IF AMERICA HAS ANOTHER COVID SURGE, RIGHT-WINGERS WILL BLAME THE VACCINES

America's COVID-19 numbers are looking good, but experts are concerned that there might be another wave of infections, primarily as a result of the Delta variant. Full vaccination provides good protection against this variant, but in areas where many people are unvaccinated, a surge in infections could happen.

That's what mainstream science is telling us. Crackpots and disinformationists are claiming that vaccinations aren't preventing the spread of the virus, they're causing it.

Here's the message from a sight called the NOQ Report ("News. Opinion. Quotes."):

Statistical analysis of the “Delta Variant” of Covid-19 compared to vaccinations in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States points to a narrative that runs contrary to what mainstream media and governments have been promoting. A closer look at the numbers reveals the Delta Variant may actually be strengthening as a result of increased vaccinations....

Here are two charts. In the first, you’ll note that India’s vaccination rate jumped in mid-March and peaked in April. In the second chart, you’ll see the number of Covid-19 cases spiked in mid-April, right around the time when the number of vaccinated people in India had risen rapidly. This is almost certainly not a coincidence.

This probably makes a lot of sense to your right-wing relatives, who don't know that India has a very low rate of vaccination, which left it vulnerable to the Delta variant. (There's also a COVID spike in the U.K. largely caused by the Delta variant, but it hasn't been as sharp as India's. The U.K. has a high rate of vaccination, although more than 40% of adults in the U.K. still aren't fully vaccinated.)

Here's another claim, from a British site called the Daily Expose:

Are we beginning to see evidence of ‘Antibody Dependent Enhancement’ (ADE) due to the Covid-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom? The latest data on hospitalisations and deaths allegedly due to Covid-19 certainly suggests so.

ADE can arise in several different ways but the best-known is dubbed the ‘Trojan Horse Pathway’. This occurs when non-neutralizing antibodies generated by past infection or vaccination fail to shut down the pathogen upon re-exposure.

Instead, they act as a gateway by allowing the virus to gain entry and replicate in cells that are usually off limits (typically immune cells, like macrophages). That, in turn, can lead to wider dissemination of illness, and over-reactive immune responses that cause more severe illness....

Since the 1st February 2021 there have been 73 alleged Covid deaths within 28 days of a positive test result due to the Delta Covid variant. However only 46.5% of these deaths were people who had not been vaccinated. Whilst 36.6% of the deaths were people who had been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks. A further 13.7% of the deaths were people who’d had one dose of a Covid vaccine at least 21 days prior to infection.

In all 50.68% of the deaths occurred in people who had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. A further two deaths occurred in which Public Health England had not ascertained whether the person had received a dose of the Covid vaccine.

There are multiple conclusions we can come to due to this data –

1 – These people did not die to Covid-19 but instead died due to other causes and were just labelled as Covid-19 because they happened to test positive 28 days prior to their death.

2 – The vaccines do not work.

3 – The vaccines are causing antibody dependant enhancement, as has been proven to happen in trials for SARS and MERS vaccine candidates.

Or the vaccines work well against a new, more transmissible variant, but not as well as they do against the original form of the virus, which means that we need to vaccinate more people so we don't get more spread and more variants, some of which our current vaccines might not fight very well. (That possible conclusion doesn't appear in this post.)

The Daily Expose is a misinformation factory that churns out misleading and deceitful information on COVID. It spread stories claiming that the vaccines increase the risk of miscarriage (debunked here and here), that the vaccines decrease male fertility (debunked here), and that only 3,000 people have died of COVID in the U.K. rather than the official totals of more than 70,000 (debunked here).

If America's case numbers increase, perhaps in the fall, how mainstream will this idea go? Will Fox News -- owned by Rupert Murdoch, who got his first shot early in the U.K.'s vaccination campaign even though he's never been a British citizen -- spread the idea? Will the rest of the right? Probably.

What's safe to predict is that right-wingers, who downplayed COVID all along, will try to blame President Biden for any spike in cases that occurs in America. Some mainstream pundits will play along, accusing Biden of not doing enough outreach to Donald Trump and his followers. (They'll claim, preposterously, that Trump would have joined a pro-vaccine campaign led by Biden if Biden has just asked nicely.) And right-wing edgelords will say vaccines are the problem.