Dec 31
New Year’s is an important holiday for Coffee & Covid. Like many of you, I measure life in Pandemia in days, months, and years. We have yet to reach our second-year anniversary of life with this disgraceful engineered pest; but today’s milestone is nevertheless significant. Most of us have survived! I’m referring — of course — not to the disease, but to having survived a second year of unprecedented government over-reaction and the “new normal.”
We have every reason to be optimistic. Life is good. Even despite my sliced toe.
So today I present to you what I hope will be my one and only Annual Covid News Recap, providing a sort of timeline of the major events of 2021, packaged in our own unique C&C style. But first, a quick status report on the Childers’ family’s big New Year adventure.
🪖🎉 :: *FIELD REPORT* :: 🎉🪖
The Childers family is having a “plains, trains, automobiles” type of holiday. After our original plans fell through at the last-minute, a mad online scramble ensued, hotels were full, flights were canceled, reservations were scarce, and we finally landed on something completely different but within an easy day’s driving distance in a beachy resort town three states away.
The CDC would FREAK OUT if it saw what was going on down here. It’s a lovely, amazing, marvelous madhouse, bustling with activity, bumper-to-bumper with traffic, and nigh-impossible to find a restaurant reservation. And — it’s almost completely maskless. Everywhere. Even the servers are down to 50% masked. Maybe less.
Even if you were looking for it, you might be forgiven for not knowing the government has declared a pandemic.
For instance, we took the kids up the old lighthouse yesterday afternoon, with gift shops conveniently located in the base AND at the top, a narrow concrete staircase winding up about seven flights, scenic views and cool breezes at the top.
It was a popular spot; totally packed. Believe me, it was way over fire code capacity in there. WAY over. Navigating the narrow stairs was an exercise in squeezing tightly past people who were either headed down or passing us on the way up. I have to admit, the first few times it was kind of shocking. It’s been so long since I’ve been reflexively allowing other people extra personal space that it took a conscious effort to be comfortable with crowd-normal.
Everything is open. We haven’t encountered a single — not one — store, restaurant, event or attraction that required masks. Certainly not injections. In stark contrast to late December, 2020, the streets, roads, and highways are busy. Almost too busy. No awkward moments at the elevator, trying decide whether the person already on board is going to freak out if you get in with them.
My guess is that many of you are also experiencing life this way — something very close to pre-Covid normal. These types of stories, describing ordinary life, are — mercifully — getting boring again. Still, clearly, not everyplace is back to normal or even close to normal. For example, even NBC moved its company New Year’s Eve party to Miami. And a viral picture shows that AOC and her boyfriend are spending the holiday there, too. I guess all that “safety” in New York City isn’t 100% working out.
My working hypothesis is that Covid madness is draining out of the world like dirty water out of a bathtub. It’s still pooled up in the big cities and the elitist public events, but it’s drying out everywhere else. True, we have a lot of mopping up to do, and we need to get control back to make sure this never happens again, but the flood is over.
🎉 :: *2021 YEAR IN REVIEW* :: 🎉
January. January 2021 began with great news and excitement: the vaccines were coming out! Life will be back to normal soon! Even that happy news wasn’t without controversy, of course; we argued about who should get the highly-desired shots first: old folks, frontline healthcare workers, or historically disadvantaged groups? Jabs were more valuable than courtside Lakers’ tickets. People were pulling strings to get them. Some idiots were even masquerading as old ladies to jump the line and get their jabs faster. The vaccines were flying off the shelves. High-strung democrats were bitterly complaining that Governor DeSantis was intentionally withholding shots from blue counties.
Also in January, Elon Musk moved his first company — the one that makes the giant drilling machines — from California to Texas. By the end of the year, the physical moves would help launch Tesla stock into outer space, rocketing share prices to unbelievable stratospheric records and cementing Lorena Gonzalez’ place in the history books as possibly the dumbest California assemblywoman of all time.
On January 6, I reported without comment my very first “Covid coincidence” — the sudden, unexplained death of 41-year-old Portuguese nurse Sonia Acevedo on New Year’s Eve 2020 — 48 hours after her first Pfizer jab. Fortunately, the CDC got right on this case, by which I mean they slid Sonia’s file folder under the dumpster behind headquarters in Atlanta, which is otherwise known as the “Vaccine Safety Research Department.”
Newspapers were busy recycling stories from the previous summer about overwhelmed hospitals and aggravated nurses. One notable LA Times headline in January declared: “It’s ‘World War III,’ says L.A. County doctor beset by intensely sick COVID-19 patients.” By “World War III,” the newspaper meant “imaginary,” because at the time LA County’s dashboard showed over 14% available ICU capacity.
You have to read these stories carefully.
By January 20, Biden had already broken his campaign promise to shut down the virus, only two weeks into his administration, proving his masterful ability to set expectations super low, when he said “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
February. Because, if one mask is good, two must be better, in February Fauci began advising double masking. Later in the month he’ll reverse himself — again — and say there’s no data showing double masking does anything at all. I guess it didn’t poll well. New York’s attorney general published a report concluding Andrew Cuomo lied about nursing home fatalities, which were in the tens of thousands — and the media immediately got distracted by something President Trump tweeted and forgot all about it.
On February 3 — about a month from when the vaccines first became available — I reported that Pfizer announced it was starting clinical trials on booster shots. In hindsight, that should have been our first warning sign. I was still reporting “good vaccine news” in February, but also on February 3, I reported for the first time on the data from Israel that seemed inconsistent with the efficacy of the injections being reported everywhere else.
On February 6, the New York Times ran an article asking why “progressive leaders” were doing such a bad job at “mass vaccinations.” But Covid numbers were dropping all over the country as we emerged from the winter wave. The timing wasn’t right for mandates yet. It would still take a few months.
By February 23, Alachua County’s positivity rate had dropped to only 1.1% and I announced I was ending the blog, and threw an impromptu get-together at World of Beer in Jonesville, Florida. At least we got beer. Even though the Covid numbers would drop still further, they would rebound shortly. The Narrative was too strong.
March. By early March, Florida had vaccinated every willing healthcare worker and nursing home resident, and over half its seniors. In the first week of March, hours after CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned governors of a “fourth wave” and not to reopen too soon, Governor Abbott reopened the entire state of Texas, lifting all mandates. Other states and tourist destinations began relaxing their Covid restrictions. Most of the changes have been permanent.
In March, the Narrative started showing some cracks, and I began talking about dams and dam breaks. On March 8, the Covid Tracking Project announced its own voluntary retirement since the pandemic was essentially over. They got out early; I hung in a little longer to see “Covid zero.” By mid-March, the media was hyping the South African variant and the game was back on.
On March 14, I reported that democrats in Florida were upset at the Governor again, because DeSantis “looked ready to ban mask mandates.” The Capitol was still barricaded and fearful lawmakers were still sheltering and recovering. A number of countries suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to issues with … blood clotting. The CDC was taking a nap and forgot to follow up on checking Pfizer, J&J, and Moderna for blood clotting problems.
On March 16 — just a few months before New York’s awful governor imploded — the New York Times ran a made-up critique of Governor DeSantis’ management of the pandemic. Physician, heal thyself!
By the end of March, I was reporting that the injections were widely available to anyone who wanted them, and I profiled a local nurse who’d declined the injection. Infections were clearly trending up again, and Governor DeSantis announced for the first time that Florida would NOT be mandating vaccines under any circumstances — even higher case numbers. Times reporters were apoplectic. How dare he.
April. April kicked off with CDC Director Walensky admitting having an anxiety disorder featuring “unshakeable feelings of impending doom.” Maybe she’d brighten up if she lost the Karen hairstyle? Governor DeSantis banned vaccine passports in an executive order that recognized natural immunity, which spontaneously combusted when an unfortunate clerk carried it into CDC headquarters. Bloomberg ran an article headlined, “We Must Begin Planning for a Permanent Pandemic.”
By mid-April, Delta was the name of the game, and the media was worrying about falling vaccination rates. Meanwhile, on April 14, I reported on a BMJ op-ed by a doctor who reported seeing wide scale illnesses including neurological injuries in her injected co-workers. The FDA was shocked — shocked and appalled! — at finding BLOOD CLOTS in some J&J patients, and paused the drug until the media got distracted by a different story. Vaxx rates continued to plummet.
By late April, the CDC published guidance recommending AGAINST screening for low Vitamin-D levels. Because science. What do you need that vitamin for anyway? The New York Times, in a burst of optimism, and noticing that injected people were still wearing masks, headlined “IRRATIONAL COVID FEARS - Why do so many vaccinated people remain fearful?” Lotteries and tax credits incentivized jabs.
Florida, Texas, and four other red states stole eight U.S. Representatives from blue states in the census as citizens voted on Covid policy with their sneakers, loafers, sandals, and one-way U-hauls.
May. May began with the Florida legislature passing HB 2006 — the statutory vaccine passport ban. Cruise lines ignored this, blaming the CDC, so Florida sued the CDC and won. Then cruise lines sued Florida and got an injunction of the passport ban, thereby getting compliant with the CDC. They kept requiring jab passports to cruise, until yesterday, when the CDC recommended that NOBODY take cruises because so many vaxxed cruise passengers are catching Covid. So. That’s what you get for playing with the CDC.
The Salk Institute published a study showing that spike proteins damage the vascular system. DC banned dancing at weddings. Vaccination rates fell further as states tried to incentivize jabs and make it SO easy to get them. The CDC shocked the media and experts by saying that jabbed people could go without masks. In another red flag, Walensky signalled where things were going when she said, “It may very well be that local businesses, colleges, and local jurisdictions will work towards vaccine mandates. That is going to be locally driven and not federally driven.”
Locally driven. Which is why the head of a FEDERAL AGENCY was announcing it, of course. Makes perfect sense.
On May 18, I reported an odd development — in Seychelles, almost 40% of positive tests over the previous two weeks were from the FULLY VACCINATED. In hindsight, this was right on schedule. Then, Wuhan lab leak theory and gain-of-function news begins breaking through the media’s firewall, until the propaganda department could get focused and hide it back under the media’s mattress again. Giant protests over Covid policy began in the U.K.
June. June started off with more media hand-wringing over vaxx rates, which just kept falling, and with Buzzfeed’s successful lawsuit to get Fauci’s emails, which show the good doctor coordinating Covid strategy with Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and conspiring to hide evidence that Covid was engineered, among other sketchy things. Amazon canceled Fauci’s dumb book, available at that time for pre-order (but why???), titled “Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward.”
Amazon didn’t comment on why it withdrew Fauci’s awesome book. He didn’t need the money anyway.
On June 5, Florida stopped daily Covid reporting, creating peals of protest and riling up Blue-Anon conspiracy theorists. Five days later, Doctor Fauci infamously said that attacking him is just like attacking SCIENCE ITSELF. On June 12, the First DCA entered its order in my mask case, finding that mandatory masking was presumptively unconstitutional — a first and, to my knowledge, only appellate-level decision affirming the obvious. The county did NOT appeal the decision to Florida’s Supreme Court.
John Stuart ranted about Covid coming from the Wuhan lab on Colbert’s show. The CDC presented clinical evidence of juvenile cardiac vaccine injuries to the FDA’s vaccine committee, which … agreed to add a tiny 4-point-type warning to the safe and effective Pfizer and Moderna vaccine disclosures stating that there is a “likely link” between those drugs and heart inflammation in some teenagers and young adults.
July. July kicked off with Governor DeSantis signing HB 241 — the “Parent’s Bill of Rights.” Biden admitted that people can get Covid from their PETS, and more animal reservoir news stampeded out of various zoos. The CDC stopped tracking breakthrough cases, for some reason, right after Britain announced that 50% of its hospitalized (i.e. serious) patients were fully-injected. The Yankees-Red Sox game was postponed because six of the Yankees’ vaccinated players came down with Covid, and throughout the remainder of the year, injected sports figures kept catching the virus.
Joe Biden declared it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and said that the un-injected posed a deadly hazard to the injected. Somehow. He wasn’t totally clear on the specifics. Florida started the miserable trek up toward its summer Covid summit, and cases began spiking. A terrifying UK study reported that Covid “long-haul” caused MALE MEMBER MINIATURIZATION — among 200 other scary symptoms.
Funny how they can’t find ANY injection adverse events no matter how much they investigate the drugs, but they can find all these long-haul symptoms without even hardly trying.
Canceled Dutch virologist Geert Vanden Bosch published an article describing his year-old claim that the spike-protein vaccines would soon result in “escape” and massive breakthrough cases — causing horse-laughs by the media and approved experts, and encouraging social media to delete his accounts. What did he know anyway? But within five months, Omicron would prove him correct.
On July 26, Biden’s Department of Justice published its now-infamous memo opining that vaccine mandates were totally legal. Within days, private vaccine mandates started metastasizing throughout America’s big businesses and hospitals.
August. In August, New York’s attorney general tries again in a new report on Andrew Cuomo, this one about his icky habit of touching women in inappropriate places and saying totally inappropriate things to them. And the second time is the charm! This report is the one that does the trick, and before the month is over, the International Academy of Arts rescinds Andrew Cuomo’s daytime Emmy — on the same day he gets chucked out of the New York Governor’s office.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And use the Me-too strategy. It never fails.
Then, news about both Pfizer and Moderna’s waning efficacy went mainstream, with both companies admitting the inconvenient fact, and serious talk of boosters starts. The media begins denying that anyone ever promised that the injections would prevent infection. You just imagined that. Michael Rappaport goes on an epically profane TikTok rant, which goes viral, complaining that he feels lied to because he got the vaccines but is now being called a super-spreader. He’s not a $&#* super-spreader.
Israeli data continues to show unfortunate injection failure and, they more they jabbed, the more the hospitalizations, especially among the jabbed (over 60% of patients). C&C starts up its calling army to encourage legislators to call a special session of the Florida legislature to pass an anti-mandates bill. I publish tips for writing religious exemption requests. Medium.com jailed my post titled, “The Vaccine Fairy,” for some reason, and Patreon de-platformed me without notice.
Finally, on August 30 the experts were baffled again, and the Washington Post-Gazette published an article headlined, “Breakthrough COVID-19 cases are rising, and experts are trying to figure out exactly what that means” — and they were talking about hospitalizations. In other words, SERIOUS cases.
September. September started with a bang: Coffee & Covid was de-platformed off Medium.com, also without notice. Two back-to-back New England Journal of Medicine op-eds reported breakthrough cases in hospitals — of the ALPHA strain. Not even Delta, much less Omicron, which wasn’t even on the CDC’s whiteboard yet. Florida’s summer wave starts trailing off. I filed suit the City of Gainesville to enjoin its vaccine mandate for city workers.
Stories of vaccinated celebrities who catch a serious case of Covid and are hospitalized begin mounting up. Rochelle Walensky holds a press conference and admits, “We are concerned that the current strong protection against severe infection, hospitalization, and death could decrease in the months ahead.”
Uh-oh!
A study came out titled “The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is poised to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines.” Florida opened its first monoclonal antibody treatment location. Biden issued executive vaccine mandates for federal workers and contractors. Two top FDA directors resigned, apparently in protest.
The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee mets and voted 16-3 to DENY Pfizer’s request for an EUA for boosters. Several days later, the FDA will override its own committee and approve the booster injections anyway. Governor DeSantis appoints Joe Ladapo as the state’s new surgeon general.
On September 23, I won my vaccine injunction against the City of Gainesville and obtained the first broad injunction against a vaccine mandate in the country. The city did not appeal. The same day, Biden began rationing Florida’s monoclonal antibody treatments. The CDC rewrites the definition of “vaccine” on its website. Because it’s not misinformation if you redefine it.
October. October began eventfully, with my filing a lawsuit against two of the rebellious counties who continued to defy the state’s emergency ban on mask mandates. Hospitals start to feel the effects of vaccine mandates as nurses retire in droves. Three nordic countries suspended or discouraged Moderna’s injection in people under 30, because of an increased risk of heart inflammation and BLOOD CLOTS.
On a shareholder call, Tesla announced it was moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas. Florida’s Board of Education moved to sanction rebellious school districts defying the mask mandate ban. Southwest pilots shut down the airline over jab mandates, which Southwest’s CEO referred to as “bad weather.” The FDA’s advisory panel voted to approve J&J’s booster — this time the right way — and the media published a bunch of stories about how it’s “okay” to mix and match original jabs and boosters.
For the first time anywhere, the UK’s surveillance data showed NEGATIVE vaccine efficacy, meaning that injected people were more likely to be infected and hospitalized than un-injected folks. C&C’s calling army celebrated after the Governor announced that a special legislative session WOULD be called after all.
The NIH admitted that okay, it was POSSIBLE that it MIGHT have MAYBE funded some Wuhan coronavirus research, and taking a play from the CDC’s book, re-defined “gain of function” on its website. See how easy that is?
The FDA’s advisory panel approved shots for kids aged 5-11 in a 17-0 vote, now fully on board, and the CDC opened up FOURTH booster shots. The Biden Administration pushed its December 8 injection mandate deadline back to allow more time “educate” employees. And, the CDC reports that cases per 100,000 among the fully-injected increased from 12.3 in late June to 121 in mid-August — a tenfold jump over about 45 days.
Halloween looked almost completely normal.
November. November begins with Biden issuing the long-awaited OSHA and CMS mandates. Before the month is out, the Fifth Circuit enjoined the OSHA mandate and a Missouri court enjoined Biden’s CMS Mandate in 10 states. In staying the OSHA rule, the Fifth Circuit cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues” with the rule.
Republicans sweep various state and local elections, including (and especially) in traditionally-blue areas like Virginia. Pfizer adds tromethamine — a heart stabilizer — to its injection formula for kids. Just as a stabilizer, or something. Florida’s special legislative session rocks the country with a package of new laws pushing back against vaccine and mask mandates and local government overreach. The court grants my petition for mandamus against the rebellious school districts and the school mask mandates in Florida come to an inglorious end.
The Narrative finally collapses under its own weight, becoming a low pile of twisted steel, shattered concrete, and smoking rubble. The international Covid machine shifts into high gear — pushing boosters. On November 26, the W.H.O. declared a new strain of Covid to be a “variant of concern” — Omicron! The U.S. shuts down travel with six African countries. Finally, Florida becomes the only state to reach the CDC’s “blue” status — which immediately triggers the CDC to rewrite the rules to make it nearly impossible to reach “blue.”
Which brings us to December.
December. On December 1, a Louisiana court enjoined the CMS Mandate for the whole country, a decision that will shortly be pruned back to just the plaintiff states. Various state school board associations leave the national in droves over its DOJ-weaponized attack on soccer moms who say mean things to school board members. A Swedish preprint study accidentally reveals that the overall death rate after the second injection is +20% higher than background mortality rates.
Omicron creates international chaos and media hysteria! Florida, Georgia, and Kentucky courts enjoin Biden’s Federal Contractor Mandate. Fauci admits that the definition of “fully vaccinated” will now have to include up-to-date booster shots — less than a year from when the injections first became available. And, the UK announces that a booster shot will be required to hold a valid vaccine passport in that country, even before the ink was dry on many Brits’ brand new vaccine cards. That was fast, huh?
The figures from South Africa quickly begin showing “de-coupling” of cases and deaths. Meanwhile, Omicron seems to prefer injected folks, and Reuters publishes an article headlined, “Most Reported U.S. Omicron Cases Have Hit the Fully Vaccinated - CDC.” But it’s not ADE, don’t worry, why would you even think that?
Fully-vaccinated Ivy League schools start closing after outbreaks of virus, despite vaxx mandates, mask mandates, and crazy covid restrictions that only a deranged college administrator with a huge endowment and unlimited budget could conceive. The Atlantic publishes an article with the headline, “The Pandemic of the Vaccinated Is Here.”
Biden holds an emergency press conference right before Christmas, takes no questions, and announces “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death… for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.” So much for shutting down the virus. Thanks, Joe. Pfizer’s CEO admits, “even triple-vaccinated are likely to transmit” the virus. CNN’s TV-doctor admits, “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations.” But Rochelle Walensky said people should “continue to wear their masks to prevent the infections” because the jabs won’t stop them.
Biden — in a much-anticipated announcement — described a new federal surge plan that includes the federal government buying a lot of at-home test kits and sending 1,000 military healthcare workers to overwhelmed hospitals. If there are any. A fews days later, he says “there IS NO federal solution. This gets solved on the state level.”
The CDC cut quarantines by two-thirds, because science, and even lets asymptomatic people who are testing positive back to work after only five days, or asymptomatics back to work if quarantine “isn’t feasible,” as long as they mask up.
Tests start drying up and are suddenly in short supply, for some reason, probably supply-chain issues. Some citizens line up for hours in freezing weather, and Vermonters fill up ERs, to get their free Covid tests. And — totally unrelated — the Administration floats various trial balloons suggesting ending testing altogether — except for symptomatic folks, which is exactly how this whole thing should have started in the first place.
If mass testing of asymptomatic people ends, the pandemic WILL officially be over. Think about it. There won’t be any thousands of “cases” for the media to report. Deaths will fall even lower if hospitals stop testing every person who comes in the door.
2022 is going to be great. I can’t wait.
C&C readers are the BEST. You deserve my best wishes for a super Happy New Year! I’ll be back on Monday, next year!, with more, better, snarky commentary on whatever crazy notion the federal government comes up with next. See you then!
Help us spread optimism and hope! https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-
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