The light at the end of the mRNA vaccine tunnel looks more like a train every day
We need to talk about South Korea.
Through 2020 and 2021, South Korea chased zero Covid with strict border controls, aggressive testing and tracing, and a vaccination campaign that reached nearly its entire adult population with mRNA (and some DNA) shots.
The country didn’t quite get to zero. Infections and deaths rose slowly last year. But it came close enough that the usual highly credentialed public health experts held it up as a light among the nations.
Here’s Devi Sridhar – once the world’s youngest Rhodes Scholar, today a “personal chair” in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh Medical School – telling the world in November 2021 how super-duper-good South Korea did:
Devi – you can trust her, look at that piercing gaze! – explained:
Maximum suppression helped buy time for scientists to get to work, and therefore find a sustainable exit from the crisis… The pivot from maximum suppression to mass vaccination was a rational and logical shift to achieve a successful transition out of the pandemic.
Devi?
Reality called. It has some edits to your piece.
On Thursday, South Korea reported 600,000 new Covid infections – the equivalent of more than 4 million in the United States. In a single day.
Covid deaths are skyrocketing too. South Korea reported 429 deaths Thursday, the equivalent of about 3,000 in the United States. That number is all but certain to skyrocket – cases have risen so fast that deaths have not had time to catch up yet. No one should be surprised if South Korea reports more than 1,000 daily Covid deaths in the next month.
Dial E for exponential:
South Korea, even more than Hong Kong, shows the world what happens when Omicron hits a densely populated region that has no prior Covid immunity at the wrong time, as the mRNA shots fail in unison.
The mRNA shots have negative efficacy against Omicron infection within months – meaning that vaccinated people are more likely to become infected. Data from Canada, Britain, Scotland, the United States, and other countries all agree on this point. I’m not sure anyone serious even argues it anymore.
In New Zealand, for example, unvaccinated people now have even lower infection rates than those who have received boosters:
