Reuters headline last Friday: “Delta does not appear to make children sicker; Secondary immune response stronger after infection than after shot.” According to the story, comparing samples of hundreds of children, researchers from Great Britain found that the delta variant does not appear to cause more severe disease in children than earlier forms of the virus. Nor did the alpha variant compared to the “so-called wild, or original, form of the virus, first seen in China.” I quoted from the story to make note of the fact that Reuters uses the adjective “so-called.” Why that adjective? Because Reuters knows like the rest of the journalistic profession that SARS-CoV-2 is most likely the product of human selection and did not arise from the processes of natural selection (carried by a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, China).
Was there ever any indication that the delta variant was more dangerous to children? According to the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP), as of the end of September 2021, 0.1%-1.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization. That range covers across-state variation. For reporting states, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death. The AAP examined 5,899,148 total child COVID-19 cases reported during this period and found that children represented 16.2 percent (5,899,148/36,501,46) of all cases. A conservative estimate would raise the number of cases by a factor of between four and five, in the process drastically lowering the infection fatality rate (IFR). By any measure, COVID-19 is not dangerous to children. And there is zero indication in these data that the delta variant represented a unique threat to children.
You don’t have to be an expert to see that there is no need to routinely vaccinate children (in fact, it might help if you’re not an expert—at least not one employed by a government agency or a pharmaceutical firm). Yet, you have no doubt heard by now, Pfizer has asked the FDA for emergency use authorization to jab children as young as five with its mRNA technology, which introduces into their bodies a genetic sequence associated with a long list of adverse consequences. What’s the emergency? Remember AAP’s review of the data: at worst, three-hundredths of all pediatric COVID-19 cases resulted in death—and the IFR is much smaller number than that. As I reported on Freedom and Reason, pediatric deaths from COVID-19 are almost invariable associated with comorbidities that make children particularly susceptible to severe disease, preexisting conditions that included diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Also on my blog, I citing CDC data showing that influenza is far deadlier for children than COVID-19 (see “COVID-19 is Worse than the Flu”—For Whom?),.
Since natural immunity greatly reduces one’s chance of reinfection compared to the vaccine, as well as decreases the likelihood of more pathological strains, which the evidence suggests the vaccine increases, vaccinating children is doubly irrational (see The Official Vaccine Narrative Completely Falls Apart). It is irrational not only because it exposes children to danger for no reason; it’s also counterproductive given that the younger generation will be, as it has always been, a bulwark against future pandemics by establishing population immunity over the long-term.
Those in charge of this pandemic are screwing the pooch. We know at least a couple of reasons for this. The problem with natural immunity is there’s little money in it. Any rational observer who understands capitalism and the phenomenon of regulatory capture grasps that. Nor is there a lot of money to be made off a healthy population enjoying a robust immune response—at least not for the medical-industrial complex. So expect that the mass vaccination program will expand to include the little ones.
Mass vaccination of children is more probable if there is no mass resistance to the mandate. Mass vaccination is profoundly unethical (see Biden’s Biofascist Regime), however much legal precedent may be twisted to justify it. But even without a mandate, some parents will ask a doctor to jab their child. Tragically, there are parents who can’t wait to march their children down to the clinic for jabs and photo and video opportunities to be later or in real time shared with their social media accounts, the resulting cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome or Bell’s Palsy or some other potentially life-altering effect rationalized as mysterious or prideful instantiations of the communitarian ideal. The latter makes vaccine injury into a style of child sacrifice. (See Torches of Freedom, Vaccine Cards, and Our Civilian Lives.) The best we can do if we wish to keep the state from meddling in our own lives is criticize them; we cannot do what they do and demand the state intervene.
If children’s health (physical and mental) mattered, authorities would never have forced them to wear masks, which an industrial hygienist will tell you cannot work—hence the millions of children (and adults) who were infected (see Masks and COVID-19: Are You Really Protected?). With this in mind, we might reflect on the fact that more people have died from COVID-19 since the introduction of the vaccines (and habitual mask wearing) than in all of the period before the government granted manufacturers emergency use authorization. Blaming the increase in COVID-19 deaths (and Joe Biden’s poll numbers, as did White House press secretary Jen Psaki recently) on delta and the unvaccinated is dishonest.
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The pandemic began by authorities leaving the impression that coronavirus is novel and especially pathological across demography, alongside images and video of refrigerated semis and slit trenches to manage the piles of corpses. In fact, human coronaviruses date back to at least the early 1960s, when scientists positively identified the virus in humans. The microbe was classified as a common cold virus and designated B814. It took its place among other common cold viruses, the well-known adenovirus (1953) and the even more well-known rhinovirus (1956). In the 1960s, scientists began cultivating the coronavirus, labeling the grown strain as 229E. Exposing humans to both B814 and 229E produced common cold symptoms. By the mid-1960s, another strain had been identified, labeled OC43. By 2009, the species was known to have four main subspecies: alpha, beta, delta, and gamma. Yes, you read that right.
We can start the story even further back in time. Turns out that coronavirus was known to scientists back in 1930s when it went by a different name, infectious bronchitis virus (IBV). This known reality, certainly known to those who are in the know, is hidden in plain view by the legacy and social media. The point is that, before 2020, coronaviruses were always known as a common cold bug. Fast forward nearly a hundred years later and SARS-CoV-2 is a selectively pathological strain of IBV, likely the product of gain-of-function research conducted in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, in part funded by the United States (Anthony Fauci, an immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President playing a crucial role), with military applications.
The establishment could have avoided the derangement of mass hysteria by affirming what the public already knew, that most of them have likely had one or more coronavirus infections during their lives. Wives across the world have mocked husbands for thinking they were dying with a head cold probably caused by coronavirus. Rightly so. It was no big deal. It’s still no big deal for most people. Today, most of those testing positive for coronavirus report cold symptoms. Much of the rest are asymptomatic. Yes, as noted, people with certain comorbidities, especially obesity and its attendant maladies, as well as compromised immune systems, should avoid contracting SARS-CoV-2. But the majority of the population should have been allowed to go about their lives during this entire period. Why weren’t they? Why did the government obscure reality? Why is the Biden Administration mandating a vaccine most people don’t need?
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As we know, the pharmaceutical companies has been busy manufacturing vaccines alongside their other nostrums (I use that synonym intentionally). The SSRI craze (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), preying on the disequilibriums resulting from the processed food and iron cage that is life under corporate (ir)rationality, generated huge profits. But patents run out and science hits walls and, despite tactics attempting to engender fear using the scary strain names of influenza, the flu could not made quite scary enough to move product (that and the vaccine’s terrible record of efficacy) that planners believed was still a potential growth site of the industry. What to do in the face of shareholder concern? Innovate!
Since modern capitalism works by demand-creation, and fear is a well-known and a powerful pull factor in inducing desired behavior, the problem became one of how to manufacture mass hysteria over a common cold virus, with a vaccine waiting in the wings (you’re naïve if you don’t think Pfizer had the technology ready to go). First, find one about which the public is generally unfamiliar. Who’s heard of coronavirus? (There’s the neuralyzer for the few who have.) Next, modify it to make it especially dangerous for fat and old people and release it into the general population. Several obvious steps follow: obscure the source of its lethality (obesity and compromised or deteriorated immune response), causally reduce the resulting death rate to the virus alone (some sick and old people die from COVID, even those with stage-four cancer or victims of motorcycle accidents, not with COVID), manufacture panic in a scientifically illiterate population with its collective head trapped in a virtual space where the line between the real and the unreal is blurred, territory where even basic biological fact is denied, leverage routine testing to keep the panic going (see the Thomas theorem), quarantine healthy people and force everybody to hide their faces behind masks, then demand people get vaccinated or be routinely tested as presumptive disease carriers or forfeit basic freedoms that were always theirs to begin with.
What I have written above is a description of what has transpired. If I had written such a description of events in a science fiction novel you would have thought it far-fetched. This is like a far-fetched science fiction novel, only the novel if your life. You need not consider every step in the description to become suspicious about what has transpired. You can just ask yourself why the government would mandate a vaccine that does not in fact stop the spread of a virus in order to ostensibly stop the spread of a virus. Or you can ask yourself the related question of why you are not required to present an official immunity card for chicken pox, measles, mumps, polio, or small pox when attending a concert or dining out. Ask yourself why, if you did (and tens of millions did, so don’t feel too stupid), you fell for a big lie. After all, everything that was conspiracy theory yesterday is reality somewhere today and probably everywhere tomorrow.
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So, the government and the medical-industrial complex presented the coronavirus to the public as if it were novel. Yet, as I established above, they have known about coronavirus and its many variants for almost a century now and have been able to test for the virus for decades. They never bothered with routine testing because, well, it’s a cold virus. But that’s all changed. We can go down a rabbit hole and ponder all the reasons why it’s changed. Corporate profits may not be sufficient to explain circumstances. However, I want to get the reader thinking about an obvious feature of pandemic policies: the effect of a large-scale project to prevent virus acquisition and attendant resiliency of the immune system. For the likely result of what the public health experts have instructed us to do is immune system impoverishment for individuals at a crucial stage of physical development. Their directives came with the understanding that younger age cohorts with underdeveloped resistance to viruses and other microbes carry their weak systems into adulthood. They must know that these cohorts will be sickly ones over the life-course. It hard to imagine a more damning indictment of technocratic rule.
Think through the logic: Kids get half a dozen colds or more a year. Infection primes and develops the immune system at a time when most viruses have minimal pathological effects, thus safely preparing the little ones for adult life. (Safely does imply total risk elimination. Life is by definition risky, even deadly. In fact, eventually, always deadly.) One of the reasons most SARS-CoV-2 infections are asymptomatic or produce only mild cold symptoms in most adults is because of cross-immunity developed during a lifetime of exposure to coronaviruses, especially at an early age. Lockdowns may have fixed that problem by keeping children away from the pathogens they need for proper physical development, albeit the inefficacy of masks may have to some degree hobbled the solution by providing people with a false sense of security. Of course masks and other PPE helped sell the pandemic. It also helped sell masks and other PPE. Capitalism is remarkable in leaving no source of profit unexploited.
lockdowns and social distancing will likely produce a generation of adults whose bodies are less resistant to ordinary diseases. But the impoverishment will occur not only in the realm of physiology. Childhood is not just a critical phase in the physical development of humans, it’s also a critical phase in their emotional and psychological development. And it’s not just the lockdowns and social distancing and hiding of faces that are the damaging directives. It’s the constant drumbeat of fear over a virus that in several states has failed to kill a single child. “Doing our part” is a slogan in a line of ritual totems in a religious-like campaign of fear mongering and trauma-induction. The simulacra of death and disease create the illusion of ubiquitous danger—and they misdirect the populace about the real danger, namely corporate state tyranny. In fascism, the tyrant is portrayed as the savior. In the religion of scientism, in the cathedrals of the medical-industrial complex, Dr. Anthony Fauci is the word made flesh. The people become fanatics.
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If your kid has a deficient immune response, then it is not really safe to have the kid around other kids. Keep the kid at home. Work hard to make up for what the kid will miss from being around other kids. Ask the government for resources to manage your burden—a burden you do not wish to put on other parents and their children because you’re a decent human being who genuinely cares about the health and wellbeing of all children. That’s what the government is there for. No good person would by their actions wish to harm children for a bug that poses no real harm to them. Remind yourself as often as you can that influenza is deadlier to your children (and most of their teachers) than SARS-CoV-2 because it’s true. Truth is confidence-building. That will make you more courageous. And courage is contagious. It will remind you to ask what should be obvious questions: Why wasn’t influenza in our schools an issue before? Where were the lockdowns then? Where were the masks and vaccine mandates? (Expect them to put more cars on the gravy train, so don’t make too big a fuss of it in public—if you are allowed to make a public fuss over anything again. After all, we don’t want them to treat influenza the way they treat coronavirus.)
Here’s something else to consider, and I apologize if I offend some of you by writing this, but one of the significant comorbidity affecting the pathology of SARS-CoV-2 is obesity. Frankly, there are too many obese children in America. Obesity is associated with other conditions, such as juvenile diabetes. However, obesity is a disease process in itself (the only thing holds back that designation are insurance companies not wanting to pay for weight loss treatments). According to the CDC, an examination of children and adolescents from 2017-2018 finds that obesity prevalence among 2-5-year-olds is 13.4 percent. It increases with age cohort: 20.3 percent among 6-11-year-olds and 21.2 percent among 12-19-year-olds. Obesity is more common among certain populations, with prevalence at 25.6 percent among Hispanic children, 24.2 percent among non-Hispanic Black children, 16.1 percent among non-Hispanic White children, and 8.7 percent among non-Hispanic Asian children. Meta-analyses of epidemiological data finds a positive correlation between obesity in childhood and obesity in adulthood. Over all, the CDC finds that obesity prevalence was 42.4 percent in 2017-2018 (having increased substantially from 1999-2000). That study found that, 2017-2018, non-Hispanic Black adults (49.6%) had the highest age-adjusted prevalence of obesity, followed by Hispanic adults (44.8%), non-Hispanic White adults (42.2%) and non-Hispanic Asian adults (17.4%). Could this explain race and ethnic differences in death from COVID-19 that critical race theorists chalk up to systemic racism?
The good news is that obesity can be fixed in most cases through diet and exercise. We need parents to do a better job of helping their children live healthier lives. This is not a call for harassing parents who do a poor job of promoting a healthy lifestyle for their children, but we shouldn’t be hesitant to tell the truth about health in America. If public health matters, then surely poor diet and inadequate levels of physical activity matters. We must also be critical of this notion of body positivity, an Orwellian euphemism for fat acceptance. A fat kid is an unhealthy kid. A healthy kids is outside in the elements playing with other kids with their snotty noses and all the rest of it. Kids should be riding bicycles and skateboarding. Climbing on jungle gyms and in trees. And we might revisit the recommended number of jabs over the life-course—that notorious vaccine schedule. If we do the right things, if we are mindful of science, then there will be fewer kids with impoverished immune systems. There will also be fewer juvenile psychiatric disorders. And fewer fat and emotionally delicate adults.
Like all life on our planet, human beings are evolved creatures (Are We Forgetting Darwin?). Humans didn’t just appear a few thousand years ago. Nature had billions of years to develop resilient and marvelous biological machines can humans. Some humans have only recently figured out some of what makes those marvelous machines tick and, privilege and profit—and hubris—have encouraged some of them (the worst sort) to assume the role of Dr. Frankenstein. Some of them appear to think of themselves as kin to that Titan Prometheus. Gods or not, they work from theory. If the theory’s wrong, they can fall back on the provisional character of science. If the wrong theory finds its way into technology, not every result can be walked back. And medical professionals care little for science or ethics at all (Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds). But what scientists know for sure, before they do anything, is that, just as with cognitive, emotional, and moral development, people need to be around other each other to prime and develop their immune systems. One of the great evils of modern medical science is the propaganda campaign to convince you that without medical science you have suspect protection against the myriad of pathogens that surround you. Just as the manufacturers of acne medicine needed to make adolescents feel insecure about their complexion to move product, so the manufacturers of vaccines need to make the public doubt the genius of nature.
Like science, truth is mostly provisional. At least as a practical matter. But there are some things about which we are certain. One is our wondrous immune systems. Here’s another one: a corporation is not a person with a conscience. One more: Fauci and his ilk are minor intellects crouching in the shadow of the genius of nature.
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