and UK, alas.  Particularly the teachers' unions, from the start.

Cold Turkey Is The Only Way Out

We at the TSAP have said it before, and we will say it again, shouting it from the rooftops.  The ONLY way out of this madness is to go cold turkey from all of these restrictions and mandates.  Period.  And yesterday is not soon enough!

That means, effective immediately:

• No more lockdowns, hard or soft
• No more curfews 
• No more business closures or capacity restrictions (unless voluntarily)
• No more closures of anything 
• No more mask mandates, anywhere
• No bans or restrictions on gatherings or events, public or private
• No restrictions on places of worship
• No more travel restrictions, whether international or domestic 
• All schools fully open, in-person, no antisocial distancing, masks optional
• All colleges fully open, in-person, no antisocial distancing, masks optional
• No more mass testing of anyone without symptoms.  Otherwise, use rapid testing first.  For the PCR test, reduce the cycle threshold to 25
• No more quarantines of anyone without symptoms 
• No vaccine mandates, coercion, discrimination, or Covid "passports" of any kind, anywhere, period

And never again, no matter how bad it gets.  Really.  The TSAP will accept nothing less than 2019 true normal going forward, with NO more compromises.

And as long as there is no major outbreak locally, hospitals and nursing homes should also return to normal as well 100%.  It is LONG past time to stop denying visitors, and stop artificially and arbitrarily delaying and cancelling so-called "elective" procedures and treatments.  And with the proper early treatment and prophylaxis, hospitals will NOT be overwhelmed anymore than during a typical flu season.  As for the staff, aggressive rapid testing should be done regularly regardless of vaccination status (as vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus), and preference should be given to staff who are naturally immune because they have already had the virus and recovered (and are thus the very least likely to catch and spread the virus).  That's it.

Heresy, I know.  But it has been nearly two years now, and for better or worse, the virus is here to stay.  It cannot be eradicated at this point, as that train has left the station long ago.  We really only have two choices now and forever:  1) learn to live with the virus, and be honest about it, or 2) learn to live with the virus, and pretend otherwise. 

It has been observed that it is historically extremely rare for any respiratory viral pandemic to last longer than 18 months.  And they seldom have more than two major waves, three tops.  Yet here we are.  So all of our trying in vain to outsmart the virus, and/or hide from it, only served to drag it out that much longer, more painfully, and with out-of-season waves as well.  And plenty of collateral damage on top of all that as well.

This only ends when We the People finally stop complying with these mandates, cold turkey.  Or at least when a critical mass of people do so.  

So what are we waiting for?

The Two Faces Of The Branch Covidians

The Branch Covidian cult is really two cults in one:  Team Zero COVID, and their sometimes-rival, sometimes-ally, Team Vaccine.  They can easily be confused for one another by the uninitiated.  Both vehemently deny natural immunity, deny and dislike the use of early treatment and prophylaxis, grossly exaggerate the risks of the virus particularly to children and young people, and believe that only their own technocratic solutions possibly can save us.  Both reek of authoritarianism no matter how much they deny it.  Both luuurrrve to move the goalposts, cherry-pick data, shift the burden of proof, and indulge in other ridiculous logical fallacies routinely and often disingenuously.  Both have plenty of true believers along with the consummate liars and phonies in charge.  And like doctors and thieves, they both wear masks as part of their uniform (at least when the cameras are rolling).  So far, they seem like they would be natural allies.

But the similarity of the two cults ends with the differences in their eschatology, soteriology, and sometimes even cosmology at times.  Here they go from allies to rivals.  In a nutshell, Team Zero COVID believes that complete global eradication of the virus is not only still possible, but it is the only morally acceptable outcome no matter the cost (as long as someone else pays it), while Team Vaccine believes that while eradication is unlikely, the only way we can learn to live with the virus and go back to something approaching normal is if everyone in the world gets vaccinated as the ultimate endgame. 

And while neither team opposes lockdowns, mask mandates, or vaccine mandates, Team Zero COVID supports the first two the most while Team Vaccine supports the latter the most, even though many prefer a "layered" approach.  Both support achieving their own goals by any means necessary, while individual civil and human rights, economic well-being, overall community well-being, child development, or any other consideration are essentially worth zilch to them.  Even public health itself is to be ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of the Branch Covidians, insofar is it not directly related to the virus that they slavishly fear so much to the point of idolatry.

It is now becoming very clear that vaccines alone will not eradicate the virus even if 100% of the world gets vaccinated over and over again, as these vaccines are far too "leaky" to do the job.  And there are animal reservoirs as well.  So what about the Zero COVID strategy?  Well, the therapeutic window has closed on that one long ago, as the horse has bolted and the genie is out of the bottle.  The virus SARS-CoV-2 is quickly becoming endemic (if it isn't already) and will be with us forever, no matter how many lockdowns, closures, masks, or vaccines we throw at it.  It will still be here in 2030, 2040, 2050, and beyond.  So we literally have two choices, basically: 1) learn to live with the virus, and be honest about it, or 2) learn to live with the virus, and pretend otherwise. Yes, those are literally the only choices now, regardless of any wishful thinking to the contrary.  And to still pretend otherwise now, after 18 months of clear evidence, is to bear false witness and to worship false idols.

And the best way to defeat both of the two cults is to do what they are doing to the rest of us:  divide-and-conquer.  Play the two faces of them against each other, and refuse to comply with their increasingly insane, draconian, and totalitarian edicts.

Zero COVID is a pipe dream, vaccines are nowhere near as good as advertised, and lockdowns and NPIs are basically useless.  The only thing that actually works, aside from natural herd immunity, is early treatment and prophylaxis.  It's long past time to be honest about that, live our lives, and move on.

Team Reality for the win!

UPDATE:  Now that more and more of the chattering classes and MSM are finally, if grudgingly, coming around to accepting the inevitable endemicity of the virus and learning to live with it, and the mRNA vaccines are clearly crashing through the basement in terms of efficacy, Team Vaccine is basically washed up and is now quickly being absorbed by their very last refuge, Team Zero COVID.  The latter of which seems to be more hysterical than ever lately--and that REALLY says something!--since they know they are on the wrong (and losing) side of history.  They have been trotting out the same old fuzzy math combined with exaggerations, half-truths, and omissions about the supposed unacceptable dystopia that endemic COVID would entail, while in reality the real dystopia would be if TZC actually gets their way.  Look no further than Australia and New Zealand, not to mention China, to see what sort of totalitarian police state would inevitably--and permanently--result sooner or later, and it would still be an exercise in futility in the long run.  Because short of putting all 8 billion people of the world each in solitary confinement indefinitely, which would obviously be unacceptable on humanitarian grounds, it is mathematically impossible for TZC to actually achieve their pipe dream of complete virus eradication.

And now even New Zealand, the crown jewel of the Zero COVID movement, has finally thrown in the towel and abandoned the impossible and Sisyphean goal of eliminating the virus completely.  Delta managed to chin-check them just hard enough to sober them up somewhat.  Unfortunately, lest you think they finally joined Team Reality for good, despite recent easing the Prime Minister noted that they will still have some flavor of lockdown restrictions until they can get a whopping 90% of the eligible population vaccinated, meaning they are squarely part of Team Vaccine for the time being.  They are at 48% of the eligible population already fully vaccinated as of October 5, so that is still a pretty tall order for New Zealand.  In contrast, Team Reality (that is, people like us at the TSAP) would much rather just go cold turkey and simply end all restrictions yesterday and go back to true normal regardless of anything, period, and NOT cajole anyone to get vaccinated.  What better time than now?

Britannia Waives The Rules (Well, Kinda)

Well, it's official now.  The UK finally went ahead with Freedom Day today, after a month of delay.  Gone are the promises of irreversibility though (i.e. they will not rule out new lockdowns at some point in the future), and some restrictions will still remain though far less than before.  But generally speaking, virtually all mandated restrictions have now become downgraded to mere non-binding recommendations for the most part.  Better late than never, I guess.

One upside of delaying the final lifting of restrictions to July 19 is that it is being done at or very close to the peak of the current virus surge, so when we most likely see case numbers go down rather than up two weeks or so from now, that will thus thoroughly discredit any belief that these restrictions ever did any good.  Had Freedom Day occurred on schedule a month ago on June 23, the case numbers would have been about the same either way regardless of restrictions as we have seen, but people would have no doubt blamed the surge on the lifting of restrictions, then the government would have reimposed restrictions at or close to the peak, after which cases would drop again, and then take credit for the drop, as we have seen many times before.  But this time, restrictions are instead being lifted counter-cyclically (i.e. with opposite timing), which will be the real test of their effectiveness and relevance (or lack thereof).  Egg meet face, lockdown zealots!

UPDATE:  It was announced on literally the same day that, starting in late September,  there will be vaccine passports required to enter nightclubs and possibly even sporting events.  And it should go without saying that we do NOT support such a thing at all.  It is a slippery slope to totalitarianism, plus there is no statistical evidence to back it up.

UPDATE 2:  As of July 27th, it is now clear that cases have begun falling rapidly in the UK.  And "scientists" are apparently "baffled" by this.  They must not remember the famous Farr's Law, or even Hope-Simpson, right?  To the lockdown zealots, good luck getting all that egg off of your faces!

UPDATE 3:  Looks like Belarus, who practically had NO restrictions all along, really didn't do worse than their neighbors overall in terms of excess all-cause mortality.  In case the lockdown zealots didn't have enough egg on their faces already!

AUGUST UPDATE:  There has been some head-scratching about why cases started ticking up again in the UK after over two weeks of sharp declines.  But this is still no "exit wave" related to lifting restrictions, as it took too long to even begin, is not even a distinct new wave, and has still not topped the previous July high.  The best explanation is that the background epidemic has still been rising at the same rate regardless, while in July there was the rapid rise and rapid fall of a sharp and short-term outbreak related to the month-long Euro finals soccer gatherings, mainly in young to middle-aged men.  So the lockdown zealots still have egg on their faces to this day.  How will they live this one down?

Fortunately, as of September 11, Boris has finally relented (and hopefully repented!) on his vaccine passport plans, at least for the time being.

COVID Is Endemic. "Zero COVID" Is A Pipe Dream. Lockdowns And NPIs Are Useless.

The following Tweet really wins the internet:

Pretty much sums it up.  The virus can be defanged and reduced to a nuisance, and indeed it largely has already thanks to herd immunity and attenuation, but it will never be eliminated.  It will continue to ebb and flow to one degree or another indefinitely.  Even smallpox took over 200 years to eradicate after the vaccine.  And it's time we accept that fact and deal with endemic COVID like we do seasonal flu and the common cold.  That is, learn to live with the virus just like all other endemic viruses.  We know now that lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and stuff like that really make no difference to the course of the virus in the long run, and they come with their own set of problems, ultimately doing more harm than good.  And that applies a fortiori to endemic COVID.

That's right, these restrictions are all pain and no gain.  And there is a name for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We know how to treat this disease now.  We know what to use for prophylaxis as well.  We know that the virus, while bad, was never the apocalyptic Big One that some had predicted.  We know who the risk groups are, and we have already vaccinated them (plus a good chunk of the general population as well) to a greater extent and faster than we have for any other disease in history.  So anyone who says we still somehow can't go 100% back to normal yesterday because reasons is a LIAR with a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda.  And we thus must completely disregard their bluster.  Yesterday is not soon enough!

UPDATE:  Another Tweet, even more to the point:

This one too, setting the internet on FIRE:

And this one as well, to which we would also add "and early treatment and prophylaxis for all who want it":

UPDATE 2:  See also here and here for some good articles from The Daily Sceptic about the nuances of herd immunity.  And yes, it is very nuanced indeed.

UPDATE 3:  Yet another study finds lockdowns to be worse than useless.  Again.  Sooner or later, everyone (or at least those with anything approaching a conscience) will collectively regret how we panicked and knee-jerkedly threw the wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage back in March 2020.  Even the most rabid Zero COVID zealots can only keep doubling down so long to postpone, and ultimately amplify, the inevitable agony of regret.

Britannia Waives The Rules! NOT

It was announced today that the UK's final reopening step in removing the last remaining restrictions, scheduled for June 21st, will most likely be delayed for "up to" (read: at least) another four weeks.  The latest excuse is that the supposedly much worse Indian Delta variant of the virus is spreading like wildfire in the UK.  Yes, "cases" (i.e. positive tests) are up per the official numbers, but I think we have all seen this movie before, and it's never ended well:

Come on, Boris, stop being such a wee-willy wanker and grow a pair already!  What happened to that fun-loving libertarian you once were just 15 months ago?  And ask yourself, if the Delta variant is so much more contagious, why isn't it spreading like wildfire in the many other countries in which it has been detected for as long as the UK, including, but not limited to, the USA?  Don't think too hard, though--you don't wanna fry the few brain cells you still have left, buddy.

(OK, granted there is Nepal, but they are an outlier.)

Look, practically all of the vulnerable members of society are either 1) fully vaccinated or 2) chose not to get the vaccine.  In fact, the UK has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, as does the USA (who the UK just caught up to recently).  Fully 80% of British adults (70% in Scotland) have measurable levels of antibodies, from vaccination, previous infections, or both.  If that is not herd immunity, I really don't know what is.  Besides, we know the virus is sharply seasonal, and it is now out of season.  So the odds of the NHS being overwhelmed this summer are practically zero.  Hospitalizations are still largely flat despite the rise in "cases", and though up slightly in some places they are are still nowhere near the first or second wave levels.  And deaths are still not budging.  Thus, COVID-19 has been reduced to a mere nuisance, and mass testing has created a "casedemic".

Even if there were no vaccines, or for those for whom the vaccine may be a dud, we nonetheless have treatments that work (Ivermectin, Budesonide, etc.).  If only the government would allow them, of course.

(Shhhh!  Don't be too loud about Niacin and NAC!  Now THAT would be the ultimate game-changer!  And Vitamin C, D, zinc, and an ionophore like Quercetin.)

We know now that lockdowns and NPIs are worse than useless, and at best you will only push the virus into the fall and winter where when know it is far worse.  Thus, a "safe spread summer" is just what the doctor ordered, even if the vaccines were somehow useless against the new variants (which is not true).  And masks?  Well, maybe chain-link fences are the best defense against mosquitoes, right?  Riiiiight. 

Meanwhile, the USA is largely full steam ahead with reopening and unmasking, many states already did months ago, and we are doing fine over here.  Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are still falling.  Perhaps us "septic tanks" (Yanks) really do have the right idea now after all?  I think we all know the answer.

So how about it, Boris? Time to send the SAGE bedwetters packing and open up 100% yesterday!

UPDATE:  UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced officially that he will be delaying the final reopening step by "four crucial weeks" until July 19th, while leaving open the possibility of delaying it even longer still in the event of a "far more dangerous variant".  He dangles the carrot of it possibly being shortened to only a two week delay until July 5th (riiiiight!), and also gives the consolation of the 30 person cap on weddings being lifted on June 21st.  But I really wouldn't bet on a full lifting of restrictions anytime soon in Britain, unless of course there are massive and relentless protests along with some very conspicuous civil disobedience there no later than the next week or two.  But of course, under the current regime, that would technically be illegal (wink wink).

Oh, and by the way, if you really read between the lines you will see that COVID is actually becoming......milder.  That is, it is becoming more cold-like in terms of symptoms and significantly less likely to result in hospitalization or death compared to older strains.  And yes, that is the supposedly much worse Delta variant we are talking about, that is now dominant in the UK and will likely eventually become dominant worldwide.  As for being somewhat more contagious, that is most likely true, but remember it only needs to be very slightly more contagious to edge out the competition and become dominant, and estimates of it being 60% more contagious than the Alpha strain are most likely grossly exaggerated.  In a nutshell, the pandemic is over, attenuation of the virus is occurring along with herd immunity, and endemic COVID is now essentially becoming the new common cold in more and more places, following in the footsteps of the four other endemic common-cold coronaviruses (at least one of which, OC43, most likely started out as a pandemic as well).  The fact that this overall good news is being ignored by the mainstream media and government really speaks volumes as to their real agenda of fearmongering, power, and control.  Meanwhile, the USA is already several steps ahead of the UK on the road to true normalcy, and in practice is mostly already there now.

Indeed, it seems that the Delta variant's symptoms for most people are practically identical to hay fever and the common cold, with perhaps a mild hangover thrown in for good measure.  That is, headache, sore throat, runny nose, and/or generally feeling a little bit "off" are reportedly far more common than the classic fever, cough, loss of smell/taste, or shortness of breath that are common with previous strains of the virus.

UPDATE 2:  On June 26th, the March For Freedom had an excellent turnout.  And with Matt Hancock resigning in disgrace for his scandalous hypocrisy in flouting his own rules, thus following in the footsteps of the disgraced Neil "Professor Pantsdown" Ferguson, the regime does not seem to be winning anymore. 

UPDATE 3:  Looks like Delta is already dominant in much of the USA as of July 1, yet overall cases are still not exploding, deaths continue to fall, and hospitalizations remain quite low.  Soon it will be dominant worldwide (if it isn't already), but since the best evidence suggests that it is LESS deadly/nasty than previous strains, that is again actually a blessing in disguise on balance.  Behold, the soon-to-be new common cold.  And you know that Delta is already old news now, as the fearmongers are already talking about the Peruvian Lambda variant now.

Our Very Last Chance To Let America Be America Again, For Real This Time

It is Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start to summer, and COVID-19 is on the run pretty much everywhere now.  Cases and deaths are plummeting left and right.  All of the most vulnerable members of the American population are either a) fully vaccinated or b) were offered the vaccine but chose not to get it, more than half of the entire population has had at least one vaccine dose, and half of all US adults are now fully vaccinated (i.e. more than two weeks after the final dose).  In fact, in ten states and counting, at least 70% of adults (often considered the "herd immunity" threshold in a naive population, ignoring the plentiful natural exposure of at least 30% of Americans already and as much as 50-70% in some states) are now fully vaccinated.  And furthermore, we also know now how best to treat this disease as well, even before we had the vaccines.

Is it technically even a pandemic anymore?  Depending on one's definition, it may not be.

All states except Hawaii have at least eased (or set a date for easing) their mask mandates, and many have dispensed with them altogether, while nearly all states have reopened their economies and ended most restrictions.  The CDC has recently eased recommendations as well.  Things are thus largely moving in the right direction for the most part.

Now is thus the time, in fact LONG past time, to end ALL restrictions and go 100% back to normal.  And not just for the vaccinated, but for everyone, period.  For children as well, in fact a fortiori for them.  Masks and social distancing are NOT healthy for children, and fortunately they were generally never at much risk from COVID to begin with.  Ignore the bluster from the zealots that want to make these restrictions permanent.  No more lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports, or anything like that ever again.

(Another myth bites the dust as well:  Not only are kids at a vanishingly low risk of dying or being hospitalized from COVID, they are apparently also highly unlikely to suffer from Long COVID either.  Turns out, many if not most of the supposed cases of children under 16 suffering from this vaguely-defined protracted syndrome are likely not even related to the virus at all, given the lack of difference between seronegative and seropositive children in experiencing it.  One could thus argue that "lockdown disease" from a toxic mix of prolonged anxiety, isolation, and vitamin deprivation is probably the most parsimonious explanation for most of these cases in both children and adults, even in many cases when the virus is a contributing factor as well.  Post-viral syndromes are of course very real, but are generally far more likely to follow severe infections rather than mild ones, and the vast majority of COVID infections are quite mild, especially in children.)

And given how we know that COVID is a very seasonal virus, it would in fact behoove us to allow a "safe spread summer" (i.e. a truly normal summer, kinda like we had in the summer of 1969 despite being during the nasty Hong Kong Flu pandemic, even including Woodstock and literally putting a man on the moon, imagine that!) to build up our immune systems before the fall and winter in case the virus comes roaring back again.  Had we done that last summer, we would have had a far less nasty second wave than we did (and third wave in some places as well).  And the new variants of the virus if anything make the case for doing so even stronger in fact.

This summer is our LAST CHANCE we have to end the New Abnormal for good and fully restore the civil rights and liberties that we feared were lost forever.  If we successfully demand to have a normal summer and resist any attempt to continue or reimpose these authoritarian restrictions in the fall, then the forces of liberty will have won.  But if we fail to, well, we only need to look at Germany and the UK to get a glimpse of our dark future going forward.  Thus, we must demand a complete return to true normal yesterday, settle for nothing less, and by Labor Day (a day followed by fully open, in-person, un-masked, un-distanced schools starting the very next day) at the latest we must fully resolve to completely lay waste to all that remains of 2020 forever, God willing.

Let America Be America Again.  For real this time!  And may America finally be reborn on the Fourth of July.  So what are we waiting for?

The Biggest Public Health Fiasco In History

What is "the biggest public health fiasco in history"?  If you had guessed the COVID-19 pandemic itself, you would actually be quite wrong.  As horrible as it is, anyone who has read a history book or stayed awake in history class can tell you there have clearly been far, far worse pandemics than this one.  No, that dubious honor would actually in fact go the highly counterproductive countermeasures--lockdowns.

That is the headline conclusion arrived at by the preeminent expert authors of a Telegraph article (worth reading in full), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorf, both of Great Barrington Declaration fame.  In a nutshell, the lockdowns and related restrictions not only failed to stop the virus, but also utterly failed to protect the most vulnerable members of society, and caused a massive amount of collateral damage as well, to say nothing of the unprecedented assault on our hard-won civil rights and liberties.

Many, many studies bear this out quite nicely.  In fact, lockdown states and countries tend to have, on average, higher death rates than their free and open counterparts.  You read that right:  greater government stringency is actually correlated with higher death rates.  It is thus painfully obvious now that the "cure" was far worse than the disease.

Just like we at the TSAP have been saying for over a year now, basically.  And we are at nearly day 400 or so (!) of "15 days to flatten the curve" now.  Groundhog Day effectively became Groundhog Year.  So what has become of the specious claims used to justify all of these unprecedented restrictions?

First, the infamous Imperial College model (devised by Professor Neil Ferguson) that was initially used to justify lockdowns was, in a word, wrong.  Not just a little bit wrong, but often orders of magnitude wrong for so many countries, both in countries that eschewed lockdowns and those who implemented them, and everything in between.  Once it became clear by the end of April 2020 that the model had utterly failed its first real-world tests in places like Sweden, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the few US states that did not lock down or barely did, that really should have been the end of it.  But the lockdown zealots then simply moved the goalposts again, and clung to a few other very questionable assumptions that supposedly made these restrictions necessary regardless of the models.  So what about those?

We know now that truly asymptomatic spread, while possible, is a lot rarer than most people think, a mere 0.7% even in that very closest and riskiest setting of all, within households.  And outdoor spread?  A vanishingly low 0.1% of cases. And fomites (surfaces)?  An even lower still < 0.01%, and probably even less than that if people wash their hands and don't touch their faces or keep fiddling with their masks!  All for a disease with an infection fatality rate within the ballpark of a nasty flu season for most people, and that we know now how to treat effectively.  This is what the actual science says, folks.  And it utterly demolishes any need for lockdowns, closures, mask mandates, or any other New Abnormal restrictions at this juncture, period.

As for indoor aerosol (airborne) transmission, which looks like the real dominant way it is transmitted as opposed to large droplets, if we put even a smidgeon of the effort we have been putting into masks, distancing, and disinfecting surfaces (which are largely useless against small aerosols) instead into simply improving ventilation and airflow, air filters and UV light, and avoiding indoor overcrowding, that would have made a far greater difference had we done so before or during the worst of the pandemic.

The TSAP currently advocates going "cold turkey", ending all restrictions and opening up 100%.  And yesterday is not soon enough!  Look, it's not April 2020 anymore.  We have not one, not two, but THREE vaccines now, and even well before that we already had proven treatments and prophylactics (including, but not limited to, Ivermectin, Budesonide, HCQ, and various vitamins and minerals like Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, Zinc, Selenium, Magnesium, Quercetin, Resveratrol, Niacin, Thiamine, B-12, and the amino acid Lysine) that the ghouls in charge wilfully chose to ignore, deny, or greatly downplay.  Which, by the way, is literally murder by omission.  Not only do we know a LOT more now, but knowing that lockdowns would do more harm than good is something we should have known before the pandemic--and in fact we did.  But then we threw the hard-won wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage, and now we are all paying a heavy price for it.  

So what are we waiting for?  Set a hard and permanent "quit date" no more than a week or two in the future, commit to it, and lift ALL restrictions on or before that date, period.  That is, revert back to being no stricter than we were in 1957-1958, 1968-1969, 2009-2010 (all pandemic years, by the way), 2018, 2019, or January-February 2020.  That is, return to the true normal 100%.  And finally end the officially declared state of emergency as well.  And make sure this public health fiasco NEVER, EVER happens again!

UPDATE:  We should all know by now that lockdowns are worse than useless, at least for a disease of this type.  The data clearly speaks for itself.  But even if they were somewhat useful in fighting the virus, the collateral damage is so massive and so predictable that, according to Julius Ruechel's excellent article, they are morally equivalent to pulling the switch in the classic Trolley Problem.  Which is to say, lockdowns are inherently immoral unless one is a truly incorrigible cold-hearted utilitarian who could care less about human rights and human dignity.  We at the TSAP believe in "first, do no harm", and lockdowns of course inevitably do plenty of harm (especially to the most vulnerable and underprivileged members of society) no matter how much money we may print in an attempt to paper over such contrived and unnecessary harm.

And once again, we see Sweden has still won the lockdown debate hands down.  Ditto for the wide-open states (Florida, Texas, etc.) in the USA as well.

There is even a good Covid Charts Quiz as well.  See if you can spot the difference in the trends between lockdown vs. open, and masked vs. unmasked states.

JUNE UPDATE:  And according new studies, two other things we can add to the list of worse than useless measures are Plexiglass (or Perspex in the UK) screens and nighttime curfews.  Both seem to be not only useless, but even counterproductive, in that they may even increase transmission of the virus!  So along with lockdowns and general mask mandates, these NPIs should also be scrapped yesterday and permanently removed from serious consideration ever again.  To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, "Mr. Biden, tear down this plexiglass!"

It's NOT Just The Economy, Stupid!

Along with the false choice between "lives versus livelihoods", lockdown enthusiasts seem to have this idea that "just" the economy is a mere appendage of society that can be casually hacked off at will with no long-term consequences.  While clearly nothing is further from the truth.  As we have learned the very hard way, lockdowns are always a lose-lose proposition, at least in the long run.  And their proponents thus have a LOT of blood on their hands.

Given how it has been clearly shown time and again over the past year that lockdowns, closures, and related restrictions don't really save lives or materially stop the spread of the virus (at best they slow it down a bit, thus ironically prolonging the pandemic, and at worst they are gasoline on the dumpster fire), it would be bad enough if all they did was "merely" wreck the economy.  But the damage goes far deeper than that.  A recent article in fact details the massive damage that these restrictions do to the mental health of young people.  All that loneliness, isolation, depression, anxiety, and existential dread in our unprecedentedly contactless and touchless society is highly toxic, and in fact more young Americans under 25 died from suicide than died from COVID in 2020.  All-cause mortality among people under 25, especially ages 15-25, was indeed significantly higher in 2020 than in 2018 or 2019.  But that is likely the tip of a very large iceberg of damage that will be felt for a very long time to come.

Quarantine in general is inherently traumatizing to most people, and thus never good for mental health.  And it is a truism that the longer it is, the worse it is.  Alas, we can thus expect the incidence and prevalence of PTSD to rise dramatically as a result.

To say that this very sad state of affairs stunts the development of children and young people would have to be the understatement of the century!

An entire generation has now also suffered educationally as well due to school closures.  Virtual "learning" has generally been a joke (albeit not a very funny one), and the unprecedented level of learning loss (which disproportionately affects poorer students and students of color, by the way) will leave lasting scars on them.  And the dystopian masked, distanced, and hyper-germaphobic environment they must endure when they actually are being educated in-person in most schools truly cannot be good for their mental health or even physical health.  Seriously.

Not like all that loneliness and isolation is actually good for anyone of any age, particularly including the very same elderly and vulnerable members of society that the lockdowners claim to have done all of these dystopian things in the name of "protecting".  Which was a spectacular and and epic failure to say the least.

And for women?  Well, let's see.  Between disproportionately losing their jobs or working in risky essential jobs, having to stay home with their kids with no respite while schools and daycares are closed, and/or caring for sick and vulnerable adults ad well, women have been taking on a triple burden throughout this pandemic.  And with primarily male violence against women and children (domestic violence and child abuse) skyrocketing during lockdown as well, with victims being trapped with their abusers, we can conclude that lockdown has basically been patriarchy on crack.  And women's hard-won progress has thus been set back decades.

(And one can also thus conclude that Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who eschewed lockdowns, has in practice been more of a feminist than lockdown-loving Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, despite the former ironically being a conservative Republican and the latter being a liberal Democrat.)

And again, the best evidence shows that these toxic and authoritarian restrictions did nothing to save lives or otherwise benefit public health at all on balance.  We unfortunately cannot change the past, but we can decide what sort of future we can have and try to repair the damage as best we can.  Thus, as we have already advocated, it is best to go "cold turkey" from these restrictions, go back to normal 100%, and vow to NEVER repeat these mistakes again.  And yesterday is not soon enough!

To paraphrase a song from R.E.M. "Don't go back to Lockdown, and waste another year."

The TSAP Opposes Vaccine Passports

We at the TSAP vehemently oppose the latest disturbing trend:  "vaccine passports".  Yes, those things are exactly what they sound like, a paper (or most likely digital) proof of vaccination to be used as a requirement for entry into various venues, travel, and God only knows what else.  Perhaps even leaving one's house at some point?  Make no mistake, these creepy vaccine passports are the next crucial step towards a "papers please" totalitarian state, and slopes are a LOT slipperier than they appear!

The TSAP has already vehemently opposed from the get-go ANY form of force or coercion for these still-experimental COVID vaccines, period.  Anything short of free and fully informed consent in that regard is an egregious violation of civil and human rights (not to mention the US Constitution, remember that dusty old thing?) and thus has absolutely NO place in a free and civilized society, period.  And we absolutely refuse to compromise in that regard.  This illiberal and utterly Orwellian and dystopian idea needs to be nipped in the bud, and yesterday is not soon enough!

The very specious concept that the vaccinated and unvaccinated must be segregated in some way is patently absurd on its face.  The unvaccinated are NOT a material threat to the vaccinated, and if there is any threat it would be the other way around.  Unless, of course, you are in fact tacitly conceding that these vaccines may not really be all they are cracked up to be, but hey, you said it (or implied it), not me. And if that were really the case, and the vaccines were essentially no better than Nyquil, then what would be the point of vaccination in the first place?  Conversely, if the vaccines really are so safe and effective against such an extraordinarily horrible plague like you claim, there would be no need to force or coerce anyone to get them at all.  Seriously, if you give the New Abnormal zealots enough rope...

Plus, rigidly segregating the unvaccinated from the vaccinated in the long run would most likely result in dangerous new and/or vaccine-resistant variants taking hold more easily, by unwittingly selecting for, concentrating, and incubating whatever nastier and more contagious variants there are at a given time, compared to simply letting the virus circulate freely and the nastier variants eventually burn themselves out and get swamped by the milder ones.

In fact, as we at the TSAP have pointed out repeatedly before, we don't even need a vaccine to go back to true normal, since even well before the vaccines we already had more than enough existing treatments and prophylactics sufficient to reduce the pandemic to a mere nuisance within a week or two.  That is, if we had actually chosen to use them instead of suppressing and censoring such things.

At least Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has the good sense to preemptively oppose the idea of vaccine passports.  In fact, he recently implemented an executive order prohibiting them in his state.  Not only does it ban government entities from issuing or requiring anything of the sort, but also prohibits any businesses in Florida from requiring them for customers and patrons as well.  Make no mistake, he clearly does NOT oppose COVID vaccines or any other common vaccines, and he has clearly been instrumental in freely distributing these shots in his state just like every other governor has.  But unlike some other big-shot governors, he is clearly taking a firm stand against even the slightest hint of vaccine coercion and the resulting vaccine apartheid.

Even if DeSantis were the only governor in the nation who will take such a stand (and he probably won't be for very long), his executive order creates a clear and positive conflict between federal and state law should the federal government make any attempt to create and impose their own national vaccine passport program.  Talk about a major fly in the ointment!

Meanwhile, the venerable ACLU is strangely out to lunch on this issue.  Just a year ago they opposed even such trivial intrusions as temperature checks, and yet they won't openly take a stand on THIS?  Hey ACLU, you know we love you overall, but know this:  "the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality," as JFK apocryphally attributed to Dante's Inferno.

Even the famous arch-vaccine skeptic and arch-lockdown skeptic J.B. Handley has been strangely quiet lately about this increasingly pressing issue, come to think of it.  And in fact ALL of his several blog articles from 2020 related to either vaccines, COVID, and/or lockdowns have been mysteriously deleted in these past few months for some reason.  And his Twitter has barely even mentioned these topics at all since January or so.  Of course, people will unfortunately interpret his deafening silence as consent.  Whether he is silent or was silenced, we really don't know, but either way, it is not good at all.

(Fortunately, there is always the Wayback Machine, which indefinitely saves archived versions of his many now-deleted articles for all of us to see.)

Oh, and one more thing:  it should go without saying, but these experimental vaccines are NOT FOR KIDS!  Not only is COVID less dangerous than the flu for children, and children are far less likely to spread it too, but these vaccines have barely been tested at all on people under 16 for the Pfizer vaccine (18 for Moderna and J&J).  That makes these vaccines all risk and negligible reward, so our opposition to vaccine coercion applies a fortiori to anyone under 18.  If consenting adults truly want to take these vaccines, that is fine, but DO NOT impose them on kids or teens, period.  And certainly DO NOT require them as a condition of school attendance just because some of the already-vaccinated teachers and staff are still somehow too scared (!) of unvaccinated kids.  No, you FIRE the freaking cowards and open up 100%, yesterday!  It's really a no-brainer at this point.

We have a choice between returning to true normal versus the dystopian New Abnormal on steroids for the foreseeable future.  Let's make the right choice.

(While we still have a choice, that is.)

UPDATE 1:  As of April 5th, it looks like DeSantis is no longer the only governor to openly oppose vaccine passports.  As of April 6th, the number is now SEVEN, and growing, red and blue, and now also includes:  Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike Parson of Missouri, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, and Laura Kelly of Kansas.  And, of course, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota as well, who rightly called vaccine passports "un-American".  Even President Biden is apparently backing off from the idea now.  And New York's "Excelsior Pass" currently seems to be a glitchy mess for the most part.  The tide is finally turning, God willing.

UPDATE 2:  Looks like the TSAP has been right all along about herd immunity having been far closer than the "experts" seem to think, even before the vaccine (that is, the old-fashioned way via natural infection).  Antibody serosurveys apparently only tell part of the story, since, as yet another study confirms, T-cells seem to be both more important, more durable, and fortunately more prevalent than antibodies.  Simply as little as being exposed to the virus but not necessarily infected (that is, a failed attempt by the virus to infect you since you managed to knock it out quickly before it could establish itself), or perhaps a brief and asymptomatic infection, can be sufficient to develop at least some T-cell immunity even in the absence of detectable antibodies and/or when repeatedly testing negative for the virus itself.

In fact, previous exposure to other coronaviruses (including common cold coronaviruses) apparently can also create a T-cell cross-response to SARS-CoV-2 to some extent as well, a fact already known last year.

And not only do T-cells last longer than antibodies, but another study finds that they work far better against the new variants, even the South African and Brazilian ones.  These variants managed to evolve a specific mutation to at least partially dodge antibodies, but yet they do NOT seem to be able to stand a chance against our T-cells, whether they are derived from previous natural exposures to the older strains or from vaccination (which interestingly appear to be about equally effective in that regard).

So where can we get these T-cells?  From our very own thymus glands, in fact, and we need sufficient zinc to make it happen.  Zinc is also needed for the B-cells to make antibodies, and plus it is also a good antiviral in it's own right by stopping viruses from replicating, especially when paired with a zinc ionophore such as Quercetin.  Throw in some Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, niacin, thiamine, resveratrol, and the amino acid Lysine, and you got yourself a truly winning combination.  So whether or not you end up getting any of the vaccines, be sure not to forget any of these crucial nutrients!

(In the same vein, the ever-insightful Bill Sardi also points out that thymus gland extracts are quite promising treatments for when one is actually sick.)

Because truly the very best "vaccine" of all is the one that the body makes itself.  And unlike manmade ones, it is universal as well, with no nasty side effects.

UPDATE 3:  The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, including Professor Martin Kulldorf, clearly oppose vaccine passports as well.

UPDATE 4:  As for the latest Faucian (Faucist?) idea that vaccinated people can somehow become asymptomatic superspreaders, and thus still needing to continue following restrictions indefinitely, that is also highly unlikely given how 1) asymptomatic transmission in general, even without vaccines, is far less likely than originally thought (a mere 0.7%) and thus not a major driver of outbreaks, and 2) while breakthrough infections can still occasionally occur after being fully vaccinated, there is evidence that vaccinated people have significantly lower viral loads than unvaccinated people, further reducing the potential for onward transmission to others.  Thus, there is no real obstacle to returning to 100% normal yesterday.  But still, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not, be sure to take your vitamins, wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, and respect each other's personal space, the latter of which used to be called "etiquette".  Also, fresh air and sunshine are your friends.  And if you actually get sick in the traditional sense of the word, stay the hell home!  In other words, use common sense.

UPDATE 5:  We are deeply disappointed in Thom Hartmann for his recent article he wrote in support of vaccine passports for places as mundane as restaurants.  There is absolutely nothing "woke" or progressive in taking such a stance, period.  

Also, take a look at Miss Conceptions on Twitter.  They point out some rather eerie "coincidences" that can be found all around the world in regards to vaccine launches and subsequent spikes in supposedly COVID cases and deaths as well as all-cause excess deaths within a few weeks later, typically lagged two weeks.  From India to Hungary to Czechia to Mongolia to Chile to Israel to Gibraltar to the UK to several US states, et al., it is really quite curious indeed.  And if nothing else, as a bonus, you will also learn the flags of pretty much every country in the world.  

We can see a classic "journey-destination problem", that is, whether through mass infection, mass vaccination, or the two-for-one special, the journey to herd immunity is much more dangerous than the destination.  Though as Gibraltar and Israel have shown, and the UK is currently showing, once the unfortunate mountain of corpses has been climbed, there is barely any COVID at all on other side once the dust has finally settled. If only there were some sort of safe and effective treatment and prophylaxis regimen available last year, then the journey could have been made much safer, without resorting to any rushed experimental vaccines.  Oh wait, there actually was such a thing in existence, but the ghouls in charge chose to wilfully ignore, deny, and greatly downplay it, which is literally murder by omission. 

UPDATE 6:  See the following excellent article by Helen Andrews.  The issue isn't going away!