Understanding Singapore’s Covid miracle

How did a nation that locked down so late become the success story of the pandemic?

Something close to a miracle occurred in Singapore in 2020. At the time of writing, Singapore has recorded 59,602 cases of Covid with just 29 deaths. At just over 10,000 cases per million, the cases are well below those of the US (80,232 cases per million), the UK (57,198) and France (50,710). Moreover, the vast majority of Singapore’s cases are concentrated in the foreign worker dorms, while community cases have been limited to just over 6,000.

Moreover, Singapore’s Covid-related death toll is staggeringly low, with its infection-fatality rate standing at just 0.05 per cent. Little wonder many have noted that Singapore has controlled the outbreak of Covid remarkably well. Yet very few have noted how unlikely an outcome that was. Even David Chan, a professor of psychology at Singapore Management University, in his hurriedly written book on the Singapore outbreak, Combating a Crisis, misses how spectacular an outlier Singapore is.

Several reasons for Singapore’s outlier status have been proposed, including: mask wearing, tight border controls, lockdown measures, and contact tracing with the associated app, TraceTogether. As implied by the extended title of Chan’s book – The Psychology of Singapore’s Response to Covid-19 – he claims that the success of Singapore’s Covid response was, at least in part, due to good psychological management of ‘negative emotions’, and ‘building psychological capital’ and trust via, for example, campaigns to maintain personal hygiene and to safe-distance, and clear government communication and assurance.

However, the ultimate reason why Singapore has suffered so minimally from the Covid outbreak is mysterious, and may ever remain so. Out of all the possibilities put forward, good contact tracing is likely the most important in stemming community spread of Covid, although, as we will see, the TraceTogether app played no role in that. The other vitally important measure that Singapore took was to protect care homes, something that has not been widely commented on and that Chan does not mention anywhere in Combating a Crisis.

Government communication in Singapore has been less chaotic than it has been elsewhere, notably in the UK and the US. It was not, however, entirely smooth, and communication regarding face masks was notably mixed. Indeed, face masks were a rare sight before January 2020, and at that time the official advice to residents was not to wear a mask. At the end of January, Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong advised Singaporeans not to wear a mask unless they were currently sick. That advice was supported by a national information campaign from the National University of Singapore School of Medicine (see the cartoon below). Mask sales surged (despite government instruction) in late January, and then eased again until the advice was reversed in early April. Mask wearing was rare before January 2020 and then patchy until it was enforced on 14 April, and so widespread mask-wearing before the outbreak cannot explain Singapore’s extreme outlier status.

Singapore is a major travel hub and welcomes close to 20million overseas visitors every year. Between October 2019 and March 2020, close to 7.5million visitors entered Singapore from overseas, with roughly 20 per cent of them coming from mainland China. Singapore did not close its border to tourists until 24 March, one week after Rome closed its main terminal. Thus, as for other major international travel destinations, including Rome, London and New York, Singapore will have received guests who moved freely throughout the city with Covid for at least three to four months (and many of them not wearing masks). Temperature screening set up at the end of January at Singapore’s airport might have made some difference, but it would not have detected asymptomatic cases. Tight border control cannot explain Singapore’s extreme outlier status.

Singapore is also densely populated; people live and socialise in close proximity. Few people cook at home because eating out is so cheap, and the weather is conducive to being outdoors. I took the picture below on 25 March in a popular night spot known as Holland Village. Note the density, the close proximity of tables and the lack of mask wearing. The national lockdown, known here as a circuit breaker, did not come into effect until 7 April, almost a month after Italy, and about two weeks after New York City and the UK. A widespread tendency to distance or an early lockdown cannot explain Singapore’s extreme outlier status.

Singapore’s highly effective track-and-trace systems provides a more promising explanation. Singapore learned several lessons from the SARS outbreak in 2003, including: that the transfer within hospitals was a central problem (UK, take note); and that temperature monitoring and isolating those with a fever, along with their contacts, was the best way to prevent community transmission.

Beginning in January, temperature screening became more common, and by early February daily screening was mandatory at most workplaces and for entry to most shopping centres, bars, restaurants and other crowded areas. Anyone with a fever was required to isolate for two weeks. Most public places also required patrons to declare their entry using their mobile phones to register via a SafeEntry QR code. Anyone diagnosed with Covid was interviewed regarding their whereabouts and their SafeEntry records were inspected. Close contacts were identified and quarantined. The hotspots identified by SafeEntry were also reported and people were advised to self-isolate if they had been in those areas during certain periods.

Singapore launched its own contact-tracing mobile app known as TraceTogether on 21 March. TraceTogether works via Bluetooth to record other phones using TraceTogether in close proximity. In the event of a user being diagnosed with Covid, the records can be downloaded by government officials and those who were in proximity can be alerted to either isolate or be tested.

Chan notes that utilisation of the TraceTogether app was far below what was needed in order for the app to be useful. There were several initial problems with the app, including the general difficulty for older people in navigating their smartphones, and some did not own one. The app was also incompatible with some phones, especially the iPhone. And it also had a tendency to drain phones’ batteries. The government addressed those problems by introducing a wearable app for people to carry around with them.

Nevertheless, take-up of the app (and wearable device) remained at around 25 per cent in March, far below the 75 per cent needed to make it useful. Human-interview contact tracing might have contributed to Singapore’s extreme outlier status, but smartphone tracing did not.

The major barrier to use of TraceTogether was a concern about privacy. As Chan notes:

‘The news on developing the wearable device and the updated TraceTogether app to collect users’ personal identification numbers evoked considerable negative feedback on social media, including an online petition which garnered more than 40,000 signatures within a short span of only a few days.’

People were concerned about the government having access to their location and who they were with. Chan considers that concern misguided because the government will only obtain the data where a person has been in close contact with a case. And besides, who wouldn’t want potentially life-saving intervention to protect them from Covid?

Well, the person having a secret affair, or moonlighting on their boss, or not working entirely legally or being with other people not working entirely legally. Even in Singapore, people can step outside the rules either on purpose or by accident, and Singapore is not known for leniency when it comes to those who don’t follow the rules, whatever the reasons might be. Governments globally have also breached privacy accidentally through the misplacing of records, or deliberately to counter crime or terrorism. Given all this, people’s reluctance to download a tool of state surveillance on to their phones is hardly a surprise.

Regardless of the reluctance to use TraceTogether, it is clear that Singapore implemented strong techniques to prevent Covid transmission. The worker dorms, however, were not included in the efforts. There are over 300,000 foreign workers residing in worker dorms in Singapore. Workers come from Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China and largely perform construction and other manual labour jobs that employers claim Singaporeans are unwilling to do – at least for the wages they offer.

The worker dorms provide, as Chan described, ‘crowded communal living… A typical dormitory has between 12 and 16 workers living together in a room with beds spaced less than one metre apart.’ Such crowding is perfect for spreading an infectious virus like Covid, and it spread impressively. Based on PCR and serology testing, just under half the workers were infected. Of those infected, just over a third showed symptoms, 25 were admitted to ICU, and two tragically died.

So, overlooking the threat of infection in the worker dorms was an error on the Singapore government’s part. But it was one that had relatively minimal health impact because the workers were young and healthy. Errors that allowed Covid to spread through care-home populations, notably in the UK, Sweden, and elsewhere, were vastly more destructive.

Around 12,000 Singaporean citizens live in care homes, compared with around 418,000 UK citizens. That equates to about 0.3 per cent of Singapore’s population (citizens only) and about 0.6 per cent of the UK’s. Outbreaks of Covid in care homes in the UK and elsewhere have had a devastating impact, but that has clearly been avoided in Singapore.

Indeed, shortly after the first case of Covid was detected in a care home on 31 March, Singapore’s Ministry of Health moved around 3,000 nursing home employees into hotels to isolate them from the wider community, and tested all 9,000 nursing-home staff. Positive tests were followed by contact tracing and quarantine. Those measures were in addition to a month-long ban on visitation, safe-distancing in all homes, and zoning. Singapore has reported only three Covid-related care-home deaths, compared with estimates of 25,000 Covid-related deaths in the UK.

In summary, then, Singapore implemented an effective track-and-trace system with associated quarantine. That system did not rely on the TraceTogether app. An app might be cheaper and easier to implement than manual track-and-trace, but that is still to be proven and the privacy concerns remain.

Early adoption of masks and lockdown were not a feature of Singapore’s response to Covid, and so early mask adoption and early lockdown did not make the difference. Whether the later adoption of masks has helped prevent any further spread, and whether the lockdown was necessary to prevent a wider community spread, will be answered by further scientific and historical enquiry. Strong protection of care-home staff and residents, however, clearly contributed to the remarkably low death rate.

Chan’s broad suggestion that psychology played a special role in Singapore is only true in a narrow sense. Adoption of the TraceTogether app is rising, nudged along by the government making further relaxation of the Covid rules dependent on more people adopting the app and by linking the app to the SafeEntry procedure. Soon it will not be possible to shop, go to a restaurant, or enter most public buildings and places unless the app is activated and running. It doesn’t require much psychological knowledge to understand why people conform with measures that are required for many everyday activities. As Chan explains, the authorities have been prepared to ‘explicate, elaborate, educate, engage, and enforce’ (my emphasis). So, although Singapore’s success in dealing with Covid is impressive, it has relied on compliance with strict laws that might not transplant across borders. Attempting to reproduce Singaporean approaches to Covid in London, Rome or New York could generate a considerable amount of what Chan calls ‘negative emotion’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/05/understanding-singapores-covid-miracle/

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How two states with opposite COVID strategies BOTH 'bent the curve': Cases, deaths and hospitalizations plummet by 30% in a month in lockdown-loving California AND open-all-hours Florida

Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, no two states have been more different in their approaches than California and Florida.

In early March, California Gov Gavin Newsom limited gatherings, closed bars and indoor dining at restaurants, implemented mask mandates and implored residents to stay at home.

Comparatively, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis has enacted few measures, lifting an ordinance that prevented people from operating businesses and restaurants as well as lifting COVID-19 related fines and penalties in September.

Looser restrictions mean schools have not been shut down statewide and mask mandates have never been imposed.

In November, he even criticized states like California with harsher restrictions and said he trusted his residents to 'use common sense.'

In an interview on Fox News Business on Sunday, DeSantis argued that Florida 'focused on lifting people up' during the pandemic but 'lockdown states' are 'putting people out of business.'

'There's a whole bunch of things we've been doing for COVID, but at the same time, we've lifted our state up, we've saved our economy and I think we're going to be first out of gate once we are able to put COVID behind the country,' he told Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.

Despite these different approaches, both states ended up with roughly the same outcome. A DailyMail.com analysis shows that, over the last two months, the states have each seen cases, deaths and hospitalizations fall by about one-third.

So were lockdowns necessary and did they work? The answer is a complicated one, but researchers say that they were beneficial in the early months due to our lack of knowledge about how COVID-19 spread and how to treat it.

Studies have shown that stay-at-home orders and restrictions saved numerous lives, but that they might be less useful now as more of the population gains natural immunity through infection or immunity via vaccination - but that social distancing and masks are still necessary to continue driving down case and death rates.

CALIFORNIA: Historically California has had a rate of about 8,499 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents

FLORIDA: Similarly to California, Florida has an overall rate of about 8,306 cases oper 100,000 people

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9262397/How-California-Florida-took-different-approaches-ended-result.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Young people’s despair over coronavirus deepens as crisis drags on

London: Life seemed promising last year to Philaé Lachaux, a 22-year-old business student in France who dreamed of striking out on her own in the live music industry. But the onset of the pandemic, leading to the loss of her part-time job as a waitress, sent her back to live at her family home.

Now, struggling to envision a future after months of restrictions, Lachaux says that loneliness and despair seep in at night. “I look at the ceiling, I feel a lump in my throat,” she said. “I’ve never had so many suicidal thoughts.”

“The pandemic feels like a big stop in our lives,” she added. “One that puts us so low that I wonder, ‘What’s the point?‘”

With curfews, closures and lockdowns in European countries set to drag into the northern spring or even the summer, mental health professionals are growing increasingly alarmed about the deteriorating mental state of young people, who they say have been among the most badly affected by a world with a foreshortened sense of the future.

Last in line for vaccines and with schools and universities shuttered, young people have borne much of the burden of the sacrifices being made largely to protect older people, who are more at risk from severe infections. But the resilience of youth may be overestimated, mental health professionals say.

Faced with a restricted social life and added uncertainty at an already precarious moment in their lives, many young people are suffering from a gnawing sense that they are losing precious time in their prime years.

Across the world, they have lost economic opportunities, missed traditional milestones and forfeited relationships at a pivotal time for forming identity.

“Many feel they’re paying the price not of the pandemic, but of the measures taken against the pandemic,” said Dr Nicolas Franck, the head of a psychiatric network in Lyon, France.

In a survey of 30,000 people that he conducted last spring, young people ranked the lowest in psychological well-being, he said.

In Italy and in the Netherlands, some youth psychiatry wards have filled to record capacity. In France, where the pandemic’s toll on mental health has made headlines, professionals have urged authorities to consider reopening schools to fight loneliness. And in Britain, some therapists said that they had counselled patients to break lockdown guidelines to cope.

In the United States, a quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had seriously considered suicide, one report said. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a survey conducted by UNICEF of 8000 young people found that more than a quarter had experienced anxiety and 15 per cent depression.

And a study conducted last year by the International Labor Organisation in 112 countries found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds could be subject to anxiety and depression.

The lasting effects on suicide rates, depression and anxiety are still being measured, but in interviews, a dozen mental health experts in Europe painted a grim picture of a crisis that they say should be treated as seriously as containing the virus.

“We are in the midst of a mental health pandemic, and I don’t think it’s treated with near enough respect,” said Arkadius Kyllendahl, a psychotherapist in London who has seen the number of younger clients double in recent months.

A sense of limbo

Many European countries went into northern autumn with the illusion that they had curbed virus outbreaks, only to face an even larger wave of infections this winter. That led to mistaken expectations, young people said, that harsh restrictions would soon end.

Lockdowns have offered some a respite from the stresses of school or work, which have made them more resilient, psychologists say. But for others, especially those who already struggled with mental health conditions or limited access to care, their fragility has been exacerbated.

“Not being in control of something like this is anxiety inducing,” said Dalia Al-Dujaili, 21, a student at the University of Edinburgh. As the pandemic has dragged on, so has the sense of limbo, she said, and she tried online therapy for the first time last year.

“What am I doing? Why am I getting a degree, if there’s not going to be any jobs?” she asked.

One blessing, she said, is that younger people are more open to discussing their struggles. “Everybody talks about their therapists and their meds,” she noted.

That has not stopped some from feeling guilty, however, given that the pandemic has affected everyone.

“There are people with bigger struggles: people who have lost their jobs, or a relative to the disease,” said Marcelo Andreguetti, a Brazilian graphic designer who studies in Cologne, Germany.

He said he began taking antidepressants after he was told he had depression and obsessive compulsive disorder this year.

‘Loneliness brings them into despair’

Winter has worsened the situation, according to therapists and psychiatrists, who say they have seen young people manifesting more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders and addictions.

In the Netherlands, Dr Robert Vermeiren, a professor of child psychiatry at Leiden University Medical Centre, said the acute ward he manages has been full for weeks — something he had never experienced.

The situation was so serious, he said, that his team did not send children home for Christmas, as it usually would. Isolation has also disrupted the usual teenage transition, when young people move from belonging to their family to belonging to their peers, Vermeiren added.

In Italy, calls doubled last year to the main hotline for young people who have considered or attempted harming themselves. Beds in a child neuropsychiatry unit at the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome have been full since October, said Dr Stefano Vicari, director of the unit.

Hospitalisations of young Italians who harmed themselves or attempted suicide have increased 30 per cent in the second wave of cases, he added.

“To those who say that, after all, these are challenges young people have to go through, that they will come out stronger, this is only true for some, those who have more resources,” Vicari said.

Catherine Seymour, head of research at the Mental Health Foundation, a Britain-based charity, said that young people living in poorer households were more likely to experience anxiety and depression, according to a study conducted among nearly 2400 teenagers.

“It may be that those in poorer households are more likely to lack enough space and internet access to help with schoolwork and communication with their friends,” Seymour said. “They may also be affected by their parents’ financial worries and stress.”

Studies from the first lockdowns suggest that they may have already left an indelible mark.

In France, a survey of nearly 70,000 students found that 10 per cent had experienced suicidal thoughts during the first months of the pandemic, and more than a quarter had suffered from depression.

In Spain, one of the world’s toughest lockdowns last spring had a profound impact, especially for young girls, who were more likely to experience stress, anxiety and depression, according to a survey of 523 people by the University of Valencia.

Konstanze Schoeps, one of the study’s authors, said, “They were developing their own freedom and space, and during lockdown they lost what they had just started to experience.” “It amounted to a process of grieving,” she added.

A search for remedies

The situation has become so dire that students and mental health advocates have asked authorities to moderate some measures, including by reopening schools and universities, even as officials worry that a premature easing of regulations will worsen the spread of new variants.

“Building social relationships is at the centre of our lives, and that is gone,” said Heïdi Soupault, 19, who urged President Emmanuel Macron of France to reopen universities in an open letter that spread quickly on the internet last month.

Starting this month, students in France can return to universities one day a week. They can also get three free therapy sessions.

In Britain, where mental health organisations and experts have urged the government to divert funding to help address the issue in schools, officials have said that they will consider mental health support as part of plans to lift restrictions. In the Netherlands, the central government has pressed regional authorities to invest more in youth mental health.

Dr Silvia Schneider, a child and adolescent psychologist in Bochum, Germany, said that governments should share clear messages on television and social media.

“We need to give very easy accessible information on how to handle the feeling that they are not alone with these challenges,” Schneider said about young people. “And that there are some things that can help them.”

To combat symptoms of anxiety and depression, some therapists, like Kyllendahl in London, are telling their clients to go outside as much possible — even if it involves breaking restrictions.

Still, some young people see a silver lining. “At least the pandemic has given us the right to be sad,” said Lachaux, the French student. “We don’t have to show all the time how strong we are.”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/young-people-s-despair-over-coronavirus-deepens-as-crisis-drags-on-20210215-p572gy.html

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Leftists have a new and hateful label for anyone who supported Donald Trump: Terrorist

Vengeance-seeking American leftists, in total coordination with Big Tech, corporate media collaborators, and the wholly unaccountable bureaucracy known as the deep state, have made it their mission to convince the nation that anyone who supported Donald Trump is a potential domestic terrorist.

How fanatical are the perpetrators of this narrative? CNN anchor Jake Tapper called on Republicans “to stop these insane lies [about the election results] that have taken root in their party” lest there be no end to “MAGA terrorism.” That Tapper and his network spent three years blatantly lying about Russian collusion reveals that genuinely insane lies that serve the progressive agenda are perfectly acceptable.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace not only likened Trump supporters to domestic terrorists, but noted that former President Barack Obama authorized drone strikes killing American citizens “for the crime of inciting violence, inciting terrorism.” She further insisted that Mitch McConnell, who was in the Senate at the time, knows the way you “root out terrorism” is to “kill those who incite it.”

Again, what constitutes incitement is highly selective. Here’s a small sampling of quotes from elected Democrats immune from such a designation:

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” —Maxine Waters

“We’re going to impeach the motherf—r!” —Rashida Tlaib

“We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And sadly, the domestic enemies to our voting system and honoring our Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in the Congress of the United States.” —Nancy Pelosi

“We will probably need a supplemental for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives.” —Pelosi again

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” —Chuck Schumer, “addressing” a mob on the steps of the Supreme Court — while a case was being heard

Is Schumer’s “you won’t know what hit you” less inciting than Trump’s “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”? And what about the sitting speaker of the House labeling her political opponents enemies?

https://patriotpost.us/articles/77651-progressive-or-terrorist-2021-02-11

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IN BRIEF

Pelosi says officers who protected Capitol will get Congressional Gold Medal (The Hill)

Remember back in January when Biden said the Capitol Police were racist?

Cuomo aide admits they hid nursing home data so feds wouldn't find out (New York Post)

Schumer leaves door open to 14th Amendment measure to bar Trump from office (Fox News)

New "gun trafficking" bill could cripple legal firearms market (Bearing Arms)

Pelosi banned congresswoman's military officer son from attending her swearing-in (Daily Caller)

Lincoln Project faces fierce backlash as more abuse evidence emerges (Fox News)

Well, except from CNN, which avoids the topic altogether.

AG Barr quashed plea deal by fired Officer Derek Chauvin in George Floyd death (NBC)

Biden administration finalizes deal for 200 million vaccine doses from Pfizer, Moderna (NBC)

Biden says U.S. will have enough vaccine for 300 million people by end of July (Washington Post)

Doctor destroyed for vaccinating patients (Power Line)

White House considering domestic travel bans to stop coronavirus mutations surge (Washington Times)

Gas prices are up 18% since Biden took office (Not the Bee)
Cancel Culture

China bans BBC after harrowing report on atrocities against Uyghurs (Fox News)

Berkeley dorms guarded by cops who only let students out to eat, use the bathroom, or get a COVID-19 test (Reason)

France sees foreign threat: "out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses" (Legal Insurrection)

Policy: Unemployment, inflation, and automation: The truth about the $15 minimum wage (Daily Wire)

Policy: Call transportation bailouts what they are: More welfare for labor unions (Heritage Foundation)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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The traitors

They were all RINOs, particularly the contemptible Mitt Romney, who never got over his defeat by Obama. And both they and McConnell wanted to distance them from Trump knowing how vengeful the Donks are. They wanted to be seen as good guys during the Biden regime. There have already been a lot of rats deserting the sinking ship and these were just the latest.

Former US President Donald Trump was acquitted Saturday in the Senate on the impeachment charge of inciting the January 6 Capitol riot despite seven Republican senators siding with Democrats to convict.

Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania all voted against their former party leader.

The Republicans issued statements explaining their votes as Mr Trump’s historic second impeachment trial came to a close.

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” Senator Cassidy said.

“After careful consideration of the respective counsels’ arguments, I have concluded that President Trump is guilty of the charge made by the House of Representatives,” said Senator Romney, who also voted to convict Trump on a separate charge a year ago during the Ukraine impeachment.

"I do not make this decision lightly, but I believe it is necessary," Burr said. "By what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

A majority of senators found Trump guilty on Saturday in a 57-43 vote, but the number fell short of the supermajority needed to convict the president. Had Trump been convicted, the Senate would have moved to bar the 45th president from holding federal office ever again.

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/7-republican-senators-vote-to-convict-trump-on-incitement-charge/news-story/7883cc10e3b1d8b0adf86009dfaa48a5

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What’s next for Donald Trump? Some speculations

Trump has a lot of troubles. But the loyalty and enthusiasm of his followers aren’t among them.

“Now that he has been stripped of the title ‘commander-in-chief,’ he could find a different army, within the United States, to command and control,” surmise a group of analysts at the Brookings Institute policy think-tank.

It’s a notion the US armed forces takes seriously. This week, senior Pentagon officers addressed their troops on the dangers of extremism and their vow to uphold the constitution and defend “the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.

But the seditious movement remains strong among US militia, white extremists, fringe Christian and conspiracy communities.

The QAnon movement is whipping itself up towards another crescendo. It insists Trump is still president. That he’s just biding his time. That all his enemies are about to be arrested. That he will return to the White House in triumph on March 4.

But the near-religious fervour of such supporters presents an opportunity: “Trump could well become so desperate that he opts to continue to stoke violent flames of tension,” the Brookings analysts write.

“The state party leaders are the activists, not the elite,” notes former Republican senate strategist Liam Donovan. “The rank and file are hardcore Republicans, and hardcore Republicans are hardcore Trump people. He has absolutely converted them.”

“The 2020 election put to rest the comforting fable that Trump’s election was a fluke. Trump is the United States — or at least a very large part of it,” writes Professor of political science Jonathan Kirshner.

“One cannot paint a picture of the American polity and the country’s future foreign policy without including the significant possibility of a large role for Trumpism, with or without Trump himself in the Oval Office”.

Trump’s followers are loyal to Trump. Not the Republican party. Just how large – and powerful – that cohort is yet to be seen. The first tests will come as the Republicans select candidates for the next round of elections. Who Republicans vote for during the 2022 midterm elections will clinch it.

Trump’s ultimate goal: swaying the 2024 presidential primaries. Will he make a political comeback? Or will he seek to have one of his favourites installed?

Not all senior Republicans are enthralled by Trump. A few key figures have openly rejected the bombastic former president’s behaviour as dangerous and subversive.

Congresswoman and House Republican leader Liz Cheney voted to impeach him. He’s now preparing candidates to oust her from the preselection for her seat.

Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell baulked at Trump’s demands at the last moment, saying he’d been “fed lies”. He’s now the target of intense internal pressure.

“Trump’s most ardent supporters not only offer allegiance to him but are deeply sceptical of any Republican who does not do the same,” the Brookings analysts say.

This may allow Trump to “go rogue” and splinter from the Republican Party. He’s already voiced the idea.

But any such move would be handing the Democrats an enormous advantage. He’s not likely to steal many of their votes. And any division of existing Republican ballots would be less likely to propel a candidate over the finishing line.

Then there’s the gulf between words and actions. In an anonymous vote, Cheney retained her position as House Republican leader 145 in favour to 61 against.

“There are plenty of foot-soldiers (quite literally), affiliated political staffers, and streams of grassroots funding to get such an effort off the ground,” the analysts write. “But Republican politicos know that while the Trump wing of the party is not large enough to be successful, it’s large enough to be devastating to their election chances.”

“Trump could look at the media landscape, see a significant prospective audience and launch new ways to communicate with the world. This could include establishing his own news channel.”

Social media may also be in his sights. And he has a ready and willing audience waiting in the wings.

Trump’s show business skillset was in full play as president. A personal social media and television stage would give him a new voice. He’ll have the adoration of fans. He’ll have a platform for his opinions. He can perform to the crowd.

Whatever the outcome, Brookings argues Trump has already paved the way for a successor seeking to ride on his coat-tails. “His supporters will still remember him fondly, but will have moved on to a new, shiny, race-baiting candidate like Josh Hawley or Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

The state of Georgia has opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to influence its election results.

“Trump’s legal problems could place him before state and federal judges who are unwilling to let his celebrity and claims of wealth supersede sentencing guidelines,” the Brookings analysts surmise. “It’s unlikely but possible that the former president could find himself in a place none of his predecessors found themselves: an orange jumpsuit.”

But it’s a scenario full of risk. He could well become a martyr to the Trumpism cause. With supporters ranging from extreme evangelicals to QAnon, the Proud Boys to neo-Nazis, from the Oath Keepers militia to white supremacists – the odds of such an outcome are high.

“Trump presided over dozens of ethical scandals, egregious procedural lapses, and startling indiscretions, most of which would have ended the political career of any other national political figure of the past half-century. But the trampling of norms barely registered with most of the American public,” says Professor Kirshner.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/whats-next-for-donald-trump-the-least-predictable-ex-president/news-story/9f4ce0768f531f2a211115cc4f5627fd

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Is this finally proof the vaccine is working in Britain? Covid deaths among over-85s plummet by 41% - almost twice as fast as un-vaccinated people over-65s

The number of Covid deaths in over-85s is falling twice as fast it is in younger Brits, raising hopes that the UK's vaccine drive is clicking into gear, with just one per cent of the population refusing jabs.

The Government's target of administering 15 million doses is set to be hit this weekend, amid a backdrop of falling cases and deaths, with pressure growing on Boris Johnson to present his 'roadmap' out of lockdown.

The supreme efforts of volunteers over recent weeks now appears to be paying dividends, with the number of fatalities among the oldest age group now falling on average by some 41 per cent a week.

By contrast, the number of weekly deaths is falling by 22 per cent for those aged under 65.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, a risk expert from the University of Cambridge, told the Sun: 'There is a statistically significant difference between the age groups. A substantial amount of this difference will be vaccines.

'And, by the end of the month, it's going to be quite dramatic. It is quite tricky to spot as deaths are falling everywhere — it's just that in older groups the drop is much faster than others.'

Meanwhile, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals just one in every 100 people offered a Covid jab have turned it down.

The Prime Minister said today he is 'optimistic' he will be able to begin announcing the easing of restrictions when he sets out his 'roadmap' out of lockdown in England on February 22.

Speaking during a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, Mr Johnson said: 'I'm optimistic, I won't hide it from you. I'm optimistic, but we have to be cautious.'

He said his first priority remained opening schools in England on March 8 to be followed by other sectors. 'Our children's education is our number one priority, but then working forward, getting non-essential retail open as well and then, in due course as and when we can prudently, cautiously, of course we want to be opening hospitality as well,' he said.

'I will be trying to set out as much as I possibly can in as much detail as I can, always understanding that we have to be wary of the pattern of disease. We don't want to be forced into any kind of retreat or reverse ferret.'

It comes as:

The so-called R-rate is now below one in every region and stands at between 0.7 and 0.9 for the whole of the UK, which is the lowest level since summer;

It was revealed illegal migrants were getting the Covid jab in plush quarantine hotels in Heathrow;

Matt Hancock said he hopes Covid will become a 'treatable' virus and a disease we can 'live with' after all adults are offered a vaccine by September;

It was reported that Cabinet ministers have backed the use of vaccine certificates for travellers wanting to head abroad this year;

There were 15,144 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the seven-day average down 26.3 per cent on the previous week;
There were an additional 758 deaths, with the seven-day total down by 27.1 per cent.

There is variation in uptake between age groups, however, with five per cent of those offered the vaccine aged 30-49 deciding not to receive it, compared to two per cent for the 50-69s and less than one per cent for the over-70s.

Furthermore, Professor Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), has said the uptake of the coronavirus jab among care home staff remains 'far too low'.

Prof Harnden said that nationally only 66% of care home staff had taken up the offer of a first dose.

'If they are to stop potentially transmitting to those vulnerable people who they look after and care for deeply, they need to take the immunisation up. The message needs to come across loud and clear,' he told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

However, he rejected suggestions that the vaccine could be made compulsory among staff if they wanted to carry on working in care homes. 'I would much prefer to be able to persuade by the power of argument than to force people or to make people lose their jobs because they didn't take up the vaccine.'

His comments come as the Government launches a fresh drive to encourage people to accept a vaccine amid continuing reluctance among some groups.

Ministers are confident they will achieve their UK-wide target of getting an offer of a vaccine to those most at risk from the virus - including all over 70s - by Monday's deadline.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he hoped a combination of vaccines and new treatments will mean Covid-19 could be a 'treatable disease' by the end of the year.

However, there is concern in Government at the rate of vaccine uptake among some communities - including some ethnic minorities.

NHS England said the top four priority groups in England - people aged 70 and over, care home residents and staff, health and care workers and clinically extremely vulnerable patients - 'have now been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated', while Wales said those groups had been reached.

NHS England said people aged 65 to 69 can now get a vaccine if GPs have supplies, while Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said they had already begun contacting some over 50s.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9256627/Covid-deaths-85s-plummet-41-week-thanks-vaccine.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Russia's Sputnik coronavirus vaccine is a shot in the arm for the Kremlin

It has been a long time since the Kremlin could claim a true soft-power victory: but in the development of its coronavirus vaccine, it appears to have finally found one.

The Sputnik V, which was last week revealed to be 92 per cent effective by the latest trial data, was named after the satellite that Moscow sent into orbit in a world-first in 1957.

The vaccine’s rushed registration last August was met with deep scepticism. But now the cheap, easy-to-transport jab is drawing envious glances from around the world, winning new friends in poorer countries and breaking ice with geopolitical rivals.

Even after Moscow began a rollout to its citizens last year, there was widespread doubt about the value of the Sputnik V. Full trial data had not been released, many Russians noted, while the Kremlin’s announcement that it was slightly more effective than the Moderna and Pfizer jabs was taken in the West as mere propaganda.

That changed with the release of Sputnik V’s late-stage trial data, showing in a publication in the highly respected Lancet that the vaccine did indeed rival the efforts of Western science.

The Gamaleya Institute in Moscow has a proud scientific history dating back to the 19th century and in recent years developed clinically approved vaccines for Ebola and MERS, but the institute’s statement early last year that its staff self-administered the Sputnik V vaccine before the official start of clinical trials drew strong criticism in the scientific community.

The Sputnik V's first takers were found in developing nations that struggled to get their hands on Western vaccines had so plumped for Russia’s $10-a-jab offering - and that trickle has become a rush with the emergence of verified positive results.

By Friday, 26 countries including the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and Pakistan have approved Russia’s vaccine, with new countries signing on almost daily.

Iran, which has seen the worst outbreak in the Middle East, earlier this week launched its inoculation campaign with the Russian jab by putting the son of the country’s health minister on live TV to receive the first dose.

On the other side of the world, Argentina, which has now recorded two million confirmed cases of Covid-19, led the way in Latin America by inoculating thousands of healthcare workers with Sputnik V at the end of December.

“The reputational baggage of this country is so bad that no one was expecting anything good from the vaccine,” Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Centre told the Telegraph.

Initially focusing on getting the vaccine out to poor countries was sensible, he added, as they came to resent the vaccine-hogging of Western powers.

“It’s a very clever move from the point of view of diplomacy targeting the countries that are struggling to get the vaccines from richer nations,” Mr Gabuev said.

“(The Kremlin) is counting on strengthening Russia’s image in developing countries, and it’s also about business: Russia has been selling the vaccine, and it is hoping to convert this into business deals including oil and gas further down the line.”

The big prize, of course, would be securing approval from the EU - even as the bloc issues almost daily condemnations of the Kremlin over the poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny. And victory appears within reach.

The European Medicines Agency said on Wednesday that it was in talks with the Gamaleya Institute to map out the next steps after it applied for approval.

Hungary will on Friday become the first EU nation to start using Sputnik V, the country's chief medical officer said.

Hungary broke ranks with the EU last month by becoming the first bloc member to approve the Russian jab, ordering two million doses to be delivered over three months, enough to vaccinate one million people.

"Today we are beginning to vaccinate with the Sputnik V vaccine, this is taking place in the designated vaccination stations," Cecilia Muller told a press briefing on Friday.

Family doctors in Budapest could choose five persons each to send for the jab at four hospitals in the capital, Ms Muller said, as part of an initial round of inoculations using the first batch of 2,800 doses sent from Russia.

Andrej Babis, the Czech prime minister, last week said that Prague would consider using Sputnik V even without the European regulatory approval.

He said on Wednesday that the Czech Republic, which has been badly hit by the pandemic, could buy the vaccine and have it ready in storage as soon as the EU approves it.

Saddled with growing anger over a slow rollout in the home country of the Pfizer jab, German authorities have offered support and possible production sites for Sputnik V.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who was one of President Putin’s staunchest critics over the poisoning of Mr Navalny who was convalescing in a Berlin hospital, has reached out to the Russian president to talk about possible cooperation, saying that “every vaccine is welcome” in the EU.

The Sputnik V’s developers hope that an upcoming trial in Azerbaijan of using their vaccine alongside the AstraZeneca jab could lead to potential registration in Britain.

Already, the Kremlin has seized proudly on the news that the EU has given its diplomats the green light to take it themselves.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/12/russias-sputnik-coronavirus-vaccine-shot-arm-kremlin-needs-right

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Moral Narcissism and the Show Trial of Donald Trump

Discussing the Democrats’ impeachment trial in legal terms is a ludicrous waste of time. Anyone literate in the English language can see that the concept of impeaching a former president is entirely absent from the U.S. Constitution.

Removing someone from office who is no longer in office in the first place is a serio-comic oxymoron straight out of the Theater of the Absurd.

What is actually going on is Trump Derangement Syndrome taken from a neurosis to some kind of bizarre psychosis with overtones of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The level at which this “trial” is worth examining, therefore, has a psychoanalytic, not a legal, tilt. It raises, once again, the question of why the Democrats and their media cohorts despise former President Donald Trump so much.

Yes, I know they fear his political comeback above all things and wish to extinguish it, but what is it, on a deeper level, that makes them believe this man to be such a monster that they are going full Stalinist in conducting what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) aptly called a “show trial”?

Allow me to be a tad self-referential because I think, at least to some degree, the answer can be found in my 2016 book—actually written before Trump won the nomination and with few specific references to him—“I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic If It Hasn’t Already.”

The narcissism I was referring to was not the traditional kind based on the Greek youth Narcissus’s fascination with his own image, but a narcissism of ideas, of “moral” self-description.

I explained it this way: What you proclaim, what you say you believe, is what makes you good, what makes you important—not the actual results of those beliefs, which are irrelevant.

Biden’s recent cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline could be described as a purely morally narcissistic act—proclaimed as something significant for the environment when, in reality, all it does is put people out of work and give comfort to our enemies as America becomes more energy-dependent. (Ironically, it also has negative environmental repercussions, forcing the oil to be transported by more risky means, such as by rail.)

John Kerry, the White House climate czar, is a moral narcissist par excellence, jetting around endlessly in his carbon-belching private plane to save us all from climate change.

Moral narcissism fits today’s liberals and progressives to a “T,” living millionaire and billionaire lives that make hypocrisy the understatement of all time while disdaining the working class, as well as their needs and values to a degree that would embarrass Marie Antoinette.

Trump undermined all that. He makes and made plenty of proclamations and certainly loves his private plane(s), but he’s all about results.

In fact, he makes a point of delivering on his promises, the exact antithesis of standard operating procedure in Washington, where politicians send us endless emails and texts (almost always asking for money) about what they say they believe or are planning, but almost never about what they have accomplished, as if we don’t and shouldn’t care about that.

It’s the way the game has been played in D.C. for ages, quite comfortable and insular when you think about it, and self-replicating. No wonder Trump is loathed.

(He also made things such as improving the economy seem remarkably easy and quick—just remove excessive regulations and lower taxes—actually common sense, when it was supposed to be so complicated and arcane that only wise politicians and economists could do it over years.)

Although nearly pervasive in the Democratic Party, moral narcissism isn’t exclusive to it. A number of Republicans fit the description as well and you can almost be certain they will be among those voting to convict Trump in the show trial.

These politicians (both sides) and the media are particularly angry because, as narcissists, moral or otherwise, they have a great need of fans—people to admire them constantly and make them feel alive.

Trump ruined that to a great extent by unmasking them as phonies. Rage and vengeance were and are the natural responses.

In a less-overtly psychological realm, it’s not inconsequential that he made his money before coming to Washington; they usually make theirs during and after.

Trump even had the temerity actually to lose half his fortune while serving, at the same time donating his salary to various federal agencies.

How “off-message” is that! Imagine if that became pro forma for our public servants.

So, it’s a “twofer” … or even a “threefer” … or is it a quinella when it comes to hating Trump?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/moral-narcissism-and-the-show-trial-of-donald-trump_3690218.html ?

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IN BRIEF

Impeachment managers hype emotion with unseen footage of Capitol rioters (National Review)

Team Biden erects tent city in Texas to handle massive influx of illegal immigrants welcomed by his policies (Fox News)

Gun control advocates 'confident' on executive action from Biden after White House meeting (Washington Times)

Americans reporting vote fraud say claims repeatedly dismissed by FBI (Washington Times)

COVID spending spree has deficit at $736 billion in first third of year (The Hill)

House Democrats propose multibillion-dollar COVID-19 relief health package (The Hill)

Biden Justice Department asks Supreme Court to save ObamaCare (Washington Free Beacon)

Dozens of math-challenged former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party (Reuters)

Why stop with two? CDC recommends double masks to help protect against COVID (CBS)

Pharmacies say they could handle a massive ramp-up in COVID-19 vaccination distribution but lack supply (Washington Examiner)

CDC: Fully vaccinated people don't need to quarantine if exposed to COVID (NBC)

Hope 'n' change is busted: Biden's new target for reopened schools is behind where U.S. is now (Fox News)

Biden brings up China's human rights abuses, "unfair" economic practices in first call with Xi Jinping (Forbes)

Fed Chair Powell says rates will stay low for a while, citing bleak jobs picture (CNBC)

NBA says all teams must play national anthem after Dallas Mavericks stop playing it (NBC)

YouTube completely bans LifeSiteNews, removes all videos (Blaze)

Facebook says new algorithm will "reduce political content" on news feeds (Just the News)

Policy: Texas governor warns $15 minimum wage would "put a boot on the neck" of small businesses (FEE)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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The Decline of Intelligence in the West

The article below by Canadian essayist David Solway is a dazzling display of cultural awareness but lacks sober consideration of any of the issues he addresses. So let me fill in some of the gaps.

Why the decline in average IQ? There does seem to be such a decline but it is no mystery. For around 50 years, effective contraception has enabled women to enjoy sex and male company generally without childbirth resulting. So many women have opted out of childbearing. And, sadly, highly intelligent women are more likely to do that. And that means that they do not pass on their genes for intelligence. So present-day mothers have a lower average IQ. And that can only mean a population with a lower average IQ.

So what are the implications of a population with a lower IQ? We do of course already have some such populations: Africans and Arabs, for instance. And both those have created societies where it is not inviting to live. But such societies have many differences from ours so the dysfunction could be due to other factors than IQ.

A much more hopeful observation is that all societies are only superficially democratic. It is the smart fraction that rules the roost. So Israel is run by the Ashkenazim, Brazil and Mexico are run by whites and the 7% of Britons who get a private school education run almost everything in that country. And such elites trend to be self-perpetuating. Private school boys tend to marry the sisters of their classmates and black/white marriages are rather rare. And Sephardi/Ashkenazi marriages are the exception rather than the rule.

So what will happen is that as long as the smart fraction intermarry, their societies will tend to be run much as before. A large dumb majority will not matter much

But one needs to be cautious in attributing everything to IQ. There are other influences which have produced the dumb behaviour that Solway documents. An obvious one is the decline in American education. American education is now decisively in the hands of the Left and producing well-informed citizens does not seem to be one of their priorities. They want to produce "woke" people above all. And being woke is rather inimical to real knowledge.

And woke attitudes are now society-wide, with few on the Left being immune to them. Most conservatives have no time for wokery but they too sometimes make obeisances to it for the sake of peace. So the deterioration in the national discourse can largely be traced to the ideological needs of the Left


Recent studies have reported a worrisome decline in IQ scores in Western nations over the last decades, a reversal of the once-hopeful Flynn Effect (named after the late philosopher and psychologist James R. Flynn) which posited a growth in cognitive abilities for much of the 20th Century. Now the Flynn Effect seems to have reversed, leading to predictions of a general dumbing down of selective populations. Other studies report that IQ erosion is not confined to this century but that IQ has dropped by an average of 14.1 percent over the last century. As Evan Horowitz writes for NBC News, “A range of studies using a variety of well-established IQ tests and metrics have found declining scores across Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, France and Australia.”

Horowitz argues that the plummet in cognitive abilities “could not only mean 15 more seasons of the Kardashians, but also… fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future.” Flynn himself, who did the original research on the eponymous effect, has stated that “The IQ gains of the 20th century have faltered.” Flynn’s more optimistic Are We Getting Smarter: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century was published in 2012; his subsequent findings led in an opposite direction.*

The brainchild of French psychologist Alfred Binet, the IQ construct is a controversial issue with many different interpretations and applications. Charles Spearman proposed the variable notion of a g factor, or general intelligence measure, responsible for overall performance on various mental ability tests such as memory retention, spatial processing, and quantitative reasoning. The g factor has been compared to general athletic ability which allows a person to excel in different fields and activities. There has been vigorous debate over the strict equivalency between IQ scores and intelligence, but there is broad agreement on a general waning of intelligence or, from a clinical perspective, an ebbing of IQ scores. Of course, smart people can sometimes do poorly on IQ tests and obtuse people can sometimes rank high on aspectual tiers of these tests. But the consensus appears to be that the correlation approximately holds while allowing for scalene anomalies. In effect, the g factor is eroding.

One recalls MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, who referred to “the stupidity of the American voter” as helping him to pass the controversial law. One wonders if Gruber ever heard of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s test results purporting to show that “the rot starts at the top.” This would implicate Gruber and his cohort in the experience of what Piaget calls horizontal décalage, which stymies the application of cognitive functions and logical operations to extended tasks. In other words, Gruber et al. are also stupid, gradually destroying the very society that enabled them to flourish. But the rot can also start at the bottom, as a combination of generalized mental vacancy and low-to-no-information voters furthers cultural and social degeneration. As Morris Berman remarks in The Twilight of American Culture, “A society cannot function if nearly everyone in it is stupid.”

Why should we be surprised that an American president should pronounce “corpsman” as “corpseman”? Or that a Canadian prime minister says “peoplekind” in lieu of “mankind”? Or that a Washington, D.C., mayor and his staff should have objected to a perfectly good word like “niggardly”? Or that a Methodist pastor and Congressman should follow the exclamation “Amen” with “a-woman,” when an ordained minister should surely know that “Amen” is an acronym for the Hebrew אֵל מֶלֶךְ נֶאֱמָן (El melech neeman: “Lord and faithful King”)—or, as some scholars think, a calque for the Aramaic “so be it”? One can multiply these gaffes, misnomers, and malapropisms indefinitely among those who should know better—and that is merely scratching the surface. The dumbing down phenomenon is virtually encyclopedic in heft and extent.

One sees the same intelligence deficit in the names chosen for some of our major social media networks. “YouTube” is cringe-worthy—just say it dispassionately to yourself. “Facebook” is a ridiculous moniker, as well as a dubious platform: as Niall Ferguson quips in The Great Degeneration, Facebook is “a vast tool enabling like-minded people to exchange like-minded opinions about, well, what they like.” Then there’s “Twitter.” A conversation between human beings is compared to birds twittering on a digital branch—the implicit message is that communicants are bird-brained. (Contrast to such infelicity a beleaguered platform like “Parler” with its French connotation of real speech and an analogy to a living room where people gather to converse amicably and share ideas.) The Apple logo—an apple with a bite taken out of it—is the fruit of pure bathos and corporate stupidity, inadvertently reminding us of the primal sin in the Garden of Eden and warning us about the perilous quest for knowledge that tantalizes on another digital tree. “Think different” is thus contra-indicated, an original sin. Apple, seriously?

Top or bottom doesn’t seem to matter. In his spy thriller Early Warning, Michael Walsh comments about government officials who, presumably “the best minds of the Republic,” are merely a “collection of hacks, time-servers, and affirmative-action appointees” whose advancement depends heavily on nepotism. “It was really pathetic, when you thought about it: that more than two centuries of American history had come to this.” Believe it. An American congressman fears the island of Guam will capsize. So-called “ambush journalist” Jesse Watters in Watters World interviews young university students; the level of ignorance, functional illiteracy, and smug self-esteem he uncovers is enough to turn the specter of our cultural practices, general knowledge, and university system into a cosmic joke.

And so it goes. A London community activist, asked about removing a Churchill statue during the summer of BLM love, admits she hasn’t “personally met” Winston Churchill. A swarm of Twitter users condemns Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Tom Brady as “racist” for defeating half-black Kansas City Chiefs’ QB Patrick Mahomes on Super Bowl LV during Black History Month—the fact that the great majority of Brady’s teammates are black and are clearly Brady enthusiasts seems to have escaped their attention. Major economic and energy policies seem planned not by cerebral giants but by weed-addled pubescents. Bill Gates, for example, wants to pepper the sky with aerosols to reflect sunlight out of the atmosphere and initiate global cooling—the risks are incommensurable and likely irreversible. Gates has what we might call “sector-intelligence” and might do well on segments of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, but I wouldn’t bet on his g score. The travesty of intelligence, prudence, and wisdom is beyond calculation, and it is only getting worse as IQ continues to slip down the great chain of thinking. This is the world that the classic film Idiocracy extravagantly punctures.

Why this should be is anybody’s guess. No one really knows. Various theories have been proposed to account for accelerating neural descent, ranging from the Dewey-inspired “progressive education” agenda working its leveling passage from the turn of the 20th century to the decrepit public schools and failed universities of the present day; to the softening effect of prolonged affluence and ease on a culture; to the debilitating influence of “smart” technology that performs our cognitive functions for us; to the assumption that women of higher intelligence are having fewer children, implying that women of lower intelligence are driving population growth; to the effects of increased media exposure and the consequent lessening of reading; to the emergence of the vices of envy and resentment owing to radical egalitarianism and the rancor of the under-performing against the skilled, hard-working, and successful, a dynamic cogently analyzed by Dinesh D’Souza in Stealing America; or to the merely inescapable fact of decay: as Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” One thinks, too, of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ remark in his Journal: “From much, much more; from little, not much; and from nothing, nothing.” Whatever the cause or causes may be, intellectual deterioration seems to be the case.

What, then, is to be done? We need to go to literature to contemplate possibilities for restoration. The problem, says Barry Lopez in Arctic Dreams, is that “The good minds still do not find each other often enough.” In his reflections on culture In Bluebeard’s Castle, George Steiner imagined a future of small, eremitic clusters of intellectual light dotting an arid landscape, recycling Max Weber’s notion of frail enclaves of enlightenment as the last resort of a civilization sinking into darkness. Walter M. Miller Jr.’s classic A Canticle for Leibowitz portrayed an obscure abbey in the Utah desert where historical knowledge is kept alive and preserved from the “Simpletons,” even if it’s only a sacred shopping list or a mysterious blueprint for circuit design. “Let us change the icons,” wrote Will Durant in The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, “and light the candles.”

Berman calls this the “monastic option,” but he does not regard it as an assembly of cenobites residing in a physical plant somewhere in the outback. Instead, it consists of a disparate collection of individuals, “cultural nomads,” who may not know one another but are dedicated to a life of private decency, “the disinterested pursuit of truth, the cultivation of art [and] the commitment to critical thinking.” The “new monks” derive from and support “traditions of craftsmanship, care, and integrity, preservation of canons of scholarship, critical thinking, individual achievements and independent thought.” Their purpose is “to transmit a memory trace of what a culture can be about.”

It’s a daunting task. The number of people incapable of lucid argument and civil debate, whether Internet trolls, social media vulgarians, angry progressivists, media ignoramuses and intellectually challenged political leaders, is legion. It is therefore by no means astonishing that the greatest civilization the world has ever known, the Judeo-Christian West, is subsiding into a state of cognitive expiry, prone to fantasies and delusions, unable to confront and parse the reality of the world, oblivious to the symbiosis of man, history and nature, distracted by pseudo-scientific baubles, bereft of spiritual substance, and foreign to the very idea of truth.

In Social and Cultural Dynamics, Pitirim Sorokin, one of the great thinkers of our time, distinguished between “ideational” cultures, which are knowledge-and-spiritually focused, and “sensate” cultures, which are primarily informational and materialistic, the latter eventually devolving into a condition in which coercion, fraud, debasement of the creative impulse, family breakdown, and the encroachment of “untruth” into the human conscience (read: political correctness, fake news, electoral debauchery) are paramount. The latter is our present cultural home, lacking reflective capacity and experiencing a downtrend in clarity of thought and general percipience, shaving off IQ points as clarity and percipience drop. The concept of intelligence is complex and multifactorial, but if by “intelligence” we mean something like the ability to see the world as it is, to understand context, and to act in ways proven to be beneficial over time, then, according to Sorokin, intelligence is likely to decline in the latter stages of a “sensate” age.

The decline of intelligence—moral rectitude and creative exuberance are collateral casualties—is now in full throttle. The exceptions to the debacle—monks, nomads, people of integrity, people capable of common sense, the classically educated—represent the only viable hope for a new “ideational” age to arise out of the rubble of a “sensate” disaster. It may take another century to bring about what Sorokin called “the turn,” the slow ascent up the IQ ladder, which is cold comfort indeed. But I suspect it’s the only real comfort we have

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Sens. Grassley and Tillis Unload on Biden Order Allowing Violent, Criminal Illegals to Go Free

In the opening days of the Biden presidency, the administration issued an array of executive actions, including a 100-day moratorium on deportations for illegal aliens.

Led by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), Republican lawmakers took note of the order, which holds no exception for violent criminals who are also in the country illegally. The pair wrote to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tae Johnson, pointing out that the memorandum “constitutes a wholescale abandonment of law enforcement,” as well as the “will of Congress.” They note that during his confirmation, Mayorkas vowed to respect the rule of law, but this moratorium does not.

“With respect to the 100-day deportation moratorium, we noted with alarm that there is no general exception to the moratorium for criminal aliens. Under the terms of the memorandum, unless the ICE Director determines that the law requires a specific criminal alien be removed, most criminal aliens with final removal orders will be untouchable as long as the deportation moratorium is in place. Given that 92% of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ (ERO) interior removals from the United States in FY2020 had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges,1the failure to exempt all criminal aliens from the deportation moratorium seems particularly egregious,” Grassley and Tillis wrote on Wednesday. “This deportation moratorium constitutes a wholescale abandonment of law enforcement and a frustration of the will of Congress, written into the law, that aliens with final removal orders actually be removed from the country. It also does not signal the sort of respect for the rule of law that Secretary Mayorkas professed repeatedly at his confirmation hearing on January 19."

The letter was also signed by GOP Sens. John Cornyn (TX), Ron Johnson (WI), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Mike Lee (UT), Josh Hawley (MO), Joni Ernst (IA), Ted Cruz (TX), Tom Cotton (AR), James Lankford (OK), and Ben Sasse (NE). The GOP lawmakers warned the Biden administration officials that the moratorium as written not only sidesteps the rule of law, but also has potential to establish an influx of "sanctuary cities."

"The Department’s January 21 memorandum creates, in our view, an unacceptable threat to public safety; constitutes a disregard for the rule of law and the will of Congress; and undercuts the integrity of the immigration enforcement regime. While some local jurisdictions have in recent years taken steps to establish themselves as 'sanctuary cities,' at grave peril to their residents, the interim enforcement priorities and the deportation moratorium described in the January 21 memorandum are a big step towards converting the entire United States into a sanctuary nation. This is illogical and unacceptable."

While promising “unity” and a return to normalcy, the moratorium issued by the Biden administration would allow violent criminals, who are illegally present in the first place, to return to the streets.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/02/04/grassleytillis-n2584193

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Australian expert claims coronavirus likely started in China following WHO investigation

An Australian virus expert who recently travelled to China to investigate the coronavirus pandemic is convinced it originated there.

NSW Health infectious diseases expert Professor Dominic Dwyer was part of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) 14-strong virus investigation team which visited Wuhan for two weeks to study the outbreak’s source.

While the investigation did not definitively declare China as the source, Prof Dwyer, who is now in quarantine following his return to Australia, told Nine he believed COVID-19 “started in China”.

“I think the evidence for it starting elsewhere in the world is actually very limited. There is some evidence but it’s not really very good,” he said.

The WHO team visited a number of placed linked to the initial outbreak, including the Huanan Seafood Market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Hubei Province Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Hubei Provincial Hospital.

Prof Dwyer also added bats were the “most likely” source of the virus but that it had been active in the community for “weeks’ before the outbreak connected to the wet market in late 2019.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/australian-expert-claims-coronavirus-likely-started-in-china-following-who-investigation/news-story/5f3a6b8037bebe52c9e9fcc1fdd4fee0

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The Left's 'Insurrection' Hypocrisy

They demand that rioters and inciters be held accountable. Unless they're on the Left.

It’s telling, isn’t it, how Democrats supported a summer’s worth of deadly and costly rioting all across our nation’s inner cities and yet squealed like stuck pigs when a single short-lived eruption came too close for their Capitol Hill comfort.

In an all-too-predictable display of liberal privilege, they trotted out endless encouragement of and justification for the former, and nonstop denunciations of the latter; a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for the former, and a presidential impeachment for the latter.

“They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop,” said then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.”

And they should not.

How is such overt sanctioning of mob violence not a disqualifying act? After uttering those remarks, Harris shouldn’t have been able to run for dog catcher, much less vice president of the United States. But she’s a leftist, so she’s immune from accountability.

“To the media,” as Pat Buchanan writes, “the long hot summer of rioting, looting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was driven by ‘racial justice’ protests against a ‘systemic racism’ that permeates society. … Joe Biden and his party have responded by setting as a goal the replacement of ‘equality of rights’ with ‘equity,’ an equality of results, where gaps in test scores, incarcerations, incomes and wealth between white and black are to be closed by government action.”

Ah, equity — that sweet-sounding word with the sourest of meanings. As we wrote last month, “Equality and equity aren’t the same things. Not even close. The root of the former word is one of the self-evident truths embedded in our Declaration of Independence. It refers to the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. The latter word, however, refers to systems and institutions that are ‘fair’ and ‘just.’”

Consider, for example, the hard-left and wholly disreputable money-grubbers at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently decided to give certain racists a pass based on the color of their skin. “In the name of equity,” writes Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag, “the SPLC announced that it’s shutting down its black nationalist hate groups category like the Nation of Islam. After ‘doing the internal work of anti-racism,’ the SPLC will no longer list black racist hate groups because ‘the hate is not equal.’”

When is “hate” not really hate? When it comes from the Left.

Or consider the Bellingham insurrection. What’s that? You haven’t heard about the Bellingham, Washington insurrection two weeks ago — the one in which antifa tangled with police, stormed city hall, and forced the city’s mayor to be evacuated? Imagine that. “It is impossible to describe how evil these Antifa terrorists are,” writes Power Line’s John Hinderaker. “You really have to watch videos of them in action — this is just one of thousands — to get the picture. Which is why, I suppose, such videos are absent from the nightly news: Democrats want to protect their shock troops.”

Indeed, it’s almost as if Big Media only denounced certain kinds of political violence and insurrection. As for the January 6 riot at the Capitol, “That was an act of insurrection,” writes Buchanan of leftist opinion, “a treasonous attempt to overturn a democratic election and overthrow a democratic government. Of all the riots in 2020 and 2021, that was the unforgivable one. The proper response to that riot is not to heed its angry voices but to impeach the president on whose behalf they acted, to strip him of any right to serve again in public office, and to write new laws to deal with the horrific ‘domestic terrorism’ we witnessed at the Capitol.”

If it weren’t for double standards, the Left wouldn’t have any at all.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/77647-the-lefts-insurrection-hypocrisy-2021-02-10

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The oligarchy’s chosen method of “reopening” after the pandemic shows that it intends to attempt to validate the harm it did over the previous year. Will it work?

Riding fear of COVID-19, our oligarchs persuaded millions of Americans to join in masked pantomime, to deliver themselves to something like house arrest, and to blame Donald Trump for their troubles. But as much as the oligarchs enjoyed COVID powers and dreamt of segueing them into a “new normal,” they knew that America could not be locked down forever.

They especially knew, were they to unseat Trump and become responsible for the country, their charges that he had failed to stop the pandemic would come back to haunt them. “Why can’t you stop it?” would be the natural question they would have to face as the virus did what airborne viruses do: spread. Hence, after January 20, dismounting the COVID tiger, albeit gingerly, became the order of the day.

And so it happened, on January 22, Joe Biden spoke the truth: nothing that anyone could do can alter the trajectory of the virus’ spread.

A few grumbles notwithstanding, there was silence from very same media and “experts” who had accused Trump of responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths because he had not implemented a nationwide test-trace-and-quarantine system. The futility of such measures in preventing an infectious disease from running its course once it has entered a population was as obvious in 2020 as in 2021. But then, denying it served the oligarchy’s prosecution. Affirming it now serves its defense.

Already on January 16, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that his state could not wait to reopen until herd immunity had been reached naturally or through a vaccine, because “If we wait, there will be nothing left to open.”

Across the country, some of the Democratic mayors and governors who had most vigorously imposed COVID-19 restrictions hastened to remove them, even though the number of “cases” is higher than it was in April. By the third week of January, California Governor Gavin Newsom revoked his December stay-at-home order along with a 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew he had imposed in the face of rising case numbers. One reason for Newsom’s move may be the fact that just over 1 million Californians have signed a petition to force a recall election.

But there is a larger reason why the ruling class seems intent on distancing itself from responsibility for the COVID restrictions. The oligarchs and their press agents had argued the COVID troubles were 100 percent Trump’s fault, and defeating him would alleviate them. Preserving the lockdowns is unsustainable politically. But lifting the restrictions in the apparent face of rising cases risks uncovering the fact that COVID was less a plague than a political ploy. To repeat President Biden’s true statement of how little government can do with regard to COVID is an indictment of the entire oligarchy’s conduct since March. It exposes that conduct as political predation with deadly consequences for millions. Hence, dismounting the COVID tiger in a way that preserves the powers it gained for the oligarchy requires some prestidigitation.

Fortunately for the oligarchy, there is a way of making sure that each lightening of restrictions dovetails nicely with a drop in the number of “cases.” How is that? Because vaccines notwithstanding, the “softness,” the very plasticity of the number by which the oligarchy scared the hell out of America in 2020, makes it possible, presto magico, gradually to ease the fear.

In April, I explained in these pages how changing definitions of the term “case” made it possible to substitute the oligarchy’s agenda for COVID’s reality in the minds of Americans. The same dishonest process can be used in reverse.

The reality is that we do not know how many people have been infected with COVID-19, and the standard PRC test only muddies the waters. On Inauguration Day, the World Health Organization, after consultation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, issued a two-part directive intended to reduce the number of what it calls “false positive” COVID cases that clarifies only the corrupt political nature of everything surrounding the pandemic.

Throughout 2020, doctors and hospitals had been encouraged—if not pressured—to label as COVID any set of symptoms that looked remotely like it (explaining why cases of influenza almost disappeared from the United States last year). Now the WHO asked them to make sure that in order for a case to be labeled COVID, symptoms must also match positive results of the standard PCR test.

Simultaneously, the WHO strongly suggested that those who administer the PCR test reduce the number of cycles through which samples are processed. Through 2020, most jurisdictions in America had run samples through 40 cycles. Running that many cycles radically increases the chances of a positive result. This not only inflated the number of “cases,” but it also attributed hospitalizations to COVID-19 rather than to other causes. It led to patients being treated as if they had COVID rather than for what really ailed them, and attributing deaths to COVID that in fact were not.

The new guidance guarantees that, in the coming months, the number of “cases” will drop. The oligarchy will credit the reduction to its wise management. Loosening its grip gradually, it will claim benevolence and prudence. By thus dismounting the COVID tiger, it will try to validate the harm it did over the previous year.

There being nothing especially artful about this stratagem, and most Americans not being utterly stupid, its success depends exclusively on the media’s near-unanimous complicity in it. That unanimity, however, may be getting harder to maintain. Not only is the binding objective—getting rid of Trump—no longer there, documents are surfacing that show the material complicity between Anthony Fauci, the oligarchy’s fountain of authority in all matters COVID-19, and the development of the virus itself. Covering for that level of professional incompetence and corruption may be a bridge too far, even for today’s media.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13406&omhide=true

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IN BRIEF

Biden has now signed 52 executive orders and actions in first 20 days (Daily Wire)

U.S. sees a steady and significant drop in coronavirus cases, but media drumbeat continues (NBC)

Cuomo asks court to overturn his own COVID restrictions on houses of worship (National Review)

CVS, Walgreens to begin delivering COVID-19 vaccines Friday (USA Today)

Americans are saving more during the pandemic (NBC)

U.S. consumer prices up 0.3% in January, led by energy spike ... caused by Biden's bad executive orders (AP)

TikTok sale to Oracle, Walmart shelved as Biden reviews security (Fox Business)

Woke NFL's Super Bowl LV attracts 96.4M viewers, fewest since 2007 (Disrn)

Woke NBA's Dallas Mavericks won't play national anthem at home games (The Hill)

Woke syrup: The brand formerly known as Aunt Jemima to be called Pearl Milling Company (NBC)

Policy: Biden's weak case for returning to the UN Human Rights Council (National Review)

Policy: Africans plead with Joe Biden to stop paying their countries to kill children (The Federalist)

U.S. to reengage with the farcical UN Human Rights Council (State.gov)

Senator Richard Shelby is fourth Republican to not seek reelection in 2022 (Senate.gov)

Minimum wage increase would kill 1.4 million jobs, CBO finds (Daily Caller)

Biden press secretary says illegal immigrants convicted of crimes will not be prioritized for deportation (Post Millennial)

Biden administration considers COVID tests for domestic flights (Roll Call)

Hacker attempted to poison water supply in Florida city near Super Bowl in Tampa (Examiner)

Tom Brady called "racist" on social media for winning Super Bowl during Black History Month (PJ Media)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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AstraZeneca vaccine: why Australia is forging ahead as South Africa tackles Covid variant

Medical experts say the jab is effective against severe infection, as researchers work to adapt vaccines against variants and experiment with mixing inoculations

Australian health authorities have moved to calm concerns about
the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after a small-scale study suggested its efficacy against mild to moderate infections from the the South African variant of the virus could be as low as 10%.

AstraZeneca is going through the Therapeutic Goods Administration approval process now and is slated to be rolled out from April. This is what experts are saying.

You should still get the AstraZeneca vaccine

That’s the advice of Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly. He has urged people not to put too much stock in the results of the South African study, which he stressed was both limited in scope and had not yet been peer-reviewed.

Kelly told reporters on Tuesday that people should be wary of “taking small amounts of information quickly, without looking at it carefully, and making conclusions”.

“At the moment, I can absolutely say – and this may change in future, and we will be nimble in the way we look at that information and putting that into our planning – but at the moment, there’s no evidence anywhere in the world that AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern. And that is the fact.”

His comments were echoed by Prof Mary-Louise McLaws, an Australian epidemiologist and advisor to the World Health Organisation on Covid-19.

“I commend your readers to get any vaccine that is offered to them, because it will reduce severity,” McLaws told Guardian Australia. “Any vaccine is better than no vaccine. If you do get the virus it will improve your outcomes, your response, and you may not get severe Covid.”

There is also evidence from another unpublished study in Israel on the Pfizer vaccine, which suggested that people who are not protected by the vaccine nevertheless had a reduced viral load. So even if a vaccine had a reduced efficacy, there is evidence to suggest it will reduce the extent to which a person spreads the disease, McLaws said.

AstraZeneca, unsurprisingly, also played down the study on the South African variant, saying it was a small phase one or two trial, which showed limited efficacy against mild disease from the variant.

“While we have not been able to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalisation given that subjects were predominantly young, healthy adults, we do believe our vaccine will still protect against severe disease for the B1351 variant, particularly when the dosing interval is optimised to 8-12 weeks,” AstraZeneca said.

What the South African study actually showed

The study was a small-scale trial of 2,000 people aged 31 which showed the AstraZeneca vaccine had as little as 10% efficacy in preventing mild to moderate infection against the South African variant of Covid-19, B1351. However the researchers expressed hope the vaccine would still offer significant protection against more serious infection, which is the goal of the global vaccine program.

The study is yet to be peer-reviewed or published. The South African government has paused its planned rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in response.

It is not the only vaccine to show reduced efficacy against the South African variant. Trials of the Novavax vaccine also showed 60% efficacy against the South African variant, compared with an 89% efficacy overall – 95.6% against the original coronavirus and 85.6% against the UK variant.

Kelly said Australian authorities will be looking very closely at all information which comes out about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but said there was to date no information to suggest it did not protect against severe infections from the South African variant.

He said Australian authorities will be talking closely with the UK, where AstraZeneca has already been widely distributed.

“This is a very good vaccine, very safe, and once it goes through those processes, of safety, quality and efficacy, we will be able to look to roll out that vaccine as well – as always, subject to the TGA advice,” he said.

Yes, but it will take time. AstraZeneca said it has already started adapting its vaccine against the South African variant, “and will advance rapidly through clinical development so that it is ready should it be needed”.

Novavax responded to the lower results in South Africa by saying it would immediately start developing a new vaccine aimed specifically at the South African variant.

AstraZeneca is a viral vector vaccine, which relies on the use of an RNA molecule – the same part of the virus as used in the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Novavax is a more traditional protein-based vaccine, and they take longer to modify.

Kelly said mRNA and viral vector vaccines can be adapted more quickly than protein vaccines, but even if they are able to be adapted,” it is another issue to make nine billion of them”.

“If we’re going to vaccinate the whole world, it’s going to take time,” he said.

Why don’t we just all take the Pfizer vaccine?

That would be a great option, says McLaws. Except we don’t have enough, and there is significant pressure on the global supply. Australia recently secured an additional 10m doses of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total contracted amount to 20m doses by the end of the year.

That’s enough to administer the required two doses to 10 million people, or just under 40% of Australia’s population. The first 80,000 doses of the Pfizer are still on track to arrive in Australia by the end of February, Kelly says, and authorities are hoping for weekly deliveries thereafter. People in the highest-risk cohort – frontline medical staff, hotel quarantine workers, aged and disability care home residents and staff – will get that vaccine.

The balance of the population is likely to receive either AstraZeneca, which is manufacturing 50m doses in Melbourne that are expected to be administered from March, pending TGA approval, or the Novavax vaccine, which is several months away.

What are the other options?

Well, we could mix vaccines. That concept is being trialled in the UK – they called for volunteers just last week – and will involve giving 820 unvaccinated people over the age of 50 a first dose of either the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine. Half the group will have their vaccine switched for the second dose, and the other half will get the same again.

It is an option worth considering, McLaws said. Without it, the risk is that people vaccinated with AstraZeneca – largely the 20- to 39-year-old cohort – may not be fully protected against Covid-19. That’s a problem because that age group, while not at highest risk of serious disease or death, made up half of all people who contracted Covid-19 in Australia last year. They are highly mobile and more likely to be underemployed and working multiple part-time jobs, which increases their risk of exposure.

Even without considering new variants, AstraZeneca has a lower reported efficacy than Pfizer and Novavax, the other options in Australia’s stable. It sought regulatory approval in the UK on the basis that it has about 70% efficacy.

“The risk is that if our 20- to 39-year-olds are vaccinated with AstraZeneca, we have at least a 30% risk of them not eliciting an immune response without the additional problem of a variant,” McLaws said. “This is an opportunity to look at how we protect the unknown 30-odd percent. And that may be to mix up the second dose with something that doesn’t have such low efficacy for the South African strain and the Brazilian strain.”

What does this mean for borders and other restrictions?

To date there have been no reported cases of the South African variant in the Australian community.

But the risk remains. Since Friday there have been 87 samples of B117, the UK variant, detected in hotel quarantine in Australia and 18 of B1351, the South African variant.

But the vaccine results solidify what epidemiologists have warned for some time: that life will not instantly go back to normal once the majority of the population has been vaccinated

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/09/astrazeneca-vaccine-why-australia-is-forging-ahead-as-south-africa-tackles-covid-variant