@mimi

Restoring humanity to humanity? Looking you in the eyes? Hmm... I think humanity is acting like crickets. Searching for a hiding place. I would not advixe to search for crickets. It seems to be a hopeless endeavour.

Thankfully we sometimes still have a choice.

and for that I am genuinely happy.
I didn't know Sherlock is such a good cowboy.
And if you don't understand my (not so) funny English that is just my freedom to talk my mouth as I please and I am grateful that you allowed me to do that as I please.

Restoring humanity to humanity? Looking you in the eyes? Hmm... I think humanity is acting like crickets. Searching for a hiding place. I would not advixe to search for crickets. It seems to be a hopeless endeavour.

Thanks for this great OT, Sherlock. I don't like crossroads. Too hard to know which direction to take.

With all due respect ... I need a new nickname for you.

Stay put and be well.

@doh1304
they are so "cheap".

Think like TPTB. What is COVID to them?
ans: An opportunity to make $billions.
Who would stop us?
ans: Well, it used to be anti authoritarian lefties, but we got the authoritarian right to attack them for us. Now it's anti authoritarian rightists. What we need are authoritarian leftists.
Hey, we've got authoritarian pseudo leftists, and we've already indoctrinated them to hate anti authoritarian rightists for us.
ans: Flood the media with propaganda about how those who aren't falling for our vaccination scam are brain dead haters who are killing us. Hate is a sure-fire tool.
But what about when the antiauthoritarian right and left realize they're both being played? They'll both hate us!
ans: Gleep!

@gulfgal98

Thanks for reposting the link to it. Yes I have been wondering why we aren’t talking more about it and I think we should. Part of it was that damn self censorship in case it’s another thing viewed as a conspiracy theory and would just cause more friction here. I don’t think it is because it seems most countries have been following the same script. Kill the economy, kill small businesses, kill people’s options to make a living, kill the option for people to afford housing, kill…ect. But make sure that the rich people get even more insanely rich by transferring money to them free of charge and rigging the economy for them.

Then add in all the censorship and topics that we are forbidden to talk about and losing the ways to do it. That democrats are the ones pushing for more censorship just blows my mind as does how many dem voters that are in favor of it no matter that they stood against it their whole lives previously.

Congress gave Blackstone money again so they can buy up any house that meets their fancy including whole neighborhoods and then renting them out at obscene rates. And also planning on building factory towns and all that comes with it. Yep I think we should be definitely talking about this.

We did cover the massive transfer of money from congress immediately while they dickered about how much to send us. Democrats are still doing it. No problem passing the largest military budget in history while cutting down what comes to we the people. Manchin doesn’t want an entitlement society? But he has no problem with one that benefits his donors. Trillions in subsidies for fossil fuels and gawd only knows what else, but gawd forbid that Americans are food secure. Oops..I’ll stop here.

Thanks again.

In my naive, overly optimistic way, I honestly believed that the pandemic would make us all behave in a kinder and gentler way toward one another. I could not have been more wrong. My stupid delusions of people actually coming together and caring for one another has been permanently dashed.

This pandemic and how friends, family, and our own government have reacted to it has completely and utterly darkened how I now view the world. It really does not matter who is right and who is wrong. Just as it does not matter if you believe that I have been propagandized or manipulated over this issue or not. We are all constantly being propagandized and manipulated over everything in this country. The coup has been completed and the dismantling of all public good is nearly complete. We saw that in our government's failure to give the people of this country healthcare in the midst of a pandemic while funneling trillions of dollars upward to large corporations and the wealthiest among us.

In May of this year, I wrote an essay about the Great Reset and its implications for every one of us. Perhaps we should all be talking about the much bigger picture envisioned by the Great Reset instead of attacking one another over vaccines, cures, and masks.

Honestly, I have come to believe that is no undoing what has happened to us as human beings in the last year and a half. It is extremely sad to watch us fighting over scraps on the ground while the oligarchs get fatter and fatter. All I know is that as I get older, I have become very tired of the infighting. And maybe that is exactly what the oligarchs have wanted all along.

@gulfgal98 and agree with every bit.

If you can, try to hang in there with us.

In my naive, overly optimistic way, I honestly believed that the pandemic would make us all behave in a kinder and gentler way toward one another. I could not have been more wrong. My stupid delusions of people actually coming together and caring for one another has been permanently dashed.

This pandemic and how friends, family, and our own government have reacted to it has completely and utterly darkened how I now view the world. It really does not matter who is right and who is wrong. Just as it does not matter if you believe that I have been propagandized or manipulated over this issue or not. We are all constantly being propagandized and manipulated over everything in this country. The coup has been completed and the dismantling of all public good is nearly complete. We saw that in our government's failure to give the people of this country healthcare in the midst of a pandemic while funneling trillions of dollars upward to large corporations and the wealthiest among us.

In May of this year, I wrote an essay about the Great Reset and its implications for every one of us. Perhaps we should all be talking about the much bigger picture envisioned by the Great Reset instead of attacking one another over vaccines, cures, and masks.

Honestly, I have come to believe that is no undoing what has happened to us as human beings in the last year and a half. It is extremely sad to watch us fighting over scraps on the ground while the oligarchs get fatter and fatter. All I know is that as I get older, I have become very tired of the infighting. And maybe that is exactly what the oligarchs have wanted all along.

@fire with fire

Well said. I too have avoided hating anyone who believes differently than I do. When my brother said something about the stupid people who refuse to get vaccinated and are keeping the epidemic going I just said, yup, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to change his mind by mentioning how it doesn’t stop us from getting infected and spreading the virus. And people with that mindset rarely think about the people who cannot get vaccinated. Everyone who doesn’t is just stupid and selfish and, and…

BTW not one of the current vaccines have been fully approved and that makes the mandates illegal. Pfizer’s is not available yet and they are using up their vaccines that are under EAU, but Fauci hasn’t told us that. Walensky is saying that they are perfectly safe for pregnant women even though they haven’t been tested to see if they are. And since kids rarely get sick why is Pfizer asking for EAU to vaccinated them? Biden still hasn’t given OSHA the power to enforce the mandates and I’m not sure that he legally can, but it was a scare tactic to get people to take them. And guess what? The NY governor is firing anyone who doesn’t get it and replacing health care workers with national guard health care workers who don’t have to get vaccinated until June 2022. Wut? Tell me how that makes sense?

Merck’s new drug doesn’t work and can cause cancer, costs under $18 to make but they are selling it for $700. The government has already given them $1.7 billion for 1.2 billion doses. India has stopped working with them because of both issues. Just another way to transfer money upwards and from the things that we should be getting. If the truth about all this ever comes out…

Of course this opening line reminded me of one of the dozens of iconic moments in Apocalypse Now: "Someday this war is gonna end."

Until about six weeks ago or so, I took that as a given. Like every plague in human memory, it eventually would play itself out in time. In fact, that commonsensical thought is what animated my own message board comments from the start of the crisis. I saw no evidence, anywhere, that anybody in authority thought that notion was worth consideration in determining how to "save lives."

No, it was just assumed without any meaningful debate or even explanation that the virus would kill indiscriminately and indefinitely unless humans reduced their personal contact each other. That may be the simple truth, but it still does not answer the question of why it does not kill everybody -- or why previous global infections have played themselves out in time.

That open ended formulation of "saving lives" did not pass my smell test, and I made some internet posts asking the question, how bad can this pandemic be?
.

Worst Case Scenario 7/9/20

.
Instead of arguing about the unknowable future course of the Asteroid Virus, let us assume the worst. In addition to mutating into multiple configurations, it turns out the virus has collateral pathological effects besides filling up the lungs with fluid. Suggestions that this might be happening are showing up on the internet as of now.

In this thought experiment, the current flap about the World Health Organization and aerosol projection of infectious material is joined by dozens of other bureaucratic screw-ups, while the infection rate climbs and the death rate resumes its climb. Public pressure groups and some politicians "call out" the various organizations like WHO and CDC for their criminal negligence, and the general public becomes more disillusioned and angry. So mad, they vote Democrat in November.

But the virus ignores the election returns and continues to attack human beings, making millions sick and hundreds of thousands die, due to a combination of Trumpian Anti-Science stupidity, the fundamental dysfunctionality of our social order and the unbeatable nature of the mutating, multi-faceted plague that refuses to go away.

How many people will this ultimately kill?

And how will people manage to remain good citizens as the "correct" science continues to impose social distancing indefinitely -- the New Normal is masks and long lines with no mass gatherings of people ever.

Does this civilization survive? How?

This, of course, is a more elaborate version of a question that still draws contempt and invective rather than rational thought. Is the cure worse than the disease? This question has nothing whatsoever to do with whether any particular statistic is bogus. It assumes that the virus is as bad as Science can possibly predict a virus to be, and then asks how bad is that? It also asks the forbidden question of how many people will be killed, maimed, sickened, rendered homeless, go hungry, turn to crime, become addicted -- and become multi-factored and multi-vectored THREATS -- in the Intentional Depression started to defeat the virus.

And it is the organized suppression of this side of the Pandemic Equation that makes me paranoid.

.

.
How Do We Know When We've Won of Lost? 8/17.20
.
I will never forget the first week of this War Against the Invisible Enemy. On March 10, during a nationally televised basketball game, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ordered the end of all NBA games, effective at the final buzzer. Two days later, before Trump declared a National Emergency, toilet paper disappeared from grocery stores and hoarding turned shopping into a Third World dystopian ordeal. At that point, there was no governmental order -- just panic. "If there is no more sports, something really BIG must be going on!"

From then to now, a hodge podge of orders, reversals and resumptions of various policies have materialized from a bewildering parade of politicians, bureaucrats and designated experts who appear on TV almost every day to reveal the latest numbers, curves, surges, spikes, waves, explosions and wildfires that show that whatever we have done so far to stop the virus has not worked.

There was never any debate at all, and the strategy for fighting the virus was just announced without any discussion of other alternatives. This was yet another example of binary framing -- either you are with us or you are with the terrorists, either you support Russiagate or you are a MAGA head, either you support every detail of the restrictions or you are a Trump supporting moron and a terrorist bent on the slaughter of innocents.

.

What I had no conception of as a year ago was the bizarre transformation of the global economy that is taking place. It is hidden in plain sight in the business press, but it never makes headlines and it is invariably segregated from "news" about the pandemic. The Federal Reserve has been creating liquidity to support the stock and real estate markets, throwing trillions (with a T) "dollars" at investors and the stock market averages are about double where they were as of March 2020. Housing prices have increased by more 15% while there are 15 million vacancies, including seven million dwellings "held off the market."

The price tag for all the various economic legerdemain is at least $10 trillion around the world, probably more than $20 trillion.

To link the anomalies of Covid policy with the perversity of the stock market and real estate booms is of course just another paranoid conspiracy theory. Guilty as charged. I believe that the "cost" of the pandemic is much like the "cost" of the War on Terrorism -- a gift to the friendly guys and gals who donate money to politicians.

.
As of March 2021, the good folks at Pfizer held a conference call with the "investment community." As of then, they were working under two assumptions:

1. booster shots would become necessary for the rest of time

2. the pandemic would turn endemic
.

we think as this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there's an opportunity here for us

.

Six months later, well shut my mouth, but they were right back then.

.

So, I hope you are right, JtC, and I hope that the pandemic is winding down already. Most importantly, I am hoping that the infinite power behind the most ridiculous bullshit in the history of the world accepts that verdict and agrees to shut down the mandatory vaccination program as unnecessary.

Based on the trajectory as reflected by what I pointed out last summer and what is going on now, I cannot imagine that happening. Nobody goes to this much trouble to say, "Whew! We are so glad we don't have to tell people what to do about their health anymore!"

My sourpuss skepticism is no more reliable than all this message board science I have been hearing about for a year and a half. But I believe I see the writing on the proverbial wall. The most absurd of paranoid fantasies are far more likely than not to be implemented as whatever diabolical Doctor Evil plot is on track. Whatever is going on, it sure ain't a sincere effort to "save lives."

So your goal is sensible and humane -- how do we avoid hating each other? That should be a lot easier than to stop worrying. I don't hate my brother who thinks I am going to die of covid because I have not gotten vaccinated. He is no longer impressed with mask wearing, but he concedes it is better than nothing.

I could debate with my brother and prove to him that this vaccine regime does not and cannot stop the pandemic or keep the vaccinated from spreading infection. Shit, that is a no-brainer as the authorities tell us to wear a mask even after getting jabbed.

I also have a business associate who shocked me on a phone call this week. He is an extremely nice guy who is a lifetime lefty who does not vote because both parties are run by capitalism. I called him to let him know that I had quit my job as of August 31, and that I had now severed all ties with the union that employed us both. Although he was aware of the September 1 deadline, it did not occur to him that I did not want to get vaccinated.

In fact, he told me about some hot job opportunities with Los Angeles County. Next month some 4000 county employees who are "too stupid to get vaccinated will be fired. You can probably get a job easily." Ever since Trump became the Poster Child for pandemic skepticism, I have heard this exact same presumptuous tone of voice that assumes that everybody with any common sense is on board with every detail of the Save Lives narrative -- and that anybody who does not share that assumption deserves to have their lives destroyed. That is about as good a definition of hate that I can imagine.

That irrational hate is what you are talking about. I have to own up to vast disappointment in my brother and my former colleague. Although my brother insisted on "discussing" it, I never talked about any of this with my professional associates. In fact I went to some trouble to disguise the reason for my "retirement": It ain't anybody's business what my health care regime is. I did not quit because of the vaccine. I quit because my employer (a labor union !?!?) has no legal or moral right to ask if I got jabbed -- for the simple truth that these vaccines do not prevent infection or spread. If I decide that I don't want to get stuck, the ONLY rationale that would make any sense for mandatory vaccination would be if it offered actual immunity. That would indeed end a pandemic.

But it hasn't and the Pfizer folks never claimed it would.

This is not to say that the community here should throw up its collective hands and say, "Well it was a nice thing, freedom. Sad to see it go."

But the pandemic might not ever end. Isn't that what endemic means?

@fire with fire endemic means here forever. endless jabs. "Get used to it. Live with it." Very grim, indeed.

Of course this opening line reminded me of one of the dozens of iconic moments in Apocalypse Now: "Someday this war is gonna end."

Until about six weeks ago or so, I took that as a given. Like every plague in human memory, it eventually would play itself out in time. In fact, that commonsensical thought is what animated my own message board comments from the start of the crisis. I saw no evidence, anywhere, that anybody in authority thought that notion was worth consideration in determining how to "save lives."

No, it was just assumed without any meaningful debate or even explanation that the virus would kill indiscriminately and indefinitely unless humans reduced their personal contact each other. That may be the simple truth, but it still does not answer the question of why it does not kill everybody -- or why previous global infections have played themselves out in time.

That open ended formulation of "saving lives" did not pass my smell test, and I made some internet posts asking the question, how bad can this pandemic be?
.

Worst Case Scenario 7/9/20

.
Instead of arguing about the unknowable future course of the Asteroid Virus, let us assume the worst. In addition to mutating into multiple configurations, it turns out the virus has collateral pathological effects besides filling up the lungs with fluid. Suggestions that this might be happening are showing up on the internet as of now.

In this thought experiment, the current flap about the World Health Organization and aerosol projection of infectious material is joined by dozens of other bureaucratic screw-ups, while the infection rate climbs and the death rate resumes its climb. Public pressure groups and some politicians "call out" the various organizations like WHO and CDC for their criminal negligence, and the general public becomes more disillusioned and angry. So mad, they vote Democrat in November.

But the virus ignores the election returns and continues to attack human beings, making millions sick and hundreds of thousands die, due to a combination of Trumpian Anti-Science stupidity, the fundamental dysfunctionality of our social order and the unbeatable nature of the mutating, multi-faceted plague that refuses to go away.

How many people will this ultimately kill?

And how will people manage to remain good citizens as the "correct" science continues to impose social distancing indefinitely -- the New Normal is masks and long lines with no mass gatherings of people ever.

Does this civilization survive? How?

This, of course, is a more elaborate version of a question that still draws contempt and invective rather than rational thought. Is the cure worse than the disease? This question has nothing whatsoever to do with whether any particular statistic is bogus. It assumes that the virus is as bad as Science can possibly predict a virus to be, and then asks how bad is that? It also asks the forbidden question of how many people will be killed, maimed, sickened, rendered homeless, go hungry, turn to crime, become addicted -- and become multi-factored and multi-vectored THREATS -- in the Intentional Depression started to defeat the virus.

And it is the organized suppression of this side of the Pandemic Equation that makes me paranoid.

.

.
How Do We Know When We've Won of Lost? 8/17.20
.
I will never forget the first week of this War Against the Invisible Enemy. On March 10, during a nationally televised basketball game, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ordered the end of all NBA games, effective at the final buzzer. Two days later, before Trump declared a National Emergency, toilet paper disappeared from grocery stores and hoarding turned shopping into a Third World dystopian ordeal. At that point, there was no governmental order -- just panic. "If there is no more sports, something really BIG must be going on!"

From then to now, a hodge podge of orders, reversals and resumptions of various policies have materialized from a bewildering parade of politicians, bureaucrats and designated experts who appear on TV almost every day to reveal the latest numbers, curves, surges, spikes, waves, explosions and wildfires that show that whatever we have done so far to stop the virus has not worked.

There was never any debate at all, and the strategy for fighting the virus was just announced without any discussion of other alternatives. This was yet another example of binary framing -- either you are with us or you are with the terrorists, either you support Russiagate or you are a MAGA head, either you support every detail of the restrictions or you are a Trump supporting moron and a terrorist bent on the slaughter of innocents.

.

What I had no conception of as a year ago was the bizarre transformation of the global economy that is taking place. It is hidden in plain sight in the business press, but it never makes headlines and it is invariably segregated from "news" about the pandemic. The Federal Reserve has been creating liquidity to support the stock and real estate markets, throwing trillions (with a T) "dollars" at investors and the stock market averages are about double where they were as of March 2020. Housing prices have increased by more 15% while there are 15 million vacancies, including seven million dwellings "held off the market."

The price tag for all the various economic legerdemain is at least $10 trillion around the world, probably more than $20 trillion.

To link the anomalies of Covid policy with the perversity of the stock market and real estate booms is of course just another paranoid conspiracy theory. Guilty as charged. I believe that the "cost" of the pandemic is much like the "cost" of the War on Terrorism -- a gift to the friendly guys and gals who donate money to politicians.

.
As of March 2021, the good folks at Pfizer held a conference call with the "investment community." As of then, they were working under two assumptions:

1. booster shots would become necessary for the rest of time

2. the pandemic would turn endemic
.

we think as this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there's an opportunity here for us

.

Six months later, well shut my mouth, but they were right back then.

.

So, I hope you are right, JtC, and I hope that the pandemic is winding down already. Most importantly, I am hoping that the infinite power behind the most ridiculous bullshit in the history of the world accepts that verdict and agrees to shut down the mandatory vaccination program as unnecessary.

Based on the trajectory as reflected by what I pointed out last summer and what is going on now, I cannot imagine that happening. Nobody goes to this much trouble to say, "Whew! We are so glad we don't have to tell people what to do about their health anymore!"

My sourpuss skepticism is no more reliable than all this message board science I have been hearing about for a year and a half. But I believe I see the writing on the proverbial wall. The most absurd of paranoid fantasies are far more likely than not to be implemented as whatever diabolical Doctor Evil plot is on track. Whatever is going on, it sure ain't a sincere effort to "save lives."

So your goal is sensible and humane -- how do we avoid hating each other? That should be a lot easier than to stop worrying. I don't hate my brother who thinks I am going to die of covid because I have not gotten vaccinated. He is no longer impressed with mask wearing, but he concedes it is better than nothing.

I could debate with my brother and prove to him that this vaccine regime does not and cannot stop the pandemic or keep the vaccinated from spreading infection. Shit, that is a no-brainer as the authorities tell us to wear a mask even after getting jabbed.

I also have a business associate who shocked me on a phone call this week. He is an extremely nice guy who is a lifetime lefty who does not vote because both parties are run by capitalism. I called him to let him know that I had quit my job as of August 31, and that I had now severed all ties with the union that employed us both. Although he was aware of the September 1 deadline, it did not occur to him that I did not want to get vaccinated.

In fact, he told me about some hot job opportunities with Los Angeles County. Next month some 4000 county employees who are "too stupid to get vaccinated will be fired. You can probably get a job easily." Ever since Trump became the Poster Child for pandemic skepticism, I have heard this exact same presumptuous tone of voice that assumes that everybody with any common sense is on board with every detail of the Save Lives narrative -- and that anybody who does not share that assumption deserves to have their lives destroyed. That is about as good a definition of hate that I can imagine.

That irrational hate is what you are talking about. I have to own up to vast disappointment in my brother and my former colleague. Although my brother insisted on "discussing" it, I never talked about any of this with my professional associates. In fact I went to some trouble to disguise the reason for my "retirement": It ain't anybody's business what my health care regime is. I did not quit because of the vaccine. I quit because my employer (a labor union !?!?) has no legal or moral right to ask if I got jabbed -- for the simple truth that these vaccines do not prevent infection or spread. If I decide that I don't want to get stuck, the ONLY rationale that would make any sense for mandatory vaccination would be if it offered actual immunity. That would indeed end a pandemic.

But it hasn't and the Pfizer folks never claimed it would.

This is not to say that the community here should throw up its collective hands and say, "Well it was a nice thing, freedom. Sad to see it go."

But the pandemic might not ever end. Isn't that what endemic means?