COVID is Airborne

Did you ever enter a crowded room and immediately smell cigarette smoke? You look around and see that the person smoking is way across the room. That is how COVID spreads, it is airborne like smoke. If you can smell the cigarette or perfume, just remind yourself that stench could just as well be COVID. The six foot distance rule was a lie made on the assumption that COVID only spread in large droplets which would drop to the ground within six feet. Since the start of the pandemic I have always used a 22 foot rule of social distancing for myself. 22 feet is about the distance of 4 dead bodies lying head to toe on the ground. If people crowd inside the 22 foot perimeter a mask goes on if I am outside. The mask is always on when inside.

The United States ended the COVID Public Health Emergency on May 11, 2023. COVID however still spreads through the communities. The CDC held a conference to essentially pat themselves on the back for their handling of the COVID public health emergency. To date about 101 attendees to that conference have been infected so far because of the superspreader event. Of course CDC employees should be fully vaccinated so there will be few deaths. Should you want the next available COVID booster shot, that will now be an out of pocket expense. The last I heard those shots will cost $300. Cha Ching!

School children are the primary spreaders of the COVID virus. They infect one another in classrooms and then bring the virus home to infect parents and grand parents. After the COVID public health emergency  ended the CDC quietly added a few sentenced to their guidance for school kid on their website. They pointed out that children should mask in schools and at home if another child comes over to play. The health of children was never at the forefront of peoples minds as there was a rush to open in person learning. What was most important was getting the children out of the home so parents could go back to work. People used children’s mental health concerns as a smoke screen to force kids back into poorly ventilated crowded classrooms. There are affordable options to get HEPA filters in classrooms but few are really concerned about the health of the children.

CDC Muzzled

The New York Times recently published an article with the headline: “We were helpless.” It wasn’t news that the 45th president has muzzled The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but there were new insights into the mood in the agency as their research and advice was ignored and silenced. The article is supported by interviews with 11 current and former agency employees, as well as a review of text messages and other documents. Which showed the agency under the thumb of the former president.

In February 2020, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, warned Americans to prepare for a pandemic. When The former president learned of the announcement he was furious and severely reprimanded her. With her silenced the entire agency was put under political pressure to downplay the pandemic. Vice President Mike Pence, with no epidemiology experience was put in charge of the coronavirus task force. It was his job to silence and spin communications from the CDC.

CDC officers were sent to airports around the country to screen passengers flying into the United States from China. They were told however that they could not wear medical masks because the politicians did not want to alarm the general public. Passengers from China were wearing masks but the medical professionals were forced to go mask less. It soon became clear that the virus was spreading not just from people who showed visible symptoms, but also asymptotically.  Just screening for visible symptoms was pointless. The public needed to be warned but the CDC was silenced.

Privately, CDC  officers were calling friends and family asking them to cancel weddings and planned vacations, to stay home, and to wear masks and even goggles when they venturing outside. The general public was not told. Those who shared their thoughts on social media were told to stop or be fired.

A month later the CDC director finally announced the asymptomatic spread of the virus. Finally after two months, the white house begrudgingly advised the public to wear masks. Had the CDC been allowed to advise the public when they wanted, 36,000 lives could have been saved. Considering the ongoing mass hypnosis and denial that number is a drop in the bucket in the ever escalating preventable COVID death toll.

So is the CDC being muzzled in 2023? It would appear so.

What the flock are they doing?

Most sheep are easily controlled and manipulated. The rebel black sheep cares about the herd. The United States has decided mass infection is the cheapest cost of action. If you wanted to thin the herd by several million people then convincing the population that a deadly virus is “mild” would do the trick.

Propaganda is now in the works to make those who wear masks seem like outliers. The mayor of NYC is asking store owners to insist that people entering their stores must remove their mask. It might be far easier to ask them to show their drivers license, but the point is to discourage the population from protecting themselves from an airborne virus that has killed millions of Americans and continues to do so.  The unintelligent are scapegoating the intelligent.

Floriduh Governor Ron DeathSantis wrote an order, that directed the state’s health and education departments to issue rules preventing the implementation of school mask mandates in an effort to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

Mandatory masking in schools reduced the spread of the virus. Some masks are better than others. Cloth masks and the flimsy blue medical masks are not as effective as N-95 masks. By the time quality N95 masks were being advised, masks had already become a political flash point.

CDC released three studies in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that highlighted the importance of using layered prevention strategies including universal masking to stop the spread and minimize disruptions to school operations for safe in-person education. These studies found that school districts without a universal masking policy in place were more likely to have COVID-19 outbreaks.

There are no longer any states requiring people generally to wear masks in public places. Several states still mandate masking for most people in certain high-risk settings, including health care and long-term care facilities. The federal government’s nationwide mask order for public transit, commercial flights and transportation hubs such as airports and train stations was struck down by a federal judge in April 2022. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has stopped enforcing the mandate and major U.S. airlines made face-covering optional on domestic flights.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend that people ages 2 and older wear masks while on public transportation and at transportation hubs.

Though president Joe Biden has decided to promote, “the pandemic is over” since he is eyeing a re-election run. No level of fantasy or denial can dispute the fact that several thousand people continue to die every week inn America due to COVID-19.  The American workforce is also continuing to thin as more and more people are crippled by long COVID.

People who are going about life unmasked as if the year were 2018 are fearful of those who wear masks since it reminds them that the pandemic is not over. Seeing someone in a mask can actually make them angry.

Rhinos

Rhinoceros is an absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. There was a movie adaptation in 1974. Over the course of the play the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town turn into rhinos. It is about conformity and mass delusion. Ultimately only one human does not succumb to the plague. The main character’s love interest begins explaining that he is in the wrong for wanting to remain human. The rhinos, stampeding down the streets and building hallways seem happy as they bellow and scream. “Those are the real people.”, she says about the rhinos, “They look happy, they are right to do what they did.” She then quietly walks out the doorway to become a rhino herself, leaving him alone. The last human in the town and perhaps the earth.

We are living in a rhino apocalypse where the best defense is to be immune to peer pressure. Most people are returning to a pre-pandemic life. However the pandemic is not over with over 500 Americans dying every day. Granted back in January thousands of people were dying every day but over 2000 deaths a week is not unacceptable. Basic health precautions are still needed.

As people pack together in public spaces, they are living a mass delusion thinking no mitigation measure are needed. They are living a lie. Being fully vaccinated, I believe I am safe from hospitalization and death, but I am not safe from Long COVID. There is not treatment options or cure for Long COVID. It would mean months, years or perhaps a lifetime of debilitation illness. About 1 in 5 people who were infected develop Long COVID.

The CDC published a study which states, “It is likely that a substantial proportion of patients surviving COVID-19 will experience long term symptoms, requiring prolonged care even after a mild or moderate disease. These symptoms might negatively affect patients quality of life.” Though in black and white, it seems to have been kept rather quiet. There are no ongoing warnings about the dangers of repeat infections causing Long COVID so most of the population remains ignorant. Ignorance is bliss.

When I wear an N-95 mask in public, some people are genuinely insulted. You can see the anger in their eyes. They fear the mask because it reminds them that they are living in a fantasy. The contagion has already spread. Most people have bought into the mass delusion that becoming infected multiple times is the new normal.

Mass delusion is intoxicating and tempting. When you see large crowds of Rhinos gathering in tight herds and breathing in each others faces, it is tempting to believe that life has returned to normal. The rhinos seem happy. But the virus can not be seen and it is still circulating. Vaccines and repeat infections are not stopping the spread of the virus and the proliferation of new more infectious variants.

But, did he die with wildfires or from wildfires?

With of from COVID? That is the question. In April of 2020 the CDC gave specific advice to doctors on how to determine the cause of death that should be listed on a death certificate. If a patient died of pneumonia caused by COVID-19, then Pneumonia would be listed as the cause of death and the patient would have died OF COVID. Those who died OF COVID-19 are considered the number of people whose primary cause of death was due to the virus.

If other  COVID was considered a co-morbidity like obesity, but the person died from an accident or other cause, then the patient would have died WITH COVID.

We have officially entered the COVID exhaustion phase of the pandemic. People grasp at any straw of misinformation in order to pretend the pandemic is over or never happened. I have seen FOX news hosts claim that thousands of people are dying in motorcycle accidents and they just happen to have COVID. This is just lunacy. A doctor would never claim  COVID as the cause of a motorcycle accident.

One patient had cancer and was told he only had months to live. In those final months he caught COVID-19 and was unable to breath. He died OF COVID.

In April of 2021 Dr. Deborah Birx, said, “If someone dies WITH COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.” That lead conspiracy theorists to assume numbers were being inflated. In the spring and summer of 2021 that policy was altered to say that in order for a death to be counted as a COVID-19 death, the disease had to have played a role.

Since the start of the pandemic the numbers of non-COVID excess deaths have been on the rise. Excess deaths are deaths that are above the average number of deaths expected based on an average of the previous 5 years. Many of these rising excess deaths are likely due to COVID causing an increase in  heart attacks, strokes, embolisms, aneurysms, diabetes, and damage to autoimmunity. COVID causes damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver, heart. It causes brain damage, brain inflammation, brain autoimmunity. COVID can cause ongoing illness and disability that can be life changing and may be lifelong.

Regardless of weather the death is OF or WITH COVID, when a loved or friend one dies, the cost is incalculable. I don’t understand the need for the semantics. The pandemic is not over and over 500 Americans are dying needlessly every week.

COVID Tipping Point

Is there an unacceptable level of COVID deaths that could convince people that “living with the virus” should not mean mass infection? We have been at a high plateau of over 300 deaths a day for months now. It would seem that 300 deaths are considered acceptable to most, since people think life will return to normal if they just ignore the virus. Wishing the virus away does nothing to mitigate it’s spread.

The media seems to regard these deaths as insignificant since most who die are old or vulnerable. Do more children need to die for anyone to care? Do the caskets need to be smaller? Since the easing of masking and social distancing more children are being infected than adults. The children then take the virus home and give it to their parents and grand parents. Since the start of the pandemic about 700 children have died as of October 2021. I am assuming parents consider this acceptable collateral damage now that they can live without masks.

Governments around the world have been quietly installing air filtration HEPA systems to keep themselves safe, while telling everyone else that the pandemic is over. Meanwhile the caskets are also quietly being stacked up.

COVID deaths in New York State spiked 30% in December 2022, to the highest tally since early 2022, a Post analysis showed. This is in part due to the highly transmissible XBB.1.5 (Kraken) variant that is now spreading across the country. Meanwhile home tests have made it impossible too track just how the virus is spreading.

In China doctors are being instructed too try not to write COVID as the cause of death. No official wants the public to be aware of what is happening. A doctor Wen noted that most countries are finding that most deaths from COVID are caused directly by the infection rather than by a combination of COVID and other diseases. Just as in China, some American talking heads want to convince people that the numbers of deaths due to COVID have been under-counted. The truth is that even American deaths due to COVID have been under counted since long term complications are not taken into account.

The CDC predicted that the number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths will remain stable or have an uncertain trend over the next 4 weeks, with 1,500 to 5,400 new deaths likely reported in the week ending February 11, 2023. The national ensemble predicts that a total of 1,108,000 to 1,120,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by this date.

Kraken XBB.1.5

Happy New Year.

XBB.1.5 nicknamed Kraken, is the cause of an increase in Covid cases and hospitalizations in New York. This new variant is a recombinant or combined version of two Omicron variants and has an increased level of transmissibility and is highly immune evasive.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) didn’t notice this variant until it  accounted for 40% of new infections in the United States. They were blindsided by the sudden surge. Cases have been doubling exponentially. From literally nowhere, XBB.1.5, aka the Kraken variant, has leapt to 40% of sequences on the US CDC’s weekly-updated variant tracker page. Last week, it wasn’t even listed as a variant.

Why are these figures so stunningly bad? For the simple reason that if you take a hyper-transmissable variant like XBB.1.5 and add a Delta variant like lethality to it, the country, or indeed the entire planet, could be facing an unprecedented and potentially irreversible disaster. The lethality of XBB.1.5 is unknown. It has a great affinity to ACE2, so likely it will be able to infect the lungs and the cardiovascular system with worse outcomes than previous Omicron variants.

XBB.1.5 has a “greatly enhanced” ability to bind to cells. It is a sub variant of Omicron but far more transmissible. “We’re projecting that it’s going to be the dominant variant in the Northeast region of the country and that it’s going to increase in all regions of the country,” said Dr. Barbara Mahon, director of the CDC’s proposed Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, in an interview with CBS News. More than 70% of infections in the regions spanning New Jersey through New England are now from XBB.1.5, the agency projected. Kraken is quickly spreading in Florida, Texas and Washington State.

Hospitalizations continue to tick upwards all across America. The Kraken is coming at a time when most of the public has abandoned masking and every other simple and basic mitigation measure. The Kraken is here to open the New Year. It is is resistant to many of the monoclonal antibody drugs that doctors had relied on earlier in the pandemic.  Omicron has caused more death than any other variant since the start of the pandemic simply because of the huge number of people infected.

The latest bivalent boosters appear to offer better “neutralizing activity” for Omicron variants, including XBB. So if you haven’t had your booster, it is advisable for the new year. The CDC has quietly begun recommending masking indoors but we all know that recommendation will go largely ignored and the lemmings will crowd together and infect one another. At home tests may prove less effective in detecting the new variant. One test, DxTerity’s saliva test for the virus, has proven itself useless.

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like COVID!

I heard the song,”It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like COVID” and I can’t get it out of my head. Right after the crowds gathered for Thanksgiving, I watched as the hospitalization numbers ticked upwards. Seems like everyone is partying mask less like it is 1999. Everyone seems to be over COVID but COVID continues to spread. It doesn’t matter how many times you have been vaccinated, the virus keeps finding ways to elude the immune system. Repeated infections are resulting in increased risks of fatal outcomes. Rather than boosting immunity repeated infections are destroying the immune response to COVID and other viruses like flu and RSV. Blood clots, heart failures and a huge rise in cases among children should have people concerned but the Who’s in Whoville keep going about their life blissfully unaware, while pressing together in tight crowds for comfort.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Medical Association warn that the surge in RSV, flu and COVID is threatening the upcoming holiday season. Thanksgiving has jump-started a new surge of COVID all across America. For weeks, RSV has been sending lots of babies and young children to emergency rooms and intensive care units. On top of that, Flu hospitalizations doubled in just one week and are at the highest they’ve been this time of year in a decade. When everyone masked up the last several hears and flu literally disappeared. No that all masking and distancing has been abandoned the viruses hare having a field day.

Nearly 9 million flu cases, 70,000 flu hospitalizations and 4,500 flu deaths have already been reported so far this year, including 14 deaths among children. And now COVID looks like it’s surging, too. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says COVID hospitalizations jumped 15 to 20% in just a week, raising fears that deaths could start rising, too.

The simple mitigation measure to keep you and your family safe have never changed, though some have chosen to make your health a political issue. Social distance. Wash your hands a lot. Wear a good fitting KN95 mask, especially around family and friends. Open windows as much as you can, and stay home if you’re sick. And get both a flu shot and one of the new COVID boosters. Most of all, think for yourself, since there is so much misinformation on social media.

 

 

Citizen COVID

The undisputed winner of the mid term election is COVID-19. COVID won the race in an undisputed red wave. Regardless of which party dominates Congress and the Senate, they are both down playing the ongoing pandemic. The cost of vaccines will no longer be covered by the government but will cost about $130 per jab.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of a shortage occurring for COVID-19 rapid tests. In this advisory, the CDC advised diagnostic service providers to expect an increase in the demand for laboratory-based COVID-19 testing due to a shortage in supply for both point-of-care testing and rapid testing for COVID-19.

There is currently a temporary shortage in point-of-care and over-the-counter test supplies. To help preserve rapid test kits and supplies and meet the current test demand, CDC recommends the use of laboratory-based testing whenever possible.

As the election approached every candidate held packed election rallies which of course are fabulous venues to spread the virus since no one masks anymore. Passive conventionalists pretends the pandemic is over but it is not. The herds press together but there is no herd immunity.

President Joe Biden seems to think that Americans care about only one thing, and that is the price of gas. He may be right. He went on to announce that he felt the pandemic was over. All United States government efforts to curtail the coronavirus have disappeared. Mask mandates have been lifted on public transit. Public health agencies are being crippled by conservative law makers.

The White House and the CDC have framed COVID as a problem for individuals, but informed action is hard when cases and hospitalizations are underestimated, most testing sites have closed, and the over optimistic CDC guidelines downplay the coronavirus’s unchecked spread. COVID has won.

Alien Things

North Korea claims that “Alien Things” are to blame for it’s COVID-19 “Fever” Outbreak. South Korean activist for years have flown balloons across the border which distributed pamphlets that were critical of Kim Jong Un. The dictator is furious that this activity was never stopped. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in North Korea, the activists have been airlifting masks and pain killers to its suffering northern neighbor.

Kim Jong Un claims that people who touched one of these balloon care packages became infected by COVID-19 and spread it to the rest of the nation. The CDC has pointed out that COVID-19 is spread through aerosolized particles. Though infection through touch is possible is is far less likely. At the start of the pandemic I was using antiseptic wipes to disinfect all incoming groceries but that practicewas pushed to the wayside due to the more recent findings. A mask is far more important that wiping down groceries.

A far more likely reason for the vast spread of the virus in North Kora would be the Military parade superspreader event held by Kim Jung Un for promote his missile program. North Korea has reported some 4.7 million cases of “The Fever” among it’s population of 26 Million. Since the dictator wants to save face, that number is obviously under reported.

North Korea is a nation that is completely vaccinated and therefor very susceptible to the worst possible outcome from the fast spread of the virus. President Joe Biden and Covax have offered to airlift in vaccines by Kim Jung Un claimed that the North Korean Epidemic Prevention Center had everything under control. The health Ministry is clueless and has done nothing to protect citizens. News of the horrific outcomes has been downplayed by the Communist regime. We may never know just how many people suffered needlessly and died.

North Korea’s Epidemic Prevention Center claimed that an 18 year old soldier and a kindergartner came into contact with “Alien Things” in the town Ipoh near the southern border. They later tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The nation has stressed that anyone who finds “Alien Things” must notify authorities immediately so that the objects can be safely removed.

By laying blame of “Alien things” flown across the border, the agency hopes to ease public complaints about the absolute failing of the nation to handle the health crisis while also echoing past complaints about the balloon aid program. When West Berlin was cut off by Communists Russia after WWII, a comprehensive airlift program was initiated to help the citizens of that city.  South Korea in a much smaller way was trying to offer assistance to it’s besieged neighbor.