Vaccines

"I am vaccinated — two Moderna shots, then boosted with a Pfizer booster," Fox News's Geraldo Rivera said as he announced he tested positive for Covid two weeks ago. "I thought for sure that I was immune...I ate some humble pie." The View's Whoopi Goldberg expressed similar surprise when she caught the virus, saying, "It was a shock, because I'm triple vaxxed, I haven't been anywhere, I haven't done anything." "It's one of those things where you think, I've done everything I was supposed to do... Yeah, it doesn't stop Omicron," she added. There have been scores of high-profile people admitting over the past month that you can "do everything right" and still catch Covid-19.

We volunteered to serve in the biggest medical experiment in human history. We accepted the biggest peacetime suspension of civil liberties in American history. And we agreed not to ask difficult questions about the origins of the virus. Now it’s time we recovered our freedom — and exercised the responsibility that sustains it. The Omicron variant isn’t the end of the world. It looks more like the beginning of the end. The case numbers are rising even faster than the rate of inflation, but the ICUs aren’t overflowing and the death rate remains low. Covid-19 seems to be becoming endemic, like all the other bugs we might catch in a normal winter. If you’re elderly or obese, or if you have another co-morbidity, then you have a way to go yet.

Since becoming Health Secretary there has been one big question Sajid Javid cannot answer: how can he justify firing a worker who has recovered from Covid, has antibodies and doesn’t want the vaccine? Javid first did this with unjabbed care home workers and now plans to fire unjabbed NHS doctors. Today he met one of them — and it didn’t go well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOlEYcd1nyI Javid’s answer? He didn’t have one During a visit to King’s College Hospital in south London, Javid was on camera talking to NHS staff asking them what they thought about his plans for compulsory vaccination. He presumably expected them to agree.

'A stain on our soul'. That was how Gordon Brown, in his latest missive on the subject, described the failure of the west to ensure that the whole world is vaccinated. In a previous attack on western policy — at the end of November, just as Omicron was emerging — he wrote of “hoarding” and 'vaccine nationalism'. Take Africa: it is certainly true that vaccination rates in many countries are very low. While the UK has managed to deliver 195 doses per 100 people, Nigeria has only managed seven, Ethiopia and Somalia nine, and Chad and South Sudan two. Can all this be blamed on the failure of western nations to donate vaccines?

We’ve all learnt to wash our hands more carefully over the last couple of years, but no one has soaped his dirty digits as fastidiously as Joe Biden. His announcement that “there is no federal solution” to Covid-19 puts him up there with history’s greatest handwashers. Like Pontius Pilate, Biden is leaving it to the mob: “this gets solved at the state level.” Unlike the procrastinating procurator who surrendered his responsibilities to the jeering Judeans, Biden’s got it right. But it won’t save him from the jeers — and nor should it. Biden won the presidency on a promise of the federal solution that he now says doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist in 2020, either.

What was the point of tonight's Covid press conference? Boris Johnson didn't have anything big to announce, other than a very dubious-looking new lectern telling people to 'Get Boosted N0w', with the 0 in the 'now' looking a lot like a Hula Hoop. His purported focus was on the doubling rate of Omicron, and to announce today's record high number of positive tests (78,000). A cynic might argue that calling a press conference on the vaccination programme is distracting from the self-inflicted political mess Boris is currently wallowing through. Given people are already queuing round the block for their booster jabs, it doesn't seem as though the message about Getting Boosted Now really needs a, well, boost.

Why is the government so scared of the Omicron variant? So far, most of the evidence we have for transmissibility and virulence of Omicron is based on very limited data from South Africa, but the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has now published its own preliminary study of the variant — the results of which will presumably have been available to ministers and scientific advisers prior to Wednesday’s decision to enact ‘Plan B’. They appear to show a variant which is more transmissible, more likely to evade vaccines and more likely to reinfect people who have previously had Covid. But there is a very big caveat: they are based on tiny numbers of Omicon cases.

The new Omicron variant of Covid-19 is “mild” and no reason to panic, according to one of the South African doctors who discovered the new strain. Nonetheless, American politicians and public health officials are extending mask mandates, expanding vaccine mandates, and warning of the potential for another lockdown. Pfizer is taking their cues and stepping in to play hero. Despite only having a week or two of research available to them, the pharmaceutical giant insists that preliminary lab results show that three doses of their vaccine work well at neutralizing the Omicron variant. How convenient that the so-called “booster” shot Pfizer and President Joe Biden have been pushing for months is now found to be super effective against this new variant.

The Prime Minister has just announced Plan B. Working from home has been all but mandated and large venues — as well as nightclubs — will be required to check for vaccine passports. But where is the evidence for this, and what does the data say? Johnson’s vaccine passport idea copies Nicola Sturgeon’s policy in Scotland which was found, in a 70-page evidence paper, not to have had any measurable effect. As evidence Chris Whitty presented South African hospitalisations — a country with less than a third vaccinated. When Omicron was discovered the government said we should wait for data to be gathered before reacting. Sensible, given the huge economic and livelihood consequences of even small restrictions. Data is published every day.

As we near the final days of his term, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking his final shot at children by implementing an indoor vaccine mandate. This means that kids will not be able to dine indoors at restaurants, visit museums or do any number of other cultural activities around the city. Additionally, children ages five to eleven will no longer be able “to participate in high-risk extracurriculars including sports, band, and dance.” The new rules are as cruel as they are pointless. Twenty percent of New York City children ages five to eleven are vaccinated against COVID-19. That number is actually pretty high as kids face an extremely low risk of any kind of poor COVID outcome.

Ministers accused of overreacting to the Omicron variant will feel vindicated by the comments of Moderna chief executive Stéphane Bancel. In an interview with the FT, Bancel said he expects his company’s vaccine to suffer a ‘material drop’ in efficacy against Omicron – on the grounds that the new variant has 32 mutations to its spike protein. The protein, which the virus uses to attach itself to human cells, is targeted by the Moderna vaccine. The vaccine seemed to cope with previous variants – but they had fewer mutations. Bancel said the company’s scientists had told him: ‘This is not going to be good.’ Yes, it will be possible to re-design the vaccine to cope with Omicron, but it will take several months.

Did you think we were having supply chain issues? Just wait until the vaccine mandates — cross-border and federal — kick in. We haven’t seen anything yet. “The supply chain that stole Christmas” has been dominating headlines all over the place for over a month now, even in The Spectator. Senator Mike Lee’s office is having fun with it too. The senator has just introduced the Surpassing Temporary Obstructions at Ports and Guaranteeing Resources to Increase the Nation’s Commercial Health Act — or STOP the GRINCH Act. More on that in a moment — but first, why are we hearing so much about the supply chain lately? Because of shortages, obviously! But wait. There’s nothing terribly new here.