“Died suddenly” would not possess memetic traction were excess deaths not running way above ten percent, and those deaths not attributable to COVID.
It’s the context of high profile on-air collapses and demises within the post-pandemic statistical reality that provides teeth to the speculation about the Pfizer and Moderna products’ adverse effects.
If there were stats but no anecdotes, or anecdotes but no stats, then there’d be reason for corrosive skepticism about either. But we find them together, and must deal with them as bolstering each other; skepticism means you should apply some of your cultivated dubiety against the medical protocols rushed through by Trump and foisted upon the world.
From the first rumblings of a vaccine to combat “the virus” I was skeptical. It’s not merely that I am skeptical of Big Government/Big Business relations, and that Big Pharma companies have really bad track records, and that the whole of the medical establishment has been on the wrong road for a long time — witness the ill health of the majority of Americans. It was not just that. It was that early on we learned of the spiked proteins, and that they were themselves dangerous to our health, and that the Big Pharma companies were producing vaccines that instructed recipients’ bodies to produce spiked proteins to induce an immune response. But those spiked proteins were themselves harmful, so why focus on spiked proteins? It seemed nuts to me. Dangerous.
But then, the whole thing seemed nuts to me. I had thought that established medical opinion was against introducing vaccination into an epidemic. I also looked at the basic risk factors, which could be mapped on several vectors, and thought: getting the whole world to accept a new gene-therapeutic medicine without proper study was to risk Flipper Baby results. It risked mass extinction, even. Via adverse effects ranging from cardiovascular disease to sterility. It’s as if the whole argument for proper testing of drugs was thrown over by elites and the masses at the same time in their panic over a new disease which they themselves felt more comfortable panicking about than studying.
And my fellow libertarians were, in the main, worse than no help. Accepting their own ignorance of the specifics, they forgot to apply skepticism about the distribution of knowledge and all their learned theories about government’s pernicious influence and swallowed, instead, the typical progressive’s gullible trust in The Experts.
But now the evidence is becoming clear beyond the attention of us stock skeptics:
In the summer of 2020, I was at the local Dollar General and the county commissioner I had voted for was there, wearing a mask like I was. I complained about the stupidity of the masks. I mentioned that they did not work as touted. He immediately responded with the need to “hold the course” . . . until (get this) “a vaccine can be rolled out.”
I looked at him as if he were a crazy man. But he was not. Is not. He is just someone who believes what the experts tell him, and he lacked the courage to doubt and inquire and resist folly farded up like a lipsticked pig.
I did not vote for his re-election.
We got the vaccines, and the mask mandates eventually came down. And I blocked a few “friends” on Facebook who were praising lockdown measures. Now, how long will we endure deaths due to myocarditis and other heart-related and clot-related diseases, obviously induced by the mRNA treatments, and just as obviously ignored by the people who think they are smart. But who do not possess any horse sense whatsoever. The kind of people who will be easily led to their slaughter, or accept the slaughter of millions of others.
It’s always been “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” for (say some) there never was and never will be a real vaccine against these coronaviruses.
The fact (now established) that the pharmaceutical companies did not study their products’ capacity to reduce transmission, and the fact (now established) that the “vaccines” do not effectively reduce transmission to a significant degree (in most areas, it is the vaccinated who are getting and transmitting the virus), that means these pharmaceutical products fail at the one thing people really want in a vaccine: stopping an epidemic.
Now, the vaccines have accomplished one thing: a redefinition of what a vaccine is. We rubes always thought the goal was to stop infections, to bring down rates of transmissability to make the disease in question a rare and not a common event. But we were wrong. We were focusing on the major successes of vaccines, not the nature of all vaccines. One does not take a rabies vaccine to prevent getting rabies: such infections are rare events. One takes a rabies injection so that one survives infection.
You will occasionally encounter a knowledgeable person who will you instruct you on this (in haughty tones; typical for modern argumentation). And one’s proper response should be, at first, “oh, yeah: you’re right.” But then one should interrogate old epidemiological protocols which warn against pushing vaccines during epidemics. The time to push preventative vaccination is during lull periods. Ask your haughty friends about that. Better yet, ask an expert.
What happened this time around was that government-certified and -subsidized experts pushed an ameliorative* vaccine in a time of a pandemic, and did so within the context of a psychological operation (that is, an ad campaign) touting its expected ability not to ameliorate symptoms and disastrous consequences (cytocine storm; death) but to stop the spread of infections.
Other things were also done to stop the spread: mandates for mask-wearing, lockdowns and general “social distancing.”
The upshot of these latter has been shown to be ineffective.
It is more controversial to say the vaccines have been ineffective. And it is still ultra-controversial to question the “side-effects” of the two primary vaccine types, both of which focused on the infamous “spiked protein,” and which some of us have been warning about from the beginning: that this specific protein may be dangerous in and of itself, and using it to elicit some “immune” response is a very dangerous thing.
It is also, somehow, still controversial to bring up many other related topics, like noting that immune responses are themselves dangerous (since that is what a cytokine storm is) or that natural immunity is an effective and important element in fighting off even new diseases or that some cures can be worse than the disease they aim to cure.
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As in a realswamp, The Swamp’s predators don’t all work together; unlike in a real swamp, it’s filled with packs that do work together: no One Over-arching Conspiracy, but a myriad conspiracies that often fit together. They are united, in the main, to keep The Swamp undrained.
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The essence of the State is the transfer of wealth from some to others, under the banner of serving all, but with the insiders always taking the house cut. It is easy to understand in theory. But in practice?
A month ago I met a Russian-Ukrainian American at the beach, and we chatted. He’d been told about FTX, the cryptocurrency. He was under the impression that it was legit. The next big thing, it was touted to him, designed to provide a backbone to a new world financial system.
It now proves to have been a way for its creators to ponzi up a huge fortune, and for Democrats to launder money from subsidized Ukraine to pay for the 2022 mid-terms. It is quite the scandal. It’s in the news.
And Democrats will use its implosion to “regulate crypto,” which will get for them even more power.
The sheer corrupt evil that is the Democratic Party apparently knows no bounds.
As for future monetary innovation, I am only interested in cash. I would prefer it to be based upon — or better yet consisting of — gold and silver. That is what Outside Money should be. I just don’t see blockchain performing a decent function as store of value, much for less mechanism of trade. I think the U.S. should establish a standard, and then allow businesses to mint coins with one side being an advertisement, the obverse being the guarantor agency (U.S. Mint, to begin with).
Forget crypto. It was a nifty idea, but it is has several huge defects.
And the Democratic Party Machine must die.
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I’ve never really been a conservative, and my heresies and apostasy are not in doubt. But I’ve never not “believed” in The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
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Jack Gaughan, artist cover illustration for Jack Vance’s The Brains of Earth. 1966, Ace Books.
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* I use “ameliorative” not because that’s the common medical term of art, the common adjective for this function, but because it’s such a good word . . . that I’d not used in decades.
To repeat a suspicion first aired by me in 2020: the reason we have had as many COVID deaths as we did (and they may not be as many as the America’s official tallies say) is that government, media and the pharmaceutical industry suppressed discussion and implementation of traditional and seat-of-pants therapeutics and standard emergency doctoring in order to legally allow for the fast-tracking of “vaccines” that did not work as billed.
In addition to blaming Fauci and Birx and the above-mentioned culprit institutions, the chief focus of blame must go to Wanna-Be Messiah Donald J. Trump, and then to his most ardent haters, the mobs of Trump-hating Democrats, and their elitist pol whip-masters, who found a way to leverage the pandemic over-reaction into a clever swamping of the electoral system to install a demented old nabob pervert into the White House.
The perfidy here is tremendous, and I blame them all. The charge is mass murder, perhaps genocide. And culpability accrues to Biden voters as well, perhaps, to future Trump voters.
A lot of people have a lot of soul-searching to do.
I mentioned it at the time, but it bears repeating: the whole “flatten the curve” program was conceived as national, while the pandemic was regional and seasonal. It was all about saving the hospitals from overuse by COVID patients. That was the rationale. Do voters remember this rationale, this excuse?
Most areas shut down had insignificant amounts of infection, and were NOT clogging their hospitals. In April 2020, I took a friend to the hospital. It was nearly empty. The stressor on the hospitals in the Pacific Northwest was not COVID but the lockdown. The hospital staff was even mumbling about lack of revenue in the hospital, with an undercurrent of worry for the people who [they thought, not implausibly] needed treatment.
The whole thing was crazy. Yet Americans went along with it, like dutiful sheep willing to be fleeced or slaughtered, and as many states’ governors forced the lockdowns to go on for month after month, fearing (apparently) breakouts of the disease in their states, and that they would be blamed for them if they did not extend lockdowns. And then, by huge clicks of the memetic ratchet, the issue became partisan! What a gloriously ridiculous clustermuck.
The damage done to the spirits and health of the people is still incalculable. Yet my state’s idiot governor was voted in for another term.
The explicit case for lockdowns only made sense in certain regions. National lockdowns never made sense. Federation-wide lockdowns made no sense. And while it is easy to blame the several states, the whole horrid exercise was initiated by Trump and his team of “experts.”
In the “national” capital.
twv
Addendum: Of course, there are still partisans of lockdowns and mask mandates here in the West. These people are, as near as I can tell, just letting out their inner Mao.
There have been four varieties of “vaccines” devised for dealing with the 2020-x pandemic. Curiously, on the Mayo Clinic “Different Types of” page, only three are mentioned.
The four:
1. the most famous and heavily pushed mRNA variety associated with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna;
2. the adenovirus vector virus agents associated with Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Russia’s Sputnik V;
3. the subunit vaccine delivered by the Novavax COVID-19 used in Japan, Australia and Canada; and then there is
4. the most traditional of all, the whole inactivated vaccine as developed in two forms by China.
Though most of the world has come to its senses and put the insane lockdowns to a halt (at least for the time being), China has continued them, with totalitarian rigor and socialistic incompetence. Curiously, China has not imported any vaccines, sticking with its old-fashioned variety and forswearing the fixation on the spiked protein feature that American vaccine manufacturers are so enthusiastic about.
Do the makers of SARS-Cov-2 know something? Or is it another Han-handed flub?
I’ve no great reason to prefer one theory over the other. But, as always, the state of the debate in the West is absurdly stupid. Most people are unaware of the different types of concoctions called “vaccines.” To ask a normal person to explain the differences would be to like asking a neocon what the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam are.
But there are sources on pandemic policy with honest presentation and some degree of reliability. Dr. John Campbell’s video updates are worth regular consult, for example.
A study of actual infection/death rates prior to the introduction of any of the vaccines was synopsized by Dr. Campbell, recently:
The initial analyses of the epidemic were much more dire than these results: the Wuhan flu was not as deadly as feared, though it was indeed deadly. Dr. Campbell calls attention to three things not covered in the study:
the subsequent vaccine effects
results of prior infections (natural immunity)
evolution of variants
But I am very disappointed that the doctor does not mention a fourth factor: the suppression of normal emergency medical practice and the complementary reliance upon the vaccine rollout, and, more generally, doctors’ and politicians’ reliance upon centralized control of medical information.
I hazard that one reason for the devastation of COVID, especially in the U.S., was the government response regarding the use of vitamin and anti-bacterials and anti-fungals and anti-viral medicines. I go far on this: Fauci and the CDC are mass murderers. And they did what they did for money. Key to the successful implementation of this plot was the cowardice of our leaders, and our population.
But perhaps I overstate. Maybe it was all folly, no perfidy. Even so, the suppression of early treatments, and the active political-media suppression of alternative treatments, HCQ and Ivermectin most infamously, contributed to the deaths of millions.
It’s hard to forgive fools for this; impossible to forgive knaves.
While we chortle watching Democratic insiders scramble to pretend that
there is no recession,
inflation is no big deal,
their goofy tax increase package (complete with IRS-agent/audit-increase measures) will decrease inflation (it won’t), or
jabbing infants with COVID “vaccines” is a good idea,
it’s not so funny when we comprehend that the Republican response is led by
Trump.
While I’m not now nor have ever been a NeverTrumper, my huzzahs for the former president are severely muted.
Why? Well, Trump is almost as much to blame as Biden & Co. for the current fiasco. His last year in office was a disaster.
While watching a terrific report on the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory, it became clear to me from Trump’s own mouth just how in-over-his-head he was in 2020.
Yet Donald Trump still defends Operation Warp Speed and the vaccine roll-out. He glories in it.
What he doesn’t seem to realize that it was the vaxx that allowed for the governors — and world governments — to inflict lockdowns for months and even years longer than made any sense (much less that they had any right to inflict them).
It was the lockdowns that led to the bailouts that led to the money supply increases coincident with supply reductions that led to the current stagflationary morass.
Biden cannot blame Trump, though, and indeed isn’t blaming Trump — for he wants to do more of the same that got us into our fix.
But as horrible as Biden is, it was Trump who signed the bailout checks — not only to individuals but also to major corporations — and it was Trump’s pushing Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx up into daily prominence that allowed the contagion of mask mandates, lockdowns, and bad therapeutics to rule while we all “waited” for the vaccines.
And it is Trump who is marshaling the forces against the egregious Democrats.
This does not bode well.
But, again, it is hard to lambaste Trump to the exclusion of the Democrats, with their unhinged fixation on the January 6th mini-riot leading them to their seemingly insane belief that they have something on the man, to prevent him from running again. The FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence better be something more than what it looks like, a witless fishing expedition. For only the Democrats could make a Trump 2024 run look like a good idea.
That’s American politics today: there is no “bipartisan” loyalty in opposition any longer. Each side breeds its Nemesis, and suffers for it . . . while feeling, somehow, class-righteous.
The self-fulfilling prophecy often rests on a more basic trap: the self-reinforcing policy.
You support a policy because you are alarmed at how awful x is, so you support policy A, which you say fights x. But policy A increases x. So when x increases, you double down on policy A. Demand more measures of an A-ish nature, and continued support of policy A. Because x!
This makes you a fool, of course, but most of us are fools about something, and it is impolite to call each other foolish, since there never would be an end to it. So, in politics, folly increases.
Here are some examples:
1. Low-skilled worker unemployment is bad, since it leads to crime, drug-use, family breakdown, and, of course, more unemployment. So, policy A: Raise the legal minimum wage rate! This of course increases unemployment, as economists have explained for two hundred years, requiring more state aid. But most people don’t listen to economists except when economists back up their prejudices. And since state aid is obviously designed to help the afflicted, we are not unreasonably distracted from noticing that policy A is responsible. Now focused entirely on intentions, not on means or results, when someone like me suggests getting rid of A, oh, the outcry! Raise A instead! This ensures more unemployment, more state aid, and a great deal of Pharisaic posturing. Forever and ever amen.
2. Terrorism is bad. Terrorists often come from foreign lands. So policy A: ‘let’s fight terrorists over there, not here!’ But bombing innocent weddings and children and the like in the War on Terror increases resentments that lead to terrorism here and elsewhere in the First World. But terrorism spurs resentment here as well, thus increasing support for policy A, the War on Terror. Which ramps up the violence, and. . . .
3. The latest contagion is bad. Undoubtedly. The standard way to deal with this is to quarantine the infected, isolate the at-risk population, and let the healthy part of the population get infected and handle the disease with their immune systems, and then build up herd immunity. But that is not a very woke way of doing things, so a new policy, let’s call it . . . A . . . would isolate the healthy population. Now, that is taking x seriously! Of course, we are now on a new course, and we aren’t concentrating on the at-risk populations, like those in nursing homes, and are even sending those who should be quarantined into nursing homes, leading to alarming death rates. This panics the proponents of the new policy A, so they demand . . . more of policy A, not the older policy, which is so passé — or should I say ‘pass-A’? The panicky folk demand evermore A, which prevents herd immunity. But when suppport for A diminishes, and a return to normalcy occurs, the number of cases of infection increase. Entirely to be expected, but it is ‘proof’ of a need for more A! So, A is re-introduced. Sure, it’ll decrease herd immunity and mean that more people will die later on, but hey: ‘at least we tried’!
Policies that reinforce themselves by their ‘failure’ are the favorite kind of policies of fools. Whole ideologies congeal around them. And certain unscrupulous people encourage them in full knowledge.
It is so easy to manipulate fools.
And since it is folly to tell fools of their folly — what is the percentage in that? — folly is self-reinforcing.
And it is my own folly that I persist, since there is a good chance that when they come to take me away to the new concentration camp — let’s call it camp A — many of the people I have called fools will shout huzzahs.
This was pushed at me on Facebook by Pfizer. This is cultic cringe.
“Believing in science” is parodic of Christian phraseology — but sans satiric intent or even mockery, making it itself mockworthy.
The idea is salvific: “Believe” in Big Science . . . and thou shalt be rewarded with a glass-and-steel utopia right out of science fiction.
But everybody knows what we actually get: designer drugs made to counteract designer diseases that make the designers ultra-rich while those who take the jabs still get the disease even though they were told they wouldn’t.
Do you need more evidence that insiders of the technocracy belong to — and run — a cult? And no one is more inside-the-cult than the subsidized-and-protected biggest gun in the Big Pharma corporate arsenal.
This new cult, though, is worse than the corruption that set Luther to rebel against the Papacy — the selling of indulgences — for no buyer of an indulgence could prove the deal a fraud, while Pfizer’s and Moderna’s “vaccines” have been shown to provide almost no immunity. The only recent cases of COVID among my adult friends and family were all “vaxxed.”
What the Dementia Patient in Chief calls “the liberal world order” is unstable (I know it; you know it; we all know it) and our elites urgently want to move to a much-ballyhooed “New World Order” where there is much less freedom and no privacy. They want a well-oiled machine where The People are subject to massive controls.
This is also what both political parties have been working towards — the phrase “The New World Order” (NWO) was introduced to us by a former CIA head who somehow became the U.S. President on no merit whatsoever — but is now a decidedly Democrat goal.
It really is a class-based notion, as Alex Gutentag’s “The Great Reset Is Real” makes clear. The power-wielding/power-seeking class in question, which might as well be called the “cognitive elite,” made a near-united push for the NWO during the insane response to the recent pandemic and is now rapidly switching gears. But its goal is clearer now than ever. And the means of new controls on the general population can be seen in every emergency order and accommodation by major corporations:
As the idea of a “Great Reset” continues to be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, governments, central banks, and NGOs are becoming ever-more explicit about their plans. Any new supposed emergency can be manipulated by financial institutions to initiate systems of total control. Once fully realized, these systems may be impossible to combat.
For my part, I merely suggest we consider reviving older technology, something already tested on the elites:
Wirkman Comment 