The Covid Narrative: Season 2 Preview!

Oh, so you thought this madness would only last one year?

Well I'm as surprised as you, but the news makes it clearer and clearer every day, the crazy Covid fear narratives just haven't stopped. It should be clear to us all by now that the "Official Covid Narrative" has been picked up for a second season.

Can you really blame them? With such great ratings in Season 1 and with Season 5 of the Trump Show cancelled, of course this show would get a big contract for Season 2.

I thought you all might want an exclusive look at what is in store during Season 2. This will save you valuable time and help you know what’s coming! SPOILER WARNING! If you want to feel surprised and afraid all year DO NOT read on!...

One overall note before we get started: At no point going forward in 2021 will any region come close to reaching their hospital capacities and very few regions will experience substantial excess deaths even next fall, but that won't stop the narrative from driving us crazy all the way into next year.

April - Just Hold On! - This is where we are today. Over half of seniors are fully vaxed, over 75% of seniors and nearly half of all adults have at least one shot. Add in the previously infected and the remaining risk of Covid death is de minimis. But that doesn't stop our public health betters and the media from demanding we all "hold on" just a little longer.

Examples:

https://www.kcra.com/article/cdc-director-us-may-soon-return-to-everyday-activities/35997416#

https://www.wtnh.com/news/connecticut/cdc-director-urges-public-to-hold-on-for-a-little-while-longer-after-rise-in-covid-cases/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/29/cdc-chief-warns-us-headed-for-impending-doom-as-covid-cases-rise-again-right-now-im-scared-.html

Reality: The top ten states by per capita covid hospitalizations are all locked down states on the Northeastern seaboard plus Michigan. They are having a seasonal wave just like last spring which is peaking as we speak. Lockdowns don't work. Meanwhile Texas is holding packed events with maskless crowds and not seeing a surge.

May - We "Stopped the Surge" - Cases will ebb in the North/Northeast and Fauci et al will claim credit, stating that this proves that "The Science" of lockdowns/restrictions/masks is correct. Meanwhile cases in the open states will remain low, but this information will be left out of most reports.

Reality: It will be clear to anyone looking at the data that these restrictions and mandates can't possibly be the cause of falling cases since so many open states will not see a spring surge. The effect of vaccines will be seen in the spring wave having a lower CFR than prior waves since the elderly are nearly all vaccinated meaning the cases are mostly in the healthier age groups.

June - A "Victory Lap"  for "The Science" - With well over 3/4 of all adults fully vaccinated and cases falling to new lows in most of the county it will be time for "The Science" to take a victory lap.

At least one southern state, I'd guess Florida, will see a case spike (not a major death spike) and this will be heralded as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't "Follow the Science". There will be many panicked stories about new "Vaccine Escape Variants" and a huge narrative push to vaccinate every living thing in the country before one of these "new forms of the virus" breaks out.

California will celebrate their "Opening" but masks and many restrictions will remain in place since there will be lingering Hospitalizations in some regions and we can never be too sure... Proof of vaccination will be mandatory for many activities, with these so-called "Vaccine Passports" praised in the media as the safe way forward.

Reality: Just like last year the southern half of the county that missed out on the Spring wave will see a seasonal wave in the summer. It will be the least deadly to date thanks to vaccines and prior immunity. Covid will be well on it's way to being an endemic cold virus, not of significant harm to almost anyone. Vaccine resistant variants will gain in prevalence, but vaccines will still offer a strong prophylactic effect to these strains, such that even when one is infected it will very rarely lead to anything more than common cold symptoms.

Vaccine Passports are counterproductive and a waste of time as the chance of a vaccinated under 70 year old being hospitalized due to close contact with an unvaccinated individual is on the order of 1 in over 10 million encounters!

July - "Viral Independence" and "Zero Covid" - Joe Biden will hold a bizarre socially distanced press event on the White House lawn and claim we must move towards complete "Viral Independence" and that means a concerted effort to reach "Zero Covid" worldwide.

"Zero Covid" has been a talking point for months in epidemiologist circles, but it's always remained under the surface. In the summer of 2021 it will be mainstreamed. The mantra will be that "No One is Safe, Until Everyone is Safe", and the only way we can create this safe society is to eradicate the virus entirely. This means that even if cases are low we can't lift mask mandates or go back to the way things were.

There will be tremendous pressure placed on anyone who has yet to be vaccinated. The public will be actively told to shun the unvaccinated from society as "they are the impediment to a safe world." There will be a rise in cases across the south (including Southern California) and this will be used as a reason why we can't just return to normal. "Normal was Never Good Enough".

The blame for the southern rise in cases will be laid at the feet of anti-lockdown governors and anti-vax conservatives even in California.

Reality: The Covid vaccines are incredibly effective, but they aren't equipped to eradicate a virus like Sars-Cov-2. Their main purpose is to act as strong protection from mild to moderate symptoms with good protection against severe symptoms and death. Covid Zero is a quixotic quest dreamed up by a public health establishment high on their own supply. It may not even be possible given our current technologies and certainly not in the short term. To achieve it will mean ongoing restrictions for years. Above all it is unnecessary as the virus won't be more than a bad cold in the coming years, but as long as any Covid case is treated as a serious hazard and followed by testing, tracing, and quarantine the Covid panic won't end.

August - School Must be Opened "Safely" - As summer wanes school will again become a major topic of discussion, and again it will be apparent that little was done over the summer to prepare for a normal school year, but there is a reason for this: Safety!

We all know kids need to be in school, but it must be safe. And that means that even though all the teachers are vaccinated, cases are low, and hospitals empty, we still need kids to be masked, constant surveillance testing, and more restrictions that make kids suffer.

There will be constant fearful stories on the risk posed to children, from "New Variants", etc. however spuriously sourced, and the mantra will be that until every child is vaccinated we can't let our guard down!

Many school districts on the west coast will still not be fully open, with some simply running "Zoom in a Room" with kids and teachers in separate rooms interacting through screens. Masking of children will be ubiquitous over half the county.

Reality: By this point the science will have been in for over a year. Schools are safe! No restrictions of any kind are needed whatsoever!, especially given that every teacher who wants a vaccine will have had one. Masking is a farce to begin with, but particularly for elementary school children. The stories of variants that adversely affect children are some of the most vile fake news of this entire saga, and there is not an ounce of truth to them.

September - Booster Shots - Those vaccines that have been hyped up all year, turns out they're out of date, there are "New Forms of the Virus", and while there might not be much of any proof of lower vaccine efficacy against these variants, we can never be too careful. But big pharma is here to save the day with an updated booster shot to protect us again!

There will be a massive campaign to roll out these shots across the county before a potential fall wave hits the country. Fall wave you say?, I thought we had Zero Covid? Well by now it's clear that the virus is hanging around.

Reality: Of course the virus is hanging around, it's endemic. But even as cases will be constantly highlighted, what won't be shown is just how much less dangerous this virus is. Also key is that given the way we count Covid deaths we will never run of our deaths to count if we are so inclined.

October - "Twin"-demic! - This is actually a reboot of a failed plot line from Season 1. There was talk of a potential "twin"-demic in 2020 with Covid and Flu both hitting the US. Instead Covid dominated all other respiratory pathogens in the 2020 cold/flu season.

With Covid suppressed by vaccines and prior infection, the flu will be back in 2021, and this will lead to fearful story after fearful story about the danger of facing "Two Epidemics at Once"! States will use this as an excuse for more restrictions and extending mask mandates, stating that "They worked against the flu last year, so we need to use them again".

Reality: Flu wasn't stopped by masks. There is decades of science and the experience of countries like Sweden and Brazil that prove this wasn't the case. Flu was stopped by viral interference and it's return should be heralded as a good sign. Essentially, this will mean that the pandemic phase of Covid is over, and instead it will be just another cold virus we contend with every cold/flu season. In 2021, cases and hospitalizations from all respiratory viruses taken together will not be outside the range seen in other non-pandemic seasons, but the mix will be very different with both Flu and Covid playing a part.

November - Enough is Enough - With November comes off-year elections, and really the first year when many voters will cast their first vote based on Covid. The 2020 election was about a lot more than Covid, and most of the angst over school closures came after November when at the time many parents were still being spun lies about schools opening any day...

This will come as a crushing blow to the Covid Panic Establishment and for a brief moment sanity will break through the narrative of fear with the message that "Enough is Enough". There will be a story of two asking “how much longer we are expected to put up with these restrictions?” especially given that basically everyone will have been vaccinated and cases of Covid will be much much lower than last year.

But these messages will quickly get drowned out by the "One Two Punch of Covid plus Flu!".

Reality: At no point in the 2021 cold/flu season will any region come close to reaching their hospital capacities and very few regions will experience substantial excess deaths, but that won't stop the narrative from driving us crazy all the way into next year. There are entire industries built around Covid Panic and they won't die quietly.

December - The "New Normal" - Either this will be the last gasp of the Covid Hysteria or it truly will be a “New Normal”. By now it will be hard for the narrative to hide the fact that Covid is an endemic virus, just part of the annual, cold & flu season. This will be spun as a "New Normal" where we must always keep our guard up against a "world in which a deadly virus is on the loose."

There will be stories of hospitals "overwhelmed" by the "twin-demic" but these will read much more like the stories of harsh flu seasons in year's past. Be that as it may, Californian's will still be celebrating 2022 with masks on.

Reality: The party will have long been over, but if enough of us bye into it the panic won't end.

Anyway, this might seem pessimistic, but then again six months ago I never would have thought we'd still be where we are today with the crazy narratives we keep hearing day in and day out coming not just from the media but from our highest ranking public health officials. I'd love to be wrong, but as long as this narrative holds I plan to link monthly to the stories that fit right in to the "Season 2 Script".

Anyway 0 and 2,