Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 194

[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. 

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. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I often deal with PMC people. They are trained in a system of extreme division of labor. That means you may be an expert, and sometimes the only expert in the whole world, to treat the middle finger of the left hand. However, if someone asks questions about the middle finger of right hand or, god forbid, thumb or toe, you are clueless. You are expected to refer him to another expert.

How do these ultra-specialized "experts" verify information about anything else? For something to be considered valid by them, it has to come from an expert in another narrow field. So, for virology, they only trust virologists from some big name institution. In fact, they may prefer to go to SARS-corona-virologists, because how can someone studying AIDS virus also be an expert in SARS-coronavirus? That is their mindset, and I am talking about university professors, not small fries.

Then they take the same logic to the next level. For news to be valid, the articles have to come from the "experts" of news, which usually means NY Times. How can a blog or website tell them anything about any topic? When I talk to them, I see them verify all kinds of information by searching at NY Times and making sure the newspaper agrees.

All kinds of logic fail on them. They appear rational on the surface, but probe deeper and you find extreme irrationality because of their expertise and information verification system.

[(Anonymous)]

Moreover, respecting and deferring to the expertise of those in other narrow fields reinforces the validity their own claim to be deferred to in their tightly-defined field.

I know medics who deferred without question to the experts in Public Health.

[coyote_girl]

I heard it the called the silo effect decades ago. It happens in large organizations, government or corporate. It seems to be the natural outcome of any large human organization where centralized control is attempted. Eventually it becomes too dis-functional and inefficient and will collapse under its own weight. Think the Soviet Union.

In nature it is self organizing like in hives, flocks, and swarms. That is called murmuration. When it is centralized and micro managed it is called the Dunning-Kreuger effect.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Anonymous— I too deal often with PMC people. My family, for the most part, and most of my colleagues. Most of my friends, too. (I've been avoiding a lot of old friends... I don't know how many of these relationships are going to survive much longer.) So I am very familiar with their attitudes about experts. Many continue to read the NYT as an oracle of truth. With one exception that I am aware of, all have happily taken several covid jabs in 2021-2023.

I agree with you, that their narrow focus and information verifiction system is flawed. And those flaws have actually led to some of them getting themselves killed.

The biggest lesson for me in this whole covid catastrophe has been to trust my own judgement, and most especially, to trust my own intuition. Fortunately for me learning to trust my own judgement and my own intuition (and to know the difference) was a lesson I had already learned some years ago, so this was less a lesson really than a "refresher." I got through it very well; still, it's not like everything with me is hunkydory. I find this irrationality in the people around me continually disorienting. And, I would say, dispiriting. This forum has been a saving grace for me.

SDPM

[adara9]

"information verifiction system": lol! I'm guessing "verifiction" was a typo, but I'm choosing to read it as a portmanteau of "verifying fiction".

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the NY Times seems to be what Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. (At least for the PMC crowd I used to hang out with.)

Just today, I got a few belly laughs from reading Matt Taibbi's mockery of David Brooks ("priest of the elites") for calling for a mass movement to oppose Trump. And then, later today,when casually taking the temperature of a local TDS-infested list-serve, someone quoted the same article glowingly, without a trace of irony.

Thanks to JMG, this makes perfect sense to me now-- any self-described expert is massively threatened by Trump's rejection of standard "expert" opinion.

*Ochre Harebrained Curmudgeon*

[(Anonymous)]

*OHC*— What I'm hearing (I try not to laugh) from the PMCs in my world (who assume I agree with them because, in their way of thinking, there is no other way of thinking), is that Trump and his followers will lose bigly in the midterm elections because "the whole country is going is rise up against Trump because he is Literally Hitler."

So, they are very confused about what's happening and why. I can't say I have all the answers, either, but I don't think I'm quite as lost as they are, still believing their doctors (who are baffled) and reading the NYT.

My local pharmacy is still advertising walk-in covid vaxxes. I don't think there are many takers, however.

SDPM

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly, SDPM. Because all good, intelligent people, aka NYT readers, think the same way. And what has the NYT ever been mistaken about, after all?

*(Well... they might not go so far as to ask that question.)

*Ochre Harebrained Curmudgeon*

This derangement is not new in history

[the_arcane_archivist]

As I talked before my PKD divinatory model we are now until December of 2027 in the Roman equivalent of Severus Alexander the last emperor before the 3rd century crisis the crisis that almost ended the Roman Empire. Thus this time of Trump until the December of 2027 as bad as it may get with inflation and economic crisis, will be the best time in the next almost 30 years, Because many don't know what those Roman times looked like, I am quoting here from the excellent reading of Edward Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, my notes in square brackets, but I recommend reading the whole chapters to make an idea what the next 2 and half year would entail:

https://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume1/chap6.htm

The lenity of the emperor confirmed the insolence of the troops; the legions imitated the example of the guards, and defended their prerogative of licentiousness with the same furious obstinacy. The administration of Alexander was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of his age. In Illyricum, in Mauritania, in Armenia, in Mesopotamia, in Germany, fresh mutinies perpetually broke out; his officers were murdered, his authority was insulted, and his life at last sacrificed to the fierce discontents of the army. (76) Firmness of the emperor, One particular fact well deserves to be recorded, as it illustrates the manners of the troops, and exhibits a singular instance of their return to a sense of duty and obedience. Whilst the emperor lay at Antioch, in his Persian expedition, the particulars of which we shall hereafter relate, the punishment of some soldiers, who had been discovered in the baths of women, excited a sedition in the legion to which they belonged. Alexander ascended his tribunal, and with a modest firmness represented to the armed multitude the absolute necessity as well as his inflexible resolution of correcting the vices introduced by his impure predecessor, and of maintaining the discipline, which could not be relaxed without the ruin of the Roman name and empire.


[...]
[my note: the failure to completely purge Elagabalus’ cronies (Biden Admin), but the financial corruption that persists even in the emperor's quarters]

Notwithstanding this act of jealous cruelty, as well as some instances of avarice, with which Mamaea is charged, the general tenor of her administration was equally for the benefit of her son and of the empire. With the approbation of the senate, she chose sixteen of the wisest and most virtuous senators, as a perpetual council of state, before whom every public business of moment was debated and determined. The celebrated Ulpian, equally distinguished by his knowledge of, and his respect for, the laws of Rome, was at their head; and the prudent firmness of this aristocracy restored order and authority to the government. As soon as they had purged the city from foreign superstition and luxury, the remains of the capricious tyranny of Elagabalus, they applied themselves to remove his worthless creatures from every department of public administration, and to supply their places with men of virtue and ability. Learning, and the love of justice, became the only recommendations for civil offices; valour, and the love of discipline, the only qualifications for military employments.(68)

[...]

Their praefect, the wise Ulpian, was the friend of the laws and of the people; he was considered as the enemy of the soldiers, and to his pernicious counsels every scheme of reformation was imputed. Some trifling accident blew up their discontent into a furious mutiny; and a civil war raged, during three days, in Rome, whilst the life of that excellent minister was defended by the grateful people. Terrified, at length, by the sight of some houses in flames, and by the threats of a general conflagration, the people yielded with a sigh, and left the virtuous, but unfortunate, Ulpian to his fate. He was pursued into the Imperial palace, and massacred at the feet of his master, who vainly strove to cover him with the purple, and to obtain his pardon from the inexorable soldiers. Such was the deplorable weakness of government, that the emperor was unable to revenge his murdered friend and his insulted dignity, without stooping to the arts of patience and dissimulation.

Timewise in the Roman Empire model, Biden Admin has been both Caracalla and Elegabalus reigns, which are amongst the most vile tyrannies in the Roman history.

Re: This derangement is not new in history

[ecosophia]

Archivist, could you please do all of your corrections at once, rather than posting one at a time? I just had to review each of the five corrections you made to this comment individually...

Re: This derangement is not new in history

[ecosophia]

Excuse me -- all seven of them. Two more were waiting when I went back to the inbox. :-(

Re: This derangement is not new in history

[the_arcane_archivist]

Oh I am so, so, sorry, I didn't know this is how it works I thought DW presents you just the latest one...

I apologize and thank you for your patience.

[(Anonymous)]

It's because it is, at base a belief system, and the people you are talking about are simply devout believers.

To get ahead in the PMC world, you have to conform. You need to give the Right Answers starting in elementary school, and keep giving them your whole life. Some people may be able to fake it, but for most, they simply internalize a belief system centered around the Religion of Progress, the near-infallibility of Science, Academia, and Experts, and the entire PMC world view of what is good/bad, true/false, etc. The system ruthlessly selects for conformity and a willingness to internalize a set of fundamental beliefs about how the world works.

It has long been thus, but covid really turned the screws on the belief system, if you know what I mean. It was so absurd that a small number of people who were part of the belief system - and a lot more who were sort of on the edges and hadn't really thought about it much - suddenly realized just how absurd it was. Meanwhile, the True Believers doubled down on the belief system in the face of its failure (a common response among the very religious, apparently, there were studies on cults related to failed prophecies that seemed to demonstrate as much), and continue to rabidly defend their faith. Which is what it is - blind faith. That's why logic, data, evidence, reason, real world experience, etc., have no impact on it.

IMO, if you can step back and see it for the faith-based system it is, and the indoctrinated true believers for the devout cultists they are (remember, their ability to make sense of the world and their whole lives hangs on this belief system), then it's easier to understand and easier to deal with.

[charlieobert]

You helped me see something here.

I saw a cartoon out on FB - a man talking to a teen girl on a cellphone.

He - What are you upset about now?

She - (checks phone) They haven't told me yet.

I think a lot of people have an absolute terror of thinking for themselves and having to make up their own minds, and then be responsible for their choice. It is a step many are not ready to take.

We've had discussions here and on Magic Monday about how most people don't think but just react. It seems to me that one of the first and most important steps toward thinking is being willing to have your own thoughts and opinions. I suspect that the terror of being responsible for what you think and choose is a Guardian at the Threshold that keeps many stuck in the reactive loop.