The ‘consensus’ about no Covid herd immunity is political, not scientific

Covid-19 is here to stay, and if you’re a freedom-loving conservative, a Covid-vaccine-skeptic, or both, it’s all your fault. Well, mostly. According to the NY Times, there is some blame to be passed along to the Chinese-created coronavirus itself as it mutates faster than Dr. Anthony Fauci’s talking points. But really, the overarching message from the NY Times that is being echoed by leftists on social media is that it’s all your fault, you anti-science knuckle-dragging hillbilly MAGA bigot!

The NY Times article declares, “Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe.” They call it a “consensus.” They used scienc-esque sounding words to make us believe there is no light at the end of the tunnel, mostly because of the people who are concerned about vaccines that are experimental, not FDA-approved, and did not fit the definition of “vaccine” until they changed the meaning in the Merriam-Webster dictionary a few weeks ago. If you’re reading this article, chances are you engage in some combination of fighting against face masks, social distancing, lockdowns, or vaccines, and therefore our readers are the target market for the hatred being pushed by the NY Times.

But this isn’t really about the science. If we wanted herd immunity, we would have done what has always been done since the notion of herd immunity came into being. We would have kept things open, dumped the masks (whose efficacy is questionable at best), loaded up on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and allowed otherwise healthy people to live their lives. Over time, herd immunity could have been achieved. Meanwhile, we could have protected the most vulnerable by enacting policies that were the exact opposite of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo until herd immunity amongst the younger population was achieved.

No, I’m not a doctor. I’ve only read or listened to what real doctors have been saying for over a year. Call me a medical junky; I was following Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. Joseph Mercola since before it was cool. And what those who are apparently not part of the “consensus” have been saying all along is that we need to protect the vulnerable and let everyone else take their chances if they so wish. Freedom was the path to herd immunity and the formerly freest nation in the world failed to walk it.

Now, the narrative is being formed around no future herd immunity. This is political, 100%. It’s about keeping us blaming each other, but more importantly it’s the latest phase in the “get vaccinated you dumb Neanderthal” agenda. But the biggest reason they’re putting this “consensus” out there now is to set the stage for Covid-19, Covid-22, Covid-23, Covid-25… to be our ongoing top-of-mind policy master in perpetuity. According to the NY Times article:

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.

“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”

The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity — by the summer, some experts once thought possible — captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another “why bother” to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.

Yet vaccinations remain the key to transforming the virus into a controllable threat, experts said.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on Covid-19, acknowledged the shift in experts’ thinking.

“People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he said.

“That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense,” he added. “I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.”

Did you hear (read) what Fauci said? He referred to stopping using the term herd immunity in the “classic sense.” What he’s really saying is that the concept of herd immunity is for us to forget ever getting there. Why? Because we’re much closer to getting there than Fauci or the Covid tyrants want us to realize.

There are many common misconceptions about herd immunity, so let’s debunk a few. For herd immunity to be achieved, that does not mean everyone or even nearly everyone needs to be immune. We achieved herd immunity for past diseases when around 40% were immune. That number makes it too challenging for a disease to properly flourish, allowing it to die off naturally. With a disease as contagious as Covid-19, the number may approach 50%. But it’s not 65%, 80%, or even 100% as I’ve heard from some so-called experts.

Way back when before pretty much everyone in mainstream media was conscripted into the Covid tyrants’ army, there was even a report on Newsweek through MSN that said Covid herd immunity could be achieved at 47% infection rate. Where are we now? Some say we’re as high as 40%, but the consensus (a real one this time) is that around 1/3rd of the population has been infected at one point or another over the last year.

As mentioned before, it’s not ALL about us hillbillies keeping the nation down with our embrace of freedom and skepticism of vaccine pseudo-science. The disease has to take some of the blame because states like Florida and Texas are doing better without lockdowns than states like California, New York, or Michigan where lockdowns are the new permanent normal. They needed a scapegoat and the disease allegedly provided it by creating new strains every couple of days, or so it seems. The NY Times article made sure to create the strains boogeyman to drive the fear of the Covid gods into the hearts of mortal men:

Early on, the target herd immunity threshold was estimated to be about 60 to 70 percent of the population. Most experts, including Dr. Fauci, expected that the United States would be able to reach it once vaccines were available.

But as vaccines were developed and distribution ramped up through the winter and into the spring, estimates of the threshold began to rise. That is because the initial calculations were based on the contagiousness of the original version of the virus. The predominant variant now circulating in the United States, called B.1.1.7 and first identified in Britain, is about 60 percent more transmissible.

As a result, experts now calculate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent. If even more contagious variants develop, or if scientists find that immunized people can still transmit the virus, the calculation will have to be revised upward again.

Polls show that about 30 percent of the U.S. population is still reluctant to be vaccinated. That number is expected to improve but probably not enough. “It is theoretically possible that we could get to about 90 percent vaccination coverage, but not super likely, I would say,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Though resistance to the vaccines is a main reason the United States is unlikely to reach herd immunity, it is not the only one.

The narrative the Covid tyrants have created is a two-edged sword. Either we allegedly reach “herd immunity” by vaccinating everyone, in which case they win, or we never reach herd immunity, in which case they win. Either way, it’s the people who lose.

‘The Purge’ by Big Tech targets conservatives, including us

Just when we thought the Covid-19 lockdowns were ending and our ability to stay afloat was improving, censorship reared its ugly head.

For the last few months, NOQ Report, Conservative Playbook, and the American Conservative Movement have appealed to our readers for assistance in staying afloat through Covid-19 lockdowns. The downturn in the economy has limited our ability to generate proper ad revenue just as our traffic was skyrocketing. We had our first sustained stretch of three months with over a million visitors in November, December, and January, but February saw a dip.

It wasn’t just the shortened month. We expected that. We also expected the continuation of dropping traffic from “woke” Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but it has actually been much worse than anticipated. Our Twitter account was banned. Both of our YouTube accounts were banned. Facebook “fact-checks” everything we post. Spotify canceled us. Medium canceled us. Apple canceled us. Why? Because we believe in the truth prevailing, and that means we will continue to discuss “taboo” topics.

The 2020 presidential election was stolen. You can’t say that on Big Tech platforms without risking cancellation, but we’d rather get cancelled for telling the truth rather than staying around to repeat mainstream media’s lies. They have been covering it up since before the election and they’ve convinced the vast majority of conservative news outlets that they will be harmed if they continue to discuss voter fraud. We refuse to back down. The truth is the truth.

The lies associated with Covid-19 are only slightly more prevalent than the suppression of valid scientific information that runs counter to the prescribed narrative. We should be allowed to ask questions about the vaccines, for example, as there is ample evidence for concern. One does not have to be an “anti-vaxxer” in order to want answers about vaccines that are still considered experimental and that have a track record in a short period of time of having side-effects, including death. One of our stories about the Johnson & Johnson “vaccine” causing blood clots was “fact-checked” and removed one day before the government hit the brakes on it. These questions and news items are not allowed on Big Tech which is just another reason we are getting canceled.

There are more topics that they refuse to allow. In turn, we refuse to stop discussing them. This is why we desperately need your help. The best way NOQ, CP, and ACM readers can help is to donate. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal as well. We are on track to be short by about $4100 per month in order to maintain operations.

The second way to help is to become a partner. We’ve strongly considered seeking angel investors in the past but because we were paying the bills, it didn’t seem necessary. Now, we’re struggling to pay the bills. We had 5,657,724 sessions on our website from November, 2020, through February, 2021. Our intention is to elevate that to higher levels this year by focusing on a strategy that relies on free speech rather than being beholden to progressive Big Tech companies.

During that four-month stretch, Twitter and Facebook accounted for about 20% of our traffic. We are actively working on operating as if that traffic is zero, replacing it with platforms that operate more freely such as Gab, Parler, and others. While we were never as dependent on Big Tech as most conservative sites, we’d like to be completely free from them. That doesn’t mean we will block them, but we refuse to be beholden to companies that absolutely despise us simply because of our political ideology.

We’re heading in the right direction and we believe we’re ready talk to patriotic investors who want to not only “get in on the action” but more importantly who want to help America hear the truth. Interested investors should contact me directly with the contact button above.

As the world spirals towards radical progressivism, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report going.

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