Who pulled the plug?

Well, what a difference a day or two makes in the fast-moving world of the SCIENCE™. We’ve had the CDC finally start saying things the “conspiracy theorists” were saying over 18 months ago. They’re now admitting that there’s a with/from covid distinction and that the majority of those dying with covid were pretty unwell to begin with.

The BBC (shock, horror) running a piece on research that suggests exposure to colds has given people some cross-reactive immunity to covid - whatever is the world coming to?

Meanwhile, Reuters is doing its best to dismiss the notion of “Mass Formation Psychosis” as a valid psychological concept (it did a “fact check”). Whether or not one thinks mass formation is a good explanation for the weirdness and cultish behaviour we’ve seen in response to covid is another issue, but Reuters seem to be attacking the notion that there could be something to the idea of the Madness of Crowds.

I’m not sure where I stand on the issue of mass formation psychosis. There has definitely been something going on. Whether mass formation is the right way to look at it, I don’t know. There has been an almost religious zeal in the promotion and take-up of covid hysteria. The cultish behaviour has been very evident. I’ve had many conversations where I’ve been accused of being “anti-science” merely for pointing out official government statistics. And how are we to explain the madness of the family in the picture swathing granny in plastic so that she can hug her grandchild? Something has deranged a significant fraction of the population.

OK, the video is probably staged as a kind of parody, but we’ve all seen examples of irrational behaviour. It’s possible, I suppose, that I might have become even more hideously ugly over the last 2 years, but until covid I’ve never had people literally try to press themselves into a wall as I passed by sporting my gloriously unmasked face of doom.

And now we have the High Priest of Pfizer openly stating that 2 shots “offer little protection, if any”, and perhaps more worryingly that the vaccines have not had “the expected safety profile”. Right there we have an open admittance that all is not well in Safe-and-Effective Vaccine World.

Despite this there are still many beating the “anti-vaxx are scum” drum. I have no idea whether the Toronto Star is a reputable paper, or something like the National Enquirer, but really guys?

I’m not sure who The Star is appealing to here. Trying to get people to take the Goo to protect those who have already had the Goo is really crappy marketing.

As one commenter on Twitter wryly noted

If the vaccines worked, they would be working

The BBC piece (also noted by other “news” outlets) seems to indicate a reversal on the policy of dismissing natural immunity. This downplaying of natural immunity has always baffled me a bit. The whole point of a vaccine is to stimulate the body’s own natural immunity in a safe way so that it is all geared up ready to fight the real thing when it comes along. Without natural immunity, vaccines would not work at all.

There’s definitely been a shift. Mixed in with all the usual covi-bollox there are now surprisingly “conspiratorial” views being aired - or at least views that would have been considered conspiratorial and anti-science only a year ago.

What I want to know is who pulled the plug?

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