Doubt they will publish this as it’s too radical. Still, Col Sir Grumpy McGrouch (Ret.) here finds relaxation in writing it. Mind you, had they done this from the beginning we’d be a lot better off. The ultimate unfalsifiable hypothesis.
LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST:
I’m over 70 and triple vaccinated.
I’ve been thinking about getting the fourth jab, but wanted some more information. So I went to the government website, as we are adjured to do. I waded through its pabulum and found nothing.
Nothing about a fourth dose. Nothing about Omicron. Nothing about how the Pfizer vaccine works against Omicron. In short nothing to help me decide.
Outside the government website I found the latest study on the efficacy of Pfizer vs Omicron. It’s a study of 134,000 in Canada, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
Its conclusions:
1. The Pfizer vaccine is not effective against Omicron if you’ve had only two doses.2. If you’ve had three doses, Pfizer is effective against hospitalisations and death, though not against transmission from Omicron. Effectiveness declines sharply after six months.
This led me to decide to get my fourth jab, because my third was 11 months ago. I’m concerned not so much with not getting Omicron, but with not dying from it.
The government website was zero help in making up my mind. Its website is huge, unwieldy, clunky… and unhelpful for today’s circumstances. Info on Omicron, third and fourth doses ought to be up front and obvious. Instead it’s missing.
In fact it’s an embarrassing website. It’s like using a fax in the days of email.
With all the billions the government has to spend on Octopus give aways and 500,000 free airline tickets, surely it could spend some money on a decent interactive Covid-19 website? Something like Our World in Data? Or The Spectator. Or the New York Times.
Still, I found enough on the blobsite to propose my two-step plan to save Hong Kong:
1. Pay those over 70 to get vaccinated. Give them $3k at the third dose. It is important that they get three doses (the latest study shows). This would cost about $500 million, but that’s only a fraction of what has been spent on Octopus and plane ticket give aways. And the vast untracked cost to the Hong Kong economy.
2. Scrap all other restrictions. ”All” as in all. Scrap mask mandates, scrap vaccine mandates, scrap 0+3 mandates, scrap self-assessment,, scrap all testing. Scrap it all and return to normal.
The result would be fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths.
How so? Given what we know about the epidemiology of hospitalisations and deaths — the government website has the data! — it remains the case that SARS-CoV2 is a virus that kills the elderly. We knew this at the beginning and we know it now. While it is factually true that anyone can get it and anyone can die, that — as a fact-checker would say — “lacks context”. The context being that while factually true, the numbers killed by this virus in the under 70 are few. Those that remain worried can look after themselves, without requiring society at large to “shelter”.
My plan would save Hong Kong in three ways:
Save lives (the elderly)Save livelihoods (the working age)Save our sanity (everyone)
PF, etc…
ADDED:
1. “The Science” is not a fixed thing. It’s a process. Of proposing falsifiable hypotheses and testing them. Even the ten experts on the government Experts Group are constantly disagreeing with each other. A truth will emerge from that process. Noting how many different approaches to Covid were adopted globally, all said to be “following the science”. End of the day, it’s a political / social call, with science informing the process.
2. Long covid: report today (10/10) about LC in under 19s. I’m not saying to young people don’t get vaccine. Just that now we’re at 80% triple vaxxed, any more ought to be individual decision. Mandates are a useless hassle.
3. Vaccine the elderly: the government missed a huge opportunity to get them all vaxxed by offering $5,000 at the third dose. Instead they gave all of us $5,000, twice (!), with no strings. Stupidity.
