"We're Not Going To Lock Down Our Economy Or Our Schools"

This is part of what Jen Psaki said in a press briefing on Friday. A more complete account had this:

"We are not going back. We are not turning back the clock," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

"This is not March 2020 or even January 2021," she added. "We're not going to lock down our economy or our schools because our country's in a much stronger place than when we took office."

But the account continues with a more realistic caveat:

The promise came as some teachers unions aligned with the Democratic Party call for the school year to begin with virtual classes, not in-classroom learning.

Just this past week, of course, the administration reversed itself on the COVID eviction moratorium, so there's no assurance that any equivalent promise from Ms Psaki will have weight. The issue pretty clearly hinges on who's able to reach the senile regent and bamboozle or bully him into whatever policy they want.

Meanwhile. the institution that's actually driven what's locked down and what's not, the CDC, has contradicted itself again on policy. Did Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, inadvertently argue this week against controversial vaccine-verification systems, such as the one being used in New York City. [Shouldn't the copy editor have added a question mark here?]

. . . During an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, Walensky explained the CDC changed its mask guidance because fully vaccinated people can allegedly transmit the delta variant as readily as unvaccinated people.

That is when she claimed the vaccines do not prevent COVID-19 transmission.

"That was the reason that we changed our guidance last Tuesday," Walensky said. "Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well with delta with regard to severe illness and death. They prevent it."

"But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission," she added.

Walensky then followed up by recommending people wear face masks indoors if they are surrounded by unvaccinated people or those who could be more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Except that it's generally acknowledged that neither paper nor cloth face masks are effective in preventing COVID transmission anyhow. And Dr Fauci has also reversed himself:

Medical experts have shifted their views on asymptomatic spread over the course of the past year. Asymptomatic transmission means an individual can spread the disease without realizing it, and the phenomenon has led to many of the severe lockdowns this year, according to CNBC. The World Health Organization says people can even spread while they’re pre-symptomatic, or just before they begin to display symptoms, the outlet reported.

Last January, America’s top infectious disease expert, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, said that asymptomatic transmission historically has never been the driver of outbreaks.

“The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person,” Fauci said at the Jan. 28 [2020] White House press briefing. “Even if there's a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers."

Dr Walensky's remarks on CNN are still confusing in that she said, "But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission." The "anymore" would suggest that at one time, they did prevent transmission, which in context might make the listener think this is something new, caused perhaps by the insidious delta variant.

As far as I can tell, the actual situation is far more uncertain, since there's no reliable statistic on how many "cases" of COVID are asymptomatic. This in turn is a product of the general redefinition of "case" that's taken place over the past 18 months: prior to then, a "case" of a disease was by definition a person with symptoms leading to a diagnosis. An asymptomatic case was an oxymoron. Since COVID, a "case" is a positive test for antibodies, no symptoms needed. But the vaccine also functions by causing the body to produce COVID antibodies. From a policy standpoint, this is gobbledygook.

Definitiomins change. Policies change with changing definitions. "The Science" changes on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Nothing these people promise is reliable at all. A good part of it is who's able to whisper in the senile regent's ear this week.