Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 167

[ecosophia]

We are now in the fourth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary more than three years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health are anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; and the story continues to unfold.

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 and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. 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 wholly owned 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 plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. 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. 

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[ecosophia]

What fascinates me is that the mask cultists are so eager about it. The ones I've seen are practically radiant when they get to wear masks and bully other people into doing the same.

I wondered for a while, since so many of the ones I encountered first are women of a certain age, if it was simply that they got to hide incipient wrinkles that way. Still, that's clearly not the only factor.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps that's a small bonus. The female I encountered was probably in her forties and starting to gray; the men were around the same age. But mostly I think they just get off on pushing other people around (figuratively speaking) and flaunting their "virtuous" behavior. If it was solely about health and safety, then they would be apologetic about inconveniencing their customers, not boastful.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

As you say, "If it was solely about health and safety, then they would be apologetic about inconveniencing their customers, not boastful."

If anyone has the energy to push back on these tyrants, and I hope so, I very much hope so, might I suggest the Peggy Hall religious exemption route. It costs 29 bucks (so it's not for everyone, and I don't take commissions, jaja)-- but the idea is, she sells you a download of a document relevant to your state law regarding masking, then you take that to a notary. (Usually you can get a notary at a UPS mailboxes shop, for example, no big deal.) Keep you notarized document in a plastic sleeve, and present it-- precisely in circumstances such as this one (the bullying maskers in that used bookshop).

From what I have observed, mask bullies will bully with all their usual arguments (we've all heard them), until they get threatened with something with some serious legalese and that suggests that it just might ...uh oh...) have an attorney behind it. Then they'll back down fast. I kind of don't think the owner of a used bookshop is going to want to take on an actual lawsuit..

Again, I have no financial interest in this--I don't know Peggy Hall personally-- make of it what you will:
https://www.thehealthyamerican.org/classes/exemption-doc-publicaccommodations

FYI I myself will be downloading and notarizing a form for my state. And I will carry it with me. What i recall from 2020-2023 is that the mask tyrants oftentimes pop up in unexpected places, and they can be so dreadfully insistent. Back then, my attitude was, it's stupid, it's annoying, but go-along-to-get-along, this will be over soon. But I don't see it that way now. I see it now as very important to push back, and push back hard, and with precision. Not yelling, but having the precise legal vocabulary. They will impose on the sheeple whatever they can get away with, and who knows what medical treatments / procedures / total headaches / perversions they'll come up with next.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I would prefer to not give any business to the insane cult members. I might think twice if I were really hard up and there were no other options, but I would rather just do my shopping elsewhere.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

This post got me thinking. Which, in my personal scheme of things, are the places most important to pushback on when it comes to mask bullying? I think all such businesses are, because they are open to the public, and because they are open to the public in the US that's means that, no, they do not have the legal right to make me put on the mask if I say I have a medical reason not to. I wouldn't want to allow precedent for that in my city.

That said, I wouldn't buy anything, not even a postcard, from that bookstore ever again, as a matter of principle.

And I think I'd be much more into protesting a mask mandate in some place supported by my tax dollars, such as a museum that gets tax payer funding, for example, or any place that sells food.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[kallianeira]

That's a tough call for someone in a little town with only one or two grocery stores and no home delivery option. How much choice do you have? Still, I'm going to get out my mask exemption document from 2022 (which I have never had to use in a shop because by then it was pretty much over) in preparation.

But I did hear from people who had them at the time that they were not always honoured. And when I went back to training at work in September!!!!! 2022 that place was still requiring them and wouldn't broach an exeption even with a legally valid document. You were stuck. Dead right and all that.

- iridescent scintillating elver

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Not the worst idea, although during the height of the scamdemic, I just told people I had a "medical exemption" and that was usually enough (unless I was dealing with the most enthusiastic mask enforcers).

I'm not sure how good the legalese stuff would be right now, since most of the emergency orders and such used to back up mask mandates during the scamdemic proper have since expired. For example, the "State of Iowa Proclamation of Disaster Emergency" order ended at 11:59 p.m. on February 6th, 2021. Although I suppose I could still print out Section 4, subsection G wherein it states: Any person, for whom communication is made difficult while wearing a face covering, is exempt from the face covering mandate.

--Sam

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously, there's an S&M vibe to the masking.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Totally. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these mask bullies utilize face-diapers in the bedroom.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

yes a sexual thrill.

Dominatrix + Karenism + woke fascist + trembling with excitement over another regulation.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

In the spirit of hate being to us what sex was to the Victorians, I do think there's something thrilling and satisfying in being able to push others around. If they comply, you feel in control, if they don't, you get to put them in the "bad people" category, so you can freely loathe and punish them. Maybe that's just the scapegoat phenomenon.

With things breaking down as rapidly as they seem to be, I wouldn't be surprised to see people clinging to fantasies of control and order, even if they are mask-flimsy.

Andy T.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Like being a bouncer at a bar,,,,,,,,FINALLY having mega-Chuck Norris levels of POWER!

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[baconrolypoly]

As a 'woman of a certain age' myself, and knowing other women of similar age, one reason I've heard for being okay with masks is that it means you aren't expected to smile at people. If a woman is masked and quietly going about her business, men can't shout 'Give us a smile, love, it might never happen!' and after decades of hearing such orders to smile from complete strangers, that can very welcome.

Personally, I just avoid anywhere that masks are expected to be worn, not that it seems to be currently a thing in the UK.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[ecosophia]

That seems to be a British habit -- I don't think I've ever heard men in America shout catcalls at women demanding a smile from them. (From my American perspective, it strikes me as a bizarre thing to do, but I know our habits look just as weird to Brits.) Still, I could definitely see that being a reason to mask in Britain...

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

I have had it happen to me a number of times when I was a younger woman, though much more often in the south than while I lived in the midwest. And I remember my grandfather telling my mother to smile (“what do you have to be upset about?”), so in some places I do think smiling is a kind of default and people get a bit unnerved when you don’t. But it’s also been a long time since I’ve experienced it or heard about it from anyone.

I will never forget my first trip outside the US, to England when I was a teenager. An otherwise model-beautiful customs agent greeted us whose smile could have broken a mirror.

Andy T.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed JMG. I spent some of my formative youth in western England and that's how it came across to me.

Jed

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[baconrolypoly]

Thankfully I haven't had demands for smiles for a while, sometimes with hurled insults if I didn't comply, but the memory of them is ingrained forever.

I heard from other women that putting on a mask gave them a level of anonymity that they found to be relieving. In a world where many middle-aged women feel they have demands from all sides to be caring, from their elders, children and grandchildren and beyond, it gets very tiring so putting on a mask is a message to the world that we're not interacting today, thank you very much.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[claire_58]

I'm in favour of using masks subversively. I will remind myself when I see one that there may be many reasons why that person donned a mask.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

believe it or not I've heard burquas (sp?) praised for similar reasoning.

No I'm not reporting live from Kabul.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned - Smile!

[(Anonymous)]

If you were a young woman in the workforce in the 1980s and 90s, the demand from men to smile happened at least once a month in the USA. At LEAST once a month. Unfortunately, most women (like me) did smile because doing otherwise usually had bad consequences. Example: my first job out of college in 1980, I used to have to go to the computer room in the morning and pick up printouts. Those were the days of mainframes where we used punch cards and computer "jobs" ran overnight. I am a total introvert, very shy, was even more so then, but I was reasonably attractive. The guys in the computer room (it was all guys) started treating me like crap and I found out that I was known as the bit*h that refused to smile and flirt with them. I WAS SCARED TO DEATH OF THEM and just wanted to get back to my desk and look at my printouts. I have lots and lots of stories of appalling harassments from working in the tech industry in the 1980s and 1990s -- like the guy who told me I had "hitched my tail to the wrong loser" because a rumor went around I was having an affair with my married boss. He followed that comment up with a proposition. I wasn't sleeping with my boss and didn't with him either, and ended up finding a new job. My experience is not in any way unique. Just one of hundreds (thousands?) of examples from my 40+ year career. Men regularly would tell me to smile in the hallways. And I wasn't beautiful, voluptuous, or wearing slutty clothes -- I was just young and reasonably attractive in a very male dominated environment. I would have loved to respond "frack you," but... consequences.

I am a lot older these days and men aren't going to tell me to smile anymore, but I haven't heard that it has happened to any of my three daughters either. Things have changed. The difference in the dynamics at work between men and women now and say, 20 years ago, is stark. Men literally tiptoe around women in every way shape and form these days because they are one misunderstood comment away from a complaint to HR, which will absolutely cost them their job. Also any misunderstood comment to gay employees and most especially to transgender employees will cost them their job. In a way, I think this has gone way too far, but in another way, I put up with a lot of sh*t and it is nice for my daughters not to have to put up with it.

What happened to me when we stared wearing masks during COVID is that I quit wearing makeup. Makeup and masks don't mix. I never wore very much, ever, but as a woman who grew up in the South last century, well, I was taught to wear a little, at least. Early in Covid, I did wear masks when asked and quit wearing any makeup. I will never wear a mask again, no matter who asks. And I'll never wear makeup again either...Hurrah!

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned - Smile!

[(Anonymous)]

I did hear praise for masks from women who felt tired of wearing makeup. And then it seems that makeup sales surged during the pandemic, maybe from a forbidden feeling, or just looking for an outlet for pent-up energy? The worst of my spending habits reared their heads during the lockdowns, and I’m positive it was from frustration and loneliness, and trying to manifest a certain future by shopping for it (didn’t work). I spent a lot of time in the influencer/online makeup culture space up until a few years ago. I don’t miss it.

The tiptoeing around lgbt issues is a part of my daily job at a small residential mental health service. To me, there is a very similar feeling to the attitude around masking, very much a 'letter of the law trumps the spirit of the law' kind of attitude. I try to live and let live, I like to have a broad range of presentations myself (hence my nickname), but whoo, get the nomenclature wrong, miss a pronoun, and you hear the astral crack of the whip, and must perform your social penance. (It also unnerves me that I can wear all the pagan symbols I want, but my Christian coworkers are afraid to wear crosses and fish…) Unfortunately, although many people I love belong to it, that particular denomination of the religion of progress is one I privately struggle with.

One thing that gives me hope though: even my most hard-line client in that camp, who has what I think are legitimate symptoms of long covid, has given up on the masks and seems to see them as a farce. When covid spread through our company in August, there was a palpable wave of relief when we reached the critical mass of realizing no one cared.

Andy T.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

My family is like this. I think I know part of why it's happening The mask thing is an outlet for a profound emotional need: the need to call people out for hurting others. Most people also judge other cultures. Our upper class prides itself on not judging other cultures, which has some weird results. If you know what you are doing, you can get members of this class to defend all kinds of atrocities, because they cannot allow themselves to judge another culture for anything.

They are surrounded by a host of barbaric practices (and many which most people shrug about, but the upper classes get weird about, such as eating dairy products), especially once you rise high enough to see the outer circles of real power, and are regularly defending the most atrocious actions other human beings can do as "cultural differences", or necessary evils to fight Russia or the like. Getting caught judging any other culture, or the actions of the powerful, will cost them their perks and privileges, and they know it.

The mask thing gives them an excuse to attack another human being for "bad behavior", and they need it. They know lots of people regularly do things that put others at risk, or outright causes severe harm to another human being, but they are forced to pretend this kind of behavior is fine, even laudable, when it really is not, and they know it is not. Give any excuse to call someone out for putting others at risk and selfish actions, and they will take it.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting observations!

Could be a movie:

THE SPOKES ON THE WHEEL OF WOKE.
This time it's personal.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

I simply can't imagine the amount of mental gymnastics necessary for them to think and behave the way they do. I mean, what about their "emotional need" to tell the truth? I for one would go insane trying to rationalize all the nonsense they ostensibly believe. And I wouldn't derive any pleasure from scapegoating other people. I suppose there is something to the idea that the highly educated classes are better equipped to resolve such cognitive dissonance. You have to be really smart to be that dumb.

Re: Mask Mandates Have Returned

[(Anonymous)]

First, I genuinely hope that you never find yourself in a position in which you have the option to contort yourself into insane shapes to try to cling to things you genuinely think you need in order to have a decent life. Far too few human beings are able to withstand such pressures with any kind of grace and dignity, and the majority of us fold into it. Yes, it requires an insane amount of mental gymnastics.

Keep in mind as well that these are people who are genuinely, truly convinced that truth is nothing more than what the powerful claim it is. They implicitly accept the post-modernist view that truth does not exist, it is unknowable, and so everything that anyone ever claims to believe in is nothing more than a claim to power. Any attempt to claim something as true is nothing more than "I have enough power to make you act as if this thing is true".

There is no disconnect, because there is no way to ever tell the truth in this worldview....