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The Food and Drug Administration’s top scientists recently gave a sobering assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic that stands as a stark departure from the hysteria public health experts have promoted for over two years.
The FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock and top vaccine official Dr. Peter Marks wrote their view that Covid-19 is the “new normal” in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“As the US emerges from the recent Omicron surge of the COVID-19 pandemic following close to a million deaths in the country attributable to COVID-19, many people are hoping that the worst is over,” the FDA scientists wrote. “Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks.”
“Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal,” they added.
“It will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza,” they went on. “And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates in consultation with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC).”
It should be noted that seasonal flu vaccines are recommended for the elderly and at-risk; they have never been mandated in the United States despite their widespread introduction in the early 1980s. Nor have masks been a part of any influenza strategy prior to the emergence of Covid-19.
The Office for National Statistics (U.K.) show decisively in February that Covid-19 was not more dangerous for young people and children than the seasonal flu.
A bioethicist at the University of Oxford named Euzebiusz Jamrozik remarked on the findings, which were demonstrated by a chart of the data. It shows that Covid-19 was about equivalently dangerous for young people as the seasonal flu but progressively became less dangerous as more variants emerged.
While Covid cases have spiked in many parts of the country, it has not been accompanied by an increase in hospitalizations or deaths.
In late March, the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that 95% of Americans have some form of protection against Covid.
“So, let’s just talk about where we are with the variant,” Walensky said. “This is the most recent variant that causes up to a million cases in the middle of January, every single day. What we know specifically about this Omicron variant, in contrast to what we saw with both Delta and Alpha, is this more transmissible.”
“But we also know that it tends to cause less severe disease correcting for comorbidities, correcting for vaccine status and booster status,” she said. “We have seen that Omicron specifically causes less severe disease, less hospitalizations, less ICU stays and less death correcting for all of those things. So that is true of Omicron. Specifically.”
She did not mention that natural immunity is a massive factor in the risk calculus for patients, a fact that the CDC’s data showed in January. But she did acknowledge that in part because of prior infections, 95% of Americans have at least “some” protection against Covid.
“We also know that in this country because of vaccines because of boosters and because of protection from prior disease, infection-induced immunity (natural immunity) that about 95% of people in this country have some level of protection,” she said.
Of course, Walensky continued to tout vaccination, but the acknowledgment of natural immunity, which she refers to as “infection-induced immunity,” is an important one.
So, just to be clear: 95% of Americans now have “some protection,” due to natural immunity, Covid vaccination, and boosters combined. If you are not in the risk profile of being obese, immunocompromised, or elderly, the already miniscule chance of dying from the Omicron variant plummets to almost nil with natural immunity protection.
This has not stopped the Biden administration from sounding the alarms about a speculated 100 million cases ahead of the 2022 midterms. The White House’s dire projection is not based on any new data, however, but on a ‘model.’
“The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that 100 million Americans — roughly 30 percent of the population — will get infected with the coronavirus this fall and winter, according to the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity,” the New York Times reported.
“The 100 million figure is not as high as the total number of Americans known to have become infected with the highly contagious Omicron variant during the wave in December and January. It is based on a range of outside models, though the official did not specify which ones, and assumes that a rapidly evolving virus in the Omicron family — not a new variant — will spread through a population with waning immunity against infection,” the Times added.
The CDC claimed there were 146.6 million prior infections in the United States as of September 2020. Based on its calculation of four infections for every reported case, and the currently reported 82 million “cases,” this would put the number of people with Covid prior infections at nearly the entire U.S. population of 330 million people.
Thus, it is becoming more obvious that most Americans no longer consider Covid to be a “crisis.”
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“Less than one in 10 Americans now describe COVID-19 as a crisis — with about three in four calling it a manageable problem and one in six saying it’s no problem at all — according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index,” Axios reported in April.
Axios claimed that the findings “matter” because: “These sentiments — and the public’s growing desire to be done with mask mandates and other restrictions — raise significant challenges for public health officials in managing new surges, and could create real political headwinds ahead of the midterms.”
“Democrats were five times as likely as Republicans to say COVID-19 is a crisis (16% to 3%),” the story added. “Meanwhile, Republicans were 10 times as likely as Democrats to say COVID-19 is not a problem (31% to 3%).”
“Here’s another way to look at the overall numbers: About twice as large a share of Americans said COVID-19 is ‘not a problem at all’ (17%) than said it is ‘a serious crisis’ (9%),” the story notes.
The mainstream media and public health experts can continue to beat the drum of Covid hysteria. But the FDA is giving up on the narrative — even if Democratic politicians are desperately clinging to it for the 2022 midterms.
