URLs du Jour

2022-01-11

  • It's all in a day's work for Confuse-A-Citizen. [Classical reference] James Freeman's reaction to the recent meandering thoughts of Rochelle, Rochelle Walensky: Now She Tells Us.

    On Sunday Dr. Walensky tweeted:

    We must protect people with comorbidities from severe #COVID19. I went into medicine – HIV specifically – and public health to protect our most at-risk. CDC is taking steps to protect those at highest risk, incl. those w/ chronic health conditions, disabilities & older adults.

    Fair enough, but this recognition that some face great risk from Covid while others face much lower risk has been obvious from the start. In response, a group of accomplished and wise scientists crafted the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 to promote a ”focused protection” strategy—taking great care to shield those at high risk while allowing the vast majority who are at low risk to continue working, learning and doing all the things that sustain life. This sensible prioritization sounds very much like what Dr. Walensky is suggesting in her Sunday tweet.

    But that's not all! Freeman also points to this CDC report which talks about those comorbidities:

    For over 5% of these deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death.

    But before you get all hot and bothered about that:


  • That's what she didn't say. Did Rochelle, Rochelle say that 75% of all COVID deaths involved four comorbidities? Take it away, Allahpundit: No, the CDC chief didn't say that 75% of all COVID deaths involved four comorbidities.

    But Walensky wasn’t talking about all COVID deaths. She was talking about COVID deaths among the vaccinated. She was referring to this study published by the CDC on Friday, the same day she gave the interview above.

    During December 2020–October 2021, a total of 1,228,664 persons aged ≥18 years completed primary vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech, 72.8%; Moderna, 20.0%, Janssen, 6.5%; unspecified mRNA vaccine, 0.8%) across 465 facilities in PHD-SR. Among these, 2,246 (18 per 10,000) acquired COVID-19, including 327 who were hospitalized, 189 (1.5 per 10,000) who had a severe COVID-19 outcome, and 36 (0.3 per 10,000) who had a COVID-19–related death (including nine persons discharged to hospice). Among those who acquired COVID-19 after primary vaccination, 1.6% (36) died, 1.1% (24) survived and were admitted to an ICU, and 5.7% (129) survived and received a diagnosis of acute respiratory failure or required NIV but were not admitted to an ICU…

    All persons with severe COVID-19 outcomes after primary vaccination had at least one of the eight risk factors identified as significant in the model. The frequency of having four or more risk factors increased with disease severity, ranging from 18.8% (386) among persons who had nonsevere outcomes, 56.9% (87) among survivors who had respiratory failure or were admitted to an ICU, to 77.8% (28) among persons who died.

    Out of 1.2 million vaccinated people, just 36 died. That’s .003 percent, a phenomenal survival rate. Of those 36, slightly more than three-quarters had four comorbidities. Which is to say, even if you have three comorbidities, getting vaxxed all but guarantees that you won’t die if you’re infected.

    Confused? I wouldn't blame you.

    But don't believe those who have shown themselves to be context-shearing propagandists.


  • I'm not sick, just cold. So very cold. But that's me. Jim Geraghty notes the sad state of affairs: America Is Out Sick This Week. But skip down a bit, and we eventually get to commentary on Rochelle, Rochelle:

    Speaking of squandered trust and goodwill, managing the Omicron variant is difficult enough without an administration and public-health leaders who keep saying the wrong things. This morning, Axios quoted a bunch of doctors and public-health experts who contend that the federal health agencies, particularly the CDC, may be squandering their credibility with usually receptive Americans. Dr. Leana Wen, CNN talking head and the former president of Planned Parenthood, offered the harshest assessment: “The CDC is facing a real crisis of trust. The primary problem is the policy and how insular [director Rochelle] Walensky has been in setting it. She and the others are great communicators, but no one can communicate a bad policy.”

    I’m not so sure Walensky counts as a “great communicator.” This weekend on Fox News Sunday, Bret Baier tossed her a softball, giving her multiple opportunities to rebuke and correct Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor’s otherworldly contention that, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.” But it was like pulling teeth; Walensky clearly had no interest in speaking any critical word of Sotomayor, even though the justice was talking nonsense and wildly exaggerating the virus’s risk to children.

    Walensky also said that it would take several weeks to determine “how many of the 836,000 deaths in the U.S. linked to Covid are from Covid or how many are with Covid.” That’s an important distinction! How is it that the CDC doesn’t have, at minimum, a ballpark figure for that?

    If you were holding your breath waiting for clarity and diligence from government officials… well, you wouldn't be reading this, having long since passed away.


  • Don't hold your breath waiting for corporate leaders to grow spines, either. Ed Morrissey looks at Intel's missing skeletal structures: On second thought, never mind about China's genocide

    Surprised? Don’t be; Intel is hardly the first American-based firm to discover that access to Xi Jinping’s markets is its “core.” However, it’s still worth noting in the context of credibility when it comes to corporate social-justice campaigns.

    After all, what’s a little genocide between friends?

    In mid-December, Intel published a letter to its global suppliers on its website, calling on its business partners to avoid sourcing from the northwestern Chinese region, where the Chinese government has conducted a campaign of forcible assimilation against ethnic Muslim minorities.

    Within days, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company was denounced by Chinese social-media users and state-run media for cutting business dealings with the region, while one of its China brand ambassadors pulled out in protest. The chip maker apologized on Dec. 23 on its Chinese social-media accounts, adding that the letter was written to comply with U.S. law and didn’t represent its position on Xinjiang.

    A Wall Street Journal check of the same webpage and supplier letter on Jan. 10 found that the company had erased any reference to Xinjiang there. Previously, Intel had written in the letter viewed on Dec 23: “Our investors and customers have inquired whether Intel purchases goods or services from the Xinjiang region of China. Multiple governments have imposed restrictions on products sourced from the Xinjiang region. Therefore, Intel is required to ensure our supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.” The Jan. 10 version didn’t carry that wording.

    Intel had already debased itself in a groveling apology to the Xi regime two days before Christmas. This amounts to an attempt at rewriting history, a practice that Intel and other US corporations will need to practice when the Xi regime collapses and the extent of their genocidal depravities become more widely known. Collaborators with the regime will have to answer for their cooperation at that point, and more.

    I'd like to imagine that someday in the not-too-distant future people will look back in disgust and loathing at Intel et alia for their mealymouthed kowtowing to the Chinese Communists.


  • I was not stimulated, either. Daniel J. Mitchell looks at Biden’s “Stimulus” Failure.

    The White House claimed this orgy of new spending would lead to four million additional jobs in 2021, on top of the six million new jobs that already were expected.

    So what happened? Matt Weidinger of the American Enterprise Institute looked at the final numbers for 2021 and discovered that employment actually fell compared to pre-stimulus baseline projection.

    The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected on February 1, 2021…a gain of 6.252 million jobs over…2021…we now know payroll employment in the fourth quarter of 2021 averaged 148.735 million — an increase of 6.116 million compared with the average of 142.619 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. That means the job growth the President praised this week has fallen 136,000 jobs short of what was expected under the policies he inherited. …President Biden and congressional Democrats promised their $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would create millions of additional new jobs this year — on top of what White House economists called the “dire” baseline of 6.252 million new jobs reflected in CBO’s projection without that enormous legislation. …House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) repeated that claim, stating that “if we do not enact this package, the results could be catastrophic,” including “4 million fewer jobs.” Yet…not one of those four million additional jobs supposedly resulting from that $1.9 trillion spending plan has appeared, as job creation in 2021 did not even match CBO’s projection without that legislation.

    Mitchell also looks back on the failure of Obama's "stimulus".