I'm an Unvaccinated American facing a winter of death and discontent
Pres. Biden ignores CDC study that boosters deter COVID vaccine
Pres. Biden is so melodramatic that he is quoting Shakespeare. “Now is the winter of our discontent” is a line from the play Richard III. The president said that, “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death.”
I’m not vaccinated. I’ve never had COVID. And I’ve never once been scared to get the virus.
Biden’s winter-of-my-discontent messaging is having the opposite of his intended effect on the unvaccinated. We see the president as having stage fright, and it’s a comedy.
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The White House announced that, on Tuesday, Biden will give a “a stark warning of what the winter will look like” for unvaccinated Americans. Interestingly, all that was dropped from the speech overnight. He toned it down to tell Unvaccinated Americans that:
"How concerned should you be about Omicron which is the dominant variant and happened so quickly. If you're not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned,” the president said. "You're at a high risk of getting sick. And if you get sick, you're likely to spread it to others including friends and family."
In between coughs, Biden added that, "The unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in the hospital or even dying."
Biden’s tone was very different last week in the a “direct message to the American people” on Omicron variant. He said:
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.
CDC booster deterrent
After Biden gave the unvaccinated a fatal diagnosis, he said this:
But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you had your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death — period. Number two, booster shots work. Three, boosters are free, safe, and convenient.
Biden is booster obsessed, and it’s backfiring. I wrote back in September in this story about the booster back and forth messaging, that Biden declared:
This shot will boost your immune response. It will increase your protection from COVID-19. And it’s the best way to protect ourselves from new variants that could arise.”
When I was writing that story, I found a survey buried in the CDC presentation (attached at bottom) to recommend Pfizer booster shots to the public. One section said boosters make the unvaccinated less likely to get any shots. Look at this graphic from the presentation:
As you can see, only 15% of unvaccinated hear about booster and feel more motivated to get their first shot. So did Biden and the CDC booster-o-rama messaging in early fall get the unvaccinated to roll up their sleeves?
This CDC graph shows you that the early fall push for boosters made fewer unvaccianted get a first dose. The numbers went up in November, possible because of the super-scary Omicron variant or employer mandates.
The fate of the unvaccinated
The CDC has a teeny-tiny chart on its website to compare cases of COVID in vaccinated, unvaccinated and boosted. I put it below to show the most recent available data is that about 100 out of 100,000 fully vaccinated got COVID compared to 475 out of 100,000 unvaccinated. It’s not a dramatic difference.
Then look at the stats comparing death rates for COVID.