No, not the “scientific” study of politics.
We’re going to have to add another category:
There have been some extraordinary flip-flops in the USA over the last couple of weeks on the Chinese Xi Snot disease.
“Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic,” CNN’s Dr. Leana Wen said on Monday night. “It’s not appropriate for omicron,” she continued. “It was not appropriate for delta, alpha, or any of the previous variants, either, because we’re dealing with something that’s airborne.”
…
On the other hand, back in July of 2020, Wen was actually touting cloth masks on Twitter. “It’s a lot less uncomfortable than ventilators, dialysis lines, all of those things that have had to happen to my father,” she warned.
PCR tests are unreliable – CDC director:
The newly updated CDC guidelines don’t require testing at the end of isolation because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “So we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs,” Walensky explained.
I can think of other problems raised by such sensitive tests that can produce a bucketload of false positives – like huge numbers of cases that could scare the shit out of ordinary people when publicised by unscrupulous or moronic MSM sources and government healthcare bureaucrats – and politicians of course.
Ten day quarantines can be cut to five days – CDC
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just dropped adjusted quarantine guidelines for COVID-19 and vaccinated individuals. This is after an outcry from the airline industry that the guidelines and the surge in Omicron variant cases were causing staffing shortages.
Wait! What? You mean to say they took other factors into consideration rather than just “YOU WANT TO KILL GWANDMA“.
The reason for the change then was not “SCIENCE” but complaints from industry. This was promptly backed up by none other than Dr Fauci. The decision is based on keeping things open because the sheer number of people testing positive with Omicron would crash things if they were all told to follow the previous CDC rules.
As a result the Left hit the roof, as you can see from the responses on that Twitter thread. My fave so far (H/T Spongebob Squarepants):
sAcRiFiCe YoUr LiFe FoR tHe GlOrY oF mAmMoN
Although it’s a tough competition since they’ve thrown their idol as far under the bus as they could (from that link):
The Left “embraces the science” only when the science embraces the left’s narrative. When it does not, science is to be ignored, manipulated, dismissed out of hand, or bald-faced lied about it. BTW, one of the nutters there, Rashida Tlaib, is a member of Congress; part of “The Squad” actually, those fearsome new Women of Colour taking the baton of socialism from Bernie Sander’s dying hands.
Yet the same Left is aghast that Fauci admitted that “The Science” is really The Politics. But barely anything in the past two years of the pandemic has been done because of science. It’s all politics. And dirty, crude, base-stroking politics at that.
In fact this is the CDC doing science, although they’re just catching up – to the point where they’re obviously now going to start treating C-19 like every other respiratory virus. Cold and flu contagions are generally within the first 2-5 days of onset of symptoms. If a person has no symptoms, then it is a waste of time, money, manpower, and critical resources forcing them to isolate. They had been warned a few days earlier:
A trade group representing major U.S. airlines urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halve its recommended quarantine time for individuals with breakthrough cases of Covid-19, warning the current 10 days could lead to labor shortages and flight disruptions.
An implicit lockdown then. Well duh! And it wasn’t just the CEO of Delta Airlines either.
Folks on the Left are mad at Fauci and the government for making it so plain that it isn’t just about public health – that economics and politics factored into the decision. Why were those important factors not important enough to consider before when small businesses were being shut down and people were losing their jobs? It was always true that you should consider other factors. It’s just that earlier they didn’t care and were willing to throw everything under the bus. Some of them – not just the screamers – still are:
Is it because they don’t want society to grind to a halt under Joe Biden? I’d bet that it is.
Which is why we got this from The Big Guy: “There is no Federal solution”. Plus an assist from the “conservative” journalist, Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo, whose brain was so broken by Trump that she flip-flops shamelessly on everything; here on what rising case numbers mean politically for DeSantis vs Biden a few months apart.
In this she and the rest of the MSM are just acting as stenographers for the Administration; here’s Biden COS Ron Klain repeating the same argument that saw Right wingers and other opponents of these policies cancelled from FaceTwit just months ago. It should always have been about protecting those most at risk and not locking everyone down. But the Democrats were too busy pushing fear pornography.
The FaceTwit banning shit is still going on:
But in nine months time, they’ll find out he was right the whole time, which will then add some more fun to Right Wing commentator Ben Shapiro’s selection of all these backtracks and more in this thread:
So once it became clear that covid was not in fact a pagan god visiting vengeance on the unwashed Trump voters alone, the media and Democrats are now willing to admit the following:
1. Cloth masks are ineffective against omicron (Leanna Wen, CNN);
2. The vaccinated can spread and get covid;
3. The death rate is comparable to the flu (Chris Hayes);
4. Many people are entering hospitals with covid, not from covid (Fauci);
5. Natural immunity is a reason omicron hasn’t been as virulent (Fauci);
6. We have to take into account societal needs, not just spread prevention (CDC);
7. The asymptomatic should not be tested (NFL);
8. We should focus on hospitalizations and deaths, not case rate (Biden);
9. Children are not at risk and schools should remain open;
10. Covid is predominantly an illness affecting the immunocompromised and elderly and we should not shut down society.
I wonder when anybody in New Zealand, starting with our MSM, is going to catch up with any of this?
Oh, who am I kidding, they were ideological bitches for the Left before this started and thanks to $110 million they’ve moved to be whores for Labour.
No Minister 
Brilliant!! But those who are blind to what’s actually going on (aka Wayne and his followers) will dismiss all of this because of “the science”.
This too regarding Fauci’s other admissions about counting hospitalisations instead of cases and that there should be even further breakdowns of the former.
Even some politicians are getting the message, although as I’ve said before, that’s because the current messaging (ZOMG “1 million cases per day”) has turned on them and is now making them look bad while not enabling them to push more controls:
Yeah, well to even the dumbest person on the plant, the number of cases is completely irrelevant. Our MSM will continue with the fear porn though.
It does seem, based on my reading over the last couple of days, that medical people are starting to realise that hospitals are a great place to get the virus.
Personally I avoid them, too many sick people there.
What staggers me most is the number of people who are not aware that: Whether you are vaccinated or not, the virus can be contracted and the full strength version of the virus can still be passed on.
Being vaccinated reduces the severity of symptoms – AND THAT’S ALL! ..and only for a limited time.
Two conundrums I continue to ask are:
1) If you are vaccinated but I am not, what do you have to fear?
2) Would you rather have a coffee with someone who is unvaccinated but has tested negative for the virus, or, with someone who has been vaccinated but has not been tested?
I’ll have coffee with anyone regardless of their vaccination status.
Oh look, now the Mayo Clinic has come and given cloth masks the boot:
The.
Mayo.
Clinic.
If you do nothing but read, watch or listen to the MSM you would never have known about all the studies conducted over several years that show that masking doesn’t work against these sorts of viruses.
I wonder when the NZ MSM will report this?
I don’t care about the MSM reporting it. What should happen, tomorrow, is Arden should issue one of her edicts saying, as a result of this, masks are no longer compulsory.
There are two chances of this happening.
Political Science? Sounds like witchcraft. It’s as bad as when Adam Smith used a pastiche of scientism and converted Economics into science from the field of morality.
Is anyone capable of reason? Or, are we just tribals who use articles and “science” to justify a predetermined position. Nobody thinkz. All is feelz. Faith conquers logic.