The data about delta variant infections do not support panicking

By Andrea Widburg

We're finally getting some clarity about what's going on with COVID, and its information that makes even more perplexing the Biden administration's fanaticism about reintroducing all the COVID restrictions that not only didn't work last year, but were lifted completely for the Black Lives Matter protests and riots. The short version is that the vaccine doesn't seem to protect against the delta variant, we're all still contagious, but (thankfully) we're not dying like flies. That news, while not uplifting, doesn't seem to justify the Democrats' hysteria.

First, about the vaccine's limited (but not nonexistent) protections:

The CDC reemphasizes that risk of infection or hospitalization [is] much lower in the vaccinated [than] among the unvaccinated. However, it also admits that breakthrough cases, especially among the [D]elta variant, are more common than people might want to believe and may require rethinking the open-for-business atmosphere the country embraced in late spring.

Vaccinations still decrease the risk of death or severe disease by a factor of 10 and risk of infection by a factor of three. In vaccinated persons who did contract the virus, infected persons had a 40% lower viral load than unvaccinated persons, a shorter duration of viral load, a lower risk and shorter duration of symptoms.

Sadly, the vaccine is least effective among the most vulnerable: the aged and immunocompromised. This is especially bad because the delta variant is more contagious than the original version — although no more infectious on average than chickenpox. (Of course, our kids are vaccinated against chickenpox.) This puts the vaccine in a weird category where it's neither a vaccine nor a flu shot.

The really rotten thing is that people who have had the vaccine are still contagious:

The CDC is expected to announce this week that new data shows people vaccinated against COVID-19 who become infected with the Delta variant can spread it and infect others, The New York Times reported late Thursday.

Dan Crenshaw thinks Biden's words will haunt him, but I don't think so:

“If you are vaccinated, you do not have to wear a mask” will be Joe Biden’s “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

Two bold faced lies told at the expense of the American people.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) July 30, 2021

For one thing, Biden won't remember them. And for another thing, we're back to that huge disconnect between panic and reality.

Thus, while above information explains why the Biden administration is panicking and wants everyone re-masked and locked up, we've already been shown repeatedly that the masks make no difference. The virus is smaller than masks — and, in any event, people wear them wrong, touching them and reusing them. We also know that masks are bad for children, who are at almost zero risk. As for the lockdowns, all they did was destroy people's livelihoods.

But shouldn't we still panic? It's back! It's back! Well, maybe; but maybe not. If you type "COVID mortality rate United States" into Bing, you're very likely to get a chart showing global statistics, statistics for the whole United States, and statistics for individual states. Here are some pretty much random examples:

I may not be the brightest bulb on the block when it comes to understanding charts, but it seems to me that, while cases are rising, mortality is not. Whether this is because people are vaccinated or because, with Donald Trump gone, the medical establishment is willing to treat people before they're at death's door, I cannot say. What I can say is that the initial panic was about a disease with a less than 2% mortality rate. The new panic that the administration is trying to gin up is over a disease that currently seems to have a lower mortality rate by a significant factor.

So what's going on? It could be that the administration is lying again and that something truly terrible is coming down the pike. I prefer not to think about that.

I continue to believe that the Democrats benefited spectacularly from COVID last year and intend to do so again. They will destroy the economy in true Cloward & Piven fashion, allowing them to institute socialism. They will create social chaos, allowing them to move strongly as a police state.

And ultimately, they will cow us into being a 2+2=5 citizenry, willing to accept anything they impose on us. And that is a substantially worse fate than a disease with what appears to be (again) a less than 2% mortality rate.

I'm not the only one wondering what's going on here. Tucker Carlson is perplexed, too: