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The assessment Facebook banned and the corporate media destroyed people for holding looks to be the correct one. Oops, looks like the fact checkers effed up again. Despite more than a year of the merchants of mendacity running cover for the US and Chinese establishments, most Americans see through the lies:
Virtually every aspect of Covid-19 has been lied about by the regime and its Trust The Science enforcers.
They said it came from wild bats or pangolins. It didn’t.
They said it spread through physical contact on inorganic surfaces where it could remain virulent for weeks. It doesn’t.
They said sanitizing surfaces, both retail counters and your knuckles and everything in between, over and over and over again was the way to slow the spread. It wasn’t.
They correctly predicted 67 of the last 0 supers spreader events. It was a baseball game in Texas this Spring that finally routed the super spreader sentries. The massive George Floyd protests nearly a year before had shown those paying attention that the super spreader sensationalism was just that, but a lot of people weren’t paying attention. They are now.
They said masks did more harm than good. That was to keep proles from buying protective gear so the medical establishment could have first dibs. Leveling with the public and asking them to do their patriotic duty by making homemade masks or foregoing them for a few weeks wasn’t part of the plan. Why would it be? You think we have an actual country? What year do you think this is, 1941? Excuse me while I empty two years’ worth of toilet paper off this WalMart shelf to store in my basement. Wipe with leaves, loser.
Then they said a mask was good, two masks were better, and wear them everywhere if you don’t hate humanity. They said wearing masks outside made no sense. Then they said wearing masks inside doesn’t make much sense. Guess they were right before they were wrong before they were right again in this case. Or maybe they were wrong before they were right before they were wrong again. Who knows?
They said states that didn’t lock down were going to experience carnage. Didn’t happen. There are no discernable differences in outcomes between states that never mandated lockdowns and states that have kept them in place for over a year now.
They said restricting travel from Asia was racist. A month later, foreign travelers from anywhere to anywhere were quarantining for two weeks going to and from because you can never be too careful.
They said an effective vaccine within the year was impossible. Donald Trump was lying about its potential for political reasons. A week after Trump’s election loss, Big Pharma announced the vaccines were ready to go. And not one moment later than we knew, they assured us, as they stuffed Joe Biden’s coffers with cash.
Those whoppers are off the top of the head. It’s not an exhaustive list.
Collapsing trust in every major institution in society is a real head-scratcher, isn’t it?
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Virtually every aspect of Covid-19 has been lied about by everyone. The issue has become so politicised that the only thing you can be sure of is that anyone who has a strong opinion on the subject also has a political axe to grind. It is impossible that we can ever know the truth because once an issue is politicised it is always impossible ever to know the truth.
The regime is certainly lying to you about this issue, but the critics of the regime are certainly lying as well. When an issue becomes political every opinion, pro and contra, has to be regarded with deep scepticism.
Covid-19 is like climate change. Science and truth are irrelevant. It’s all politics.
I am not as willing to condemn the CDC as other people because I think their flipflopping on masks is an accurate reflection of the unclear science and trying to do the right and least risky thing. However, I agree with AE that the CDC's performance is helping undermine trust.
The amazing thing to me is that we don't seem to be learning any lessons from the last year. We were totally unprepared. The government should have plans in place for pandemics. Doing things like shutting down air travel from affected countries should happen almost automatically. Where are our new plans now?
As for the bat origin, although I didn't make a thing of it, I was an early believer in lab leak, going back to maybe early February. However, now I am worried people are going to all in on it. There isn't any evidence yet for a lab leak, and we have to remain open to natural origin as well as to Unz's blowback theory. I assume a leak but remain uncommitted.Replies: @Travis
One mask good, no mask bad!
One mask good, two masks better!
(oh… oh crap, um…)
Mask maybe not so good, no mask still kinda bad? wha?
Some lives are more equally valuable than others.
And we have always been at war with Eastasia.
So when are the American people finally going to rise up to kick ass and chew bubblegum?
Curious lickspittle sycophants the world over want to know. Unless it’s not already clear, we collectively have no spine and shit ourselves if we have to make our own decisions.
Unless and until the American people reassert their sovereignty over the sociopathic lying elite within their own Republic, the rest of Team America ® is screwed.
The regime is certainly lying to you about this issue, but the critics of the regime are certainly lying as well. When an issue becomes political every opinion, pro and contra, has to be regarded with deep scepticism.
Covid-19 is like climate change. Science and truth are irrelevant. It's all politics.Replies: @Chrisnonymous, @Triteleia Laxa, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @Audacious Epigone
Yes, this is true. It is often difficult to find clear answers in the medical field. For example, the efficacy of masks was very much uncertain before COVID–how much and in what circumstances masks help. I feel that is still true, but now it is impossible to get nuanced opinion. The big problem is that it is going to affect the science too. From last year on, any research article or review article on masks will be written by someone with a perspective, making their research or judgement suspect. We could already see this with the scientist in Hong Kong who did the hamster mask experiment for the expressed purpose of showing that masks work. Any unbiased person should automatically ignore that research as unreliable, but instead it is promoted.
I am not as willing to condemn the CDC as other people because I think their flipflopping on masks is an accurate reflection of the unclear science and trying to do the right and least risky thing. However, I agree with AE that the CDC’s performance is helping undermine trust.
The amazing thing to me is that we don’t seem to be learning any lessons from the last year. We were totally unprepared. The government should have plans in place for pandemics. Doing things like shutting down air travel from affected countries should happen almost automatically. Where are our new plans now?
As for the bat origin, although I didn’t make a thing of it, I was an early believer in lab leak, going back to maybe early February. However, now I am worried people are going to all in on it. There isn’t any evidence yet for a lab leak, and we have to remain open to natural origin as well as to Unz’s blowback theory. I assume a leak but remain uncommitted.
The states with excessively long lockdowns ended up not even paying the full costs involved. More federal unemployment benefits went out to states with higher unemployment rates because they had longer lockdowns. This was paid for with money printing, which you can look at as an inflation tax, that will hit the people in states with shorter lockdowns just as hard. In order to make rational decisions at the state level, the politicians and voters in each state needed to be forced to pay any costs resulting from their decisions and any attempts to shift costs needed to be blocked. This didn’t happen.
Costs were also shifted to the future. The economic damage from excessively long and harsh lockdowns will cause slower economic growth for years. Generally speaking, wealthier people live longer than poorer people so making people poorer in the future will eventually result in many years of lost life expectancy. Lockdown opponents were portrayed as heartless eager to kill granny types by lockdown proponents but these lockdown proponents had on blinders where they only looked at the present.
As time goes on there will be a slow dawning realization that we were stampeded into a panic that led us to throw rationality out the window and make numerous bad decisions without thinking about the long term ramifications of those decisions.
https://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/20080320iraq4.gif
This may sound flippant, but, when you think about it, it makes sense. Make a list of the top one hundred things in your life which you care about and I bet you that the Iraq war doesn't feature.
Remember how the anti-war movement vanished as soon as Obama took office? They clearly didn't care much about being anti-war.
Nor is this a particular characteristic of Americans. It is just that mass media and the Internet serve as giant pipes that take allow everyone's negative energies to mix in and flow together. Your personal issues represented in global events - the ultimate drug.Replies: @Nikolai Vladivostok
What made me unique (compared to the rest of the 23%) is that I wasn't against going to war in the Middle East. I just thought Iraq was the wrong country.Replies: @Triteleia Laxa, @silviosilver
It will be interesting to see who's big enough to openly admit he was wrong. John Derbyshire did it on Iraq. Perhaps Steve Sailer, Curtis Yarvin or Roko of Less Wrong might do it for Covid hysteria once all the numbers are in.
I shared the view of many Americans that US military power was a force for good in the world that defeated Nazism and Communism and was cleaning up places like Iraq. I remember arguing about Just War theory and civilian casualties on these new things called "blogs". However, I was not a cookie-cutter GOPe Republican even at that time in that I thought Iraq should be divided up along ethnic lines--let the Shia part join Iran, give the Kurds a homeland (that would be protected by a large permanent US military base), and let the Sunnis determine their own fate, maybe allying with Saudi Arabia.
Part of my Just War argument was that Saddam was claimed to kill about 10,000 Iraqis per year, so an equivalent number of deaths in a liberating war was an ethical wash. I couldn't imagine how there could more than 10,000 civilian deaths when we were just going to drive into Bagdad with our tanks to cheering crowds the way we had entered Paris in WWII.
The shock and awe bombing campaign was a big shock to me. After that, it was transparently obvious that WMD had been a lie. We never stole the oil I thought was ours by right of the expense we had gone to. No one was serious about the massive financial costs being imposed by the occupation. And I eventually lost faith in the idea of democracy as universally applicable across peoples and cultures. I don't remember when I got comfortable just saying I had been wrong, but it was while Bush was still in office.Replies: @Bill Jones
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
The regime is certainly lying to you about this issue, but the critics of the regime are certainly lying as well. When an issue becomes political every opinion, pro and contra, has to be regarded with deep scepticism.
Covid-19 is like climate change. Science and truth are irrelevant. It's all politics.Replies: @Chrisnonymous, @Triteleia Laxa, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @Audacious Epigone
I’ve met one person in my life whom I could speak with, on emotionally challenging subjects, without them mixing in their own hidden issues. Politics lets these run rampant. Welcoming its frameworks into science is to introduce the demons of everyone involved.
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
Most people were never really for the Iraq war and most people are not really against it now. Most people don’t really care, and why should they?
This may sound flippant, but, when you think about it, it makes sense. Make a list of the top one hundred things in your life which you care about and I bet you that the Iraq war doesn’t feature.
Remember how the anti-war movement vanished as soon as Obama took office? They clearly didn’t care much about being anti-war.
Nor is this a particular characteristic of Americans. It is just that mass media and the Internet serve as giant pipes that take allow everyone’s negative energies to mix in and flow together. Your personal issues represented in global events – the ultimate drug.
I was young and idealistic then. Now, not so much. Why protest if your government starts yet another stupid war? Just keep your sons out of the military and get on with your own life as best you can. The West as a whole is even more farcial now than it was then and its downward momentum is unstoppable.
Better to focus on your own family and community. If you make a big fuss every time your government does something reprehensible, you'll do little else.
Costs were also shifted to the future. The economic damage from excessively long and harsh lockdowns will cause slower economic growth for years. Generally speaking, wealthier people live longer than poorer people so making people poorer in the future will eventually result in many years of lost life expectancy. Lockdown opponents were portrayed as heartless eager to kill granny types by lockdown proponents but these lockdown proponents had on blinders where they only looked at the present.
As time goes on there will be a slow dawning realization that we were stampeded into a panic that led us to throw rationality out the window and make numerous bad decisions without thinking about the long term ramifications of those decisions.Replies: @V. K. Ovelund, @Alexander Turok
I had not thought of that. Interesting.
When I fill out federal form�940 annually, for FUTA, there is a line to assess a “credit reduction” surcharge if my state has paid out excessive unemployment benefits. Most years, most states have no surcharge, so I have usually left the line blank, but assume that the surcharge will hit employers in many states (perhaps including mine) for tax year�2021. I also assume that it will not hit employers in nonshutdown states like Florida.
But this is just a side observation. Even if my guess is correct, you are right in the main, of course.
Rows and floes of bats in air
And pangolinners if you dare
And mask-ed karens everywhere
I’ve lived a year that way
But now they only flip and flop
They said we’d all just up and drop
So many things I would have done
But I was locked away
I’ve looked at bats from both sides now
The Fauci clown, and still somehow
It’s bat illusions I recall
I really don’t know bats at all
That chart shows the subject population is still a bunch of macroglossic goobers. They are still parroting the official line. Wake me up when they remember that CIA has been testing and using biological weapons for 70 years, that they used anthrax on us, and they got caught red-handed whipping up SARS-COV-2.
This is ratfuck failure fallback plan 001: duplicitous attribution.
I am not as willing to condemn the CDC as other people because I think their flipflopping on masks is an accurate reflection of the unclear science and trying to do the right and least risky thing. However, I agree with AE that the CDC's performance is helping undermine trust.
The amazing thing to me is that we don't seem to be learning any lessons from the last year. We were totally unprepared. The government should have plans in place for pandemics. Doing things like shutting down air travel from affected countries should happen almost automatically. Where are our new plans now?
As for the bat origin, although I didn't make a thing of it, I was an early believer in lab leak, going back to maybe early February. However, now I am worried people are going to all in on it. There isn't any evidence yet for a lab leak, and we have to remain open to natural origin as well as to Unz's blowback theory. I assume a leak but remain uncommitted.Replies: @Travis
The efficacy of masks was never demonstrated, in fact masks have always failed to prevent respiratory viral spread in every study conducted over the last 50 years. This is one reason the FDA outlawed cloth masks from being used and surgical masks have warning labels stating they do not protect users from influenza or other airborne viruses.
So a majority of Americans (excluding demoncraps of course) don’t buy the coronachan bat lie – good. Now that a large chunk of the population realizes the government lied about that, why don’t they think it lied about the lethality or the efficacy of a non-fda approved supposed “vaccine”? Will there ever be any be any consequences for all this lying? I ain’t holding my breath.
We best hope their are no unforeseen side effects from these vaccines. The public will forgive the ‘mask controversy’. No one was hurt and people have long known doctors and nurses mask up to reduce infections in operating rooms so maybe it would help reduce covid infections too. Besides Joe Biden only asked us to wear them for 100 days. I assumed his handlers had, by this time, some reason to believe that would get the pandemic under control and we could dispense with the mask wearing. Now I’m not so sure. What I am sure of is Dr. Anthony Fauci is a living , breathing embodiment of the Peter Principle. His love of the limelight, his careless public statements and, as we are now finding out, his mendacity should be ringing alarm bells in D.C. It sure looks like he also sponsored the creation of the Covid virus as well. That goes well above incompetence and buffoonery. If this turns out to be the case and or his vaccine program starts hurting people he and his cohorts are heading for a Nuremberg style Tribunal.
https://twitter.com/KateMessner/status/1373690535777603588Replies: @Audacious Epigone
All of that was demonstrated over 30 years ago, yet he continued to hold authority. He "failed upwards" more than once. This ought to be an indictment not just of Fauci but of those who promoted him.
This crisis has revealed the actual "elites" as incompetent chair-warmers at best, with some of them obviously corrupt, mendacious parasites. Turchin's thesis is demonstrated, along with Pasha Glubb.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2493952/
Abstract
No masks were worn in one operating theatre for 6 months. There was no increase in the incidence of wound infection.Replies: @res
Iraq was just relentless lying and propaganda. Covid-19 is genuinely Owellian, as Ron Unz said.
Only if the meat and potato middle class, who are victims and pose as smarties, were smart enough to infuse inconsistencies, in-ordinate reactions into the suggestions of media re-media, as another layer for rectal endoscopy, alas analysis. Toxic data to the magnitude for another loop of re-ingesting, regurgitating. That would be unz.com on steroids! Ron comes closest to it for now. Seen the length of the prayer a long term societal numbness as desired. Lesser time for cooking in the real!
But, but… Fauci is America’s doctor…
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
I supported it. I was in elementary school at the time, growing up in a very conservative environment, so perhaps it was somewhat likely I would. But oh, how wrong I was. How I regret it. How that mistake informs my opinion on foreign policy today.
You know what being a part of an adult is? Changing your mind when evidence proves you wrong. Owning your mistakes. I suspect most lay Americans would be happy to do that, judging by the recent foreign policy polls. It’s elite culture that has a pathological aversion to doing so. I’m uncertain why: maybe it subconsciously makes you a lesser human in your eyes, to have been wrong at some point. What is undeniable is that the political culture of denial is toxic.
This egotistical defence mechanism is much harder to deploy in public life.
Marriage is a political issue. Sex is a political issue. Food is a political issue. Drugs is a political issue. The weather is a political issue. Medicine is a political issue. Every single branch of science is a political issue. Sport is a political issue. Your choice of books to read or movies to watch - these are political issues. Everything is political.
And people will not change their minds on any political issue, because people define their identities by their political beliefs. To admit that one might have been wrong would be to admit that one's political beliefs might be fallible. And to admit that would be to risk having one's whole identity collapse.
And this applies to rightists as much as to leftists, it applies to conservatives as much as it applies to liberals, it applies to alt-righters and libertarians as much as it applies to socialists.
Conclusions drawn by the public rarely have anything to do with reality.
I often see that people who struggle with change, will cope by changing, but pretend to themselves, and you, that they were always the new way.
This egotistical defence mechanism is much harder to deploy in public life.
I too supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and yes I was wrong. But remember how the government was lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. And there had been previous Democratic criticism of George H.W. Bush on the basis that he let the Iraqi nuclear program get too far. I now know not to believe such assertions, but I do excuse my previous misjudgment a bit based on a naiveté about the willingness of the government to lie to us.
As for the Covid-19 virus, I doubt we’ll ever know but the most plausible hypothesis I’ve heard is that it was a part of a program to develop a vaccine against the much deadlier SARS virus, and lax Chinese laboratory safety practices led to an accidental release.
I specifically remember a Kuwaiti "Nurse's aid" Nayirah, testifying before Congress about Iraqi soldiers ripping new born babies out of the incubators in the ICU and throwing them on the floor.
It was all lies.
The "Nurses aid" was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US. The story was concocted by a New York PR firm Hill and Knowlton who had been hired to embroil the US in the war.
The story came out shortly afterward and I was sure that charges of treason would be levied against the company and its executives.
If arranging and coaching foreign citizens in the lying before Congress on behalf of a foreign Government to cause a war isn't treason, what is?
Nothing happened.
H&N arranged for all the little Kuwaiti kids to have US flags to wave as The Brave US murderers triumphantly entered Kuwait.I saw their name again recently- last Oct I think, they'd just won a contract to advise the WHO on its approach to Covid communications.
Collapsing trust in every major institution in society is a real head-scratcher, isn’t it?
I say:
BAT SOUP FEVER is now CHINA LAB FLU and the Ruling Class of the American Empire has been in bed with the CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY for decades now and Nixon the Ohio Quaker Turd went to China to start the great CHEAP LABOR GAME.
COLLAPSE — IMPLOSION — SECESSION — POWER DIFFUSEMENT — DELEGITIMIZATION — ACCELERATIONISM — RULING GLASS DECAPITATION
The only thing holding the American Empire together is monetary extremism from the privately-controlled Federal Reserve Bank.
Heat Wave In New England — Drink Plenty Of Water and Lemonade and Ale!
I wrote this in October of 2020:
The country has fallen to the villainy and treason of the JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire a long time ago in a place far away in our memories, and the American Empire is strangling and extinguishing those White Core Americans who could recreate and continue the spirit of roaming and settling and conquering Whites from the steppes to the peninsula off the great Asian land mass called Europe to the Germanic forest clearings to America and Australia and all over and to space and the oceans.
The use and abuse of the debt-based fiat currency medium of exchange to buy off greedy and weak and cowardly White slobs born before 1965 using asset bubbles and debt has temporarily interrupted the exchange of cultural continuum that ordinarily occurs between generations and the nasty greedy White slobs born before 1965 believe they’ll play out their string with all the goodies and all the crocodile tears about how bad bad bad Whitey was and is and the young Whites in White Core America have had enough of that crud and they want to guard and protect their families and their people and their country and their nation and they recognize that the JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire has used the government of the USA as a political weapon to destroy the historic American nation and to attack the European Christian ancestral core of the USA.
The obvious decline of the American Empire must not be arrested as it were; it must be accelerated to the final dislodgement and forcible exile of the evil and treasonous JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire.
The sonofabitches couldn’t even get the federal funds rate to 3 percent from the Obama Zero Interest Rate Policy before the asset bubbles in stocks and bonds and real estate — commercial and residential — started to implode.
The oncoming implosion of the Biden Asset Bubble shall destroy and dislodge the evil and treasonous JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire.
The JEW/WASP Ruling Class of the American Empire resembles the Saxons behind their shield wall at Senlac Hill in 1066, and the proud and brave WHITE CORE AMERICANS are the Normans come to conquer and to claim by battle their rightful inheritance.
More pretentious crap like that for thousands of words until Wednesday of November 4 or the next Wednesday after that or until the happy destruction of the evil Republican Party clears the way for the new political party called White Core America.
https://www.unz.com/anepigone/incredulous-election-outcome/#comment-4248120
Tweet from 2015:
Now, poll people on the question of who paid for and wanted to unleash this nightmare on the world.
Follow it up with a poll on the desired endgame, e.g.
Population reduction
Population control and enslavement
Create milk-cow populace with subscription-based lives
etc.
The vaxxes have already been implicated in at least 4,763 deaths in the US alone per the CDC’s own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D170F958 ), with more than 331k adverse events reported, and as VAERS reports are only given in a fraction of all events, it is likely this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Beyond the relatively small handful of those who are branded cranks and conspiracy theorists by MSM propaganda that assures people the vaxxes are safe and effective, anyone else really paying attention rather that lapping up the “news” being spoon-fed to them about all the great and good that is in progress would have already started the groundswell for Nuremburg II.
Let’s hope someone catches on before the mass die-off kicks into full gear.
Expecting a surgical mask or a cloth mask to screen out the Covid virus is like expecting a sieve to hold water.
Rats started the virus.
What I am sure of is Dr. Anthony Fauci is a living , breathing embodiment of the Peter Principle. His love of the limelight, his careless public statements and, as we are now finding out, his mendacity should be ringing alarm bells in D.C.
All of that was demonstrated over 30 years ago, yet he continued to hold authority. He “failed upwards” more than once. This ought to be an indictment not just of Fauci but of those who promoted him.
This crisis has revealed the actual “elites” as incompetent chair-warmers at best, with some of them obviously corrupt, mendacious parasites. Turchin’s thesis is demonstrated, along with Pasha Glubb.
the really smart internet guys are usually correct ahead of time on stuff like this, the midwit people and bureaucrats almost always wrong, and the mouth breather low intelligence people are correct about half the time, because instinct and evolution have equipped them with intuition that is often correct.
cue the IQ distribution meme charts with the caveman on the left, the liberal in the middle, and the highly intelligent guy on the right. it works for most topics.
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
I was in that small 23% that opposed it in 2003. I was all over the internet expressing my opposition, not that it did any good.
What made me unique (compared to the rest of the 23%) is that I wasn’t against going to war in the Middle East. I just thought Iraq was the wrong country.
If masks don’t work, why do surgeons and nurses wear them in the operating theatre?
The article says that everybody, everybody (yes, you, too) who has a strong opinion on the subject has some political ax to grind.
And so then you grind on with your strong opinions on the subject and pretend you’re speaking truth when you are just grinding your political ax, just like the guy said, acting it out like as if he didn’t say it, like those cretinous heavy metalists who “like” Spinal Tap even though it is ridiculing the shit out of them.
You don’t understand yet. I can tell by your illiteracy. What I mean is, whether masks work or not should not be a Democrat vs. Republican issue. It should simply be, do they or don’t they, or, more truthfully, do they work to a certain extent (the middle ground usually being the correct answer–all these black/white, either/or, false-dichotomy, THEY DON’T WORK AT ALL types revealing their spots for all to see.)
Dress codes and fashion statements are important.
Good article except for all the Trump bashing. Yes I know Trump had his faults but the article criticizes him for all the wrong (woke) reasons…not surprising considering it’s Vanity Fair.
(If masks don’t work, why do surgeons and nurses wear them in the operating theatre?)
There is the risk of bacterial infection ( germs ) as you are exposing the ‘insides’ of a patient during surgery. Viruses are much smaller than bacteria so how effective even N-95 grade masks are in blocking a virus is the unanswered question. The answer seems to be somewhere between ‘not very’ to ‘it can’t hurt so a mask is better than nothing’. Its probably a bit like making soldiers wear a steel helmet. It won’t stop a bullet but it might stop a fragment or rock from a artillery shell.
What made me unique (compared to the rest of the 23%) is that I wasn't against going to war in the Middle East. I just thought Iraq was the wrong country.Replies: @Triteleia Laxa, @silviosilver
If I were to invade a Middle Eastern country, it would be Qatar. A tiny, yet also obese, native population, lauding it over resentful slaves, with easy to patrol borders, and enormous natural resources. Perfect.
Your comment is a hilarious backfire.
There’s very little evidence for surgical masks reducing surgical infections, even after a century of studies, even for only bacteria.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK195776/
Surgeons really wear them to keep blood, gunk and even spinal fluid, from spurting in their mouths. Yuck.
If masks don’t work, why do surgeons and nurses wear them in the operating theatre?
Dress codes and fashion statements are important.
If Covid vaccines are dangerous long term there would be some irony. The people who would get sick would be the ones the government/deep state likes the best…those who do as they are told without questioning.
To your point, having the majority of the useless eaters self-select their own extermination, nobody will be around to object to the culling when they come around and shoot the rest of us.
TPTB have made it known for nearly two decades that the ideal population for Mother Gaia is less than 500 million. Several of these types are pushing hard for mass vaccination.
To serve man ... it’s a cookbook!
https://youtu.be/NIufLRpJYnI?t=0m13sReplies: @Alexander Turok
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
A decade or so from now, Epigone will publish graphs like this showing that everyone opposed lockdowns and other extreme restrictions on freedoms.
It will be interesting to see who’s big enough to openly admit he was wrong. John Derbyshire did it on Iraq. Perhaps Steve Sailer, Curtis Yarvin or Roko of Less Wrong might do it for Covid hysteria once all the numbers are in.
Yes, it is also ironic that they are likely to object to GMO food, but they are clamoring to be genetically modified.
To your point, having the majority of the useless eaters self-select their own extermination, nobody will be around to object to the culling when they come around and shoot the rest of us.
TPTB have made it known for nearly two decades that the ideal population for Mother Gaia is less than 500 million. Several of these types are pushing hard for mass vaccination.
To serve man … it’s a cookbook!
This may sound flippant, but, when you think about it, it makes sense. Make a list of the top one hundred things in your life which you care about and I bet you that the Iraq war doesn't feature.
Remember how the anti-war movement vanished as soon as Obama took office? They clearly didn't care much about being anti-war.
Nor is this a particular characteristic of Americans. It is just that mass media and the Internet serve as giant pipes that take allow everyone's negative energies to mix in and flow together. Your personal issues represented in global events - the ultimate drug.Replies: @Nikolai Vladivostok
Almost all my friends opposed the Iraq war but I could only convince a couple to attend an anti-war rally. None of the others would have sent a letter, made a call or done anything else. They thought our country (Australia) was about to get involved in a stupid war and they didn’t care. After all, we were university students, not people who might actually have to fight.
I was young and idealistic then. Now, not so much. Why protest if your government starts yet another stupid war? Just keep your sons out of the military and get on with your own life as best you can. The West as a whole is even more farcial now than it was then and its downward momentum is unstoppable.
Better to focus on your own family and community. If you make a big fuss every time your government does something reprehensible, you’ll do little else.
Audacious Epigone asserts that the media and medical establishment “lied” about, for example…
1. The virus came from wild bats or pangolins.
2. The virus spread through physical contact on inorganic surfaces where it could remain virulent for weeks.
3. That sanitizing surfaces was the way to slow the spread.
A necessary condition of lying is that one asserts what one knows or at least thinks one knows to be false. Did TPTB know last year that the virus didn’t originate in an animal? (Do we even know now?) Did TPTB know last year the exact mechanism by which the virus is spread and how to contain it? (And why would they want to lie about that? What advantage accrues to them by making people wash their hands more often?)
Saying that TPTB are lying flatters them since it sounds like they knew, last year, all the ins and outs of the disease. Is it not more plausible that they just did not know, gave what they thought was the best advice, and got some things wrong?
One thing that you have to bear in mind is that governments had to be seen to be doing something, because people expect that if there's a crisis the government should do something. Mostly it doesn't matter much what governments actually do as long as they're seen to be doing something.Replies: @Jtgw
What made me unique (compared to the rest of the 23%) is that I wasn't against going to war in the Middle East. I just thought Iraq was the wrong country.Replies: @Triteleia Laxa, @silviosilver
Technically, I opposed it in 2003, but only after it was declared “mission accomplished.” Before that, I was huge booster of it. When I realized what a sham it was, I went virtually full leftard in my opposition. (Then later I calmed down and pait it little attention, writing it off as a huge waste of time and money when there were, it fast became clear to me, far more important things to worry about.)
Some of this is arrogance or idiocy, but some is simply updating your beliefs when new evidence comes in. The ‘experts’ never went so far as to actually admit they were wrong, but still, they’re preferable to the crockpots.
Part of it is that the elite don’t have sewing machines. Even the old grannies among them. So they honestly thought the only possibility was to wait for China to produce more. As someone who prepped before this, I can just say that if you want us to be more self-sacrificing, you could try actually listening to us for once in a while.
To your point, having the majority of the useless eaters self-select their own extermination, nobody will be around to object to the culling when they come around and shoot the rest of us.
TPTB have made it known for nearly two decades that the ideal population for Mother Gaia is less than 500 million. Several of these types are pushing hard for mass vaccination.
To serve man ... it’s a cookbook!
https://youtu.be/NIufLRpJYnI?t=0m13sReplies: @Alexander Turok
Anti-GMO and anti-vaxx are quite similar, both believe that their use of scare words (genetic modification! You’re like putting DNA in your body dude!) is sufficient to prove that a widely used thing is dangerous. No need to go out into the real world and find actual evidence of harm.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D171F336When you get to the CDC page, go first to the bottom and hit the agree button, then select the Request Form tab at the top.
This is better than scary words, I guess.BTW, you might want to do a little more research on how modRNA vaxxes have actually fared now that they’ve been tried on human test subjects en masse.
Costs were also shifted to the future. The economic damage from excessively long and harsh lockdowns will cause slower economic growth for years. Generally speaking, wealthier people live longer than poorer people so making people poorer in the future will eventually result in many years of lost life expectancy. Lockdown opponents were portrayed as heartless eager to kill granny types by lockdown proponents but these lockdown proponents had on blinders where they only looked at the present.
As time goes on there will be a slow dawning realization that we were stampeded into a panic that led us to throw rationality out the window and make numerous bad decisions without thinking about the long term ramifications of those decisions.Replies: @V. K. Ovelund, @Alexander Turok
That’s because rich people are less likely to be fat or to smoke, and possibly because a high genetic load causes both low income and unhealthiness. It isn’t because they can afford to “buy” health via more medicine.
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn't increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can't pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.Replies: @iffen, @nebulafox, @res, @V. K. Ovelund
People are usually prepared to change their minds when evidence proves them wrong, unless it’s an issue that involves religion or politics. And these days everything involves politics.
Marriage is a political issue. Sex is a political issue. Food is a political issue. Drugs is a political issue. The weather is a political issue. Medicine is a political issue. Every single branch of science is a political issue. Sport is a political issue. Your choice of books to read or movies to watch – these are political issues. Everything is political.
And people will not change their minds on any political issue, because people define their identities by their political beliefs. To admit that one might have been wrong would be to admit that one’s political beliefs might be fallible. And to admit that would be to risk having one’s whole identity collapse.
And this applies to rightists as much as to leftists, it applies to conservatives as much as it applies to liberals, it applies to alt-righters and libertarians as much as it applies to socialists.
The regime is certainly lying to you about this issue, but the critics of the regime are certainly lying as well. When an issue becomes political every opinion, pro and contra, has to be regarded with deep scepticism.
Covid-19 is like climate change. Science and truth are irrelevant. It's all politics.Replies: @Chrisnonymous, @Triteleia Laxa, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @Audacious Epigone
Truly, madly, deeply stupid. The only liars about anthropogenic climate destabilisation are the fossil fuel and Rightwing financed denialist industry, and the teeming masses of life-hating Dunning-Krugerite devotees of the denialist death-cult.
Genetic engineering is the correct term. GM was invented by the Monsanto et al PR hacks. The evidence of harm, in the increasing use of Roundup, ie glyphosate plus adjuvants, is copious, but industry hacks like you simply deny everything.
1. The virus came from wild bats or pangolins.
2. The virus spread through physical contact on inorganic surfaces where it could remain virulent for weeks.
3. That sanitizing surfaces was the way to slow the spread.
A necessary condition of lying is that one asserts what one knows or at least thinks one knows to be false. Did TPTB know last year that the virus didn't originate in an animal? (Do we even know now?) Did TPTB know last year the exact mechanism by which the virus is spread and how to contain it? (And why would they want to lie about that? What advantage accrues to them by making people wash their hands more often?)
Saying that TPTB are lying flatters them since it sounds like they knew, last year, all the ins and outs of the disease. Is it not more plausible that they just did not know, gave what they thought was the best advice, and got some things wrong?Replies: @dfordoom, @Audacious Epigone
Yes, that’s quite plausible. But very few people here want to hear that. They want conspiracy theories, preferably conspiracy theories involving white genocide or Bolsheviks. They want conspiracy theories with some group cast in the role of Bond Villain.
One thing that you have to bear in mind is that governments had to be seen to be doing something, because people expect that if there’s a crisis the government should do something. Mostly it doesn’t matter much what governments actually do as long as they’re seen to be doing something.
Published in 1981:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2493952/
Abstract
No masks were worn in one operating theatre for 6 months. There was no increase in the incidence of wound infection.
I find it surprising that in the 40 years since then that paper has only been cited 16 times (only once between 1986 and 2007).
One interesting citation is this 1983 paper which says (emphasis mine, reference 3 is your paper).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2494432/So photographic evidence is superior to testing face masks in actual usage?!
This 1993 citing paper is much more interesting. Notice that "not significantly different" corresponded to a 25% drop in infection rate without masks. Which they note as a 34% increase in the other direction.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2497725/It is interesting how much medicine resembles an art rather than a science when examined closely.
And here we are 40 years later with no change in practice (or conventional wisdom).Replies: @TomSchmidt
A ‘huge booster’ eh. All that blood on your paws-does it ever trouble your ‘conscience’?
Choke on it.
It was only in recent months, a full year after it was known, that the ‘medical experts’ here in Austfailia acknowledged aerosol spread of the disease. These are the same buffoons who describe ivermectin as ‘sheep dip’.
The title of this article sounds like a Billy Joel song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut6CpuRXlnA
Average life expectancy has been declining for the past twenty years among the working class in the U.S. This is because of declining working class incomes from increased income inequality. At a surface level you could say rich people live longer because they engage in less alcohol or drug abuse but if you look deeper than that you would have to say the working class would have fewer problems in these areas if their economic condition wasn’t deteriorating.
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn’t increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can’t pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-down-in-2020-but-traffic-fatality-rates-surgedThe article links to more detailed data--which unfortunately only covers the first 9 months of 2020 (seems like final 2020 data should be out soon)--here.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813053
The fatality rate soared in Q2, but the number of fatalities actually decreased because driving was down so much. In Q3 the fatality rate increased a bit from the already high level, but driving picked up some so fatalities increased 13%.
I wonder if these excess deaths should be counted as COVID deaths. ; /
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn't increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can't pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.Replies: @iffen, @nebulafox, @res, @V. K. Ovelund
I agree with much of what you have written in this comment, but intelligence/wealth/health/”sucesss”/mental health/etc. is very much a package deal.
No, bats didn’t start the virus, illegal domestic CIA agents Robert Garry and Ian Lipkin did. Meryl Nass burned them.
https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2021/06/here-is-why-i-believe-nature-medicine.html
This is your bill of indictment right here. Ship them off to Khabarovsk in irons.
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn't increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can't pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.Replies: @iffen, @nebulafox, @res, @V. K. Ovelund
Create a society of lords and peasants, don’t be shocked when you get all the downsides of that.
No one is responsible for creating this society.
It fell from the sky.
That would be the bubonic plague. The two major appearances of that particular disease on the world stage were so cataclysmic that they caused permanent changes in human society and the geopolitical order globally. Let’s hope *that* disease remains under lock and key, for all our sakes, because we’re ill equipped to deal with it in the age of globalization.
More accurate to say rats transmitted the virus via fleas.
An aside, but I’m really enjoying Kyle Harper’s book on the collapse of the Roman Empire. He focuses on the disease and environmental angle of things rather than the traditional military and political factors. The former: the empire suffered from three very nasty bouts of plague, the last of which was the bubonic plague under Justinian. Together with the wars against Persia, there was enough demographic decimation to make the Islamic conquests possible. The second one-the plague of Saint Cyprian, he of the first hospitals in Carthage-Harper identifies as a major cause in the rapid growth of Christianity in the 3rd Century.
Create a society of lords and peasants,
No one is responsible for creating this society.
It fell from the sky.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2493952/
Abstract
No masks were worn in one operating theatre for 6 months. There was no increase in the incidence of wound infection.Replies: @res
Thanks! Even more interesting than that summary is the Discussion section.
In Table 1 the infection rate without masks was half that of the lowest rate with masks!
I find it surprising that in the 40 years since then that paper has only been cited 16 times (only once between 1986 and 2007).
One interesting citation is this 1983 paper which says (emphasis mine, reference 3 is your paper).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2494432/
So photographic evidence is superior to testing face masks in actual usage?!
This 1993 citing paper is much more interesting. Notice that “not significantly different” corresponded to a 25% drop in infection rate without masks. Which they note as a 34% increase in the other direction.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2497725/
It is interesting how much medicine resembles an art rather than a science when examined closely.
And here we are 40 years later with no change in practice (or conventional wisdom).
Thanks for the fascinating follow-up.
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn't increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can't pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.Replies: @iffen, @nebulafox, @res, @V. K. Ovelund
The increase looks even more dramatic given that driving decreased. From March:
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-down-in-2020-but-traffic-fatality-rates-surged
The article links to more detailed data–which unfortunately only covers the first 9 months of 2020 (seems like final 2020 data should be out soon)–here.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813053
The fatality rate soared in Q2, but the number of fatalities actually decreased because driving was down so much. In Q3 the fatality rate increased a bit from the already high level, but driving picked up some so fatalities increased 13%.
I wonder if these excess deaths should be counted as COVID deaths. ; /
I remember the lies told in support of the first war crime against the Iraqi’s.
I specifically remember a Kuwaiti “Nurse’s aid” Nayirah, testifying before Congress about Iraqi soldiers ripping new born babies out of the incubators in the ICU and throwing them on the floor.
It was all lies.
The “Nurses aid” was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US. The story was concocted by a New York PR firm Hill and Knowlton who had been hired to embroil the US in the war.
The story came out shortly afterward and I was sure that charges of treason would be levied against the company and its executives.
If arranging and coaching foreign citizens in the lying before Congress on behalf of a foreign Government to cause a war isn’t treason, what is?
Nothing happened.
H&N arranged for all the little Kuwaiti kids to have US flags to wave as The Brave US murderers triumphantly entered Kuwait.
I saw their name again recently- last Oct I think, they’d just won a contract to advise the WHO on its approach to Covid communications.
Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease, not a viral one. The bacteria is Yersinia pestis. It is spread by fleas who can pick up the bacteria from rats, although I assume they can also acquire it by biting an infected human.
Moreover, it is not currently confined to the world’s lab freezers. There are still occasional outbreaks in places like Mongolia among rodent populations like marmots.
About 7 cases a year, but a real fear of an outbreak in LA.
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/verify/verify-bubonic-plague-cases-happen-every-year/507-e2e17ec7-a4a3-47d9-a5e8-e6a254666186
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7375793/Medieval-diseases-lurk-LA-124-cases-Typhus-confirmed.html
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gifReplies: @Blinky Bill, @Triteleia Laxa, @nebulafox, @Jay Fink, @Nikolai Vladivostok, @Chrisnonymous
I supported the war, but maybe not for the same reasons as other people. I never believed Saddam was connected to 9/11, and I didn’t think his “WMD programs” were likely to be a big threat to us (although I did believe he had them). But at the time, the history of Iraq was one of war and genocide. The Iran-Iraq war was still not that far in the past, and we had at that time an ongoing active no-fly zone enforcement action in part to protect the Kurds from genocide. The “no-fly zone” was in fact a long-term stalling of what many people regarded as the unfinished Iraq War I.
I shared the view of many Americans that US military power was a force for good in the world that defeated Nazism and Communism and was cleaning up places like Iraq. I remember arguing about Just War theory and civilian casualties on these new things called “blogs”. However, I was not a cookie-cutter GOPe Republican even at that time in that I thought Iraq should be divided up along ethnic lines–let the Shia part join Iran, give the Kurds a homeland (that would be protected by a large permanent US military base), and let the Sunnis determine their own fate, maybe allying with Saudi Arabia.
Part of my Just War argument was that Saddam was claimed to kill about 10,000 Iraqis per year, so an equivalent number of deaths in a liberating war was an ethical wash. I couldn’t imagine how there could more than 10,000 civilian deaths when we were just going to drive into Bagdad with our tanks to cheering crowds the way we had entered Paris in WWII.
The shock and awe bombing campaign was a big shock to me. After that, it was transparently obvious that WMD had been a lie. We never stole the oil I thought was ours by right of the expense we had gone to. No one was serious about the massive financial costs being imposed by the occupation. And I eventually lost faith in the idea of democracy as universally applicable across peoples and cultures. I don’t remember when I got comfortable just saying I had been wrong, but it was while Bush was still in office.
You are an evil fucker deserving great harm.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
If only Team Red hadn’t spent most of last year arguing it was just the flu they might be able to capitalize on this revelation more. Ron’s theory that Andrew Anglin helped spread this idea to displace the lab leak hypothesis in order to forestall war with China is interesting even if it grossly overestimates Anglins influence. Of course his own pet conspiracy theory that this is blowback from an American bio terror attack on China is also pretty far fetched.
The US is one of the worlds remaining pest-holes.
About 7 cases a year, but a real fear of an outbreak in LA.
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/verify/verify-bubonic-plague-cases-happen-every-year/507-e2e17ec7-a4a3-47d9-a5e8-e6a254666186
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7375793/Medieval-diseases-lurk-LA-124-cases-Typhus-confirmed.html
I shared the view of many Americans that US military power was a force for good in the world that defeated Nazism and Communism and was cleaning up places like Iraq. I remember arguing about Just War theory and civilian casualties on these new things called "blogs". However, I was not a cookie-cutter GOPe Republican even at that time in that I thought Iraq should be divided up along ethnic lines--let the Shia part join Iran, give the Kurds a homeland (that would be protected by a large permanent US military base), and let the Sunnis determine their own fate, maybe allying with Saudi Arabia.
Part of my Just War argument was that Saddam was claimed to kill about 10,000 Iraqis per year, so an equivalent number of deaths in a liberating war was an ethical wash. I couldn't imagine how there could more than 10,000 civilian deaths when we were just going to drive into Bagdad with our tanks to cheering crowds the way we had entered Paris in WWII.
The shock and awe bombing campaign was a big shock to me. After that, it was transparently obvious that WMD had been a lie. We never stole the oil I thought was ours by right of the expense we had gone to. No one was serious about the massive financial costs being imposed by the occupation. And I eventually lost faith in the idea of democracy as universally applicable across peoples and cultures. I don't remember when I got comfortable just saying I had been wrong, but it was while Bush was still in office.Replies: @Bill Jones
I read your piece.
You are an evil fucker deserving great harm.
Some of what I believed was correct given my assumptions. If civilian casualties had been low, they would have been justifiable in the context of a peaceful democratic post-invasion Iraq. I just didn't conceive of how the military intended to conduct the war or realize that a peaceful post-invasion Iraq was impossible. That's misguided but not evil.
You have to remember that Saddam was (a) really a bad guy and (b) in power because of the West meddling in the Middle East anyhow. It's not like the war was waged to depose an unfriendly leader chosen by his people.
One thing that you have to bear in mind is that governments had to be seen to be doing something, because people expect that if there's a crisis the government should do something. Mostly it doesn't matter much what governments actually do as long as they're seen to be doing something.Replies: @Jtgw
I maintain the main problem with democracy is not that the elite manipulates public opinion but that they are beholden to it. Most people are morons. In a classically liberal society with constitutionally restricted government the idiocy of the average person is prevented from doing too much damage. The modern progressive infatuation with brute majoritarianism and contempt for constitutional restraint is bad enough but it’s starting to engender a similar idiocy on the right.
According to a recent JAMA article, suicides didn't increase in 2020 but there was a big increase in accidental deaths from drug overdoses. There was also an increase in auto fatalities in 2020, most likely from increased alcohol use. The stresses of so many people being thrown out of work probably led to even more drug and alcohol abuse than normal. The only thing that kept it from being worse were the increased unemployment benefits. These were paid for with money printing which will cause even greater stress on Americans in the future as inflation rises and they can't pay their bills. There are still eight million less people employed in the U.S. than before the lockdowns and as prices rise from inflation things will become especially bad for them. Anyone on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, will also be harmed by future inflation caused by money printing for unemployment benefits and government bailouts that were needed to counteract the excessively long and harsh lockdowns. Meanwhile, the wealthy have become even wealthier over the last year.
Also, contrary to what you say, being wealthier and having things such as access to better medical care, more expensive larger and safer automobiles, being able to live in safer neighborhoods, being able to afford more education and so on lead to better health outcomes and longer lives for those who have access to them.Replies: @iffen, @nebulafox, @res, @V. K. Ovelund
The American generation to which your father and mine belonged handled this differently. They handled it much, much better. In a peculiarly American way that is impossible for Millennials to understand (because, regrettably, they have never been afforded the opportunity to experience it), affluent Americans of our fathers’ generation took pains to avoid setting themselves too visibly apart from their working-class countrymen. There was a sharp racial division in the United States, but except in the American South, there was no sharp class division. Affluent persons who took on airs were roundly mocked—and not just by the working class, but more especially by their fellow affluents.
Since there was no sharp class division, the affluent stood in a position to lead imperceptibly by social example. Following the social example as well as they could, the working class lived more responsibly than today, and with better morale, because they felt that they were part of something finer—which, in fact, they were, even though they could never have managed it on their own.
We used to have a name for that. We called it, “The American Way.” The American Way is so utterly vanished now, it is hard to imagine that it ever existed, but exist it did.
I miss it.
I find it surprising that in the 40 years since then that paper has only been cited 16 times (only once between 1986 and 2007).
One interesting citation is this 1983 paper which says (emphasis mine, reference 3 is your paper).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2494432/So photographic evidence is superior to testing face masks in actual usage?!
This 1993 citing paper is much more interesting. Notice that "not significantly different" corresponded to a 25% drop in infection rate without masks. Which they note as a 34% increase in the other direction.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2497725/It is interesting how much medicine resembles an art rather than a science when examined closely.
And here we are 40 years later with no change in practice (or conventional wisdom).Replies: @TomSchmidt
It recalls that We knew years ago that antibiotics would cure ulcers, but ignored it for years. There was nothing proving that the antibiotics worked, but they in fact did. It took two men to self-infect withH. Pylori and then cure themselves to get medicine to accept what it had known years before.
Thanks for the fascinating follow-up.
Nope, not in the slightest.
Choke on it.
So morons are not “entitled” to democracy, but a self-selected elites are?
There are dangers to both. And what we have is a self selected elite anyway – an elite selected for their ability to satisfy popular whims. Elite rule of some sort is inevitable anyway.
Agreed, and I blame misrule by elites rather than peons trying to participate in "democracy."
Elite rule of some sort is inevitable anyway.
Agreed, and I blame misrule by elites rather than peons trying to participate in “democracy.”
Here’s a link to some actual data on the “safe” vaxxes actual safety.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D171F336
When you get to the CDC page, go first to the bottom and hit the agree button, then select the Request Form tab at the top.
This is better than scary words, I guess.
BTW, you might want to do a little more research on how modRNA vaxxes have actually fared now that they’ve been tried on human test subjects en masse.
You are an evil fucker deserving great harm.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
In what way?
Some of what I believed was correct given my assumptions. If civilian casualties had been low, they would have been justifiable in the context of a peaceful democratic post-invasion Iraq. I just didn’t conceive of how the military intended to conduct the war or realize that a peaceful post-invasion Iraq was impossible. That’s misguided but not evil.
You have to remember that Saddam was (a) really a bad guy and (b) in power because of the West meddling in the Middle East anyhow. It’s not like the war was waged to depose an unfriendly leader chosen by his people.
What’s going to happen if the lab leak hypothesis is proven? Personally, I believe it. But who’s going to make China pay, and how? China is now the world’s dominant power. We’re pathetic.
The regime is certainly lying to you about this issue, but the critics of the regime are certainly lying as well. When an issue becomes political every opinion, pro and contra, has to be regarded with deep scepticism.
Covid-19 is like climate change. Science and truth are irrelevant. It's all politics.Replies: @Chrisnonymous, @Triteleia Laxa, @Mulga Mumblebrain, @Audacious Epigone
The critics don’t have power, though–the regime does.
It's impossible to have a genuine debate about anything connected with COVID, or climate change, or countless other subjects, because just about every claim made by both sides is a lie. Two groups of dishonest ideologues hurling insults at each other is not a debate.
Whenever an issue becomes politicised both sides will lie. That's why we will never have a useful debate on on anything connected with COVID, or the vaccines, climate change, HBD, racism, demographics, immigration, China, etc, etc.
https://twitter.com/KateMessner/status/1373690535777603588Replies: @Audacious Epigone
Gross.
1. The virus came from wild bats or pangolins.
2. The virus spread through physical contact on inorganic surfaces where it could remain virulent for weeks.
3. That sanitizing surfaces was the way to slow the spread.
A necessary condition of lying is that one asserts what one knows or at least thinks one knows to be false. Did TPTB know last year that the virus didn't originate in an animal? (Do we even know now?) Did TPTB know last year the exact mechanism by which the virus is spread and how to contain it? (And why would they want to lie about that? What advantage accrues to them by making people wash their hands more often?)
Saying that TPTB are lying flatters them since it sounds like they knew, last year, all the ins and outs of the disease. Is it not more plausible that they just did not know, gave what they thought was the best advice, and got some things wrong?Replies: @dfordoom, @Audacious Epigone
At least as early as January of 2020 Fauci was corresponding with people who thought the lab leak explanation the most likely. But the thrust of the post is well taken.
Heh:
True, but critics seriously weaken their case when they lie. And it’s particularly foolish for the critics to lie because they don’t have power and they don’t have the media behind them. Their lies will be exposed and they will end up discrediting their own case.
It’s impossible to have a genuine debate about anything connected with COVID, or climate change, or countless other subjects, because just about every claim made by both sides is a lie. Two groups of dishonest ideologues hurling insults at each other is not a debate.
Whenever an issue becomes politicised both sides will lie. That’s why we will never have a useful debate on on anything connected with COVID, or the vaccines, climate change, HBD, racism, demographics, immigration, China, etc, etc.