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Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 108
We are now in the third year of these open posts. As the phrase "died suddenly" repeats in the mass media like a mantra, statistics for work days lost to illness and all-cause mortality mount up in heavily vaccinated nations, and more and more ugly facts about the official response to Covid spill out into public, we are entering what may well turn out to be the most difficult period of the Covid disaster -- the phase in which denial rises in lockstep with the death rate, and a great many people try not to admit what has been done to them by the people and institutions they trusted. It could get ugly, folks. 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, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.
With that said, the floor is open for discussion.
Re: Some mask reflections
(Anonymous) 2023-08-30 12:23 pm (UTC)(link)I have some "minimally compliant" gauze masks that let me breath, and I expect I may don one if for some reason (gods forbid) I have to get inside a medical (or veterinary) facility with a mandate, if it were for the sake of my own or another's health or safety. I imagine I would also comply on a plane if I for some reason I had to fly in a dire emergency, which is highly unlikely (the only thing I can imagine would be some sort of improbable situation where a friend or family member got sick or injured in a far-off place and needed help, and the airlines all had mandates again). But that's about it. I plan to boycott any businesses that require them. I know one farmer's market that won't enforce them for fresh produce and dairy, and I can probably get most other groceries at a Spanish market that also didn't pay much attention to rules the last time (just wear the mask on your chin so we can pretend we're following the government mandate, we don't actually care).
I think what's different this time is that more people have woken up.
They say that in coercive situations, usually about one-third of people are reliably compliant and buy in completely, about one-third are reliably skeptical, and about one-third can be persuaded either way. I think during the height of cootie-mania, we saw two-thirds of everyone persuaded, and no more than one-third pushing back. I think that this time, the middle pendulum has swung the other way, and we'll see only one-third compliant, and the middle third siding with the skeptics and pushing back - I think they've lost that persuadable middle.
I saw this in the anec-data of my own circles. The PMC liberals I know all went in whole hog for cootie-mania and jab-a-paloosa, and they almost all still Believe the Science(TM). I have no doubt that their set will be re-donning their virtue-signalers as soon as they're told to by the Experts(TM). The skeptics were skeptics last time and still are, and like us are probably even more done with this nonsense this time around. What's changed is that a bunch of the go-along-to-get-along people I know, who believed back in 2020-2021 that the authorities were telling the truth and acting in the public's best interest, have caught on. They watched the various lies become obvious, they wore masks and got jabbed then got covid anyway and so did everyone else, and a lot of them have seen the impact of school closures and masking on kids and the impact of cootie-mania on the economy, and they've stopped listening to the Experts(TM) who got it all wrong and started listening to the skeptics.
If told to wear a mask someplace I plan to treat it as a joke - are you kidding? Didn't we learn last time that this DOESN'T WORK? - and if they keep pushing, boycott (with the handful of exceptions noted above).
Re: Some mask reflections
The PMC liberals that I know would grudgingly return to masking if they were asked to or if they felt at high risk of infection - since most of them still believe that masks work - but they've also become more responsive to local indicators like hospitalizations, deaths, severe illness in their own social circles, etc. vs. following the media.
Put simply, I don't think that a rehash of The Great Fearmongering of 2020-21 is possible with this virus at this time, even if it does start killing people at substantially higher rates. From my perspective, if people return to acting really frightened this fall and winter, it will be because they truly have something to fear this time rather than because The Experts told them to Be Very Afraid.
Re: Some mask reflections
Re: Some mask reflections
Rintrah's latest thoughts are interesting I think because he differentiates himself from GVB. He sees a likely slow build of more serious disease due to ongoing infections of different serotypes rather than the 'sudden switch' prediction of GVB:
https://www.rintrah.nl/serotype-evolution-how-dengue-became-so-deadly/
"Rather, I’m expecting that with multiple simultaneously circulating serotypes, we will just see a rapid deterioration of the situation."
He makes a fair case and the rise of the newest BA.2 is a little concerning, albeit not immediately, as in it's current form it's probably not spreading quickly:
https://twitter.com/yunlong_cao/status/1697318194976010446
'1) BA.2.86 is antigenically distinct compared to XBB.1.5.
2) BA.2.86 can significantly escape XBB-infection/vaccination induced antibodies.
3) However, the infectivity of BA.2.86 may be much lower than XBB.1.5 and EG.5.'
This also concerns:
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1697729433917084080
'Real Time August Disability Data from BLS has held on to highs from June. Even more disturbing is Employed Men accelerated in July & Employed Women hit new all time high in August. For some reason the employed rate of change is worse than overall. Any guesses?'