Power Defines Truth and Dissent is a Lie

Power Defines Truth and Dissent Is Therefore a Lie

From World War II through the start of the Digital Age early this century, a privileged narrative prevailed as “reported” by the three broadcast networks, a few national magazines like Time and the two nationally distributed newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. You could not encounter any advocacy of communism, fascism, atheism, anarchism or any other variety of institutional dissent without the context clearly identifying such ideas as evil, foolish or both. You had to go to a library or a dusty old book store to look for information about disapproved ideas, and it did not even occur to anybody that there was anything odd about this regime. It was Normal.

During those decades, the distinction between “fact” and “opinion” was irrelevant. Communism was the big problem, and our privileged narrative held that its main tool was lying – later rhetorically inflated to “disinformation.” To counter communist lies, we established Radio Free Europe, beaming the Truth to the victims of Soviet aggression. I will never forget a conversation I had with my girlfriend's Army Colonel father in 1969. He said, "What bothers me is these Reds, going around telling people they aren't happy. People are happy."

Those were the days.

The Internet subverted the power of that group of a dozen or so national news organizations to define the truth. Marshall McLuhan foresaw this – he must have been a space alien. Before the internet, it took a major capital investment to communicate with the mass of the population – paper mills, printing presses, delivery trucks, a national network of broadcast antennas, a roster of reporters deployed around the globe. The “entry cost” to communicate with millions of people was always in the millions of dollars – back when a million bucks was a lot of money. Thus the Privileged Narrative was provided by people or organizations with Big Money.

Today, a few hundred dollars will hook you up with several billion people. It takes some pizzazz and a lot of luck for your humble contribution to go viral – but as lots of cat video fans will tell you, it happens. Nobody has control over what goes viral, with both memes and “facts” now spreading instantly around the world, obliterating the once unchallengeable power of the TV networks and the nationally circulated print organs.

Without anyone in power to filter out disapproved information, we are now in a state of Information Anarchy. Exacerbating this chaotic situation is the apparent war of dueling realities between the Democrats and Republicans here in the USA. While having no trouble authorizing money to keep our wars against the whole world going by almost unanimous votes in Congress, they angrily insist that the other party’s leaders belong in jail.

This bizarre stalemate of dueling accusations of fundamental illegitimacy by the highest public officials in the nation has completely obliterated any hope for the quaint notion of “objectivity.” Facts are supposedly stubborn things, so if you want to win your argument, make sure that you never have to face one. Nope, just call it Fake News.

Which brings us to the Life and Death Fake News Battles going on today. I am a newcomer to this board, and the most striking thing I have seen so far is that this crisis of legitimacy and epistemology is playing out here, too. One thread links to an article that condemns “pro-Trump” doctors for lending their medical licenses to the effort to slaughter Americans because Trump’s election somehow depends upon it.

The implication is undeniable. If a doctor is “pro-Trump” he or she is by definition a liar and an accomplice to mass murder. The “truth” is that there is only one correct way to fight the virus, and there can be no disagreement with that. Dissent is by definition a lie.

This is in line with the various internet articles and viral memes that chortle with glee at the imminent deaths of Trump Supporting Lockdown Protesters. It also ignores the “novel” nature of this virus which, by definition, has unknown and unpredictable effects, pre-emptively disqualifying any medical opinion that varies from the conclusions coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus has become Russiagate Part Trois – a rallying cry for hatred of Trump without any practical point to it other than Trump sucks.

Well, he does suck. And his ridiculous Presidency is a travesty. Nevertheless, just because some medical doctor voted for him, it does not follow that the doctor really wants to kill human beings just to help Donnie Shrimpfingers stay in the White House. Nor does it render the Pro-Trump doc a quack.

Certitude about how The Lockdown Is Good is insane. I am going along with it, and I accept the notion that it is better to be too cautious than not cautious enough. But to condemn anybody who disagrees or even just questions it as indifferent to human death is totalitarianism in action.

And it makes me wonder where that little internet meme came from . . . .

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Lookout's picture

TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, is not the norm here. In fact there's even a trumpeteer or two among us.

For the most part this is an evidence based community. As you describe much MSM (main stream media) has bias. In part because of Reagan's dissolution of the fairness doctrine and in part due to Clinton's Telecommunication bill leading to massive destruction and consolidation of media companies, leading to today's remaining six media corporations.

People here explore news sources and bring stories of interest to our attention. We each come out of our own bias and that is reflected in the pieces here. Like all media it requires thinking for yourself and weighing evidence on your own. No one agrees with everyone, but I find this community mostly respectful of any opinion validated by evidence.

I hope you enjoy your experience here.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout @Lookout Thanks for your reply. I am very favorably impressed by the intelligence and personality of the board as a whole, and I hope that I can contribute.

I am in complete agreement about the Telecommunications Act consolidating the corporate stranglehold on mass communications. The topic du jour in this connection is censorship over the (up to now) relatively free wheeling platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It is a pain in the ass at least, and maybe it will be more effective than I expect. But worst case scenario, those six corporations have the loudest individual voices, but they still cannot reassert the level of control that existed when there were only three broadcast networks -- and no internet.

Interesting to me is the fact that the subject matter of the current censorship offensive is in support of the Lock Down Is Unquestionable Regime. In real life I have tried to make the distinction between going along with a strategy that calls for unity and declaring anybody who even suggests not going along is a bio-terrorist. So far, those who support the main stream take on it have all unloaded with a sack of insults, all drawing on the meme of dissent on this point is not permitted because it is WRONG.

This mindset, which is straight out of 1984, troubles me. It is like the scene in Orwell's book where a little boy is pissed off that he is unable to attend a public execution. His father is proud of his son. It shows the right spirit.

Yes, the right spirit loose in the country is that we all have to think the same thing about the virus because any contrary thought is both murderous and pro-Trump. Shut up is never a good argument, but that is the rule of the day.

I dissent.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

Lookout's picture

@fire with fire

into our homes every night. When is the last time you saw war televised on cable news? In some ways, the news of the 60's was better. They of course redbaited every night ...similar to Russiagate.

And now they will collect your browsing history. Even Duck Duck is minimizing search results. Remember the internet is easy for NSA to monitor... providing even greater manipulation. So media control is a real problem as you suggest.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout crucial print organs like the NYT and WaPo also helped bring about the war. It wasn't until later in the 60s that the tide began to turn. Up to then, iirc, it was mostly flag waiving gung ho off to Nam coverage, including Walter Cronkite and David Halberstam. The occasional off key note was struck by Morley Safer and several others, the exceptions. But for the most part in the 1963-67 period it was the MSM not asking too many difficult questions about the war policy.

And back then we got 23 minutes of nightly national/int'l news from the majors -- they select, and that's what you get. "And that's the way it is" said Walter. That's all we had, so we didn't know it could be much better. Well, at least the majors had a number of foreign offices. And in the Commentary Dept, we got Eric Sevareid's eloquent "on the one hand/on the other hand" taking both sides, and a little Howard K Smith, the Establishment's favorite.

As wild and diverse as it is, the internet is a welcome alternative to yesteryear's strict and narrow news gate keeping. If we can get the new Big Three of Facebook, Amazon and Google broken up on antitrust grounds, it would be even better.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...system of reality-testing that is taking place at all times. Sometimes it looks like cynicism; sometimes it looks like contrariness. It can look like dissent to the prevailing opinion, or like stubborn resistance to conformity. Personally, I believe this tributary system is a herding behavior that is always moving us toward Intellectual Honesty, which is rarely a popular state of mind, in the short term.

Which brings us to the Life and Death Fake News Battles going on today. I am a newcomer to this board, and the most striking thing I have seen so far is that this crisis of legitimacy and epistemology is playing out here, too. One thread links to an article that condemns “pro-Trump” doctors for lending their medical licenses to the effort to slaughter Americans because Trump’s election somehow depends upon it.

This is a 'self-leveling' community. No snapshot defines our views because we are in a state of becoming. Or, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan: "We don't necessarily agree with everything that we say.” It can take a while to adjust to the ebb and flow here — and to the wide tolerances overall.

I think your reference to McLuhan as a resource for understanding the dynamic here is smart. Brilliant, even. I've long thought McLuhan provides a good mirror for society to catch a glimpse of itself. Much like the work of his contemporary, Orwell, does. They — we — are involved in 'mind expansion'. That's what got us into this fine mess during the Age of Enlightenment. Maybe it can get us out. Again, MdLuhan:

The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Anja Geitz's picture

@Pluto's Republic

For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.

However, the accompanying issue for me lies in the social realities for those of us who are aware, and I’ll tell you, it’s mighty lonely. I had a neighbor once ask me how I was able to live in a world that was as awful as I seemed to think it was. No answer was necessary for the question was not meant as an opening to a real conversation. It was a judgement that basically said I was either a paranoid crackpot or a depressive bitter individual.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz just some high wealth percentage of it's inhabitants.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

This is my mantra and as long as I am on board with that, I can go along with anything that is thrown at me. The universe brought the COVID to make us take time out to think about what we want, what our values are, what actions we are exhibiting, etc. We have been given a time out by a highly intelligent virus that is stopping the world in order to bring about great societal change. We, as human beings, control nothing. The universe is in charge of everything.

This is an example of some of the community participants here and if you want to stick around, it would be great if you donated monthly to the site so that we can avoid ads. Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

RantingRooster's picture

I would like to address this statement.

"The implication is undeniable. If a doctor is “pro-Trump” he or she is by definition a liar and an accomplice to mass murder."

For me, if a doctor is "pro Trump", who is a pathological liar himself, and is ok with the president of our country lying straight through his teeth, and has no regard for what impact our president's lies will have, not only here in the US, but the greater world for that matter, is out of their fucking mind, and is in blatant violation of the AMA ethical guidelines, endorsing a known, pathological liar who has done irrepetible harm (Killed) to our own citizens.

Imo, it should be grounds for revoking their medical license, tar and feathering, as well as running them fuck out of town at gun point, for reckless endangerment of public health!

That might "sound / read" like TDS, but I assure it's based on the AMA's own ethical guide lines and the physician Hippocratic oath. DO NO HARM! The "remedy" for which I speak, granted it's spiteful, but that is from purely personal experience dealing with shit hole Doctors most of my entire life!

I don't "trust" the CDC because they don't print in their top 10 list of causes of death to Americans, the American Healthcare "system", that kills over 400 thousand annually simply from preventable medical errors, making PME's the 3rd leading cause of death of Americans. But I digress...

However, of course the "reality" is this, if one becomes president of the US, "he or she is by definition a liar and an accomplice to mass murder."

That's just one of those "stubborn facts", no?

Drinks

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@RantingRooster

Because I have a similar view about the military and military veterans. I express my view using most of the same words that you used so effectively. [In fact, I am having a hard time resisting the urge to write a matching rant of my own right now.] I hate to be called "reactionary" because everything I say about the military is valid. If this were a sane world — where people still have moral compasses and know how to think critically — my views about the military would be indistinguishable from the facts on the ground. My words would simply be hard truths. They would be things that need to be said.

::: resisting the urge to say them :::

Your view reads as reactionary, just like mine. Such words are their own destination. A loop of frustration. But they are not disinformation. in a sane world, their meaning would seem relatively objective, TDS is not very observant or self-aware. TDS is a package of angry cliches and delusional narratives. (I have advanced degrees in Putin Derangement Syndrome and China Derangement Syndrome, so I know.) I even see some restraint in your rant, Mister Rooster. But then, I tend toward hyperbole when I'm on a roll, so to me everything looks a bit restrained.

That being said, passionate reactions always flash a warning to me — an inner meme appears that looks exactly like the failing Democratic Party. Some time back, the Party's TDS fused completely with its political identity. It has become a sociopathic golem with no agency beyond its tortured obsession with Donald Trump. The Party's reactionary sizzle has consumed its policy sausage :::burp::: They got nuttin' but a pile of very bad decisions — one after another. The Democrats unconscionable corruption and their deliberate betrayal of their constituents will taint any politician associated with their brand. The meme is Mister Magoo: Blind, senile, and behind the wheel of a bus filled with Democrats.

If the following statement became the Left's strategic activism during the 2020 elections, the Centrists would resign and disappear. No doubt they would return to the Republican fold.

The Democrats unconscionable corruption and their deliberate betrayal of their constituents
will taint any politician associated with their brand.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
RantingRooster's picture

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic
This is perfect! Drinks

I have advanced degrees in Putin Derangement Syndrome and China Derangement Syndrome, so I know.

I reckon a lot of my ranting is about the cognitive dissonance that permeates the very fabric of our society, that most people seem to miss because they don't drill down into what someone said. They seem to take it at face value and move one, with no critical thought.

So, when a "doctor" is "pro" Trump, just the basic cognitive dissonance of a doctor, supporting a known pathological liar, whose oath is to "do no harm", is enough to send me into a tizzy fit.

Of course I start with the premise, I do not trust doctors, full stop.

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@RantingRooster

For me, if a doctor is "pro Trump", who is a pathological liar himself, and is ok with the president of our country lying straight through his teeth, and has no regard for what impact our president's lies will have, not only here in the US, but the greater world for that matter, is out of their fucking mind, and is in blatant violation of the AMA ethical guidelines, endorsing a known, pathological liar who has done irrepetible harm (Killed) to our own citizens.

Imo, it should be grounds for revoking their medical license, tar and feathering, as well as running them fuck out of town at gun point, for reckless endangerment of public health!

What sort of punishment do you feel is appropriate for this doctor?

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RantingRooster's picture

@Blue Republic @Blue Republic She has an obvious problem with math, and facts.

Fact is, not everyone that tests positive gets sick, nor shows symptoms, so they don't "recover", because they NEVER got sick.

The "recovered" counts are about people who tested positive, and got sick, and then recovered.

If you test positive and didn't get sick, you did not recover, because you did not get sick.

You can't count those people, as she is clearly doing, as "recovered". That's called fuzzy math, and it's bullshit!

She is doing the public a great dis-service (endangering public health) by lying straight through her teeth with her fuzzy math!

Doctors in general to me, are all suspect because of their profit motive. Most of the medicaid and medicare fraud that happens in this country, is by doctors.

My wife is dead from a doctor's mistake, so I am quite biased, bitter, cynical, as well as ragging with furious anger at the cruelty inflicted on our population by doctor's profit motive! And I freely admit that!

Drinks

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@RantingRooster
for Covid-19 in the way they have been used.

Mehra et.al. did a multinational registry analysis of the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19. Some patients also were given macrolides (antibiotics) to control secondary infections.

96 032 patients (mean age 53·8 years, 46·3% women) with COVID-19 were hospitalised during the study period and met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 14 888 patients were in the treatment groups (1868 received chloroquine, 3783 received chloroquine with a macrolide, 3016 received hydroxychloroquine, and 6221 received hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide) and 81 144 patients were in the control group. 10 698 (11·1%) patients died in hospital. After controlling for multiple confounding factors (age, sex, race or ethnicity, body-mass index, underlying cardiovascular disease and its risk factors, diabetes, underlying lung disease, smoking, immunosuppressed condition, and baseline disease severity),

We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19.

https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(20)31180-6

I would have been delighted if they had been effective, but this is clearly not the case. I agree with your frustration on this issue.

There are other ways to treat Covid-19 that can improve outcomes, and hundreds of clinical trials around the world for other treatments. Vaccines are in clinical trials and it appears that one or more of them should be effective.

EDIT: I did not realize that the link I pasted did not work. I cannot get the link to work but the article is in the Lancet.

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@ScienceTeacher

way are you talking about - or do you mean all of them?

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are contraindicated.
@RantingRooster
for Covid-19 in the way they have been used.

The study you cite is clearly different than what the Dr. in the video is doing, as she is treating symptomatic, but non-serious (not serious enough to require hospitalization) patients on an outpatient basis and the study is of seriously ill inpatients.

This doctor (Cardillo) has been treating patients with serious symptoms with success, but claims that without zinc is is much less or ineffective. I didn't see any reference to zinc in the study you cited.

Dr. Zelenko also recommends including zinc in the protocol and emphasizes starting treatment early. Benefits of early treatment w/HCQ are reinforced by this recent Brazilian study:

Empirical treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for suspected cases of COVID-19 followed-up by telemedicine

in which 600+ patients who were deemed symptomatic based on tele-interviews were offered HCQ /AZT on an outpatient basis. 400+ elected to receive it and the remaining 200+ declined, were not offered medication and became the control group. The study reported no serious side effects in the treatment group. The treatment group was somewhat more at-risk than the control group as they had somewhat more co-morbidities and reported more severe symptoms than the control group.

Standards for referral for hospital admission, inclusion or exclusion from the study were as follows:

In case patients needed to be referred to hospital, they were evaluated,
admitted and treated by medical staff advised to follow the standard protocol from
the institution.

The main hospitalization admission criteria were:
● Worsening general condition
● Oxygen Saturation 3 days, with a
probable diagnosis of COVID-19 and no immediate indication for
hospitalization.

Exclusion criteria
● Severe related retinopathy
● Severe liver disease
● Myasthenia Gravis
● Known QT enlargement
● Pregnant
● Severe renal failure"

Outcome?

Our study showed a robust decrease in the need for hospitalization when
hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin were prescribed in the early days of
symptoms. The best results were observed when treatment was prescribed before
17
day 7 of the initial symptoms, supporting the hypothesis that hydroxychloroquine and
azithromycin may act on viral replication, as reported in previous studies (22, 43).

Specifically, the need for hospitalization was 1.9% for the treatment group versus 5.4% for the control group. So, despite the control group having fewer co-morbidities and being less sick at the outset they ended up needing hospitalization at a rate 2.8 times higher than the treatment group.

That's not all, though. The study also compared hospitalization rates among the control group based on whether they began more or less than seven days after the onset of symptoms. For those who started early (under seven days) the rate was only 1.17% - just over 1/5 that of the control group!

The study used a metric I wasn't familiar with, NNT - Number Needed to Treat. Basically, the number of patients receiving the treatment that would obviate the need for one hospitalization.
Number was 28 for the straight treatment v. control comparison and fell to 23 when comparing early treatment v. control group outcomes.

Taken with the experience of numerous doctors who are using it effectively - the above suggests that HCQ/AZT done *early* could be a a huge saving both in terms of suffering and economically.

Anyway, it's what doctors would use for themselves and family - including for prophylaxis, if they thought themselves or a family member had been exposed to COVID - according to this survey.

India is using it prophylactically for front line providers and is moving toward employing it on a mass basis.

Which means Trump was actually correct in saying that front line workers are using it for prevention, not that that matters to his critics.

EDIT - fixed link to survey of US doctors about whether they would use hydroxychloroquine themselves.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Blue Republic

...that does not leave Reader's dumber than they were after reading it.

I appreciate your patience.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
magiamma's picture

@ScienceTeacher

Hydroxychloroquine: Trump's Covid-19 'cure' increases deaths, global study finds

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/22/hydroxychloroquine-trump...

The drugs are fairly safe for patients being treated for malaria, but Covid-19 is a very different disease. The authors of the paper pulled together results for more than 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals, taking one of the drugs, with or without an antibiotic such as azithromycin, between 20 December and 14 April.

The death rate among all groups taking the drugs was higher than among people who were not given them. One in six of those taking one of the drugs died, while one in five died if they were taking chloroquine with an antibiotic, and one in four if they were on hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic. The death rate among patients not taking the drugs was one in 11

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@magiamma

and several other studies indicate that by the time a patient is sick enough to be hospitalized, it is TOO LATE for hydroxychloroquine to do much good.

So of course since The Rump made such a big to-do over the drug, the Guardian has its knives out for him in every possible way. They wouldn't dare mention the studies that show that people taking hydroxychloroquine for malaria have a lower rate of infection with Covid-19, and less severe symptoms if they do get it.

Apparently it has value as a prophylactic and in the early stages, but only if promptly administered and with proper medical follow-up.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@magiamma
I downloaded the pdf from Lancet for myself, but the link in my comment does not seem to work. The paper was reasonable and I tend to trust Lancet. JAMA and BMJ need to be read more carefully. Unfortunately it looks like hydroxychloroquine should not be used in a wholesale, off-label way. It may be a good thing in regions prone to malaria, even if only to prevent the need to fight off both infections at once.

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@RantingRooster

to hear about your wife, RR.

As Dr. Buttar notes (below video), iatragenic (medical error) is either the 3rd or 5th leading cause of death in the US depending on which source you believe.

That said, in my opinion, Dr. Lozano is doing just fine - she is actually practicing medicine - meeting patients and treating them to the best of her ability. As she notes, many doctors are not seeing patients and people were (are) being sent home from hospitals and told only to quarantine.

Unless she is just blatantly lying (why would she?) she has been treating symptomatic patients effectively and very economically - I don't find a thing wrong with that, in fact that's what doctors *should* be doing, no?

The HCQ/AZT (most often with zinc) protocol is being used, and effectively by many doctors in the US and internationally (see my reply to Science Teacher below). According to this survey it is what doctors would use for themselves and family members.

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RantingRooster's picture

@Blue Republic with that lady Doctor in the video above is this:

"Fact is, not everyone that tests positive gets sick, nor shows symptoms, so they don't "recover", because they NEVER got sick.

The "recovered" counts are about people who tested positive, and got sick, and then recovered.

If you test positive and didn't get sick, you did not recover, because you did not get sick.

You can't count those people, as she is clearly doing, as "recovered". That's called fuzzy math, and it's bullshit!"

She is not reporting "facts", she is "spinning" numbers to make things "look better" than they are. That could do real harm, like kill someone by them being contagious, expose others, and not know it.

This whole "testing" thing is utterly a mess. How do people that test positive, but not have symptoms, and have not gotten sick, how can we call them recovered?

Do they have to have a positive test, and then 14 or more day later have a negative test, and is that what we are calling "recovered"? Also recovered does no equate to immunity does it?

She may very well be a "great doctor", and it is not her skills as a doctor I question, but I'm outraged at her conflation of the numbers, which is very misleading, which is DANGEROUS to the public.

I'm in a high risk group, so I have to treat this as a potential death sentence to me. Someone who wants to enjoy their freedumb, who has been exposed, but not symptomatic, but could still be contagious, and could kill me.

So, I hope you can understand my outrage by her conflation of the numbers and how dangerous that is to someone in a high risk group.

I'm also concerned because it seems everyone (not here a C99 but in general) is getting around to being okay the idea of just letting people like me die, to "save" the American Economy, like we fighting World War, but we're trying to do it in hand cuff and ankle shackles.

Honestly, that's kind of scary to me. (Apologies if I'm overly passionate)
Drinks

Things that scare me:
[video:https://youtu.be/_7QhHTAWGOo]
[video:https://youtu.be/O6M_iHSv0-0]
[video:https://youtu.be/KF2vUoH2u6k]
[video:https://youtu.be/lwlEX9ybHwc]

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It is a good perspective.
Have one small hiccup.

Nobody has control over what goes viral

except perhaps the gate keepers like faceplants, giggles, twitters, duck-ducks
and the like.

Anja makes a good point as well. It is lonely out here in the land of truth and science based
(informed) opinion. Few of our readers are leaders in some misinformed consent. Those without
a bit of reason-backed critical thinking attempts tend not to post without some friendly push back.

Cheers

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