By Daniel Levi
In the early days of the coronavirus, we were told that vaccines will prevent us from getting the virus. Then as millions of people received the vaccines, the narrative changed to “vaccines will stop people from getting sick, but they may not stop people from getting infected and possibly spreading the disease.”
Then between May and early June, the Delta variant started to spread around the country. As more vaccinated people get sick from the virus, the narrative changes again. This time, medical experts said that “all three vaccines were 100 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths from COVID.”
As it turned out, that’s also not true. Israel and the United Kingdom are examples of countries where vaccines have failed to prevent hospitalizations and even deaths. According to Jerusalem Post, citing a new report from Israel Health Ministry, some 143 Israelis were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday at 12 p.m. July 2021.
The report found that of the 143 hospitalized Israeli patients, 58% were vaccinated, 39% were not at all, and 3% were partially vaccinated, meaning they had taken one dose or a full week had not passed since their second shot. Only one patient was a child. Five were pregnant women or women who recently gave birth, Jerusalem Post reported.
That’s not all. Of the country’s 64 serious patients, including 17 in critical condition, there were 12 who were being invasively ventilated. However, while the percentage of vaccinated cases was high, the percentage of those who require invasive treatment was low: Only three fully vaccinated people were being invasively ventilated.
The situation in the United Kingdom is even worse. More vaccinated people died from the virus than the unvaccinated. As we reported late last month, data from Public Health England showed that more vaccinated people died of the Delta variant in the UK than the unvaccinated. The death rate is 8.45 times higher for the vaccinated.
According to the report, Delta variant is now the dominant variant in the UK with the “Delta variant accounting for approximately 95% of sequenced and 92% genotyped cases from June 7 to June 21, 2021.” During that period, a cursory analysis of the report shows that a total of 7,235 Delta variant cases were reported among fully vaccinated (after 2 doses) while a higher number, 53,822 Delta variant cases, were reported among the unvaccinated (Table 4 on page 13 of the report).
Earlier today, Scott Adams, the creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip, asked Twitter users this question: “If a vaccination doesn’t stop you from getting a disease, but it does reduce the symptoms, wouldn’t that be called a therapeutic?”
With millions of people now vaccinated in the U.S., we now know that both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are “therapeutic vaccines” and do not provide “sterile immunity” like the smallpox vaccines. Currently, these two vaccines do not provide a long-term cure for the virus. About every six months, every vaccinated person may now have to get another boost or dose to combat the threats from the new virus variants such as Delta.
Since vaccines neither cure the virus nor prevent the spreading of the virus and instead only provide similar treatment like therapeutic drugs (e.g. Remdesivir), the question then becomes: Why is the government not investing more resources in the development of therapeutics, antibody therapies instead of focusing more on vaccines?
Meanwhile, Stanford University officials confirmed today that at least seven fully-vaccinated Stanford students test positive for coronavirus. The officials at the Ivy League school said in a letter to students on Thursday.
“As you have seen in the national news, cases of COVID-19 have been ticking upward,’ officials wrote in the letter. We are seeing some of this in our own community, where we are experiencing an increase in the number of student COVID cases, including among fully vaccinated individuals.”
Stanford is one of the nearly 600 universities and colleges nationwide that have required students and faculty to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before coming back to campus this fall. The school is also enforcing its mandate by requiring proof of vaccination status.
