Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 184
Feb. 11th, 2025 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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; 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.
6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.
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.
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-12 03:43 am (UTC)The history of medical organization, education, and so on is interesting, and well-studied. Suffice it to say that, in the 19th century (and before), medical practice in the US was pretty unrestricted, unstandardized, untrained and at the best unreliable. For various reasons, there was a reform movement, part of which was an opposition to "quackery" (which began with movements against eg lye in medicines, or frequently lethal remedies), part of which was a reform of medical education, and part of which was certification of medical providers. And elimination of rivals. Again seriously but not literally, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
(A good, brief survey of much of this can be found in a couple of chapters of Randall Collins' The Credential Society.)
However, the key is this. No matter how sensible regulations may be in principle, they are a two-edged weapon. Once they are in place, they can be used by any number of people, who can put them to any number of uses, or abuses. One of these is to shut people up (or down, or out). Even a reasonable code of conduct, or statement of ethical principles, can be put to factional purposes. Once such a regulatory train has left the station, it can be very hard to turn around. People who are targeted by such complaints can be put to a great deal of trouble, and expense, to defend themselves, even against absurd charges. "The process is the punishment."
It's a matter of basic risk management to try to reduce one's vulnerability to attacks from ill-wishers. This is especially true for vulnerabilities that are marginal, or irrelevant, to what one is trying to do.
LeGrand
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-12 04:02 pm (UTC)When I got home, she told me what had happened and said that she was pretty sure that it was a deliberate attempt to get her to break the law. We discussed it, and came to the conclusion that threatening her with prison would have been a cheap way to blackmail me into going along with the incoming party line -- "forget about peak oil, climate change is all that matters now" -- in my public posts. At that same time I was fielding a fair amount of pressure along those same lines from other sources...and when I didn't buckle, all of a sudden I was no longer doing paid speaking gigs in the green circuit, hobnobbing with the big names in the field and the occasional congresscritter. I didn't (and don't) mind -- but it was an interesting brush with the realities of power and influence in today's America.
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-12 05:02 pm (UTC)Do you ever consider banging the Peak Oil drum again at least once in a while? I know you felt that you said everything you wanted to say, but by this point a new generation could really use hearing it, too. Yours was always the voice on the matter I consistently found most sensible-- I showed up at a time that all the magic and mysticism stuff was mostly on the back burner, so by the time "Blood of the Earth" hit you already had enough cred with me to start at least considering the merits of the other stuff.
Also now that "drill baby drill", as well as "build nuclear build" seem to be the energy mantras of Trump 2.0, I'd love to get your Peak Oil OG perspective in a long form essay or seven. Maybe just me :-)
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-12 06:07 pm (UTC)In the meantime, I hope to address the ongoing decline of industrial society from other angles, and be prepared to circle back around to resource depletion when its chance of being heard exceeds that of a mild fart in a cat-6 hurricane.
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-12 06:18 pm (UTC)Ok then, perhaps I'll try again in a few more years...
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-13 01:22 am (UTC)-Bofur
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-13 05:30 am (UTC)Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-13 04:58 pm (UTC)Unfortunately that particular law is intended to defend a monopoly.
Re: Covid and medical advice
Date: 2025-02-16 03:13 pm (UTC)Everything else is just noise or the quacks objecting to being outed.