Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 193
Apr. 15th, 2025 10:34 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.
Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-16 12:35 pm (UTC)My general impression is that tensions are high. Many sensitive people seem to have quite a lot of challenges with sleep and emotional, mental or fysical health. Last Monday’s MM saw a lot of talk on strange neurological issues showing up. I was too late to chime in, but my own neurological issues have been bad recently. The past 5-6 weeks I basically had a headache every day. Fellow Dutchman Rintrah shared on his blog that he had such severe acute psychosis that he had to be put in an institution. He seems somewhat better now. My sense is that tensions are still rising and that it becomes ever more difficult to solve everyday conflicts in a constructive manner, but my perception could be colored due to my own struggles.
Dutch organization ANWB reported that this year’s ski season has been brutal. Ski accidents were up +20% from last year which already was a high. The conditions were not especially bad, so they couldn’t give an explanation.
I’ve lost interest in closely following excess mortality but still keep a light tab on it. The general trend is that yearly rates are stable at 8-9% excess mortality compared to pre-Covid rates. Last year saw a declining trend in Q1, but Q2 and Q3 saw an increase such that in Q3 the year so far was the deadliest since the start of the Coof. But Q4 saw a lower than usual excess mortality so that at the end of the year the overall mortality was back at the post-Coof average. My reading of the situation is that we are looking at long-term increase of mortality by 8-9% and that the lower mortality in Q4 can be explained by a pull-forward effect from Q2 and Q3.
More interesting is a breakdown of the mortality in age and gender. Statistician Herman Steigstra did just that. He found that most mortality is in the under 60 yrs category and that the eldest ages have no excess mortality at all. Especially women ages 30-50 are hit hard (+20-30%). Excess mortality in the younger age categories doesn’t show any sign of abating, ominously it actually seems to increase.
The Dutch parliament recently discussed excess mortality with the deputy minister for Health Karremans. Out of 150 members of parliament, no less than 3 MP’s engaged on the subject. They were all from coalition parties. The opposition didn’t even bother to attend the meeting. Two proposals were submitted. One asking for investigation of the excess mortality amongst women 30-50 while the other caught the manipulation of the baseline expectation mortality and wanted Karremans to discuss this with health agency RIVM. Karremans rejected the first proposal because “the numbers weren’t coming from scientists” (abject nonsense of course) and made no serious commitment to the second. A few days later the second proposal was accepted by parliament but it’s clear there won’t be any real action coming from it. All in all a very disappointing showing.
The larger point here is that I notice that issues are not being solved any more and that politics and media focus on irrelevant nonsense to give the populace the illusion that they are working at things. Three weeks ago the coalition almost fell and the media and politicians were screaming from the top of their lungs about it. The issue was embarrassingly irrelevant: a minister didn’t want to give 5 people a non-financial award. Seriously, that was all! In the same week it was announced that 5 refineries and 2 chemical plants are going to shut down, but nobody had time for it. Same with the announcement that Tata Steel is going to downsize 1600 jobs. The deindustrialization is gaining speed and nobody in The Hague notices. If I were in a leadership position I would wonder what 800B euro’s investment in weapons is going to do if we don’t have basic industries to produce steel, fuel and chemicals. Maybe we’re gonna fight the Russians with crossbows? The way it’s going my country will resemble Zimbabwe very fast, of course after the obligatory economic crash followed by civil war. It looks like the issues with the vax will go unnoticed. Soon we will have such immense problems that nobody will care.
Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-16 07:11 pm (UTC)But, they're saying it still may be converted to producing a lower grade of steel with different equipment, and that could not be reversed. This would leave them without a domestic supply of the high-quality steel needed for tall buildings and similar things (like maybe warships?). It is easy to suspect that the original purchase was part of a long-term strategy by China to remove that industrial capacity from the U.K.
Also, the Welsh are p*ssed because the blast furnace operated there was allowed to be shut down years ago with no such effort to save it.
Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-16 09:45 pm (UTC)Crazy that the British government let the Chinese have such critical infrastructure as British Steel. They live in an alternate reality where it's still 1995 and the US will always protect us and we grow rich by globalizing all of our capital. And the experts (science) are always right and trustworthy, so no need to think about the wisdom of lockdowns or inquire into the safety of a new vaccine. If you do ask such inappropriate questions you can kiss your career goodbye so only followers of the system will rise to the top.
Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-17 02:59 pm (UTC)Blast furnaces and cement kilns need a rebuild after shutdown as the refractory lining can't tolerate the stresses from expansion/contraction during thermal cycling.
Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-16 11:02 pm (UTC)Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-17 02:22 pm (UTC)Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-17 03:28 pm (UTC)For 2025 there is a strong increase compared to 2024 but unfortunately they don't give the comparable number for 2024 so I can't put a number on it.
Re: Update fron the Netherlands
Date: 2025-04-19 07:24 am (UTC)I'm not, and I haven't noticed the same level of stress around me, but I have friends that live in Amsterdam and they have been quite stressed-out the past few months. So I thought, maybe location has something to do with it?
(For people who don't know the Netherlands: the Randstad is the urban blob in the west of the country that contains, among others, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague)