Trump gave this man-made catastrophe oxygen by allowing the extension of the "15 days to slow the spread" for another 30 days. I'll admit he was in a trick-box. That said, a leader is supposed to recognize a trick-box, accept it, provide a solution and then make his case as to why the long term "COST" of this nonsense should be rejected.
He did not do that. I'm very disappointed that he did not rally the country around the only true solution there was: Let healthy Americans protect the vulnerable by being "brave" and "filtering" c19; that it was patriotic to take this head-on, rather then kicking the can down the road. To make his case that there was a "price" to be paid no matter what. But the price to hide from it would be orders of magnitude higher.
To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable (being a firewall) by taking on the risk of getting C19. That's what a leader does; make the tough decisions when you don't have all the information, when there are no "good" options and then communicate to the public the way forward.
In other words, to make an appeal to Americans that it was ultimately in every individuals and the countries interests, to rally around mitigating the unavoidable "pain" would require accepting the relatively low risk. To do otherwise would be cowardly and result in even more deaths of the vulnerable. This would have created peer pressure to be brave and for each individual to do their part in a common goal. Sort of like women in the World Wars giving white feathers to cowardly men.
The risk to the healthy was always negligible and he should have made that clear - we knew from the beginning that to be true. His lack of foresight led to the opposite type of peer pressure, which was a key feature in protracting this nightmare. And to recognize his reelection was at more risk if he allowed the country to be paralyzed by fear.
By failing to understand this he allowed the narrative to grow roots. This means, he may have to pay a price politically. He chose the "easy" way out by hoping this would self resolve or that the "vaccine" would magically end the "pandemic". A leader understands that being indecisive compounds the problem, confuses followers and always leads to poor outcomes. By following this strategy he allowed cowardness to become a virtue. He did not recognize that that was the "real" trickbox he (and the country) was in.
If only one person in the US was demonstrated to have died from Covid, then the intelligence agencies, through their allies in the media, would have ensured that DJT would have worn that single death around his neck up through election day.
People with no moral floor who were in powerful positions wanted DJT out of office; that has to be kept in mind when looking back at the year 2020 (with our "20/20 hindsight").
Trump was vulnerable to court treachery because he was an amateur among hardened professionals. DC is a snake pit - it's not called "the Swamp" for nothing. Of course this is precisely why he was elected, and why the public is willing to forgive him. Forgiving him for hyping "Operation Warp Speed" may not come so easily, however.
Don't know if "warp speed " really would matter Danno, he would be blamed for all the death and destruction regardless. Remember the dems wouldn't touch a "TRUMP" vaccine and it wasn't ready until after the election then the dums were pushing their way to be first in line for it. Joe campaigned on destroying the virus, how did that work out? More death in his first year with the vax than Trump without vax. My point I guess is that we're a small minority on these platforms unless we get a massive blowout and all the corruption is exposed and the media accepts that and reports on that, it might not matter. Am I making any sense, maybe not....
The mainstream media will never admit to corruption that they've been a party to. The media answers to the government, or some entity within the government. If Tucker Carlson's mashups of CNN, NBC, etc. running with the same narrative using exactly the same words aren't proof enough, then see Matt Taibbi's expose of Twitter (which he outlined in Substack).
Never, never, never will the "media" turn. Just finished "The Devil's Pleasure Palace", how this whole cult of "critical theory" (emphasis "theory", seems few in U. S. actually understand what a "theory" is ! To the vast majority, "theory" IS TRUTH, proven truth, the word is used in that meaning ALL the time here. The roots of this "movement" are deep, I doubt the press, the educational establishment, and many others can ever reverse the effects of this post war group of "sophisticated thinkers" on Americans. An effect I think of as an "infection" of the psyche, or what the author, Walsh, terms "a hoard of demons" released into the nation. The more I read about the entire history of the Frankfurt School, how subtlety all of this began, post war. How it took root in our academic circles (that is a FACT for sure, I lived and taught in that atmosphere everyday for some time), our "journalism" schools, and gradually infested every aspect of our life and culture.
Yes, Trump was in a box - dammed if you do, damned if you don't. Had Trump somehow managed to win the 2020 election, all the side negative effects of the vax, and all the responsibility, would be placed on Trump.
Trump was of course the "NYC tough guy", but as you commented, just NYC "tough" is still not a match for the seasoned DC institutionalized corruption and the truth that both "political parties" are the SAME, for the sake of the masses, and KNOWING how emotional humans are, they put on this "public face" of their party, then they golf, vacation, dine, and travel in the same social circles. Trump has his own "social circles". they were NOT in Washington D.C. ! Also tough to face in another campaign, was his intense loyalty to one of the most powerful in D.C., the ultimate bureaucrat. as seasoned as Biden, the "Fauci". What that man has done to harm all mankind, might one day be public knowledge.... drip, drip, drip.... Forgive Trump... maybe they will, but forgive Fauci, for the things he did LONG BEFORE "Covid", I doubt it ! In my opinion, another BIG mistake I was surprised even a novice like Trump made, was surrounding himself with such questionable people, especially morally "fluid" individuals ! Now it seems, we have the very SAME thing, a "leader" with very poor skills in choosing the "best" people for high positions. It's so depressing, so very depressing !
RFK Jr's book "The Real Anthony Fauci" has sold millions of copies. Fauci can run but he can't hide. Biden? He's the deep state's wet dream, he's forced by his dementia to allow the DC elites to run the country but is accountable for their decisions. They also have more than enough proof of his misdeeds as VP to blackmail him should he ever put enough brain cells together to oppose them.
It would not have mattered what he thought through or didn't think through. (One of his closest advisors, Dr. Birx, has publicly admitted to manipulating the information she provided him; she is currently living a carefree life. I imagine the possibility of prosecution is not something that she thinks about at all.)
The lies and manipulation are off the charts re everything these days - i read an article yesterday about the 86 year old obese pope with one lung, who has "pneumonia," but is expected to be fit enough for his Holy Week activities, starting with Palm Sunday smh
See what I mean - yesterday the article I read quoted the "nursing staff" saying he was doing well and expected to be back to his regular duties by Sunday - three days lol. He must be a lot sicker because - you are right - now the projection is perhaps not at all over Holy Week. After the last few years, I don't believe anything.
He lacks any ability to gauge BS from reality and a terrible judge of character. He is a “business man” not a political leader who had to learn how to deal with the bureaucracy and is enamored of the “strong man” type of leadership, ie military types. Elected to stop globalism, he became their most effective tool ever!
Even though I no longer suffer from TDS, I still don't like Trump. As you say, his focus is on business. An excellent con man who knows how to manipulate the masses. I can't help thinking that a lot of what he did was more or less leading from behind, with his eye on the election.
Neither. I refuse to get trapped in that false dichotomy. I've come to view our so-called leadership as a uniparty. I don't like either party, although for mostly different reasons. We're stuck in a plutocracy or a corporatocracy or whatever you wanna call it. Politics is just a distraction for the plebes.
That said, I don't really have a solution to offer.
I couldn't help thinking, when I read your comment, that all the 'hardened' politicians in the West did no better than Trump, despite their alleged political savvy.
Having been in show biz, it's amazing how Trump didn't recognize the slick and well produced show early 2020. All the inconsistencies and contradictions should have clued him in. Very regrettable.
Yeah I am married to a D.A. who suffers from terminal TDS. No $ to move and rent is simply outrageous so I stay and STAND STRONG, PROUD AND NOT BACKING DOWN
Some people still bleat about the Covid deaths in the US being all Trump’s fault. If you point out that it was he who started the lockdowns, which they strongly admire when initiated by Democrats, they sputter and have nothing useful to say.
Because he was told that it was essentially a bioweapon. That's what I believe many people in power around the world heard from their intelligence agencies. That's the reason the standard mitigation measures against pandemics were discarded. Yes, they told the stupid public that it came from bats or pangolins but they themselves were almost certain that the virus was a product of gain-of-function research..
I agree with this version. What would make Trump do a 180 is if the CIA told him it was a Chinese bioweapon and treatment was unknown. That and he was surrounded by a nest a slithering snakes driven by hubris and greed. Still, he should have seen this earlier. But even if he did he was doomed because the media already started the death ticker on the bottom of the screens (which promptly disappeared after Biden and Pfizer teamed up).
Yes Charlotte, he certainly SHOULD have seen it for what it was. I am a largely uneducated, ordinary, working class man, with NO political acumen whatsoever, but, going purely off of the premise that "they" (the intelligence apparatus and mainstream media) generally ALWAYS lie
about EVERYTHING, by late March 2020, I already had the patent number for Pirbright Institute's COVID 💉"vaccine", dated 2018, & correctly intuited EVERY subsequent move thereafter,
often LONG before it was considered a "safe bet" by the alternative media "truther" community. No greater "smarts" or ability as a "social prophet" than ANYBODY else, but working solely from the premise that "they" ALWAYS lie to us, about EVERYTHING of ANY importance, I pretty much guess-timated EVERY forthcoming action and restriction, and the REAL reasons for them. The idea that Trump floundered in confusion is, to me, thoroughly ludicrous. I STILL believe Trump to be the controlled opposition element fronting the "Christian/ conservative values" side of the then Hegelian dialectic. But then,
I think there's a definite difference between making decisions for yourself (I was never going to take their novel vaxxes) and making decisions for a whole country. Something must have happened to change Trump's mind, and until we know for sure, the 'bad advice by a cabal with an agenda' hypothesis will suit me fine.
TDS seems even to have extended to Pelosi asserting that Trump must 'prove his innocence'.
More than that I suspect: a bioweapon as vengeance against Trump personally for his trade wars. No way Trump wanted that understood by the electorate. The bureaucracy had great blackmail against him--the narrative that he had brought Armageddon on us, not understanding the risk of taking on China. So he sold his soul to the Faucis and intel community... I am not sure China acted alone--but that’s another story.
Am I wrong in remembering that there was about to be a big tariff deal with China for which the Chinese were not happy, and just before this deal was completed the virus was unleashed? I always suspected these two events were connected, in addition to the fact that the deep state just had to come up with something severe to destroy whatever good economic progress DJT could take credit for before the election.
Yes, and he had just completed changing the weak NAFTA rules for the USMCA, which closed many loopholes that Canada and Mexico exploited using cheap China products. For example, the Canadians could take a piece of Chinese steel and put one bend in it and then stamp Canada on it and call it “Canadian” and it got better trade treatment and could pockets huge amounts of money for poor quality steel. Trump closed most of those loopholes- China realized he was going to do the same thing with them. His team of Lighthizer, Ross and Navarro was excellent.
One of my favorite talks during the entire 4 years of Trump was Wilbur Ross at Davos when he told the astonished elite that the cushy tariff rules were going to be blown up- I could not stop laughing- simply the best!! Absolutely- trillions at stake and those corporate powers (thousands of conniving Bill Gates types) were frothing at the bit to take him down!
In many Western governments the virus literally ripped through the corridors of power BEFORE the lockdowns started. In Westminster alone many MPs, Cabinet ministers and advisors got infected with covid in February/March pre-lockdown and fared perfectly fine.
How were they suddenly convinced that they were dealing with a bioweapon if they'd experienced it as a cold or bad flu at worst?
Remember how they had to make an example of Boris' bout and took him to hospital for "monitoring" and to give him oxygen? This was so obviously a psyop intended to scare both the public and the PM himself. How come none of the oldies in the House of Lords were taken to hospital nor Prince Charles nor anyone else who also had the virus around the same time?
I agree. This was his biggest mistake. However, I don’t think any of us (including Trump) had any idea how utterly stupid, corrupt, power-hungry, and evil the state and various establishments turned out to be. I certainly had no idea how insane it would all get and I understand giving into the two weeks in order to appease the crazies for a moment. I honestly never thought it would continue past a month because I believed wrongly that people wouldn’t stand for it. I expected protests and defiance.
True STew. My biggest disappointment was most certainly my fellow Americans and their cowardice to do the right thing. Sad and now I have no hope or expectations of the future for this nation. Home of the Brave is a long distant memory for me.
All of us were under the delusion that the USA was a country of free people who would stand up for freedom. Ha! Where did we get this delusion from? I suspect from Hollywood and public school propaganda. It is now clear to see that the masses don’t rise up without a strong leader leading the way. And, tragically, all the leaders were pointing in the direction of lockdown and tyranny.
Oh, speak for yourself. I certainly knew what they were likely doing on day one (day 1!). As did my father starting in the late 1980’s. People just weren’t paying attention when Waco happened. Or when more than a decade earlier, a newly militarized federal IRS agent killed Gordon Kahl. Conservatives especially only have themselves to blame for their inattention and addiction to Boomer comforts.
Trump was surrounded by, (or surrounded himself with), "advisors" who, I suspect, saw him as an easily manipulated path to power for themselves. And who most emphatically did NOT have the best interests of the country in mind. We will probably never know exactly who, or precisely what, caused the President to change his stance, literally over night, (March 10). But the country, and the world, are paying a hell of a price.
I agree, this was a massive mistake for Trump to make. I'm fairly certain he knew better and knew the decision he should make.
I listened to an interview with Jeffrey Tucker on Kunstler's podcast, there he seemed to expand a bit on the written article, saying that Trump was told by the security apparatus this was certainly a bioengineered virus and could be the big one. He at that point agreed to 2 more weeks, put it into the NSC to manage and then it was more or less out of his hands. That explains a bit more about his overnight change, but doesn't excuse letting it continue.
And the vaccines. Trying to rush those through ahead of an election with little testing. And not having a uniform national database for what constitutes a "COVID death."
I would bet the farm, no more than 200k died FROM c19 in the US. And that number would've been less if they hadn't clustered the vulnerable into death chambers.
Almost no one would have died if Ivermectin would have been available ,especially since winter was over and summer was just around the corner ..Flu comes around every winter and that flu could be reduced to almost nothing if vitamin D would be used during winter month ,in northern latitudes . All the extra death ,besides the ones that happen naturally every year where by design ,made possible by the reducers of humanity ,which is murder .
I literally fired Teladoc over this issue. My company added them as a telehealth option in 2020. In 2021, they refused to let any doctor in their network prescribe Ivermectin. I had first hand conversations with doctors about this. I can't say they did this to every employer, but they did this to us. In our 2022 renewal, we told them if they didn't keep their nose out of the doctor-patient relationship, they were gone. They didn't relent and we fired them. Crazy times.
Almost no one would have died had not Ivermectin been deliberately banned. (But then they'd not have been able to justify the emergency authorisations for the various - and much more lethal - clot-shots.)
Yep, it WAS a corrupt and abhorrent act to have virtually OUTLAWED the necessary therapeutics but anyone suffering from the symptoms microwave emissions,
radiation poisoning, Erm. . . I mean "COVID", needs to take Glutathione, N-acetylcysteine, vitamins C and D, and mercetin, in THAT descending order of value. Stay the hell AWAY from these damn jabs, they killed my Dad and FIVE of my neighbours, and caused SEVERE neurological disorders and cognitive impairments in several friends and acquaintances.
I’m skeptical of the “official” numbers as well. I don’t know anyone who died of covid or was even hospitalized for it. I know they’re out there, but whenever I ask people if they know someone who died, it’s almost always no.
I know personally two people who died not of covid but one my brother in a hospital with flu .isolation ,sedation remdesivir ,ventilation and general mistreatment .Death after six days .The other a young person and a friend of mine dropped dead after the second shot ,shortly after .
So I own a biz that has over 400 employees (700 pre-covid) and we have over 3k clients that are also business owners - many of which I talk to regularly.
Not bragging, but I have a "big" sphere and there's not one person I know of who died from covid - nor any of the people I know, who know someone who died from covid - or even went to the hospital.
The worse case I saw was my wife lost her taste for about a week and had a horrible cough for about 3 weeks...then she was fine.
I can't believe that my "sphere sample" is unique.
I directly know only one person -- my 95yo great-aunt who lived in a Spanish care home and passed away in May 2020. But given her already poor health and the cruel isolation she was subjected to in her final months, did she really die "from" covid? I have trouble blaming the virus rather than the policies...
Meanwhile, last year my fit and healthy 56yo second-cousin died of cardiac arrest and my partner's grandma (in her 90s mind you but living entirely independently with no health conditions) died of a stroke that she had a few weeks after her booster.
Just anecdotal of course... But it does beg the question: how many people know anyone who died from/with covid, let alone anyone under 70 or anyone not already sick with multiple conditions? And how many people know someone who has died of any cause from 2021 onwards and who was previously healthy?
Agreed, Trump’s biggest blunder will always be C19 and not stopping at 15 days and pivoting sooner. He let the reigns loose and got bogged down by the Deep State and Globalists. DeSantis will not fare better though. The weight and momentum of these people (& rigged system) is too big to take down or change.
Desantis is an attorney and listens and analyzes both sides of any issue. Hes got common sense, too, something DJT is sorely lacking! He bucked the lockdown trend early on in Fall of 2020 and stood alone against the MOB including Trump. Trump hates Desantis for being the man he isnt.
DeSantis is a very good Governor- however, there are still bigger issues that differentiate him from Trump as a Presidential candidate. He will support all of the Republican wars- like Ukraine. He will have people like Ken Griffin on his team (think Game Stop) and he will not do anything that puts other Governors to shame. for example, states on the border have the power to literally stop illegal immigration but Abbott is not allowed to, by Mcconnell and the corporate backers of the RNC who want cheap labor and a “political” issue to raise money with. That’s why they couldn’t let Kari Lake win- she would have exercised those powers, demonstrating what control the RNC has over everyone. They choose their candidates. DeSantis is backed by Jeb Bush and Karl Rove.
I’m for Trump because - even with his flaws (who knew narcissism could be a super power?lol)- he wants to stop China being the world super power and the official RNC candidates will never be allowed to do this- their corporate backers demand to make cheap crap there. And the reluctance to start wars- he stood firm against so many new incursions and his support of the basic fundamental principle that cheap energy raises people out of poverty.
China isn’t our enemy. The US has become a bully empire. It needs to end and stop. Trump doesn’t get that fully. And he failed spectacularly on Covid, and failing to anticipate election fraud. Many saw it coming.
He needs to stand aside for DeSantis, and be a voice for a more peaceful foreign policy.
To add to your insightful response I would suggest if Trump had at least one solid person with a medical background (ideally a Dr. McCullough or Malone) to whisper in his ear common knowledge and history about these flu’s and Neil Ferguson’s track record, perhaps he would have had the confidence to stand strong. The manger of a baseball team wins by having skilled players, Trump was given an empty deck. Hope he has learned.
He was not in charge of the CDC and NIH and he inherited Fauci. Replacing him during a health crisis would have been a huge gamble politically. The press would have excoriated him. The CDC and NIH are only quasi governmental agencies- under the leadership of Fauci they receive more than 80% of their funding from private sources, mainly pharmaceutical companies, causing an inherent bias. There were too many battles for Trump to take on with Mcconnell limiting his powers at every turn (he never got absentee appointment powers that they gave Obama, for instance) and an ongoing Russia narrative at every turn orchestrated by the 3 letter agencies and the DNC and RNC.
This is another riddle: there WERE medical dissidents, very early on, and they were vilified with a force and a violence that I found shocking. Why this massive backlash against any medical professional who uttered a single syllable of doubt?
Ryan, I'm sorry, but i have to reject this statement of yours:
"To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable..."
The vulnerable are supposed to patriotically hide? Too much Nanny-state vibe there for me. Living one's life, enjoying freedom and man's God given right to free will is patriotic, digging a hole and hiding becauseothers are scared is cowardice.
since you're talking about rejection, you're argument is a bit of a non-sequitur.
explain to me how a lazy, ignorant and fearful crowd of the amorphous "vulnerable" people DEMANDED you and I sacrifice our God given right to free will, for the luxury of them being able to justify not allowing effing children to be children?
I gotta go back and read what I wrote, it seems to have been slightly off, the evils of typing and talking while in zoom meetings. Sorry buddy. Anyway, more meeting time!!
No worries. As I read both our comments I think it comes down to the "definition" of "vulnerable".
I actually think we'd agree if that were defined.
And if the vulnerable chose to go about their lives (rather than stay at home) , in my hypothetical initial posting, then I would actually respect them.
Because I have a feeling, even if you and I fell under the definition of "vulnerable" we wouldn't hide from it.
I was thinking more of "options" not edicts. And not to make the healthy fundamentally change their lives for those who considered themselves vulnerable.
Waaaaaay too many people hid under the umbrella of vulnerable.
A few, but not enough, I'm still disappointed in my dad. He knows I think he wimped out. Ironically, one of his friends was on the Diamond Princess, and when that old fat guy didn't get killed by covid after being locked in with it, my father should have known covid wasn't a threat.
I think the possibility, postulated by phoney stats and projections, that something like 3 million Americans could die, promoted by Drs. Faucii and Birxs, scared Trump into thinking he couldn't take the risk.
Did you know that orphaned cats were given more, in the way of donations, than business owner who made the sacrifice so people could play reindeer games with their masks?
could be. but try to think of a specific "who" that would have done this all so well? my sense is any executive facing an unprecedented potential catastrophe would been incorrectly influenced by the people around him. hindsight is a wonderful thing but don't kid yourself.
Around the same time, there was a Medium article circulating going against the lockdown drum beat, rationally talking about the Cruise ship data, the historical uselessness of lockdowns, and Corona's general status as a just really bad flu.
It went viral in right-wing circles through natural word-of-mouth, and Medium removed the article. Soon after, the "Hammer and Dance" made its splash.
Every day, I am more and more thankful Substack seems to have thrown hack platforms like Medium to the dustbin of the internet.
If you saved that article, say to Evernote, or in some other way could reproduce it, I would love to read it! I read some great articles about the same subjects, including Diamond Princess, that convinced me covid was a nothing burger. That feeling was (obviously) not shared by the right folks, though.
What pisses me off the most is the number of so-called heroes (Drs & nurses) followed CDC (communist disease controllers) orders when they knew in their heart of hearts that shoving tubes and REMDESEVIR down the patients throats endangered them
HOW IN THE HELL CAN ANY OF THEM LIVE WITH THEMSELVES
If the typical number of comments is any guide, almost nobody reads those STAT News articles. Considering the slant of STAT News, I'm shocked that they 1. Printed it in the first place and 2. Didn't take it down later.
When there wasn’t a massive contraction and subsequent die off in every homeless camp in every city, I knew for sure that this was a setup. More proof came with the Floyd - BLM insurrection with no documented spread. But when you an have uninformed, weak , easily persuaded electorate, you can sell anything. Shit they were trying to have people inform on each other.
I was an acquaintance of a lovely lady who was an occasional rough sleeper (she used to sell magazines near my office block pre-covid). I saw her during the 2021 lockdown, she knew it was all a scam and told me they were going to try to vaccinate everyone in community housing and short-term accommodation, but she was going to refuse.
The article you referred to by Aaron Ginn quotes Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford. It was the subsequent demonization of Ioannidis, a highly respected scientist who I've long admired, that started me on the path from True Covidian Believer to skeptic.
Ioannidis has been a stalwart against the lunacy from early on! Interestingly, I see the same attacks on his logic in the comments on that piece, by all-too-typical chicken littles, who were just hankering for a chance to mask-up and vaccinate their dogs. Pitiful.
He seems to have hung onto his job despite the even worse demonization after an April or May 2020 scientific study analyzing the statistics in one region of California. I'm grateful he's still there. He does lots of good work about the abysmal state of a lot of scientific research.
Indeed. Think about this though. Academics are PAID to question existing dogma, propose theories, and all that. How the absolute flaming hell can an academic be threatened with losing their job for questioning the covid dogma? Should we not be doing that as a matter of course? The religious timbre of the Great Covid Dumpster Fire might be the thing that pissed me off the most, particularly given my view of organized religion generally. :-)
I truly would not know where I would be without substack. I am very thankful. Only here can I directly communicate and connect with the very people who have stature and truth on our side. Those who write here and those who add more truth in their comments have saved my sanity. It was here that the insanity in major part was revealed to me and I connected the dots.
Sadly, a very high percentage of people feel a need to be told what to do. This is especially true with anything outside their daily routines. Mostly due to the secular nature of modern society where people have transitioned the innate sense of wanting to belong to something bigger (church, family, community) into a clinging of ideology like climate, race and gender. These huge populations no longer live in a real community of any type. Their lives revolve around social media (cultural cancer) and government. My opinion, this is going to get millions killed off in a bad way. Thanks in particular to the massive overtaking of societies by the UK and US thinking class of elites. Until then all we can do is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
I agree with you but one question. Why did the leadership structures of almost all organized religion go along with this? The Christian leaders aiding in destroying community and their own downfall. They pushed fear!
There were many conflicting opinions in “the church” with a high percentage of people seeing through the narrative but most pastors didn’t have the science background to understand or refute the logic, plus they were personally liable and under similar pressure as any business to conform... recall what happened to the Canadian Pastors who resisted.. arrests and jail time.. it happened in Australia too..and then the underlying belief that Christians should submit to authority..and on top of that they we’re dealing with fears of the mark of the beast, end times etc .. it was very difficult for those without solid understanding of disease and numbers, or the desire to follow what was happening objectively ie not being influenced by the mainstream media and their own fears.. so they went along.. as did many business..
Trump was similar he clearly didn’t have any understanding of disease management and unlike DeSantis he didn’t take the time to learn and consult till it was too late, he lost his presidency, by the time real advisers came on board like Atlas and Alexander...that said he had only just survived a low life impeachment and had a sincere belief in the vaccines .. he was naive..
I quit going at the second round of masking after being shut out for an entire year. During which district leadership poached our much loved pastor and gave us a newby just out of seminary. From the pulpit “get your shots”. They gave into fear and left faith far far behind. Jesus gave up his body and conscience to the STATE. (The Plan) Jesus overcame that for us. He gives us strength to not do the same to not relinquish our body and conscience to the principalities and powers of this world. Those evil powers have been well revealed who they are this past 3 years.
I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward Trump. He knows nothing beyond what his own instincts are telling him but he's got these "experts" screaming in his ear, almost every other country doing the same and a deeply ideologically hostile press ready to blame him for literally every single death.
As usual, he should have followed his own gut rather than the fucking awful people surrounding him, but I can understand why he didn't.
Seems to me there have been only 2 backbones throughout this whole charade - one in Sweden and one in Florida. The idea that world governments frantically scroll through Twitter and Friends to find out what to do next is so depressing. How stupid are these people?
Meritocracy is over, the people that did things are gone, we have governement full of people in charge based on their identity and absolute conformity to supporting the consensus political position of the money handlers.
I sent an email out in later April 2020 that said Sweden did it right and I’ve always believed it. I’ll pay myself on the back for that one a little bit.
A BiL claimed Sweden did it wrong, then more recently, when I complained about adverse effects from shedding at his birthday party, denied knowing what "shedding" is.
The shedding isn’t talked about enough. I know many who had horrible very specific reactions around vaccinated people. It was really terrible throughout fall of ‘22 when so many were receiving their 3rd, 4th and even 5th shots.
I'm not going to any more such congregations of shedding people. While tolerable, I noticed some effects riding in a car with a sister. I guess most of these jabbed people have chosen to be antisocial.
Madrid region reopened almost fully after June 2020. Many have called it the Florida of Spain. It couldn't escape the mask mandates as they were imposed nationally but the region's president, Isabel Ayuso, refused to allow businesses to suffer any longer.
My parents, in their 70s, live in Madrid and their lives went back to normal, more or less, in summer 2020. My dad's book club resumed as did my mother's exercise classes; they started meeting up with their neighbours, friends and family (with the exception of a few who wanted to keep hiding away). I went to Madrid throughout the latter half of 2020 and throughout 2021. Everything was open, even music festivals and theatre productions resumed in summer 2020 -- it was a huge contrast to the UK, where I live.
When vaccinations began Madrid never once considered implementing the green pass and, indeed, never did.
Europe had Pueyo. The States had people like Tufekci and Howard. Many of us--myself included--want to blame (useful idiot, evil, incentivized) policymakers like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Wallensky. For sure, they deserve both blame and derision. Just as much, evil companies like Pfizer and rich assholes with vaccine ROI to reap, like Gates, played much too prominent a role. However, there were also previous nobodies, folks working the TED Talk circuit and related, who exerted tremendous influence, not only with policymakers, but also with the rank-and-file. BOTH the hoi polloi and "our leaders" were listening to the same losers and taking steps that enriched the same assholes! And thus, here we are, three years into The Great Covid Dumpster Fire. Pfizer is still printing money. People are still voluntarily masking. Unrepentant influencers are asking for "amnesty" as if they deserve it. Policymakers have no way to back away from the edge without saying goodbye to the gravy train of public office they so richly do not deserve. I know it gets tiring to see me continue to use this hashtag, but it fits. #WeAreSoScrewed
There were a lot of bad actors working from a variety of motives. Fauci was a big one, as we have seen him behind the scenes influencing news about lab leak, and working to suppress the Great Barrington Declaration, among other things.
Our western reductionism has accultured us to looking for single silver bullets or supervillains, whether you're talking about governments or medicine or whatever. Complex systems are beyond the grasp of too many people.
Even if you don't have the time and focus to deal with a complex system, simply recognizing what it is and that it exists as such will help cut a lot of erroneous conclusions.
I can see the merit in examining WHEN the lunacy began, but I'm more perplexed by analyzing when the lunacy SHOULD have fallen apart. That is, WHEN should more people have wised up.
I know when I began to question EVERYTHING: It was June 2020:
WHEN the weather in the northeast USA become delightful--and we were told to remain inside.
WHEN insane marauders rioted--UNMASKED--and we were told that was OK.
Then, a few months later, WHEN the "vaccines" were rolled out and pronounced "safe & effective." That was when my brother & I responded with, "How do they know? This stuff didn't exist 6 months ago!"
For me, I remain baffled by the failure of many people to question government policies and to submit to absurd edicts.
As for Trump--he was in a NO-WIN situation. I'm confident there was nothing he could have done to change the trajectory. Too much TDS and too much fear.
In April 2020 it was clear from antibody tests that the virus was already far more widespread than we realized, and we had already been living with it without knowing. By the end of April, 25% of NYC had antibodies. That's millions and millions of missed cases in NYC alone. Yet the "experts" didn't mention this and instead STOPPED DOING ANTIBODY TESTING.
I saw Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on a podcast. He's at Stanford. He said when the virus "hit," researchers in California tested samples from blood banks. The blood was collected months earlier--October 2019--and there were covid antibodies in the samples.
Exactly. Bloodwork from mid-December 2019 in Washington/Oregon/CA showed the same thing. 2% of donations were already positive.
That was four months before we did anything at all to slow the curve. Winter months of holiday travel and gathering inside and going to basketball games and church -- yet we didn't even notice the virus was circulating until Jay Inslee threw covid-positive patients into nursing homes.
Yes. Nobody seemed to understand how innocuous the disease actually was. Especially for children--all the kids had antibodies--acquired without ever noticing they’d had covid. It drove us insane when the NYT, CNN media mafia kept droning on and on with charts and graphs and bubbles about case fatality rate. They sold it as if it were the infection fatality rate. The CFR was completely meaningless because it didn’t found the vast majority of people who’d had Covid and were never tested.
I kept saying that Karen was going to be baffled when little Timmy tested positive for antibodies without being sick, but they deftly sidestepped that conversation by not doing antibody tests (and ignoring acquired immunity in the first place).
I think in May 2020 it became clear to us that the thing was mostly killing off very old people and we were hurting the general population with lockdowns AS WELL AS very old people, who were basically locked up in care homes. In June we heard there was an outbreak at a hospital in Austria and realized that only ONE person died. We learned that two people from our hometown had died - both well over eighty and sick. This was NOT a problem of the general population, that much was clear.
And then it got super ridiculous with all those rules and restrictions that didn't make any sense at all.
He most certainly could have. He could have told them they had their two weeks, now lay off. If they wouldn't accept it, follow it with "You're fired!" The idiot Hatu legislooture failed to tell the Department of Public Health and the governor the same thing, as South Dakota's allegedly did when it's supposed to have demanded no more CDC nonsense.
No. We agree. I'm no fan of Trump. As always, I vote for the least objectionable candidate. That said, I maintain he could not "win." If he lifted the mandates, the screwballs would scream he was "KILLING PEOPLE!" Arresting BLM rioters = racism. He could not "win," no matter what he did. The opposition was too loud and WAY too obnoxious.
Every politician who has ever held office uses that same calculus. As an example, President Obama pardoned a bunch of people for non-violent drug offenses and other convictions at the end of his second term. Seems rather obvious that he could have pardoned them at the start of his first term! However, had he done that, he might have experienced fall-out negatively affecting his re-election bid. They "enjoyed" at least four additional years in prison as a result.
Writers like Eugyppius and Tucker are starting to get closer to answering the why and how questions of lockdowns, non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc. The "outbreak" in Italy was really the tipping point ... not what had happened in China until then.
The real - or main - cause of all the deaths in Italy also need more belated investigation. I suspect (like others) most were caused by iatrogenic and panic reasons ... instead of the virus suddenly infecting everyone in this region.
i think this too. especially the underexamined puzzle of how Italy locked down, and then how the Italian lockdowns got exported everywhere else, is at the core of this.
I read something a while back, maybe Michael Senger, about how Italy was working closely with China. Given the West's general knee-jerk distrust of anything Chinese, seeing Italy lock down would've been more influential.
I just laughed when I saw them. So amateurish especially the picture of the lady who lay dead in 2 different places! The video taken from a window of the scene set up was hilarious especially the dead guy with his head out of a bodybag smoking!
Palestinian propaganda shots, often used as straight news-footage in the West. My favourite is the ambulance claimed to have been hit by a cruise missile; the siren had been removed leaving a hole in the roof = evidence of a cruise missile hit, according to western media.
As Trump aims at returning to office, I wonder if he'll ever admit he got tricked. Many people who like him hate the vaccines, and Trump still swears by the vaccines.
You got the never Trump response. The real reason is he is playing to get elected again.
If enough people find out about what really happened he can change. Right now, too many live in an alternate reality. Evidence, see gdoc's media programmed "orange man bad" response.
I'm new as a Conspiracy Theorist but I do wonder about the example of a few heads of state that met their demise after resisting The Narrative(tm) . It might be that Boris Johnson and Trump were "persauded" to do as they were told ...or else.
Every president since 1963 gets the anonymous "Remember JFK" phone call on the first day in office. If they don't get it, they don't need it because they already have been vetted.
Pres. John Magufuli of Tanzania was a vocal skeptic (e.g., he publicized that a pawpaw fruit tested positive) who died in 2021. He’s the only one I’m aware of, but there may have been others.
You can't leave out of the analysis Trump's essential cowardice and desperate need to be liked and admired. Those swamped the essential businessman common sense of his first instincts.
He's a person who always doubts himself and will never risk the aloneness that a strong leader must be willing to experience until decisions are later proven correct.
But because it's taken until now to understand what caused so many of the early casualties--wrong treatment, no treatment, etc.--who would've been on his side as the hospitals kept murdering grandma? Even I can recognize he had no way of winning against all the forces from everywhere, fucking this thing up so badly.
Excellent essay.
Trump gave this man-made catastrophe oxygen by allowing the extension of the "15 days to slow the spread" for another 30 days. I'll admit he was in a trick-box. That said, a leader is supposed to recognize a trick-box, accept it, provide a solution and then make his case as to why the long term "COST" of this nonsense should be rejected.
He did not do that. I'm very disappointed that he did not rally the country around the only true solution there was: Let healthy Americans protect the vulnerable by being "brave" and "filtering" c19; that it was patriotic to take this head-on, rather then kicking the can down the road. To make his case that there was a "price" to be paid no matter what. But the price to hide from it would be orders of magnitude higher.
To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable (being a firewall) by taking on the risk of getting C19. That's what a leader does; make the tough decisions when you don't have all the information, when there are no "good" options and then communicate to the public the way forward.
In other words, to make an appeal to Americans that it was ultimately in every individuals and the countries interests, to rally around mitigating the unavoidable "pain" would require accepting the relatively low risk. To do otherwise would be cowardly and result in even more deaths of the vulnerable. This would have created peer pressure to be brave and for each individual to do their part in a common goal. Sort of like women in the World Wars giving white feathers to cowardly men.
The risk to the healthy was always negligible and he should have made that clear - we knew from the beginning that to be true. His lack of foresight led to the opposite type of peer pressure, which was a key feature in protracting this nightmare. And to recognize his reelection was at more risk if he allowed the country to be paralyzed by fear.
By failing to understand this he allowed the narrative to grow roots. This means, he may have to pay a price politically. He chose the "easy" way out by hoping this would self resolve or that the "vaccine" would magically end the "pandemic". A leader understands that being indecisive compounds the problem, confuses followers and always leads to poor outcomes. By following this strategy he allowed cowardness to become a virtue. He did not recognize that that was the "real" trickbox he (and the country) was in.
If only one person in the US was demonstrated to have died from Covid, then the intelligence agencies, through their allies in the media, would have ensured that DJT would have worn that single death around his neck up through election day.
People with no moral floor who were in powerful positions wanted DJT out of office; that has to be kept in mind when looking back at the year 2020 (with our "20/20 hindsight").
Trump was vulnerable to court treachery because he was an amateur among hardened professionals. DC is a snake pit - it's not called "the Swamp" for nothing. Of course this is precisely why he was elected, and why the public is willing to forgive him. Forgiving him for hyping "Operation Warp Speed" may not come so easily, however.
Don't know if "warp speed " really would matter Danno, he would be blamed for all the death and destruction regardless. Remember the dems wouldn't touch a "TRUMP" vaccine and it wasn't ready until after the election then the dums were pushing their way to be first in line for it. Joe campaigned on destroying the virus, how did that work out? More death in his first year with the vax than Trump without vax. My point I guess is that we're a small minority on these platforms unless we get a massive blowout and all the corruption is exposed and the media accepts that and reports on that, it might not matter. Am I making any sense, maybe not....
The mainstream media will never admit to corruption that they've been a party to. The media answers to the government, or some entity within the government. If Tucker Carlson's mashups of CNN, NBC, etc. running with the same narrative using exactly the same words aren't proof enough, then see Matt Taibbi's expose of Twitter (which he outlined in Substack).
Never, never, never will the "media" turn. Just finished "The Devil's Pleasure Palace", how this whole cult of "critical theory" (emphasis "theory", seems few in U. S. actually understand what a "theory" is ! To the vast majority, "theory" IS TRUTH, proven truth, the word is used in that meaning ALL the time here. The roots of this "movement" are deep, I doubt the press, the educational establishment, and many others can ever reverse the effects of this post war group of "sophisticated thinkers" on Americans. An effect I think of as an "infection" of the psyche, or what the author, Walsh, terms "a hoard of demons" released into the nation. The more I read about the entire history of the Frankfurt School, how subtlety all of this began, post war. How it took root in our academic circles (that is a FACT for sure, I lived and taught in that atmosphere everyday for some time), our "journalism" schools, and gradually infested every aspect of our life and culture.
Oh yeah, watch Tucker every day.
Yes, Trump was in a box - dammed if you do, damned if you don't. Had Trump somehow managed to win the 2020 election, all the side negative effects of the vax, and all the responsibility, would be placed on Trump.
I doubt he would have supported mandates. That alone would have limited the damage.
Trump was of course the "NYC tough guy", but as you commented, just NYC "tough" is still not a match for the seasoned DC institutionalized corruption and the truth that both "political parties" are the SAME, for the sake of the masses, and KNOWING how emotional humans are, they put on this "public face" of their party, then they golf, vacation, dine, and travel in the same social circles. Trump has his own "social circles". they were NOT in Washington D.C. ! Also tough to face in another campaign, was his intense loyalty to one of the most powerful in D.C., the ultimate bureaucrat. as seasoned as Biden, the "Fauci". What that man has done to harm all mankind, might one day be public knowledge.... drip, drip, drip.... Forgive Trump... maybe they will, but forgive Fauci, for the things he did LONG BEFORE "Covid", I doubt it ! In my opinion, another BIG mistake I was surprised even a novice like Trump made, was surrounding himself with such questionable people, especially morally "fluid" individuals ! Now it seems, we have the very SAME thing, a "leader" with very poor skills in choosing the "best" people for high positions. It's so depressing, so very depressing !
RFK Jr's book "The Real Anthony Fauci" has sold millions of copies. Fauci can run but he can't hide. Biden? He's the deep state's wet dream, he's forced by his dementia to allow the DC elites to run the country but is accountable for their decisions. They also have more than enough proof of his misdeeds as VP to blackmail him should he ever put enough brain cells together to oppose them.
I get it, but that doesn't mean he should have thought it through better.
He lacked the key to successful leadership: calculating "net" cost.
It would not have mattered what he thought through or didn't think through. (One of his closest advisors, Dr. Birx, has publicly admitted to manipulating the information she provided him; she is currently living a carefree life. I imagine the possibility of prosecution is not something that she thinks about at all.)
didn't help he's a self identified germaphobe
The lies and manipulation are off the charts re everything these days - i read an article yesterday about the 86 year old obese pope with one lung, who has "pneumonia," but is expected to be fit enough for his Holy Week activities, starting with Palm Sunday smh
Funny, just read that they're preparing for a holy week without the Pope down at the Vatican.
See what I mean - yesterday the article I read quoted the "nursing staff" saying he was doing well and expected to be back to his regular duties by Sunday - three days lol. He must be a lot sicker because - you are right - now the projection is perhaps not at all over Holy Week. After the last few years, I don't believe anything.
'I imagine the possibility of prosecution is not something that she thinks about at all.'
We can dream.
He lacks any ability to gauge BS from reality and a terrible judge of character. He is a “business man” not a political leader who had to learn how to deal with the bureaucracy and is enamored of the “strong man” type of leadership, ie military types. Elected to stop globalism, he became their most effective tool ever!
Even though I no longer suffer from TDS, I still don't like Trump. As you say, his focus is on business. An excellent con man who knows how to manipulate the masses. I can't help thinking that a lot of what he did was more or less leading from behind, with his eye on the election.
Don't want to hijack the thread, but would you rather have Biden or Trump in the White House?
Neither. I refuse to get trapped in that false dichotomy. I've come to view our so-called leadership as a uniparty. I don't like either party, although for mostly different reasons. We're stuck in a plutocracy or a corporatocracy or whatever you wanna call it. Politics is just a distraction for the plebes.
That said, I don't really have a solution to offer.
DeSantis.
Well, he's it, warts and all; this is the point to where 250 years of American history has led us.
It would be unthinkable and unconscionable to allow the current Dumpster Fire to muddle through another four years; the place would be unrecognizable.
100% over.
You're right
I couldn't help thinking, when I read your comment, that all the 'hardened' politicians in the West did no better than Trump, despite their alleged political savvy.
Yeah, but we have a political leader w/ 50yrs experience and look what happened! We just can't seem to catch a break 😪 lol
I think it was eugyppius who made the comment that our system simply attracts corruptible people.
Spot on SB! Just look what happened today with Trump. I feel like we're living in Russia.
And psychopaths.
Having been in show biz, it's amazing how Trump didn't recognize the slick and well produced show early 2020. All the inconsistencies and contradictions should have clued him in. Very regrettable.
Very good point. Never heard it that way, but spot on
Do y’all really believe he was getting enuff truth from anybody to make a fight out of it, and again, they are still wearing the damn mask.
James Lee, I don't know what he knew, but he should have stood firm on his instincts, as he initially resisted and appeared to smell bs.
Yeah I am married to a D.A. who suffers from terminal TDS. No $ to move and rent is simply outrageous so I stay and STAND STRONG, PROUD AND NOT BACKING DOWN
Some people still bleat about the Covid deaths in the US being all Trump’s fault. If you point out that it was he who started the lockdowns, which they strongly admire when initiated by Democrats, they sputter and have nothing useful to say.
The only apparent touching points of Lefties and Logic is that they both begin with the letter 'L'.
Given that they seem to be determined to return most of us to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, I think they're more Luddites than Lefties, nowadays.
Damn right.
Because he was told that it was essentially a bioweapon. That's what I believe many people in power around the world heard from their intelligence agencies. That's the reason the standard mitigation measures against pandemics were discarded. Yes, they told the stupid public that it came from bats or pangolins but they themselves were almost certain that the virus was a product of gain-of-function research..
I agree with this version. What would make Trump do a 180 is if the CIA told him it was a Chinese bioweapon and treatment was unknown. That and he was surrounded by a nest a slithering snakes driven by hubris and greed. Still, he should have seen this earlier. But even if he did he was doomed because the media already started the death ticker on the bottom of the screens (which promptly disappeared after Biden and Pfizer teamed up).
Yes Charlotte, he certainly SHOULD have seen it for what it was. I am a largely uneducated, ordinary, working class man, with NO political acumen whatsoever, but, going purely off of the premise that "they" (the intelligence apparatus and mainstream media) generally ALWAYS lie
about EVERYTHING, by late March 2020, I already had the patent number for Pirbright Institute's COVID 💉"vaccine", dated 2018, & correctly intuited EVERY subsequent move thereafter,
often LONG before it was considered a "safe bet" by the alternative media "truther" community. No greater "smarts" or ability as a "social prophet" than ANYBODY else, but working solely from the premise that "they" ALWAYS lie to us, about EVERYTHING of ANY importance, I pretty much guess-timated EVERY forthcoming action and restriction, and the REAL reasons for them. The idea that Trump floundered in confusion is, to me, thoroughly ludicrous. I STILL believe Trump to be the controlled opposition element fronting the "Christian/ conservative values" side of the then Hegelian dialectic. But then,
you never CAN be sure, NOT 100%, can you?
I think there's a definite difference between making decisions for yourself (I was never going to take their novel vaxxes) and making decisions for a whole country. Something must have happened to change Trump's mind, and until we know for sure, the 'bad advice by a cabal with an agenda' hypothesis will suit me fine.
TDS seems even to have extended to Pelosi asserting that Trump must 'prove his innocence'.
Weird world; weirder woman.
Wow. Hegelian dialect eh? Not bad for an uneducated man
Formal "education", no. Mensa member? Yep.
Yes
More than that I suspect: a bioweapon as vengeance against Trump personally for his trade wars. No way Trump wanted that understood by the electorate. The bureaucracy had great blackmail against him--the narrative that he had brought Armageddon on us, not understanding the risk of taking on China. So he sold his soul to the Faucis and intel community... I am not sure China acted alone--but that’s another story.
Am I wrong in remembering that there was about to be a big tariff deal with China for which the Chinese were not happy, and just before this deal was completed the virus was unleashed? I always suspected these two events were connected, in addition to the fact that the deep state just had to come up with something severe to destroy whatever good economic progress DJT could take credit for before the election.
Yes, and he had just completed changing the weak NAFTA rules for the USMCA, which closed many loopholes that Canada and Mexico exploited using cheap China products. For example, the Canadians could take a piece of Chinese steel and put one bend in it and then stamp Canada on it and call it “Canadian” and it got better trade treatment and could pockets huge amounts of money for poor quality steel. Trump closed most of those loopholes- China realized he was going to do the same thing with them. His team of Lighthizer, Ross and Navarro was excellent.
One of my favorite talks during the entire 4 years of Trump was Wilbur Ross at Davos when he told the astonished elite that the cushy tariff rules were going to be blown up- I could not stop laughing- simply the best!! Absolutely- trillions at stake and those corporate powers (thousands of conniving Bill Gates types) were frothing at the bit to take him down!
But there's something that doesn't square.
In many Western governments the virus literally ripped through the corridors of power BEFORE the lockdowns started. In Westminster alone many MPs, Cabinet ministers and advisors got infected with covid in February/March pre-lockdown and fared perfectly fine.
How were they suddenly convinced that they were dealing with a bioweapon if they'd experienced it as a cold or bad flu at worst?
Remember how they had to make an example of Boris' bout and took him to hospital for "monitoring" and to give him oxygen? This was so obviously a psyop intended to scare both the public and the PM himself. How come none of the oldies in the House of Lords were taken to hospital nor Prince Charles nor anyone else who also had the virus around the same time?
I agree. This was his biggest mistake. However, I don’t think any of us (including Trump) had any idea how utterly stupid, corrupt, power-hungry, and evil the state and various establishments turned out to be. I certainly had no idea how insane it would all get and I understand giving into the two weeks in order to appease the crazies for a moment. I honestly never thought it would continue past a month because I believed wrongly that people wouldn’t stand for it. I expected protests and defiance.
True STew. My biggest disappointment was most certainly my fellow Americans and their cowardice to do the right thing. Sad and now I have no hope or expectations of the future for this nation. Home of the Brave is a long distant memory for me.
"Safetyism" is the hallmark of our population now.
All of us were under the delusion that the USA was a country of free people who would stand up for freedom. Ha! Where did we get this delusion from? I suspect from Hollywood and public school propaganda. It is now clear to see that the masses don’t rise up without a strong leader leading the way. And, tragically, all the leaders were pointing in the direction of lockdown and tyranny.
Yeah. But once they restricted your time, space and access to society via the masks it was over.
But still the cowardness of Americans really shows you how weak we've become since "the greatest generation".
Seriously, I made a complete ass of myself, bragging to a European friend how "Americans would never put up with a lockdown!"
Whoops. How humiliating.
Exactly!
Oh, speak for yourself. I certainly knew what they were likely doing on day one (day 1!). As did my father starting in the late 1980’s. People just weren’t paying attention when Waco happened. Or when more than a decade earlier, a newly militarized federal IRS agent killed Gordon Kahl. Conservatives especially only have themselves to blame for their inattention and addiction to Boomer comforts.
Trump was surrounded by, (or surrounded himself with), "advisors" who, I suspect, saw him as an easily manipulated path to power for themselves. And who most emphatically did NOT have the best interests of the country in mind. We will probably never know exactly who, or precisely what, caused the President to change his stance, literally over night, (March 10). But the country, and the world, are paying a hell of a price.
I agree, this was a massive mistake for Trump to make. I'm fairly certain he knew better and knew the decision he should make.
I listened to an interview with Jeffrey Tucker on Kunstler's podcast, there he seemed to expand a bit on the written article, saying that Trump was told by the security apparatus this was certainly a bioengineered virus and could be the big one. He at that point agreed to 2 more weeks, put it into the NSC to manage and then it was more or less out of his hands. That explains a bit more about his overnight change, but doesn't excuse letting it continue.
And the masking. Man, it is hard for me to understand how he did not have the imagination of how that would end up.
And the vaccines. Trying to rush those through ahead of an election with little testing. And not having a uniform national database for what constitutes a "COVID death."
YES!
"From and with". Boils my blood to this day.
I would bet the farm, no more than 200k died FROM c19 in the US. And that number would've been less if they hadn't clustered the vulnerable into death chambers.
Almost no one would have died if Ivermectin would have been available ,especially since winter was over and summer was just around the corner ..Flu comes around every winter and that flu could be reduced to almost nothing if vitamin D would be used during winter month ,in northern latitudes . All the extra death ,besides the ones that happen naturally every year where by design ,made possible by the reducers of humanity ,which is murder .
I literally fired Teladoc over this issue. My company added them as a telehealth option in 2020. In 2021, they refused to let any doctor in their network prescribe Ivermectin. I had first hand conversations with doctors about this. I can't say they did this to every employer, but they did this to us. In our 2022 renewal, we told them if they didn't keep their nose out of the doctor-patient relationship, they were gone. They didn't relent and we fired them. Crazy times.
100% Joe. Nailed it.
Almost no one would have died had not Ivermectin been deliberately banned. (But then they'd not have been able to justify the emergency authorisations for the various - and much more lethal - clot-shots.)
Yep, it WAS a corrupt and abhorrent act to have virtually OUTLAWED the necessary therapeutics but anyone suffering from the symptoms microwave emissions,
radiation poisoning, Erm. . . I mean "COVID", needs to take Glutathione, N-acetylcysteine, vitamins C and D, and mercetin, in THAT descending order of value. Stay the hell AWAY from these damn jabs, they killed my Dad and FIVE of my neighbours, and caused SEVERE neurological disorders and cognitive impairments in several friends and acquaintances.
I’m skeptical of the “official” numbers as well. I don’t know anyone who died of covid or was even hospitalized for it. I know they’re out there, but whenever I ask people if they know someone who died, it’s almost always no.
I know personally two people who died not of covid but one my brother in a hospital with flu .isolation ,sedation remdesivir ,ventilation and general mistreatment .Death after six days .The other a young person and a friend of mine dropped dead after the second shot ,shortly after .
So I own a biz that has over 400 employees (700 pre-covid) and we have over 3k clients that are also business owners - many of which I talk to regularly.
Not bragging, but I have a "big" sphere and there's not one person I know of who died from covid - nor any of the people I know, who know someone who died from covid - or even went to the hospital.
The worse case I saw was my wife lost her taste for about a week and had a horrible cough for about 3 weeks...then she was fine.
I can't believe that my "sphere sample" is unique.
I directly know only one person -- my 95yo great-aunt who lived in a Spanish care home and passed away in May 2020. But given her already poor health and the cruel isolation she was subjected to in her final months, did she really die "from" covid? I have trouble blaming the virus rather than the policies...
Meanwhile, last year my fit and healthy 56yo second-cousin died of cardiac arrest and my partner's grandma (in her 90s mind you but living entirely independently with no health conditions) died of a stroke that she had a few weeks after her booster.
Just anecdotal of course... But it does beg the question: how many people know anyone who died from/with covid, let alone anyone under 70 or anyone not already sick with multiple conditions? And how many people know someone who has died of any cause from 2021 onwards and who was previously healthy?
Agreed, Trump’s biggest blunder will always be C19 and not stopping at 15 days and pivoting sooner. He let the reigns loose and got bogged down by the Deep State and Globalists. DeSantis will not fare better though. The weight and momentum of these people (& rigged system) is too big to take down or change.
Desantis is an attorney and listens and analyzes both sides of any issue. Hes got common sense, too, something DJT is sorely lacking! He bucked the lockdown trend early on in Fall of 2020 and stood alone against the MOB including Trump. Trump hates Desantis for being the man he isnt.
Desantis 24'
He has transformed Florida in less than 3 years since I moved here.
It is a place now where it is okay to separate "love of country" vs. "love of government".
People get it and I live in one of the most purple suburbs you can imagine. Virtually everyone is on the same page:
Get the bums out and return the power to the people.
DeSantis is a very good Governor- however, there are still bigger issues that differentiate him from Trump as a Presidential candidate. He will support all of the Republican wars- like Ukraine. He will have people like Ken Griffin on his team (think Game Stop) and he will not do anything that puts other Governors to shame. for example, states on the border have the power to literally stop illegal immigration but Abbott is not allowed to, by Mcconnell and the corporate backers of the RNC who want cheap labor and a “political” issue to raise money with. That’s why they couldn’t let Kari Lake win- she would have exercised those powers, demonstrating what control the RNC has over everyone. They choose their candidates. DeSantis is backed by Jeb Bush and Karl Rove.
Well Charlotte we'll vote for whoever opposes totalitarianism right? I think that leaves 2 realistic choices; Trump or DeSantis.
I’m for Trump because - even with his flaws (who knew narcissism could be a super power?lol)- he wants to stop China being the world super power and the official RNC candidates will never be allowed to do this- their corporate backers demand to make cheap crap there. And the reluctance to start wars- he stood firm against so many new incursions and his support of the basic fundamental principle that cheap energy raises people out of poverty.
China isn’t our enemy. The US has become a bully empire. It needs to end and stop. Trump doesn’t get that fully. And he failed spectacularly on Covid, and failing to anticipate election fraud. Many saw it coming.
He needs to stand aside for DeSantis, and be a voice for a more peaceful foreign policy.
To add to your insightful response I would suggest if Trump had at least one solid person with a medical background (ideally a Dr. McCullough or Malone) to whisper in his ear common knowledge and history about these flu’s and Neil Ferguson’s track record, perhaps he would have had the confidence to stand strong. The manger of a baseball team wins by having skilled players, Trump was given an empty deck. Hope he has learned.
I had a lot of hope for Scott Atas, I wish his advice would have prevailed. Perhaps it was just too late.
He was not in charge of the CDC and NIH and he inherited Fauci. Replacing him during a health crisis would have been a huge gamble politically. The press would have excoriated him. The CDC and NIH are only quasi governmental agencies- under the leadership of Fauci they receive more than 80% of their funding from private sources, mainly pharmaceutical companies, causing an inherent bias. There were too many battles for Trump to take on with Mcconnell limiting his powers at every turn (he never got absentee appointment powers that they gave Obama, for instance) and an ongoing Russia narrative at every turn orchestrated by the 3 letter agencies and the DNC and RNC.
Rock on Charlotte!
This is another riddle: there WERE medical dissidents, very early on, and they were vilified with a force and a violence that I found shocking. Why this massive backlash against any medical professional who uttered a single syllable of doubt?
I presume because it's a military operation as an aspect of a bankers' war.
He has that, but hasn't learned. Dump Trumpenstein!
And replace him with whom?
If he can maintain adequate security, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Ryan, I'm sorry, but i have to reject this statement of yours:
"To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable..."
The vulnerable are supposed to patriotically hide? Too much Nanny-state vibe there for me. Living one's life, enjoying freedom and man's God given right to free will is patriotic, digging a hole and hiding becauseothers are scared is cowardice.
since you're talking about rejection, you're argument is a bit of a non-sequitur.
explain to me how a lazy, ignorant and fearful crowd of the amorphous "vulnerable" people DEMANDED you and I sacrifice our God given right to free will, for the luxury of them being able to justify not allowing effing children to be children?
I gotta go back and read what I wrote, it seems to have been slightly off, the evils of typing and talking while in zoom meetings. Sorry buddy. Anyway, more meeting time!!
No worries. As I read both our comments I think it comes down to the "definition" of "vulnerable".
I actually think we'd agree if that were defined.
And if the vulnerable chose to go about their lives (rather than stay at home) , in my hypothetical initial posting, then I would actually respect them.
Because I have a feeling, even if you and I fell under the definition of "vulnerable" we wouldn't hide from it.
I was thinking more of "options" not edicts. And not to make the healthy fundamentally change their lives for those who considered themselves vulnerable.
Waaaaaay too many people hid under the umbrella of vulnerable.
Well I agree, but how many baby-boomers do you know that didn't take the coward exit?
A few, but not enough, I'm still disappointed in my dad. He knows I think he wimped out. Ironically, one of his friends was on the Diamond Princess, and when that old fat guy didn't get killed by covid after being locked in with it, my father should have known covid wasn't a threat.
I agree, but I'm not sure the screeching hordes of the TDS afflicted would have ever let that plan be attempted.
He worked in the oval office right?
He took the wrong ramp; FEAR
I think the possibility, postulated by phoney stats and projections, that something like 3 million Americans could die, promoted by Drs. Faucii and Birxs, scared Trump into thinking he couldn't take the risk.
We’re all genius’s now👍🇺🇦
Lol! You got that right!
But 12 million Merry Cats died!
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*TO2056gWgab1vnkHLIACkA.png
Did you know that orphaned cats were given more, in the way of donations, than business owner who made the sacrifice so people could play reindeer games with their masks?
could be. but try to think of a specific "who" that would have done this all so well? my sense is any executive facing an unprecedented potential catastrophe would been incorrectly influenced by the people around him. hindsight is a wonderful thing but don't kid yourself.
Easiest call in history
How about I would have. Does that work for you?
It wouldn’t have mattered, they are still wearing mask.
BUT would you have been FORCED to if he had rejected masking in full?
Have you ever given thought to the fact that when corporate boards figured out that you could substitute masks for distance was a game changer?
Trump could've prevented that. I was a big supporter, but he failed the children of the US.
Around the same time, there was a Medium article circulating going against the lockdown drum beat, rationally talking about the Cruise ship data, the historical uselessness of lockdowns, and Corona's general status as a just really bad flu.
It went viral in right-wing circles through natural word-of-mouth, and Medium removed the article. Soon after, the "Hammer and Dance" made its splash.
Every day, I am more and more thankful Substack seems to have thrown hack platforms like Medium to the dustbin of the internet.
"Soon after, the "Hammer and Dance" made its splash."
I keep reading the title of that post as "Hammer and Sickle."
If you saved that article, say to Evernote, or in some other way could reproduce it, I would love to read it! I read some great articles about the same subjects, including Diamond Princess, that convinced me covid was a nothing burger. That feeling was (obviously) not shared by the right folks, though.
What pisses me off the most is the number of so-called heroes (Drs & nurses) followed CDC (communist disease controllers) orders when they knew in their heart of hearts that shoving tubes and REMDESEVIR down the patients throats endangered them
HOW IN THE HELL CAN ANY OF THEM LIVE WITH THEMSELVES
🎯👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Here you go:
https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/03/22/the-best-article-yet-on-the-coronavirus-by-aaron-ginn/
Awesome. Substack continues to be the resource I did not know I needed.
This is good too. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
Ioannidis was spot on. If we had a media that did its job this article would have been front-page news across the world.
If the typical number of comments is any guide, almost nobody reads those STAT News articles. Considering the slant of STAT News, I'm shocked that they 1. Printed it in the first place and 2. Didn't take it down later.
Not quite nothing, but severity very comparable to flu.
When there wasn’t a massive contraction and subsequent die off in every homeless camp in every city, I knew for sure that this was a setup. More proof came with the Floyd - BLM insurrection with no documented spread. But when you an have uninformed, weak , easily persuaded electorate, you can sell anything. Shit they were trying to have people inform on each other.
They did this in London and nothing happened.
I was an acquaintance of a lovely lady who was an occasional rough sleeper (she used to sell magazines near my office block pre-covid). I saw her during the 2021 lockdown, she knew it was all a scam and told me they were going to try to vaccinate everyone in community housing and short-term accommodation, but she was going to refuse.
The article you referred to by Aaron Ginn quotes Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford. It was the subsequent demonization of Ioannidis, a highly respected scientist who I've long admired, that started me on the path from True Covidian Believer to skeptic.
Ioannidis opinion piece 3/17/2020 https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ (Which somehow never got taken down, despite its appearance on a Pharma-friendly website.)
Ginn article on Medium (~3/18 to 3/20/2020?) https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/03/22/the-best-article-yet-on-the-coronavirus-by-aaron-ginn/
Ioannidis has been a stalwart against the lunacy from early on! Interestingly, I see the same attacks on his logic in the comments on that piece, by all-too-typical chicken littles, who were just hankering for a chance to mask-up and vaccinate their dogs. Pitiful.
He seems to have hung onto his job despite the even worse demonization after an April or May 2020 scientific study analyzing the statistics in one region of California. I'm grateful he's still there. He does lots of good work about the abysmal state of a lot of scientific research.
Indeed. Think about this though. Academics are PAID to question existing dogma, propose theories, and all that. How the absolute flaming hell can an academic be threatened with losing their job for questioning the covid dogma? Should we not be doing that as a matter of course? The religious timbre of the Great Covid Dumpster Fire might be the thing that pissed me off the most, particularly given my view of organized religion generally. :-)
'Academics are PAID to question existing dogma'
Well, that would be scientists, not just academics, and the entire scientific method has been mostly thrown in the garbage, in favor of The Science™.
The censorship of reality was the first thing that got my attention, and to me is still the worst thing that happened in the last three years.
It was the instant politicization of COVID that make me skeptical of the vaxx.
I truly would not know where I would be without substack. I am very thankful. Only here can I directly communicate and connect with the very people who have stature and truth on our side. Those who write here and those who add more truth in their comments have saved my sanity. It was here that the insanity in major part was revealed to me and I connected the dots.
Sadly, a very high percentage of people feel a need to be told what to do. This is especially true with anything outside their daily routines. Mostly due to the secular nature of modern society where people have transitioned the innate sense of wanting to belong to something bigger (church, family, community) into a clinging of ideology like climate, race and gender. These huge populations no longer live in a real community of any type. Their lives revolve around social media (cultural cancer) and government. My opinion, this is going to get millions killed off in a bad way. Thanks in particular to the massive overtaking of societies by the UK and US thinking class of elites. Until then all we can do is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
I agree with you but one question. Why did the leadership structures of almost all organized religion go along with this? The Christian leaders aiding in destroying community and their own downfall. They pushed fear!
The failure of the church was perhaps the worst part.
The leadership of many denominations seems to be more like anxious, risk averse HR managers than prophetic men of God. You see this on many issues.
Priest in my parish in Northern Illinois still masking to distribute Communion. The congregation not masked or standing 6' apart. STOP ALREADY!
There were many conflicting opinions in “the church” with a high percentage of people seeing through the narrative but most pastors didn’t have the science background to understand or refute the logic, plus they were personally liable and under similar pressure as any business to conform... recall what happened to the Canadian Pastors who resisted.. arrests and jail time.. it happened in Australia too..and then the underlying belief that Christians should submit to authority..and on top of that they we’re dealing with fears of the mark of the beast, end times etc .. it was very difficult for those without solid understanding of disease and numbers, or the desire to follow what was happening objectively ie not being influenced by the mainstream media and their own fears.. so they went along.. as did many business..
Trump was similar he clearly didn’t have any understanding of disease management and unlike DeSantis he didn’t take the time to learn and consult till it was too late, he lost his presidency, by the time real advisers came on board like Atlas and Alexander...that said he had only just survived a low life impeachment and had a sincere belief in the vaccines .. he was naive..
Because they all adopted the LdS (or whatever they're called now) Twelfth Article of Faith - "We believe in being subject".
Scriptures that say that people should submit to government authorities. And not recognizing our situation is different than what those people faced.
I quit going at the second round of masking after being shut out for an entire year. During which district leadership poached our much loved pastor and gave us a newby just out of seminary. From the pulpit “get your shots”. They gave into fear and left faith far far behind. Jesus gave up his body and conscience to the STATE. (The Plan) Jesus overcame that for us. He gives us strength to not do the same to not relinquish our body and conscience to the principalities and powers of this world. Those evil powers have been well revealed who they are this past 3 years.
Fear shuts down the rational brain. The smartest dogs are easiest to train…
I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward Trump. He knows nothing beyond what his own instincts are telling him but he's got these "experts" screaming in his ear, almost every other country doing the same and a deeply ideologically hostile press ready to blame him for literally every single death.
As usual, he should have followed his own gut rather than the fucking awful people surrounding him, but I can understand why he didn't.
Trump has always been well known as a germophobe. They played on his deepest fear.
Seems to me there have been only 2 backbones throughout this whole charade - one in Sweden and one in Florida. The idea that world governments frantically scroll through Twitter and Friends to find out what to do next is so depressing. How stupid are these people?
"How stupid are these people?" How much time do you have?
Fear makes us stupid. Shuts down activity in the prefrontal cortex
lol. I'm sure it'd be fun to hear!
look at a bell curve. The "mean" tells us roughly half, by definition, are stupid.
Wiltster - remember the last time you had a conversation with a person who had a 100 IQ?
It takes patience.
They are getting harder to find. 😎
Meritocracy is over, the people that did things are gone, we have governement full of people in charge based on their identity and absolute conformity to supporting the consensus political position of the money handlers.
I sent an email out in later April 2020 that said Sweden did it right and I’ve always believed it. I’ll pay myself on the back for that one a little bit.
A BiL claimed Sweden did it wrong, then more recently, when I complained about adverse effects from shedding at his birthday party, denied knowing what "shedding" is.
The shedding isn’t talked about enough. I know many who had horrible very specific reactions around vaccinated people. It was really terrible throughout fall of ‘22 when so many were receiving their 3rd, 4th and even 5th shots.
I'm not going to any more such congregations of shedding people. While tolerable, I noticed some effects riding in a car with a sister. I guess most of these jabbed people have chosen to be antisocial.
Madrid region reopened almost fully after June 2020. Many have called it the Florida of Spain. It couldn't escape the mask mandates as they were imposed nationally but the region's president, Isabel Ayuso, refused to allow businesses to suffer any longer.
My parents, in their 70s, live in Madrid and their lives went back to normal, more or less, in summer 2020. My dad's book club resumed as did my mother's exercise classes; they started meeting up with their neighbours, friends and family (with the exception of a few who wanted to keep hiding away). I went to Madrid throughout the latter half of 2020 and throughout 2021. Everything was open, even music festivals and theatre productions resumed in summer 2020 -- it was a huge contrast to the UK, where I live.
When vaccinations began Madrid never once considered implementing the green pass and, indeed, never did.
Rumor suggests (still no documentation available), the South Dakota legislature, too.
Europe had Pueyo. The States had people like Tufekci and Howard. Many of us--myself included--want to blame (useful idiot, evil, incentivized) policymakers like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Wallensky. For sure, they deserve both blame and derision. Just as much, evil companies like Pfizer and rich assholes with vaccine ROI to reap, like Gates, played much too prominent a role. However, there were also previous nobodies, folks working the TED Talk circuit and related, who exerted tremendous influence, not only with policymakers, but also with the rank-and-file. BOTH the hoi polloi and "our leaders" were listening to the same losers and taking steps that enriched the same assholes! And thus, here we are, three years into The Great Covid Dumpster Fire. Pfizer is still printing money. People are still voluntarily masking. Unrepentant influencers are asking for "amnesty" as if they deserve it. Policymakers have no way to back away from the edge without saying goodbye to the gravy train of public office they so richly do not deserve. I know it gets tiring to see me continue to use this hashtag, but it fits. #WeAreSoScrewed
There were a lot of bad actors working from a variety of motives. Fauci was a big one, as we have seen him behind the scenes influencing news about lab leak, and working to suppress the Great Barrington Declaration, among other things.
Our western reductionism has accultured us to looking for single silver bullets or supervillains, whether you're talking about governments or medicine or whatever. Complex systems are beyond the grasp of too many people.
Even if you don't have the time and focus to deal with a complex system, simply recognizing what it is and that it exists as such will help cut a lot of erroneous conclusions.
The recent 180° by Australia is at least a little bit encouraging. I haven't heard what sort of local support or pushback they're getting on that.
I can see the merit in examining WHEN the lunacy began, but I'm more perplexed by analyzing when the lunacy SHOULD have fallen apart. That is, WHEN should more people have wised up.
I know when I began to question EVERYTHING: It was June 2020:
WHEN the weather in the northeast USA become delightful--and we were told to remain inside.
WHEN insane marauders rioted--UNMASKED--and we were told that was OK.
Then, a few months later, WHEN the "vaccines" were rolled out and pronounced "safe & effective." That was when my brother & I responded with, "How do they know? This stuff didn't exist 6 months ago!"
For me, I remain baffled by the failure of many people to question government policies and to submit to absurd edicts.
As for Trump--he was in a NO-WIN situation. I'm confident there was nothing he could have done to change the trajectory. Too much TDS and too much fear.
In April 2020 it was clear from antibody tests that the virus was already far more widespread than we realized, and we had already been living with it without knowing. By the end of April, 25% of NYC had antibodies. That's millions and millions of missed cases in NYC alone. Yet the "experts" didn't mention this and instead STOPPED DOING ANTIBODY TESTING.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/coronavirus-antibodies-present-in-nearly-25-of-all-nyc-residents/
Coronavirus Antibodies Present In Nearly 25% Of All NYC Residents, Cuomo Says; Un-PAUSE In Certain Regions Of NY Might Begin In May
APRIL 27, 2020
I saw Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on a podcast. He's at Stanford. He said when the virus "hit," researchers in California tested samples from blood banks. The blood was collected months earlier--October 2019--and there were covid antibodies in the samples.
So there was that.
Sheesh. The blunders are legion.
Exactly. Bloodwork from mid-December 2019 in Washington/Oregon/CA showed the same thing. 2% of donations were already positive.
That was four months before we did anything at all to slow the curve. Winter months of holiday travel and gathering inside and going to basketball games and church -- yet we didn't even notice the virus was circulating until Jay Inslee threw covid-positive patients into nursing homes.
And during that "pre-pandemic" time, there were people who didn't feel "sick," OR they felt non-specific "sick." A cold, perhaps?
We have a new definition of fiasco.
Yes, whatever you do, don't read the articles about how the flu got an early start in 2019.....
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-an-unexpected-virus.html
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/this-years-flu-season-is-off-to-an-early-unusual-start-cdc-says/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/health/flu-season-early-start/index.html
I'll read those after I stab a sharp stick in my eye.
Yes. Nobody seemed to understand how innocuous the disease actually was. Especially for children--all the kids had antibodies--acquired without ever noticing they’d had covid. It drove us insane when the NYT, CNN media mafia kept droning on and on with charts and graphs and bubbles about case fatality rate. They sold it as if it were the infection fatality rate. The CFR was completely meaningless because it didn’t found the vast majority of people who’d had Covid and were never tested.
I kept saying that Karen was going to be baffled when little Timmy tested positive for antibodies without being sick, but they deftly sidestepped that conversation by not doing antibody tests (and ignoring acquired immunity in the first place).
Two things that infuriated me when discussing kids & covids:
1. The parents who injected their kids considered themselves superior to parents who didn't--and even treated those parents as neglectful.
2. The uber-idiot SCOTUS justice Sotomayor who claimed there were 100,000 kids infected with covid.
Didn't she say there were 100,000 IN THE HOSPITAL with covid?
Yes. She's a retard.
They blocked access to antibody tests here in the UK. It was obscene.
It was the same in London, where I live, but everyone still claimed the virus had only just emerged mid-March.
Cognitive dissonance—a state of mind at which many humans excel.
I think in May 2020 it became clear to us that the thing was mostly killing off very old people and we were hurting the general population with lockdowns AS WELL AS very old people, who were basically locked up in care homes. In June we heard there was an outbreak at a hospital in Austria and realized that only ONE person died. We learned that two people from our hometown had died - both well over eighty and sick. This was NOT a problem of the general population, that much was clear.
And then it got super ridiculous with all those rules and restrictions that didn't make any sense at all.
He most certainly could have. He could have told them they had their two weeks, now lay off. If they wouldn't accept it, follow it with "You're fired!" The idiot Hatu legislooture failed to tell the Department of Public Health and the governor the same thing, as South Dakota's allegedly did when it's supposed to have demanded no more CDC nonsense.
Yes, he could have said that. And we'd still be hearing the screams.
He could have screamed back, "So, you lied about 2 weeks relieving pressure on hospitals?" Charge them with insubordination to go with their firings!
I think I'm going to disagree with you for the first time.
Never forget he made cowards of "Republicans" too.
No. We agree. I'm no fan of Trump. As always, I vote for the least objectionable candidate. That said, I maintain he could not "win." If he lifted the mandates, the screwballs would scream he was "KILLING PEOPLE!" Arresting BLM rioters = racism. He could not "win," no matter what he did. The opposition was too loud and WAY too obnoxious.
Okay. We're both still batting a thousand....lol...:))
Oh thank god.
LOL!
I think that Scott Atlas nailed when he criticized Trump for doing whatever he thought would improve his chance of re-election.
Every politician who has ever held office uses that same calculus. As an example, President Obama pardoned a bunch of people for non-violent drug offenses and other convictions at the end of his second term. Seems rather obvious that he could have pardoned them at the start of his first term! However, had he done that, he might have experienced fall-out negatively affecting his re-election bid. They "enjoyed" at least four additional years in prison as a result.
Writers like Eugyppius and Tucker are starting to get closer to answering the why and how questions of lockdowns, non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc. The "outbreak" in Italy was really the tipping point ... not what had happened in China until then.
The real - or main - cause of all the deaths in Italy also need more belated investigation. I suspect (like others) most were caused by iatrogenic and panic reasons ... instead of the virus suddenly infecting everyone in this region.
i think this too. especially the underexamined puzzle of how Italy locked down, and then how the Italian lockdowns got exported everywhere else, is at the core of this.
I read something a while back, maybe Michael Senger, about how Italy was working closely with China. Given the West's general knee-jerk distrust of anything Chinese, seeing Italy lock down would've been more influential.
Maybe China's experience wasn't the main reason, but the scary videos coming out of China sure started people down the fear path.
And don't we all now believe those videos - or some of them - had to be staged?
I just laughed when I saw them. So amateurish especially the picture of the lady who lay dead in 2 different places! The video taken from a window of the scene set up was hilarious especially the dead guy with his head out of a bodybag smoking!
Actually I think it was realized fairly quickly that those videos were staged. But by that time it was too late.
China learned it's lesson well from Pallywood.
Palestinian propaganda shots, often used as straight news-footage in the West. My favourite is the ambulance claimed to have been hit by a cruise missile; the siren had been removed leaving a hole in the roof = evidence of a cruise missile hit, according to western media.
As Trump aims at returning to office, I wonder if he'll ever admit he got tricked. Many people who like him hate the vaccines, and Trump still swears by the vaccines.
You got the never Trump response. The real reason is he is playing to get elected again.
If enough people find out about what really happened he can change. Right now, too many live in an alternate reality. Evidence, see gdoc's media programmed "orange man bad" response.
He's certainly earned the never Trump response.
They seem to flock and aggregate towards middle management.
And to start multiple, dodgy businesses named after themselves in brassy, all-capital, block letters.
I'm new as a Conspiracy Theorist but I do wonder about the example of a few heads of state that met their demise after resisting The Narrative(tm) . It might be that Boris Johnson and Trump were "persauded" to do as they were told ...or else.
Every president since 1963 gets the anonymous "Remember JFK" phone call on the first day in office. If they don't get it, they don't need it because they already have been vetted.
cheers
Who were those heads of state? I can't remember any of them croaking.
Pres. John Magufuli of Tanzania was a vocal skeptic (e.g., he publicized that a pawpaw fruit tested positive) who died in 2021. He’s the only one I’m aware of, but there may have been others.
The guy in Haiti?
I don't recall the names but believe there were at least two African country leaders.
Something that doesn't seem to get much exposure is the fact that Trump got a million or more from Pfizer.
Do you have evidence? Because I've heard different.
You can't leave out of the analysis Trump's essential cowardice and desperate need to be liked and admired. Those swamped the essential businessman common sense of his first instincts.
He's a person who always doubts himself and will never risk the aloneness that a strong leader must be willing to experience until decisions are later proven correct.
But because it's taken until now to understand what caused so many of the early casualties--wrong treatment, no treatment, etc.--who would've been on his side as the hospitals kept murdering grandma? Even I can recognize he had no way of winning against all the forces from everywhere, fucking this thing up so badly.
What about Trump got information, on that day, that it was a lab-made virus and the US DoD was responsible ?
A viable theory.
That would explain the cageyness and the obsession with vaccines.
Everything is so deeply fucking weird.
Wow, I never realized that article took off like it did. They had a team that even translated it into a bunch of different languages.
Almost as though it was part of some coordinated media campaign, or something.
Yes, in record time, refined (not Google translate) translations, as Michael Senger observed.