Weekly Roundup: The Vaccine They Don't Want You To Get Edition
Good news: There's a COVID-19 vaccine out there that:
Is more than 90% effective in clinical trials at actually preventing infection of all variants, rather than being merely palliative for Delta et al
Operates in almost identical fashion to a conventional vaccine, rather than using the mRNA pathway or other methods that reprogram living human cells
Doesn't need to be cold stored
Results in fewer, and mild, side effects
Was lauded by The Atlantic four months ago as "The Best Vaccine"
Has not been linked to heart disorders or anaphylaxis
Costs less to produce than any other "vaccine" for COVID-19
Was developed in the United States by an American company
Sound good to you? Are you interested in this? Great! You can get it today... in Indonesia, and India. But not here. In fact, there's no plan to make it available to American citizens --- unless those citizens have already had two shots from Pfizer or Moderna.
Surely I'm making this up, right?
Chances are some of you already know the vaccine to which I'm referring: the American-developed Novavax. It was part of President Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" but unlike the BioNTech and Moderna products, it wasn't co-developed with a major global pharma company and therefore it has moved much more slowly through the various loopholes, er, hoops placed in front of it by global regulators.
Unlike the aforementioned "the jabs", which should properly be called "gene therapies", Novavax is a true dead-protein vaccine not that different from the vast majority of vaccines administered to human beings from the very first one to the present day. It doesn't reprogram your cells and use them as factories to crank out infectious "spike proteins". It uses encapsulated particles to stimulate your immune response. It's more effective than any of the three vaccines currently authorized by the FDA and currently being shoved into children as young as five years old. Thirty thousand Americans have already received it; they're doing great and VAERS doesn't show a single death.
(Approximately one in every 14,372 "the jab" recipients dies shortly after vaccination, so in theory there would be two deaths if Novavax followed the same pattern. I should note, for the sake of accuracy, that not everyone in the VAERS database can be proven to have died from adverse reactions to "the jab". But I should also note, for the sake of accuracy, that only six percent of "COVID-19 deaths" occur in patients with no other co-morbidities, meaning that it's been the sole cause of death for fewer than 315,000 Americans, or under one in one thousand.)
There is no metric you can devise or standard you can imagine in which Novavax is not indisputably superior to the existing "the jabs" out there, except one: It's not going to put any money into the pockets of the companies that rushed mRNA products to market and used the world population as human guinea pigs for a gene therapy that has degenerated to a merely palliative effect for the vast majority of people who have received it. Surely you all know people who are double and even triple THE JABBED but who have COVID-19 nonetheless; this past weekend I lost the services of a highly-respected motorsports photographer because he has failed COVID-19 tests multiple times in the past twenty days despite having taken every "the jab" he can possibly get his hands on. His Instagram continues to remind everyone that vaccines are safe and effective, in much the same way that some people in the Soviet Union were praising the dictatorship of the proletariat even as Stalin's firing squads pulled the trigger.
Indonesia and India have already accepted Novavax as equal to the other therapies out there, rather ironically citing the results of the US clinical trial in their decision. Novavax states that they have opened a dialogue with the FDA but they don't expect to be approved for anything more than a booster, which makes sense from a perspective of raw corporate fascist evil: you can have a vaccine that works after you pay for two that don't, Primecitizen! Instead, the focus seems to be on bringing this low-cost vaccine to the developing world, which is possibly the dumbest strategy possible. Vaccines are not mid-sized sedans or smartphones; there is no reason for there to be a multiple-tier pricing strategy where rich Americans have to suffer through Pfizer while people in Eritrea get a truly safe and worthwhile vaccine.
In any sane universe, the FDA would approve Novavax for adults (at least) with the same reckless abandon they've shown in authorizing Pfizer for toddlers, allowing the "vaccine hesitant" to get their shots in the near future. Ah, but here's the problem: It seems obvious that the controversial (and, as of this writing, court-rejected) Biden vaccine mandate is meant to get Pfizer/Moderna "the jabs" in everyone's arm before they have a chance to choose Novavax. There is no respectable or decent reason for such a decision. The best possible justification is ensuring pharma profits for the government's chosen vendors; the worst one is a genuinely sick, but very human, desire for "the poors" et al to suffer through the same Pfizer side effects as the Blue Tribe. There are millions of people out there who are enraged at the idea that Science Denier Hick Trash might end up getting the best and safest product because they didn't rush into compliance. Tying the mandatory receipt of a Pfizer/Moderna "the jab" to one's employment, housing, and even ability to eat a meal out of the house well before Novavax approval... that's the best way to prevent the aforementioned rage.
(Sidebar: Why has President Biden tied mandatory vaccination to employment in the private sector, while steadfastly refusing to even discuss the idea of making it mandatory in order to receive public assistance? And how, exactly, have most states determined that being terminated for non-vaccination makes you ineligible for unemployment benefits? Other than O'Brien's "float off the floor" display of raw power, where is the rationale behind these decisions, taken as a whole?)
If the FDA and the Biden Administration genuinely cared about "herd immunity", they'd do what India and Indonesia are doing: they'd approve this traditional vaccine for emergency use immediately and watch millions of Americans sign up to get it. The fact that they're doing exactly the opposite should tell you everything you need to know about the politics of vaxxing... the politics of ooh, feeling good about being a Pfizer or Moderna early adopter. (Yes, that's an Eighties music joke. I'm sorry.)
Note Zero: The deliberate use of "the jab" above, even when it breaks the rules of grammar, is reflective of my personal contempt for the use of "the jab" as a phrase and as a sales tool.
Note One: It should be noted that here at Riverside Green, we were the very first people to receive multiple doses of Pfizer VAXXING and we are, in fact, on our third booster shot. If you read this at any time in the future, please assume that we have received as many booster shots as are recommended by CNN at the appropriate time. We are not the kind of racist fascist Nazis who would only have five boosters in our bloodstream when everyone else has six of them. Thank you for your compliance.
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This week, for Hagerty, I drove a Miata, and my wife also drove a Miata, albeit a racing one.