Masks are good and vaccines not so much? — CDC doubles down on its self-contradicting COVID-19 silliness
© 2021 Peter Free
29 July 2021
If you still trust the CDC — you are gullible in the extreme
I frequently point to the US public health apparatus's unwillingess to substantively research aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Instead, we are subjected to deliberately fostered Ignorance's many policy meanderings.
Consider the latest CDC self-reversal
Regarding mask use in already COVID-vaccinated people, CDC published the following backtrack yesterday (28 July 2021):
Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant.
However, preliminary evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people who do become infected with the Delta variant can spread the virus to others.
To reduce their risk of becoming infected with the Delta variant and potentially spreading it to others[,] CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people:
Wear a mask in public indoor settings if they are in an area of substantial or high transmission.
Fully vaccinated people might choose to mask regardless of the level of transmission, particularly if they or someone in their household is immunocompromised or at increased risk for severe disease, or if someone in their household is unvaccinated.
People who are at increased risk for severe disease include older adults and those who have certain medical conditions, such as diabetes [— a statement that is contradicted by CDC's own published analysis, here —], overweight or obesity, and heart conditions.
Get tested if experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.
Get tested 3-5 days following a known exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days after exposure or until a negative test result.
Isolate if they have tested positive for COVID-19 in the prior 10 days or are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.
Follow any applicable federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations.
© 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Interim Public Health Recommendations for Fully Vaccinated People — Summary of Recent Changes, cdc.gov (28 July 2021)
We're 21 months into this pandemic
Yet, no persuasive evidence exists for the utility of cloth masks in COVID control. The little directly COVID-related mask evidence that does exist, arguably slightly goes the other way.
Yet, CDC and everyone else continues to maintain that this purported infection and anxiety-control method is, or should be, effective:
One particularly idiotic version of this stupidity is the CDC mandate that air travelers (on aircraft and in airports) be masked. Except when they eat.
Now, folks on aircraft eat pretty much all at the same time. And those in airports are variously eating all the time, all over the place.
Ask any competent infectious disease specialist whether such a porous masking strategy would work to prevent an easily transmitted respiratory infection, and they would laugh in your face.
Yet, we are still indulging this nonsense.
And still not investigating whether these evidently asinine rules work.
We can infer that nobody really gives a 'shit' about epidemic research because policy is actually all about generating money and seizing power.
Recall in related regard, that COVID vaccines were the Official Hope of Humanity just days ago. And arguably helpful ivermectin and a similar flock of cheap generic cronies were emphatically not, as a matter of US policy.
Now, we are being implicitly advised that existing vaccines might not be as helpful as Authorities had maintained.
This newly purported unhelpfulness being because a comparative handful of people might still become sickened and transmit a virus that in actuality does not kill or maim proportionately very many people.
In short, we are right back to the same presumptions that public health authorities and Big Government made pre-vaccination.
If your Rage Quotient is not yet full — recall that scientifically grounded people warned that FDA's emergency testing procedures for American COVID vaccines did not test the vaccines for their ability to reduce recipients' subsequent ability to infect others.
Thus, the circle of Government ridiculousness happily closes upon itself.
Aggressive stupidity encompasses all, it seems.
The moral? — Given the Government's failure to test which measures work . . .
. . . (or not) in reducing COVID transmission, we are back to Dark Age Ways of meandering through the Lands of Devils and Demons.
This was all avoidable. Provided that Authorities cared about doing their job on the Public's behalf. And assuming that Government actually promoted epidemiological science, rather than pseudo-medicine and Big Pharma profit.
If such autocratic haplessness does not offend y'all, it should.
We are, presumably, paying these autocracy-oriented fools do something other than line their own pockets.