Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 134

[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: Defecting Nonconformists

[(Anonymous)]

"I knew people who decades ago would tell you all about the corruption of the medical industry, how the public commons had been demolished in favor of vulgar consumerism, how bottled water was the biggest scam ever, and looked at any "respectable" institution with a jaundiced eye who transformed into Covidian cultists overnight. A lot of them weren't on the Trump derangement train either. They weathered a wide range of other absurdities but the pandemic broke them."

I noticed the same thing.

One possibility I've been pondering is that germaphobia, in the loosest sense of the word, is more prevalent and powerful than I realized. It's like there was just something about the threat of disease, of infection and sickness, that was able to shut down their critical thinking skills in a way that other threats didn't.

I remember talking to a member of the PMC who was on the left (had been a big Sanders supporter) and who didn't succumb to TDS (in fact, I think he rather prided himself on "understanding" that Trump support was due largely to economic factors and made logical sense), but who was convinced that Cooties-19 was a big threat. I remember saying "just look at the CDC's own data!" and pointing out that the infection fatality rate for someone our age was very low, only 1 in X number. He basically said that the number I was using meant that he had a 1 in X chance of dying, which was actually high, and I was like, one, that's not that high, you're statistically more likely to die in a car crash or drown, and two, that number includes people your age who are sick with other things, people with cancer, auto-immune conditions, obesity, diabetes, people who are malnourished, people with mental health and substance abuse problems - those are the "1 in X number" who might wind up dying of a respiratory virus. You have literally none of those things, what on EARTH are you worried about? But that's the thing - he was scared. For some reason, fear of infection shut down critical-thinking and threat-assessment skills in a way other things didn't. We looked at the same CDC numbers (we're in the same age group), and I was like "whew, that's nothing; even if you didn't know the numbers were inflated and took them at face value, statistically this disease is only picking off the very oldest and sickest, I'm more likely to die in a car crash, there's nothing to fear from this virus!" while he looked at the numbers and went "OMG, I have a 1 in X chance of dying!!" and was frightened by it.

He wasn't the only one like that, either. It's really strange.