Is stay at home helping? Are the preventative measures helping?

The virus is small enough to go through all but the n95 masks.
The death counts in PA and NY include the nursing homes where the governors sent covid positive patients into the most covid susceptible environments. That has to skew the numbers.

The official line is that the preventative measures are preventing infections and deaths. But officials would have to say that since they instituted the measures.

real problem is that all the statistics and data we have on COVID are politically driven

Typical US problem? ... over here our statistics indicate that 60% of the current IC unit capacity (90% of pre-2020) is now occupied by covid-19 patients... (sorry for getting more off-topic)

also, one can find flaws in basically all of the counting, etc. and think that the virus must be taken seriously, particularly as it seems obvious to everyone but politicians and their closest friends that we needed to prepare for either a second wave or returning back to normal, or both.

That hasn't happened in many places (I'd argue almost everywhere).

According to CDC there were 22,000 deaths in the US attributed to the flu in 2019, whereas there were over 500,000 in the deaths due to COVID in the first 12 months of the pandemic.

Remarkable how Flu-A and -B bowed out of the picture to favor COVID, no? Almost all the deaths from -A, -B, and COVID are due to pneumonia, in any case. Distinction/Difference problem here. Yes, there are some deaths which resulted from hospital treatment of the symptoms (respirators.)

A more hard-bitten skeptic might say that the numbers are being manipulated for the benefit of hospitals and certain high-ranking Government "health" "experts."

Regardless, the 99.8% survival rate cannot be disputed. Further, to claim that 'masks' and 'distance' have saved the US from an extinction event is not falsifiable, given that NEJM published an article flatly stating that masks are useless unless N-95, and those under tightly controlled conditions (May 11th, IIRC). Further, there is absolutely ZERO scientific evidence for the 6' "distance" protocol.

The common flu was never bad enough in the recent past where hospitals ran out of room in South Texas and North Dakota and patients literally died in hallways waiting for care, or where city parks in New York City were requisitioned as temporary burial grounds with morgues not being able to keep up with over 1000 excess deaths per day during the first wave.

Those claims were largely debunked but if you have documentation, by all means show us. NYC, as I recall, encouraged people to continue using the subway and we all know about the Cuomo problem. You might not want to use NY as part of your evidentiary claims.

The problem is that only priests can anoint, confess, and, for about 90% of things,

How is this a problem?

The real problem is that all the statistics and data we have on COVID are politically driven

[Neon, florescent purple bold] Wait... you mean people aren't following the science? [off]

in protecting natural life, we endanger supernatural life by cutting off access to the sacraments.

Is that rather like saving the city by burning it to the ground, or improving the music program by burning all books of Gregorian chant and exiling or murdering all the musicians?

pfreese - furthering the rabbit hole and drawing the ire of those who object to the discussion of this issue, I'll just respond to one of your examples, as a resident of the hardest hit county in South Dakota. (And in saying this, I don't disagree that COVID is a serious issue/threat, and should be taken seriously, btw): This is taken from following local news and updates from hospital staff, and talking the hospital doctors and nurses of my acquaintance.

In spring of 2020, Sioux Falls (main population and healthcare center of South Dakota) emptied its hospitals, moving departments (e.g. cancer doctors) out to other facilities around town, so that the bulk of hospital capacity could be open and available for COVID. Then, we had very few cases in that period, the emergency capacity was not needed, and the hospitals were losing money fast. During the summer the emergency plan was rolled more or less 'back to normal'. Still no surge of cases. Then, in October-November-December, we experienced a big surge of cases, along with the rest of the upper Midwest. However, in the judgment of the hospital administration, there was not a need to move back to the emergency measures that, ironically, we implemented in the spring when there was no surge. So the hospitals got very busy, and at a few times actually up to capacity, and in some cases patients were moved around or flown to less busy places. But the judgment of the administrators this was preferable to moving back to the logistically and financially devastating emergency plan of the springtime. The hospitals in fact weathered the surge, and the surge has since subsided, so it looks like they knew what they were doing.

Why say all this? Because it's easy to throw out an article, but the article can easily give a skewed perspective on reality. The idea of flying patients around gives a scary picture of emergency and overflow, while the reality is that the surge plan worked, and our hospitals never needed to move back to a true emergency footing, with all routine surgeries and procedures canceled and the hospital departments emptied out.

And that's just one situation that I'm personally familiar with, which is part and parcel of the whole problem with the media and its influence on all of our perception of the situation. Another problem is that many on this forum will be annoyed at my getting into the weeds/rabbit hole on this topic. So the media perspective is either accepted as gospel, or the person who pushes back, even gently, on it is accused of being obnoxious/divisive/introducing tangents, etc.

It takes all of the above to discuss just one article you posted, but the discussion is irksome and inappropriate for this forum. But the practical and moral decisions we need to make are based on our individual perspectives, which are an aggregate of personal experience and countless other articles, but which should not be discussed. It's all rather dispiriting...

Dad,

No one has taken you up on the offer because there isn't such a thing. The nearest anyone will come is "Greater Love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends". John Ireland's setting is a tremendous piece of music, but I can't build a case for being a guinea pig in a lab experiment as a moral requirement.

Still waiting for someone to reference the Catholic moral teaching that requires Catholics to be guinea pigs taking experimental "vaccines"

Seconding Chris; if you put it this way, you'll probably never get an answer.
On the other hand I'd certainly appreciate some guiding in this question that goes further (my German-protestant thinking running havoc...) than what the pope and our bishops say.

NB. As for the EU, we are in the lucky situation that the vaccines have gone through the normal approval procedure (with the side effect of a 2 month delay with respect to the US and UK), no idea whether this is relevant to the ethical question from a catholic perspective.

"Influenza Case": flu-like illness which could not be transformed into Covid case no matter how many cycles the PCR ran. Unlike Covid, "influenza" does not include fatal bullet wounds, motorcycle crashes at 60++MPH, or coronary arrest.

Does that help?

As to "moral obligation," we have CDF's 12/2020 declaration:

“It is evident, in the light of practical reason, that the vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and must therefore be voluntary,” adding only that if the common good so indicates then “it is good to permit recommendation of vaccination, in particular to protect those who are weakest and more exposed.”

.....Rachel Maddow notwithstanding.....

Elmar,

In this country, there is an emergency approval and a normal approval. Emergency approval skips all sorts of steps (which usually lengthen the process by several years).

Directly to your question: unless the EU has such a process, you can't fall back on that argument as such but there certainly may be other arguments.... such as the fact that it isn't actually a vaccine, and it's previously untested technology/methodology. There are other reasons to resist this.

Hawkins,

Are these

robust safeguards and controls in place post-authorisation.

actually there?