As more and more people get vaccinated, it’s reasonable to assume that a greater portion of new COVID cases will come from vaccinated individuals. 

But after being told that vaccines will slow the rate of transmission, how is it possible that July 2021 COVID cases now surpass July 2020 numbers?

“Yes, vaccines block most transmission of COVID-19” 

—National Geographic reported on April 21, 2021, citing CDC data.

“Vaccines Appear to Be Slowing Spread of Covid-19 Infections” 

“With more than 37% of U.S. adults fully vaccinated, Anthony Fauci expects case numbers to drop significantly.”

—The Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2021

On April 8, 2021, Amesh Adalja, MD of the Center for Health Security stated that “emerging data confirms what many of us thought would be the case,” that vaccinated people are unlikely to spread COVID.

“…[N]ot only do the vaccines stop symptomatic COVID, but they also make it highly unlikely that someone can even be infected at all. I think the preponderance of the evidence supports the fact that vaccinated individuals are not able to spread the virus.”

—Amesh Adalja, Center for Health Security, April 8, 2021

“You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”

—Joe Biden, CNN Town Hall, July 21, 2021

They may not have been lying, but the facts prove them wrong. Despite increasing numbers of vaccinations, COVID cases are climbing. 

As of July 20, 2021, the U.S. reported 61,965 new COVID cases, with 68% of the population vaccinated — up from 59,888 new cases one year ago (July 20, 2020).

As of this writing, the U.S. has vaccinated 68% of adults — still 2% shy of Joe Biden’s 70% goal by July 4, 2021, but a considerable number nonetheless.

If vaccines reduce transmission of the virus, how is it possible that there are more COVID cases in 2021 with 68% of the population vaccinated than there were in 2020 with 0% vaccinated? 

BLAME THE UNVAXXED

The official talking point of the Biden Administration is that the unvaccinated are to blame for the spike in new COVID cases. 

“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the CDC said last week. “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk.” 

This is illogical on its face. If fewer people were contracting the virus a year ago when “vaccination coverage” was at its lowest — zero, because there were no vaccines in July 2020 — how are cases rising at all?

The fact that there has been an outbreak of COVID in the White House proves that outbreaks aren’t concentrated only in “low vaccination coverage” areas.

LOCKDOWNS & MASKS

Some have argued that state lockdowns and mask mandates kept the virus at bay as states pushed to vaccinate their people. But this doesn’t pass the smell test either.

Most state lockdowns and mask mandates ended in May, with New Mexico bringing up the rear as the second to last state to fully re-open effective July 1, 2021. 

According to The New York Times COVID map, cases started climbing again at the beginning of July. If lockdowns were the reason COVID cases were falling, the surge we’re seeing now would have started long before now. 

In New Mexico, there were 87 new COVID cases on July 1, 2021. By July 21, that number had climbed to 271.

LEAKY VACCINES

Many medical experts have used the example of Marek virus to explain how COVID vaccines may be opening pandora’s box for further outbreaks.

Like the Marek virus vaccine, COVID vaccines are “leaky,” meaning they don’t stop infections or transmission of the virus itself. A basic understanding of evolution helps explain how dangerous it is to tinker with nature. 

Every organism aims to survive and reproduce, to pass on its genes and extend the longevity of its species. To do so, it will adapt to changes in environment. 

Vaccines constitute an environmental change, and a virus by nature will adapt a resistance to any obstacles that prevent its proliferation. 

While we tend to look at diseases as evil or intentionally harmful, COVID has no malicious intent. Its goal is not to kill humans, because any disease the kills its host kills itself.

COVID is just doing what everything in nature does. When vaccines fail at wiping out a virus — COVID vaccines never intended to do so — the virus adapts.

Assuming the multitude of COVID variants aren’t the products of laboratory tinkering, the new strains are likely a product of basic evolution. Not only are they adapting to natural environmental conditions, but they’re very likely evolving to maneuver around these man-made obstacles we’ve put in their path in the form of vaccines. 

VACCINE FAILURE

Before the “experts” claimed vaccines would curb transmission—a shift in rhetoric when they realized people weren’t lining up as eagerly to get the jab as they hoped — they were content saying vaccines merely minimized the severity of COVID infections. 

Whether this occurred or not is up for debate. (COVID may very well be operating on its own agenda, with changes in transmission and severity as much a matter of demographics and climate as masks and vaccines.) But it does make sense, theoretically, that even “leaky” vaccines still reduce viral load and thus curb more severe reactions, hospitalization, and death.

After all, that has been the case with vaccines in the past, at least among vaccines that were tested for more than six months before distribution.

The problem is, cases are up, hospitalizations are up, and despite the claims that only the vaccinated are dying of COVID, the data proves otherwise. 

As more COVID variants emerge and countries report significant spikes in new COVID cases, the new strains are proving to be less responsive to vaccines.

Despite anecdotal claims that people with vaccines aren’t dying of coronavirus, the data proves otherwise. In the UK, where roughly half of the population is vaccinated, a full half of new COVID deaths were among the vaccinated, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If 70% was the number the Administration believed would make America safe enough to gather for the Fourth of July holiday, being 2% shy of that in mid-July wouldn’t explain the rise in new COVID cases.

Logically, if more people are vaccinated and vaccines slow the spread of the virus, COVID cases would be down.

TO EACH HIS OWN

Whether vaccines work or are contributing to more strains of an ever-evolving virus, the constant moving of the goal-posts is reason enough to be skeptical. And in America, a free country at least for now, it’s the individual’s choice to get a vaccination or not. 

For those who point and laugh assuming every new death is from an unvaccinated conspiracy theorist, remember that the majority of COVID deaths have occurred in the elderly, many due to no fault of their own. It was governors like Andrew Cuomo, after all, who stuffed nursing homes with younger COVID patients and oversaw a mass execution of innocent lives. 

Politics plays a role in everything these days, but an ounce of epistemic humility would go a long way in blunting the partisan divide over an issue that is not black and white.