Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 65

[ecosophia]

As we proceed through the second year of these open posts, it's pretty clear that the official narrative is cracking as the toll of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines rises steadily and the vaccines themselves demonstrate their total uselesness at preventing Covid infection or transmission. It's still important to keep watch over the mis-, mal- and nonfeasance of our self-proclaimed health gruppenfuehrers, and the disastrous results of the Covid mania, but I think it's also time to begin thinking about what might be possible as the existing medical industry reels under the impact of its own self-inflicted injuries. 

So it's time for another open post. 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. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religious, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.    

Comments

Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'

[methylethyl]

These discussions are fascinating to me, because I got there through a different route. My parents, on each their own merits, are decent people. But my childhood relationship with my mother was completely fracked by some combination of her social consciousness and tendency toward pushiness and my autistic traits.

So between us, we developed some fairly awful feedback-loops, where she'd tell a socially-appropriate lie, and I'd correct her, right out in front of everybody, because I couldn't understand why she'd said it and I couldn't handle cognitive dissonance or inaccuracy. She'd be embarrassed and scold me for it later, and then I'd chafe at being scolded for being truthful-- which was clearly wrong. I'd read my Bible!

Or, because I was really slow at auditory processing, she'd rattle off a list of five things she needed me to do, and then expect an immediate response, even though it was going to take me several seconds, at least, to figure out what she'd said, compare it to what was already on my schedule, and make a decision about whether I could do it... and there's no way in heck I was going to remember more than two out of the five things anyway without writing them down. It left me in a horrible bind, because if I waited until I'd processed what she'd said, she'd assume I was ignoring her and get pissy about it. So in self-defense I learned to just answer "OK" immediately, while I continued to decode whatever was said, to avoid the charge of "not listening". But then I'd find, a few seconds too late, that I'd agreed to a whole slate of things I didn't want to do, that conflicted with other things I was already obligated to do, or that I couldn't possibly remember all of... and then I'd get yelled at for being "lazy" or "avoiding chores" or making promises and not keeping them. Which, to be fair, is often what it looked like. But on my side, I felt as though I'd been cruelly trapped and tricked.

My twenties involved a lot of working through these issues, finally figuring out what had gone so terribly wrong, and figuring out how to relate to my mother in a grownup, healthy-boundaries kind of way. I actually explained to my mother the dynamic, and asked for her help and understanding in trying to have more positive interactions... and it worked. Once I explained it, she could kind of see it too. Wasn't instant, but we have reached a point where we can communicate, and I can tell her "no", and we can treat each other like adults. So now we don't have to be enemies.

But the tremendous WRONGNESS of those patterns of interaction is etched very deep. I will NOT tolerate being shamed for saying what I believe to be true. And I will NOT be manipulated into agreeing to things I don't actually want to do/say. And any time I find myself in a situation where there's even a whiff of that going on-- where I feel pressured to do something I'm not sure about, where people are saying obviously untrue things, or things that cause cognitive dissonance, any kind of high-pressure sales tactics or people laying on shame for something I don't believe is wrong... it brings out the fight in me. All that childhood bad-feeling bubbles right to the surface, and OH NO YOU DON'T! I spent YEARS disentangling myself from that trap and I will NOT go there again. I don't have to answer you right now. I don't have to go along with this. I will take as much time as I need to think about it, and then I will make my own decision. Any attempt to push me in some other way... is not a good way to get my cooperation. And... lie to me once, about anything, no matter how trivial, and I will never trust another word you say.

There has just been SO MUCH of that going on the last couple of years. Even though it was really painful and a lot of work to get where I could be around my mother... I'm really glad I did it, and it confers a certain immunity to manipulation tactics. It's like... well, you could have trapped me that way when I was fourteen. But I'm way past that now.