I have been continually amazed at my fellow citizens' willingness to believe in the existence of a ebola-level pandemic. Even though, if they were to honestly evaluate their day-to-day life over the past two years they should come to another conclusion...? I think these people would be prepared to continue to have hysterics about a cold, supplemented by faked statistics and biased reporting - probably for years.
We need to stand up and make our voices heard. The political class has every reason not to back down, but to keep pushing hard. Vaccine mandates, monthly boosters, lockdowns, quarantine camps, whatever it takes to keep control of the narrative and stay in power.
And the police in Germany cannot deal with hundreds of large and small protests occurring simultaneously on Mondays at 18:00 all over the country (thank you Saxony!). The protests are getting larger every week. It is truly invigorating to meet so many like-minded people from all walks of life.
It's 1:33 pm EST on 12/26, and I've just done a news search for "omicron deaths." Results? I've got tens of stories about ONE MAN in Houston who died of omicron (or perhaps "with" omicron), who had been "previously infected!" with covid. ("scare" "quotes" intentionally ironic.) One guy. Now, I'll note that according to Dr John Campbell, something like 75% of new infections in the USA are omicron. That said, to be fair, deaths in the USA aren't exactly plummeting either. So we'll probably need another week or two before it becomes obvious that Omicron isn't bad news at all.
Still, the silence on deaths from omicron is DEAFENING.
Cheers, all.
Kim G
Ajijic, Jalisco
Where gringos go masked, terrified. Mexicans, not so much.
P.S. Can someone explain why you can't (or don't) get omicron AND delta at the same time? Why exactly does omicron drive delta out? Omicron provides delta immunity but not the reverse?
And it turns out that the health department in Houston will not confirm that man died "from omicron." But the fearmongers needed a story to perpetuate their narrative. #EnoughAlready
Well, technically you could as it is more of a viral swarm, not just one variant that you get. So, if you get multiple strains at once, the one with the greatest replicating capacity (i.e. it gets in the cells fastest) will soon outcompete the others, leaving them to spend more time outside a cell and therefore exposed to NK cells and other antiviral mechanisms of the immune system which will quickly destroy them. Any antibody response that favors one variant over another will just add to the selection effect.
A natural infection of any variant that triggers immune memory would serve to limit another variant due to the recognition of epitopes that are functionally-constrained (ie. more than just spike) across most strains.
Omicron has been almost like a blessing, as it truly is the end of the pandemic as a dangerous virus
On the other hand, containment hysteria continue unabated; and it seems most intensely in the places that least require it.
Schools? Universities? I never realized how much administrators actually hate young people; how they justify the imprisonment and misery just to pay homage to a virus which is harmless to the young. My kids are now in the state of mind that school is where they go to experience bullshit; they are not even 10 years old. They have said as much, and have lost respect for the institution. I have mixed feelings about this.
More travel measures. More testing. More masks. More more more. I'm slowly resigned to constructing my life in such a way that I no longer interact with the most corona-ed areas of society because this is going to be a long term thing. How, and why, many a dozen people who self-identify as "experts" because they have the right degrees and so called credentials are able to continue to exert such a power over the world, baffles me to no end, but then again, High Priests of all religions command great power - the Why is not relevant. There can be untold death and misery and somehow that cements their power rather than destroys it.
As for pushing back- this substack and a handful of others are where I go to get my daily dose of humanity and reason. I continue to try and do my part to resist all the insanity - but from time to time I wonder if it would just be easier to "drink from the crazy river" and to stop trying to scream at a hurricane
The entire political system which is propped up by the overwhelmingly older population who actually vote hates young people. Young people as a whole are however, both too stupid to do anything about it, and increasingly it seems, to actually notice. The middle class ones in particular are deeply entranced by "woke", even as woke safetyism wrecks their daily lives as they pay through the nose for debased college educations while being imprisoned on dorms.
But on the other hand, it was this kind of situation which became the catalyst for May '68 in France. It just took enough radicals with their heads screwed on right to say non.
Thing is, with disable innate immune systems even an Omnicron, like a common cold, can take a person out. I hope that is not the case. But it would make sense. Saline nose rinses work great, though i still dislike doing it, it works. Moving on with life...maskless.
The flccc.net protocol says nasal rinse with 4-5 drops of 1% povidone-iodine + saline 3 or 4 times a day. Gross is the understatement but it works great to thin out the herds so less gets to the lungs.
I use a small syringe with 0.25-0.3 ml and snort up each nostril. You can buy or make the saline (1/2 tsp salt + 1 cup distilled water). Then you dilute the 10% povidone-iodine (the most common strength) by mixing 1 tsp with 9 tsp of saline. You can also gargle with it or use one of the commercial mixes with chlorhexidine, povidone-iodine, or cetylpyridinium chloride in it. Do not swallow.
Glad to help. Doing as good as I can in Soviet Canuckistan LOL. Just keep finding ways to work around the stupid season up here and wait it out. I call it "The Life Of Brian" defence after the gladiator scene. I don't need to defeat them, just out last them.
I do the gargle with the Betadine solution. The nasal mist is on back order. A solution of baking soda, salt water, boiled and cooled water was recommended by an international health organization in GVB’s email today. This, in lieu of masks, makes sense!
Yuck, I hate flooding my nose. We’re in Buffalo for Christmas, And I won’t mask up. So I send my partner to the store and to run errands. He wears a super duper heavy duty mask from Mars.
It's mainly because someone I live with has been delayed a cancer scan for a year, and will be delayed further if we contract what is now little more than a common cold (omicron). I also wear a P3 half mask respirator to the supermarket like a bloody hypochondriac lunatic. Nothing to do with my fear of covid, everything to do with the Machiavellianism of the political class.
Last night I just used the salt in boiled water (cooled). Snorted. So refreshing. From being a salt water swimmer for 20+ years, I can attest to its healing power for all manner of cuts, bug bites, acne, etc. No more irritating spray in my schnaz.
I’m from Buffalo, live in Free Florida now, say Hello to the crazy Messianic Kathy Hockul if you see her. Still have a house there , haven’t stepped foot in it in 2 years. I refuse to wear a mask or capitulate with the vaxx cards and mandates. Enjoy your stay.
College students are complete pussies these days. I grew up in the 60's and 70's when college students were taking over university administration offices, conducting sit-ins, and some violent protests to stop the Vietnam war. Today? Students are meekly staying in their rooms and submitting to vaccine terrorism.
I wish they'd grow a spine and say "no!" That, and withholding their tuition would spell the end of this.
"I'm slowly resigned to constructing my life in such a way that I no longer interact with the most corona-ed areas of society because this is going to be a long term thing." Amen. I feel like this will happen organically where eventually a large number of the population constructs a parallel society of sort.
I would rather not say where I live if that's ok with you. I have a bit of a public profile; excuse my paranoia!
The kids go to a private school which follows the local health mandates - masks, no mixing, limited/restricted play, restricted extracurriculars, etc.
The universities I was referring to, in the extreme, can be encapsulated by Emerson College in Boston, where returning students have a 2 week "Stay in Room" order to look forward to, as well as booster mandates, and remote learning indefinitely. How they still have paying students(customers) is beyond me.
I agree. Berkeley and all the CA colleges and universities are now requiring boosters. I sent emails to the college but I’m not hopeful. I seriously want to pull my son out but I know he won’t have it and neither will my husband. If he gets sick from this booster I will never forgive myself even though it seems my voice is not heard on this issue.
Holy cow… the damage is cumulative with each booster! Even if your son doesn’t get “sick,” what kind of subclinical damage is going on? So, he’ll get a degree, be a great success in his field, and then… keel over at 45 or 50. I’d continue to work on your husband, sweetie. And forgive yourself… if you’ve tried to warn, and it doesn’t work, you have to find peace with that somehow… take care❤️
I know. I keep sharing everything with my kids. They think I’m listening to conspiracy theories. I fighting a losing battle. I’m the uneducated one in our family as I only have an AAS. You know how smart those ones are with high degrees! Sarcasm
Deb, I post every 2-3 weeks on recommendations as to how to deal with all this. Please buck yourself up and realize that you are the EDUCATED one — the smart one! I have a BSEE from Cal Poly Pomona, an MSEE from Caltech, an MA in International Studies form Claremont Graduate University, etc. etc. and have been in that world. Don’t let them intimate you, sweetie — your ability to think clearly trhough this mess is the real intelligence here.
Unpopular barely touches the surface. I have no say in what he does. He’s 20. Too smart to see through all the bullshit. He’s genius almost but does not see what the governments of this world are up to. I’m almost glad I’m coming to the end of my days so maybe I won’t see how it all plays out. Sounds bleak I know but it’s how I feel right now.
Sending your kids to these Marxist organizations is insane--wake up and find more suitable schools. Sounds like you're the problem. Wake up and starve these anti-American institutions.
I agree but how do you tell your kid he can’t go to a college which is top in his field of expertise that he is excepted into? And the person paying for it(my husband). Is 200% into sending the kids to these top colleges so his kids can get an education in their field. As a mom who sees what is going on I feel helpless. No voice.
The answer to the old question, ‘if your friends all jump of a bridge, would you?’
…yes. Yes they would. Our youngest is still at home, and remarkably is the only one left unjabbed. Our eldest is now trying to find a cardiologist to evaluate his new symptoms, fearing myocarditis.
Warning: Watch who he picks for a cardiologist. Just had my 6 month checkup with my FL cardiologist. Never mentioned vax once. Focused on nutrition, exercise, sleep and meditation.
Besides fighting the covidiots, I am dead set against these schools sneaking in CRT. I provide two scholarships every year for students- one at Ave Maria college in FL, the other at Hillsdale. These schools do not take govt funding, so they are free to educate w/o CRT.
CarolAnne, that is awesome! Both great schools. I wanted my son to attend Ave Maria for law school, and he choose Boston. It’s been pretty horrible for me! Lol
My son is at a law school in Boston, booster mandate and online until February, insanity. He sees it, because we live in Florida, I don’t know how he can stand it. And the tuition bill is criminal. Almost all of his 3 years has been online, I’ll be happy when he finishes in April. Such a joke. His law school education was conducted in my den in SW Florida for almost 200k. Sorry for the rant.
Higher education is a complete scam. My brother graduated from Notre Dame law school and said he learned nothing useful. It was only when he started to practice in a reputable firm did he learn anything. Something he said he could have done with little or no class work and without the $100,000 of debt.
I hear you, my son is a MBA/ CPA, very bright kid, it’s been a joke, I can tell by the conversations that I have with him that nothing he has learned is applicable to real life.
He’s a total capitalist and wants the bank. Noteworthy are his ambition and Conservative ideals.
New England is driving the nightmare. Nearly all of the public health guidance is being amplified by schools and hospitals from that region. I'm not sure who is guiding the group think, but it is being given legitimacy by Harvard, Brown, BU, Yale, etc.
I want to exile them. Put them on leaky boats in the ocean as refugees. Only excuse them if their families plead sufficiently for them in which case they become wards of the State for life with their families monitoring them for the State.
Rewarding authoritarianism with authoritarianism isn't exactly productive or humane. Maybe just make these folks work regular jobs with no particular sway over public policy and then leave them alone?
well recognising them as what they are and taking some measures to protect against them doing further harm would be productive of course. Just as it is productive to eliminate waste.
Making a law and imposing it is not 'authoritarianism'. It is the exercise of authority, true enough, but it is not the phenomenon itself, the political, social practice, is it? You don't say mandating seatbelts is authoritarianism do you?
Or locking murderers up?
These people have been and are being guilty of the most heinous crimes all the way to sheer murder. Dereliction of duty the very least of what they do. Incredible though it sounds coup d'etat has been the norm for them !
What else can you call it when a whole State has its laws suspended on the grounds of a State of Emergency that simply doesn't exist?
Repeated month after month after month?
And for two years failed utterly to give the smallest assistance to the health of the people and instead mandated measures ALL of which were detrimental to the Immune Systems, medical and psychological health of the people, safety, sanctity and health of our democracy.... ?
They are at the very least 'lame brains' and they need treating as such for they have another psychological quirk that needs recognising and taking into account: a propensity to persuade and insinuate themselves into positions of influence and power from whence they do harm.
Wards of the State. Let them live in dormitories in mental hospitals unless their families plead for them upon which they can be released into the care of their families.
As they gloried - and do glory - in making a whole nation powerless let them spend their lives as powerless wards of the state while we explore the convolutions of their minds that they could be so hostile to everyone and everything - facts, science, reason, humanity...
I think this is not a realistic expectation and would probably not be a good idea. If the Corona apparatchiks know nothing will happen to them and they can just vanish into anonymity, they are less likely to fight the "back to normal" phase than if they have to face grave consequences if they lose.
I am in awe at how psychotic governments have been. Amazing that the biggest existential threat we all face is from our own governments.
Also that the mildness of Omicron has panicked policy makers. It’s too incredible. For me, at this point, the conspiracy is to believe that there is no conspiracy.
Mistakes happen, but when they become too many, serial and follow a pattern, the line between incompetence and malfeasance and malevolence is crossed - and yes it evidences conspiracy to commit these acts and cover up the truth.
The WHO H1N1/swine flu scandal 2009, featuring the Pandremix vaccine, was a conspiracy. It was documented and condemned by a UK Labour MP and a German doctor reporting to the Council of Europe. Easy to consider that this is another one, helped by better control of the press than 12 years ago.
It seems that pharma was suffering falling RoI and was desperate to find a new income. What better than a $50 product 90% of the population take 2-3 times a year?
I've given a figure of 90% as I don't think the USA or even UK could get much past that without triggering WW3. The UK has apparently had a massive nationwide advertising campaign for boosters - I hadn't seen it, I no longer watch TV - and 250,000 came forward who hadn't been treated before.
Mm, 250,000 in say 70,000,000 ... 0.3% of the population. Try that again and my guess is you'll get even fewer extra. Diminishing returns. Desperation breeds resistance by those who remain, who probably include lots of highly-educated PhDs and MDs.
Dr David Martin in interviews listed some of the US patent numbers for SARS, MERS and the rest. If that's correct, it's no cockup. I'd like to see him debate other experts, though.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick (UK) has written several good books, my favourite so far being 'Doctoring Data' (2014). He predicted much of what we see, i.e. dogma overrides data and 'medicine' becomes quackery. A lot of 'mainstream' drugs no longer have proper evidence to support their use, because the sole evidence was pharma-funded trials.
Doctors hate being called quacks. If you have any really egregious opponents, don't hesitate to use the word, but I'd be sparing with it.
a computer today is, after all, interactive tv, even your cellphone and even on those devices we quickly find ourselves avoiding the mainstream as useless and dangerously misleading - witness us being here for instance for lack of an acceptable mainstream venue. so it's absolutely slam dunk. tv has had its day. that was quick wasn't it?
TV is how this has been pushed out to the masses even in days of laptops and 'smartphones'.
But your smartphone is the one that really needs ditching. And everyone needs to smarten up on what a proxy is. And we need regulation of this IT industry which has yet to happen in 30 years or more.
I'm beginning to think the 2009 H1N1 events didn't get enough traction because all the social media outlets were so limited then. Now it's a very different situation, and the pervasiveness of SM has been utilized to the utmost and has made this whole charade possible.
Martin is trying to sell his crypto. In a world where the Central Banks are thinking of removing the Private banks and going straight to the customer (rather than citizen) with digital coins that are in turn part powered by yourselves now metalled up with a + on one end and a - on the other.
The mania of governments can only be explained by one thing in my book. A repeat of 2008 is on the cards and pandemic compliance is linked to good credit at the IMF.
It's not amazing. It's expected. 20th century governments killed hundreds of millions of people. The current round of politicians are the same type of people just dumber.
Yep. You're in the right area there alright. I think of them as being clinically sadists. And part of the reason for their success is an inborn masochism in the larger population.
I've wondered if this is a natural evolutionary consequence for the human race - it's progress having always been one of sadistic overlords and humbled masses who have to learn to enjoy it, suffer it. If there's any truth in that surmise we'd need to institute psychological testing for all our authorities in future.
We need to strip them of every , single asset, all of the trillions, down to the striped prison garb. They will own nothing. And they will be miserable for the rest of their locked down, solitary lives.
Better than that. 4 walls of unbreakable mirrors. No matter which way they turn, when they open their eyes all they see is their decrepit, gluttonous, evil selves
Ah... that's a good one. Make them wear masks for the rest of their lives and socially distance and lockdown permanently. If not exiled to leaky boats in the south pacific.
wow... I don't really want to be more vindictive than those inhuman bastards but it's really tempting.....
But you know what? Nothing will happen to them at all.
They'll find a way to segue into having done the right thing all the time.
They'll actually claim a victory. Their victory.
And they've got everything going for them, haven't they?
All the MSM that helped them.
All the craven intellectuals and chattering classes that went along.
All the masses who went along and won't want to shame themselves.
All the professional classes who reneged on their professions: medical, legal, educational.
And so on.
And where will we be?
You look forward to your time in the sun when your wise prophesies are borne out and your obdurate refusal to kowtow is lauded and appreciated?
Nope.
They will pat each other on the back and all agree that what they did was right and good and has brought about this 'victory'.
And you and I, we'll be seen as having been trouble makers and dissenters, uncooperative deadweights and annoyances. And we won't be invited to any parties.
The trajectories in Denmark, the U.K., and S.A. certainly look good.
The fact that they've gotten noisiest and most desperate (unvaccinated WILL crowd the hospitals and die in large numbers!) despite the apparent mildness of omicron is hopefully also the final surge of tyrannical, anti-scientific lunacy.
How much tyranny we must withstand in the future depends on how many of us actually noticed what happened to our governments during covid: that they were willing to weaponize fear against their citizens in some sort of post-nationalistic, quasi-liberal form of fascism. (Someone who is a political scientist, help me out here, as my quest to make sense of it may have missed the mark.)
I’m not a political scientist, just a 69 year old observer of life’s passing parade.
The rot started with Universal suffrage and elected Governments. Once you have that, politicians soon figure out tax receipts ordinarily used to fund the workings of the State, becomes a slush fund to bribe voters to vote for them. The electorate cottons on quickly and elections become auctions where they sell their votes to the highest bidder. Using the tax system for redistribution is sold as moving money from the rich to the poor (fair, equality, social justice), but society is not bi-polar and there is a big lump in the middle who are neither. In any case the money flow is not unidirectional, and the middle lump who contribute the most want something out of it too. The confidence trick is to get them to believe they get more out than they put in - and this is called the Welfare State.
Increasingly since WWII, responsibility has transitioned from the individual to the State, and now the bulk of the population is infantilised, wholly dependent on the State - a surrogate Mummy - for everything, including doing their thinking for them, their safety and protection.
That is how our rulers have been able to do what they have done to a population that has exchanged their individual sovereignty, freedom and self-reliance for safety and the State providing what they don’t provide for themselves.
I see no way back outside social and economic breakdown, which is well on track started by the CoVid tyranny and which will be completed by Net Zero Carbon.
I used to teach (among other subjects) political science. Let me tell you what was for me a very humbling koment, and an eyeopener to the hubris that is virtually intrinsical to political science (regardless of personal political position):
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I don't think it's wrong to claim that 99.9% of all economists and all political scientists, analysts, whatever other titles may apply, utterly and completely failed to see that coming. In 1988 consensus among both fields were that the East/West divide and the Cold War? Status Quo for the foreseeable future, at least for the coming century.
The events of 1989 and onwards, the easing of nuclear posturing (kids today have no clue what it does to you to practice for "when the nuclear war comes" in kindergarten), and how our brothers and sisters in the old Soviet satellite states freed themselves from tyranny - rejoice! Let Freedom ring!
And not a single professor nor lecturer would acknowledge how ignorant, stupid, conceited and simply pigheaded they had been. Not a one! No, in 1991 every-effing one at the institution for political science? Oh, they had always known that the USSR couldn't last much longer.
I know of a grand total of two political scientists who has had the stones to revise theur hypotheses, even to the point they've admitted to ahving been in error. (Not about the USSR but at all, on any issue):
Samuel P. Huntington, and Francis Fukuyama.
I heartily recommend both, no matter where one is on a political issue.
Agree in general. No matter the government: monarchy, socialist, communist, republic or democracy, the drift with time is to plunder what can be stolen. Liberal democracy is, perhaps, the ultimate fantasy: the illusion that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else. Governments are born, they live, they die. They are replaced by something new. And the process begins anew. It's probably just part of human nature. Who was it who said that the only thing we learn from history is that we fail to learn from history?
People are not as dumb as they clearly appear to be. Just think about it: they build, make and do everything at the same time as appearing to be too stupid to see common sense, common facts.
No. They're not that dumb. The reasons for the behaviour are manifold.
So education could be the 'way back'.
We need, I think, education in the duties and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy.
You DON'T simply vote for one of two Parties and then walk away until the next time.
You DO vote for your rep and you monitor constantly and interact.
Someone said every generation we are invaded by Barbarians - our children. Our manners, etiquette, being polite, self-respect, self-discipline, values, freedom, responsibilities, moral absolutes, are not passed down through our genes, they have to be taught, in the home, in schools, in the community. We have failed with this. It started in the 60s with the ‘anything goes’ Hippies… no rules, no standards do what tiu like, laze about, don’t work - just enjoy the benefits others have created.
The problem is, how can children be taught these things when their parents, teachers and most in the community never learnt them?
It's true what someone said. I know. I've raised children. And I've got real memories of what a barbarian I was myself, to my shame.
But I wouldn't throw in the towel. I used to think it was all pretty hopeless until a read a really excellent text once, online somewhere, that just summed up the whole thing, perfectly. Itemised every little thing wrong about our children and our way of bringing them up, letting them get away with this or that.
It was really beautiful and the inference was quite clear: all was lost.
Then at the end the person who'd posted it revealed it had been written by, I think all these years after reading it, some ancient Greek back in Pythagoras' time or such.
Apparently it was ever thus.
There's said to be a sot of pendulum effect, too, isn't there? The children react to the parents and go 'this' way. Then their children react to them and go 'that' way - back to where the grandparents were.
We are in uncharted territory, really. This internet and smartphone access has made one 'hive' of us in a way that never was even approximated before.
And done it all in the last 20 years. Blindingly fast.
It seems to me this is literally a different organism now. The human race. A different organism.
Now capable of having a 'hive mind'.
Years ago - ten or more - someone startled me by saying there was 'only one' computer in the world really.
Seemed ludicrous. Didn't he know there were millions ?
Of course he did. But what he meant was that with interconnectedness any single one of them could be viewed as merely a terminal offering access to all the rest.
That's very clear now. Isn't it? It wasn't then. But it is now.
Well the thing is that putting a smartphone in every person's hands has made every person a 'terminal' doing I/O with that 'one computer'.
So not only is there now quite clearly 'only one computer' but now this 'one computer' can be seen as having millions of human minds connected to it.
It's kind of like a living computer.
Or the other way round - the human race is a 'computerised' race. Well on its way to roboticized.
I don't think we can really have any idea of what that 'mind' is going to think or do. There's never been such a thing on planet earth before.
It's perhaps a poor imitation but it is something akin to a race sharing instant telepathy.
Science fiction is today science fact.
We know to our horror that's totally true in regard to the 'science fiction ' of 1984.
Well I reckon its true in regard to a great deal more.
I can only hope that good and right and reason will triumph.... :)
No politician will ever admit they are failures. As they always do, they will implement more nonsense to cover up their uselessness as leaders. These are mostly arrogant, self serving, power control freaks who consider themselves far above the people they seek to rule over.
I have been wondering about "regime change" for the last 6 months or so. (Where the regime is the post WWII techno-liberal democratic state.) I think it is coming, but what comes after is the question.
I think the most interesting question is indeed what comes next from a political science perspective, i.e. what's next in the world of Corona containment. I am periodically swinging between two different viewpoints
1) Most governments are eager to phase out all measures to be able to be the ones claiming victory and gain re-election. I am saying this because, directionally, many of the measures seem to have a negative return in the long term. For example, consider vax passes & the fact they "expire" after X months. In Italy, 6 million eligible people are without them, including many teenagers. Even assuming an extremely high adoption rate for the 3rd dose in the next 6 months or so (say, 90%), there would be 4 million more people (10% of ~40 million vaxxed) that end up without a "pass". Every single multistep process has some "loss" at each step (in tech this is akin to the "purchase funnel"). Bringing this loss to zero is unbelievable. How is this eventually sustainable if you fast forward this process 12-24 months out? Because of this, governments must be thinking of how to look for an out & and for a victory lap
2) Governments in general are enjoying the level of control they can subject the population to through mass media conditioning, including pointless measures that create a false sense of "doing something". For example: masking outdoor, masking kids in school, "passes", the testing theater and so on. Because of this, they will keep these measures for years, or decades, until they are just inbuilt in the fabric of society like the "no smoking" in public places and so on. In addition, letting go of these measures could be construed by the opposition as a sign of weakness towards protesters / "no pass" / "no vax" / whatever, and governments don't want to look weak against some enemy. It will not matter who wins elections, no-one will remove many of these measures, and any chance will occur only on the scale of decades as some people emigrate etc
I really can't settle between these two extremes. Due to my personal story, I follow a handful of regions pretty closely (Italy, Catalunya/Spain, USA with all of its differences, and to some extent UK and Germany). The signal that comes from these places randomly points to either 1) or 2).
Eugyppius's point about liberal democracies' demise is well taken but I think somewhat overplayed (but would be glad to discuss).
On one hand, there has been a sort of demise since the end of the cold war because the fundamental dynamics of conflict between capital and labour have changed. Politics has moved in many countries more towards a sort of "technocratic center", and in some countries (eg Italy) you can argue you've had many more "technocratic governments" than not (Monti, Draghi). So, for example, "austerity" policies that have benefited the German or Northern Italian economic elite to the detriment of Southern Europe through the introduction of the single currency have just been a fact of life, happening outside the space of liberal democracy.
On the other hand, though, none of that had to do with freedom of movement at macro or micro level or generally bothering people in their daily lives (masking, kids, etc). In fact, bothering people at micro level seems contrary to the general objectives of capital against labour.
Anyway, a bit of a digression but hopefully some food for thought
You are very charitable if you think governments want to put this behind them. Ministers and other politicians cannot deviate from following "The Science" which means they have to defer to accepted "experts" to tell them what to do. Those 'experts' are enjoying a level of prominence, celebrity, funding, and attention which is simply unheard of. 3 years ago if someone said they studied epidemiology it would be a snoozefest, now they can potentially wind up on TV.
Then, you have to account for the 10-20% of the population that WANT the measures to continue indefinitely. You underestimate how many zealots in the general public WANT masks forever, and everything associated thereafter. Don't underestimate what a noisy bunch of Karens are capable of. The entire Prohibition movement in the 1920's was led by barely a fifth of the US population, and it took a LONG time to kill it.
The media, inexplicably, also wants this to continue. I don't have an explanation why. Across the board, whether its left-leaning publications like the NYT, the FT, or the WaPo, all the way to the right with the Economist or the WSJ, measures such as masking and testing are considered a given, indisputable, inviolable.
The more people who get covid, the better. If you told me a year ago that I would wind up being "pro spread" I would have looked at you like you were insane...
NYT comments on an article about the unvaccinated was something like ‘people do not go to the ICU over a cold’ where someone had remarked that COVID was becoming a cold.
This is absolutely not true - any frail/vulnerable person can certainly die of a cold just as they can a UTI or rotavirus or similar. We just don’t test everyone for rhinovirus when they enter the hospital, and it does not feature on the death certificate.
I wouldn't be surprised if that were the next demand. The risk tolerance of these people has been reduced to absolutely nothing when it comes to infectious disease.
I've always assumed that the only way to smooth this chapter into its place in history is to gaslight the hell out of us about flu - currently underway.
I comment occasionally to the Sydney Morning Herald & Melbourne Age which is normally below the story. It is not possible to get past the censors even if I'm very polite. I suspect that the NYT and WAPO are the same therefore what you're seeing is biased content, just like the stories that they cover.
The more vaccinations the zealots get, the quicker they may be silenced. From what I've been reading and listening to lately, the mRNA vaccine may well be Zeus' thunderbolt for the unwary.
(WRT your remarks on the lefty media and their support of all these drastic measures - it really does look like David Horowitz is right: inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.)
I totally get it that there's people with a greatly diminished risk tolerance and inordinate influence (I was thinking of something Emily Oster published today on Twitter which was really crazy, or even Zeynep T has disappointed me in that regard).
However, in the real world, there's nuanced views which eventually will bear consequences.
For example, take the indoor mask mandates. There's a whole array of jobs where people will more or less refuse to go back to the office if they have to wear masks (jobs where the worker have leverage/options). This eventually may mean it is more difficult to attract high-skilled workers in a certain geography because of that reason.
Same goes for infinite masking of kids in school: will you relocate to place XYZ if you know your kids' situation materially worsens?
I do not know the answer to these questions and surely some people will tell me they won't matter much, people won't care about their own kids, etc.
Which may all be true for some folks, but less true for other folks, and these things one way or another do compound and become pressure points on politicians.
All of this to clarify my point about some "optimism". I absolutely think most politicians have turned out to be very incompetent, subject to "do something to cover my a**", and everything else. But also they are subject to various forms of pressure. There is hope in a scenario where different sets of policies get enacted in different adjacent geographies and this emerges over time
There is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future, everything will be back to more or less normal. The question is how long - another year? 5? 10? The answer to that question will inform how much damage we are willing to inflict
I don't think it was a coincidence that women's suffrage and Prohibition came about at the same time. Indeed I think the Temperance Movement was sort of a moral force for letting women vote.
> I am saying this because, directionally, many of the measures seem to have a negative return in the long term. For example, consider vax passes & the fact they "expire" after X months. [...] Every single multistep process has some "loss" at each step (in tech this is akin to the "purchase funnel"). Bringing this loss to zero is unbelievable.
A somewhat tangential point, but one interesting thing about the vax passes is how crude a tool they are for creating compliance with an ongoing vaccination regime. For a one/two/three shot and done sequence, sure. It's evil and antithetical to everything the West should be, and opens the door to even more evil and antithetical actions, but it does create a strong incentive to get jabbed: do what you're told, or lose your rights.
The problem with ongoing jabs is that once a person opts out for good - and a few people will, every time a new booster comes around - no future vaccination demands will hold any weight. Once you refuse booster #5, who cares about booster #6 - or #7, #8, and so on? You're already banned from restaurants, theaters, gyms, work, or travel, depending on your location. What's the government going to do, ban you harder?
As they are now, these systems aren't compatible with the constant boosting the vaccinators want. They'll either turn into mandatory vaccination, something more nuanced a la China's actual social credit system, or go away.
...Then again, bureaucrats haven't shown much sense up until now, so why should I expect them to start? Perhaps vaxpasses will continue limping along as-is indefinitely in some locations, such as blue US cities.
That's my point, though: with the vax pass as it currently stands, they can't. The Los Angeles city government isn't going to arrest or shoot or fine me if I don't get my booster. (I mean, hypothetically. I don't live in LA, thank god.) I never got vaccinated in the first place, so as the laws are right now, none of their booster demands will make any difference.
They'll need to do SOMETHING to the system if they want to keep it and have ongoing boosters, whether that's adding more punishments or something else.
I can't speak for everyone obviously, but I like to think that many people, at least in USA, would resist forcible vaccination even if it costs them their lives. Now, understand I'm thinking of actual door-to-door searches, dragging people away, strapping them down scenario. If things get that bad, I'm going out shooting too. Our nation will have deteriorated into something not worth living in, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Realistically, however, if we get a "1984" type government, it will be forced upon everyone by systematic marginalization, what previously were "rights" now are "privileges" -- if your vax card is up-to-date. That's a much harder enemy to fight.
I hope you're right but just wait. South Africa is a low vax country. UK is not. ADE OAS and a whole.host of other issues could take the vaxxed by storm. Also the all causes death rate in Germany etc is alarming high. They will blame something on this. Make everyone take heart tablets or something. I cannot see this going quietly into the night.
Denmark's a high vaxx country with a lot of Omicron. so far, it looks like the vaxxed are more likely to get it, but no sign they face worse outcomes. so yes, some OAS which will probably lead to even more explosive Omicron waves in Europe, but as the thing can't really make that many people sick, unlikely this will be a very big deal.
i don't think so. you need something more transmissible than Omicron, and Omicron is already the product of very unnatural forces. in a few months, everyone will have some form of antibodies to SARS-2, driving opportunities for mutation still lower. yes, the vaccinated will still be a problem here, but they will also begin to develop some immune response to Omicron, just a suboptimal one.
Eugyppius did you still stay away from the vax? as a fellow resident of Munich (i think you said you live here) I am lucky that i dont work for a German company.
"in a few months, everyone will have some form of antibodies to SARS-2"
Wish it were so, but look at the cumulative case numbers for the last two years - at that rate it would take more than a decade for everyone (in the case of Germany) to be infected once.
And some (many?) may simply never catch it. Good for them, but we may not get handed this argument on a silver platter, for free.
Panics are never punished. No apologies, no regrets, no firings. They just fade away, leaving new bureaucracies in place that will help to run the next panic. Bush's 9/11 "threat" created the bioterror agencies, which stayed in place through later administrations, planning and scheduling the "virus" "threat." Bush also created TSA, which is now the major sustainer of the muzzle mandate for the "virus" "threat".
Yes, TSA was one of the first things I thought after the first "2 weeks" in March 2020: how we still have to take our shoes off at the airport for ONE unsuccessful bomber nearly 20 years ago. The Ozymandias-like inertia of bureaucracy is fascinating in a way.
The bulk of the tyrannical responses to COVID were based on mere possibilities. Emergency powers were invoked for imagined future occurances. The very word emergency was essentially redefined by the wannabe dictators and an important task in the hoped-for aftermath will be to drastically reform those emergency laws.
If we don't, as eugyppius suggests, the hysteria will be ramped up again; hysteria about an imagined climate "emergency", a gun "emrrgency", or a white supremecy "emergency", all of which will be chsracterized as matters of public health.
Let's indeed hope were nearing the end of the viral pandemic. But the hardest work, implied in eugyppius' final paragraph, will be ahead of us. It is not easy for people of good will to hold others harshly accountable, but the times call for it, just as they did at a point 80 years ago.
Thanks for your faith, but I think I'd probably recuse myself from the job. All I feel anymore towards any of them is rage. I admit I would enjoy it.
You'd probably want me around to help protect your family and home, if and when they come for it, where I'd be a fearsome ally. But I've seen through the veil of lawful democracy and don't trust myself to behave like anything but a dog with the leash off.
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice" I think Barry Goldwater said that. How different things would be now if Lyndon Johnson wasn't elected and started the "Great Society"?
The medical system and physicians have been as bad as the bureaucrats and public policy makers - it is the opioid crisis all over again with the lack of critical thinking by the very people who are supposed to protect the health of the populace
The public health people who did think critically, (for example the signatories to the Great Barrington Declaration) were pilloried by our corrupt Press. Ordinary physicians seem too cowed by their own woke medical societies to speak out. Very disappointing. Thank goodness for the Dr McCulloughs, etc.
In most of the US people are ignoring the powers that be, including the local powers that be. Blue cities live in panic. My purple city has had an indoor mask mandate since August , which is mostly followed in the “in” parts of town but nowhere else. And no one says a word to me (or anyone else) who doesn’t wear a mask. There is a clear “whatever” vibe - authorities aren’t messing with it, staff are done confronting people over it, and more people are realizing they don’t have to actually do it. The rest of our state (except one other city) is red and you’d never know anything is or has been going on for at least the past year. Media is totally tuned out, as are most politicians. I don’t think they can make it stick here, regardless of what tantrums Lord Fauci has.
The dutch government has been saying that the pandemic was almost over the past two years. Now they are suddenly saying it will stay forever. Given their tendency to be completely wrong it is certainly possible the end is near.
Just curious: why did the dutch government massively reduce their containment measures in the summer? I was there on vacation in September and it felt wonderfully pre-pandemic. Here in Germany, they have just been tightening and tightening the screws. Even when the numbers get better.
We have been less strict throughout most of the pandemic, cancelling most rules in summer time. This is year they cancelled all the measures in exchange for the 3G system. However the measures came back as soon as autumn hit.
I have been continually amazed at my fellow citizens' willingness to believe in the existence of a ebola-level pandemic. Even though, if they were to honestly evaluate their day-to-day life over the past two years they should come to another conclusion...? I think these people would be prepared to continue to have hysterics about a cold, supplemented by faked statistics and biased reporting - probably for years.
We need to stand up and make our voices heard. The political class has every reason not to back down, but to keep pushing hard. Vaccine mandates, monthly boosters, lockdowns, quarantine camps, whatever it takes to keep control of the narrative and stay in power.
And the police in Germany cannot deal with hundreds of large and small protests occurring simultaneously on Mondays at 18:00 all over the country (thank you Saxony!). The protests are getting larger every week. It is truly invigorating to meet so many like-minded people from all walks of life.
hearing that protests are getting larger literally makes my day
Great strategy. Every week at the same time, so it grows over time as more people become aware.
It's 1:33 pm EST on 12/26, and I've just done a news search for "omicron deaths." Results? I've got tens of stories about ONE MAN in Houston who died of omicron (or perhaps "with" omicron), who had been "previously infected!" with covid. ("scare" "quotes" intentionally ironic.) One guy. Now, I'll note that according to Dr John Campbell, something like 75% of new infections in the USA are omicron. That said, to be fair, deaths in the USA aren't exactly plummeting either. So we'll probably need another week or two before it becomes obvious that Omicron isn't bad news at all.
Still, the silence on deaths from omicron is DEAFENING.
Cheers, all.
Kim G
Ajijic, Jalisco
Where gringos go masked, terrified. Mexicans, not so much.
P.S. Can someone explain why you can't (or don't) get omicron AND delta at the same time? Why exactly does omicron drive delta out? Omicron provides delta immunity but not the reverse?
And it turns out that the health department in Houston will not confirm that man died "from omicron." But the fearmongers needed a story to perpetuate their narrative. #EnoughAlready
Just repeating what a commenter on Mercola.com noted yesterday: If you like anagrams, delta omicron = media control. Yikes! The truth is within!
And omicron = moronic, delta = led ta = led ta moronic.
delta omicron = romantic led. Love a good anagram!
Well, technically you could as it is more of a viral swarm, not just one variant that you get. So, if you get multiple strains at once, the one with the greatest replicating capacity (i.e. it gets in the cells fastest) will soon outcompete the others, leaving them to spend more time outside a cell and therefore exposed to NK cells and other antiviral mechanisms of the immune system which will quickly destroy them. Any antibody response that favors one variant over another will just add to the selection effect.
A natural infection of any variant that triggers immune memory would serve to limit another variant due to the recognition of epitopes that are functionally-constrained (ie. more than just spike) across most strains.
Omicron has been almost like a blessing, as it truly is the end of the pandemic as a dangerous virus
On the other hand, containment hysteria continue unabated; and it seems most intensely in the places that least require it.
Schools? Universities? I never realized how much administrators actually hate young people; how they justify the imprisonment and misery just to pay homage to a virus which is harmless to the young. My kids are now in the state of mind that school is where they go to experience bullshit; they are not even 10 years old. They have said as much, and have lost respect for the institution. I have mixed feelings about this.
More travel measures. More testing. More masks. More more more. I'm slowly resigned to constructing my life in such a way that I no longer interact with the most corona-ed areas of society because this is going to be a long term thing. How, and why, many a dozen people who self-identify as "experts" because they have the right degrees and so called credentials are able to continue to exert such a power over the world, baffles me to no end, but then again, High Priests of all religions command great power - the Why is not relevant. There can be untold death and misery and somehow that cements their power rather than destroys it.
As for pushing back- this substack and a handful of others are where I go to get my daily dose of humanity and reason. I continue to try and do my part to resist all the insanity - but from time to time I wonder if it would just be easier to "drink from the crazy river" and to stop trying to scream at a hurricane
The entire political system which is propped up by the overwhelmingly older population who actually vote hates young people. Young people as a whole are however, both too stupid to do anything about it, and increasingly it seems, to actually notice. The middle class ones in particular are deeply entranced by "woke", even as woke safetyism wrecks their daily lives as they pay through the nose for debased college educations while being imprisoned on dorms.
But on the other hand, it was this kind of situation which became the catalyst for May '68 in France. It just took enough radicals with their heads screwed on right to say non.
Thing is, with disable innate immune systems even an Omnicron, like a common cold, can take a person out. I hope that is not the case. But it would make sense. Saline nose rinses work great, though i still dislike doing it, it works. Moving on with life...maskless.
The flccc.net protocol says nasal rinse with 4-5 drops of 1% povidone-iodine + saline 3 or 4 times a day. Gross is the understatement but it works great to thin out the herds so less gets to the lungs.
Hi TRM.
flccc.net is not forthcoming.
Do you have quantity information on the saline solution please?
Do you snort it?
Funny questions to be asking a stranger.
Cheers.
I use a small syringe with 0.25-0.3 ml and snort up each nostril. You can buy or make the saline (1/2 tsp salt + 1 cup distilled water). Then you dilute the 10% povidone-iodine (the most common strength) by mixing 1 tsp with 9 tsp of saline. You can also gargle with it or use one of the commercial mixes with chlorhexidine, povidone-iodine, or cetylpyridinium chloride in it. Do not swallow.
Very much appreciate your help TRM. Hope you are doing well.
Glad to help. Doing as good as I can in Soviet Canuckistan LOL. Just keep finding ways to work around the stupid season up here and wait it out. I call it "The Life Of Brian" defence after the gladiator scene. I don't need to defeat them, just out last them.
I do the gargle with the Betadine solution. The nasal mist is on back order. A solution of baking soda, salt water, boiled and cooled water was recommended by an international health organization in GVB’s email today. This, in lieu of masks, makes sense!
Yup I'm doing the nose thing during the omicron wave too..
Yuck, I hate flooding my nose. We’re in Buffalo for Christmas, And I won’t mask up. So I send my partner to the store and to run errands. He wears a super duper heavy duty mask from Mars.
It's mainly because someone I live with has been delayed a cancer scan for a year, and will be delayed further if we contract what is now little more than a common cold (omicron). I also wear a P3 half mask respirator to the supermarket like a bloody hypochondriac lunatic. Nothing to do with my fear of covid, everything to do with the Machiavellianism of the political class.
Go Terrain. Then you won't have to worry about the mask.
What is Go Terrain?
Last night I just used the salt in boiled water (cooled). Snorted. So refreshing. From being a salt water swimmer for 20+ years, I can attest to its healing power for all manner of cuts, bug bites, acne, etc. No more irritating spray in my schnaz.
That’s great!! All natural wonders. 👍
I’m from Buffalo, live in Free Florida now, say Hello to the crazy Messianic Kathy Hockul if you see her. Still have a house there , haven’t stepped foot in it in 2 years. I refuse to wear a mask or capitulate with the vaxx cards and mandates. Enjoy your stay.
College students are complete pussies these days. I grew up in the 60's and 70's when college students were taking over university administration offices, conducting sit-ins, and some violent protests to stop the Vietnam war. Today? Students are meekly staying in their rooms and submitting to vaccine terrorism.
I wish they'd grow a spine and say "no!" That, and withholding their tuition would spell the end of this.
Whatever happened to "rebellious youth????"
Sad state of affairs.
"I'm slowly resigned to constructing my life in such a way that I no longer interact with the most corona-ed areas of society because this is going to be a long term thing." Amen. I feel like this will happen organically where eventually a large number of the population constructs a parallel society of sort.
Great post! I agree with you so much, I could swear I wrote it. But my kids are way older than 10. 🤣
Where do you live, may I ask? Curious about which school system you are speaking of
I would rather not say where I live if that's ok with you. I have a bit of a public profile; excuse my paranoia!
The kids go to a private school which follows the local health mandates - masks, no mixing, limited/restricted play, restricted extracurriculars, etc.
The universities I was referring to, in the extreme, can be encapsulated by Emerson College in Boston, where returning students have a 2 week "Stay in Room" order to look forward to, as well as booster mandates, and remote learning indefinitely. How they still have paying students(customers) is beyond me.
I agree. Berkeley and all the CA colleges and universities are now requiring boosters. I sent emails to the college but I’m not hopeful. I seriously want to pull my son out but I know he won’t have it and neither will my husband. If he gets sick from this booster I will never forgive myself even though it seems my voice is not heard on this issue.
Holy cow… the damage is cumulative with each booster! Even if your son doesn’t get “sick,” what kind of subclinical damage is going on? So, he’ll get a degree, be a great success in his field, and then… keel over at 45 or 50. I’d continue to work on your husband, sweetie. And forgive yourself… if you’ve tried to warn, and it doesn’t work, you have to find peace with that somehow… take care❤️
I know. I keep sharing everything with my kids. They think I’m listening to conspiracy theories. I fighting a losing battle. I’m the uneducated one in our family as I only have an AAS. You know how smart those ones are with high degrees! Sarcasm
Deb, I post every 2-3 weeks on recommendations as to how to deal with all this. Please buck yourself up and realize that you are the EDUCATED one — the smart one! I have a BSEE from Cal Poly Pomona, an MSEE from Caltech, an MA in International Studies form Claremont Graduate University, etc. etc. and have been in that world. Don’t let them intimate you, sweetie — your ability to think clearly trhough this mess is the real intelligence here.
https://rumble.com/vr171s-it-all-makes-sense-once-you-realize-we-are-in-world-war-iii...-episode-86.html
Here's something to share with them (although if they've already had 2 jabs it won't be pleasant):
https://doctors4covidethics.org/dr-explains-basic-immunology/
Go hard now and make yourself unpopular for a week or two. Tell him what his choices are. He'll thank you for it later.
Unpopular barely touches the surface. I have no say in what he does. He’s 20. Too smart to see through all the bullshit. He’s genius almost but does not see what the governments of this world are up to. I’m almost glad I’m coming to the end of my days so maybe I won’t see how it all plays out. Sounds bleak I know but it’s how I feel right now.
I’m in the same boat with my son in Boston. I’m sick.
Sending your kids to these Marxist organizations is insane--wake up and find more suitable schools. Sounds like you're the problem. Wake up and starve these anti-American institutions.
I agree but how do you tell your kid he can’t go to a college which is top in his field of expertise that he is excepted into? And the person paying for it(my husband). Is 200% into sending the kids to these top colleges so his kids can get an education in their field. As a mom who sees what is going on I feel helpless. No voice.
The answer to the old question, ‘if your friends all jump of a bridge, would you?’
…yes. Yes they would. Our youngest is still at home, and remarkably is the only one left unjabbed. Our eldest is now trying to find a cardiologist to evaluate his new symptoms, fearing myocarditis.
Naïveté kills.
Warning: Watch who he picks for a cardiologist. Just had my 6 month checkup with my FL cardiologist. Never mentioned vax once. Focused on nutrition, exercise, sleep and meditation.
Besides fighting the covidiots, I am dead set against these schools sneaking in CRT. I provide two scholarships every year for students- one at Ave Maria college in FL, the other at Hillsdale. These schools do not take govt funding, so they are free to educate w/o CRT.
CarolAnne, that is awesome! Both great schools. I wanted my son to attend Ave Maria for law school, and he choose Boston. It’s been pretty horrible for me! Lol
Good luck mom!!!👍
these are obviously not 'educational' institutions but 'miseducational'.
My son is at a law school in Boston, booster mandate and online until February, insanity. He sees it, because we live in Florida, I don’t know how he can stand it. And the tuition bill is criminal. Almost all of his 3 years has been online, I’ll be happy when he finishes in April. Such a joke. His law school education was conducted in my den in SW Florida for almost 200k. Sorry for the rant.
Higher education is a complete scam. My brother graduated from Notre Dame law school and said he learned nothing useful. It was only when he started to practice in a reputable firm did he learn anything. Something he said he could have done with little or no class work and without the $100,000 of debt.
I hear you, my son is a MBA/ CPA, very bright kid, it’s been a joke, I can tell by the conversations that I have with him that nothing he has learned is applicable to real life.
He’s a total capitalist and wants the bank. Noteworthy are his ambition and Conservative ideals.
New England is driving the nightmare. Nearly all of the public health guidance is being amplified by schools and hospitals from that region. I'm not sure who is guiding the group think, but it is being given legitimacy by Harvard, Brown, BU, Yale, etc.
then they're not schools and they're not hospitals.
I asked Santa for tribunals. 🤞
I'd be ok with just shaving their hands and parade them in the streets with chants of "shame, shame, shame"
I want to exile them. Put them on leaky boats in the ocean as refugees. Only excuse them if their families plead sufficiently for them in which case they become wards of the State for life with their families monitoring them for the State.
My wife suggested putting them on big rubber boats and then stabbing the boat with a giant needle in the middle of the ocean. She's mad.
Rewarding authoritarianism with authoritarianism isn't exactly productive or humane. Maybe just make these folks work regular jobs with no particular sway over public policy and then leave them alone?
well recognising them as what they are and taking some measures to protect against them doing further harm would be productive of course. Just as it is productive to eliminate waste.
Making a law and imposing it is not 'authoritarianism'. It is the exercise of authority, true enough, but it is not the phenomenon itself, the political, social practice, is it? You don't say mandating seatbelts is authoritarianism do you?
Or locking murderers up?
These people have been and are being guilty of the most heinous crimes all the way to sheer murder. Dereliction of duty the very least of what they do. Incredible though it sounds coup d'etat has been the norm for them !
What else can you call it when a whole State has its laws suspended on the grounds of a State of Emergency that simply doesn't exist?
Repeated month after month after month?
And for two years failed utterly to give the smallest assistance to the health of the people and instead mandated measures ALL of which were detrimental to the Immune Systems, medical and psychological health of the people, safety, sanctity and health of our democracy.... ?
They are at the very least 'lame brains' and they need treating as such for they have another psychological quirk that needs recognising and taking into account: a propensity to persuade and insinuate themselves into positions of influence and power from whence they do harm.
Wards of the State. Let them live in dormitories in mental hospitals unless their families plead for them upon which they can be released into the care of their families.
As they gloried - and do glory - in making a whole nation powerless let them spend their lives as powerless wards of the state while we explore the convolutions of their minds that they could be so hostile to everyone and everything - facts, science, reason, humanity...
Heads, shave their heads but in my case it would do you no good. Just save my razor for maybe one more shave out of it.
I think this is not a realistic expectation and would probably not be a good idea. If the Corona apparatchiks know nothing will happen to them and they can just vanish into anonymity, they are less likely to fight the "back to normal" phase than if they have to face grave consequences if they lose.
So they can crawl out again from under some other rock? There are consequences for mass murder!
Soon
I am in awe at how psychotic governments have been. Amazing that the biggest existential threat we all face is from our own governments.
Also that the mildness of Omicron has panicked policy makers. It’s too incredible. For me, at this point, the conspiracy is to believe that there is no conspiracy.
Mistakes happen, but when they become too many, serial and follow a pattern, the line between incompetence and malfeasance and malevolence is crossed - and yes it evidences conspiracy to commit these acts and cover up the truth.
The WHO H1N1/swine flu scandal 2009, featuring the Pandremix vaccine, was a conspiracy. It was documented and condemned by a UK Labour MP and a German doctor reporting to the Council of Europe. Easy to consider that this is another one, helped by better control of the press than 12 years ago.
It seems that pharma was suffering falling RoI and was desperate to find a new income. What better than a $50 product 90% of the population take 2-3 times a year?
I've given a figure of 90% as I don't think the USA or even UK could get much past that without triggering WW3. The UK has apparently had a massive nationwide advertising campaign for boosters - I hadn't seen it, I no longer watch TV - and 250,000 came forward who hadn't been treated before.
Mm, 250,000 in say 70,000,000 ... 0.3% of the population. Try that again and my guess is you'll get even fewer extra. Diminishing returns. Desperation breeds resistance by those who remain, who probably include lots of highly-educated PhDs and MDs.
Dr David Martin in interviews listed some of the US patent numbers for SARS, MERS and the rest. If that's correct, it's no cockup. I'd like to see him debate other experts, though.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick (UK) has written several good books, my favourite so far being 'Doctoring Data' (2014). He predicted much of what we see, i.e. dogma overrides data and 'medicine' becomes quackery. A lot of 'mainstream' drugs no longer have proper evidence to support their use, because the sole evidence was pharma-funded trials.
Doctors hate being called quacks. If you have any really egregious opponents, don't hesitate to use the word, but I'd be sparing with it.
Yes. No longer watch tv. Me too. Completely worthless. Even dangerous.
Yes, me too. We just moved into a new house and never signed up for TV. Their sales dept. thought we were nuts.
a computer today is, after all, interactive tv, even your cellphone and even on those devices we quickly find ourselves avoiding the mainstream as useless and dangerously misleading - witness us being here for instance for lack of an acceptable mainstream venue. so it's absolutely slam dunk. tv has had its day. that was quick wasn't it?
TV is how this has been pushed out to the masses even in days of laptops and 'smartphones'.
But your smartphone is the one that really needs ditching. And everyone needs to smarten up on what a proxy is. And we need regulation of this IT industry which has yet to happen in 30 years or more.
I'm beginning to think the 2009 H1N1 events didn't get enough traction because all the social media outlets were so limited then. Now it's a very different situation, and the pervasiveness of SM has been utilized to the utmost and has made this whole charade possible.
Martin is trying to sell his crypto. In a world where the Central Banks are thinking of removing the Private banks and going straight to the customer (rather than citizen) with digital coins that are in turn part powered by yourselves now metalled up with a + on one end and a - on the other.
Maybe we just don't need any of the crypto coins.
The mania of governments can only be explained by one thing in my book. A repeat of 2008 is on the cards and pandemic compliance is linked to good credit at the IMF.
That's why Bitcoin is in all of our futures. Strangle off the money handlers--FR, IMF, World Bank....
I'll stay with gold coins, thank you very much!
You bet! Let's buckle up
It's not amazing. It's expected. 20th century governments killed hundreds of millions of people. The current round of politicians are the same type of people just dumber.
As a libertarian, welcome to my world...
Yep. You're in the right area there alright. I think of them as being clinically sadists. And part of the reason for their success is an inborn masochism in the larger population.
I've wondered if this is a natural evolutionary consequence for the human race - it's progress having always been one of sadistic overlords and humbled masses who have to learn to enjoy it, suffer it. If there's any truth in that surmise we'd need to institute psychological testing for all our authorities in future.
Arrest, indictment & imprisonment would be kind compared to what they deserve.
We need to strip them of every , single asset, all of the trillions, down to the striped prison garb. They will own nothing. And they will be miserable for the rest of their locked down, solitary lives.
With masks on. To slow the spread. In their solitary confinement.
Better than that. 4 walls of unbreakable mirrors. No matter which way they turn, when they open their eyes all they see is their decrepit, gluttonous, evil selves
Beautiful
Delicious.
Ah... that's a good one. Make them wear masks for the rest of their lives and socially distance and lockdown permanently. If not exiled to leaky boats in the south pacific.
We don't want them here.
You can literally die of loneliness. This would help us get some good RCT data on how long it takes.
wow... I don't really want to be more vindictive than those inhuman bastards but it's really tempting.....
But you know what? Nothing will happen to them at all.
They'll find a way to segue into having done the right thing all the time.
They'll actually claim a victory. Their victory.
And they've got everything going for them, haven't they?
All the MSM that helped them.
All the craven intellectuals and chattering classes that went along.
All the masses who went along and won't want to shame themselves.
All the professional classes who reneged on their professions: medical, legal, educational.
And so on.
And where will we be?
You look forward to your time in the sun when your wise prophesies are borne out and your obdurate refusal to kowtow is lauded and appreciated?
Nope.
They will pat each other on the back and all agree that what they did was right and good and has brought about this 'victory'.
And you and I, we'll be seen as having been trouble makers and dissenters, uncooperative deadweights and annoyances. And we won't be invited to any parties.
We'll be the villains.
I bet.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Ditto
Public apologies would be nice, too..
You couldn't listen to them. It'd be an insult. You'd know they were lying as they spoke.
Would be nice, yes. How can you hope to get 'nice' from these people?
Absolutely.. The only thing I'd like for these people is to be humiliated..heavily humiliated.
The trajectories in Denmark, the U.K., and S.A. certainly look good.
The fact that they've gotten noisiest and most desperate (unvaccinated WILL crowd the hospitals and die in large numbers!) despite the apparent mildness of omicron is hopefully also the final surge of tyrannical, anti-scientific lunacy.
How much tyranny we must withstand in the future depends on how many of us actually noticed what happened to our governments during covid: that they were willing to weaponize fear against their citizens in some sort of post-nationalistic, quasi-liberal form of fascism. (Someone who is a political scientist, help me out here, as my quest to make sense of it may have missed the mark.)
I’m not a political scientist, just a 69 year old observer of life’s passing parade.
The rot started with Universal suffrage and elected Governments. Once you have that, politicians soon figure out tax receipts ordinarily used to fund the workings of the State, becomes a slush fund to bribe voters to vote for them. The electorate cottons on quickly and elections become auctions where they sell their votes to the highest bidder. Using the tax system for redistribution is sold as moving money from the rich to the poor (fair, equality, social justice), but society is not bi-polar and there is a big lump in the middle who are neither. In any case the money flow is not unidirectional, and the middle lump who contribute the most want something out of it too. The confidence trick is to get them to believe they get more out than they put in - and this is called the Welfare State.
Increasingly since WWII, responsibility has transitioned from the individual to the State, and now the bulk of the population is infantilised, wholly dependent on the State - a surrogate Mummy - for everything, including doing their thinking for them, their safety and protection.
That is how our rulers have been able to do what they have done to a population that has exchanged their individual sovereignty, freedom and self-reliance for safety and the State providing what they don’t provide for themselves.
I see no way back outside social and economic breakdown, which is well on track started by the CoVid tyranny and which will be completed by Net Zero Carbon.
I used to teach (among other subjects) political science. Let me tell you what was for me a very humbling koment, and an eyeopener to the hubris that is virtually intrinsical to political science (regardless of personal political position):
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I don't think it's wrong to claim that 99.9% of all economists and all political scientists, analysts, whatever other titles may apply, utterly and completely failed to see that coming. In 1988 consensus among both fields were that the East/West divide and the Cold War? Status Quo for the foreseeable future, at least for the coming century.
The events of 1989 and onwards, the easing of nuclear posturing (kids today have no clue what it does to you to practice for "when the nuclear war comes" in kindergarten), and how our brothers and sisters in the old Soviet satellite states freed themselves from tyranny - rejoice! Let Freedom ring!
And not a single professor nor lecturer would acknowledge how ignorant, stupid, conceited and simply pigheaded they had been. Not a one! No, in 1991 every-effing one at the institution for political science? Oh, they had always known that the USSR couldn't last much longer.
I know of a grand total of two political scientists who has had the stones to revise theur hypotheses, even to the point they've admitted to ahving been in error. (Not about the USSR but at all, on any issue):
Samuel P. Huntington, and Francis Fukuyama.
I heartily recommend both, no matter where one is on a political issue.
Agree in general. No matter the government: monarchy, socialist, communist, republic or democracy, the drift with time is to plunder what can be stolen. Liberal democracy is, perhaps, the ultimate fantasy: the illusion that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else. Governments are born, they live, they die. They are replaced by something new. And the process begins anew. It's probably just part of human nature. Who was it who said that the only thing we learn from history is that we fail to learn from history?
People are not as dumb as they clearly appear to be. Just think about it: they build, make and do everything at the same time as appearing to be too stupid to see common sense, common facts.
No. They're not that dumb. The reasons for the behaviour are manifold.
So education could be the 'way back'.
We need, I think, education in the duties and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy.
You DON'T simply vote for one of two Parties and then walk away until the next time.
You DO vote for your rep and you monitor constantly and interact.
Someone said every generation we are invaded by Barbarians - our children. Our manners, etiquette, being polite, self-respect, self-discipline, values, freedom, responsibilities, moral absolutes, are not passed down through our genes, they have to be taught, in the home, in schools, in the community. We have failed with this. It started in the 60s with the ‘anything goes’ Hippies… no rules, no standards do what tiu like, laze about, don’t work - just enjoy the benefits others have created.
The problem is, how can children be taught these things when their parents, teachers and most in the community never learnt them?
It's true what someone said. I know. I've raised children. And I've got real memories of what a barbarian I was myself, to my shame.
But I wouldn't throw in the towel. I used to think it was all pretty hopeless until a read a really excellent text once, online somewhere, that just summed up the whole thing, perfectly. Itemised every little thing wrong about our children and our way of bringing them up, letting them get away with this or that.
It was really beautiful and the inference was quite clear: all was lost.
Then at the end the person who'd posted it revealed it had been written by, I think all these years after reading it, some ancient Greek back in Pythagoras' time or such.
Apparently it was ever thus.
There's said to be a sot of pendulum effect, too, isn't there? The children react to the parents and go 'this' way. Then their children react to them and go 'that' way - back to where the grandparents were.
We are in uncharted territory, really. This internet and smartphone access has made one 'hive' of us in a way that never was even approximated before.
And done it all in the last 20 years. Blindingly fast.
It seems to me this is literally a different organism now. The human race. A different organism.
Now capable of having a 'hive mind'.
Years ago - ten or more - someone startled me by saying there was 'only one' computer in the world really.
Seemed ludicrous. Didn't he know there were millions ?
Of course he did. But what he meant was that with interconnectedness any single one of them could be viewed as merely a terminal offering access to all the rest.
That's very clear now. Isn't it? It wasn't then. But it is now.
Well the thing is that putting a smartphone in every person's hands has made every person a 'terminal' doing I/O with that 'one computer'.
So not only is there now quite clearly 'only one computer' but now this 'one computer' can be seen as having millions of human minds connected to it.
It's kind of like a living computer.
Or the other way round - the human race is a 'computerised' race. Well on its way to roboticized.
I don't think we can really have any idea of what that 'mind' is going to think or do. There's never been such a thing on planet earth before.
It's perhaps a poor imitation but it is something akin to a race sharing instant telepathy.
Science fiction is today science fact.
We know to our horror that's totally true in regard to the 'science fiction ' of 1984.
Well I reckon its true in regard to a great deal more.
I can only hope that good and right and reason will triumph.... :)
I hope that is never forgotten. But I fear it will be.
Not a political scientist either, but search for neo feudalism...
Yes, check out the work of Joel Kotkin on the subject of neofeudalism. He has been writing about it for several years now.
No politician will ever admit they are failures. As they always do, they will implement more nonsense to cover up their uselessness as leaders. These are mostly arrogant, self serving, power control freaks who consider themselves far above the people they seek to rule over.
here i mean more the failures of the technocrats, the modellers, the virologists, the epidemiologists, etc
I see that the shrewd ones are already trying to jump off the sinking ship, slowly, but surely...those are the most dangerous ones, me thinks
I have been wondering about "regime change" for the last 6 months or so. (Where the regime is the post WWII techno-liberal democratic state.) I think it is coming, but what comes after is the question.
Very true but they will have to drop this nonsense but still so many people believe it
I think the most interesting question is indeed what comes next from a political science perspective, i.e. what's next in the world of Corona containment. I am periodically swinging between two different viewpoints
1) Most governments are eager to phase out all measures to be able to be the ones claiming victory and gain re-election. I am saying this because, directionally, many of the measures seem to have a negative return in the long term. For example, consider vax passes & the fact they "expire" after X months. In Italy, 6 million eligible people are without them, including many teenagers. Even assuming an extremely high adoption rate for the 3rd dose in the next 6 months or so (say, 90%), there would be 4 million more people (10% of ~40 million vaxxed) that end up without a "pass". Every single multistep process has some "loss" at each step (in tech this is akin to the "purchase funnel"). Bringing this loss to zero is unbelievable. How is this eventually sustainable if you fast forward this process 12-24 months out? Because of this, governments must be thinking of how to look for an out & and for a victory lap
2) Governments in general are enjoying the level of control they can subject the population to through mass media conditioning, including pointless measures that create a false sense of "doing something". For example: masking outdoor, masking kids in school, "passes", the testing theater and so on. Because of this, they will keep these measures for years, or decades, until they are just inbuilt in the fabric of society like the "no smoking" in public places and so on. In addition, letting go of these measures could be construed by the opposition as a sign of weakness towards protesters / "no pass" / "no vax" / whatever, and governments don't want to look weak against some enemy. It will not matter who wins elections, no-one will remove many of these measures, and any chance will occur only on the scale of decades as some people emigrate etc
I really can't settle between these two extremes. Due to my personal story, I follow a handful of regions pretty closely (Italy, Catalunya/Spain, USA with all of its differences, and to some extent UK and Germany). The signal that comes from these places randomly points to either 1) or 2).
Eugyppius's point about liberal democracies' demise is well taken but I think somewhat overplayed (but would be glad to discuss).
On one hand, there has been a sort of demise since the end of the cold war because the fundamental dynamics of conflict between capital and labour have changed. Politics has moved in many countries more towards a sort of "technocratic center", and in some countries (eg Italy) you can argue you've had many more "technocratic governments" than not (Monti, Draghi). So, for example, "austerity" policies that have benefited the German or Northern Italian economic elite to the detriment of Southern Europe through the introduction of the single currency have just been a fact of life, happening outside the space of liberal democracy.
On the other hand, though, none of that had to do with freedom of movement at macro or micro level or generally bothering people in their daily lives (masking, kids, etc). In fact, bothering people at micro level seems contrary to the general objectives of capital against labour.
Anyway, a bit of a digression but hopefully some food for thought
You are very charitable if you think governments want to put this behind them. Ministers and other politicians cannot deviate from following "The Science" which means they have to defer to accepted "experts" to tell them what to do. Those 'experts' are enjoying a level of prominence, celebrity, funding, and attention which is simply unheard of. 3 years ago if someone said they studied epidemiology it would be a snoozefest, now they can potentially wind up on TV.
Then, you have to account for the 10-20% of the population that WANT the measures to continue indefinitely. You underestimate how many zealots in the general public WANT masks forever, and everything associated thereafter. Don't underestimate what a noisy bunch of Karens are capable of. The entire Prohibition movement in the 1920's was led by barely a fifth of the US population, and it took a LONG time to kill it.
The media, inexplicably, also wants this to continue. I don't have an explanation why. Across the board, whether its left-leaning publications like the NYT, the FT, or the WaPo, all the way to the right with the Economist or the WSJ, measures such as masking and testing are considered a given, indisputable, inviolable.
The more people who get covid, the better. If you told me a year ago that I would wind up being "pro spread" I would have looked at you like you were insane...
If you’re feeling too optimistic, get yourself to the wapo or nyt comment boards.
These people are not ready to move on.
There is no "moving on". May as well be asking them to go back to shitting in the woods.
Frustratingly one of the top
NYT comments on an article about the unvaccinated was something like ‘people do not go to the ICU over a cold’ where someone had remarked that COVID was becoming a cold.
This is absolutely not true - any frail/vulnerable person can certainly die of a cold just as they can a UTI or rotavirus or similar. We just don’t test everyone for rhinovirus when they enter the hospital, and it does not feature on the death certificate.
Just another way in which they’ve lost the plot.
Why are people so dense?
I have been wondering if every winter we will have to close schools and stores for the flu season LOL
I wouldn't be surprised if that were the next demand. The risk tolerance of these people has been reduced to absolutely nothing when it comes to infectious disease.
I've always assumed that the only way to smooth this chapter into its place in history is to gaslight the hell out of us about flu - currently underway.
"Is the bear Catholic?" (sorry, could not resist)
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
I comment occasionally to the Sydney Morning Herald & Melbourne Age which is normally below the story. It is not possible to get past the censors even if I'm very polite. I suspect that the NYT and WAPO are the same therefore what you're seeing is biased content, just like the stories that they cover.
The more vaccinations the zealots get, the quicker they may be silenced. From what I've been reading and listening to lately, the mRNA vaccine may well be Zeus' thunderbolt for the unwary.
(WRT your remarks on the lefty media and their support of all these drastic measures - it really does look like David Horowitz is right: inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.)
I totally get it that there's people with a greatly diminished risk tolerance and inordinate influence (I was thinking of something Emily Oster published today on Twitter which was really crazy, or even Zeynep T has disappointed me in that regard).
However, in the real world, there's nuanced views which eventually will bear consequences.
For example, take the indoor mask mandates. There's a whole array of jobs where people will more or less refuse to go back to the office if they have to wear masks (jobs where the worker have leverage/options). This eventually may mean it is more difficult to attract high-skilled workers in a certain geography because of that reason.
Same goes for infinite masking of kids in school: will you relocate to place XYZ if you know your kids' situation materially worsens?
I do not know the answer to these questions and surely some people will tell me they won't matter much, people won't care about their own kids, etc.
Which may all be true for some folks, but less true for other folks, and these things one way or another do compound and become pressure points on politicians.
All of this to clarify my point about some "optimism". I absolutely think most politicians have turned out to be very incompetent, subject to "do something to cover my a**", and everything else. But also they are subject to various forms of pressure. There is hope in a scenario where different sets of policies get enacted in different adjacent geographies and this emerges over time
There is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future, everything will be back to more or less normal. The question is how long - another year? 5? 10? The answer to that question will inform how much damage we are willing to inflict
Poorly educated but most degreed.
I don't think it was a coincidence that women's suffrage and Prohibition came about at the same time. Indeed I think the Temperance Movement was sort of a moral force for letting women vote.
I often wondered about the timing of Prohibition. I don't think it was a coincidence that it occurred with the mass production of automobiles.
> I am saying this because, directionally, many of the measures seem to have a negative return in the long term. For example, consider vax passes & the fact they "expire" after X months. [...] Every single multistep process has some "loss" at each step (in tech this is akin to the "purchase funnel"). Bringing this loss to zero is unbelievable.
A somewhat tangential point, but one interesting thing about the vax passes is how crude a tool they are for creating compliance with an ongoing vaccination regime. For a one/two/three shot and done sequence, sure. It's evil and antithetical to everything the West should be, and opens the door to even more evil and antithetical actions, but it does create a strong incentive to get jabbed: do what you're told, or lose your rights.
The problem with ongoing jabs is that once a person opts out for good - and a few people will, every time a new booster comes around - no future vaccination demands will hold any weight. Once you refuse booster #5, who cares about booster #6 - or #7, #8, and so on? You're already banned from restaurants, theaters, gyms, work, or travel, depending on your location. What's the government going to do, ban you harder?
As they are now, these systems aren't compatible with the constant boosting the vaccinators want. They'll either turn into mandatory vaccination, something more nuanced a la China's actual social credit system, or go away.
...Then again, bureaucrats haven't shown much sense up until now, so why should I expect them to start? Perhaps vaxpasses will continue limping along as-is indefinitely in some locations, such as blue US cities.
>> What's the government going to do, ban you harder?
Kill you.
Just collateral damage in their eyes.
That's my point, though: with the vax pass as it currently stands, they can't. The Los Angeles city government isn't going to arrest or shoot or fine me if I don't get my booster. (I mean, hypothetically. I don't live in LA, thank god.) I never got vaccinated in the first place, so as the laws are right now, none of their booster demands will make any difference.
They'll need to do SOMETHING to the system if they want to keep it and have ongoing boosters, whether that's adding more punishments or something else.
No, I get what you're saying, your logic is sound.
I'm just saying they aren't killing you YET.
Look at Germany (Austria?) and see where it goes from imprisoning the unvaccinated. It's incremental. Fascism basically always is.
I can't speak for everyone obviously, but I like to think that many people, at least in USA, would resist forcible vaccination even if it costs them their lives. Now, understand I'm thinking of actual door-to-door searches, dragging people away, strapping them down scenario. If things get that bad, I'm going out shooting too. Our nation will have deteriorated into something not worth living in, so I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Realistically, however, if we get a "1984" type government, it will be forced upon everyone by systematic marginalization, what previously were "rights" now are "privileges" -- if your vax card is up-to-date. That's a much harder enemy to fight.
It happens slowly. Then it happens suddenly.
I hope you're right but just wait. South Africa is a low vax country. UK is not. ADE OAS and a whole.host of other issues could take the vaxxed by storm. Also the all causes death rate in Germany etc is alarming high. They will blame something on this. Make everyone take heart tablets or something. I cannot see this going quietly into the night.
Denmark's a high vaxx country with a lot of Omicron. so far, it looks like the vaxxed are more likely to get it, but no sign they face worse outcomes. so yes, some OAS which will probably lead to even more explosive Omicron waves in Europe, but as the thing can't really make that many people sick, unlikely this will be a very big deal.
let's see but there are still a crap load of greek letters to get through
i don't think so. you need something more transmissible than Omicron, and Omicron is already the product of very unnatural forces. in a few months, everyone will have some form of antibodies to SARS-2, driving opportunities for mutation still lower. yes, the vaccinated will still be a problem here, but they will also begin to develop some immune response to Omicron, just a suboptimal one.
its almost certainly man made. lets see. there might be another whoopsie from a lab once the hysteria of this one dies off.
They’re saying smallpox is next.
most of eastern europe and asia were inoculated against small pox. so the west would fall
hmmm
My guess is that they have a whole stockpile of them to release.
Eugyppius did you still stay away from the vax? as a fellow resident of Munich (i think you said you live here) I am lucky that i dont work for a German company.
"in a few months, everyone will have some form of antibodies to SARS-2"
Wish it were so, but look at the cumulative case numbers for the last two years - at that rate it would take more than a decade for everyone (in the case of Germany) to be infected once.
And some (many?) may simply never catch it. Good for them, but we may not get handed this argument on a silver platter, for free.
Unnatural forces = mass vaccination with leaky vaccine in the middle of an epidemic
Yes, please
It’s high in all high vaxed nations
It won't end, not with the new Covid pills coming to market. They won't allow the market to wither when a new product is about to enter.
They're allowing EUAs on multiple products so don't expect any sense to emerge just yet.
-hey I just discovered an edit button! Woo!
Panics are never punished. No apologies, no regrets, no firings. They just fade away, leaving new bureaucracies in place that will help to run the next panic. Bush's 9/11 "threat" created the bioterror agencies, which stayed in place through later administrations, planning and scheduling the "virus" "threat." Bush also created TSA, which is now the major sustainer of the muzzle mandate for the "virus" "threat".
Yes, TSA was one of the first things I thought after the first "2 weeks" in March 2020: how we still have to take our shoes off at the airport for ONE unsuccessful bomber nearly 20 years ago. The Ozymandias-like inertia of bureaucracy is fascinating in a way.
While hundreds of thousands cross the US southern border unheeded.
"Those are, however, mere possibilities."
The bulk of the tyrannical responses to COVID were based on mere possibilities. Emergency powers were invoked for imagined future occurances. The very word emergency was essentially redefined by the wannabe dictators and an important task in the hoped-for aftermath will be to drastically reform those emergency laws.
If we don't, as eugyppius suggests, the hysteria will be ramped up again; hysteria about an imagined climate "emergency", a gun "emrrgency", or a white supremecy "emergency", all of which will be chsracterized as matters of public health.
Let's indeed hope were nearing the end of the viral pandemic. But the hardest work, implied in eugyppius' final paragraph, will be ahead of us. It is not easy for people of good will to hold others harshly accountable, but the times call for it, just as they did at a point 80 years ago.
Holding people accountable is necessary if we are to move forward.
Then I guess I'm not a person of goodwill. I want guillotines and gallows.
LOL. I believe that when the time comes you will mete out justice soberly rather than gleefully and that makes you person of good will.
Thanks for your faith, but I think I'd probably recuse myself from the job. All I feel anymore towards any of them is rage. I admit I would enjoy it.
You'd probably want me around to help protect your family and home, if and when they come for it, where I'd be a fearsome ally. But I've seen through the veil of lawful democracy and don't trust myself to behave like anything but a dog with the leash off.
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice" I think Barry Goldwater said that. How different things would be now if Lyndon Johnson wasn't elected and started the "Great Society"?
The medical system and physicians have been as bad as the bureaucrats and public policy makers - it is the opioid crisis all over again with the lack of critical thinking by the very people who are supposed to protect the health of the populace
The public health people who did think critically, (for example the signatories to the Great Barrington Declaration) were pilloried by our corrupt Press. Ordinary physicians seem too cowed by their own woke medical societies to speak out. Very disappointing. Thank goodness for the Dr McCulloughs, etc.
It is amazing, the wreckage that Oxyhas left in its wake. But.... it's a new dawn? That was yesterday?
People are dumb.
I’ve got my popcorn ready for that third failure option
In most of the US people are ignoring the powers that be, including the local powers that be. Blue cities live in panic. My purple city has had an indoor mask mandate since August , which is mostly followed in the “in” parts of town but nowhere else. And no one says a word to me (or anyone else) who doesn’t wear a mask. There is a clear “whatever” vibe - authorities aren’t messing with it, staff are done confronting people over it, and more people are realizing they don’t have to actually do it. The rest of our state (except one other city) is red and you’d never know anything is or has been going on for at least the past year. Media is totally tuned out, as are most politicians. I don’t think they can make it stick here, regardless of what tantrums Lord Fauci has.
The dutch government has been saying that the pandemic was almost over the past two years. Now they are suddenly saying it will stay forever. Given their tendency to be completely wrong it is certainly possible the end is near.
No idea yet, but hope you are right.
Just curious: why did the dutch government massively reduce their containment measures in the summer? I was there on vacation in September and it felt wonderfully pre-pandemic. Here in Germany, they have just been tightening and tightening the screws. Even when the numbers get better.
We have been less strict throughout most of the pandemic, cancelling most rules in summer time. This is year they cancelled all the measures in exchange for the 3G system. However the measures came back as soon as autumn hit.