Data Suggests Government is Making Pandemic Worse, Not Better

COVID-19 cases and deaths are approaching peak levels again after mask mandates, lockdowns, and the distribution of 365 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.

According to USA Facts, the seven-day average for cases was 136,636 and 1,000 for deaths on August 23, 2021.  At COVID-19’s peak, on January 9, before the mass-vaccination campaign got into full swing but after nearly a full year of mask mandates and lockdowns, there was a seven-day average of 249,501 cases and 3,340 deaths. The seven-day average on August 23, 2020, for cases, was 40,408 and 962 deaths.

Herd Immunity in Jeopardy?

Some medical professionals are questioning whether government actions jeopardized natural herd immunity.

Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population have antibodies to a pathogen from a previous infection that the likelihood of someone being infected (and transmitting) the pathogen is greatly reduced. The phenomenon would impact previously infected people as well as people who were never exposed.

According to the Mayo Clinic, 70 percent of the population would have to be recovered from COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity. However, Anthony Fauci, M.D., President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, dismissed the idea of natural herd immunity for COVID-19. In an October Yahoo News interview, Fauci stated, “quite frankly that is nonsense, and anybody who knows anything about epidemiology will tell you that that is nonsense and very dangerous.”

The Great Barrington Declaration

Weeks before Fauci’s statement on herd immunity, three medical school professors considered world-class experts in epidemiology published The Great Barrington Declaration.

“As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls,” write Martin Kulldorff, of Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta, of Oxford University, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. “We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine.”

Their declaration has been signed by 850,000 medical and public health scientists, medical practitioners, and members of the public.

Vaccine Interference?

COVID-19 cases began to surge in July, seven months after the COVID-19 vaccines were being distributed free of charge to millions of Americans under emergency use authorization.

At first, vaccines were distributed to those most at risk from dying from the virus, the elderly, people living in nursing homes, and the chronically ill. Adult health care workers of all ages were also given top priority. Cases dropped dramatically between January and March, and many states ended lockdowns and lifted mask mandates by June.

On May 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved emergency use of the vaccine for adolescents as young as 11. In a statement, the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Rochelle Walensky acknowledged that children have mild or no symptoms from COVID-19 but recommended all get vaccines because of “rare, tragic cases of children dying.”  Seventeen million adolescents in the U.S. became eligible for the shots under the emergency use authorization.

An online parent’s forum on August 30 by TruthforHealth.org, a newly formed non-profit information organization of doctors and scientists that receives no funding from health care organizations or pharmaceutical companies, pointed out vaccines for children are unnecessary and even unsafe.

Case Numbers Skyrocket

After case numbers and deaths started to suddenly climb, panic set in. Fauci, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, held a news conference on August 18 to state that booster shots would be needed for all vaccinated adults in the coming months.

“Having reviewed the most recent data, it is now our clinical judgment that the time to lay out a plan for boosters is now,” Murthy said. “This is likely due to waning immunity and the strength of the Delta Variant.”

Fauci acknowledged there is no data to support the idea that a booster can reduce transmission.

“We don’t know that right now,” Fauci said.

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement

A major concern of doctors and scientists is whether the vaccines are creating resistant variants,  a phenomenon known as antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), when antibodies do not stop the virus from entering a cell but increase its ability, like a Trojan horse.

In an August 21 article in NOQ Report , Dr. Joel Hirschhorn reviews warnings made months ago from two top virologists: Dr. Luc Montagnier, a Nobel laureate, and Dr. Vanden Bossche, who is on the faculty of universities in Belgium and Germany and has worked in the pharmaceutical industry.

Montagnier stated there is no better explanation for variants than ADE and the mass vaccination campaign has been an “unacceptable mistake.”

Because of ADE, the vaccines are incapable of helping the public reach herd immunity, says Montagnier. “The vaccinated are just as transmissive as the unvaccinated,” said Montagnier. “Therefore the hope of a ‘collective immunity’ by an increase in the number of vaccinated is totally futile.”

A better approach would be early treatment of infection with ivermectin and a bacterial antibiotic, said Montagnier “because there is a bacterial cofactor that amplifies the effects of the virus,” Montagnier said.

‘Incredible Disaster’ for Health

Bossche, too, has not minced words about the mass vaccine campaign, according to the NOQ Report article.

“Given the huge amount of immune escape that will be provoked by mass vaccination campaigns and flanking containment measures, it is difficult to imagine how human interventions would not cause the COVID-19 pandemic to turn into an incredible disaster for global and individual health,” Bossche said.

Peter McCullough, M.D., Ph.D., who has been leading the charge on early COVID-19 treatment, stated in a blog post that the CDC director herself admitted when the vaccine fails, a “very high viral load” can spread to people who are unvaccinated.

“The vaccine is setting people up to be…kind of super spreaders,” McCullough stated on OAN’s Real America.

AnneMarie Schieber (amschieber@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Health Care News.

This article was updated on August 31, 2021.