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Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 5

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.
2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.
3. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.
With that said, the floor is open for discussion.
Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-07 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)A person I know was visiting a US Federal Government building last week and was required to fill out the form to enter. He was told by the guard at the door, no form, no entry, and apparently that applies to everyone including employees, contractors, and visitors. He told the guard, I am not vaccinated and the guard replied, “I don’t want to know.” He filled out the form, checking the 4th box, “I decline to respond” and tried to hand the form back to the guard. The guard refused to take the form and said, “Just keep it with you, in case anyone asks.” No one did.
The form is 4 pages long and it says, among other things, that if you check any box other than “I am fully vaccinated” then you are required to have taken a test within the past 72 hours showing you are negative for Covid 19. But the government agency the person was visiting doesn’t do any testing and no one asked for any test results. It appeared that the guards at the door are not allowed to ask for test results. The person told me that he had taken a Covid test within the required 72 hours in case anyone asked. He said you can buy a two pack of tests at CVS for around $25 and it is easy: you just pour a solution into a tray (or something like that) and get a result. I said, but you have to stick the Q-tip thing up your nose, right? He said, uh yeah, sure….
I was given a briefing by another government agency who is planning to implement the “attestation form” and was told that home testing would be fine for anyone who was required to be tested and that the Biden administration has said that it will pay for all testing. I can only imagine the Rube Goldberg mechanisms that will be put in place for the test reimbursement scheme. Companies will probably have to hire another admin person to process expense claims for home tests purchased for people who visit government buildings.
One last thing: in the briefing that I got on the attestation form, the briefer admitted that Covid cases were way up in government buildings, and many were “breakthrough” cases, i.e., people who were fully vaccinated are getting sick. Someone asked, what if I fill out the attestation form saying I am vaccinated and then I get sick? The response was, “Your status doesn’t change.”
It looks like the government knows they have to appear to be doing something about the rise in Covid cases in their buildings and they can’t mandate vaccination (except for the military, and we have yet to see how that will work out – the requirement date is this month. It is not looking good). So the government is doing this form, which is meaningless, and mandating testing, which is done at home by people who may or may not actually be testing themselves, and they are not testing the vaccinated, who may be sick and be spreading Covid to others. Potemkin government.
Re: Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-07 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)I took a trip to the USA last month. The requirement at the time (probably still for the nonce) was that anyone boarding an airplane bound for the USA has to have a negative test certificate dated withing 72 hours before the departure time. I got a certificate from a local clinic, but it was just a letter signed by some doctor somewhere. In retrospect, I could have saved some money by just writing my own certificate (signed, Joe Schmoe, MD).
The company I work for also gave me a home test kit to submit before I went back to work after my trip. I filled up the test tube with rainwater. It came back negative.
I have long suspected that one of the main points of all the testing (aside from fanning the flames of fear and inflating case numbers) is to give lots of money to the pharmaco-medical industry.
Re: Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-08 11:14 am (UTC)(link)This is demoralizing for all concerned-- including those involved in law enforcement. They've got to know they're making a few people really suffer for something everyone does anyway-- that is to say, for something that is culturally accepted.
When I was in university (DC area), the dorms literally reeked of marijuana every weekend. The year before I arrived, the FBI ran a sting operation that put 5 students in jail for marijuana possession. Now that marijuana's illegality is ancient history, I wonder how those 5 students and those FBI agents feel about that now.
Right now, September 2021, this is not the case for vaccination papers, I know-- feelings are running high both for and against! But once the booster shots start being required top establish "status," I expect that defiance of related rules and regulations will be far more widespread, as it was with these two above-mentioned instances.
Meanwhile, some police and jail wardens, among others, will collect salary and benefits.
But time will tell.
Cobalt Choleric Peacock
Re: Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-08 04:28 pm (UTC)(link)I did not intend to show disrespect to anyone because they work as a police officer or jail warden. I was making the simple point that, when something is illegal, and yet, at the same time, it is widely and openly culturally accepted-- as these two things were in decades in the past-- the use of undocumented labor and marijuana possession and consumption-- there's the problem.
I for one would find it similarly demoralizing to have a situation where legally we have to deal with all sorts of paperwork and requirements about vaccines that almost no one respects-- that everyone just thumbs their noses at-- but then, whammo, every rare now & then, some poor schmo gets fined and/or jailed.
Of course, right now, many people think that the vax & a vax passport (& similar & etc.) are all Right & Good-- I am speculating about a possible future when that might no longer be the case. (And I expect that to be the case in 2022, once the vaxxed realize, it wasn't what they expected, now they have to have the boosters.)
Cobalt Choleric Peacock
Re: Potemkin government
So in spite of the vaccines and the mandates, everyone where he works has to wear masks and sanitize the place. And they have to restrict how many people can be in the office at a time.
Re: Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-08 03:04 pm (UTC)(link)It’s more security theater. Very Pro Forma. Incidentally this is why I’m less worried about mandates and passports et. Al. It just seems to be an excuse to be seen doing something! Whether or not it’s effective is something else again.
“the briefer admitted that Covid cases were way up in government buildings, and many were “breakthrough” cases, i.e., people who were fully vaccinated are getting sick.”
In the words of Mugatu from the Zoolander movie, “DOESN’T ANYONE NOTICE THIS?!? I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!”
This all seems like a very straightforward 2+2=4. And yet I’m repeatedly told “No it doesn’t! 2+2=27!”
“So the government is doing this form, which is meaningless, and mandating testing, which is done at home by people who may or may not actually be testing themselves, and they are not testing the vaccinated, who may be sick and be spreading Covid to others. Potemkin government.”
Exactly, I feel the same way about this that frankly I do about environmentalism. When y’all start taking this seriously do let me know, THEN we’ll talk about it.
Re: Potemkin government
(Anonymous) 2021-09-08 10:10 pm (UTC)(link)-Cym