As reminders…

Alpha–Variant first identified in the UK

Beta–Variant first identified in South Africa

Gamma–Variant first identified in Brazil

Delta–Variant first identified in India

Omicron–Variant first identified in South Africa

Updating the chart above:

Ancestral: B.1.1.529 Omicron (and cousins)

Transmissibility: All the +

Immune Evasiveness: All the +

Vaccine Effectiveness: Check (for hospitalization)

Also as a reminder:

–We will be brief this week (no really). Or at least brief in terms of the usual length of this update.

–First, welcome back to our Chinese readers! I’m willing to bet the cause of your recent visit to our site was the link to news reports documenting the CCP’s recent, inadvertent truth telling about the plans to continue “zero COVID” policies for at least 5 years that had your citizens a little alarmed. Locking them in their homes and starving them because the CCP’s plan to handle COVID has been a catastrophic failure for years has more to do with their concern than my links to speeches your guys gave though, my dudes–don’t site scrape the messenger!

But hey, while you’re here, make sure you read some other inadvertent truth that has leaked from official CCP sources recently about the gross, manifest, documented and continued genocidal abuse of Muslims by the CCP in the Xinjiang province. You can find a brief summary here, and there is more summarized here at the Wikipedia about it (with links out), of course. There’s more here, and of course, you, and all of China, and really, all the world at this point, can read about the duplicity and malfeasance and outright evil of the CCP contained in the Xinjiang Police Files here.

Or you can just read about how the CCP’s incompetence allowed hackers to breach the police records of 1 billion people by accessing the Shanghai National Police records and offering to sell those details on Chinese citizens on the dark web. Spectacular work guys. That’s all here for the world to see. I know you guys have been trying to delete that too! Can’t have your citizens know that A) their private details have been breached by your negligence and B) that the only thing you care about really protecting on the net is your reputation–and certainly not anything important to your fellow Chinese!

Anyways, thanks for reading guys, and make sure you come back often! May you and the CCP continue to live in interesting times.

–Around the horn, new cases are leveling off in the US. We should be down sloping the BA.4/BA.5 waves by the end of the month. Most of Western Europe and South America are starting to climb these waves. Also seeing activity in Australia and parts of Asia that is probably these highly contagious, breakthrough prone omicron cousins as well. Macau had new COVID infections, raising the risk that more cases in the rest of China will be found within the next couple weeks. South Africa cases continue to decline though–so again, there is some hope that we may get most of the fall/winter variants out of the way early. We’ll have to see. All this global activity is sadly just more chances for the omicron cousins to mutate one more time and see if there is a more contagious version of themselves that is still even possible for SARS-CoV-2.

–The socioeconomic front is also short. Dutch farmer protests are heating up–they are piling manure to block government offices and recently bought a tank. Presumably from their Ukrainian colleagues who towed abandoned Russian equipment off the battlefield? Anyways, they are using that disrupt blockades, and reports are the police are getting chippy with shots fired. Also worth mentioning, because most reports don’t, that the reason for the protest is that the new legislation in the Netherlands would force a number of them out of business entirely and reduce the livestock herds in the Netherlands by a third to hit arbitrary ammonia goals–meaning the Netherlands would no longer be a significant exporter of food during a time of global food scarcity. Ecuador protests are also continuing. Ghana has joined the protest party in the last couple weeks too.

–The Bonfire of the Credibilities had a strong week as well, which you can read here and here.

–You have probably noticed that drivers are a little more aggressive of late, tempers seem to be shorter overall. We’ve all seen it. And on some level, we understand. It’s the cumulative pressure we all feel from the rapid pace of significant changes. It already feels like a century has happened in the space of a few years, and catastrophes continue to overlap. This is from a New Zealand comedy troupe, whose usual fare is lampooning video games and retail jobs. But they do a great job with the cumulative effect of the most negative aspects of connected life, with a little flavor of COVID lockdowns/socioeconomic changes at the end. Take the 5 minutes to check it out, because it will help you take a deep breath and remember the other guy or gal who is blowing up on the road or in the store really may just be having a bad day, or a series of bad days.

–Otherwise, just wanted to thank a couple readers for some thought provoking comments this week.

1) To flog the 0-5 vaccine dead horse one more time…

Although maybe not emphasized enough given my annoyance at shifting goalposts and the propaganda to explain them, the vaccine –is– triggering an immune response.  It will reduce the chances they spread SARS-CoV-2 to high risk people they might encounter by some percentage points. I don’t know how many, and think of it similar to the X percentage points you reduce risk by wearing a mask.

I also think the vaccine is still likely to reduce severe disease risk in these kids–what hosed the trial, and the source of my complaints about it, is that the risk for severe disease in these kids (absent underlying high risk conditions) is already so low that you would need tens of thousands of patients in a study to prove that.

They would have been far, far better off just running a giant safety study in this age group and saying it’s safe and available for those who want it given the clinical efficacy in other age groups.

That was not done, and frankly, there would have been very legitimate complaint that they had not demonstrated clinical benefit to evaluate risk with just a safety study. Of course, they wound up in that exact situation anyways, but I digress… Point is, kind of damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

My best guess at what actually went down in the design of these studies is this. Both Pfizer and Moderna prudently reduced the dose to reduce myocarditis risk in these patients. Because they reduced the dose, the FDA, understandably but perhaps a little dogmatically, probably strongly suggested they needed a full clinical efficacy study. After all, they probably argued, with a reduced dose, we still need to show the vaccine is providing immune response and clinical benefit. I also suspect, but don’t know, that some of the people at those tables likely did truly believe that COVID was a greater threat to kids this age than the actual data and experience over the last two years suggests. Certainly, the messaging about “top 5 cause of death” to now “encourage” vaccine adoption in the face of what are frankly inconclusive (from a prevention of severe disease standpoint) suggests that possibility. I think they were more than a little surprised that there were not enough hospitalizations in two simultaneous, large Phase 3s to do statistics on. I am also suspicious that they pushed for a clinical efficacy study because if they did try to wave it through on just safety, as we highlighted in some of the quotes last week, they were likely concerned that this would be used to undermine trust in the vaccines. Or more bluntly, conspiracy sites would have seized on it to say that they “knew” the vaccine didn’t work, and didn’t even try to show effects on severe disease in kids this age.

However they arrived at the decision to boldly go for clinical efficacy in age group with such a low rate of hospitalization from COVID, they got torched.

And then they doubled down with the embarrassing display we covered last week.

Regardless, the long story short is the vaccines for 0-5 do provoke an immune response. How much of a clinical benefit that is to them is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Probably? Maybe? Can’t tell from these studies. But no show stopping toxicity signal, and they will be monitoring for any myocarditis risk. If you have a kid in this age range, and choose to get the vaccine for them, I understand. Don’t feel like I’m ragging on the vaccine. But on the other hand, if you choose not to vaccinate because they could not get more than a safety read and some antibody studies in these clinical trials, and thus just aren’t sure if the benefit outweighs the risks, I get that too. Either way you go, I understand.

2) Several comments hit around the same theme, acknowledging that there are serious gaps in our current leaderships and institutions, but at the same time concerned that if we abandon guidance of experts entirely, we may not exactly get a Renaissance at the end of the present institutional Dark Age.

After all, isn’t there obviously a segment of the population that at this point is so confused by everything out there, and coming at them over the last couple years, that they are on tilt? That kind of tilt I just highlighted in the New Zealand comedy troupe’s video above, in fact? And in that state, are some of them not being exploited and driven to greater confusion? They have been led so far astray by rhetoric intended to deceive them that they have internalized it fully. So fully they can no longer recognize truth from fiction to realistically get back. They have become corrupted and lost. Scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Is this not self evident looking at the world around us? Is it not better that someone more knowledgeable, who really can separate truth from fiction for them, should do for them what they cannot do for themselves? Lead them even if they are reluctant, even resistant, to follow?

I exaggerate the comments quite a bit here for effect.

But there is genuine concern that critical thinking has eroded in some percentage of the population that they cannot be reasonably expected to tell truth from fiction for themselves any more, and will need guidance of some kind to come through.

After all, just read these updates, and how hard truth from fiction can be. How often through this pandemic have I been asked by readers about something distorted, or just outright wrong on the science, and pointed out the errors on these pages?

How many people out there don’t have this update to do that, and are taking those at face value, because of Gell-Mann Amnesia and simply not knowing what they don’t know, and don’t know who to trust or ask?

Gotta’ be some, right?

So even though I exaggerate, well, isn’t some of that true for at least some portion of people somewhere?!?!?!

Here’s what makes me smile as I write this. I can assure you–I would wager enormous sums of money, in fact–that if I ask you to picture who those people are, what they look like, where they tend to live, what beliefs you think they hold and how they might act on them and then describe that picture to me… do you know what I would get?

It would not be one description. It would be several. If not “many.”

I can also tell you that my interpretation of the number of readers who send me the stuff they come across that made them say “huh… this is wild if true, but kind of makes me think it’s maybe not true?” is different.

That tells me that people’s bullshit filter is actually pretty good. Or as the old poker adage goes, you can bluff a single player. But the more players in a hand you have to bluff, the less likely your bluff is to work.

They have not been getting many curve balls past you guys, collectively.

Really. Go back to the grand daddy of these in my updates, the original “Plandemic” review (stay to marvel at my optimism that there would be limited SARS-CoV-2 waves just above this section). It starts with mention of just how many people’s bullshit filters got tripped by this, and they asked me about it.

The people you worry about are probably far fewer in number than you think they are.

But even if they are few, don’t we still, as a moral imperative, have to do the good for them they cannot do for themselves?

Yes, and here’s my thoughts on how to do that.

First, big props to the educators on this list who teach some rhetoric in their courses–from their responses, they have already been consciously shifting metaphors around rhetoric and argument from zero sum competition and war metaphors to encourage argument as a discussion that seeks Truth. Capital T. Hopefully, this means the next generation won’t have quite the same baggage we deal with. It will help with this “how.”

As for the rest, well, I don’t think whatever portion of the world we believe is beyond ability to recognize truth and fiction anymore is beyond saving. I don’t think the world is beyond saving just yet–even if cranked to maximum stupid right now. 

There’s a NYT best selling non-fiction author who writes about performance and like everyone has been worried the state of the world these past years. He made a comment in a podcast venting some frustration from his workshops and retreats, and with some weariness said that in his experience, no matter how much you want, wish and desire real change for the better from people, you never get more than ~15% worth of change out of them. People just get trapped in habits that can be adjusted, but never completely broken, and the dramatic change of the Hero’s Journey that is so common in our narratives in movies, plays and literature is just a story.

I was fortunate to have a bit of an email back and forth with this author, because I disagreed a bit with that sentiment, and didn’t really want him to give in to the weariness, bordering despair, that his statement came across with. After all, he really does do good work, and should continue fighting the good fight. My comment was that surely, there are examples, and you can get more change out of people than that.  He agreed with reluctance, but felt those were atypical, and sincere and lasting conversion was rare. I agree, with less reluctance, but deferring to his experience and expertise, that more than 15% may not be frequent. Especially in the timelines with which he typically works and the sincerity he has in desiring change for the better–anything less than conversion to 100% better, and my guy will be blaming himself or continuing to search for better methods, wondering why he didn’t get 100% change this time.  His “15%” may reflect his perfectionism, and actual average change may be higher than he thinks! And it is tough for this guy to go longer and deeper on fewer because he is in demand and wants to make as much positive change as possible.

On the other hand, I think of addiction.  Addiction, at its heart, is a pathology of mindset. You slowly become accustomed to a set of beliefs and behaviors that are bad for you, and eventually become bad for others around you too.  For addictive substances, it’s because of the temporary high.  Addictive substances make you believe they have relieved or assisted some other problem, when really what they wind up doing is merely stopping the craving for -the substance-.  Temporarily.  And the bad feelings that convince you of the -need- to use the substance are actually the -effect- of the drug.  It is the low of withdrawal is the –real– effect, not the high! After all, after awhile, tolerance sets in and the high is simply the absence of withdrawal. The withdrawal is so bad, so intense of an effect that avoiding it, at all costs, becomes that “need” that prompts the behavior!  Once that idea of “need” sets in though, addiction has its hooks in. 

Goes without saying this is true of ideas and belief as well, especially when tribal.  We can become addicted to belonging to a tribe.  “Belong to a tribe” is a hardwire program of a social animal like Homo sapiens.  We can get addicted to schismogenesis too, as tribes often become defined as characteristics and beliefs of another group they are -not-, and these become addictive reinforcing cycles.  I mention only because even if you are not coming from a tribal standpoint, what you are concerned about is a tribal behavior/belief–there is a group of people, a tribe that looks however you envision them, and in whatever number you estimate, who can no longer tell fact from fiction.

To get back on the main track though, the addict did not start an addict.  Neither did those who can no longer tell fact from fiction begin that way. By the time they are in the grip, they are well more than 15% changed from their original baseline.  And to break out of that grip, it is their -mindset-, their -beliefs-, that must change. 

That change is significant. I tell you, and you likely know already, that the truly recovered addict is far more than a mere 15% changed ; )

The most gratifying part of these updates, and why I push a little further afield highlighting concepts like schismogenesis, or just my sense of the angsty zeitgeist, or how implicit metaphors may shape our discourse in less productive ways, is every so often they hit a reader at the time at the right place.  I don’t know when it will happen or for whom it will happen, but I get some really nice notes back that one of the more “Ramble-esque” portions of the socioeconomic section landed for them.

All of this is a long, winding way of saying that I don’t worry that those who presently struggle with discerning fact from fiction, whomever you think they may be, are too far gone. Yes, despite the strong gravity of schismogenesis and heightened tribal identities among many, and the multi factorial reasons this has been happening.  Are the forces of deliberate, and even unintentional, deception strong and addictive?  Absolutely!  But if you work at the individual level with patience, peace and agape (probably the closest term to what I think is required here), you can get more than 15% change.  Consistently. Maybe not every time. Not every interaction. Maybe not even frequently. But you will make the difference you desire, and do the good for them that you hope–by changing mindsets just a little.

And even better are network effects on that. Just a few individual successes can amplify.  Recovered addicts often make spectacularly effective addiction counselors–because they have been there before themselves.

Yes, patience, peace and agape are tough to maintain at times.  Frustration happens.  But every time I have seen 15% change or more in others, this is how it happens.  Nothing for awhile, then suddenly a key belief or mindset changes in them.  You don’t always know why or how and you may not have had anything to do with it at all.  But it happens, and you can encourage the momentum at the right time.

Despair and hope are both choices. Choose wisely.

–Your chances of catching coronavirus in many places in the world this week are equivalent to the chances that it’s the weekend, and you should crank this one up too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc0KhhjJP98

<Paladin>