Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff explain that vaccine fanaticism fuels vaccine skepticism. Two slices:
Despite lack of evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines could prevent transmission and mounting evidence in spring and summer 2021 that they couldn’t stop the spread of the disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci and others convinced themselves that COVID-19 could be conquered only if 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, or more of the population was vaccinated. And when the vaccines didn’t live up to scientifically unproven promises, people’s trust in those who over-promised naturally collapsed.
In its pursuit of the impossible goal of COVID suppression by vaccines alone, public health vaccine fanatics induced many people to become skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine’s benefits.
Public authorities espoused psychological manipulation to induce vaccine uptake. For example, in its April 2021 guidance on mask-wearing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave permission only to the vaccinated to doff the mask. Their reasoning was based on a mistaken belief that vaccinated individuals can’t spread the disease, but also as an inducement to get people vaccinated since mask-wearing is unpleasant.
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When these tactics failed, the public health establishment embraced vaccine coercion. They instituted vaccine passports to exclude the unvaccinated from participation in civil life, including access to libraries, museums, and restaurants.
The federal government went further, using its vast regulatory powers to mandate vaccines as a condition of employment. These coercive actions effectively cast the unvaccinated into second-class citizenship. As they watched the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike contract COVID-19, they undoubtedly began to wonder whether public health truly had their best interests at heart.
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.) A slice:
It turns out that extreme anti-COVID measures have a real, and deadly, cost. Such as the 17 lives lost (eight of them children) along with dozens injured in the January fire at the Twin Parks North West building in the Bronx.
The head of the fire inspectors’ union now says that building’s inspection was delayed because its inspector was reassigned to check restaurants’ COVID compliance.
That’s 17 dead, to satisfy the witless demands of the de Blasio-imposed public-health regime that did nothing for public health.
To repeat: TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
The straw man continues to tyrannize China. A slice:
Millions of people across China have been plunged into a lockdown on Sunday as cases of Covid-19 tripled after a surge in infections in the north east cause the worst outbreak the country has seen in two years.
A total of 1,938 new cases of coronavirus have been reported by authorities in China on Sunday, which is three times the Saturday figures.
Tighter controls have been put in place for those looking to access Shanghai, with services in the eastern port city, of over 24 million people, have been suspended after their cases rose by 15 to 432.
