Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 24

[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 very high number of comments, so I'm opening yet 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 plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. 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, as more and more vaccinated people call in sick with the disease the vaccine was supposed to keep them from getting, and the euphemism "died suddenly" sounds like a repeated drumbeat in the media, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My daughter dropped out of college a few weeks ago but I am still on the parents' email list. They just sent out an email applauding themselves for mandating boosters because they are working (obviously!) to keep case counts low in the "community".

When JMG stated in an early post in this set that he expected more frantic attempts to vaccinate to continue, I thought "I hope he's wrong because the narrative is cracking now." Now after reading that email, I can completely see the college mandating a second booster (shot #4) after spring break. They really think that whatever is happening is due to their efforts and can not be explained in any other way.

Plus compliance with the booster shots shows one is a true believer in the regime and a caring member of their community. Plus wearing the N-95 shows the everyone that you are truly truly worshipping regularly and correctly.

I thought digital vaccine passports were a goner, but these colleges are using them now on campus and I can see a possible future where they demand them be brought over to their work life.

Covid and the vaccines are more about having the right politics than health, safety, keeping people out of hospitals, etc etc. People are fighting back agains the wrong thing. The managerial class now has a new way to measure who their true followers are and they are going to keep using it.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems to me that this show of piety is going to work for them... until it doesn't. It will be a phase change.

I agree -- and to me, it's obviously obvious that, as you say, "Covid and the vaccines are more about having the right politics than health, safety, keeping people out of hospitals, etc etc."

What has really surprised me however is how utterly incurious and rigid-minded so many people, of whom I would have expected otherwise, have been, and continue to be. (Of course I also know plenty of people whom I would have described as incurious and rigid-minded before 2020, surprises there.)

I just keep thinking of our host talking about the benefits of avoiding the vectors.

Amazing to me that I just typed that. I loved university life.

[(Anonymous)]

I believe that Eds & Meds now account for a third of the economy, yet we are only getting mentally sicker. You are not looking at the beginning of a long term trend, but the start of a downward spiral. My advice to your daughter:

Move away from the city
Learn to do useful things
Be happy with less

[(Anonymous)]

You are right regarding passports, I think. I thought they were going to be imposed by force from above, and they tried that. I think their frontal attack is destined to fail now, but they are trying a flanking maneuver.

I suspect there will be a handful of positions they have been able to secure in the past two years, and will grind down people’s will from there, over time. It looks like they’ve got their hooks in universities, and it looks like they might have international travel. So, for most people, I think these aren't pressing. For a while average people will be able to skirt these, as long as they don’t go to New Zealand for vacation, or send their kids to college. Over time though, I expect people will just begin to assume a passport is necessary for a slowly growing list of activities, each of which never quite riles up a riot. They might win over time by death from a thousand cuts.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here - I agree with the flanking maneuver. The fact that its vaccine required and no test out or previous immunity option tells me its all about the politics. I've been saving a ton of money not going to restaurants, concerts, and theater shows!

[(Anonymous)]

The real coup de grace will be if they can get it tied to being able to pay taxes or get a drivers license. Those might cause the aforementioned riots though, so those might be down the road.

If I had to think of a parallel, it would be social media. 15 or 20 years ago, if you publicly shared the fine details of what you had for breakfast, intimate details of what's happening in your family relationships, or what your travel itinerary is, most people would probably lean over and check your head for a fever. Now though, after being normalized slowly, a drip at a time, it's just "how things are". An entire generation has been raised knowing no other way.

It might be the same with passports, slowly whittling away at various aspects of your life, until it's just "how things are".

[kashtan]

They also might just achieve an increasingly segregated society in which vaccine passports that increasingly are expanded to more and more of a social credit system are the norm in exclusive bubbles, while the rest of society goes in other directions. That's really just an intensification of the class divide that's already present.

[(Anonymous)]

Until we reach morlocks and eloi.

[(Anonymous)]

"Covid and the vaccines are more about having the right politics than health, safety, keeping people out of hospitals, etc etc. People are fighting back agains the wrong thing. The managerial class now has a new way to measure who their true followers are and they are going to keep using it."

This is absolutely true.

If it weren't true, then natural immunity would count for something - but it doesn't. Because it's not about health.

And then there's this -

A place where I used to work part-time, and am now down to limited free-lance as I transition out completely, has a vaccinate-or-test policy.

I happen to know who else is using the test option because I was privy to that info. The vast majority are vaxxed; a few people have official medical reasons and are using the testing option, and one person has a strong philosophical objection, and has also already had covid. (As for me, I kind of slid under the radar; I initially told them that I had "concerns" about the covid vax "due to a vaccine reaction in the past" - technically true, in the most stretched sense of the word "true" - but that I "hadn't yet spoken to my doctor" (true), so they told me just to use the test option until it got sorted out with my doctor. Then I went from part-time to freelance and started transitioning out, and the whole thing sort of got dropped for me, since I'm on site so little, and I just bring a negative test in case they ask for it. Pretty soon I won't be there at all.)

Anyway, the rest of the employees know that some number of people have medical exemptions (but not who), and that one person made a stink - and they know who that one person is.

Who do you think they're afraid of?

There was a meeting with a bunch of grousing about how "unsettling" it was to be around so-and-so, who "won't get vaccinated even though she can!", and someone asked "are we sure she's getting tested?!" Mind you, they ALSO knew that this person had already had covid. And also know that any one of the people in the room might be one of those with a medical exemption.

They have no concern about the medical-exemption people hiding among them. Just the philosophical-exemption person who is not only getting tested, but who ALSO has natural immunity.

There is absolutely no health or safety logic to this. It's some kind of bizarre in-group political loyalty test.

And these people are in my experience typical of the mindset of the PMC.

[queenjane]

Wow, that really does say a lot. There has been so much noise made about getting vaxxed to "protect others," which I'm sure was a sincere motive for some, but there's just as much self-protection, just as much policing the borders of the compliant in-group, looking for heretics to burn. There's this undisguised lust to punish the disobedient, and it's based again on propping up one's self-image rooted in group identity more than it's about serving the greater good. They're telling themselves otherwise, I'm sure. But there is zero self-examination taking place here, no moment of reflection, no sense of "what if I'm wrong?" It reminds me so much of my experiences growing up in a fundamentalist church. The people who think they're so above "religious superstition" are completely in its grip.