A study of university students and staff has laid bare the abject failure of pandemic policy interventions such as vaccination, masks, mass testing and quarantine to limit the spread of COVID-19.
When Cornell University in the U.S. reopened to in-person tuition in August 2021, it had in place an extensive testing, contact tracing and quarantine programme in conjunction with the local health department. Vaccination was mandated for all students and encouraged for employees (students as usual getting a rough deal from their university). Masks were required on campus and isolation orders and contact tracing occurred within hours of any positive result.
The university is therefore an excellent live experiment to see whether vaccination, masks, mass testing and quarantine – tools deployed to contain Covid outbreaks the world over – could succeed.
The findings – published in the Journal of the American Medical Association – could not be clearer: the measures made no visible impact on the outbreak.
Students and staff were required to take a PCR test each week as part of the university surveillance programme. Covid stayed at low levels to begin with – an outcome which the study attributes to the containment measures but this is pure speculation, particularly as New York state was not experiencing an outbreak at this time. Come December, however, with the return of students after the Thanksgiving break and the arrival of Omicron and infections rose sharply.
Within two weeks the test positivity rocketed more than 10-fold, from 0.5% in the week ending December 4th to 5.7% in the weekend ending December 18th. This was despite there being support teams helping the infected to isolate and tracing contacts to instruct them to monitor for symptoms, test and quarantine. It is hard to imagine many non-university communities achieving the level of surveillance and intervention carried out during this period at Cornell.
Over the month from November 28th to December 31st, a total of 2,797 people tested positive, of which 98.6% were vaccinated. This proportion was higher than the 97.9% of the university population who were vaccinated, implying negative vaccine effectiveness (though this may be confounded by, for example, different prior infection rates or behaviours).
The close-contact secondary attack rate (the proportion of close contacts an infected person infects) shot up more than five-fold, from 4.4% prior to November 28th to 22.6% afterwards. This dramatic change is further evidence that it was not the quarantine measures suppressing spread before Thanksgiving, as the secondary attack rate is not affected by the subsequent isolation of cases and contacts, and 4.4% is a very low attack rate and unlikely to trigger an epidemic.
Of the reported cases, 82.2% reported mild symptoms and there were no hospitalisations, confirming once more how low the risk is from this disease, particularly in a community with a high proportion of young people like a university, and how unforgivably excessive and pointless the measures are to combat it. Genetic screening and sequencing confirmed that Omicron was the dominant variant in December.
The researchers concluded that “traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron”. Vaccination in particular was “not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing” – and indeed, a mask mandate.
Mass vaccination programmes, along with vaccine mandates and passports, were implemented around the world on the basis that being vaccinated would stop the spread of COVID-19. But this study is the latest of many to show that the notion is false: vaccination does not prevent infection, transmission or outbreaks. Neither do face masks or contact tracing and quarantine.
These lessons must be learned. All vaccine mandates must be lifted immediately, all vaccine passport schemes (such as the continuing ban on the unvaccinated entering the U.S.) must be scrapped, and mass vaccination programmes for those not at risk from the virus must be ended. Mask mandates must be lifted; contact tracing and quarantine programmes must be axed. None of these things must be attempted again. That is the only rational response to the findings of this study and others which repeatedly show the same thing. These interventions do not work and are not worth it.
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Ah, the irony: establishments of so called “higher learning”, bastions of “academic excellence” and “enlightenment” flounder so dramatically to apply the basics of critical thought and rational analysis, and fail their students in spectacular fashion, succumbing to hysterical media and political pressure.
My children will possibly be in university in 5 and 7 years time: am I optimistic that this gap will resolve the blind scientific ignorance pandered by the academics in charge? Nope.
Ideology trumps reason.
There is no secular society.
This story is a nice example of the union of liturgy, bureaucracy and experiment. Hard to say though what is most sacred.
I’d consider looking for apprenticeships now for your two children. A 4 week placement will be far more effective than a 3 or 5 year blended learning uni course with a £60k certificate to show for it.
I’ve been through academia ( undergrad,PhD and even worked in scientific research for about 6 years) and as Taylor says, ” look for apprenticeships”. People need to be in a position where they can sell their skills without the need of a 3rdparty and a university degree is just a bit of paper. Obviously if you go to Oxford you’ll mix with people who can advance your career but this situation is very rare.
It depends whether you think they should get a job serving hamburgers when they are 16 or delay until they are 25.
If they are white, straight and male then they have no hope of a job regardless of the path they take.
We knew prior to 2020 that most NPIs were ineffective against virulent respiratory viruses.
The question is why did governments worldwide all decide that they should impose these NPIs for Covid and destroy their economies in the process?
It is very strange.
It’s almost like rituals of biotyranny were the goal, and they were just waiting for a casus belli.
Also very strange that nobody noticed the absence of millions of sick people during Jan to Mar 2020 when the virus was epidemic – not hospitalisations, but people ill enough with Cold-like symptoms to have to stay at home/in bed with this ‘fast-spreading, dangerous, serious, novel virus’ from which all were at risk.
The tea-leaves foretold 500 000 deaths in UK and 2 million in USA, so since only about 3% were forecast to die, it would mean millions of non-fatal, non-serious cases would have had to be sick in total.
In fact a notable lack of sick people in the whole two years of this scam.
There were quite a few around me who were ill with what later proved to be the somewhat novel covid symptoms during Jan to Mar 2020. Some like myself were not ill enough to be off work to a 30 yr old who needed oxygen therapy for a couple of days. Just like any normal winter. And those who had persistent symptoms who went to see the doctor were then just told that it was just another virus doing the rounds.
That’s not really strange at all. Some influential people in the USA and elsewhere were very scared of Sars-CoV2 and thus, wanted to believe that Copy China as much as possible would save them. A lot of other people saw this as golden opportunity to finally implement all kinds of policies, eg, draconic controls on public/ social drinking or enforced face-masking for general public health reasons, they had already wanted to implement for a very long time.
Cranks don’t usually care if their views correspond with anything real.
Not strange at all unless you think the nwo stuff emanating from Davos over the last week is just a conspiracy theory. A Great Reset is not possible without destroying the existing global status quo, which is the primary purpose of the pseudo pandemic, the genocidal gene therapy jabs and the proxy Ukraine conflict. In the process, of course, these events have made a truly awful lot of people an awful lot of money.
How else could digital ID be introduced and accepted globally?
US are still asking for a fake test to get into their country, they need continued support to rid them of the health overlords.
This is truly terrifying. In the face of all the evidence of their own study that nothing works but there was no significant harm, their blind faith in the Church of the Continuous Coofs remains unshaken.
We just need to find more esoteric spells to mumble, and more complex rituals of self-abasement in order to protect the pure from the deadliest plague ever.
How do you reason with doom cultists like that?
You can’t reason with mad, neurotic people.
And what could be madder than insisting on completely ineffective and very costly measures agaimst a disease that does virtually no damage?
How can we get people to embrace our ideology? Very simple, destroy all common sense with a phoney virus and test and allow only nonsense fill the vacuum. The simpletons and the greedy, supposedly in charge of other countries will find a way to do the rest for us. Happy days!
I wonder why you say mass vaccination for those not at risk from the virus must be stopped, implying that mass vaccination for those that are believed to be at risk should continue? I would have thought there is enough evidence now to show that the vaxx is unfit for purpose and no one should be given it in future.
Not to forget, the jab is not a vaccine.
I think it’s a way to keep a toe inside the Overton window.
Saying vaccines should be offered to the vulnerable is a way of saying the jabs are dog shite while minimising the risk of being branded as an anti-vaxer.
Why even do a study. The numbers the universities in the USA released made it blatantly obvious, restrictions – and “vaccinations” – do not work.
Asking for, or suggesting a “rational response”, to absolutely anything nowadays, is but a forlorn hope. Rationality has, to all intents and purposes, disappeared or been expunged in finance, medicine, government, education, rights, freedoms, sexual matters, sport, war and a whole lot else besides.
We now live, as a few sane people, in a lunatic asylum, filled with and outnumbered by inmates. The rub is that we are detained by invisible bars, chains and locks, which preclude our urgent desire to escape.
That’s exactly how I feel. A handful of sane people surrounded by vast hordes of lunatics, all of whom spouting complete nonsense about literally everything, pregnant men, etc. I can see the bars, chains and locks, would love to escape: but where to? Where is there a place now that is not a lunatic asylum?
I don’t think there is anywhere, but I’m giving Portmeirion and The Village a miss, for sure. There are already enough blobby balloons, filled with hot air from places as far away as Davos, Geneva and the USA, chasing me around this part of the Eastern Counties.
After the great war against covid, which most would agree, injured no viruses, I can’t wait to see what an utter shambles the government make of all things digital, what could possibly go wrong?
I am sooooooo shocked by the findings of this study. I can only assume that it was conducted by far right tin hat wearing conspiracy theorists who were determined to undermine the mountains of empirical evidence that all such measures are highly effective. Absolutely outrageous. The researchers involved deserve to be cancelled, vilified, ostracised, humiliated and never allowed to undertake work of this kind ever again. Actually, to hell with the lot of them, just throw ’em in jail and be done with them!
Cornell and a bunch of young fit kids, problem what problem, huh until they took the jab.
Some might just have observed, they big phama gave up trying to find a vaccine to cure the common cold and because it mutates and is very transmissable, who knew? Thus in the outset of this plandemic it was evident to anyone in command of their critical faculties that, all the promises they, the medical mafia and authorities made about stalling infection rates, masks, distancing and etc – utterly useless and as are the jabs. Indeed, the only real concern now, is for, those who succumbed to the lies and took the needle.
…and here’s another experiment with an unsuccessful outcome…
https://strangesounds.org/2022/05/scientists-totally-surprised-after-gene-editing-experiment-unexpectedly-turn-hamsters-into-hyper-aggressive-bullies.html
We are all nothing but lab rats to the elite. Those of us who are conscious enough can see it plain as day.
The dilemma we have is outlined in the Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Will any of the Cabal ever admit any culpability in the lockdown madness ? Until they do,this nonsense could happen again.
But this is NOT The Science™️ and is disinformation.
“Vaccination was mandated for all students and encouraged for employees”: I imagine that gives the students the right to sue Cornell if the vaccine has damaged them.
Go to it, Young Things!
“While vaccination protected against severe illness” in the discussion. If nobody, vaccinated or not had a severe illness, how do they actually claim this to be true?
It’s a cult. It really is.
.
Did students who objected get a refund, or at least a day in court?
Maybe the problem is that so many young, healthy and one assumes, intelligent, people allowed themselves to be bullied into taking these jabs. I know that it sounds glib but if enough had simply refused and threatened to walk then the universities couldn’t have continued their bully-boy tactics. This is what it’s all been about – bullies – we have all spent the last two years being bullied by the governments that we – supposedly – elected. Now what do we do about it?