Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 150

[ecosophia]

We are now winding up 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: "Sudden Deaths"

[(Anonymous)]

As I said, I'm willing to believe it has a biological effect, but also social effects. Heavy smokers differ from non-smokers in other environmental factors, which a non-randomized study can never fully correct for, and homeless people have a very different set of risks than most of us. Anyway, I wouldn't start smoking (or vaping or chawing) because I hoped it would protect me from SARS. Someday I might decide that the virus was no longer a threat, so I could stop with the nicotine ... and find that I couldn't. It's like, if you told me that benzos would cut the mortality and morbidity risk from the cooties or any other disease by 90%, I still wouldn't dream of using one. Does addiction create bad karma?

Re: "Sudden Deaths"

[(Anonymous)]

I find it telling that your arguments continually shift the goal posts whenever you are losing the argument based on the previous goal posts. You speak of in vitro studies as being unacceptable to you; so when in vivo studies are instanced, you then shift to RCT as your new standard.

As if happens, however, the studies in Italy and those drawing on the homeless population were indeed a series of randomized controlled trials. So there goes that argument.

You also failed to respond to the argument that it is not nicotine that is addictive but an industrial additive deliberately introduced to increase sales. So pure tobacco, especially the species used by native populations before colonization has no action in common with Valium or whatever other drug you raise the specter of.

To answer your question, however, in my opinion (in no way official or definitive) no, addiction does not create bad karma. Nothing does create bad karma because bad karma does not exist.

However, since you apparently decline to accept the definition of terms that have been set forth as meaningful to me, and choose to overlook facts established by the very methods you claim to honor, there remains no common ground for further discussion. I hope this exchange has been as instructive to others on this forum as if has been to me.

Re: "Sudden Deaths"

[(Anonymous)]

It's odd how many people wig out about tobacco. I don't like the stuff, but the sheer illogic used to attack it is stunning.