Once restriction are in place, they become normalized, and once they are normalized, it is very hard to get rid of them again. After a few months, people cannot even remember that it was ever different.
By now, many people will be very afraid if they had to take the same "risks" of everyday life as they took in 2019 without thinking about it.
I am old enough to remember when you could take a bottle of water on the airplane, and also when it stopped being allowed. Even if it doesn't make any sense at all, the restriction stays in place for ever.
(At least I assume it is that way: I haven't boarded an airplane since January of 2020, and I probably never will fly again, with those vaccine and testing restrictions in place).
---
I remember I once attended a class on working processes, and the professor brought up this example he witnessed a few years back: US soldiers were trained on the usage of some kind of big mortar weapon, and they needed always a group of five people to use it. One to arm it, one to put in the mortar, one to do this, one to do the other. (Details elude me).
He noticed that one of the five was always just standing around.
He witnessed several of these groups of five, and he asked the training officers why they needed the one guy doing nothing.
No one really knew, but such was the protocol, so they kept on doing it like this.
The professor, being a professor of working processes, digged around and after some research he found: that fifth guy was the one who held the horses.
The process was from the civil war, when they wheeled up a cannon, and when the explosion came, the horses would shy, so they needed a guy to hold them.
The horses were gone, the process stayed in place.
A perfect example of bureaucratic stupidity. Here's another one, happening as we speak: I work in a govt office and after we review the file we have to stamp it "approved" or "denied" with a physical ink stamp, just like they did the 1800s. These stamps are "official government property" and have to be inventoried and tracked and if you lose them you are in big trouble.
It used to be important to stamp the paper because the "customer" used to take the approved paper around with him to show people his approved status. Today, (since like --the 60s?) we record the approved decision in a computer, we send the papers to an archive to be shredded in a few years, and we mail the customer either a letter or a physical card of some kind. No one ever sees the stamp, except for the "quality review" team, who will give you an error if your stamp does not line up in the box, or if you sign the stamp in the wrong color ink. Then they will send the file back to you to correct. For no reason. At huge waste of time and expense for all parties concerned. If the file was stamped and the computer is not updated, it is the computer that takes precedent, not the stamp.
But, that's not even the stupidest part. Most recently we have moved to 100% digital files, to try to "get rid of paper." The customer though, still submits the paper files, which are then scanned into PDFs and uploaded to a huge database, and then the paper files themselves are shredded. The customer pays to mail the papers to the govt, usually FedEX or UPS. Why can't the customer do the uploading, save time and money? Why can't the costumer just fill in a digital form, and dispense with the PDFs all together? Because the govt can't figure out how to do that yet, that's why. Why they don't just "Ask Amazon," I have no idea.
Anyway, I'm still not at the stupidest part. The big question then arose across the agency - what do we do about the stamp!?! There's nothing to stamp! How will we be able to mark the digital papers stamped, as we always did!?! Just not stamping didn't seem to be an option. So the decision was made that workers would download the PDF onto their computers and EDIT it -- draw a text box onto the PDF in the area where we used to stamp, and type the word "Approved" or "Denied" and all the other info we used to write on the stamp, save the new copy of the PDF with a new name and then upload the new edition into the database as a new file.
This decision necessitated training everyone how to use, edit, upload, name and manipulate PDF files which none of us ever did before. Many, many mistakes were made, and files have been misnamed and uploaded into the giant database and no doubt will never be located again since they have the wrong names and no one knows what the real name is. Most people seem to know this, even at higher levels of the agency. One Director said recently "I wish we could get rid of the stamps!" But...no one can. Why not? What's the problem? Where is the hold up? Who can make that decision?
Moral of the story: once a bureaucracy is doing something stupid, it will do it forever.
The US Government really needs to hire a Marie Kondo type person to streamline systems and make everything more efficient. But they also can’t do that because we would be firing over 45% of our government employees- and that cherished bureaucracy culture of power that Eugyppius so exquisitely explained would be threatened.
Precisely. Everyone knows that everyone is mostly doing nothing. So everyone is reluctant to hire that "efficiency" expert because they know what the answer is: you're all fired. So what they do instead, to try to "keep" their jobs and make themselves more relevant, is to add layers of complication, so that everyone can "stay/look busy." Every few years we alternate between "get more done, faster!" and "slow down and do better quality work!"
Ironically, or not, there are actually millions and millions of backlogged files that need to be worked, people who have been waiting years to get a decision on their case. So we do actually have a job to do, underneath all the mess. But we can't ever seem to get to those files because of the constantly changing rules on how to deal with the "new" files.
The agency DID just hire a new "Director of Efficiency" I kid you not. Perhaps he will have the authority to get rid of the stamps, lol.
I was involved with an educational institute sorely in need of improvement vis a vis student relations. It took them six months to appoint a special person. That person then took six months to decide what to do. Then he appointed a student committee to take six months to decide what needed to be done...
Which will be passed to a sub committee for revue while the original committee is disbanded to allow for a 'new blood' reformulation. The sub committee will pass upstairs those things it deems worthy of passing upstairs.
Amongst those things it is just barely possible could be the measures/concerns I appraised them of two years ago.
They all draw fine salaries and enjoy some prestige and are smooth talkers indeed.
I believe they have been infected by the virus and are now coprocephalic.
Omg, yes. The LAST thing you really want is an "efficient" bureaucracy. I sometimes joke that my real job, as a government worker, is to protect the general population from a government that "gets things done."
I promised myself back in 1989, when my country's Communist regime fell, never to work for govt again, and so far managed to keep my promise. But before 1989 I did do a 5-year stint as a para-bureaucrat, even though my official title was that of Junior Engineer.
The dumbest thing I ever saw someone doing during that time goes like this: employees on business travel were supposed to bring back the bus or train tickets they had purchased with company money while on the trip. A clerk would then write down on the back of those tickets the date received and the initials of the company department for which the employee in question worked. Quite an arduous task it was, as bus tickets used to be quite small, and printed on poor quality paper, you had to be extra careful, lest the point of your pen punctured and ripped it. And train tickets were even smaller, printed on thick cardboard, and bearing holes in them where the train controller had punched with his thongy-thingy to mark them controlled.
Now comes the intriguing bit: after all this strenuous effort of writing dates and initials, the clerk smeared the written part with glue and glued the tickets on to a large sheet of paper, which then got filed. Nobody could ever read what was written on the back of those tickets.
The never forgotten craft of dumb, we used to call it.
I had an ex girlfriend who worked at the EPA and she was quite open that mosts people working there, their expertise was needed once or twice a year. Outside of that time they were literally supposed to make work for themselves to justify their continued full time employment. Many were nature lovers so would leave for long hikes around California. One was mayor of his town at the same time as working for EPA. If the govt hired these experts on a consultancy basis they would probably have to pay a total of one salary for everyone in that office.
Government jobs at all bureaucratic levels are a stealth affirmative action welfare program for POC who would otherwise not be employable in private industry. As such, they are never going away, instead they will just grow larger.
You can have equality or quality, but you can't have both.
LOL. I worked for years interfacing with SSA, which did progress to digital uploads. It never eliminated paper in the files on our end because of course a copy of the uploaded file needed to be made. I suspect it never eliminated one piece of paper on theirs either.
Remember why computers were introduced at work? To ‘make work more efficient’. And it has done just the opposite. I used to work for a county government. The stories I could tell...
I completely agree. Now during appts, the nurse or doctor stare at a screen instead of looking at the patient. This is a problem. Several years ago, I took my husband to the ER for a severely sprained ankle. They never once even looked at him. After the doctor kept getting which ankle was injured wrong (right vs. left), I finally got fed up and said, “you would know which one it was, if you would just turn around and LOOK!”.
Totally, here's another anecdote (and one of the first eye-opening COV moments for me). Fall of 2020, I had excruciating pain and a delayed period so I went into emergency. There were 4 doctors (including the OBGYN chief) looking or talking not to me but staring into those obnoxious devices that show what your ovaries look like from the inside. And they found nothing. Then instead of speaking to me or I don't know, checking me? They stared into the screen together, hunched over my blood results, and then ultimately told me there's nothing wrong with me because the computers all say there's nothing. So basically the pain I'm feeling doesn't exist, according to their screens. Unbelievable, never have I had an experience like that. By the way, it was during that trip to a pretty central hospital during what was "peak COVID, I noticed that the hospital was completely empty. Nothing like they were showing in the news, no patients in the hallways, totally relaxed staff and the emergency room was empty by 4 PM.
One of my favorite examples is Nancy Friday's ham story in My Mother, Myself. As a child growing up, Nancy's mother taught her to always cut the end off the ham before putting it in the oven. After she grew up Nancy asked her mother why. Her mother didn't know, so they asked Nancy's grandmother, who had taught this to her mother.
Grandmother said "my oven was too small to hold an entire ham so I always had to cut the end off."
Yes, one of my pet peeves is that people need to understand the "why" of doing things, not just the "what", or they'll never be able to adapt to varying conditions, etc.
I can give a similar tale, of a similar lack of thought. When the British left India they trained engineers how to keep things running, and one of the training courses was about how the water pumps worked. Because the pump working diagram was complex the instructor wrote "Do not rub off" on the chalkboard for the few weeks the students learned about that pump. Come the exams, they were asked to draw a basic sketch of how the pumps worked, with labels. Every single student did a great sketch, labeling everything correctly - and every one of them wrote "Do not rub off"
"Once restriction are in place, they become normalized, and once they are normalized, it is very hard to get rid of them again. After a few months, people cannot even remember that it was ever different."
Indeed. Last May, Alex Kaschuta wrote a post about exactly this (https://alexkaschuta.substack.com/p/lockdown-is-here-to-stay), and to this day, I consider that essay to be one of the very best ever written on the subject. Too bad it didn't get more publicity!
Water bottles are still banned and you still have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane. Now on top of that "war on terror" stuff, there is the "war on viruses" and you have to wear masks and show a "vaccine passport" or a "test" or both. Then sit in a cramped space with no space for your legs and pay for the food, drinks and in some airlines even the headphones. And to think that that the idea of flying used to be about freedom! :D
But yeah, I'm afraid it will be hard to get rid of all those new useless rules.
And as a reminder, we weren't taking off shoes at the airport until 2005. 4 years after 9/11 and the creation of the TSA. We've still got a long way to fall on this one (if we let it).
Right. I've seen so many people say, "these restrictions are for the virus only", do they forget that the reason people have to take off their shoes in airports? It was one incident in 2001, and shoes are off for everyone, including 2 year olds, every time.
Here in England mask and other mandates expired last Thursday. Yesterday I asked a shop assistant wearing a mask if it were a requirement by management she said no. In answer to why are you still wearing one she replied so people in the store ‘felt’ protected, not ‘are’ protected I note - so just theatre. So I asked how much longer did she intend to wear a mask when was the end point, how would she know. She couldn’t say. So I asked if she didn’t know how/when to stop would she wear a mask for the rest of her life. This startled her: she hadn’t thought about that.
Many people are still wearing masks and I expect none of them know why or when they will stop - maybe there will be a sign in the heavens.
"I asked how much longer did she intend to wear a mask when was the end point, how would she know. She couldn’t say."
I've been asking that question of people since April of 2020 and got the same answer as you. This insane neverending hypnotic state was was underpinned by governments, including Trump's administration, that right off the bat provided no concrete exit point.
Yeah I did the same thing and got the same reaponse. Some people will never give up the mask - it doesn't matter what you tell them, how "the science" changes, they still insist on a magic cloth talisman over their face.
These same people no doubt."believe in the science" and laugh at "silly religious people and their arcane symbols and rituals" without a hint of irony.
Few years back, a medical student kept her hijab on in the operating room. She leaned forward and the edge of it ended up on the patient’s field of surgery, so I asked her to leave. I got reported and had to see the administrator of the hospital.
The only time I wear one is when I'm doing chores outside. It's a handkerchief and not one of those fake "medical" things, but it does keep my nose and mouth warmer.
I live on the west coast of Florida. I remember when mask restrictions ended in the local stores - in spring/summer of 2020 after only a few months. It felt strange a but so so free and wonderful. I can’t imagine what my life would be like after 2 years of just that one requirement. I don’t even WANT to imagine it.
I too am seeing a few more folks in the stores here wearing masks tho not doubled N-95s. Yikes! Have to admit, tho’ being in my 70s with a few too many wrinkles, masks are tempting. Sigh.
Yes definitely seeing the absolute insanity where I live.So in my area we had the sit down at the restaurant you can remove you mask ,but if you are ordering or going to or from your seat you mask.And people are doing this now ,we haven’t have a mask restriction since last May,I get totally depressed every time I see people behaving this way as well.I have no idea if these people are just trying to go along with the belief the masks stop the virus or just don’t want to stick out.Only hope is that get very sick and realize personally that everything was worthless.Meanwhile after getting Covid extremely early,I haven’t got sick and basically normal life.I might have got Omicron,a few sneezes and that was it ,no other symptoms and tests are so stupid I wasn’t even interesting in getting one.
I moved to Germany as a young student a decade ago to avoid exactly these type of restrictions on freedom of expression, thought and movement. Throughout my school-going years, I lived under a dictatorship. I was born during a terrible dictatorship. As a religious minority in my country, I learned to hide the beliefs of my family and community. Targeted killings were at a peak during the 90s and early 2000s and I remember that fear and oppression. Ten years later here I am in Germany watching people go entirely mad over a virus that isn't as deadly or dangerous as it was initially claimed. And I increasingly feel that I'm living in yet another oppressive regime. I have to censor my thoughts even from my friends, I have to be careful of what I say online lest me or my business gets targeted, I can't ask "why" anymore because asking "why" has been villainised, which is exactly what oppressive, religious regimes do. COVID-19 has become a religion and we have been divided into believers and non-believers.
Ha-ha. Welcome to the club. I immigrated from the former Soviet Union to California. Well, I did get many years in a free country, but now I am back to totalitarianism. My son goes to a conservatory of music where he is forced to wear an n95 mask except when he plays his wind instrument - then he wears a cloth “musician’s” mask with a flap and a big hole in the middle for the mouthpiece. Because covid. He is now required to have a booster (we did go for the “primary series” because back then I still had a lot of respect for American medicine). Well, we are emigrating again, this time to a red state with no restrictions. Life is interesting, and thank goodness we have options.)
Those of us from dictatorships know. I'm glad that you're moving. Unfortunately I can't at this point but I definitely would if things don't return to normal. Where? I have no idea. I'm starting to feel like my entire life has been a journey to freedom, only it gets snatched away at the last moment and then I'm facing the same issues all over again.
"and these aren’t honest mistakes either. They all go in the same risk-magnifying direction"
This reminds me of all the FISA mistakes during the "investigations" of Donald Trump here in the US. There were beaucoup "mistakes" made...and literally (not Joe Biden "literally"; definitional literally) EVERY ONE OF THEM went in the same direction: against Trump.
So yeah, they're not honest mistakes. They're not mistakes. They're malfeasance, and their perpetrators *ought* to pay a stiff price. "Stiff", if you catch my drift.
I am finding current situation very confusing and I have hard time seeing through the fog. On one hand, you have countries like Denmark (and soon Spain, Norway, etc.) who have announced to drop all COVID restrictions. In Denmark the cases are at record levels and hospitalizations are at about the same level as at their peak in January 2021. So, in from March 2020 until January 2022, this was the most dangerous virus that warranted closing society down. And all of a sudden, the virus is not dangerous anymore and they tell us we should go back to life we knew before.
I am glad they are doing it, but is really going on? Is this finally a silent and not-so-subtle admission that measures do nothing and vaccines are really not working that great? Are they hoping that everybody just quickly forgets what happened in the past two years? (And, yes, in a couple of years we will all forget this -- human brain is wired to push unpleasant things aside).
On the other hand, you have countries like Austria, Italy and France who are doubling down on restrictions for unvaccinated, although of course they can change all this on a whim tomorrow.
So, what is really going on? How do we cut through the fog of these decisions?
One of the problems is that many have been conditioned to believe that the number of people in ICUs and dying is unusual, that this wasn't occurring as a normal part of life before 2020. It was, and we need to say that out loud and be adults again.
True. And it's been foggy and confusing if you take media/politics out of it. I have been reading a lot of "science" papers. It's murky and confusing there as well.
And the fact that there is so much contradictory and confusing information out there sums it all up: we really don't understand much. But, we pretend we do and we make decisions as if we are completely certain of outcomes of those decisions.
Yes, this strange loosening of restrictions and while at the same time consolidating vaccine passports is worrisome. We probably won't know anything until next winter: most "green passes" will expire by then and a winter wave (either flu or corona) will start again. The intentions will be clear then.
Vaccinated (and recovered) people never really cared about any of this (they complied) and unvaccinated may be lulled into thinking it's over. Let's hope it is truly over.
In France, keeping the COVID restrictions in place is a critical part of President Macron's plan for winning the election next April. A loss would have catastrophic consequences not only for him but for all those who have been involved in the policies of the last two years.
Yes, there is a majority In the older generation, which plays a key role in the election. The restrictions may also justify the implementation of some form of distance voting. This option has been floated on several occasions and a bill has just been submitted by a party affiliated to Macron.
I certainly have no special insight to dispel the "fog." But, what if this is not about, or not only about, any vaccine? What if this has been part of a global investigation, an assessment of various populations' readiness for subsequent steps? In other words, the absolute logic of one of the prongs of attack (e.g., the vaccines) only is to be found in its utility to the over arching purpose, the grand strategy. The threadbare incoherence to a rational observer, an incoherence that has existed ever since the onset of these measures, is confusing only because, like a giant insect's appendage, we cannot see the organism to which it is attached. Just a thought.
I think we have to acknowledge there is the Deranged Duo - Austria and Germany or even the Tripe-Talking Trio Austria, Germany and Italy (the old Axis Powers, natch), where the virus works entirely differently from the rest of the world.
Der Standard (Austria) had an article yesterday about how beneficial it would be to shorten "Recovery Status" to three months, as Germany has done (in an unscientific turnabout worthy of the High Priest of Covid Hysteria, Karl L.) . As far as I can see, nobody else in Europe is taking up this insane idea.
It seems to me that Germany has much bigger problems than COVID. The virus is a minor nuisance at present. Maybe your politicians are using the virus as a distraction from your real problems. In a tremendous strategic error, Germany dismantled all its nuclear plants so that it is totally dependent on Russia for energy. Now Putin sees the current US President as the senile stupid corrupt old fool that Biden actually is, and Putin is salivating at putting the Empire back together again. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for him. Will Germany surrender when Russian forces start moving through Ukraine and the Baltics and west into Europe? Or will they still be obsessing over COVID?
You are spot on but what is broken is not that obvious .. at first.
What is wrong with West Europe is that we are at the middle of A MASSIVE masculinity crisis.
Here is a list of thoughts that I think they are loosely connected:
* Most tribes consider women to having born women but men have to go through some form of passage of trial that involves a huge calibration of your sense of RISK.
* Alpha males due to their amygdala and testosterone are people that handle RISK much better than beta males.
* Modern society has completely stopped these passage of rites.
* The people that were THE MOST afraid of this virus and MOST suscepticle to Mass Formation Psychosis, they all hold white collar jobs and thus they could afford 'working from distance'. These jobs filter a certain type of intellectual background and disobeying the managers or Risk taking is discouraged.
* When you have lived your whole life shielded from risk you grow up never developping your courage muscle, and you cannot process risk, you cannot put two and two together and tell the difference between a fatality rate of 0.1% and the risk of your government turning dystopian on you.
* You also lack the backbone to say no to your government once it starts turning oppressive. Most people VOLUNTEERED to get the jab to avoid any repurcessions from the goverment.
* Boys in general never do GOOD in school, and this is unrelated to IQ. What is related to is a two sigma difference in agreeableness compared to girls, a personality trait that is related of NOT COMPLYING and NOT DOING WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. However, even with that late start handicap when men decide to study a bit later in life, they can and often do excel in it (just like Malone that switched from carpenter to MD)
* The majority of women that do well in school are very agreeable, which means that by personality structure they will say 'yes' to most of the things that 'authority/patriarchy' will ask for them even if they end cursing it later.
* It is for this VERY REASON that it came down TO THE TRUCKERS to say NO to that scared PM of Canada. Truckers are BY ESSENCE masculine and their response is very masculine, they did not SAY MUCH they acted. From a communication point of view this PROTEST IS AMAZING, from practical point of view is WHY NOBODY HAS THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE ? They have more cars than the police, their cars are bigger, they have intercomm so they can talk to each other from miles away and they are NOISY. People won't be able to sleep for nights ....
Nah. They (Russian forces) won't go into Germany. What happens to the Ukraine is anyone's guess at the moment, though. The problem for Germany is that it really cannot do much of anything about the Ukraine. It can posture, of course, but that may result in a number of "vulnerable elders" freezing to death, as Russia shuts off gas. But that's all right: any person who dies from not-COVID is a person who didn't die of COVID! So it all works out, you see.
As Brett Weinstein repeatedly states, I can no longer assign the pandemic and the utterly destructive response to incompetence.
Incompetent people occasionally get things right. These people are consistently utterly, hopelessly wrong and, as our host says, it's always in the same direction.
"Will Omicron bring in the endemic phase?" How is it that we knew it already brought it two months ago by looking at the SA data but "experts" working for the largest economies on the planet are still asking this question? They are either stupid, incompetent or criminal. "Show me the difference and I'll have my brother-in-law arrested."
...proving once again the best form of government is always, no government at all.
Austria will end 2G mandates and go back to 3G now. I guess it‘s because of the external pressure by the European countries that keep lifting all mandates. And by the pressure of the lawyers from the Netherlands who want to exclude Austria from the EU. And by the pressure of our Constitutional Court, who sent a letter with a lot of questions to our health minister. And maybe by the pressure of the people in the streets, who knows. And as there are more and more questions about the authorization papers of Pfizer (and rumors that hedge fonds are coming after Pfizer), the EMA authorization under von der Leyen and evident pharma lobbying in Austria and elsewhere, I guess our „elite“ is getting cold feet. I am sure that Germany will follow and lift the 2G mandates soon.
This „mitigation“ step is ridiculously small but it‘s a step forward in the right direction. It‘s way more than the dictator Mückstein … aahhhm… health secretary Mückstein wanted for us. Only some days ago he has told us that the lockdown for unvaxxed will not end in 2022 at all. Well, that escalated quickly, then 😉.
Looks like 2G doesn’t lift for shops until Feb 12 and 3G for gastronomy is not in force until Feb 19. I am in Austria too and recently had the good fortune of contracting Omicron (was mild for me and my family) so have “recovered” status (or at least I will when I figure out how to get the certification from the government). But I will not be using it to go any place that requires 2G bc it just supports and enables this horrendous and discriminatory system. I stand with the “unvaccinated.”
I am glad for you and your family that you only had mild symptoms. I totally am with you on your choice not to use the "recovered" status in order not to play the totalitarian game. Same for me. I also have a valid "recovered" certificate - yet - but I have never used it and never will. As long as there is a single mandate in place (mask, vaxx, test, recovered, whatever...) the protest MUST NOT stop. We MUST get rid of every single piece of "emergency law", otherwise I don't see a very bright future for our freedom...
I am sorry, I am not able to paste a link here, I am not sure why. But if you go to kleinezeitung.at you should find the article on the main page. Otherwise in the section „Innenpolitik“. That was decided today at noon, it seems. Everything is happening so fast right now 😅.
Hmm... I don't actually speak German, but Google Translate gives me "Coalition established for 2G in trade, restaurants and hotels" (for "Koalition verkündet Aus für 2G im Handel, Restaurants und Hotels").
Seems to be like this. The vaxx mandate is not officially installed yet as the "Bundesrat" (Federal Council) will have to reconcile on Feb 3 and in the end the Federal President will have to sign the bill. But everybody thinks that this is only a formal act, so it seems that the mandate will be installed 100 %. BUT I guess that it will not be executed, as it is definitely against a lot of laws.
As long as we keep doing what we are doing, we haven't done anything wrong since what we are doing can't be evaluated until we stop doing it or start doing something else instead.
Yeh this mask thing has taken a superstitious life force of its own. This thing that 'we don't know what will happen so let's stay under the bed' is the height of fear, hysterics, cowardice, stupidity and pseudo-science. I've just about had it with infectious disease experts. Clearly they're mentally ill on some level because they talk the same here in Canada. OF COURSE, the virus will always be around and OF COURSE it will pose some kind of threat and OF COURSE it will be seasonal always potentially straining our second-rate public health system (at here in Canada) but they can't seem to take their heads of their Covid asses and apply basic COMMON SENSE. All they got behind all their nonsense now is: Mask up, lockdown and cross your fingers'. That goes for epidemiologists too. There's another bunch. I'd rather watch a 90 Day Fiance marathon then ever have to listen to these assholes ever again.
I have (scratch that - HAD a paed. friend because I had to cut him out of my life he was so absurd) a paediatrician friend. By April of 2020 he revealed himself to be a scared, authoritarian nut job. Screaming about how we needed passport to protect him from unvaccinated murderers (he called Trump the greatest peace time killer in history) at a hockey game, masks for as long as it takes while saying the only way this ends if ALL DEATHS in ALL COUNTRIES are next to zero. One day he contacted me about how he and his wife may have contracted Covid. His dramatic hysterics about 'what would he do?' without his wife if she died was the final straw from me. The next day he informed me they were negative as if nothing. Total loony tunes.
Perhaps, but we always knew people who were crazy. The difference is 2019 crazy was not a threat to you and the civil order. Now it is. The doctor I referenced is an example. If he said what he said about passports in 2019, you'd just dismiss him as an irrational moronic authoritarian crank who posed no threat. This configuration changed in 2020. Now someone can say, 'Well, he was ALWAYS a threat' but we just didn't pay attention. There's a dangerous assumption that a majority of people will perceive what you do but boy did the pandemic shatter this assumption. Never presume. Which makes Jefferson's quote: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - all the more relevant. We must ALWAYS be on guard.
I have been mapping, measuring and forecasting the damage the lockdowns and corona did for 2 years. Economically trillions of dollars, it crippled the entire logistics and industry of the world, it will cause famines never seen before, it literally affected climate. And we had scientific papers showing mathematically lockdowns actually make the spread of diseases bigger. This whole thing is either complete stupidity or complete malice. Undecided yet.
You're not paying sufficient attention to some of these brief sketches that eugyppius has been posting. I'd say it's more madness than malice - but an existential, Alice-in-Wonderland sort of madness.
Here's another pointer:
"One of the problems of our time is that stupidity has begun to think."
Why pressure pharmacies to not fill prescriptions for these effective meds?
Why threaten doctors for prescribing these treatments?
Why post a deceitful, false story about these drugs in the BMJ?
Why do media figures and politicians, who have gone out of there way to never cause offense for as long as I've been alive, mock and dehumanize the unvaccinated?
Why the almost universal call for censorship about vaccine injuries and the ineffectiveness of the vaccines?
This is evil, not stupid. I am with Dr. Malone, RFK Jr., and Dr. Yeadon on this.
son and roomate at the local university .. both sick, both positive, according to the tests given .. both jabbed, because, you know, we have to be to stop this thing .. sarc .. delivered vit c/d/zinc today .. applying for nobel prize this evening.
Omicron continues to shatter all narratives and accelerate the pandemic. And now BA2, even more transmissible! Pretty soon this thing will hop into the water supply, or open its own airline.
All these commentators can do nothing more than that - commentate. What will be will be.
In Australia, health officials have admitted that their contact tracing and qr checkin system is totally useless at the moment. But, they intend to keep this "infrastructure" in place indefinitely because "you never know in the future, plus what's the big deal it takes 2 seconds"
The decision of what happens in societies seems to fall more on the particular personal traits of public health officials; and where their personal risk calculus goes, so does the country. Never have so few controlled so much.
The best marketing gimmick is sex or new to sell a washed up product. New and improved virus which is part of nature, a particle that gets weaker with each mutation as it would kill the host if it got stronger. They have unlimited names of fear to peddle but it all comes to the common cold. What is not addressed is the destroyed immune system of the willing guinea pigs in this horrific genocide experiment executed by subhumans who do not deserve the air they breathe.
I was shocked by the hubris of ABC world news memorializing the Holocaust on Thursday-as they the nefarious players repeating the same crime! never again will we be silent again!
Once restriction are in place, they become normalized, and once they are normalized, it is very hard to get rid of them again. After a few months, people cannot even remember that it was ever different.
By now, many people will be very afraid if they had to take the same "risks" of everyday life as they took in 2019 without thinking about it.
I am old enough to remember when you could take a bottle of water on the airplane, and also when it stopped being allowed. Even if it doesn't make any sense at all, the restriction stays in place for ever.
(At least I assume it is that way: I haven't boarded an airplane since January of 2020, and I probably never will fly again, with those vaccine and testing restrictions in place).
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I remember I once attended a class on working processes, and the professor brought up this example he witnessed a few years back: US soldiers were trained on the usage of some kind of big mortar weapon, and they needed always a group of five people to use it. One to arm it, one to put in the mortar, one to do this, one to do the other. (Details elude me).
He noticed that one of the five was always just standing around.
He witnessed several of these groups of five, and he asked the training officers why they needed the one guy doing nothing.
No one really knew, but such was the protocol, so they kept on doing it like this.
The professor, being a professor of working processes, digged around and after some research he found: that fifth guy was the one who held the horses.
The process was from the civil war, when they wheeled up a cannon, and when the explosion came, the horses would shy, so they needed a guy to hold them.
The horses were gone, the process stayed in place.
A perfect example of bureaucratic stupidity. Here's another one, happening as we speak: I work in a govt office and after we review the file we have to stamp it "approved" or "denied" with a physical ink stamp, just like they did the 1800s. These stamps are "official government property" and have to be inventoried and tracked and if you lose them you are in big trouble.
It used to be important to stamp the paper because the "customer" used to take the approved paper around with him to show people his approved status. Today, (since like --the 60s?) we record the approved decision in a computer, we send the papers to an archive to be shredded in a few years, and we mail the customer either a letter or a physical card of some kind. No one ever sees the stamp, except for the "quality review" team, who will give you an error if your stamp does not line up in the box, or if you sign the stamp in the wrong color ink. Then they will send the file back to you to correct. For no reason. At huge waste of time and expense for all parties concerned. If the file was stamped and the computer is not updated, it is the computer that takes precedent, not the stamp.
But, that's not even the stupidest part. Most recently we have moved to 100% digital files, to try to "get rid of paper." The customer though, still submits the paper files, which are then scanned into PDFs and uploaded to a huge database, and then the paper files themselves are shredded. The customer pays to mail the papers to the govt, usually FedEX or UPS. Why can't the customer do the uploading, save time and money? Why can't the costumer just fill in a digital form, and dispense with the PDFs all together? Because the govt can't figure out how to do that yet, that's why. Why they don't just "Ask Amazon," I have no idea.
Anyway, I'm still not at the stupidest part. The big question then arose across the agency - what do we do about the stamp!?! There's nothing to stamp! How will we be able to mark the digital papers stamped, as we always did!?! Just not stamping didn't seem to be an option. So the decision was made that workers would download the PDF onto their computers and EDIT it -- draw a text box onto the PDF in the area where we used to stamp, and type the word "Approved" or "Denied" and all the other info we used to write on the stamp, save the new copy of the PDF with a new name and then upload the new edition into the database as a new file.
This decision necessitated training everyone how to use, edit, upload, name and manipulate PDF files which none of us ever did before. Many, many mistakes were made, and files have been misnamed and uploaded into the giant database and no doubt will never be located again since they have the wrong names and no one knows what the real name is. Most people seem to know this, even at higher levels of the agency. One Director said recently "I wish we could get rid of the stamps!" But...no one can. Why not? What's the problem? Where is the hold up? Who can make that decision?
Moral of the story: once a bureaucracy is doing something stupid, it will do it forever.
The US Government really needs to hire a Marie Kondo type person to streamline systems and make everything more efficient. But they also can’t do that because we would be firing over 45% of our government employees- and that cherished bureaucracy culture of power that Eugyppius so exquisitely explained would be threatened.
Precisely. Everyone knows that everyone is mostly doing nothing. So everyone is reluctant to hire that "efficiency" expert because they know what the answer is: you're all fired. So what they do instead, to try to "keep" their jobs and make themselves more relevant, is to add layers of complication, so that everyone can "stay/look busy." Every few years we alternate between "get more done, faster!" and "slow down and do better quality work!"
Ironically, or not, there are actually millions and millions of backlogged files that need to be worked, people who have been waiting years to get a decision on their case. So we do actually have a job to do, underneath all the mess. But we can't ever seem to get to those files because of the constantly changing rules on how to deal with the "new" files.
The agency DID just hire a new "Director of Efficiency" I kid you not. Perhaps he will have the authority to get rid of the stamps, lol.
I was involved with an educational institute sorely in need of improvement vis a vis student relations. It took them six months to appoint a special person. That person then took six months to decide what to do. Then he appointed a student committee to take six months to decide what needed to be done...
Which will be passed to a sub committee for revue while the original committee is disbanded to allow for a 'new blood' reformulation. The sub committee will pass upstairs those things it deems worthy of passing upstairs.
Amongst those things it is just barely possible could be the measures/concerns I appraised them of two years ago.
They all draw fine salaries and enjoy some prestige and are smooth talkers indeed.
I believe they have been infected by the virus and are now coprocephalic.
The last truly efficient gov't was in Berlin, 1942.
Beaurocratic waste gives a silver lining.
Omg, yes. The LAST thing you really want is an "efficient" bureaucracy. I sometimes joke that my real job, as a government worker, is to protect the general population from a government that "gets things done."
I promised myself back in 1989, when my country's Communist regime fell, never to work for govt again, and so far managed to keep my promise. But before 1989 I did do a 5-year stint as a para-bureaucrat, even though my official title was that of Junior Engineer.
The dumbest thing I ever saw someone doing during that time goes like this: employees on business travel were supposed to bring back the bus or train tickets they had purchased with company money while on the trip. A clerk would then write down on the back of those tickets the date received and the initials of the company department for which the employee in question worked. Quite an arduous task it was, as bus tickets used to be quite small, and printed on poor quality paper, you had to be extra careful, lest the point of your pen punctured and ripped it. And train tickets were even smaller, printed on thick cardboard, and bearing holes in them where the train controller had punched with his thongy-thingy to mark them controlled.
Now comes the intriguing bit: after all this strenuous effort of writing dates and initials, the clerk smeared the written part with glue and glued the tickets on to a large sheet of paper, which then got filed. Nobody could ever read what was written on the back of those tickets.
The never forgotten craft of dumb, we used to call it.
I had an ex girlfriend who worked at the EPA and she was quite open that mosts people working there, their expertise was needed once or twice a year. Outside of that time they were literally supposed to make work for themselves to justify their continued full time employment. Many were nature lovers so would leave for long hikes around California. One was mayor of his town at the same time as working for EPA. If the govt hired these experts on a consultancy basis they would probably have to pay a total of one salary for everyone in that office.
The US government should follow Catholic teaching on subsidiarity, esp N 79 of attached... States should do the same.
Things should be done at most local level possible.
https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html
Government jobs at all bureaucratic levels are a stealth affirmative action welfare program for POC who would otherwise not be employable in private industry. As such, they are never going away, instead they will just grow larger.
You can have equality or quality, but you can't have both.
"Welcome to Stampy town, population 5! ... Ahhhh, the cycle of bureaucracy!"
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BDhz69aMQ8s?autoplay=1&start=0&end=39
LOL. I worked for years interfacing with SSA, which did progress to digital uploads. It never eliminated paper in the files on our end because of course a copy of the uploaded file needed to be made. I suspect it never eliminated one piece of paper on theirs either.
Remember why computers were introduced at work? To ‘make work more efficient’. And it has done just the opposite. I used to work for a county government. The stories I could tell...
I completely agree. Now during appts, the nurse or doctor stare at a screen instead of looking at the patient. This is a problem. Several years ago, I took my husband to the ER for a severely sprained ankle. They never once even looked at him. After the doctor kept getting which ankle was injured wrong (right vs. left), I finally got fed up and said, “you would know which one it was, if you would just turn around and LOOK!”.
Totally, here's another anecdote (and one of the first eye-opening COV moments for me). Fall of 2020, I had excruciating pain and a delayed period so I went into emergency. There were 4 doctors (including the OBGYN chief) looking or talking not to me but staring into those obnoxious devices that show what your ovaries look like from the inside. And they found nothing. Then instead of speaking to me or I don't know, checking me? They stared into the screen together, hunched over my blood results, and then ultimately told me there's nothing wrong with me because the computers all say there's nothing. So basically the pain I'm feeling doesn't exist, according to their screens. Unbelievable, never have I had an experience like that. By the way, it was during that trip to a pretty central hospital during what was "peak COVID, I noticed that the hospital was completely empty. Nothing like they were showing in the news, no patients in the hallways, totally relaxed staff and the emergency room was empty by 4 PM.
Janti , I teach residents. Not enough room on this page to describe the examples.
🍻
One of my favorite examples is Nancy Friday's ham story in My Mother, Myself. As a child growing up, Nancy's mother taught her to always cut the end off the ham before putting it in the oven. After she grew up Nancy asked her mother why. Her mother didn't know, so they asked Nancy's grandmother, who had taught this to her mother.
Grandmother said "my oven was too small to hold an entire ham so I always had to cut the end off."
Omg, that's hysterical!!
I've used this story many times in my life to explain to people why it might be a good idea to examine their basic assumptions.
Yes, one of my pet peeves is that people need to understand the "why" of doing things, not just the "what", or they'll never be able to adapt to varying conditions, etc.
I work in a safety critical environment and I tell you how restrictions are introduced and removed:
-someone makes once in a lifetime mistake: restriction introduced overnight for everyone
-restrictions already in place: NEVER being removed or revised
Edited to add: I see that I wasn't the first to note this. Great minds think alike!
And that's why two decades after Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, we still have to take our shoes off in the airport.
I can give a similar tale, of a similar lack of thought. When the British left India they trained engineers how to keep things running, and one of the training courses was about how the water pumps worked. Because the pump working diagram was complex the instructor wrote "Do not rub off" on the chalkboard for the few weeks the students learned about that pump. Come the exams, they were asked to draw a basic sketch of how the pumps worked, with labels. Every single student did a great sketch, labeling everything correctly - and every one of them wrote "Do not rub off"
To put it another way, "there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program." (Reagan)
"Once restriction are in place, they become normalized, and once they are normalized, it is very hard to get rid of them again. After a few months, people cannot even remember that it was ever different."
Indeed. Last May, Alex Kaschuta wrote a post about exactly this (https://alexkaschuta.substack.com/p/lockdown-is-here-to-stay), and to this day, I consider that essay to be one of the very best ever written on the subject. Too bad it didn't get more publicity!
Thanks for the anecdote, I'll use it for demonstration purposes if I may.
And yes, that's how it works.
I figured the 5th guy was a backup to one of the other 4...lol...no to tend the Pferd...haha..
So true. Why is here here? Dunno? He looks good though...haha
Water bottles are still banned and you still have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane. Now on top of that "war on terror" stuff, there is the "war on viruses" and you have to wear masks and show a "vaccine passport" or a "test" or both. Then sit in a cramped space with no space for your legs and pay for the food, drinks and in some airlines even the headphones. And to think that that the idea of flying used to be about freedom! :D
But yeah, I'm afraid it will be hard to get rid of all those new useless rules.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/01/08/a-pandemic-of-bureaucracy/
And as a reminder, we weren't taking off shoes at the airport until 2005. 4 years after 9/11 and the creation of the TSA. We've still got a long way to fall on this one (if we let it).
Right. I've seen so many people say, "these restrictions are for the virus only", do they forget that the reason people have to take off their shoes in airports? It was one incident in 2001, and shoes are off for everyone, including 2 year olds, every time.
Here in England mask and other mandates expired last Thursday. Yesterday I asked a shop assistant wearing a mask if it were a requirement by management she said no. In answer to why are you still wearing one she replied so people in the store ‘felt’ protected, not ‘are’ protected I note - so just theatre. So I asked how much longer did she intend to wear a mask when was the end point, how would she know. She couldn’t say. So I asked if she didn’t know how/when to stop would she wear a mask for the rest of her life. This startled her: she hadn’t thought about that.
Many people are still wearing masks and I expect none of them know why or when they will stop - maybe there will be a sign in the heavens.
I feel trapped in a lunatic asylum.
That's exactly what the masks are: security blankets for some people's anxiety.
Pookies and bankies ! My son had a few until he was 2.
Fundamentalist head coverings.
"I asked how much longer did she intend to wear a mask when was the end point, how would she know. She couldn’t say."
I've been asking that question of people since April of 2020 and got the same answer as you. This insane neverending hypnotic state was was underpinned by governments, including Trump's administration, that right off the bat provided no concrete exit point.
I'm in NYC where there's a phobia of seeing people's faces...OMG where's your mask?!?
Yeah I did the same thing and got the same reaponse. Some people will never give up the mask - it doesn't matter what you tell them, how "the science" changes, they still insist on a magic cloth talisman over their face.
These same people no doubt."believe in the science" and laugh at "silly religious people and their arcane symbols and rituals" without a hint of irony.
same. mask derangement syndrome
My husband went for skiing recently and told me that he spotted quite a few people who were skiing with their masks on.
Like to fools swimming in the ocean with masks on...LOL
No. Like hijabs or turbans.
Few years back, a medical student kept her hijab on in the operating room. She leaned forward and the edge of it ended up on the patient’s field of surgery, so I asked her to leave. I got reported and had to see the administrator of the hospital.
Keeps your nose warm at least.
The only time I wear one is when I'm doing chores outside. It's a handkerchief and not one of those fake "medical" things, but it does keep my nose and mouth warmer.
🤔
I live on the west coast of Florida. I remember when mask restrictions ended in the local stores - in spring/summer of 2020 after only a few months. It felt strange a but so so free and wonderful. I can’t imagine what my life would be like after 2 years of just that one requirement. I don’t even WANT to imagine it.
Same here, but I saw a woman shopping yesterday in Sarasota area, 2 N 95s on! It’s easy to spot the mentally ill now.
I too am seeing a few more folks in the stores here wearing masks tho not doubled N-95s. Yikes! Have to admit, tho’ being in my 70s with a few too many wrinkles, masks are tempting. Sigh.
Yes definitely seeing the absolute insanity where I live.So in my area we had the sit down at the restaurant you can remove you mask ,but if you are ordering or going to or from your seat you mask.And people are doing this now ,we haven’t have a mask restriction since last May,I get totally depressed every time I see people behaving this way as well.I have no idea if these people are just trying to go along with the belief the masks stop the virus or just don’t want to stick out.Only hope is that get very sick and realize personally that everything was worthless.Meanwhile after getting Covid extremely early,I haven’t got sick and basically normal life.I might have got Omicron,a few sneezes and that was it ,no other symptoms and tests are so stupid I wasn’t even interesting in getting one.
I have seen more than one person on social media say they're going to wear masks for the rest of their lives. Seriously.
good thing. i don't want to look at their demented faces
By summer even the most ardent covidian will drop the masks a bit. They'll be selective in their "safety" measures.
I moved to Germany as a young student a decade ago to avoid exactly these type of restrictions on freedom of expression, thought and movement. Throughout my school-going years, I lived under a dictatorship. I was born during a terrible dictatorship. As a religious minority in my country, I learned to hide the beliefs of my family and community. Targeted killings were at a peak during the 90s and early 2000s and I remember that fear and oppression. Ten years later here I am in Germany watching people go entirely mad over a virus that isn't as deadly or dangerous as it was initially claimed. And I increasingly feel that I'm living in yet another oppressive regime. I have to censor my thoughts even from my friends, I have to be careful of what I say online lest me or my business gets targeted, I can't ask "why" anymore because asking "why" has been villainised, which is exactly what oppressive, religious regimes do. COVID-19 has become a religion and we have been divided into believers and non-believers.
Ha-ha. Welcome to the club. I immigrated from the former Soviet Union to California. Well, I did get many years in a free country, but now I am back to totalitarianism. My son goes to a conservatory of music where he is forced to wear an n95 mask except when he plays his wind instrument - then he wears a cloth “musician’s” mask with a flap and a big hole in the middle for the mouthpiece. Because covid. He is now required to have a booster (we did go for the “primary series” because back then I still had a lot of respect for American medicine). Well, we are emigrating again, this time to a red state with no restrictions. Life is interesting, and thank goodness we have options.)
Those of us from dictatorships know. I'm glad that you're moving. Unfortunately I can't at this point but I definitely would if things don't return to normal. Where? I have no idea. I'm starting to feel like my entire life has been a journey to freedom, only it gets snatched away at the last moment and then I'm facing the same issues all over again.
At least it’s a great destination.
This is exactly the same in Ireland with the exception that "why" is interchangeable with conspiracy theorist.
Food for thought...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QK32o2jqEH4
Powerful. Thank you for sharing.
science editor (n.): Someone who edits the science
"and these aren’t honest mistakes either. They all go in the same risk-magnifying direction"
This reminds me of all the FISA mistakes during the "investigations" of Donald Trump here in the US. There were beaucoup "mistakes" made...and literally (not Joe Biden "literally"; definitional literally) EVERY ONE OF THEM went in the same direction: against Trump.
So yeah, they're not honest mistakes. They're not mistakes. They're malfeasance, and their perpetrators *ought* to pay a stiff price. "Stiff", if you catch my drift.
I am finding current situation very confusing and I have hard time seeing through the fog. On one hand, you have countries like Denmark (and soon Spain, Norway, etc.) who have announced to drop all COVID restrictions. In Denmark the cases are at record levels and hospitalizations are at about the same level as at their peak in January 2021. So, in from March 2020 until January 2022, this was the most dangerous virus that warranted closing society down. And all of a sudden, the virus is not dangerous anymore and they tell us we should go back to life we knew before.
I am glad they are doing it, but is really going on? Is this finally a silent and not-so-subtle admission that measures do nothing and vaccines are really not working that great? Are they hoping that everybody just quickly forgets what happened in the past two years? (And, yes, in a couple of years we will all forget this -- human brain is wired to push unpleasant things aside).
On the other hand, you have countries like Austria, Italy and France who are doubling down on restrictions for unvaccinated, although of course they can change all this on a whim tomorrow.
So, what is really going on? How do we cut through the fog of these decisions?
One of the problems is that many have been conditioned to believe that the number of people in ICUs and dying is unusual, that this wasn't occurring as a normal part of life before 2020. It was, and we need to say that out loud and be adults again.
What part of this entire fake pandemic has not been foggy? It is all based on lies and propaganda and therefore things seem foggy.
True. And it's been foggy and confusing if you take media/politics out of it. I have been reading a lot of "science" papers. It's murky and confusing there as well.
And the fact that there is so much contradictory and confusing information out there sums it all up: we really don't understand much. But, we pretend we do and we make decisions as if we are completely certain of outcomes of those decisions.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/why-is-the-narrative-changing-and
Yes, this strange loosening of restrictions and while at the same time consolidating vaccine passports is worrisome. We probably won't know anything until next winter: most "green passes" will expire by then and a winter wave (either flu or corona) will start again. The intentions will be clear then.
Vaccinated (and recovered) people never really cared about any of this (they complied) and unvaccinated may be lulled into thinking it's over. Let's hope it is truly over.
In France, keeping the COVID restrictions in place is a critical part of President Macron's plan for winning the election next April. A loss would have catastrophic consequences not only for him but for all those who have been involved in the policies of the last two years.
In that case Macaroon deserves to lose badly. He needs to have his head handed to him.
Is there really a majority of people in France that support the COVID restrictions?
Yes, there is a majority In the older generation, which plays a key role in the election. The restrictions may also justify the implementation of some form of distance voting. This option has been floated on several occasions and a bill has just been submitted by a party affiliated to Macron.
I certainly have no special insight to dispel the "fog." But, what if this is not about, or not only about, any vaccine? What if this has been part of a global investigation, an assessment of various populations' readiness for subsequent steps? In other words, the absolute logic of one of the prongs of attack (e.g., the vaccines) only is to be found in its utility to the over arching purpose, the grand strategy. The threadbare incoherence to a rational observer, an incoherence that has existed ever since the onset of these measures, is confusing only because, like a giant insect's appendage, we cannot see the organism to which it is attached. Just a thought.
I think we have to acknowledge there is the Deranged Duo - Austria and Germany or even the Tripe-Talking Trio Austria, Germany and Italy (the old Axis Powers, natch), where the virus works entirely differently from the rest of the world.
Der Standard (Austria) had an article yesterday about how beneficial it would be to shorten "Recovery Status" to three months, as Germany has done (in an unscientific turnabout worthy of the High Priest of Covid Hysteria, Karl L.) . As far as I can see, nobody else in Europe is taking up this insane idea.
What argument did Der Standard make for why it would be beneficial to shorten the “recovered” period from 6 months to 3?
The French government has just reduced the time frame to 4 months. Others are likely to follow.
It seems to me that Germany has much bigger problems than COVID. The virus is a minor nuisance at present. Maybe your politicians are using the virus as a distraction from your real problems. In a tremendous strategic error, Germany dismantled all its nuclear plants so that it is totally dependent on Russia for energy. Now Putin sees the current US President as the senile stupid corrupt old fool that Biden actually is, and Putin is salivating at putting the Empire back together again. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for him. Will Germany surrender when Russian forces start moving through Ukraine and the Baltics and west into Europe? Or will they still be obsessing over COVID?
You are spot on but what is broken is not that obvious .. at first.
What is wrong with West Europe is that we are at the middle of A MASSIVE masculinity crisis.
Here is a list of thoughts that I think they are loosely connected:
* Most tribes consider women to having born women but men have to go through some form of passage of trial that involves a huge calibration of your sense of RISK.
* Alpha males due to their amygdala and testosterone are people that handle RISK much better than beta males.
* Modern society has completely stopped these passage of rites.
* The people that were THE MOST afraid of this virus and MOST suscepticle to Mass Formation Psychosis, they all hold white collar jobs and thus they could afford 'working from distance'. These jobs filter a certain type of intellectual background and disobeying the managers or Risk taking is discouraged.
* When you have lived your whole life shielded from risk you grow up never developping your courage muscle, and you cannot process risk, you cannot put two and two together and tell the difference between a fatality rate of 0.1% and the risk of your government turning dystopian on you.
* You also lack the backbone to say no to your government once it starts turning oppressive. Most people VOLUNTEERED to get the jab to avoid any repurcessions from the goverment.
* Boys in general never do GOOD in school, and this is unrelated to IQ. What is related to is a two sigma difference in agreeableness compared to girls, a personality trait that is related of NOT COMPLYING and NOT DOING WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. However, even with that late start handicap when men decide to study a bit later in life, they can and often do excel in it (just like Malone that switched from carpenter to MD)
* The majority of women that do well in school are very agreeable, which means that by personality structure they will say 'yes' to most of the things that 'authority/patriarchy' will ask for them even if they end cursing it later.
* It is for this VERY REASON that it came down TO THE TRUCKERS to say NO to that scared PM of Canada. Truckers are BY ESSENCE masculine and their response is very masculine, they did not SAY MUCH they acted. From a communication point of view this PROTEST IS AMAZING, from practical point of view is WHY NOBODY HAS THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE ? They have more cars than the police, their cars are bigger, they have intercomm so they can talk to each other from miles away and they are NOISY. People won't be able to sleep for nights ....
https://rumble.com/vtfmim-love-that-beautiful-sound-of-freedom.html
Nah. They (Russian forces) won't go into Germany. What happens to the Ukraine is anyone's guess at the moment, though. The problem for Germany is that it really cannot do much of anything about the Ukraine. It can posture, of course, but that may result in a number of "vulnerable elders" freezing to death, as Russia shuts off gas. But that's all right: any person who dies from not-COVID is a person who didn't die of COVID! So it all works out, you see.
As Brett Weinstein repeatedly states, I can no longer assign the pandemic and the utterly destructive response to incompetence.
Incompetent people occasionally get things right. These people are consistently utterly, hopelessly wrong and, as our host says, it's always in the same direction.
"Will Omicron bring in the endemic phase?" How is it that we knew it already brought it two months ago by looking at the SA data but "experts" working for the largest economies on the planet are still asking this question? They are either stupid, incompetent or criminal. "Show me the difference and I'll have my brother-in-law arrested."
...proving once again the best form of government is always, no government at all.
Austria will end 2G mandates and go back to 3G now. I guess it‘s because of the external pressure by the European countries that keep lifting all mandates. And by the pressure of the lawyers from the Netherlands who want to exclude Austria from the EU. And by the pressure of our Constitutional Court, who sent a letter with a lot of questions to our health minister. And maybe by the pressure of the people in the streets, who knows. And as there are more and more questions about the authorization papers of Pfizer (and rumors that hedge fonds are coming after Pfizer), the EMA authorization under von der Leyen and evident pharma lobbying in Austria and elsewhere, I guess our „elite“ is getting cold feet. I am sure that Germany will follow and lift the 2G mandates soon.
This „mitigation“ step is ridiculously small but it‘s a step forward in the right direction. It‘s way more than the dictator Mückstein … aahhhm… health secretary Mückstein wanted for us. Only some days ago he has told us that the lockdown for unvaxxed will not end in 2022 at all. Well, that escalated quickly, then 😉.
Looks like 2G doesn’t lift for shops until Feb 12 and 3G for gastronomy is not in force until Feb 19. I am in Austria too and recently had the good fortune of contracting Omicron (was mild for me and my family) so have “recovered” status (or at least I will when I figure out how to get the certification from the government). But I will not be using it to go any place that requires 2G bc it just supports and enables this horrendous and discriminatory system. I stand with the “unvaccinated.”
I am glad for you and your family that you only had mild symptoms. I totally am with you on your choice not to use the "recovered" status in order not to play the totalitarian game. Same for me. I also have a valid "recovered" certificate - yet - but I have never used it and never will. As long as there is a single mandate in place (mask, vaxx, test, recovered, whatever...) the protest MUST NOT stop. We MUST get rid of every single piece of "emergency law", otherwise I don't see a very bright future for our freedom...
Really? Back to 3G now? I don't think Epimetheus from https://fackel.substack.com/ wrote anything about that. Do you have any links?
I am sorry, I am not able to paste a link here, I am not sure why. But if you go to kleinezeitung.at you should find the article on the main page. Otherwise in the section „Innenpolitik“. That was decided today at noon, it seems. Everything is happening so fast right now 😅.
Hmm... I don't actually speak German, but Google Translate gives me "Coalition established for 2G in trade, restaurants and hotels" (for "Koalition verkündet Aus für 2G im Handel, Restaurants und Hotels").
"verkündet aus" means "says it's over"
Ah! Thanks. Okay, so Google Translate isn't that reliable... But they still intend to go ahead with mandatory gene therapy...?
Seems to be like this. The vaxx mandate is not officially installed yet as the "Bundesrat" (Federal Council) will have to reconcile on Feb 3 and in the end the Federal President will have to sign the bill. But everybody thinks that this is only a formal act, so it seems that the mandate will be installed 100 %. BUT I guess that it will not be executed, as it is definitely against a lot of laws.
Officially they do. It's insane.
NB: "verkündet Aus" is a bit colloquial, I think google translate might have problems with that.
https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000132947377/handel-gastro-und-tourismus-einschraenkungen-fuer-ungeimpfte-fallen-schrittweise
It's brand new.
Could you please post a source for the Dutch lawyers? I couldn't find anything.
Thanks!
https://tkp.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/20220119_Brief_an_den_O%CC%88sterreichischen_Bundeskanzler_zur_Impfpflicht.pdf
Konkludieren!
As long as we keep doing what we are doing, we haven't done anything wrong since what we are doing can't be evaluated until we stop doing it or start doing something else instead.
Funny!
And we will never be held accountable. So ha ha fuck you and die for all we care.
Yeh this mask thing has taken a superstitious life force of its own. This thing that 'we don't know what will happen so let's stay under the bed' is the height of fear, hysterics, cowardice, stupidity and pseudo-science. I've just about had it with infectious disease experts. Clearly they're mentally ill on some level because they talk the same here in Canada. OF COURSE, the virus will always be around and OF COURSE it will pose some kind of threat and OF COURSE it will be seasonal always potentially straining our second-rate public health system (at here in Canada) but they can't seem to take their heads of their Covid asses and apply basic COMMON SENSE. All they got behind all their nonsense now is: Mask up, lockdown and cross your fingers'. That goes for epidemiologists too. There's another bunch. I'd rather watch a 90 Day Fiance marathon then ever have to listen to these assholes ever again.
I have (scratch that - HAD a paed. friend because I had to cut him out of my life he was so absurd) a paediatrician friend. By April of 2020 he revealed himself to be a scared, authoritarian nut job. Screaming about how we needed passport to protect him from unvaccinated murderers (he called Trump the greatest peace time killer in history) at a hockey game, masks for as long as it takes while saying the only way this ends if ALL DEATHS in ALL COUNTRIES are next to zero. One day he contacted me about how he and his wife may have contracted Covid. His dramatic hysterics about 'what would he do?' without his wife if she died was the final straw from me. The next day he informed me they were negative as if nothing. Total loony tunes.
These people were always this crazy. You're just seeing it now.
Perhaps, but we always knew people who were crazy. The difference is 2019 crazy was not a threat to you and the civil order. Now it is. The doctor I referenced is an example. If he said what he said about passports in 2019, you'd just dismiss him as an irrational moronic authoritarian crank who posed no threat. This configuration changed in 2020. Now someone can say, 'Well, he was ALWAYS a threat' but we just didn't pay attention. There's a dangerous assumption that a majority of people will perceive what you do but boy did the pandemic shatter this assumption. Never presume. Which makes Jefferson's quote: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - all the more relevant. We must ALWAYS be on guard.
To quote the great Jim Morrison. "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near."
Also Jim Morrison:
Mister mojo risin', mister mojo risin'
Mister mojo risin', mister mojo risin'
Got to keep on risin'
Mister mojo risin', mister mojo risin'
Mojo risin', gotta mojo risin'
Mister mojo risin', gotta keep on risin'
Risin', risin'
Gone risin', risin'
I'm gone risin', risin'
I gotta risin', risin'
Well, risin', risin'
I gotta, wooo, yeah, risin'
Woah, ohh yeah
I have been mapping, measuring and forecasting the damage the lockdowns and corona did for 2 years. Economically trillions of dollars, it crippled the entire logistics and industry of the world, it will cause famines never seen before, it literally affected climate. And we had scientific papers showing mathematically lockdowns actually make the spread of diseases bigger. This whole thing is either complete stupidity or complete malice. Undecided yet.
I circled "malice" on the test. I'm pretty sure that's the right answer.
Malice taking advantage of stupidity and hysteria.
Exactly right.
Me too
You're not paying sufficient attention to some of these brief sketches that eugyppius has been posting. I'd say it's more madness than malice - but an existential, Alice-in-Wonderland sort of madness.
Here's another pointer:
"One of the problems of our time is that stupidity has begun to think."
Jean Cocteau
Why denigrate Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin?
Why pressure pharmacies to not fill prescriptions for these effective meds?
Why threaten doctors for prescribing these treatments?
Why post a deceitful, false story about these drugs in the BMJ?
Why do media figures and politicians, who have gone out of there way to never cause offense for as long as I've been alive, mock and dehumanize the unvaccinated?
Why the almost universal call for censorship about vaccine injuries and the ineffectiveness of the vaccines?
This is evil, not stupid. I am with Dr. Malone, RFK Jr., and Dr. Yeadon on this.
son and roomate at the local university .. both sick, both positive, according to the tests given .. both jabbed, because, you know, we have to be to stop this thing .. sarc .. delivered vit c/d/zinc today .. applying for nobel prize this evening.
Omicron continues to shatter all narratives and accelerate the pandemic. And now BA2, even more transmissible! Pretty soon this thing will hop into the water supply, or open its own airline.
All these commentators can do nothing more than that - commentate. What will be will be.
In Australia, health officials have admitted that their contact tracing and qr checkin system is totally useless at the moment. But, they intend to keep this "infrastructure" in place indefinitely because "you never know in the future, plus what's the big deal it takes 2 seconds"
The decision of what happens in societies seems to fall more on the particular personal traits of public health officials; and where their personal risk calculus goes, so does the country. Never have so few controlled so much.
BA2? Or is it BS2?
Test and Trace was always an idea so monumentally stupid that only government would actually do it.
The best marketing gimmick is sex or new to sell a washed up product. New and improved virus which is part of nature, a particle that gets weaker with each mutation as it would kill the host if it got stronger. They have unlimited names of fear to peddle but it all comes to the common cold. What is not addressed is the destroyed immune system of the willing guinea pigs in this horrific genocide experiment executed by subhumans who do not deserve the air they breathe.
I was shocked by the hubris of ABC world news memorializing the Holocaust on Thursday-as they the nefarious players repeating the same crime! never again will we be silent again!