Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 109

[ecosophia]

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.

Comments

Re: Thank you

[thinking_turtle]

When you say find, you probably mean asking a search engine. Search engines have incentives to steer you in a certain direction.

One of those incentives is in terms of payment. Given that you're not paying the search engine, who is? Perhaps it's advertisers, or perhaps they're selling data.

Another incentive is good relations with the government. When the Ukraine war started the EU decided to block rt.com, a news website run by the Russian government. All search engines blocked rt.com within a day. That showed a surprisingly fast process for blocking unwanted content. If any search engine objected I have not heard about it.

I like the metaphor from the Wizard of Oz. A search engine is a pair of green glasses.

Re: Thank you

[methylethyl]

I'm certain the commercial aspect has something to do with it. At some point, the search engines had to be profitable.

And to be fair, the same thing seems to have happened with other fairly benign-seeming freewheeling forums on subjects as diverse as the care and styling of long hair, and the small-scale raising of poultry. It's really hard to find the good forums anymore. The search engines only want to give you the bland corporate mush websites where there is no discussion going on. Just experts telling you the prepackaged "correct" answer to some question other than the one you're asking. It's like being stuck in a telephone tree where none of the options are what you need, and there's no "speak to a representative" button.

On the other hand... you'd think there'd be *some* way for enabling person-to-person discussions that aren't limited to telegraphy numbers of characters to be profitable. The demand exists. On some level, somewhere, I don't think it's accidental that regular sharing-of-information between ordinary people is being squelched in favor of top-down message-from-on-high stuff, while at the same time the natural human tendency to gather and talk face to face is being slowly smothered in favor of electronic communication. It feels malicious and anti-human.