The Government's Ham-Handed COVID-19 Messaging Has Hit a New Low

The U.S. government's inconsistent public messaging on the coronavirus came to a crescendo this week as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly reversed course on the use of masks by vaccinated people. The sudden backtracking follows a pattern of misleading and incoherent government health guidance that has led to a general erosion of trust in the CDC. Trust is, of course, paramount in a free country when trying to help the public make decisions about health matters. Our government does not seem to understand this simple concept.

Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic that caused millions of deaths and massive economic loss worldwide, the U.S. government performed amazingly well in some areas. Operation Warp Speed will be studied for generations as a model for quick mobilization and deployment of emergency vaccines. It worked: The vaccines developed with massive taxpayer funding are amazingly effective and have essentially ended the pandemic for Americans willing to take them.

But due to a lack of trust in national institutions, many Americans don't want to take the vaccines. According to a new Ipsos poll for the online news site Axios, the three largest groups who are unlikely to get vaccinated are white Republicans mostly in the South, Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. Axios found some similarities among these groups: "They're most likely to say they don't consume traditional mainstream news, and they're most likely to distrust authority figures or institutions."

When you lose someone's trust, consistency is paramount to building it back. Here, the key is not to belittle those who don't want to take the vaccine but to explain carefully and rationally why the vaccine works and why the risks associated with it are minimal. There's a strong case to make.

The CDC's recent flip-flop, on the other hand, is just going to further erode people's confidence in the vaccines and thereby extend the virus's effective life. You can't argue that the vaccine is safe and will enable resumption of normal life, as the government has been, and at the same time tell people they still must continue wearing masks post-vaccination. The two are contradictory and self-defeating.

The reality is that the government's health guidance from the beginning has been as much about psychological gamesmanship as it has been about public health. This started from the very beginning of the pandemic when the then-surgeon general tweeted on Feb. 29: "Seriously people -- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus."

Dr. Anthony Fauci and other officials made the same point. They followed that up months later by not just recommending masks but mandating them. We know now that the initial anti-mask argument was designed to save masks for the public health professionals who needed them most. You wonder if they ever considered just saying that. If they understood the importance of trust, they certainly should have.

The second area of government psychological gamesmanship was herd immunity, or the point at which enough people would be vaccinated to essentially snuff out the virus. Fauci initially said the U.S. would need 60-70% of people to be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity, according to The New York Times. He later cited higher numbers of 75-80% or more in a CNBC interview in December. The Times asked him why he had been "moving the goal posts." Fauci revealed then that the true number may be close to 90% and that he wanted to keep his public estimates low because so many Americans were skeptical about the vaccine. As more people became comfortable with getting a vaccine, he was more willing to increase his estimate to the true projections, according to the Times.

There are numerous other examples of the government not being straight with the American people on COVID-19. No. 1: Outdoor transmission of the virus is extremely rare, yet government guidance suggested, and many communities required, masking -- even outside; No. 2: The risks from the virus for the young and healthy are extremely low, yet the government allowed schools all over the country to close, ostensibly to protect students; No. 3: Bans on travel and dining were flouted by the very same elected leaders pushing them. The list goes on.

The result of this gamesmanship is a reduction of national trust. The groups with the lowest trust levels are the hardest to win back. Studying all the mistruths leveled to date, it's hard not to wonder if the newest mask mandate isn't some misguided attempt to encourage vaccinated Americans to pressure the unvaccinated. The reason vaccinated people must wear masks again, according to the CDC, is essentially to protect those without vaccines from the new delta variant. But the evidence that vaccinated people are at risk is razor-thin. The CDC, in support of its new guidance, cited a study from India that concluded vaccinated people could potentially transmit the delta variant. The Indian study, however, involved a vaccine not even approved in the United States.

We have never had absolute safety as a public policy goal. Without risk, our society could not function. We wouldn't be able to drive. We would forgo most medical procedures. We would essentially never leave home. Risk-free makes no sense as a goal. The reality is those who have been vaccinated are very safe from COVID-19. Deaths from COVID-19 have plummeted, and nearly all are among those not vaccinated and in higher-risk groups. The obvious answer is to steadfastly educate those who haven't taken the vaccine, not force the entire country back into unreasonable restrictions.

Masks

Through April 2020, the official recommendation by the Journal of the American Medical Association was was unambiguous:

“Face masks should not be worn by healthy individuals to protect themselves from acquiring respiratory infection because there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill.”

Part of that lack of evidence in fact showed that cloth facemasks actually increased influenza-linked illness.

In contravention to established science, States, municipalities and businesses have violated the legal requirements for the promulgation of medical counter measures during a public health emergency stating a “belief” that face masks limit the spread of SARS CoV-2. To date, not a single study has confirmed that a mask prevented the transmission of, or the infection by SARS CoV-2. Simply stated, a "belief" is not a medical countermeasure.

All parties mandating the use of facemasks are not only willfully ignoring established science but are engaging in what amounts to a whole population clinical trial. This conclusion is reached by the fact that facemask use and COVID-19 incidence are being reported in scientific opinion pieces promoted by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others.

Social Distancing

Social distancing of up to 6 feet has been promoted as a means of preventing person-to-person transmission of influenza-like viruses. While one study (Werner E. Bischoff, Katrina Swett, Iris Leng, Timothy R. Peters, Exposure to Influenza Virus Aerosols During Routine Patient Care, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 207, Issue 7, 1 April 2013, Pages 1037-1046,) hypothesized that infection could happen in a 6 foot range, the study explicitly states that person-to-person transfer was not tested and viability of the virus at 6 feet was not even a subject of the investigation.

That did not stop the misrepresentation of the study to be used as the basis for an unverified medical counter measure of social distancing. To date, no study has established the efficacy of social distancing to modify the transmission of SARS CoV-2. Public health officials have merely referenced this article.

In contravention to established science, States, municipalities and businesses have violated the legal requirements for the promulgation of medical counter measures during a public health emergency stating a “belief” that social distancing of a healthy population limits the spread of SARS CoV-2. To date, not a single study has confirmed that social distancing of any population prevented the transmission of, or the infection by SARS CoV-2.

FTC Act

It is unlawful under the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 41 et seq., to advertise that a product or service can prevent, treat, or cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable scientific evidence, including, when appropriate, well-controlled human clinical studies, substantiating that the claims are true at the time they are made. As a result, every party promoting the use of face masks is violating the FTC Act.

Further, under 21 CFR § 50.24 et seq., it is unlawful to conduct medical research (even in the case of emergency) without a series of steps taken to:

a. Establish the research with a duly authorized and independent institutional review board;

b. Secure informed consent of all participants including a statement of risks and benefits; and,

c. Engage in consultation with the community in which the study is to be conducted.

All of these laws have been broken. All relevant authorities in the United States must cease and desist the use of face masks until the matters above are rectified.

Establishment Clause

The Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Forcing someone to "believe" that a thing might work not based on facts but based on a belief alone is tantamount to a religion and is prohibited without limitation. Not even the Supreme Court's seminal decision on vaccines, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), alters this fact.

Reason and an ordered society demand the current wall of bravo sierra regarding SARS-CoV-2 be challenged and torn down down brick by brick.

Novel Variant

According the CDC,

To tell which variant might might be present in a specimen, scientists must perform whole genome sequencing (WGS) on that specimen. At this time, WGS is available for surveillance purposes only, not for individual diagnostic purposes.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS) described by CDC does not establish the genome sequence of the "delta variant" is novel from COVID-19.

There is no evidence that the delta variant is somehow distinct from anything else on GISAID. The fact that we are now looking for a thing/variant doesn’t mean that it is a thing/variant because we are looking at fragments of a strand of genetic material and the fact is that we can choose any fragment in the genome sequence and call it a thing/variant.

For example, I could come up with "omega variant" tomorrow and I could say I’m looking for this sub-strand of either DNA or mRNA, or even a protein, and I could run around the world saying “fear the omega variant.”

The problem is because of the nature of the way in which we currently sequence genomes, which is actually a compositing process – it’s what we can call in mathematics an interleaving – we don’t have any point of reference to actually to know whether or not the thing we’re looking at is in fact distinct from either clinical or even genomic sense.

And so we’re trapped in a world where unfortunately if you go and look at the papers that isolated the delta variant and actually asked the question is the delta variant anything other than a selection of a sequence in a systematic shift of an already disclosed other sequence, the answer is it’s just an alteration and when you start and stop what you call the reading frame. There is no evidence of any novel anything.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.