The Looming Conundrum

The Omicron variant represents a major challenge to the official COVID narrative, which has grown increasingly threadbare. Nothing, up to now, has been very effective against any variant. The pattern has beeen repeated spikes and lulls, when strict measures in one state like Michigan have proven no more effective than no measures at all in another like Florida. But now we learn via the Washington Post that

As part of an enhanced winter covid strategy Biden is expected to announce Thursday, U.S. officials would require everyone entering the country to be tested one day before boarding flights, regardless of their vaccination status or country of departure. Administration officials are also considering a requirement that all travelers get retested within three to five days of arrival.

In addition, they are debating a controversial proposal to require all travelers, including U.S. citizens, to self-quarantine for seven days, even if their test results are negative. Those who flout the requirements might be subject to fines and penalties, the first time such penalties would be linked to testing and quarantine measures for travelers in the United States.

This effectively nullifies the COVID narrative we've heard over the past year: the vaccines are highly effective against all variants. The persistence of COVID is due entirely to the unvaccinated. Masks, lockdowns, and testing are a carrot and stick to induce the unvaccinated to get the shots (and now the boosters). Once we reach herd immunity, this will all go away.

Now it looks like these basic assumptions no longer apply. Travelers must test irrespective of vaccination status. Maybe get retested too. Maybe self-quarantine as well. After all, don't we already know vaccinated people still transmit the disease? The logical craziness is outlined in this piece:

Requiring people to quarantine for seven days even if they test negative is something you’d expect to see out of the Australian government. If someone tests negative, logically, they do not need to stay locked in a room for a week. Further, they would have tested negative prior to the flight as well, which means people would be quarantined after not one, but two negative tests. And for what, exactly?

Back in 2020 at the start of the panic, people had to self-quarantine after one positive test but could get out after two negative tests. Now, nearly two years later, two negative tests apparently won't be enough. In other words, the public health establishment is very belatedly coming to the conclusion that all the COVID measures they've had in place for nearly two years up to and including vaccines and now even boosters, have been ineffective. So naturally, we're going to just reboot and start back with quarantines and travel restrictions and see if that works this time when it didn't before. As Press Secretary Psaki said just the other day,

As you just heard the President say, this is not going to prevent; it is going to delay. And that delay is going to help us have necessary time to do the research by our health and medical teams, to get more people vaccinated and get more people boosted. And he’s always going to err on the side of protecting the American people.

This is starting to sound like "fifteen days to flatten the curve", which was the next step after travel bans in 2020. Fifteen days to buy us time to come up with a new vaccine that's gonna fix it all, this time. But no lockdowns. Oh, no. At least, not yet. That's what the president just told us.

I notice Dr Fauci's continued insistence on last Sunday's talks that attacking him is attacking science but he's gonna go on just saving lives fell really flat. Everyone from Piers Morgan to Adm Giroir told him it's time to shut the Brandon up. I think even Fauci is starting to see where this is headed.