Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 6

[ecosophia]

The semi-open posts  I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a gargantuan (and increasing) number of comments, so I'm opening another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before: 

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. 

Comments

Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

I hope your girlfriend stays strong. I know and sympathize with a young couple in the neighborhood who have refused to get vaccinated and have lost some side work as a result.

Last month a close family member, fully vaccinated (first in the family) and very careful to mask/keep distance/good hygiene, came down with COVID. It was fortunately a mild-ish case, like a bad cold, but left her with no sense of smell (which I hope clears up soon).

I've been 'fully' vaccinated myself (a condition of seeing the grandkids, also I got a very positive and unambiguous reading from a divination - just maybe there are some instances where the vax is beneficial/harmless*). I also took good amounts of vitamin C/vitamin D/B-complex/zinc to help with the reaction to the vaccine, as recommended by an alternative health practitioner. Hopefully there will be no long term effects.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[ari_ormstunga]

She was wavering at first but she is now firmly on team no thank you. I hope you and your loved ones don't have any problems from the vaccine. My parents, aunts, and uncle all got the vaccine, as well as most of my childhood friends, so I am sincerely hoping for the best for all of us, vaxxed or unvaxxed.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Vaccine worked out good for me. I asked a spirit I had been communing with since long before Covid for protection and and opportunity to get a one dose vaccine come out of the blue. Long lines for vaccines everywhere, I was in and out in three minutes. I've been to four funerals because of Covid, should have been to a couple more but my mobility has been somewhat limited by an injury. Currently two close childhood friends of mine who are unvaccinated lay dying in a ventilator. A local hospital in a town of less than 30K had nine deaths from Covid in one day.

About 70% of the people I know have been vaccinated and really haven't run into issues beyond a vague discomfort for up to a couple of weeks and its going on 10 months and longer since some of them have been vaccinated. I've been bracing for vaxpocalpyse for some time now but am now doubting it will come at all. I think the forseen health crisis may take form in job loss and the unvaccinated having to pay hospital costs out of pocket, which began around when the pfizer vaccine became FDA approved. Add on top of that hospitals going broke because they can't get enough payment on their Covid bills to stay solvent.

rabtter

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[ari_ormstunga]

I'm sorry about your losses. I've known so many people who have had covid and fully recovered from it, including myself, that I am unable to be afraid of it at all. I think everyone should do what they think is best as free people, and if being vaccinated worked for you then I'm happy for you.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[candace_k]

Pfizer isn’t FDA approved. Comirnity was conditionally approved and Pfizer got an extension of the EUA

At least that’s the last I read

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

But despite being "legally distinct", they are "chemically identical". The entire thing makes my head hurt...

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Yup.

What both of you said.

Here's the letter to Pfizer informing them their stuff is still under EUA:

1) https://www.fda.gov/media/150386/download

And here are the letters to BioNTech giving them the happy news:

2) https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download
3) https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download

The relevant parts of Letter # 1 are:
Page 2, first, second and third paragraphs, and Footnote 8
Page 5, Footnote 9

So to recap, the FDA, which is a USA organization, approved the flavor of shot made by BioNTech, a European company, which distributes it in Europe; and left the flavor made by Pfizer, a US company, to continue under the EUA, NOT approved. But BioNTech's flavor is allowed to fly under the EUA also.

:P

- Cicada Grove

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Its a branding thing. Comimity was the name tacked onto it when it was approved.

rabtter

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

But has this ever been done before?

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

All the time. Branding is an industry whose practioners manufacture demand. As for the vaccine FDA describes it thus,

"Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older. The vaccine also continues to be available under emergency use authorization (EUA), including for individuals 12 through 15 years of age and for the administration of a third dose in certain immunocompromised individuals."

Doses for booster and those under the age of 16 still fall under the EUA.


https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine

rabtter

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

And I should of wrote ages 12-15 fall under the EUA instead of under 16, 12-15 is under 16 but so is 0-11 which is outside the EUA.


rabtter

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting.

I have been wondering lately if the health crisis may be from some other direction. For the record, I got the J&J; mostly as a result of peer pressure. Aside from a slight fever for a few hours; no negative side effects yet. That was back in April. I did not really want to get it; but I am in a sort-of tenuous living situation. My opinion on the virus-that-shall-not-be-named is rather middle-of-the-road. I see a lot of fear and disinformation all over the place. That said, I would not have gotten the vaccination if I did not live with my elderly parents that have immune issues.

The main thing I have been wondering about is if there just might be an overall increase in deaths. Along the lines of what happened after the Soviet Union collapsed. Increasing suicides, alcoholism, etc. Plus, there are so many more homeless living exposed to the elements.

In my area the death rate has been slowly increasing for the last twenty years; possibly more. I just began tracking the data for births and deaths. Since 2009 there have been more deaths than births, the last 10 years has seen the death rate really start to climb. We are getting enough immigration that our population is staying pretty stable. Will be interesting to see how deaths compare, this year. So far it looks like we are on track to meet or exceed last year's deaths.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Something I've been wondering about deaths. Those in the know last year said to look for 'excess deaths' being reported in the data to determine if covid was a legit concern, or if it was just a strong flu masquerading as a real pandemic. Sure enough, excess deaths did appear, by a noticeable amount. I figured, huh, it's a thing, and mentally moved on. Now, having spent a bit more time meditating on it, how would we know if that bump in deaths weren't deaths of despair instead? A la something like what happened in the fall of the Soviet Union. Overdose deaths, suicides, alcohol related, and so on.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

One solution would be to figure out how much excess suicide, drug, alcohol, etc. related deaths occurred, and subtract them from the excess death rates and see what happens. This data is very hard to find, but frankly it looked to me as someone who works in a hospital that those played a much larger role than Covid.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

That is certainly a possibility through famine, social disorder, emotional and educational decline and acedia, and that leaving aside war or civil war, which frankly at this point is no longer a remote possibility:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210818122731/https://ranprieur.com/archives/045.html#famine



Famine is a demographic event. The definition of famine is significant excess mortality associated with a decline in the availability of food, regardless of cause of death. If you and your family starve to death, it's not famine because there aren't that many of you. If everyone in your town runs out of food, breaks into Costco, and are mowed down by machine-gun wielding rent-a-cops, that is actually famine.

Infectious disease (often related to diarrhea and respiratory illness) kills more people than actual starvation.

The indicators of famine are weird. Colonial India developed a set of famine codes that watched for, among other things, sudden increases in prices of food, or sudden increases in petty crime, or sudden decreases in the cost of commercial sex.

Stockpiles and famine foods aren't as helpful as you think. I always assumed that if you had a year's food in your basement, or knew which weeds and bugs were edible, you'd make it through a famine. Turns out, everybody figures this stuff out at about the same time, and the dying doesn't start until the stockpiles and rabbit warrens are exhausted.

The best survival technique is to leave the area. Usually the first to go are the middle class professionals whose assets are their credentials and experience. The poor may lack the means to relocate, and the wealthy tend to have significant investments in non-mobile assets (land, businesses, factories).

Famines in industrial market economies are political or conflict-related. In general, the world has a robust and finely-tuned famine relief industry. The notorious famines of the 20th century (Leningrad, Ethiopia, Sudan) have all been war famines. You are unlikely to ever experience a famine unless you are trapped behind armed fighters.

Opportunistic cannibalism (eating dead people) is common. Predatory cannibalism (killing people to eat them) is really, really rare.




https://web.archive.org/web/20160310150127/http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/09/02/dying-russians/


Sometime in 1993, after several trips to Russia, I noticed something bizarre and disturbing: people kept dying. I was used to losing friends to AIDS in the United States, but this was different. People in Russia were dying suddenly and violently, and their own friends and colleagues did not find these deaths shocking. Upon arriving in Moscow I called a friend with whom I had become close over the course of a year. “Vadim is no more,” said his father, who picked up the phone. “He drowned.” I showed up for a meeting with a newspaper reporter to have the receptionist say, “But he is dead, don’t you know?” I didn’t. I’d seen the man a week earlier; he was thirty and apparently healthy. The receptionist seemed to think I was being dense. “A helicopter accident,” she finally said, in a tone that seemed to indicate I had no business being surprised.

The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.

Back in the United States after a trip to Russia, I cried on a friend’s shoulder. I was finding all this death not simply painful but impossible to process. “It’s not like there is a war on,” I said.




There is this book called THE HEALTH OF NATIONS True Causes of Sickness and Well-Being. By Leonard A. Sagan


I am extracting here a bit from Lynn Margulis review of it:


https://web.archive.org/web/20180106211925/http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/29/books/the-importance-of-being-affectionate.html?pagewanted=print


He develops a global concept of health that is largely cognitive and emotional and sees education as perhaps the single most important determinant of good health. He lists psychological characteristics of healthy people, all of which depend on developing ''life-skills'' during the first year of life. Healthy people enjoy high levels of self-esteem and a lack of self-indulgence, commitment to goals beyond their own personal welfare, a strong sense of community and a concern with health, especially the health of children. Entering easily into trusting, strong, lasting emotional relationships (including marriage), healthy people enjoy companionship but are not at all uncomfortable when left alone. Furthermore, ''healthy people pursue education for reasons other than the skills that education provides; to understand and find meaning is a basic human need.''

Also acedia was discussed here in the previous comments
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/145097.html?thread=18213833#cmt18213833

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for sharing this, I found it to be very interesting reading.

I think in these times a lot of people just die, manifested one way or another, of a broken heart. The covid lockdowns broke a lot of hearts. It takes a strong heart right now-- a very strong heart to stay open. I speak of the metaphysical heart.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah the demographic cliff is a real thing too. Just a lot of older people in the world. (Boomers) and that’s going to mean more deaths. That’s to add to your list of suicides, alcoholism and homelessness, not to supplant it. All those are issues too.


JMG somewhere had said something like 2 to 3 more funerals per year would add up to a significant population decrease without having to be an apocalypse.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[temporaryreality]

rabbter, I'm sorry for the suffering and loss of you and yours. That the existence of so many conflicting narratives makes some cling all the more strongly to one version (not saying that's you, at all!) exacerbates the suffering by driving wedges between so many of us. I'm glad some people, including you) are being guided to make good choices for themselves and I hope more can come to realize that the complexity of it all shouldn't drive us to answers that are too simple that they can't fit the stories of those with other experiences.

Be well.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Around here, the loss of sense of smell would be somewhat of a blessing! The darn skunks are awful this year.

Your story made me wonder: are there any provisions to help those with no sense of smell detect a gas leak? Does there exist an alarm that’s triggered, like a smoke alarm? If there ever really is a serious Covid epidemic, or if we’ve already had one that’s been concealed by fudged statistics, many thousands could be unable to smell a gas leak.

—Lady Cutekitten

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Lady Cutekitten,

Indeed! I had a stinker at my house this morning.

It's easy to find smoke detectors that also detect carbon monoxide. You can get them online, or have them installed by an electrician.

Chris in VT

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

We have a carbon monoxide detector. I was wondering about something that detects leaking gas that can blow up your house.

Some years ago, I was visiting parents when there was a weird loud thud outside and Dad immediately ordered everyone to the basement. That thud turned out to be the sound of a non-Hollywood explosion. At the end of the street a house was burning, giving off clouds of black smoke for hours. There had been a gas explosion.

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[(Anonymous)]

Yes. We have inexpensive carbon monoxide alarms on both floors of our house because my cookstove is propane gas. They're are about the same size as your standard home smoke alarm and we bought them at the big orange home store for roughly the same cost as the smoke alarms. There are also more elaborate alarms to buy online for either propane or natural gas if you're looking for something more substantial.

Beekeeper in Vermont

Re: Another wrong kind of breakthrough

[methylethyl]

Yes, gas leak detectors do exist! I want to get my parents one-- Dad has no sense of smell, and I can't count the number of times he's almost blown up the house with our gas stove...