Life Potential

Life in Pandemistan in the winter of Omicron.

Covid-vaccinated Americans, self-appointed declarers of who the “Pandemic” is “of,” suddenly turn the spotlight on themselves, with a Washington Post essay highlighting increased rates of death, anecdotes of vaccine and mask failure, and renewed despair at the human condition.

This post will rather awkwardly take two separate approaches to the essay: A brief discussion of new data on Covid vaccinated deaths (is severe efficacy waning? perhaps), and a longer, rambling philosophical musing.¹

Another 15

That’s chutzpah.

“It’s still absolutely more dangerous to be unvaccinated than vaccinated,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California at Irvine who studies covid-19 mortality. “[And yet] A pandemic of — and by — the unvaccinated is not correct. People still need to take care in terms of prevention² and action if they became symptomatic.”³

Well, so that’s it. Covid vaccinated Americans are now officially participants in the never-ending Novel Coronavirus Pandemic, according to the Washington Post and some quoted experts today. Input from the unvaccinated was not solicited.

Why the change?

The vaccinated made up 42 percent of fatalities in January and February during the highly contagious omicron variant’s surge, compared with 23 percent of the dead in September, the peak of the delta wave, according to nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Post. The data is based on the date of infection and limited to a sampling of cases in which vaccination status was known.

Ah. So it’s because the data from a consortium of state and regional health departments collected by the CDC, which for whatever reason were showing implausibly low rates of deaths among the Covid vaccinated before, partly changed course in the Omicron (BA.1) era:

source: The Washington Post

Seems fair. 23% deaths Covid-vaccinated? “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.” 40% Covid-vaccinated? “No longer a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.” And what about the numbers in between? “Pandemic of the Partially In-Hiding Unvaccinated?”

We might well suspect that all of these numbers are under-counts. The CDC relies for this data on agencies which derive power from the compliance of local residents or have, at various points, had political and potential legal stakes in public worker Covid vaccine mandates. At least one of them publicly acknowledged artificially adjusting unvaccinated case rates (though in a way that is more likely to err on the side of low than high).⁴

This may be what continues to drive lower rates of Covid-vaccinated death in the US figures than in so many other places, providing the ammunition for the jabs that attend every rephrasing of the new status quo in the Post piece. This one sums up the current theory of reality the Post has come to make sense of for the reader:

Experts say they are not surprised that vaccinated seniors are making up a greater share of the dead, even as vaccine holdouts died far more often than the vaccinated during the omicron surge, according to the CDC. As more people are infected with the virus, the more people it will kill, including a greater number who are vaccinated but among the most vulnerable.

Of course, increasing the “number” of infected Covid vaccinated does not explain an increase in the “share” of the dead; but if the elderly are now dominating deaths in general, as demonstrated below, then that could account for the increase. But if it is once again the elderly that are dying more, then why are the Covid vaccinated still only 40% of deaths? It doesn’t seem to add up. Are there really that many unvaccinated 75-year-olds left, even after all the dying the CDC claims they have already done?

So there’s nothing to do with these numbers, except use them as an imperfect measurement of changes over time. Indeed, the Omicron era returned the situation to what had previously been “normal,” whereas in the Delta era it was the middle aged and younger elderly who were driving deaths:

source: The Washington Post

This age split provides a strange view, obscuring any difference between 40 year-olds vs. younger or 50-65 year-olds vs older; but in general it fits the Post’s explanation for why rates have increased among the Covid vaccinated (even if still under-reported). In the summer, whether because of Delta or because of healthcare system mistreatment, there was a stunning increase in “Covid deaths” among the middle aged, and this seems to have fallen hard on the truly unvaccinated (as demonstrated previously⁵).

BA.1, being milder, no longer drove deaths in this younger cohort. If either Delta or the treatment regimen used for it had turned SARS-CoV-2 into something worse than a “bad flu,” BA.1 restored that former state; now, only the very elderly are at high risk. However, it seems to have also eroded the severe efficacy of the Covid vaccines. The question is, in what way? Here are three possibilities:

• The first, most obvious answer would be that the outdated antibodies elicited by the Covid vaccines don’t protect well enough against viremia (spread of the virus into the bloodstream) or other complications to protect recipients (even if now only the most vulnerable are at risk to begin with).

• Or, it may be that there are no truly vulnerable, and most of what is happening is that Omicron is getting credit for normal deaths among the elderly that happen to be preceded by a positive test. In this case, since Omicron is not causing death in every or most cases, there is nothing for the Covid vaccines to “protect” against.

• Lastly, it may be that the Covid vaccines still protect against severe outcomes, but thanks to a suppression of innate immunity are now driving such higher baseline rates of infection that the Covid-vaccinated experience severe outcomes almost or just as much, per-capita. This would accord with the test-positivity rates reported in the new Walgreens tracker.⁶

The second is the most interesting possibility. It would essentially suggest that, due to the milder nature of BA.1, the elderly ceased to be an accurate “assay” to demonstrate the efficacy of the Covid vaccines. However, this would have trouble accounting for why the CDC data showing an increase in deaths among the Covid vaccinated still shows it to be much less than for the unvaccinated. Note that the Post-CDC analysis purports to exclude the “partially” vaccinated:

source: The Washington Post

But, again, these seem like wild misrepresentations of the real rates. On the other hand, they would accord with the official reported rates after the “Omicron wave” in Hong Kong.⁷ On the other hand, BA.2 was more prevalent in that wave. So does that mean option 1 is also out, since the Chinese Covid vaccine seems to have prevented severe outcomes against BA.2?

Perhaps option 3 is the only one that provides a coherent explanation for all these facts.

Whatever the case, the natural effect of the aging of “Covid deaths” is that more deaths will be among the Covid vaccinated, and almost certainly to a much greater extent than the rates reported by the CDC.

And even this partial reality check seems to have dashed the media’s dream, and perhaps the dream of many lay Americans, that no Covid vaccine recipients were dying with the virus at all.

A Day in the Life

Of Rick Smolan’s nearly forgotten A Day in the Life photo-book series, the highlight is probably Soviet Union.

Like all the other entries, the book was the product of Smolan’s invented gimmick: Enlisting and financing 100 prominent photographers to capture scenes of life in the country in question on a single day in the 80s.

The resulting painterly images of the snowy regime were printed on gorgeous, glossy, large-format pages with accompanying captions. Soviet Union wound up being a time capsule of a declining society on the brink of collapse; but primarily it was a window into a land where life was like the West’s in some ways, and unlike the West in others. I’m sure there were some scenes of human mortality, though I don’t remember any specifically, not having touched the book in decades. Maybe a funeral, or an elder on a death-bed, or something of the like.

But I’m almost certain the caption for any such images did not say, “What is this? What is going on here? Why isn’t that old person moving?”

In 2022, Covid-vaccinated America is rediscovering that thing which they declared unnatural and morally, politically, and biologically unacceptable two years before.

Death.

The title of the Post’s essay, a collaboration between paint-by-numbers health reporter Fenit Nirappil and data visualizer Dan Keating, seems sterile and mathematic.

And while half of the essay is dedicated to the hard (if largely unreliable) numbers compiled by the CDC, the other half is a strange, National Geographic-esque panorama of Omicron-era deaths. It is as if the Covid vaccinated who died (with or) from Omicron, and their relatives, are residents of some exotic foreign land, which the reader cannot possibly fathom, ostensibly because for life to be cut short, or to end at all, is beyond the scope of known experience:

Arianne Bennett recalled her [70 years-old] husband, Scott Bennett, saying, “But I’m vaxxed. But I’m vaxxed,” from the D.C. hospital bed where he struggled to fight off covid-19 this winter. […] He died Jan. 13, among the 125,000 Americans who succumbed to covid-19 in January and February [around 3 million Americans die every year; or around 250,000 every month]. […]

“Really and truly [84 year-old Cancer Survivor Wayne Perkey’s] final days were about, ‘This virus is bad news.’ He basically was saying: ‘Get vaccinated. Be careful. But there is no guarantee,’” Rebecca Booth said. “And, ‘If you think this isn’t a really bad virus, look at me [84 year-old Cancer Survivor Wayne Perkey].’ And it is.” […]

Immunocompromised people and those with other underlying conditions are worth protecting, Vickie Estep [mother of Jessica Estep, 41 year-old Cancer Survivor and mother of two, who died on January 27] said. “There’s life potential in those people.”

The subtle difference between these vignettes of tragedy and vintage American media Pandemic Porn is that the emphasis is no longer on the alleged perfect health of the dying. Despite the inclusion of 41 year-old Estep, the point here is no longer purely one of waging propaganda in favor of fear of Virus, and against those who would dismiss said Virus as akin to any other facet of early or timely death. In fact, these stories offer would-be schadenfreude to the long-pilloried unvaccinated and “If I get Covid, I get Covid” crowds, as the dutifully masking, distancing, boosting vaccinated wail forlornly when their protective talismans of Science fail one by one.

I go through the following examples both to highlight how little regard Nirappil gives to what the “other side” would make of these disclosures of reality, and how astonishing the Covid-vaccinated subjects of these stories seem to regard the fact that people die:

Bennett went to get his booster in early December after returning to D.C. from a lodge he owned in the Poconos, where he and his wife hunkered down for fall. Just a few days after his shot, Bennett began experiencing covid-19 symptoms, meaning he was probably exposed before the extra dose of immunity could kick in. [Additional doses of Covid vaccines do not contain or confer “extra immunity.”] […]

“He was absolutely shocked. He did not expect to be sick. He really thought he was safe,’” Arianne Bennett recalled. “And I’m like, ‘But baby, you’ve got to wear the mask all the time. All the time. Up over your nose.’”

Bennett blames her husband’s death on the fact that he did not literally wear a mask over his nose “all the time.” To her, this is both a reasonable prerequisite to continued existence for the (endlessly) Covid-vaccinated, and a guarantee of it. (Bennett got sick at the same time as her husband, but presumably also ascribes this to his lack of vigilance, rather than a demonstration of the futility of same; she recovered.) No comment is made on the futility of his adherence to government advice concerning the useless third injection; in fact Bennett herself goes on to get a useless third injection 90 days after recovery.

Nirappil’s lack of editorializing on the mask and booster fanaticism of his subjects presumably constitutes an endorsement of their logic. And yet without missing a beat, he serves up sterling examples of mask and boosting failure:

[84 year-old Wayne Perkey, whose symptoms started in February] had been boosted in October. He diligently wore a mask and kept his social engagements to a minimum. […]

“It’s the 7th day of my Covid battle, the worst day so far, and my anger boils when I hear deniers talk about banning masks or social distancing [both of which were ineffective in preventing his “Covid battle” from occurring in the first place],” Perkey wrote on Facebook on Feb. 16, almost exactly one year after he posted about getting his first shot.

And from our younger subject, who is far more live-and-let-live than Perkey:

As an asthmatic cancer survivor, Estep knew she faced a heightened risk from covid-19, relatives said. She saw only a tight circle of friends and worked in her own office in her electronics repair job. She lived in an area where around 1 in 4 residents are fully vaccinated. She planned to get a booster shot in the winter.

“She was the most nonjudgmental person I know,” said her mother, Vickie Estep. “It was okay with her if people didn’t mask up or get vaccinated. It was okay with her that they exercised their right of choice, but she just wanted them to do that away from her so that she could be safe.”

Estep’s Covid vaccination and social distancing failed to protect her. So too did the 3rd dose, which did not magically insert itself in to her arm at exactly the moment before she was fated to experience her infection, nor stop Scott Bennett from still experiencing his infection despite having just preceded it, nor provide any durable effect for Wayne Perkey, who if anything had the bad luck of jumping the gun. If there is a window of restored infection efficacy after repeat-dosing, it is short-term, and impossible for any given individual to time exactly when needed, and only offers the lucky a short delay of the inevitable in reward. Fate is fate.

Estep’s laudable support for others to live life as they please doesn’t purge her tale of an implied “unnecessary” element, with the 3 in 4 not “fully” vaccinated in her region being the implied “but for” cause of her death. Her family is reported to have gone on the local news to emphasize the same point, using her death as a call for the uninjected to alter their medical choices on the basis of Estep’s story.

So Nirappil both endorses and affirms the flatly nonsensical idea that Covid vaccination confers passive protection to anyone. Though it’s not surprising that this myth has yet to die, it has traveled several hours past the “Welcome to Magical Thinking” sign at this point. But, again, the author doesn’t seem to be advancing an agenda. The emphasis is less on the implied failure of the unvaccinated than it is of the Covid vaccines. And both of these are just facts within a once unimaginable reality that the vaccinated never expected to find themselves in.

“We can die.” Just like anyone, always, as the Neanderthal Thinkers had pointed out was common sense at the time, in 2020. “We can die.” Just as from car crashes, or the flu, or anything else. “We can die.” Prematurely, as a result of biological bad luck (Estep); amid good health but after a long and active life as a DC restauranteur (Bennett); after an even longer life as local “legend” in radio (Perkey).

If the media, with the help of irresponsible public health experts and outspoken researchers on Twitter, did indeed successfully brainwash large swaths of the American public into believing that dying from a respiratory virus was some unprecedented, unnatural condition, then the only possible result was derangement. The nature and practice of this derangement, which is the same one that defines the mindset of the medical profession at large, is the pathologizing of natural death.

Death and illness, to the medical profession, are not normal parts of human existence, but a thing wholly opposite - “unnecessary.” This is obviously a contradiction (as well as a conflict with their own interests), and entire books could be written (and have; see Illich) about how the resolution of this contradiction bears fruit in the medicalization of death, the farcical insistence on artificially sustaining life until it at last it has been ritualistically proven that death is “necessary,” at which point Nature is allowed sloppy seconds at whatever is left. Arguably, many medically-designated “Cancer Survivors” are crown achievements of this ritual of artificial sustenance, which is why the failure of the rest of the species at large to stop presenting occasional immune challenges (when it is only the overall immune competence of the immunocompetent that makes any matter of “protection” possible) is taken as such an offense against this new “way of life.” I offer no prescriptions here; it is up to the immunocompromised to sort out what it is they should really expect out of their time on Earth (as Estep seems to have done).

Because SARS-CoV-2 was made to personify, in 2020, “unnecessary” natural death, the Covid vaccines, arriving a year later, were no doubt seen by many recipients as a deliverance from the same. This probably over-simplifies; to a certain extent, Americans were already “living with” the virus in the winter that the injections were released. The pathological pathologizing of the Virus that defined early 2020, and waned toward the end of the same, was “recovered” in the year that followed, especially during the summer, when headlines of the Delta wave in the south restored the purchase of the media’s Pandemic narrative.

But in a certain sense this is still directly causal. Because there was nothing that people “could do” about the virus in 2020, it came to be seen as a natural fact of life. Because in 2021 there was suddenly something one “could do,” the virus regained its former terror and its singular position in the American mindset. It again personified death. First-injections soared in many states in August (though some of this was likely illicit 3rd-dosing, as well⁸). A new “class consciousness” gelled, between those who got their injections during the summer panic and those who had gotten it earlier and now began to venerate the protection it offered against the virus in earnest.

The expert crowd-think continued to irresponsibly prod America into this psychic quagmire throughout 2021, and still does so today, even as said experts simultaneously try to break the bad news. As Nirappil quotes (emphasis added):

“Vaccines are one of the most important and longest-lasting⁹ tools we have to protect ourselves,” said California State Epidemiologist Erica Pan, citing state estimates showing vaccines have shown to be 85 percent effective in preventing death. [Not, “death from infection with SARS-CoV-2;” just “death.”]

“Unfortunately, that does leave another 15,” she said.

It is this group of Americans, the Covid vaccine recipients who fell into the trap of expecting “death” to be 100% “prevented,” that now begins the grieving process.

Having refused to listen to, or having retroactively renounced the argument against letting fear of death define life in 2020, they now will have no choice. But of course, the project starts with denial, which is no benefit to those experiencing the reality check first-hand. Emphasis added:

“In [Wayne Perkey’s] last voice conversation with me, he said, ‘I thought I was doing everything right,’” recalled Lady Booth Olson, another daughter, who lives in Virginia.

On his soon-to-be deathbed, Perkey still equated avoidance of his neighbors with “care;” religious public self-flagellation with “love.” No lessons from America’s two year war on living life had yet been learned.

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1. Press the X button on this window to automatically send a complaint. Trust me.

2. Coronavirus and most other respiratory infections cannot be “prevented,” only pointlessly rearranged in time.

3. Nirappil, Fenet. Keating, Dan. “Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows.” (2022, April 29.) The Washington Post Democracy Dies in Darkness.

4. This would be King County, WA, whose dashboard is at https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx. I’ve lost the link to the posted announcement. Basically, they announced assigning a baseline unvaccinated denominator of 5%. But since this was higher than what they would otherwise have calculated in some cases, it should only have had an effect of lowering their reported rates for unvaccinated infections. Should…

Full list of health departments used for the CDC data sets, which were used for the Post analysis, at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status (outcomes by Covid vaccine status) and https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku (outcomes by age).

5. See “Means, etc.”

6. See https://www.walgreens.com/businesssolutions/covid-19-index.jsp Among 65+, accessed 4/29/22:

7. See Smith, D. et al. “COVID-19 Mortality and Vaccine Coverage — Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, January 6, 2022–March 21, 2022.” cdc.gov

8. See Klapper, Rebecca. “Over 900 People Have Gotten Third COVID-19 Vaccine Dose Before FDA Recommendation.” (2021, August 9.) Newsweek.

When the Delta variant started spreading, Gina Welch decided not to take any chances: She got a third, booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by going to a clinic and telling them it was her first shot. […]

Welch, a graduate student from Maine who is studying chemical engineering, said she has kept tabs on scientific studies about COVID-19 and follows several virologists and epidemiologists on social media who have advocated for boosters.

"I'm going to follow these experts, and I'm going to go protect myself," said Welch, a 26-year-old with asthma and a liver condition. "I'm not going to wait another six months to a year for them to recommend a third dose."

(Previously quoted in “Boostermania,” footnote 13.)

9. 3 months is pretty “long” compared to, I don’t know, a squirt of hand sanitizer I guess.