After reading several Covid related articles a day since March 2020, I have a few opinions I want to share with readers. I'll start with a quick summary of my beliefs, all preliminary (because science is never settled), and then move on to a Conservative myth about vaccines included in the next article posted here, that annoyed me.
I expect myths and BS from leftists -- their specialty, when not falsely blaming "The Russians". But I have a much higher standard for conservatives. That standard is honesty.
My three blogs consist of the best articles I read by other authors each day. Roughly 9 to 12 of about 36 articles I read every day get published. A wide variety of authors with opinions differing from the mainstream media, who I judge to be credible. Once is a while I rap about my beliefs on the subjects of climate science, energy, Covid and Covid vaccines. My Covid beliefs are based on data, and have been previously stated on this blog. Logical beliefs that you may not have read elsewhere. If there are new data, or old data are revised, my conclusions may change. Science is never settled.
(1) Covid infection, hospitalization and death data are grossly over stated. However, two different years can be compared because they would both use the same faulty counting methodologies.
(2) The vaccines have had minimal net benefits in the short run, and early indications of long term adverse side effects suggests they will eventually be recognized as failures. Just as one would expect from a rushed 9 month development process, that usually takes 5 to 15 years for a new vaccine, with a 98% to 99% failure rate.
(3) More Americans died in 2021 from all causes, with vaccines, than from all causes in 2020, with no vaccines. Although I don't trust Covid death counts, 2021 had many more deaths with Covid than in 2020, with both numbers based on the same faulty counting methodology.
(3) The PCR test detects 52 different viruses. Only one of them is SARS-2. Therefore, using a positive PCR test to count Covid infections is worthless. In addition, with the PCR CT counts of 35x to 40x, used for analysis in 2020, there were far too many false positives -- people with no respiratory symptoms, who were not infected with any virus, but tested positive.
(4) Lockdowns did not work
(5) Masks do not work -- no honest study in history ever proved they did. I read five such studies in 2020 -- none had statistically significant results. It is possible masks have some benefits, but there are probably confounding variables -- I suspect people wearing masks are slightly more concerned about social distancing than people who don't wear masks. More important -- a person who is infected. and coughing. If they cough near other people, a mask ought to reduce the "spray distance" from the cough, which can reach 20 feet. But people who are sick should just isolate themselves from healthy people -- just like humans have done for centuries, without using masks.
(6) Social distancing has some positive effect for reducing Covid infections, but little effect for Omicron. Just being inside the same home, with windows closed. with a person infected with Omicron, seems to be insufficient social distancing.
(7) The best explanation of why Covid causes death is an allergy to spike proteins. That theory does not necessarily apply to people in a nursing homes with multiple comorbidities. Their immune systems are already weak, so Covid, influenza or even a common cold infection could be their last disease. I'm talking about almost everyone else. My conclusion is those people allergic to spike proteins will have much more serious Covid symptoms than others (the large majority) whether they are naturally Covid infected, or get vaccines that cause their body to manufacture spike proteins. They lose either way.
(8) Omicron, thanks to 30 mutations of the spike protein, when compared with Delta Covid, is not a Covid variant. A Covid variant would have had one or two spike protein mutations, and similar symptoms as Delta Covid. In fact, Omicron has the same symptoms as a coronavirus common cold, because it IS a coronavirus common cold. One that spreads extremely easily. It is not logical to call Omicron a Covid variant when it has the same symptoms as a common cold, unless you want to scare people.
(9) My riskiest belief is that the Covid pandemic will end this summer, as Omicron common colds continued "crowding out" Delta Covid. There is no such thing as a common cold pandemic. That was my prediction at the beginning of this year. It was the first prediction I made since 1997, when I made my one and only climate change prediction -- the most accurate climate prediction in world history: "The climate will get warmer,
unless it gets colder."
(10) i didn't have a number (10), but a Top 10 seemed better than nine items. So maybe this will due: Anything I have written in (1) through (9) may be wrong, but that's not on top of my list of probabilities!
The next article here includes a common conservative false claim: That vaccinated people more often getting Covid infections, than unvaccinated people, proves the Covid vaccines are no good, or even harmful. I believe Covid vaccines are no good, but Covid infections are not proof of that. That's in the first chart of the next article, that I did not edit out/ The vaccines are no good, based on their failure to reduce Covid caused hospitalizations and deaths in 2021, versus 2020. They are also no good because they cause the the largest number of serious short term adverse side effects, by far, in vaccine history.
Early indications are the Covid vaccine long term adverse side effects may be serious too, with heart problems in young people and professional athletes, micro-blood clots in other people, and some indications the vaccinated people have weaker immune systems in the long run, particularly for the triple vaccinated -- after two vaccines and a booster shot. That is also included in a chart in the next article. More serious adverse long term side effects should increase with the number of injections.
The vaccines also cause a temporarily weaker immune system, for at least the week after a shot, where herpes 1 and 2 outbreaks are too common, as a result. For a few months, the vaccines appear to reduce the probability of Covid hospitalizations and deaths, at the expense of the worst adverse side effects of any vaccine in history. But that benefit fades rapidly, just like the mediocre benefits from influenza (flu) vaccines fade rapidly.
We have the very serious problem that some people appear to be allergic to spike proteins. Only a small percentage., but you would not want to be one of them. Because you would also be allergic to the Covid spike proteins created by the Covid injections. And there is no way i know of to detect that allergy without having Covid spike proteins in your bloodstream.
The Covid / Omicron infection rate differences claims are usually misleading, and I have written about them many times. Covid vaccines do NOT prevent Covid infections. The Emergency Use Authorization documents never made that claim. I know that for a fact because I read the documents. Some politicians made that claim, but who in their right mind takes medical (or any other subject) advice from politicians?
So we have vaccines that do not prevent Covid infections. In fact they encourage Covid infections by causing vaccinated people to stop social distancing, or at least reduce social distancing. As a result, I would expect the vaccinated to get Covid infections more often than the unvaccinated. But if the difference is huge, that's another story -- it's hard to blame a huge difference on changes of social distancing behavior alone, without mentioning the possibility that vaccines have harmed immune systems. There is evidence of such harm from the UK, particularly people who have been double vaxed and got a booster shot too. They are getting far higher percentages of Covid infections than seems logical from changes in social distancing changes post-vaccination.
Ye Editor
An energy myth:
The US was energy independent under Trump myth:
On my climate science blog, approaching 300,000 visits, I delete all sentences in articles I post that mention the conservative myth that the US was energy independent when Donald Trump left office. Complete baloney. The US was never even close. The United States imported about 7.86 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of petroleum in 2020, which included 5.88 MMb/d of crude oil and 1.98 MMb/d of non-crude petroleum liquids and refined petroleum products. These were the lowest levels of imports of total petroleum and of crude oil since 1991. But that means we were short of energy independence by 7.86 MMb/d in 2020. The U.S. imported 7.86 million barrels of petroleum per day, of the 20.5 million barrels of petroleum consumed per day, which hadn't changed much in 20 years. Russia made up about 7% of total petroleum (including crude oil) imports, according to EIA. Our top source was Canada. It's not that complicated if you want to tell the truth about US fossil fuels use.
