JC

A new study published this week in the journal Nature Communications, titled “Accelerated evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in free-ranging white-tailed deer.” It had twenty-seven authors.

We haven’t visited covid’s “animal reservoir” feature for a while. In 2020 and 2021, the phenomenon was a compelling argument against vaccines, because jabs could never end the pandemic by “eradicating” the virus and creating herd immunity.

Unless you can jab all the deer, the virus will survive in the deer reservoir. And cats, dogs, monkeys, bears, lions, marmosets, and duckbilled platipi, or platypuses, or however you say it.

Then, after some point in late 2021, they admitted that the mRNA jabs don’t prevent transmission anyway, or even stop people from catching covid, and the experts finally shut up about herd immunity.

Anyway, the deer are still catching covid. Here’s what the study’s introduction explained:

We detected that SARS-CoV-2 was introduced from humans into white-tailed deer more than 30 times in Ohio, USA during November 2021-March 2022. Subsequently, deer-to-deer transmission persisted for 2–8 months, disseminating across hundreds of kilometers.

Setting aside the extremely curious question of how, exactly, humans are giving covid to deer — kissing them? petting zoos? people who identify as deer? — the study re-raises the original objection. As we continue to sprint after evasive viral variants with ever newer and improved-er vaccines, what precisely do we hope to achieve?

If we can agree the virus is out now and is never going away, then the only legitimate objective for vaccines is personal risk reduction. And if that is true, there is no justification for mandates, zero, none whatsoever.

Look at it this way. Let’s say my personal risk of dying from a covid infection is 0.001%. Should all personal risks of 0.001% or greater require government intervention? Obviously not. And don’t tell me it’s about grandma — the jabs don’t stop transmission. Grandma can get the jab as much as she wants, and if the jabs work, then she should be fine.

If the jabs don’t work, nobody should take them. Seriously. What is so hard to understand about all this?