COVID Doom Coming Or Something

They just won’t give up on the fear porn

‘The worst version’ of COVID is spreading. Can we update our vaccines in time?

For the last 18 months, the original COVID-19 vaccines — first as a two-dose series, then as boosters — have done an extraordinary job shielding us from illness, hospitalization and death. Globally, they saved nearly 20 million lives in 2021 alone. Even today, unvaccinated Americans are twice as likely as vaccinated Americans to test positive for COVID — and six times as likely to die from the disease.

But viruses evolve, and vaccines should too.

That was the big-picture takeaway from a pivotal meeting this week of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s expert advisory panel. The question before them was simple: Ahead of an expected winter surge, should vaccine manufacturers tweak their forthcoming booster shots to target Omicron — the ultra-infectious variant that has spent the last seven months surging throughout the world in one form or another — or should they stick with the tried-and-true 2020 recipe?

Really, for most citizens, the bad part of COVID is over. We aren’t doing masking. We aren’t staying home. We aren’t getting locked down, we aren’t going to shut our businesses down or limit them. What we’re left with is economic issues. If the mask cultists want to mask up, feel free. Of course, half of them are leaving their noses uncovered

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, the Omicron strain that triggered last winter’s massive COVID wave (BA.1) is now extinct. In March, it was supplanted by the even more transmissible BA.2 … which was supplanted in May by the even more transmissible BA.2.12.1 … which is now being supplanted by the (you guessed it) even more transmissible BA.4 and BA.5.

Experts say BA.5 is the one to worry about: “The worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” as Dr. Eric Topol, the founder of Scripps Research Translational Institute, recently put it. Together, the closely related BA.4 and BA.5 now account for the majority of new U.S. COVID cases, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but BA.5 (36.6%) is spreading a lot faster than BA.4 (15.7%). By early July, it will be the dominant strain in the U.S.

One has to wonder what this is really all about? We saw over the past two years that it was more about power and control than wise policy based on science and research. Would anyone be surprised if the Powers That Be attempt to create a situation for lots and lots of mail in ballots, ballot harvesting, and the other things they did in 2020? Cheat by mail?

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