Fig-leaves or concealed weapons?

It’s good to hear about the roll-back of the UK’s useless Plan B restrictions, including the infamous vaccine passports, albeit it is apparently largely an attempt to save Boris Johnson’s political career. But as I’ve already discussed here, it’s part of the general unraveling of the lockdown narrative that’s happening around the world. The worrying indicator is that the unraveling is happening in lockstep everywhere, leading many to wonder “what’s behind it.”

When the Emperor Nero died, such was the horror in which he was held by the people that a prevalent rumour went round, that he had in fact survived or even been reborn – the Nero redividus myth, which is remembered to this day by historians. So maybe the suspicions of ongoing dirty tricks are a purely psychological phenomenon, or maybe they’re not. After all, COVID is not dead, and nor are any of those who have been pushing the horrors of the last two years.

I note that the compulsory vaccination of NHS staff has not been repealed, despite its now being increasingly obvious that Omicron is a pandemic of the vaccinated. And Boris Johnson has also said that private operators may, “of course” still wish to use the vaccine passports, despite their discriminatory nature and their breach of medical confidentiality, and nothing has been said against their imposition by law in nearby countries.

But the clearest indicator of the government’s failure to start dealing in reality – and that of their press lackeys – is the absurd claim that the precipitously falling case numbers are somehow the result of the success of our booster programme. Boris made the claim in Parliament yesterday, and it’s been repeated by other ministers and journalists. There is now, of course, plenty of science to show that boosters have little, if any, protective effect on Omicron, and an Israeli study has even shown that a fourth shot is of no benefit, even for hospitalisation or death.

But there’s really no need for sophisticated science to refute the booster theory, for the outbreak is doing exactly what it did in South Africa with only a quarter of the population vaccinated, and what it is doing in the USA with far fewer vaccinated than here in Britain:

What do these people think would happen, with two years knowledge of the epidemiology, with fewer boosters administered? That the vertiginous increase in cases would have continued until the whole country got sick? And does a gradual (and behind-schedule) vaccination program plausibly explain the cases-rate hitting the ceiling and bouncing back down equally quickly?

It’s the blatant inconsistency in thinking that gets me most. Back in the day, the promise was that getting 50% of the vulnerable vaccinated would kill the pandemic. Gradually the messaging evolved as the vaccines failed until, with 80% fully vaccinated and 90% having had one vaccine dose, the continued infections were all blamed on the 10% of unvaccinated ruining life for the rest of us. This is the first illness in history where only 100% vaccination can produce herd-immunity, or so they tell us: in fact it the real situation is that the vaccines – all of them – have failed dismally, as wise heads predicted in 2020 on first principles, and given the historical failure to be able produce either a SARS vaccine or any sterilizing immunisation against respiratory viruses.

Still, the official narrative is that Britain did well (on what measure? Presumably that Imperial Colleges now admittedly flawed Armageddon did not materialise) because of its 90% vaccination rate, compared to somewhat lower rates across Europe. The 50% success threshold has been lost down the memory hole…

… But now brought out again to trumpet that the claim that the 54% of Britons who have received a third doses of vaccine have miraculously reversed the Omicron variant, despite its being far more transmissible than every other variant and vaccine resistant, to boot. What didn’t work as originally intended last year exceeds all expectations as an emergency patch this year. Excuse me for calling this out as garbage, not to mention magical thinking.

And it’s garbage which should be well understood by our government, unless its whole advisory team is so immersed in groupthink as to be in Cloud-Cuckoo Land. Or else it is immersed in the more conspiratorial deceptions. But the garbage does need to be challenged, and challenged hard, because it is the toehold that could enable the government to maintain the whole apparatus of the vaccine-cult, including passports and compulsion, indefinitely into the future if another scariant can be conjured up, or Pfizer brings some new snake-oil to market.