Lessons from COVID-19

[Neven]

Please, post this in the regular COVID-thread.

[ajouis]

It's not just the masks, but also this idea that the enemy is everywhere around you (which to me is Al Qaeda on steroids) and that the only way to fight this enemy is through mandatory vaccinations, vaccination passports, tracking apps etc. And that anyone who doesn't support this, is an insensitive, dumb person.

One of these days I will try to convey how I would like the presentation to shift (by media and politicians), and make an effort to evade polarizing pitfalls.

The problem is the hoarding of power by governments, it is sensible to have temporary measures in the face of unexpected catastrophe but there needs to be institutional resilience to revert back to normal once it’s over. New Zealand is probably the best example of that, while China is almost the opposite, using routine powers (to them) to impose strict measures

[Neven]

The forcing that our unfettered capitalism (under the neolib elites) is placing upon both Society & the Virus might lead to us finally freeing ourselves from that yolk (due to the unnecessary losses we are suffering..... so their stocks/shares don't?) and so may have a chance at the scale of changes needed (across our World?) to best mitigate against both AGW and the Novel Virus?

Hope springs eternal eh?

Indeed, but there are few signs of people connecting the dots, especially in mainstream media. Actually, the virus is used to reinforce BAU. For instance, it has been used as an instrument, possibly decisive, in the war on populism.

[Neven]

The problem is the hoarding of power by governments, it is sensible to have temporary measures in the face of unexpected catastrophe but there needs to be institutional resilience to revert back to normal once it’s over.

Absolutely, and I'd like to add that it is bad enough when governments abuse crises to hoard power for themselves. It's even worse when they do so to increase corporatism (another word for fascism), which is a means of more efficiently increasing concentrated wealth.

Examples abound already, which is one of the reasons I agitate so vehemently against the hyping of the virus by mainstream media (whilst not offering any analysis or connecting the dots). It is not done to save lives or protect people. It is done to push through all kinds of developments at a faster rate than would otherwise have been possible. Things like wealth transer, mass surveilance, overmedicalisation, curbing civil unrest, etc...

[Neven]

Jens, apologies for not replying to this earlier. You raise some good points.

The idea is to use this virus to alter society in a way that is more beneficial to global capitalism.

I don't see, how can a virus be beneficial to global capitalism. I mean consumption is going down, lockdowns mean businesses are going bankrupt, several industries (e.g tourism) are hit extremely hard. Virus can perhaps benefit certain sectors of economy (i.e IT, make everything more digital). But in general? World economy is already in deep recession. Also there are already uprisings and riots in the world due to poor economic situation and unemployment. I think everyone in power would rather prefer "business as usual growth" rather than this trouble.

You touch upon something that I had forgotten to mention, another reason why this virus is abused by the system, and thus disproportionately hyped up: to use it as an excuse for the global recession that was coming anyway due to basically no changes having been implemented since the big crash of 2008.

My contention is that the system is geared towards one thing only: the increase and further concentration of concentrated wealth. "Everyone in power" is premised on the fallacy (IMO) that people are in power. This idea rests on the belief that that human beings are in control of their destiny. This is partially true, but there are entities/phenomena/powers that play a much larger role, especially when it comes to large communities.

Concentrated wealth is such an entity, and it's the one in power. There are pockets of concentrated wealth that are magnetically attracted to each other and try to absorb one another, because concentrated power wants one thing only and that is to become bigger. Mind you, it is not some intelligent, rational or moral being. It's a monster that wants to grow bigger, even if in the long run it destroys itself (which it always ends up doing).

So, when I said 'the idea is to use this virus to alter society in a way that is more beneficial to global capitalism', I actually meant 'beneficial to concentrated wealth'. Global capitalism is what has arisen out of this need for eternal growth, as this is the most efficient way to achieve it.

I view the situation more as the global capitalism is trying to adapt to a bad situation. They know they are going to crash due to ecological crisis, so the totalitarian fascist phase is the last stage of capitalism to try to make a face everything is fine and the economic system could still keep going. But totalitarian system arrives because it is impossible to keep going in the old way. It's an adaptation, they aren't doing it voluntarily. If people can't keep consuming in the system, because the world is falling apart, they have to be kept forcefully there.

That's exactly right, I fully agree. It was interesting to see how the importance of the virus was downplayed at first by politicians - key servants of concentrated wealth - because their thinking was that BAU must be maintained at all costs to feed their master. As you rightly say, this is not possible, and so it took a while for the likes of Boris Johnson to understand which way the wind was blowing. That's when the pendulum swung to the other extreme and COVID-19 became the centre of attention unlike any other event since WW2.

That's because crises are always used to push agendas. Here's a list of things that the abuse of SARS-CoV-2 is meant to achieve through the manipulation of people's genuine fear of death:

1) A massive transfer of wealth, as evidenced by US bail-outs, where both highly profitable and insolvent industries received billions of taxpayer dollars in record time, whereas Congress goes on a holiday when a homelessness pandemic needs to averted.
2) Winning the War on Populism. Just like terms like 'socialism' and 'conspiracy theory', the word 'populism' has a pejorative connotation attached to it. This didn't happen by itself, as explained in this interesting interview with Thomas Frank (who has just published a book about it called The People, No). Anybody criticizing the state's COVID stance and policies, is essentially a populist.
3) A major distraction from the failings of neoliberalism. As said above: SARS-CoV-2 is used as an excuse for the global recession that was coming anyway due to basically no changes having been implemented since the big crash of 2008. Everything is because of the virus.
4) Destroying SMBs, so that real estate can be bought on the cheap and entrepreneurs lose their independence and become wage slaves. Some parts of the economy get hurt, such as retail and the hotel/restaurant business, but they will be replaced with monopolies like Amazon. Instead of going out and buying things, people will have to order them online (cheaper anyway, right). At some point, cash will become obsolete.
5) Increasing control through massive surveillance, controlling people's movements, having the ability to break up protests and lock people up in their homes, under the pretense of 'public health'. Just as with terrorism in the 2000s, a state of constant fear of disease will be maintained to keep people docile and obedient.

I may expand this list (something about Big Pharma should be in it, of course). But one thing is clear to me: All of it is tied to the need for the endless growth and further concentration of concentrated wealth.

As things stand, nothing good will come out of the COVID hype. Its goal is not to save lives or protect people. It isn't meant to increase awareness of how the system caused the virus, helped it spread all around the world and maximized its impact through decades of health degeneration. The lessons that are pushed are 'populism is bad', 'only vaccines can save us', 'billionnaires are wonderful philanthropists' and 'more globalist neoliberalism is the solution to all our woes'.

[sidd]

Wolf at wofstreet on the Fed making the rich richer:

"Between mid-March and mid-May, during the lockdowns, the wealth of America’s 600-plus billionaires ballooned by $434 billion"

"that boom in the stock market, the bond market, and other financial markets since mid-March happened because the Fed threw about $3 trillion at them in a short time, with the specific purpose of raising asset prices and making those folks whole so that they don’t have any skin in this pandemic."

" Powell admitted that the Fed’s nearly $3 trillion in asset purchases caused asset prices to increase, he said the goal was to “restore functioning markets,” which means markets where prices are rising, and markets where price discovery is not allowed to happen, and markets were investors are spared any losses."

"The federal government sent out stimulus checks to nearly everyone, and it sent out extra unemployment benefits of $600 a week, and for the first time ever, it provided unemployment insurance for gig workers. Hundreds of billions of dollars went to these people, and this money was highly welcome."

"And then what did these people do with this money? Of course, they spent it. That was the purpose. And they spent it at Amazon, and they spent it at Walmart, and they bought computer equipment with it to get online from home, and they spent it on groceries. And they paid rent and made mortgage payments. And this money was recycled and ended up in the pockets of the rich, from Bezos to landlords."

"The poor lost their work and got poorer, the rich got richer and the high-income earners kept their jobs, and their wealth was bailed out by the Fed."

"This system has become socialism for the rich, socializing the losses to the rest of the people, and concentrating the gains – huge gains even during the pandemic – with a relatively small number of people. This is not the way to have a thriving economy. This is a way to run an economy into the ground."

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/08/19/the-fed-made-sure-the-rich-got-richer-during-the-pandemic-why-thats-bad-for-the-economy/

sidd

[Gray-Wolf]

Indeed, but there are few signs of people connecting the dots, especially in mainstream media. Actually, the virus is used to reinforce BAU. For instance, it has been used as an instrument, possibly decisive, in the war on populism.

Oh Neven!

We dare not think ourselves 'Mainstream' can we?

I tell my kids (over so many 'human traits'?) that we are ALL on a scale from 1 to 100 percent?

We must therefore assume 1/3 of the population (for whatever reason?) are more gullible than the 2/3rds of the population above them (in their ability of not being 'Gullible'?) and so are 'easily lead/misinformed/blanked out from ever learning of things.....

Then, within that 2/3rds above the gullible some will actively be part of the horrors driving our world....and a good portion tied in so close with 'Family Life' that they 'self isolate' from the reality they should be baulking?

The likes of you (and your efforts, esp. since 07'?) is aiding folk in finding 'the dots' to join together!

Keep Well Neven

Keep you and yours Safe!

Ian.

[Neven]

Thanks, Ian. Same to you.

[Sigmetnow]

Whatever Happened To ... The Instant Hospitals Built In Wuhan For COVID-19 Patients?

Huoshenshan and Leishenshan were among 40 hospitals in Wuhan designated for serious and critical care COVID-19 patients. Sixteen other makeshift hospitals were set up in converted gyms, convention and exhibition centers to isolate and treat mild cases, so those patients [didn’t] infect their families.

The vigorous efforts seem to have worked, because just a month later, on March 10, Chinese president Xi Jinping declared that the disease had been "basically curbed" in Wuhan and its province, Hubei. That day, the 16 makeshift hospitals were all shut down.

Huoshenshan and Leishenshan continued operating for another month, after which they sent their final batch of patients to regular hospitals and were officially sealed off and "retired" on April 15. According to state media, Leishenshan ended up treating a total of 2,011 patients over the two months it was operational. Government officials say there are no plans to demolish the hospitals yet, and they can be "reactivated at any time" if a second wave of infections hits. ...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/909688913/whatever-happened-to-the-instant-hospitals-built-in-wuhan-for-covid-19-patients

[Neven]

Lesson learned: non-extraordinary viruses can be used to shut down peaceful protests that raise awareness of reality as it really is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUUym5b7fC4&feature=emb_logo

[Neven]

This was written in March 2020, by Paul Kingsnorth:

Finnegas

I would like to tell you a few things about this virus and the lessons it should teach us, all the things we should be learning. I would like to add my voice to the crowd and be heard above it.

I would like to say: fish have returned to the Venetian canals now that humans have stopped polluting them.

I would like to say: the clouds of air pollution over Italy and China have dissipated since people were prevented from causing them with their cars, planes, factories.

I would like to say: up to 80,000 premature deaths which would have been caused this way have probably been prevented in China by the shutdown of the economy.

I would like to say: carbon monoxide levels in the air above New York have collapsed by 50 percent in a single week.

I would like to say: Nature recovers swiftly when we stop our plundering of Her bounty.

I would like to say: lift your gaze, humans.

I would like to say: we can learn from this, we can change.

I am squatting in the sun on this day of the spring equinox, it is a cold sun, I am down by the pond with my children, we are watching the tadpoles squirm free of their jelly under the leafing poplars. The world is turning.

Today is the day when shafts of dawn sunlight illuminate the passages of the old Neolithic tombs at Carrowkeel, at Loughcrew, at Newgrange. Today at Stonehenge, at Wayland’s Smithy, at West Kennet, all across these Atlantic islands—today is the day the light of Sky pierces the darkness of Earth. Today is the day that aérios meets chthón.

Neolithic : we think we know what this word means, but it is just another one of our categories. When we say Neolithic, we mean: forgotten people, unknown people, the first farmers. When we say Neolithic, we mean: who were they and what was their world and how was it so different from ours under this same sky?

Their world, the world of those people long supplanted, was a world of tombs; a world of great barrows raised on high downs, barrows that became the pregnant belly of Earth, barrows into which, each equinox, a shaft of sunlight would pierce, enter the womb of the Mother, seed new life each spring.

I am writing this on the day of the equinox in the time of the great, strange plague.

I would like to say, as if I could tell you: This was what they knew. That each spring, Sky must meet Earth, that there is no life without both Sky and Earth, without both chthón and aérios. That if you live without one or the other, you will build a world that is bent on its axis, and that world may seem whole but will be only half-made, and one day it will fall over and you will fall with it.

I would like to say: well, we had it coming.

The Irish writer John Moriarty wrote a lot about chthón. His life’s search was for ways to re-embed us in what we have lost, to take us around and down again, to correct the Western Error. In his autobiography, Nostos, he writes:

Chthón is the old Greek word for the Earth in its secret, dark, depths, and if there was any one word that could be said to distinguish ancient Greeks from modern Europeans, that word chthón, that would be it. Greeks had the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the pieties and beliefs that go with the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the wisdom that goes with the word, we haven’t. Greeks had the sense of spiritual indwelling that goes with the word, we haven’t. In the hope that they might continue in the goodwill of its dark but potentially beneficent powers, Greeks poured libations of wine, of honey, or barley-water sweetened with mint down into this realm, we don’t.

I would like to say that we forgot all about chthón, we with our space stations and our stellar minds, our progress and our clean boots, our hand sanitizers and our aircon units, our concrete vaults and our embalming fluid; that for a short period we escaped into aérios, or thought we had, and now we are going to have to go underground again, and you can be sure we will be dragged there by the Hag against our will, and we will fight and fight as the sun comes down the shaft and we see again what is carved on the stones down there.

You can forget about chthón, but chthón won’t forget about you.

I would like to say that I know what to do about all this, or what to learn. I would like to teach it to you so that you may learn too. I would like to be a prophet in a time when prophets are so sorely needed.

Unfortunately, I am not qualified for this role. I don’t know anything at all, and I am learning, painfully, that this was my lesson all along.

I don’t know anything at all.

My society does not know anything at all.

All the things I was brought up to label as learning : my A-levels, my Oxford University degrees, all the books I have read and written, all the arguments I learned how to formulate, all the ideas I learned how to frame, the concepts I learned how to enunciate. All this head-work, all these modern European ways of seeing, understanding, controlling, managing, directing the world:

Nope.

None of that was it.

One of the best-known myth cycles of Celtic Ireland is the life story of the great warrior Finn McCool. Finn, in his boyhood, was apprenticed to an old woodland hermit by the name of Finnegas. Finnegas had spent his life fishing for an elusive salmon which dwelt in a pool under a group of hazel trees. The hazel trees contained a great old magic, and when their nuts dropped into the pool and were eaten by the salmon, they imparted to it all the knowledge and wisdom of the world.

Up from the earth the wisdom came, through the trees, down into the water, and Finnegas knew that if he could catch and eat the salmon then all that wisdom would be his.

One day, to his great joy, Finnegas finally caught the salmon. He laid it upon the ground and instructed Finn, his apprentice, to cook it for him while he took a walk in the woods to collect himself, to prepare for his great moment.

Cook the salmon, he instructed Finn, but eat none of it.

Yes, master, said Finn.

When Finnegas returned and looked into Finn’s eyes, he saw immediately that everything had changed. He saw that the catastrophe had occurred.

Did you eat the salmon? he demanded. No, master, replied Finn. But …

Cooking the salmon, Finn had seen a blister appear in its flesh. Perhaps wanting the meal to be perfect for Finnegas after his years of labor, he had pressed the blister down with his thumb and in the process had scalded his hand with hot oil from the cooking fish. Instinctively, he had raised his thumb to his mouth to suck away the pain.

In Finn’s eyes now, Finnegas saw all the wisdom of the world, and he saw too that it was Finn, and not he, who was destined for greatness. Finnegas saw that his life’s dream, his life’s work, was not what he had thought it was. Everything he had learned, the moment he thought he had prepared for:

Nope.

Eat, master, said Finn, offering the fish to Finnegas, for this was your work. But Finnegas refused. No, he said. No, the fish is yours, Finn, and some part of me always knew it would be so. Yours is the work, Finn. My work was to prepare for it. Eat the fish, and use well what you learn.

Maybe we thought we would one day eat that salmon, you and I. Maybe we thought that if we worked hard enough, learned enough, we could catch it and learn from it, we could save the world, change the world, teach the world some lessons.

I thought that once. I probably learned it at university. Now I think that I, we, our generations, those of us brought up within the machine, brought up to breathe with it, rely on it, those of us tamed and made by it, those of us who crushed the world without thinking—the wisdom to come is not ours.

We will never escape what we have made and what made us. We are not equipped.

We are not the people who will eat the salmon. We are not Finn.

But perhaps, if we’re lucky, we could be Finnegas.

Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we could lay some ground for what is to come.

Yours is the work. My work was to prepare for it.

You cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. You cannot use your arguments and your concepts to access the chthón. You cannot use your Oxford University degree to build a world which regards Oxford University degrees with the bafflement they deserve to be greeted with.

It is good to learn how little I know, and how little we matter.

Now I will say what I believe: that this civilization will not learn anything from this virus. All this civilization wants to do is to get back to normal. Normal is cheap flights and cheap lattes, normal is Chinese girls sewing our T-shirts under armed guard, normal is biblical bushfires and barrels of oil, normal is city breaks and international conferences and African children poisoning their bodies sorting the plastic we have dumped on their coastlines, normal is nitrite pollution and burning stumps and the death of the seas.

We made this normal, and we do not know how to unmake it, or—whisper it—we do not want to.

But Earth does, and it will.

It turns out that we were never in control at all.

Control is what civilizations do. Perhaps it is what they are. Perhaps it is their central story. If we can control the world, we can protect ourselves from the darkness it contains. We can protect ourselves from what lies under the ground, in the tombs. Who doesn’t want to be protected? But who, in the end, can ever be?

Later in his autobiography, Moriarty writes that he is attempting to walk into culture. Into a culture so sure of itself that it wouldn’t ever need to become a civilization.

Cultures like that have existed before. They will again. But not yet. And when they come, people like us will not make them. We can’t. It is not our work.

Who knows what happens next? Maybe the virus will come and carry me away, me with my weak chest, me with my winter coughs, deepened every year by the damp Atlantic land I am grounded in, and there will be nothing to be done about this. Then my atoms and light will go back where they came from, or forward to somewhere else, and this is the way of things, and when exactly did we forget that? When exactly did we decide that our tiny little temporary mass of atoms, named and suited and given a role, pumped up with words and stories, should have any right at all to persist in its small form when all else is change and motion?

Nothing matters at all, and this is why everything does.

Look: the sun pierces the tunnel; the belly of the Mother is seeded again as another year begins. Something will be born when the summer comes. You do not need to catalogue it, understand it. You do not need to learn anything at all from it.

You can just watch it come.

Cultures that last are cultures that do not build. Cultures that last are cultures that do not seek to know what cannot be known. Cultures that last are cultures that crawl into their chthón without asking questions. Cultures that know how to be, that look at the sun on the mountain, and say, yes, this is the revelation.

People last when they do not eat apples that were not meant for them, when they do not steal fire they do not understand. People last when they sit in the sun and do nothing at all.

Let us learn from this! we say. Let us take this crisis and use it to make us better! Better people, more organized people, wiser people. Sleeker people, more efficient people. Let us become sustainable! Let us learn to tell new stories, for the old ones are broken now!

We should be saying: stories were the problem. We should be saying: no more stories, not from us.

We should be saying: break the stories, break them all. Nothing of this should be sustained.

We should be saying: no more normal. Not now, not ever.

We should be saying: we could die any moment, and this has always been true. Look at the beauty!

We should be saying: see the sunlight crawl down the passage of the tomb.

We should be saying: something is about to be illuminated.

We should be saying: watch.

Emergence, March 2020

[karl dubhe2]

IMHO that article is a big steaming pile of horse shit.

In that case you are probably a New Normal. 

I can't help but worry about the Brave New World aspect of this pandemic hype. I'm going to have to read that book again.

How long do you expect Covid to be around?  Another year, or five?   I still view the thing as something that will be burnt out, eventually.   Or better treatments will be found.   (I suspect you'll call me a technologist, who expects that 'we' will solve 'our' problems by creating new ones; er I mean that we'll solve the tech problems with more tech...   Well, yah.  But just because that's what "we" have been doing these last few thousand years.  Ever since we started banging rocks together, IMO.)   

If the virus does last a longer period of time, then the world will adapt to it; political totalitarianism is a separate issue which, if the virus didn't exist, would take advantage of the traditional ways of establishing itself in a 'free' society. 

[karl dubhe2]

The idea is to use this virus to alter society in a way that is more beneficial to global capitalism.

I don't see, how can a virus be beneficial to global capitalism.

I view the situation more as the global capitalism is trying to adapt to a bad situation. They know they are going to crash due to ecological crisis, so the totalitarian fascist phase is the last stage of capitalism

Yet 'we' have done this before as well.   I can see how the capitalists could use this virus to justify a 'reset' and save themselves.   I don't think 'our' political leaders are capable of running such a system; it would take a mobilization, so yes; temporary authoritarianism.   The democracies of the world have done this before; every time "we" have gone to war with other humans.   Last time was  in the 1930s and 40s, other than the death toll, capitalism was saved.

This time, it would be  a (to use an expression I learned while playing Eve Online) PVE rather than PVP.   As long as 'we' aren't going to be killing each other, I wouldn't oppose such a political system.   Of course, that's fecking easy, as there's no way such a system could be established.

[johnm33]

karl, this may help you recognise what's coming. https://theethicalskeptic.com/2017/06/18/tyflocracy-the-new-art-of-oppressive-governance/
"Finnegass" My understanding is that the salmon was either the warrior poet who had the sight, what we term as remote viewing, and could 'swim' in eternity see and here anything, for a taste perhaps 'inside the electron' a chapter in 'The secret life of Nature'pdf about 10 pages. Or it was the druid who had integrated all the teachings and lore in the whole of the epic oral  tradition, whose tales were memorized and recited according to the time of year the time of heaven and the time of man, forming a multi year cycle of stories. Always in allegorical form usually with a well known story as the 'carrier wave' the whole herbal lore was revealed, every star named and it's position outlined, the whole landscape named everything known by the culture transmitted to all in a narrative form, the composition of such a story being the last test of the apprentice.
 They existed in all cultures some are still extant and whole, though now written, in India, perhaps the nearest we have in the west are the works of Homer, see 'Homers secret Illiad' for not just a taste but as an illustration of how the stories were supposed to function, even when all is lost if the story, even not understood, persists then the knowledge within it can be recovered.

[jens]

"Only vaccines can save us" is the official world-wide policy now. Yet covid-19 has kept spreading and on top of that keeps mutating with new more infectious strains.

Lesson: You can't beat nature with artificial means, and certainly not in the era of ecological collapse. Nature wins.

[Neven]

Psychiatrist explains what's wrong with manipulating through fear:

[Neven]

Good piece by Taibbi, as usual:

Meet the Censored: C.J. Hopkins, Critic of the "New Normal"
Internet platforms have had a sense of humor failure about the Germany-based playwright, author, and satirist, one of many zapped for criticism of pandemic policies

The arrival of Covid-19 has crashed America on a paradox that reads like the plot of a bad Star Trek episode. Half the country mistakes science for a set of inflexible decrees and demands it be worshipped as a religion. The other half believes the first group is always lying and defies even its sensible dictates, in its own theology of liberation. Science, a deliberative process, is collateral damage to the battle.

C.J. Hopkins is an American playwright, novelist, and columnist living in Berlin. His writing first came to my attention shortly after the election of Donald Trump, when he was one of the first American writers anywhere to peg Russiagate and the campaign against “fake news” as a targeting mechanism, for identifying dissident groups who now needed to be monitored and perhaps censored. He wrote this in late 2016:

Who’s behind this “fake news” menace? Well, Putin, naturally, but not just Putin. It appears to be the work of a vast conspiracy of virulent anti-establishment types, ultra-alt-rightists, ultra-leftists, libertarian retirees, armchair socialists, Sandernistas, Corbynistas, ontological terrorists, fascism normalizers, poorly educated anti-Globalism freaks, and just garden variety Clinton-haters.

Not long into the Trump presidency, when there began to be questions about factual errors popping up in sensational exposés about the Orange One, Hopkins wrote:

Absurd as it obviously is, millions of Americans are now rushing to defend the most fearsome propaganda machine in the history of fearsome propaganda machines from one inarticulate, populist boogeyman who can’t maintain his train of thought for more than fifteen or twenty seconds.

Hopkins was no Trump fan, but his writings from the Trump era became an often hilarious review of the catastrophizing that was the mandatory posture of op-ed pages during those years. He skewered hand-wringing pundits who beginning in late 2016 predicted the end of civilization in total seriousness, from the Guardian announcing the beginning of an “Age of Darkness” and the end of “civilized order,” to Paul Krugman’s prediction “a global recession with no end in sight,” to Jonathan Chait, “after heroically vowing not to flee the country with his terrified family,” guaranteeing Trump would “shake the republic to its foundations.”

His take on the pandemic began in a similar vein. Once again, he took aim at overwrought official rhetoric, interpreting a lot of the coronavirus response as an opportunistic, authoritarian power grab by the global neoliberal project. He was critical of Germany’s creepily-named Infection Protection Act, a law that took power from the country’s 16 states and allowed for the open-ended imposition of any measure the federal authorities deemed necessary, including lockdowns and overnight curfews. He blanched as the government’s response to protests against all of this grew increasingly ham-fisted:

Twitter avatar for @consent_factory
Consent Factory
@consent_factory
Thousands gathered outside the Reichstag building in Berlin to protest the "New Normal" totalitarianism this morning, so the police declared the demonstration illegal and turned the water cannons on them ... are you satisfied yet, totalitarians? Image
November 18th 2020

Most of all, Hopkins has been critical of the emotional tenor of propaganda around Covid-19, which treats the crisis not as a logistical problem to be solved but as a signal that people should fundamentally alter their expectations for life, lowering demands for political freedoms, making the terror of death a constant public relations fixation, and embracing a “new normal” of heightened surveillance and security rituals. “Society has been transformed into… an enormous hospital from which there is no escape,” he wrote, adding:

You’ve seen the photos of the happy New Normals dining out at restaurants, relaxing at the beach, jogging, attending school, and so on, going about their ‘normal’ lives with their medical-looking masks and prophylactic face shields. What you’re looking at is the pathologization of society, the pathologization of everyday life, the physical (social) manifestation of a morbid obsession with disease and death.

Not long ago, Hopkins shared on Facebook a picture of a tower in Dusseldorf on which was written the message, “Vaccination = Freedom.” He compared it to the infamous Auschwitz message Arbeit macht frei, i.e. “Work shall set you free.” Facebook said it violated community standards against “dangerous individuals,” and removed it to prevent “offline harm.” He soon found that friends and acquaintances were prevented from sharing this and other posts of his. A website where he publishes also appeared to be permanently slapped with warning labels, one fairly well-known — he tells the story below.

The political manias that have grown up around coronavirus want to sort people into groups that “believe” science and don’t, but the problem there is that much of the propaganda around coronavirus has intentionally blurred distinctions between scientific and political authority. A trend both in reporting and censorship involves describing any political opposition to pandemic policy as scientific denialism. People opposed to vaccine passports become “anti-vaxxers,” opponents of curfews or lockdowns become virus “deniers,” and so on. (Sometimes they are both things. But not always).

I’d be the last person to ever suggest an unvaccinated person go without a mask — I wore one everywhere since this thing started — but the symbolism of, say, a vaccinated Joe Biden still wearing a mask outdoors in defiance of CDC guidelines, or Kamala Harris releasing pictures of herself wearing a mask for a Zoom call, is increasingly obvious. For a politician, the mask is a symbol of the authority he or she has borrowed from science, and removing one is a symbol that the fear justifying emergency power has subsided. It’s hardly surprising to see a reluctance to take masks off, even when scientists say it’s fine to do so.

The German domestic intelligence service recently announced that it’s put “coronavirus deniers” under surveillance, because, as the New York Times explains, “they posed a risk of undermining the state.” Whether or not that will include someone like Hopkins is anyone’s guess, but it’s become clear in recent months and weeks that the standard for deleting or blocking coronavirus-related content is widening dramatically, to include everything from tasteless jokes to sarcastic complaints about health officials to the dreaded Questions About Wuhan.

A previous subject of this column, U.S. Right to Know, may have been dinged by Google for publishing public records about U.S.-funded collaboration with the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology. Over the last year, scores of websites and Facebook accounts were either shut down or suspended for various speculations about the Wuhan Institute, but now that former CDC director Robert Redfield told Sanjay Gupta on CNN, “I'm of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory. Escaped,” once-prohibited views have had to be re-mainstreamed. This underscored what should have been an obvious problem with shutting down discussions at the outset of complex news events.

I talked about these and other questions with Hopkins, who on the page is fulminating, sarcastic, hyperbolic, funny, and opinionated. I don’t agree with him about some things — I’m not particularly not a capitalist, for instance — but I never thought agreement was a prerequisite for enjoying a writer, and Hopkins is a fun one. He is the kind of person who is frankly too blunt and too interesting to be employed at an American newspaper, which is great for his readers, but probably less of a gas for him, since his type tends to be the first sent off the plank in any censorship regime.

Incidentally, I’d be interested to hear any stories from any readers about having Covid-19 related content removed or deleted. Here is the account from Hopkins:

The Q&A with Hopkins can be read at Taibbi's substack.

[sidd]

I read Hopkins regularly at consentfactory. And of course, Taibbi. Both are quite trenchant and do not suffer fools gladly. Leading to horrible shrieks from their targets, which amusingly illustrate the very points taibbi and hopkins (and greenwald, mate, blumenthal and others) make. Here is greenwald returning fire:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/corporate-medias-double-standard

But perhaps best discussed in the media thread.

sidd

[johnm33]

I was fairly neutral about vaccines, thinking that we should all make our own assessment take our own decisions and bear the consequences. It came as a surprise that so many knew so much better than others did themselves what they should do, should be made to do. This reeked of idealogical insanity, and since whenever I see or here an insult I automatically think the person doing the insulting is unknowingly revealing themselves I thought maybe I should inform myself a little better. I'm not nearly as neutral as I was, https://theethicalskeptic.com/2018/12/26/six-vaccinial-generation-trends-already-well-underway/ a very moving lesson.

[oren]

A. I can't believe I've just wasted my time reading this. This article is highly biased to the point of being funny. Hat sizes dropping, scary.
B. The site is a climate change denier blog, Judith Curry's new favorite.

[etienne]

I was fairly neutral about vaccines, thinking that we should all make our own assessment take our own decisions and bear the consequences. It came as a surprise that so many knew so much better than others did themselves what they should do, should be made to do. This reeked of idealogical insanity, and since whenever I see or here an insult I automatically think the person doing the insulting is unknowingly revealing themselves I thought maybe I should inform myself a little better. I'm not nearly as neutral as I was, https://theethicalskeptic.com/2018/12/26/six-vaccinial-generation-trends-already-well-underway/ a very moving lesson.

I didn't follow the link since Oren did it for us, but there are 3 things that are sure with vaccines:
1) Vaccine is not healthy,
2) Vaccine works
3) Getting the vaccine is better than getting sick
4) Some people have allergic or other issues with vaccine.

So the problem is to evaluate what are your risks, but since the vaccine requires about 2 months to be effective, it's not en emergency measure.

My recommendation is that if you don't live in a country going for zero covid, if you don't have specific health issues and if you can't (or don't want) to isolate yourself, your only choice is the vaccine.

Since in the case of covid, vaccinated people can transmit the sickness, there aren't any other possibilities, excepted getting the immunity through sickness.

[johnm33]

A. I can't believe I've just wasted my time reading this. This article is highly biased to the point of being funny. Hat sizes dropping, scary.
B. The site is a climate change denier blog, Judith Curry's new favorite.

Highly biased, just means he doesn't share your view.
A. "The Six Horsemen of the Vaccine Injury Generation

Yes, the smallpox and polio vaccines were critical. Yes vaccines can eradicate certain types of disease. But there is a cost – on the order of $185 billion to US households alone, and only if you count the burden borne by the families of the 5% most severely impacted by early and frequent immune activation (see Newborn immune activation may have long-term negative impact on brain function).30 31 Those who enforce vaccine policy, and knowingly and willfully ignore this cost are just as guilty as if they had caused the maladies themselves. Six defined and undeniable trends are already underway, most well represented inside the Vaccinial Generation of kids – those born after 1994. Six related, statistically verifiable and risk-indicating trends which are ignored by the holier-than-thou defenders of pharmaceutical corporate profits. Yes, while a 7 event vaccine schedule can be argued to be a necessary decision of mercy – a 54 event one cannot. It is fueled simply by profit (as we saw above).
The real cost of this profit, the six gross indicators of childhood injury are as follows:"


Quote, from one of his very few articles on climate change "Now before reviewing this article I must ask two things of its prospective reader. First, before getting one’s more-sciencey-than-thou Underoos all askew and succumbing to the temptation to assign me an ‘anti-‘ label, understand that I am a proponent of addressing anthropogenic global warming as a first priority for mankind. I have worked harder than the vast majority on this planet inside issues targeting mitigation of volatile organic compounds, alkanes, methane, carbon monoxide and dioxide contribution on the part of mankind. I have conducted professional studies regarding the value chain of carbon inside the economy, and have developed businesses and worked to change markets, with a principal focus of mitigating carbon contribution by the various industries involved. I am gravely concerned about human contribution to the the stark rise in global temperatures now obviously underway."
Fortunately he provides a reading list.
Luke E. Taylor, Amy L. Swerdfeger, Guy D. Eslick; Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-basedmeta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies; Elsevier: Vaccine 32 (2014) 3623–3629
Statistica: Global vaccine market revenues from 2014 to 2020 (in billion U.S. dollars)*; 26 Dec 2018; web, https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-global-vaccine-market/
Wall Street Journal: Merck Revenue and Profit Rise on Cancer Drugs, Vaccine; 25 Oct 2016; web, https://www.wsj.com/articles/merck-revenue-and-profit-rise-on-cancer-drugs-vaccines-1477395829
Vaccines: Expert Consult (Expert Consult Title: Online + Print) 5th Edition; Stanley A. Plotkin MD, Walter Orenstein MD DSc, Paul A. Offit MD; ISBN-13: 978-1416036111
The Ethical Skeptic, “Epistemological Domain and Objective Risk”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 23 May 2019; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-9ME
Merck Group Financials Vault and Investor Relations; https://ar.merckgroup.com/2017/downloads/index.html
State of Michigan in the Circuit Court for the County of Oakland Family Division; Matheson versus Schmitt: Case No.: 2015-831539-DM – Videotaped Deposition of Stanley A. Plotkini, M.D.; January 11, 2018; https://www.docdroid.net/8zJh4QQ/1-11-18-matheson-plotkin.pdf#page=75
Vaccines: Expert Consult (Expert Consult Title: Online + Print) 5th Edition; Stanley A. Plotkin MD, Walter Orenstein MD DSc, Paul A. Offit MD; ISBN-13: 978-1416036111
The New York Times, The Price of Prevention: Vaccine Costs are Soaring; 2 Jul 2014; https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/health/Vaccine-Costs-Soaring-Paying-Till-It-Hurts.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=18D9ABE115E4108AB746B5E19011BFEF&gwt=pay
Bregu, et al.; Accelerating vaccine development and deployment: report of a Royal Society satellite meeting; Philosophical Transactions: The Royal Society Publishing; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146780/
US FDA; Ensuring the Safety of Vaccines in the United Stateshttps://www.fda.gov/downloads/biologicsbloodvaccines/safetyavailability/vaccinesafety/ucm298181.pdf
Accounting Dot Com: What is GAAP; https://www.accounting.com/resources/gaap/
David and Paul Belk; The True Cost of Health-Care; http://truecostofhealthcare.org/the_pharmaceutical_industry/
National Vaccine Information Center: Frequently Asked Questions About Vaccine Injury Compensation; https://www.nvic.org/faqs/vaccine-injury-compensation.aspx
Speights, K.; The Motley Fool: Why Novavax Is Up 60% in 2018; web, https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/12/02/why-novavax-is-up-62-in-2018.aspx
Wall Street Journal: Merck Revenue and Profit Rise on Cancer Drugs, Vaccine; 25 Oct 2016; web, https://www.wsj.com/articles/merck-revenue-and-profit-rise-on-cancer-drugs-vaccines-1477395829
Investopedia: Key Financial Ratios for Pharmaceutical Companies; https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-analysis/090616/key-financial-ratios-pharmaceutical-companies.asp
Skeptical Raptor: Are Vaccines Really Profitable?; https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/the-myth-of-big-pharma-vaccine-profits-updated/
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Three Types of Reason”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 25 Jun 2017; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-6fD
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Elements of Hypothesis”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 13 Dec 2018; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-94J
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Elements of Hypothesis”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 13 Dec 2018; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-94J
Luke E. Taylor, Amy L. Swerdfeger, Guy D. Eslick; Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-basedmeta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies; Elsevier: Vaccine 32 (2014) 3623–3629
Centers for Disease Control Adds 3 More Vaccines to Childhood Immunization Schedule; https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/cdc-adds-3-more-vax-to-childhood-immunization-schedule/
Speights, K.; The Motley Fool: Why Novavax Is Up 60% in 2018; web, https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/12/02/why-novavax-is-up-62-in-2018.aspx
Luke E. Taylor, Amy L. Swerdfeger, Guy D. Eslick; Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies; Elsevier: Vaccine 32 (2014) 3623–3629
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Elements of Hypothesis: Example C”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 4 Mar 2019; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-94J
Himmelfarb Library / Resources / Library Tutorials / Study Design 101 / Meta-Analysis; https://himmelfarb.gwu.edu/tutorials/studydesign101/metaanalyses.cfm
Shehab N, Lovegrove MC, Geller AI, Rose KO, Weidle NJ, Budnitz DS. US Emergency Department Visits for Outpatient Adverse Drug Events, 2013-2014. JAMA. 2016 Nov 22;316(20):2115-2125
Philippe Grandjean and Philip Landrigan; The Lancet Neurology: Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity; Feb 2014; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(13)70278-3/fulltext
Carlezon, W., McLean Hospital; Neuropsychopharmacology; Newborn immune activation may have long-term negative impact on brain function; 12 Jan 2018; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180112095934.htm
The Ethical Skeptic: Never Never Land: Where we Send our Vaccinial Generation to Forget They Even Exist; web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/2016/04/18/never-never-land-the-cost-of-pretense-concerning-our-cerebral-injury-children/
Lerner, A., Jeremias, T., et al.; The World Incidence and Prevalence of Autoimmune Diseases is Increasing; http://pubs.sciepub.com/ijcd/3/4/8/
Sadak Associates Law: What immune diseases are linked to vaccines?; https://www.vaccineinjuryhelpcenter.com/vaccines-autoimmune-disorders/
Spectrum: Studies of early development reveal immune link to autism; 15 Dec 2011; https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/studies-of-early-development-reveal-immune-link-to-autism/
US Centers for Disease Control: Key Findings: Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental Disabilities in U. S. Children, 1997–2008; https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/features/birthdefects-dd-keyfindings.html
The New York Times: Sharp Rise in Occupational Therapy Cases at New York’s Schools; https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/nyregion/new-york-city-schools-see-a-sharp-increase-in-occupational-therapy-cases.html
Hooker, Brian S. Miller, Neil Z; Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders; Sage Open Medicine; May 27 2020; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2050312120925344
Millichap, J.; Pediatric Neurology Briefs: Increased Prevalence of Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsyhttps://www.pediatricneurologybriefs.com/articles/10.15844/pedneurbriefs-24-1-2/
Coghill, E.; Norton Healthcare: Doctors seeing increase in severe scoliosis cases; https://nortonhealthcare.com/news/doctors-seeing-increase-in-severe-scoliosis-cases
The Ethical Skeptic, “Vaccinials – The Betrayed Generation of Americans”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 14 Jan 2018; Web, https://wp.me/p17q0e-71G
Pavone, et al.; Ataxia in children: early recognition and clinical evaluation; Italian Journal of Pediatrics; 2017; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347818/
The Washington Post: SAT scores at lowest level in 10 years, fueling worries about high schoolshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-scores-at-lowest-level-in-10-years-fueling-worries-about-high-schools/2015/09/02/6b73ec66-5190-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af972ec77956
Lauren Camera US News: Education; Across the Board, Scores Drop in Math and Reading for U.S. Students; 30 Oct 2019; https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-10-30/across-the-board-scores-drop-in-math-and-reading-for-us-students
Children’s Health Defense: Declining IQ: A Race to the Bottom?; https://blog.usejournal.com/declining-iq-a-race-to-the-bottom-303246687853
Falling IQ scores may explain why politics has turned so nasty; https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dan-hannan-falling-iq-scores-may-explain-why-politics-has-turned-so-nasty
NBC News: Evan Horowitz, director of research communication at FCLT Global – IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn’t bode well for humanity: An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy; 22 May 2019; https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576
CNN: The Chart; Americans’ heads have been growing, scientists say; http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/05/our-heads-may-be-getting-bigger-literally/
Wright, Edmond; Head Growth and Neurocognitive Outcomes; Pediatrics, June 2015, Vol 135 / Issue 6; http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/135/6/e1393
Decreased head circumference velocity as related to developmental deficit in infancy; Pediatric Neurology, Nov 2012; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23044015
Sugarman; The Rise of Teen Depression; Johns Hopkins Health Review; 2017; https://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/fall-winter-2017/articles/the-rise-of-teen-depression
USA Today; Teen suicide is soaring. Do spotty mental health and addiction treatment share blame?; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/19/teen-suicide-soaring-do-spotty-mental-health-and-addiction-treatment-share-blame/428148002/
Miron O, Yu K, Wilf-Miron R, Kohane IS. Suicide Rates Among Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States, 2000-2017. JAMA. 2019;321(23):2362–2364. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.5054
Carly Casella; Child suicide attempts are skyrocketing in the US, but nobody knows why; https://www.thisisinsider.com/child-suicide-attempts-skyrocketing-in-the-us-2019-4?utm_content=bufferc773f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Philippe Grandjean and Philip Landrigan; The Lancet Neurology: Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity; Feb 2014; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(13)70278-3/fulltext
Kraft, A., Aschner, M; Unmasking silent neurotoxicity following developmental exposure to environmental toxicants; Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Vol 55, May–June 2016, Pages 38-44; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0892036216300162#f0005
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22226851/?i=4&from=antineuronal%20antibodies%20autism
Dewayne Johnson, Plaintiff versus Monsanto Company, Defendant; Case No. CGC-16-550128, Verdict Form; Honorable Suzanne R. Bolanos; https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/pdf/monsanto-documents/johnson-trial/Johnson-vs-Monsanto-Verdict-Form.pdf
 
He read synthesised and critiqued those so you don't have to.

[Tom_Mazanec]

but since the vaccine requires about 2 months to be effective, it's not en emergency measure.

etienne, I thought it was two weeks after the second shot. Am I wrong?

[SteveMDFP]

A. I can't believe I've just wasted my time reading this. This article is highly biased to the point of being funny. Hat sizes dropping, scary.
B. The site is a climate change denier blog, Judith Curry's new favorite.

Highly biased, just means he doesn't share your view.
A. "The Six Horsemen of the Vaccine Injury Generation

Yes, the smallpox and polio vaccines were critical. Yes vaccines can eradicate certain types of disease. But there is a cost – on the order of $185 billion to US households alone, and only if you count the burden borne by the families of the 5% most severely impacted by early and frequent immune activation (see Newborn immune activation may have long-term negative impact on brain function).30 31 Those who enforce vaccine policy, and knowingly and willfully ignore this cost are just as guilty as if they had caused the maladies themselves. Six defined and undeniable trends are already underway, most well represented inside the Vaccinial Generation of kids – those born after 1994. Six related, statistically verifiable and risk-indicating trends which are ignored by the holier-than-thou defenders of pharmaceutical corporate profits. Yes, while a 7 event vaccine schedule can be argued to be a necessary decision of mercy – a 54 event one cannot. It is fueled simply by profit (as we saw above).
The real cost of this profit, the six gross indicators of childhood injury are as follows:"

Sigh.  This all just accepts the guy's article at face value.   Yes, vaccines are made by corporate capitalist entities, therefore, they're untrustworthy?  News flash, we live in a corporate capitalist society--*everything* (almost) is produced and supplied by corporate capitalist entities.  Yeah, they get creative with accounting.  This is an argument to dismantle capitalism, a whole 'nother discussion.  It has nothing to do with the public health merits of vaccination.

Yeah, there are some concerning health trends.  Also, kids get vaccines.  So vaccines cause all those health trends!!!!!  That's just absurd and stupid.

Newborn immune stimulation a problem?  Do you have any idea how many bacteria start colonizing a newborn immediately after birth?  Pretty massive antigen exposure is universal before any vaccine is administered.  Is there a shred of evidence that routine vaccines cause some dastardly extreme immune response syndrome?  Any?

[etienne]

but since the vaccine requires about 2 months to be effective, it's not en emergency measure.

etienne, I thought it was two weeks after the second shot. Am I wrong?

Well, 2 months after the first shot is about the same as 2 weeks after the second. Here in Luxembourg, it goes a little bit faster, we only have 4 weeks between the two, but other countries wait 6 weeks.

[ivica]

In #0 we can see some pictures suggesting something, we have some chart today:
Erik Solheim: "New American GDP data confirms China's Flag of Chinaeconomy peforming astonishingly better than US Flag of United States during  Covid19 pandemic. China's growth more than 5 times as fast as US - see chart below"



In #0: "What lessons will be learned?" That some learn fast and some do not.

Information does not imply understanding and understanding does not imply experiencing it - a transformation <

[be cause]

Only one country can create artificial shortages worldwide . There are huge advantages in being that cuntry .

[kassy]

Off topic post removed. Music can go into the music thread.

[ivica]

Lessons on health and lose of it

4 Pillars <> Prevention <> Treatment <> Medication are the main points, with the 1st being the most important.

< Information does not imply understanding and understanding does not imply experiencing it - a transformation <

[ivica]

Double Bubble or 2^nd Order Lesson

   Information does not imply understanding and understanding does not imply experiencing it - a transformation.

Example of failure by limitation of understanding:
  "to someone with a hammer every problem looks like a nail" i.e. our covid-19 mitigation:
   without realizing (or even admitting, surely not experiencing) that many other factors are involved in the problem at hand
   we reduce the problem to something acceptable (to us) and treat that as independent of everything else:
   "we just have to do -this- and everything will be fine and perfect again"

<

[Neven]

Washington Post:

The world created about 8 million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean

Some 8 million metric tons of pandemic-related plastic waste have been created by 193 countries, about 26,000 tons of which are now in the world’s oceans, where they threaten to disrupt marine life and further pollute beaches, a recent study found.

The findings, by a group of researchers based in China and the United States, were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Concerns had been raised since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that there would be a boom in plastic pollution amid heightened use of personal protective equipment and rapid growth in online commerce. The study is among the first to quantify the scale of plastic waste linked to the health crisis.

The cost of the increase in plastic waste has been keenly felt by wildlife. As of July, there were 61 recorded instances of animals being killed or disrupted by pandemic-linked plastic waste, according to a Dutch scientist-founded tracking project. Among the widely publicized examples are an American robin that was found wrapped up in a face mask in Canada and the body of a perch wrapped in the thumb of a disposable medical glove that was found by Dutch volunteers; National Geographic called the latter the first documented instance of a fish being killed by a glove.

Although only about 30 percent of all covid cases were detected in Asia as of late August, the region was responsible for 72 percent of global plastic discharge, the study found. The researchers said this was due to higher use of disposable protective equipment, as well as lower levels of waste treatment in countries such as China and India. By contrast, developed economies in North America and Europe that were badly hit by the coronavirus produced relatively little pandemic plastic waste.

The situation was worsened by the suspension or relaxation of restrictions on single-use plastic products globally. New York state’s ban on single-use plastic bags, which took effect in spring 2020, was only enforced that fall.

“Better management of medical waste in epicenters, especially in developing countries, is necessary,” the researchers wrote, while also calling for the development of more environmentally friendly materials.

“Governments should also mount public information campaigns not only regarding the proper collection and management of pandemic-related plastic waste , but also their judicial use,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free From Plastic, an advocacy group. “This includes advocating the use of reusable masks and PPEs for the general public ... especially if one is not working in the front lines.”

Much plastic waste enters the world’s oceans via major rivers, according to the researchers, who found that the three waterways most polluted by pandemic-associated plastic were all in Asia: The Shatt al-Arab feeds into the Persian Gulf; the Indus River empties into the Arabian Sea; and the Yangtze River flows to the East China Sea.

"Given that the world is still grappling with COVID 19, we expect that the environmental and public health threats associated with pandemic related plastic waste would likely increase,

The study said that the leading contributor of plastic discharged into oceans was medical waste generated by hospitals, which accounted for over 70 percent of such pollution. Scraps of online shopping packaging were particularly high in Asia, though it had a relatively small impact on global discharge.

Modeling by the scientists indicates that the vast majority of plastic waste produced as a result of the pandemic will end up either on sea beds or beaches by the end of the century. In addition to becoming possible death traps for coastal animals, plastic buildup on beaches can increase the surrounding temperature, making the environment less hospitable to wildlife. And as plastic degrades over time, toxic chemicals may be released and moved up the food chain.

[Tor Bejnar]

26,000 divided by 8,000,000 =0.325% (1/3rd of 1%)
Is this how much of all plastic waste ends up in the ocean?  Whatever the percentage is, it's disgusting!  Shame on us.

But is this a lesson from COVID?

Did this 8 million tons of plastic waste (by association) save 80 million lives? 800 million lives?  How much plastic waste is a human being's life worth?  How much turtle (etc.)-killing plastic in the ocean is a human being's life worth?

Our priorities are obviously messed up.  Maybe we should save turtles (do they get COVID?) and not worry about us old fogeys (etc.) who are going to die anyway some day.  Solved:  no plastic waste so none in the oceans from this source.

But how much plastic waste is associated with building a modern house?  Maybe we should do away with new houses, too... (unless you use only local recycled/recyclable materials).

[Rodius]

26,000 divided by 8,000,000 =0.325% (1/3rd of 1%)
Is this how much of all plastic waste ends up in the ocean?  Whatever the percentage is, it's disgusting!  Shame on us.

But is this a lesson from COVID?

Did this 8 million tons of plastic waste (by association) save 80 million lives? 800 million lives?  How much plastic waste is a human being's life worth?  How much turtle (etc.)-killing plastic in the ocean is a human being's life worth?

Our priorities are obviously messed up.  Maybe we should save turtles (do they get COVID?) and not worry about us old fogeys (etc.) who are going to die anyway some day.  Solved:  no plastic waste so none in the oceans from this source.

But how much plastic waste is associated with building a modern house?  Maybe we should do away with new houses, too... (unless you use only local recycled/recyclable materials).

My thinking as well.

Covid didn't make the mess.
We have been doing it for decades, the mess is already there and growing fast.

The issue is how we use our resources. The disposable masks are just a continuation of the global culture of not being smart about our resources, recycling, and the disposable economy.

Masks are just piling onto the top of the mess. Fix the disposable thinking and it wouldn't be a problem.

[Neven]

Good article on the Unherd website, for all those who consider themselves left of the spectrum. Some excerpts:

The Left’s Covid failure
Amplifying the crisis is no way to rebuild trust

Throughout the various phases of the global pandemic, people’s preferences in terms of epidemiological strategies have tended to overlap closely with their political orientation. Ever since Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro expressed doubts as to the wisdom of a lockdown strategy in March 2020, liberals and those on the Left of the Western political spectrum, including most socialists, have fallen over themselves to adhere in public to the lockdown strategy of pandemic mitigation — and lately to the logic of vaccine passports. Now as countries across Europe experiment with tighter restrictions of the unvaccinated, Left-wing commentators — usually so vocal in the defence of minorities suffering from discrimination — are notable for their silence.

(...)

Western leftists embraced lockdown, seen as a “pro-life” and “pro-collective” choice — a policy that, in theory, championed public health or the collective right to health. Meanwhile any criticism of the lockdowns was excoriated as a “right-wing”, “pro-economy” and “pro-individual” approach, accused of prioritising “profit” and “business as usual” over people’s lives.

(...)

At the same time, the Left’s position distanced it from any kind of working-class base, since low-income workers were the most severely affected by the socio-economic impacts of continued lockdown policies, and were also those most likely to be out working while the laptop class benefitted from Zoom. These same political fault lines emerged during the vaccine roll-out, and now during the Covid passports phase.

(...)

But why has the mainstream Left ended up supporting practically all Covid measures? How did such a simplistic view of the relationship between health and the economy emerge, one which makes a mockery of decades of (Left-leaning) social science research showing just how closely wealth and health outcomes are connected? Why did the Left ignore the massive increase in inequalities, the attack on the poor, on poor countries, on women and children, the cruel treatment of the elderly, and the huge increase in wealth for the richest individuals and corporations resulting from these policies? How, in relation to the development and roll-out of vaccines, did the Left end up ridiculing the very notion that, given the money at stake, and when BioNTech, Moderna and Pfizer currently make between them over US$1,000 per second from the Covid vaccines, there might be motivations from the vaccine manufacturers other than “the public good” at play? And how is it possible that the Left, often on the receiving end of state repression, today seems oblivious to the worrying ethical and political implications of Covid passports?

(...)

The rise of neoliberal economic hegemony, globalisation, and corporate trans-nationalism, have all undermined the Left’s historic view of the state as an engine of redistribution. Combined with this is the realisation that, as the Brazilian theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger has argued, the Left has always prospered most at times of great crisis — the Russian Revolution benefited from the World War One, and welfare capitalism from the aftermath of the World War Two. This history may partly explain the Left’s positioning today: amplifying the crisis and prolonging it through never-ending restrictions may be seen by some as a way to rebuild Left politics after decades of existential crisis.

(...)

Thus, they interpreted government activism throughout the pandemic as a welcome “return of the state”, one potentially capable, in their view, of eventually reversing neoliberalism’s allegedly anti-statist project.

(...)

Neoliberalism relies on extensive state intervention just as much as “Keynesianism” did, except that the state now intervenes almost exclusively to further the interests of big capital – to police the working classes, bail out large banks and firms that would otherwise go bankrupt, etc. Indeed, in many ways, capital today is more dependent on the state than ever.

(...)

Neoliberalism today is more akin to a form of state-monopoly capitalism – or corporatocracy – than the kind of small-state free-market capitalism that it often claims to be. This helps explain why it has produced increasingly powerful, interventionist, and even authoritarian state apparatuses.

(...)

Something similar is happening today, as state contracts for Covid tests, PPE, vaccines, and now vaccine passport technologies are parcelled out to transnational corporations (often through shady deals that reek of cronyism). Meanwhile, citizens are having their lives and livelihoods upended by “the new normal”. That the Left seems completely oblivious to this is particularly puzzling. After all, the idea that governments tend to exploit crises to further entrench the neoliberal agenda has been a staple of much recent Left-wing literature.

(...)

There’s a similar dynamic at play today. Take, for example, the high-tech surveillance measures, digital IDs, crackdown on public demonstrations and fast-tracking of laws introduced by governments to combat the coronavirus outbreak. If recent history is anything to go by, governments will surely find a way to make many of the emergency rules permanent

(...)

We support government intervention if it serves to further the rights of workers and minorities, to create full employment, to provide crucial public services, to rein in corporate power, to correct the dysfunctionalities of markets, to take control of crucial industries in the public interest. But in the past 18 months we have witnessed the exact opposite: an unparalleled strengthening of transnational corporate behemoths and their oligarchs at the expense of workers and local businesses. A report last month based on Forbes data showed that America’s billionaires alone have seen their wealth increase by US$2 trillion during the pandemic.

(...)

Another Left-wing fantasy that has been shuttered by reality is the notion that the pandemic would usher in a new sense of collective spirit, capable of overcoming decades of neoliberal individualism. On the contrary, the pandemic has fractured societies even more – between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, between those who can reap the benefits of smart working and those who can’t.

(...)

[I thought that this bit was particularly good; N.]

But perhaps the Left’s response can be better understood in individual rather than collective terms. Classic psychoanalytic theory has posited a clear connection between pleasure and authority: the experience of great pleasure (satiating the pleasure principle) can often be followed by a desire for renewed authority and control manifested by the ego or “reality principle”. This can indeed produce a subverted form of pleasure. The last two decades of globalisation have seen a huge expansion of the “pleasure of experience”, as shared by the increasingly transnational global liberal class – many of whom, somewhat curiously in historical terms, identified themselves as on the Left (and indeed increasingly usurped this position from the traditional working-class constituencies of the Left). This mass increase in pleasure and experience among the liberal class went with a growing secularism and lack of any recognised moral constraint or authority. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the support from this class for “Covid measures” is quite readily explained in these terms: as the desired appearance of a coterie of restrictive and authoritarian measures which can be imposed to curtail pleasure, within the strictures of a moral code which steps in where one had previously been lacking.

Another factor explaining the Left’s embrace of “Covid measures” is its blind faith in “science”. This has its roots in the Left’s traditional faith in rationalism. However, one thing is believing in the undeniable virtues of the scientific method – another is being completely oblivious to the way those in power exploit “science” to further their agenda. Being able to appeal to “hard scientific data” to justify one’s policy choices is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of governments – it is, in fact, the essence of technocracy. However, this means carefully selecting the “science” that is supportive of your agenda – and aggressively marginalising any alternative views, regardless of their scientific value.

(...)

Ultimately, the Left’s blatant disregard and mockery of people’s legitimate concerns (over lockdowns, vaccines or Covid passports) is shameful. Not only are these concerns rooted in actual hardship but they also stem from an understandable distrust of governments and institutions that have been undeniably captured by corporate interests. Anyone who favours a truly progressive-interventionist state, as we do, needs to address these concerns – not dismiss them.

(...)

this has been a historic failure from the Left, which will have disastrous consequences. Any form of popular dissent is likely to be hegemonized once again by the (extreme) Right, poleaxing any chance the Left has of winning round the voters it needs to overturn Right-wing hegemony. Meanwhile, the Left holds on to a technocracy of experts severely undermined by what is proving to be a catastrophic handling of the pandemic in terms of social progressivism. As any kind of viable electable Left fades into the past, the discussion and dissent at the heart of any true democratic process is likely to fade with it.

[NeilT]

Very interesting article Neven but it dovetails on some discussions I've been party to elsewhere.

In the Western world and the fairly rich areas of the world, the general level of disposable income and personal gained wealth is far, far, beyond the working class situation of 70 years ago.  Witness a member of my family, former card carrying member of the communist party of the UK, moaning that his latest teacher salary wasn't really worth it because it elevated him into the top tax bracket.....  A person who had, for decades, been expounding on how the "rich" didn't pay enough tax.

Suddenly the Left have found that the mass bulwark of their voters are no longer "the poor" but more a left over from the working class of the prior centuries.

These hangovers from the left have a very different view on what they want from their governments and they are not slow to vote to change it.  These new neo-working class can very rapidly switch their vote to right of centre if they feel they are being ignored.

Leaving left parties in a quandary.

Covid 19 just shone a spotlight on this situation and what it revealed was not pretty.

Nice to see someone is writing about it though.

[sidd]

Thanks, Neven. I see this in the USA; the abandonment of the precariat working classes by the left is driving them toward the populist right.

sidd

[Neven]

Thanks, Neven. I see this in the USA; the abandonment of the precariat working classes by the left is driving them toward the populist right.

sidd

Indeed, I was forced to join a mass demonstration last week, organised by Austria's far right (comparable to the Democratic Party in the US  ).

I was none too pleased about that, also because I had sworn never to participate in a mass demonstration again, 20 years ago.

But I had no other option. Luckily, my wife and daughter agreed.

-----

Neil, the stuff I had bolded, explains in large part, I think, what has happened to common Lefties. For some reason, they crave authoritarianism, which is more of a right-wing thing, traditionally.

Is that another COVID-19 lesson?

[kassy]

I think it is just a human thing. People like security. They also prefer simple solutions. If we make a simple comparison both sides want a different path. And there will always be an asshole that shows up pretending to deliver and then people vote for it because the rest did not help either.

In general we vote on some simple issues and ignore the complex stuff that influences us too. We worry about immigration but ignore all the invisible pollution. In general humans view themselves as in competition with others and they vote along those lines while ignoring all kinds of important parts of the real world and somewhere along those lines extremist positions seem easy. 

[sidd]

I posted an article from Kingsnorth in the COVID-19 thread, but it might fit better in the this thread or the Media thread. I removed it from there and repost here.
--
Kingsnorth on mandates:  where will you draw your line?

"when I wake to the news that the Austrian government has interned an entire third of its national population as a ‘danger to public health’, a chill runs down my spine. "

"Covid-19 is a nasty illness which should be taken seriously, especially by those who are especially vulnerable to it. But it is nowhere near dangerous enough - if anything could be - to justify the creation of a global police state."

"I have not been vaccinated against covid, and I don’t plan to be. This does not make me ‘anti-vax’ - a category that is designed to feed into the ongoing culture war narrative which separates the good from the bad people, and leads both sides in that war to demonise the other. I am not against vaccination, and I certainly wouldn’t imagine I had a right to tell others what to do with their bodies. I don’t believe that the available covid vaccines are ineffective - though they do not do what they were sold to us as doing - and I can see plenty of reasons for people, especially vulnerable people, to take them if they choose. "

" the vaccine is not the point. The point is what it symbolises - and what it is being used to build."

"Covid is a revelation. It has lain bare splits in the social fabric that were always there but could be ignored in better times. It has revealed the compliance of the legacy media and the power of Silicon Valley to curate and control the public conversation. It has confirmed the sly dishonesty of political leaders, and their ultimate obeisance to corporate power."

"In the last month alone I have watched media commentators calling for censorship of their political opponents, philosophy professors justifying mass internment, and human rights lobby groups remaining silent about ‘vaccine passports.’ I have watched much of the political left transition openly into the authoritarian movement it probably always was, and countless ‘liberals’ campaigning against liberty. As freedom after freedom has been taken away, I have watched intellectual after intellectual justify it all. I have been reminded of what I always knew: cleverness has no relationship to wisdom."

"As ever, our tools have turned on us. Another revelation: they were never our tools to begin with. We were theirs. "

"We are being herded into a future in which scanning a code to prove you are a safe and obedient member of society will be a permanent feature of life, as unquestioned as credit cards and driver’s licences. We are moving towards enforced mandatory vaccination of entire populations - including children - and prison sentences for those who refuse. By winter’s end, we could be living in a world in which the state has taken full charge of our bodies, and our only chance of remaining active members of society is to submit to their every instruction, and agree to permanent digital monitoring to prove our compliance. "

" over that eighteen months we have moved smoothly from ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ to ‘mandatory injections to avoid prison.’ We have normalised this, and accepted it. We have not asked questions. Those who have dissented have been censored, silenced, bullied and abused."

"the advance of intrusive technologies, and the question it posed was: where will you draw your line? I was trying to work out for myself the answer to this question, which has nagged at me for years. At what moment does the direction of travel of the Machine become so obvious, so intolerable, so frightening, that you can no longer acquiesce? What is the breaking point? For some people it was smartphones. For others it might have been social media. These days I think that the really smart people stepped off the carousel at dial-up modems and went quietly into the woods. "

"Perhaps you think this sounds exaggerated. Hysterical, even. Just a few months ago I might have agreed. A year ago, I almost certainly would. But a year ago I had not seen what I have seen now. I had not seen the smartphone passports, the QR scanners, the meek public compliance, the deliberate whipping up of fear and hatred by political leaders. I had not seen the mandatory vaccination orders. I had not seen the camps ... my personal Vaccine Moment has arrived. Where once I was on the fence, now I am firmly off it. Even if I were to be convinced that these vaccines worked safely, I could never get myself a vaccine passport and acquiesce in the technological segregation of society. I could never scan my code without shivering. I cannot participate in this ... something is wrong. This is mine. I will not go along with what is happening. I will not validate what is emerging. I will resist it. I will take my stand."

https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-moment-part-one

sidd


--


 

[Sigmetnow]

Meanwhile, in US states with no mask or social restrictions — or that actually have regulations forbidding them — doctors are being forced to choose who gets medical care and who doesn’t, because ICUs are full; heart attack or car crash victims wait outside for hours before they can get into their hospitals’ Emergency Department, and people refuse COVID vaccinations, poisoning themselves instead with horse dewormer, because “freedom.”

“Blatant disregard and mockery” of science:  not caring who dies and how many.

[Tor Bejnar]

Interesting article, Neven.  How did the Left respond to the 1918 Flu (different from the 'mainstream'?)?  How did the Left respond to Polio vaccines in mid-late 1950s?  Smallpox vaccines and inoculation mandates since 1777?

Those seeking to enforce compulsory vaccination argued that the public good overrode personal freedom, a view supported by the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905, a landmark ruling which set a precedent for cases dealing with personal freedom and the public good.

At least to date, this is the legal precedent in the US.  Has the American Left said anything about this these past 116 years?

The ... Anti-Vaccination League of America was founded [in 1908 and] ... warned about what it believed to be the dangers of vaccination and the dangers of allowing the intrusion of government and science into private life, part of the broader process identified with the Progressive Movement.

Is Wikipedia saying that intrusion of government into private lives is part of Progressive Movement thinking? Or that the League of America was part of the Progressive Movement? (Two very different meanings...)

Progressivism is a political philosophy in support of social reform. Based on the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition, ..., out of the belief that ... societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.

Sounds to me like Progressives would tend to support vaccine mandates.  Call me confused!

[etienne]

I believe that one of the main problems of the politicians (left manly, but the right also) is the will to make people happy against their will. Services are proposed (education, culture, housing help...) but what would be needed is self esteem, a sustainable salary, the freedom do decide by yourself...

I believe that a paternalist attitude can be very counterproductive if the authority is not trusted, and it is exactly what we see now with the vaccine. In the 2nd phase of the vaccination campaign, the frustrated authority tries any possible type of pressure to get everybody vaccinated.

The left will do it for the good of the people, the right for the good of the economy.

My experience is usually that it is more efficient to reduce my needs than to try to increase my incomes (with extra salary of states subsidies), which matches neither with the left nor with the right ideology.

[Florifulgurator]

A reminder for armchair anticapitalists:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine

the first state to introduce compulsory vaccinations was the Principality of Lucca and Piombino on September 25, 1806. On August 26, 1807, Bavaria introduced a similar measure. Baden followed in 1809, Prussia in 1815, Württemberg in 1818, Sweden in 1816, England in 1867 and the German Empire in 1874 through the Reichs Vaccination Act.

That was long before there was Big Pharma.

As for practicing anticapitalists, here is a quote from the Zapatista delegation visiting Europe:

We all let ourselves get vaccinated, because we want to live and to fight.

https://anfdeutsch.com/aktuelles/delegation-der-zapatistischen-reise-fur-das-leben-in-nurnberg-28696
They have no problem with masks ever since Subcommandante Marcos, and did voluntary quarantaine before crossing the Atlantic on a boat.

[sidd]

Here's one lesson from the philly area:

Guy i know runs a stone company, does high end stone and concrete work. About 50 people, predominantly male, every one of them got vaccinated. Mostly all trump voters.

I talked to the owner last weekend and he tells me that not a single one of them, himself included, plan to take a booster.

"They just dont want to take more shots, every few months for the rest of their lives. Gonna wait for better vaccines and then might reconsider. "

Can't say i blame em. They mask up all the time anyway in their line of work, and are pretty anal about ventilation. The owner is now budgeting for biweekly testing for everybody, figures it will run him about a couple K per week, but business is booming.

He is one of the decent employers i know in the construction biz. Raised wages twice since the pandemic began.

sidd

[Neven]

I think it's the same all around the world. People feel betrayed, cheated. And how do politicians decide to react (at least over here in Europe)? With more threats, more fear, to give the mass psychosis its booster shot. And by pure coincidence, it's all good for Big Pharma.

[NeilT]

The thing is that there are several lessons which should have been learned but are not being learned.

First and foremost is that Politicians will make decisions based on risk to themselves of being blamed for inaction. Therefore they will listen to anyone who looks like giving them a get out from blame. If they lock the people down, then if things go wrong it is the fault of all those people who broke lockdown, not the government.

Beyond that, it is absolutely crystal clear that you cannot run away from covid and you cannot hide from covid. Because the second you stop running or hiding it will come and get you.

Then there was the deal. We lock you down because we don't have a vaccine and when we have a vaccine the lock downs end. Also it was the deal for releasing a vaccine within 1 year, not 10.

Then, true to form, vaccines were not made mandatory and when we were unlocked and cases began to rise, the governments only looked at the big numbers, not the massive drop in deaths and didn't look at who was getting infected and dying.

Essentially the numbers correlate closely to the numbers unvaccinated plus the 10% to 20% the vaccines cannot protect.

Wrap right back to the first point and the government's revert to trying to avoid blame.

Lessons we should all have learned.

1. Number of viruses we have a cure for. 0 (vaccines are avoidance, not cure).
2. Viruses will spread no matter how diligent you are with hygene
3. Only a complete cessation of social contact will stop transmission
4. Politicians will make decisions to serve themselves, not the people.

I don't see any of these lessons being promoted.
 
In 1999/2000, 65,000 people died of the Flu, in that one winter season.  No masks, no social distancing, no lockdowns, no mandatory vaccines.

We have learned that Flu is a fact of life and we have to live with it.  You can't run away from it.

Apparently we need to learn that lesson all over again.

[sidd]

Re: the numbers correlate closely to the numbers unvaccinated plus the 10% to 20% the vaccines cannot protect

And the evidence for this statement is ... ?

sidd

[oren]

Many politicians in 2021 (post-vaccine) reacted to health system stresses and overloads. At least in Israel this recurred, no one wanted another lockdown but then it was forced on the decision makers by too many hospitalized.

[sidd]

Video from NIH, first presenter Memoli, 4-19 minutes

At the 13 minute mark slide: Subaramanian et al., European Journal of Epidemiology, 30 Sep 2021
doi: 10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States"

https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=44165

O dear. Apparently, vaccination with these products ain't working so good ... Memoli makes a case for questioning broad mandates, but watch the whole thing if you have the time. The consensus is represented by the second speaker.

sidd

[johnm33]

About 25 years ago an old friend showed up looking quite jaundiced, he'd been told by his Dr. that there was nothing else he could do about his hepatitus, maybe he had 2 years. He'd just been diagnosed with diabetes and recalled that once over a game of chess, when he mentioned his mothers diabetes, I'd informed him that some people veiwed it as an entirely voluntary disease which could be sorted by dietary changes. He wanted to know where to find them.
It took him about three weeks to sort out his diet, then he went evangelist about it and thought he may be able to sort out his hep. problem too. For about 3 years he was part of a 'last chance hotel' community of mainly cancer sufferers a few of whom had 'miraculous' recoveries all of which so far as he could tell coincided with them having a viral infection of some sort. The other thing they had in common was they seemed to be the most disciplined in terms of diet control. When we discussed this we came to the conclusion that probably periodic viral infections acted as a cleanser on the body helping to rid it of rogue cells, from that time I have never had a vaccination [actually it's worse than that I actually try to catch whatevers going]. I figure that since in my working life I was exposed to an endless array of carcinogenics better to take a series of small hits than to be offed by cancer. [He's head chef in a restaurant overlooking the med]
Imagine my surprise when watching this video which seriously calls into question the very existence of virus's, one speaker from the point of view of what so called isolates actually are and another a food scientist used to studying actual contaminents in infinitesmal quantities who has been unable to acquire any quantified samples of cov19, just very expensive snot mixtures deemed to be 'isolates'. It would seem that virus's are simply exosomes from diseased cells broken down and disposed of by the body, which are capable of triggering 'infection' or rather a cascade of cellular breakdown in other malnourished individuals. These exosomes are most easily shed, from bronchial sources, when conditions are ripe for excessive evaporation from those 'tubes'.