Entire Conservative Media Ecosystem Pushes Dangerous COVID Lie
Yesterday the CDC director reported the results of a study that showed the amazing efficacy of vaccines in preventing severe outcomes and deaths from COVID. Citing a recent study of people who had been vaccinated, she noted that 75% of the deaths of that population had been of people with at least four co-morbidities. You could hardly imagine a more stirring recommendation of the vaccine.
Within hours, due to poor editing by Good Morning America and the viral spread of misleading tweets by prominent “conservatives,” this pro-vaccine message had been transmogrified into a claim that 75% of all deaths from COVID were of people with at least four comorbidities. Conclusion: this has always been a disease that attacks only the very sick, and government has been exaggerating the danger, including with vaccine mandates! Like the Scientologists, they took a message and flipped it on its head to make it seem the opposite of what it actually meant.
Compare the video in Clay Travis’s virally misleading tweet spreading the disinformation:
The CDC director just said over 75% of “covid deaths” occurred in people with at least four comorbidities. Since Biden can’t shut down covid, suddenly all this data is getting shared publicly. pic.twitter.com/NKvproy3lx
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 10, 2022
to the unedited video:
Here is the unedited version of Rochelle Walensky's comments, where it's clear that her comments about comorbidities were referring solely to a CDC study of vaccinated people, and not to all "Covid deaths," as ppl like Clay Travis have claimed. pic.twitter.com/Z7oJQv3gem
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) January 11, 2022
Seemingly everyone on the right spread the edited disinformation. Trump Jr. did it. Ted Cruz did it. Tucker Carlson did it. Countless Fox News personalities did it. Ted Cruz has deleted his angry retweet of Travis’s tweet, but the Web Archive still has it.
Allahpundit at Hot Air — still my favorite blogger — deserves a lot of credit for identifying the issue and spreading the truth, and he gets some credit from Philip Bump at the Washington Post:
Except, as HotAir’s pseudonymous writer Allahpundit pointed out Monday afternoon, this isn’t what Walensky was saying. She was referring to a study that evaluated the deaths of 1.2 million adults who had been vaccinated, only 36 of whom died of covid-19. It was among those 36 vaccinated individuals that three-quarters (28 in total) had four or more comorbidities.
Follow the link to Allahpundit’s post for more; I have just given a summary here. Then subscribe to Hot Air.
P.S. I have my own Substack out this morning but I thought this was important. More on the Substack later today.
The two people who died that I was close to, both had one or maybe two comorbities (obesity in one case and an auto-immune condition in the other), both in their fifties. There was no vaccine at the time. From what I gather, the most common morbidity was age, which comes with ancillary conditions.
That someone as smart as Ted Cruz can be this stupid indicates a certain amount of effort.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 8:43 amI fell for that.
The messaging on COVID has been clear at times, and weird at others.
steveg (e81d76) — 1/11/2022 @ 9:23 amI don’t think it would have been a big shock to find the overall deaths from COVID are highly influenced by the number and type of co-morbidities
I’d vaccinate anyway. I get a flu shot because I don’t like having the flu, not because I’m afraid of dying. Maybe way back in my mind I might wonder if I’ve got some unknown co-morbidities that the flu or COVID might expose.
KevinM
steveg (e81d76) — 1/11/2022 @ 9:32 amI’d like to tell you how much I want to remember to respect the loss of people who were clearly very near and dear to your heart. In the back and forth of things, that gets lost.
This is semi-related, but I’ve been saying that Leonhardt has a way of making meaning of the numbers, and he does so with his comparison of NY and Seattle, in terms of cases and hospitalizations involving the vaxxed and un-vaxxed, and it’s meaningful because it mostly involves Omicron.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/11/2022 @ 9:39 amI don’t think it would have been a big shock to find the overall deaths from COVID are highly influenced by the number and type of co-morbidities
And certainly they are, particularly age-related ones, but the vaccine makes the distribution bi-modal. There’s a bell curve with vaccine, and a another one, towards “more deaths”, without.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 9:49 amThank you steveg. I think that many of us have lost a friend or a relative through this.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:05 amThe message is vaccine[s] chasing a mutating virus which require 2,3,4 whatever “boosters” every three months after initial inoculation lacks efficacy and is a cash cow for Big Pharma. And multiple vaccine/boostered individuals still experience breakthrough cases. In addition, it is mid-January and Biden Administration still has not signed the contracts to get the ‘free home Covid tests,’ touted before Christmas.
Yes, the message is clear: these screw-ups could a park a car in an empty stadium parking lot.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:11 amStill flogging that crap, DCSCA. Did you even read this post? Why are you so determined to be wrong on this subject?
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:18 amMy brother is in the hospital with pneumonia and Covid, according to his wife, but his voice sounds very strong. I had been wondering what was happening the past two days.
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:18 am^Yes, the message is clear: these screw-ups could a park a car in an empty stadium parking lot.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:19 amI thought it was his father-in-law, but he is OK.
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:21 am@8. ‘Crap,’ Kevin? Grab your spoon; here’s a plateful for you to swallow:
10 Health and Pharmaceutical Companies Fighting the COVID-19 Coronavirus
‘Coronavirus fears have triggered volatility, a correction and ultimately a bear market in U.S. stocks in 2020. Many companies have suffered massive price drops, but a handful of stock picks have seen their prices hold up – and in some cases even soar. One such cluster includes pharmaceutical companies and other health care stocks that are in the race to develop COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics.’
https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/t052-s001-10-health-pharmaceutical-companies-coronavirus/index.html
FDA authorizes Merck’s COVID-19 antiviral pill
https://nypost.com/2021/12/23/fda-authorizes-mercks-covid-19-antiviral-pill
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:29 amWhat is the equivalent number for the unvaccinated? If well below 75% then sure vaccines are great. If not then vaccines don’t seem to matter. If they don’t have number , why not? Seems important.
kaf (375fe0) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:29 amWhat is the equivalent number for the unvaccinated?
Haven’t you heard? This is “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” – not the fault of a butter-fingered Chinese techie. Just as obesity, world hunger and rickets are the fault of American kids not drinking their milk and cleaning their plates.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:36 am@7/10 ‘could’ = ‘couldn’t.’ Typo.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:41 amAbsolutely appalling. The lies from conservatives about this issue just never seem to stop.
Time123 (121447) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:51 amhttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm
5% of the deaths are reported COVID alone, with the caveat from the CDC that those 5% likely had co-morbidities, the co-morbidities just didn’t get entered onto the reporting form.
The number of co-morbidities on the average was 2.6 for all deaths but that number is old. I’m not smart enough to figure out how to solve for the current number using the CDC data spreadsheet
I don’t blame Cruz, Travis etc for misunderstanding, because even back in 2020 we knew that people were dying from COVID with at an average 2.6 co-morbidities on board so 75% at 4 isn’t that big of a stretch.
The good news is that 75% of the deaths with vaccine onboard are with COVID but from a combination of 4 other causes, but the other news is that the unvaccinated (before vaccine) were dying with/from COVID and 2.6 other causes in 2020. COVID seems to relish bringing those things together and being the final straw
Takeaways for my own thoughts would be that as we age, we seem to have more co-morbidities than we realize and to plan accordingly, and part of that plan should be a flu shot, because the most common co-morbidity is the flu/pneumonia.
steveg (e81d76) — 1/11/2022 @ 10:56 amthey didn’t misunderstand. This isn’t a disagreement about nuance or a hard to parse statement. They took her statement out of context and used it to assert that she said something completely different then she said. That’s not a misunderstanding that’s a lie.
Time123 (121447) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:16 amDCSCA, you would have socialist drug development then? Or have government set the price of drugs? I have trouble separating your position here from Bernie’s.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:16 amwe knew that people were dying from COVID with at an average 2.6 co-morbidities on board so 75% at 4 isn’t that big of a stretch.
Uh, yes it is. If they said “The average family has 2.6 kids, but 75% have 4 or more” you’d see why it’s stupid.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:18 amYou’re chances of dying are strongly correlated with co-morbidities. The healthier you start out the better your chances which should be common sense. There is also some overlap, i.e. it’s possible for a vaxed person with co-morbidities to be at higher risk than an unvaxed person without.
This might be a going a bit to far. The question really should be what gives an individual the best chance given their conditions. If the vaccine improves an individual’s odds, or lowers their risk, it matters.
Well, that’ll be the fun part of this little exercise. This is largely a pandemic of the co-morbidities that can be mitigated by the vax. This recent misquote doesn’t really change that. But it will be interesting to watch the back and forth. Soon the people upset about this misstatement (many of whom aren’t at all upset about the misstatements in the SCOTUS oral arguments) will be using it to misstate the co-morbidity risk.
frosty (f27e97) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:25 am2. steveg (e81d76) — 1/11/2022 @ 9:23 am
They said that the first week!
The replacement hosts for Rush Limbaugh today claimed that
1) We are being gaslighted, in that the CDC & Fauci etc are trying to pretend they never said vaccinatons would prevent spread, but this was the messaging that got out..
2) When the correct something, they are pretending they just learned it – the example cited was that anybody who dies with Covid is counted as a Covid death. (the co hosts also claimed the critics of officialdom were right, but many of the criticisms were off the wall)
But, as I said long ago, deaths were also being underestimated, and the thing to use was excess deaths (said by a lot of people, but not officially tabulated. This way outnumbered the deaths counted as Covid deaths that truly weren’t.
Just think, if at most 1 in 120 people in the spring of 2020 had Covid at the same time (as I heard recently) incidental Covid hospitalizations should have been only about 1% of patients.
They’re noticing it now with Omicron because everybody going into a hospital is tested for Covid and the rate of infection for Omicron must be very high.
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:26 amThe average hospitalization for Omicron is 1.x days [I don’t remember the last significant digit] while for Delta it was 4 days.
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:35 am@19. https://www.drugwatch.com/featured/us-drug-prices-higher-vs-world/
=mike-drop=
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:43 am@13, Depends on the area. Most places are running over 60% vaccinated. Google will show you the breakdown. Plenty of research and data that all points to the same thing; Vaccination greatly lowers your chances of catching Covid and lowers the chances of being hospitalized / dying even more.
Time123 (6f9608) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:53 amWhy is Joe Biden wearing a mask outdoors in Georgia?
Per his own CDC:
“In general, you do not need to wear a mask in outdoor settings. In areas with high numbers of COVID-19 cases, consider wearing a mask in crowded outdoor settings and for activities with close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html
Perhaps, per his own CDC, this is why:
“People who have a condition or are taking medications that weaken their immune system may not be fully protected even if they are fully vaccinated. They should continue to take all precautions recommended for unvaccinated people, including wearing a well-fitted mask, until advised otherwise by their healthcare provider.”
So what meds is POTUS on? Tell us– Vlad. 😉
… and Putin smiled.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 11:56 am@26. I’m always impressed when he keeps track of it. If that were a college drinking game kids would be going to the hospital.
frosty (f27e97) — 1/11/2022 @ 12:00 pm@27. Yes, ol’Joe has the messaging skills of a Coke bottle resting on a telegraph key atop a window shade in Australia. [See ‘On The Beach’ – 1959, w/Gregory Peck for details.]
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 12:06 pmFor those of you using the word “vaccine”, I do not think it means what you think it means when applied to anything that is mRNA based. For some very smart people on this site, I can only shake my head in amazement as to how you bought into the propaganda.
Horatio (47545f) — 1/11/2022 @ 12:58 pmThe average hospitalization for Omicron is 1.x days [I don’t remember the last significant digit] while for Delta it was 4 days.
Yes and no. Omicron patients have an average stay of nearly three days while Delta patients had an average stay of nearly 5.5 days.
Source
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 1/11/2022 @ 1:15 pmThe FDA and CDC literally call the vaccines vaccines. But if you changed the names of the mRNA vaccines to something else, say Late For Dinner, what difference does it make?
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/11/2022 @ 1:17 pm@27. He called her ‘President Harris’… again.
What meds is he on????
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 1:18 pmOMG. More Atlanta Follies… The WH is in Florida, Joe???
Memo to Vlad. Roll those tanks, kid.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 1:25 pmThis is terrifying. EVERYBODY Joe keeps referencing in his Atlanta speech… is dead.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 1:32 pmAnthony Fauci calls Sen. Roger Marshall ‘a moron’ during tense committee hearing on COVID-19
https://news.yahoo.com/anthony-fauci-calls-sen-roger-225238356.html
Pope ‘I am science’ Fauci has spoken.
“The Moon’s A Balloon.” – David Niven [1971]
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 3:46 pmhttps://www.newser.com/story/315539/cdc-may-tweak-mask-recommendation.html
They must have changed the story or the headline after the article was created.
This is not necessarily accurate but it indicates that the people following this – whose job is to follow this, think they should predict this.
That bit of news is came from CNBC.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 1/11/2022 @ 4:23 pmIn the same article they want to tell people they shouldn’t think they should catch Covid to get it all over with.
The Wall Street Journal has a dissenting opinion. It had an Op-ed piece today saying that spreading Omicron should be government policy.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/speeding-it-may-be-safer-omicron-mandates-antigenic-drift-shift-covid-supervariant-mask-social-distancing-lockdown-vaccine-11641847062
I think this is a made-up worry. It’s highly unlikely anything could arise that will outcompete Omicron Unless it has a different method of transmission.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 1/11/2022 @ 4:24 pmYesterday they had an article saying that the vaccine is of very little use against Omicron, and in fact, three months after getting the vaccine, the benefit of geetting vaccinated with the old vaccine turns into a net negative (this may be irrelevant as Omicron may not be around in 3 months, and neither may the old vaccine
https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-makes-bidens-vaccine-mandates-obsolete-covid-healthcare-osha-evidence-supreme-court-11641760009
This is not an absurdity. Although the article doesn’t have it. There is a plausible scientific reason for this: Production of antibodies gets tilted toward what previously infected you. As the total amount of antibodies ready declines, the fact that some the wring antibodies are promoted begins to predominate, so that at vaccination + 3 months, a person newly infected with Omicron is slightly worse off than somebody who was never vaccinated.
This is the pre-print:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v3.full
This gives a clue as why the effect of vaccine will decline even below zero.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/magazine/universal-vaccines.html
It follows that getting a wrongly targeted vaccine could, after the initial booster effect dissipates, make it harder for the body to fight the virus.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 1/11/2022 @ 4:40 pmAttack on the legal reasoning in the Op-ed article:
https://abovethelaw.com/2022/01/jed-rubenfeld-attacks-vaccine-mandates-because-when-youre-already-disgraced-theres-nowhere-to-go-but-down
2016 paper on imprinting possibly badly:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5134739/
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 1/11/2022 @ 4:44 pmDoes Ted Cruz secretly hate his constituency for leading him to debase himself the way he has? I wonder.
nk (1d9030) — 1/11/2022 @ 5:39 pm54. This is video on YouTube of Kamala Harris’ and Joe Biden’s speeches in Atlanta.
It was boycotted by Stacey Abrams nd others because they say this all is not going to accomplish anything and he’s going to lose the Senate vote to advance the bill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMCOV5t-G10
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 5:43 pmIt follows that getting a wrongly targeted vaccine could, after the initial booster effect dissipates, make it harder for the body to fight the virus.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 1/11/2022 @ 4:40 pm
Maybe. My Branch Covidian cousin and his wife, who have been hectoring everyone on social media to get their Magic Coof Juice injections, both came down with Omicron this week. So did my boosted sister-in-law (who hates these arbitrary, inconsistent dictates as much I do) and her kids. My sister-in-law said it was the same as getting a regular cold.
Meanwhile, my otherwise-vaccinated, non-MCJ wife has yet to catch it since the pandemic started.
Or, it could also just be that it’s cold and flu season, and people are already susceptible to begin with.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 1/11/2022 @ 5:49 pmDoes Ted Cruz secretly hate his constituency for leading him to debase himself the way he has? I wonder.
He’s Canadian by birth. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/11/2022 @ 5:53 pmAs usual:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-says-he-was-arrested-during-civil-rights-fight-a-claim-hes-had-to-recant-before
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 6:06 pm42. Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 1/11/2022 @ 5:49 pm
I know someone who was out with the flu (a food server in a school. Not a cook – the food comes ready made and only needs to be frozen or heated)
The claim that the vaccine hampers refers to the period three months and later after the vaccine and might only mean the speedup is slower.
Cross-immunity matters to a coronavirus cold virus helps, so sutely a vaccine to an old version of SARS-2 should.
Sammy Finkelman (c49738) — 1/11/2022 @ 6:15 pmThe head of the CDC really should do better in presentations to flesh out the numbers with context.
When she refers to comorbidities, she should filter the results for us. The virus causes respiratory issues per the downstream effect. Is she including those in her count of 4? Did any of those 4 comorbidities appear due to a virus that broke through vaccination? She vaguely alludes to pre-existing comorbidities that “the people were unwell to begin with”.
If she doesn’t want to be misunderstood, she should have said 75% have 4 pre-existing comorbidities
Dr. Justin Lessler MD Epidemiologist Johns Hopkins in 2020, when the CDC bungled communication and then saw social media go nuts just like this time.:
“it’s important to understand that some of the comorbidities listed are actually downstream effects of COVID-19—meaning they are symptoms. For example, respiratory failure. Someone could have on their death certificate that they died of both COVID and respiratory failure, but that probably means that COVID-19 caused the respiratory failure, which caused them to die. It’s impossible for us to know the individual scenarios from death certificates, but the prevalence of respiratory factors [in the CDC findings] are consistent with being downstream conditions.”
steveg (e81d76) — 1/12/2022 @ 12:09 pm@31 you sound like Humpty Dumpty
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
Horatio (47545f) — 1/12/2022 @ 1:14 pmSCOTUS opinions tomorrow. Mandates?
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:28 pmSo I done went and axed Mr. Google “Is the mRNA vaccine a vaccine?”
And you know what? Mr. Google did not even bother to laugh at me. It just went on to talk about “mRNA vaccines”. On and on and on … binders full of talk about “mRNA vaccines”.
So, do pray tell, Horatio: If the mRNA vaccine is not a vaccine, what is it?
nk (1d9030) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:35 pmTo be exact, the mRNA shots contain the blueprints for making antibodies to a virus, not the example virus (or part thereof) for the immune system to train on. Is it a vaccine? That depends on whether your lexicon is stuck in park or not.
Here is a clear and accurate description of what is going on, as a cartoon:
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:42 pmMisspoke. The mRNA shot contains the instructions for making the spike protein, for the body to use to make antibodies, not instructions for the antibodies themselves.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:45 pmThe mandates are unconstitutional. Doesn’t take a court to tell me that.
NJRob (549e7c) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:47 pmNow that we know that the vaccinated can transmit the disease, I also see the situation as “Live And Let Die”.
nk (1d9030) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:52 pmThat’s why I asked if Ted Cruz, who is doubtlessly fully vaccinated and boosted, along with his family, hates his constituency.
nk (1d9030) — 1/12/2022 @ 3:54 pmRIP Ronnie Spector. Be My Baby.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 1/12/2022 @ 4:10 pm#51 Kudos to Kevin for correcting that error. (I didn’t because I was pretty sure he would see it — and has enough integrity to correct it himself.)
Jim Miller (edcec1) — 1/12/2022 @ 4:23 pmYou didn’t answer my question, Horatio.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/12/2022 @ 4:35 pmHere’s another one: What’s your point?
The mandates are unconstitutional. Doesn’t take a court to tell me that.
The general employer mandate certainly is. Providers in the Medicare and Medicaid systems, OTOH, agree to a lot of terms and conditions for that money that covers their overhead. I suspect those mandates will be upheld.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/12/2022 @ 4:45 pm@58-
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 1/12/2022 @ 4:48 pmAlso the mandates on federal contractors are probably constitutional. That mandate covers a pretty wide swath of the economy, especially when you include subs.
It’s not whether it’s Constitutional per se, the question before the Court I mean, but whether … dare I say it? … it’s ultra vires. In other words, sure, Congress can delegate the OSHA authority to a senile figurehead of a President who is aware of his surroundings for only a couple of hours of the diurnal cycle and dimly at that, but did it?
nk (1d9030) — 1/12/2022 @ 5:45 pmActually, the issue before the Court is not the constitutionality of the mandates, but whether a stay should be issued while the litigation percolates in the lower courts.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 1/12/2022 @ 5:52 pmSupreme Court Does Joe Biden’s Dirty Work by Delaying Ruling on Vaccine Mandate
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 1/12/2022 @ 6:00 pmCall it a stay or a preliminary injunction, the main consideration is still probability of success on the merits.
nk (1d9030) — 1/12/2022 @ 6:01 pmOn an equally important note when talking about “excess deaths” CA has drug overdoses exceeding “expected” by over 40%
steveg (e81d76) — 1/13/2022 @ 6:59 pmhttps://twitter.com/TheUnsaid11/status/1480985231419056128/photo/2