We loves us some science, oh yes we do
Also, curtains.
If you think Democrats like this guy aren’t enjoying the unlimited power to shut down your business, make you stay away from fellow human beings and strap a pointless rag over your mouth as a sign of political subservience, you aren’t paying attention https://t.co/oAurBFstE9
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) September 20, 2020
Via Ed Driscoll.
It appears that at least one federal agency is in open insurrection against legitimate elected authority. Guess which one.
Go on, guess.
At the beginning of September, the director of the Office of Management and Budget announced that, at President Trump’s direction, all federal agencies would be banned from imposing Critical Race Theory (CRT) on their employees. This was the right thing to do. CRT is pure racism. While the KKK was obsessed with blacks and the Nazis were obsessed with Jews, CRT is obsessed with white people. Teaching it at federal agencies is a shocking violation of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite its unconstitutionality and the president’s order, though, the CDC is planning to continue CRT training.
Christopher Rufo, who has become the point man for all of these stories about CRT training in the federal government, discovered what he aptly called a “BOMBSHELL.” The CDC is going ahead with its plan — paid for with your money — to impose a thirteen-week-long CRT training program on its employees.
This an important story because it is a nexus of the issues that brought Trump into the White House in 2016. It’s the story of an out-of-control federal agency that feels that no one — and certainly not the constitutional executive of the United States — has any authority over it.
Well, of course that’s true, and the way things ought to be anyhow. Who better understands what’s good for us hapless knaves and serfs than these exalted “experts”? I mean, just look at what a bang-up job they’ve done battling the Election Flu CRISIS!!!™ on our behalf, fechrissakes.
Update! Unrelated, you say? In a pig’s eye, sez I.
Dr. Anthony Fauci just spilled the beans: contrary to the implicit promise numerous politicians made that COVID-19 restrictions would only last “until there’s an effective vaccine,” Fauci says the arrival of a vaccine won’t mean life will return to normal, perhaps for more than a year.
“If you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to COVID, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” said the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Friday.
A safe and effective vaccine produced this quickly would be a stunning scientific accomplishment that could save thousands of lives. But Fauci warned that widespread distribution and getting “the majority, or more, of the population vaccinated and protected” won’t happen until perhaps the end 2021, and therefore means we cannot be free from oppressive lockdown measures until at least that point.
Dear “Dr” Falsie:
Don’t trust you, nor your minions, nor your entire Deep State bureaucracy. Under NO circumstances whatosever, then, will I be accepting a dose of your “vaccine.” Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Go take a flying fuck at a plate glass window, the whole menagerie of you fascist rat bastards. That is all.
Yrs trly etc.
Sure, what the hell, why not.
SACRAMENTO, CA—Fresh off his fireside chat to the state of California last week, Governor Gavin Newsom is announcing swift action to combat the spread of wild global-warming fires in his state. According to sources, Newsom will be signing an executive order requiring all trees to wear masks so that they don’t catch fire.
“My proposal is proven and grounded in SCIENCE,” said the governor in a statement. “Everyone knows masks work. They stop things from spreading. They stop COVID from spreading. Of course, they would also stop fires from spreading! SCIENCE tells us that masks solve almost every problem that has ever existed. This isn’t that difficult. These are facts. It’s just SCIENCE!”
Starting this week, Police, Firefighters, and Forest Management Personnel will be tasked with applying a giant mask to every single tree in the state. The governor is also considering requiring all sea turtles in California to also wear masks to prevent straws from getting stuck in their noses.
Makes as much sense as anything else does these days.
At first I was intrigued. Then it seemed kinda creepy. Then it seemed downright alarming.
On the International Space Station, clusters of nerve cells called mini-brains are developing in ways that scientists didn’t previously think was possible.
The organoids were grown from stem cells at the University of California, San Diego lab of biologist Alysson Muotri, before being packed into a box and shipped to space, where Muotri told The New York Times they’re likely “replicating like crazy.” Now, his team has found that the organoids are giving off brain waves — complex patterns of neural activity — similar to those of premature babies. It’s a bizarre finding that could force scientists to revisit the limitations of lab-grown mini-organs and the ethical issues surrounding them.
Muotri hooked the mini-brains up to spider-shaped robots to read their neural activity, according to the NYT. The findings could be a sign that scientists are approaching the capability to generate at least partially-conscious life in the lab — a development that’s long been little more than a speculative horror story in the field.
“The closer we come to his goal, the more likely we will get a brain that is capable of sentience and of feeling pain, agony and distress,” Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Brain Institute, told the NYT.
Greeeaaaat. Cause, y’know, there just isn’t nearly enough pain, agony, and distress going around these days already. Right, genius?
“There are some of my colleagues who say, ‘No, these things will never be conscious,’” Muotri told the NYT. “Now I’m not so sure.”
Oh, this is just BOUND to end well.
If these brain waves are a sign that organoids could be capable of consciousness, neuroscientists will need to grapple with a major ethical dilemma — as continued experimentation would potentially mean creating and destroying self-aware, human-like life. But we may not be there yet, cautioned University of Southern California biologist Giorgia Quadrato, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
“It’s pretty amazing. No one really knew if that was possible,” Quadrato told the NYT, before clarifying that it didn’t conclude that the mini-brains reached human levels of activity.
“People will say, ‘Ah, these are like the brains of preterm infants,’” she said. “No, they are not.”
Like you really, truly know that. Like you could EVER really know it for certain. Like you can predict where it will all lead in the end.
I’m by no means opposed to science and research, of course. And in research, a certain amount of risk is essential, a certain boldness a fundamental job qualification. But in this instance, I suspect these folks might be messing around with things that are probably best left alone.
I’m thinking very seriously about making this my final COVIDIOT shamdemic post.
A recent study claimed that the annual motorcycle rally held last month in Sturgis, South Dakota was a “superspreader event” infecting more than half of the 460,000 attendees at a cost of $12 billion to our public health institutions.
In a report titled “IZA DP No. 13670: The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19,” claimed that “large crowds, coupled with minimal mask-wearing and social distancing by attendees” turned the rally into a “superspreader” infecting 260,000 people.
Authors Dhaval M. Dave, Andrew I. Friedson, Drew McNichols, and Joseph J. Sabia concluded that “the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally generated public health costs of approximately $12.2 billion.”
The public health risks of Sturgis were so rigorously studied by the authors that “no medical journal would touch it,” as bestselling author and public health writer Alex Berenson noted on Tuesday. Instead, the report was posted on the website of the obscure Insitute of Labor Economics, a leftwing German thinktank.
Our infotainment industry — formerly known as “the mainstream media,” and prior to that as “the news business” — went bonkers over the claim.
The Hill — formerly a respectable Washington-based publication — breathlessly ran the study’s claims as though they were undisputed by anyone without a political agenda.
Here’s a partial list:
- NBC News: Sturgis rally may have caused more than 250,000 new coronavirus cases, study finds
- USA Today: Study says Sturgis bike rally was a ‘super-spreader’ event, led to 260,000 COVID-19 cases
- IBT: Sturgis Rally May Have Led To 250,000 New US Coronavirus Cases, Study Estimates
- Jalopnik: Results Are In: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Was A COVID ‘Super Spreader’ Costing Billions
- Forum News Service: Researchers: Sturgis rally a ‘superspreader event’ linked to 267K coronavirus cases
- Kaiser Health News: Sturgis Biker Rally Linked To 260,000 COVID cases
PLEASE NOTE: I boldfaced all those mentions of new “cases” above for a reason, folks. To wit:
I am begging you not to use the enemy’s language. Stop saying “cases”. Correct people who do.
A positive test is not a case. A case is an active symptomatic illness in a person needing or seeking treatment. A case is not a person who just has the bug and has, say, only the sniffles. Most people who get this don’t develop anything like a serious illness. Many never even knew they had it!
Again, some positive tests are false. Most genuine positives tests not are not symptomatic. (Here is one example.)
Positive tests do not necessarily mean active infections. I told us months ago the test was likely picking up past infections. This has since been verified (and it was always likely). Also as we guessed a long time ago, using evidence from other similar infections, the best current guess of the infection fatality rate is about 0.3%. We used similar numbers to show pictures of the number of people likely already infected.
Propagandists and governments are using these false “cases” to cause unnecessary panic. When you hear somebody say “cases”, tell them, “You mean positive tests. How many of them required hospitalization? How many deaths were caused by the virus? How many died with it?”
Stop saying cases!
Also stop saying deaths. Say “attributed deaths”, or “deaths with but not necessarily by.” Poor use of language has exacerbated this crisis beyond all measure. Do not contribute to it.
From the very start of this fiasco, it’s been nothing but lies and deception, all the way down. Well, unless one would like to be generous about the thing and credit witless stupidity instead, which I admit is a possibility too. But either way, the scam served its purpose very well already; the soaring Trump economy has been thoroughly brought down, the Amerikan populace cowed and subjugated, the “new normal” established. The shamdemic horse has been well and truly flogged nearly unto death at this point, and I for one am sick and tired of hearing about the damned thing, much less talking about it here.
So unless it’s something other than yet another run-of-the-mill “whoopsie, got it wrong” admission from yet another gaggle of mutton-headed “experts,” I’m thinking of just packing it all in for good. Perhaps that will be harder to do than I think at the moment; could be my spluttering rage as TPTB smear yet another transparent lie into the faces of the gullible majority will force me to the keyboard for another rant on this tired topic. We’ll see.
Oh yeah, that Sturgis “superspreader” surge? Guess what.
According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.
There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that’s only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.
The results of the IZA paper “do not align with what we know,” South Dakota epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said at a Tuesday news briefing.
The IZA paper “isn’t science; it’s fiction,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said.
It’s also good election-time propaganda, apparently.
NOW you’re getting it.
Don’t look now, but our masters just moved the goalposts yet again.
The notion that we would lock down our society until a vaccine is introduced to counter a virus with a 0.3% infection fatality rate and near-zero risk for non-immunocompromised individuals was shockingly insane. Then we were told that even after a vaccine is in place, the social control will not end because the vaccine will not fully work against COVID-19 for all people. Now, we are beginning to see that because indeed COVID-19 is not that much different from a pandemic flu, the flu itself will now constitute the new threshold for social control and panic in perpetuity. In other words, the totalitarianism that we blissfully accepted in March is here to stay forever, unless we reclaim our sovereignty.
“[Arizona] State officials Monday laid out a plan for ‘aggressively’ combating the upcoming influenza season as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers, with the first step being to urge people to get a flu shot as soon as possible,” wrote the Copper Courier on Tuesday. “The state plans to increase funding for Medicaid recipients to get flu shots, combine flu-shot sites with coronavirus testing facilities, and more, while also advocating many of the same measures meant to head off the spread of COVID-19” (emphasis added).
“Aggressively” combating freedom, more like. But note well the next part, which I’ll boldface for ya.
The Arizona paper was reporting on a press conference held by liberal Republican Governor Doug Ducey and Arizona health department director Dr. Cara Christ, when they warned about “a perfect storm” of lingering COVID-19 mixing with the flu season in the coming months. They warned about mask-wearing and shutting down businesses that don’t participate in their unproven social control rituals. They also revealed that indeed hospitals get overwhelmed to a degree during the flu season and now that fact, which we always lived with every year, will be used to control our lives.
Lest anybody think that the scourges of liberty and proper Constitutional governance exclusively inhabit the Demonrat Party. Hate to tell ya, but the infestation of Statist tyranny is far more extensive than that, I’m afraid.
Folks, we have come full-circle. When this all began in early March, we were warned by the World Health Organization that COVID-19 was the worst epidemic in generations, with an infection fatality rate of 3.4% and a hospitalization rate exponentially higher that was going to swamp all of our big-city hospitals. As such, there was no way to compare it to the flu. Anyone who did was treated almost like a Holocaust denier.
Now, those same control freaks are comparing COVID to the flu! See, if they were right about the threat level of this virus, the contrast between it and the flu would be black and white. Talking about the perfect storm between COVID-19 and the flu would be tantamount to tethering the health care concerns of cancer to those of a cold. But now the truth comes out that this virus really is not that much different from a pandemic flu and that hospitals are always crowded at the peak of even a seasonal flu, much less a pandemic flu.
In July, Justin Hart, founder of RationalGround.com, which promotes a rational approach to the virus, posted on Twitter a series of articles describing emergency measures in various ERs throughout the nation during the 2018 pandemic flu. Yet the media coverage at the time wasn’t incessant, it never became political, and the politicians never gave any thought to shutting down our lives. We lived with it, and few people ever heard of the 2018 pandemic flu.
That is all about to change. Now the flu is the new threshold for perpetual mask-wearing, draconian regulations on businesses and houses of worship, and government mandates of every facet of our lives.
And after that, it will be…something else. Whatever comes to hand for them, so as to keep the Sheeple fearful and compliant, and the slaugherhouse train rolling happily along.
Hence, the politicians have gone from “Don’t you dare compare this to the flu” to “We should be doing this for the flu as well.” In other words, there’s a reason why politicians and the media warn about a “new normal.” It’s not because COVID-19 will necessarily be with us forever; it’s because the tyranny of the government response had nothing to do with COVID-19. That was simply the perfect pretext because so much was unknown about it earlier this year. Now that everyone is conditioned to go along with the suspension of democracy for “public health,” it’s not even a political leap to use the flu as the next excuse.
My boldface above is exactly what I’ve said from the very start of this shamdemic fiasco. Believe me when I tell you that I take no pleasure whatsoever in having been right all along.
At present, we are at the point in this COVID “epidemic” where the flu season, which is driven more by symptoms and not testing, more definitely disrupts people’s daily schedules with illness. As Lamb notes, “By this logic, the virus would never go away and emergency powers will be indefinite.”
And indeed, that is exactly the point. That is their plan … if we let them get away with it.
Unfortunately and to our undying shame, that’s EXACTLY what we’ve done.
Yeah, tell me again all about how it’s all about health, safety, and combating a profligately-overhyped virus, whydon’tcha. That one’s my favorite.
SEATTLE CLOSES PARK TO PREVENT OUTDOOR WORSHIP SERVICE: This notice sounds innocuous enough, just a legitimate public health measure. The reality is officials closed the park because it was the planned site for a worship time organized by a group of local churches, assisted by Sean Feucht. Feucht’s ministry organization has organized 19 services in 19 cities during July and August.
“This is the height of hypocrisy for the City of Seattle to turn a blind eye to riots, looting, and AntiFa, while refusing to let Christians gather in a public park to sing and worship,” Feucht said in a statement in response to the closure notice. “First the government shuts down churches. Now it’s shutting down parks to stop us from worshipping. Time to stand up church!”
If they don’t, they will soon be destroyed forever. And if they continue to submit to this naked tyranny, they will deserve to be. Michael Walsh’s sage advice from way back in 2012 is even more apt today:
In 1844, faced with a Nativist threat to burn down St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral (at Prince and Mott streets), John J. Hughes, the Irish-born bishop (and later first archbishop) of New York, gathered several thousand of his mostly Irish parishioners and deployed them around the church. Any attack on the cathedral, warned the man known as “Dagger John,” would be repulsed with force. The Nativists backed down.
During the Civil War, Hughes undertook a secret mission to Europe at the personal request of Abraham Lincoln, to rally support for the Union cause and keep Britain from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. This he did in part by explaining the facts of the life to the English: that they’d have no luck in raising troops in restive, famine-stricken Ireland to fight against America, and a great deal of trouble if they tried.
Those were the days of the two-fisted Irish clergy, who understood their dual American roles as both the spiritual leaders of their people and — when necessary — political figures as well. But those days are long gone (Cardinal O’Connor was the last of the line).
It’s good to see the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops making noises about suing the government, but it would be even better to see Archbishop (and Cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan get out front on this issue in a very public way. “Conscientious objectors” and “civil disobedience” were all the rage on the left during the Vietnam War and the draft,” and it’s high time we tried the same tactic on them: Catholic institutions should simply ignore the law, refuse to implement it, and refuse to pay the Obamacare fines — and dare the Left utter a peep about “higher morality.” There are 77 million Catholics in the U.S., and an awful lot of them vote.
In other words, Archbishop Dolan and his confreres ought to ask themselves, What Would Dagger John Do? No need for mobs this time, just morals. But if they’re not going to vigorously defend their own faith, in a Church Militant sort of way, who will?
Pretty sure I linked and excerpted this column way back in the day, I believe; honestly, I’m astonished that I even remembered. But when I read about the above instance of the broader rejiggering of the COVID “crisis” into a convenient tool to be wielded against all the perennial hate-objects of Leftist despotism—an abominable tide that has inundated the nation this disastrous summer—it became readily apparent that some things never change after all. More, from Walsh’s second follow-up to that first Dagger John piece:
I’ve written about Bishop John J. Hughes, the first Archbishop of New York, here and here, advocating that both the Catholic clergy and its laymen take a page from that tough mick’s book and deal with the Obama administration’s unconstitutional attack on religious conscience and the First Amendment the way Dagger John would have: by defying it.
Civil disobedience was all the rage on the left when I was a lad during the Vietnam War era. Refuse to register for the draft; declare your conscientious objector status if called; refuse to pay that portion of your taxes that went to support the Pentagon, etc. The liberals couldn’t wrap themselves in enough moral goodness as they cursed and spat upon the returning soldiers in their customarily peaceful and tolerant fashion.
Time to turn the tables by using their own weapons and tactics against them.
It was said of Dagger John that he was “more a Roman gladiator than a devout follower of the meek founder of Christianity.” To face the secular threat of the modern Left, we’re going to need a lot more gladiators.
It ain’t just the Christian church, both Protestant and Catholic, that needs to get its head out of the sand, shed all comforting delusions, and boldly defy our would-be masters. For all of us, it’s quickly boiling down to this simple expression: On your feet, or on your knees.
You don’t have to like it. But you DO have to recognize it.
In any war, to refuse to fight back vigorously is effectively to surrender. At such a perilous crossroads of history not only our freedom but our very future hangs precariously in the balance…waiting. A stark, binary choice must be made; there is no longer any middle ground, no third way, no half-measures. Anyone who declines to engage, in any way they can manage, in defense of what’s right, just, and true might as well just declare themselves actively in league with the enemy and be done with it.
Craven update! Oh, it’s the Church Militant alright. But not in the way Walsh meant.
Black Lives Matter DESTROYED and TORCHED the historic St. John’s Church in Washington DC in late May.
St. John’s was designed by noted architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe to serve Episcopalians in the neighborhoods in the western end of Washington. The cornerstone of St. John’s was set on September 14, 1815.
Beginning with James Madison, until the present, every President of the United States has attended a service at St. John’s Church.
BLM torched it.
St. John’s Church leaders invited Black Lives Matter to paint race-based themes on the boarded up church this weekend.
They did not ask for Christian themes — they asked for racial themes.
Well, I mean, this IS Episcopalians we’re talking about here. But still. One can’t help but wonder what or who might be influencing these pathetic fools to prostrate themselves at the altar of cowardice and appeasement. Could it be…ohh, let me see…SATAN?!?
This has been going on for decades, of course, but its most striking manifestation of late has been the near-total failure of the Christian church to expose and reject the destructive fraud that is Black Lives Matter.
That kind of failure requires extraordinary ignorance, extraordinary cowardice, or both. After all, it’s not like the veil hasn’t come off Black Lives Matter, if it was ever there in the first place. Its founders openly profess their allegiance to Marxism, history’s most genocidal ideology. Its members repeatedly encourage violence, destruction, and even murder. Its website calls for the “disruption of the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”, the end of accepting heterosexuality as normal, and the avoidance of “environments in which men are centered”.
At least two of its leading lights—Patrisse Cullors and Malina Abdullah—practice a Yoruban zombie religion in which they may, or may not, sacrifice animals to invite the spirits of the dead to possess their bodies during their nightly riot activities. (Abdullah says she’s become very friendly with the spirits of the dead, and has had a lot of laughs with one named “Wakeesha”).
In addition, the cited catalyst for the entire movement—the “murder” of Trayvon Martin in 2012—is a lie. Trayvon Martin was not “murdered”. He violently assaulted a man named George Zimmerman by pounding his head into the pavement. Zimmerman then shot him in self-defense. That’s precisely why a jury of six women acquitted him. Yet Black Lives Matter is still calling it a “murder” on its website.
The second rationale for the movement—that a racist white cop gunned down an innocent “gentle giant” named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—is also a lie. After robbing a store, Brown attacked a police officer trying to arrest him. As a result, the officer shot Brown in self-defense. Attorney General Eric Holder himself confirmed this after an exhaustive review.
These aren’t the only Black Lives Matter lies, of course. It’s a lie that there’s an epidemic of racist police shootings. It’s a lie that defunding the police will help black communities (it does just the opposite, and has already directly enabled the murder of hundreds more black people, including children).
In short, you couldn’t invent an organization which more flagrantly violates a greater number of Biblical commandments and Christian ideals than Black Lives Matter. You have murder, beatings, necromancy, stealing, bearing false witness, covetousness, lying, insurrection against duly-elected leaders, worshipping false gods, assaults on the family, assaults on heterosexuality, and a transparently fake concern for the black lives every real Christian is duty-bound to see as creations of God. It’s a Satanic dream.
And yet…
Pretty much all of Leftism is a Satanic dream, really. Ironic that the modern libtard-subverted church would be so eager to grovel at the feet of the Prince Of Lies, solely in order to court the favor of people who hate them above almost anything else.
More silly questions asked, and answered by moi.
Apparently not.
Americans have endured months of business closures, quarantines, mask-wearing, hand-wiping, travel restrictions, limited-attendance funerals and weddings, virtual graduations, closed schools, inaccessible medical screenings and surgeries, park closures, take-out-only food, drive-thru-only banks, coinless cash registers, and sports and concert cancellations — a seemingly endless list of life disturbances that extend far beyond mere inconvenience and cause deep economic, medical, psychological, and societal hardship.
Some churches were recently banned from singing hymns, and a California pastor has been threatened with jail time for opening the doors for worship. Water and power can be turned off to Los Angeles homes if they host a group that violates official limits. Gym owners were locked up for daring to reopen, even with responsible precautions. Ankle bracelets were placed on those who declined to sign legal documents requiring burdensome and intrusive health reporting to authorities. Is this the America we know and love?
You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking.
Until recently — March 2020, to be exact — we could rely on the Constitution and Bill of Rights to constrain government’s control of our lives,
Are you serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?
but with the arrival of one virus, our legal rights seem to have been deemed irrelevant, completely subordinated to the arbitrary whims of politicians. Apparently, they can do anything now, as long as they proclaim it in the name of “safety.”
Without fanfare, without any change to the Constitution, we seem to have unwittingly entered a new era of increasing government power.
“New”? Okay, stop it, you’re killing me here.
Since power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, this should trouble all of us. What might it portend for our future?
More of the same thing we’ve seen for the last, oh, sixty-seventy years, only worse. And faster.
Once a vaccine is recognized, will the government force us to take it?
Yes.
What if we refuse? Could we lose our health insurance?
Losing your health insurance will be the LEAST of your problems, serf.
What about religious objections?
Depends. For Muslims, no problem; you’re fine, carry on. For Christians…wait, you’re a Christian and haven’t been arrested and imprisoned already?
Could we be forced to choose between our jobs and the drug? It’s hard to imagine — until you consider that schools already require immunizations. Doctors are already communicating that the “social contract” matters more than the Constitution.
Why not? Almost everything else does too.
What if we test positive but, like the couple in Kentucky, refuse to bow to health officials and sign a document on the spot mandating we report to them? Do they have that authority?
Of course they don’t. Hasn’t stopped a one of them from wielding it anyway though, has it?
Can they put us under house arrest and shackle us with ankle bracelets until the time of their choosing? They will surely tell us it is for everyone’s safety. This opens the door to an array of other so-called unsafe behaviors to follow.
NOW you’re getting it, bright boy.
In days past, we would roll our eyes at such cynical paranoia, but are we still rolling them? Will the government that now advises us to carry cash and willingly give up our belongings to robbers look away as our other civil rights are trampled? Should we expect any protection from politicians that allow mobs to flout COVID-19 rules but will gleefully jail a pastor? It appears this is less about safety and more about control.
By George, I think he’s got it!
Surely the original shutdowns and other measures were of noble intent, but the law of unintended consequences can quickly show its dark side. Until now, we’ve endured all of this to protect not only ourselves but also others because Americans are a helpful bunch. When the storm comes, if you ask us, we’ll always pitch in to toss sandbags or pick up debris. We’ll bring meals. We’ll donate money. We’ll wear a mask, too; a flavor of patriotism infused the pandemic response for a while as Americans willingly sacrificed to serve the health and welfare of their communities.
But it’s time to ask, how far will this go?
As far as we allow it to, same as it ever was. Know what else is also the same as it ever was, though? The somewhat less than staggering COVID body count, that’s what.
The CDC silently updated their numbers this week to show that only 6% of all coronavirus deaths were related to the coronavirus alone. The rest of the deaths pinned to the China coronavirus are attributed to individuals who had other serious issues going on. Also, most of the deaths are related to very old Americans.
Straight from the horse’s…uhh, mouth:
Comorbidities
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
SO, just over 9k deaths that were actually, truly COVID deaths, then. The rest—that other niggling, paltry little ninety-four fucking percent—were basically old, sick folks who already had one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, a significant percentage of whom were probably not going to make it till Thanksgiving, whither corony-V or no.
But does it get better still, you ask? Hey, these are goobermint “experts” we’re talking about here. Of COURSE it does.
Testing, testing, testing — that’s how Pelosi and the Democrats say we’ll defeat the coronavirus. Meanwhile, President Trump and his administration are conducting “operation warp speed” at breakneck pace to develop therapeutics, diagnostics, and a vaccine for the Wuhan flu. Unlike testing, treatments will actually do something for you when you come down sick with the disease. But now we’re learning the overwhelming majority of those who have tested positive for the coronavirus should really have been found negative after all.
According to The New York Times, potentially 90 percent of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus present in their bodies that such individuals do not need to isolate nor are they candidates for contact tracing. Leading public health experts are now concerned that overtesting is responsible for misdiagnosing a huge number of people with harmless amounts of the virus in their systems.
Hm; might help to explain why the CDC’s “experts” are backpedaling with no little alacrity on their previous recommendation that every man, woman, child, and embryo be tested hourly, maybe.
Bottom line? If there was some kind of ongoing competition with an award for the biggest, most extravagant swindle in all of human history, with all this COVIDiocy we could call it a wrap and declare an all-time champeen with utmost confidence. Now let’s just see how many of those FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!!™ panic ninnies and dimestore dictators are willing to chow down on a heaping helping of crow and follow THAT science.
COVID-19: The epidemic is ending, why do government restrictions remain?
Easy-peasy: because governments like them. To ask the question, truly, is to answer it. Robert knows this quite well already, of course.
This essay is going to include a number of graphs [data source], showing the daily numbers related to the Wuhan virus since the beginning of the epidemic. All show that the epidemic is truly tapering off or ending, regardless of where you live. All also strongly suggest that the lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates, and the many other odious rules that were imposed initially for just a few weeks to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed but have remained in force now for many months should immediately be cancelled or removed.
And yet, these restrictions remain, in one form or another, with some rules (such as the mandate to wear masks) being expanded, sometimes to the point of idiocy. That they remain proves again that those lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates and other rules had little to do with the disease. Instead their goal was to impose new authoritarian rules on the citizenry, meant to establish new precedents of power and control for the petty dictators who wish to rule us like servants.
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! Ladies and gennlemens, we have ourselves a winner!
Zimmerman has put together a nice collection of facts and figures—ie, actual science—that solidly confirms what I said from the very beginning about all this: the phony Covid Clampdown was never really about any stupid virus in the first place. Read it all.
Expert me no more experts.
Joe Biden climbed out of his basement last week. Twice! Once to deliver a brief but well-received address at the Democratic National Convention, and once to give a socially distanced interview to ABC News with his wing-woman Kamala Harris. The big news out of the interview is that Biden said he would shut America down again if scientists told him to.
If this is true, then I have a question. Why are we even bothering to consider Biden? Why not just elect Dr. Anthony Fauci, or Dr. Deborah Birx if we want to smash glass ceilings in the process?
Very early on we all made a decision as a society to hand our freedom to a small group of people because they have lab coats with fancy logos. It’s shocking. It is something that America needs to come to terms with because what we did can never happen again.
The misery, joblessness, loss of life, addiction, destruction of businesses, suicides — they all happened. It wasn’t people wanting manicures and brunch, it was peoples’ lives being destroyed. Did we have to do it? Maybe. Maybe we did have to do it, maybe that heavy human toll had to be accepted to stop the spread.
But we didn’t even have a conversation about it. We just pretended the downsides didn’t exist. When President Trump or anyone else said, “Wait, this is gonna hurt people too,” they were called grandma killers.
Biden just told us that as president of the United States he will do whatever the science bureaucracy tells him to do. Then why have a president? What good is he? Literally anyone could do that. If the new rule is that nobody gets to go outside or go to church unless Dr. Fauci says so, then why have a president? Why have a Constitution? Let’s just have a medical board that sends out decrees. Also one for the environment and racism. It’ll be easy, we just do whatever they say while we watch Netflix and order stuff from Amazon while having Zoom drinks.
Sadly, Amerikans have now proved that they much prefer freedom FROM choice over freedom OF choice.
Any bets on how many of the Sheeple will just bleat a servile little BAAAAH and happily go along with this?
As a symbol of submission, forcing us to obliterate our individuality by wearing masks was not explicit enough. So they pushed the envelope even further.
How much further, you ask? I blush to even tell you.
Gov Janet Mills says – servers must now wear face shields upside down so that their breath is directed up, not down. Yes she wants you to wear a dog cone… peak insanity. I wish this was a joke.. its real 😆 #facecovering #faceshield pic.twitter.com/cnyojzTd3c
— Dr Sherri Tenpenny (@BusyDrT) August 19, 2020
Desperately hoping, hoping against hope, that it’s some kind of parody or satire? That it’s just a bitter joke? That it isn’t real—CAN’T POSSIBLY be real?
Sorry, chum.
I thought this had to be a parody. Sadly, it’s not. https://t.co/Mxjo42PW9e https://t.co/XInbuRCeuA pic.twitter.com/gOkTk91cEx
— 𝓜𝓸𝓵𝓵𝔂𝓟𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 🇺🇸 (@MollyPitcherPat) August 19, 2020
Yeah, tell me again, whydon’tcha, how this is all about combatting a deadly, world-ending virus. About being “safe.” About following the SCIENCE™!! That one’s my favorite.
(Via Larwyn)
Update! Enforced estrangement, and a “life” that is no kind of life at all.
I must confess that gratitude was not always forthcoming whilst jostling for service at a crowded pre-Covid bar.
Yet the now silent sterility of Britain’s once bustling pubs perfectly personifies our ‘new normal’. Separated into smaller ‘bubbles’, prohibited from interacting with others, the demise of such establishments is an inevitable consequence of enforced estrangement.
While pubs on one level are just a convivial way to dress up our social hopes, the pandemic state of them illustrates a wider truth. For life, the way we live it now, means that the avoidance of death is more important than what we do with what we’ve got.
When Covid-19 emerged, many millions of drifting souls, finally forced to confront their own mortality, looked to their governing elite for direction, and unsurprisingly found neither courage nor perspective, just naked fear.
Almost immediately, every relational, fulfilling, communitarian component of human existence was sacrificed, with society – whipped into frenzy by a compliant press, happily policing its own lack of dissent – transfixed by the fallacious elimination of ‘preventable death’.
Constantly haunted by warnings that reunion might result in a ‘deadly second wave’, innumerable ‘little platoons’ have not and will not return. This is the harm actually, irrevocably being done to society now. Note well the shrillness of those insisting, ‘what harm can masks do?!’ They screech this disingenuous question precisely because they at some level know exactly how much harm is being done to freely lived life by this medical-security theatre.
In the continual absence of metaphysics, life – shaped for many years by the pursuit of comfort – is now defined by the avoidance of death.
In our post-religious faith terror of death, our irrational, cowardly belief that it is either possible or even desirable to create a risk-free society, we have confused life with mere existence. We have foolishly traded essential liberty for a little temporary safety, lost both, and deserve neither.
Humiliating update! What really ought to be the absolute last word on the COVIDIOT shamdemic…but won’t be.
We’ve known for months now that COVID-19 has virtually no chance of causing serious complications for young and healthy people.
If you remove just six states with extraordinarily high nursing home deaths from the U.S. data, COVID-19 never even reached the CDC’s threshold for an epidemic. [They define epidemics in terms of fatalities not, as one might expect, cases.]
Data released by the Texas Department of Health in July shows that COVID-19 is less lethal there, regardless of age, than the flu was just two seasons back!
As I reported last month, the flu put way more of a strain on our hospital system just two years ago than COVID-19 has. Yet we coped and it somehow never even became national news.
As I reported on Wednesday, just like the stories we initially heard about COVID-19’s deadliness, the scare-mongering about its extraordinary level of contagiousness also turned out to be total BS.
Infected people with no symptoms basically have no chance of spreading the virus.
As I also reported Wednesday, one reason for that is around half of us very likely have pre-existing “crossover” immunity from having been infected with other strains of coronavirus that only produce common colds.
As I’ve pointed out again and again and again, the people most insistent that we obey all these humiliating rules are routinely photographed in flagrant violation of them. Unless you think they care more about your life than their own, it’s patently clear they don’t believe a word of the fear-mongering BS they’re peddling to us.
Finally, as I reported last month, literally thousands of doctors and scientists, including a Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist, have been trying to cut through the media gaslighting since it began to sound the alarm that none of the lunatic suicidal restrictions inflicted on us make any scientific sense at all.
At worst, we’ve got a virus that’s somewhat more deadly than the flu to the old and antecedently ill but less so to everyone else.
There was never any reason for the mountain of hardship, misery, and death brought down on our heads by the deranged response to COVID-19 and there’s even less reason now.
There’s simply no way to look at Governor Mills’ order that restaurant staff parade around in public wearing dog cones around their neck other than as a deliberate attempt to force the hardworking people of Maine to participate in their own humiliation in order to create what Theodore Dalrymple has aptly called “an easily controlled society of emasculated liars.”
The dog cones make it painfully obvious.
But the same is true of forcing us to wear masks, keep completely arbitrary distances away from each other, shutting down our businesses, closing down our schools, and all the rest of the sickening defilements of America’s founding commitment to individual liberty that wouldn’t have accomplished a damned thing even if all the scaremongering about this virus hadn’t turned out to be complete garbage.
Anyone paying close attention has known all this since the greatest and deadliest hoax in history got started way back in March. But there’s no excuse for anyone not knowing it now.
They only got away with doing this to us because we let them. And it’s long past time we all stopped being willing participants in our own degradation.
Brilliantly, bluntly put, cogently argued, with a ton of supporting links throughout—Michael Thau has laid down one hell of a fine piece of work with this one.
But the lockdowns, masks, and sundry Soviet-style repression will be forever.
If you’re hoping the COVID-19 pandemic will go on forever, this post may disappoint you. And, I get it. We have gone frothing-at-the-mouth nuts over a slightly above-normal virulence virus, with a unique and obvious age-distribution pattern that should have made containment easy and panic completely unnecessary. And, if you’re living in the United States, like I am, you probably think my declaration that this pandemic is “over” to be somewhere between wishful thinking and incredibly premature, and I hear you, too, although forgive me if I’m not sure you’re the one thinking clearly, given some of the things I’ve recently read. I promise to support my assertion with data, and the wisdom of people far more expert than me who are having a harder time being heard in the present climate of…bats#@t crazy.
Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.
You may not be one of them. In fact, I’m guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven’t been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have?
I can’t see how it’s possible NOT to at this late stage, myself. Yet somehow, here we all are. Don’t miss a word of this excellent post, people; Handley has done yeoman’s work to compile a remarkable and copious shit-ton of data, stats, charts, graphs, and expert analysis—y’know, actual science—that all adds up to one irrefutable conclusion: we’ve been had.
Tyrants on notice update! A shot across the bow.
A veteran and business owner living in Shasta County, California is completely fed up with the authoritarian Covid lockdown orders so he gave a stern warning to the Board of Supervisors.
Carlos Zapata warned the masked officials in the Board of Supervisors chamber that a revolution is brewing.
“At first we sat as concerned citizens….as we realized that [Covid] is not as quite as dangerous as we thought it would be, I was absolutely appalled at the cowardice — and you guys are sitting here with your masks on — I don’t blame you for wearing masks because I would be hiding my face if I was you for what you’re doing,” Zapata said.
He continued, “I’m a business owner and I’m telling you, our families are starving — you guys can sit here with your jobs — you’re gonna sit here and get paid to fall asleep in your chair like that gentleman’s doing behind his mask right there.”
Zapata then put the officials on notice.
“Right now we’re being peaceful and you better be happy we’re good citizens, that we’re peaceful citizens but it’s not gonna be peaceful much longer — and this isn’t a threat — I’m not a criminal, I’ve never been a criminal but I’m telling you real good citizens are going to turn into real concerned and revolutionary citizens real soon. And nobody else is gonna say that. I’m probably the only person that has the balls to say what I’m saying right now.”
“We’re building and we’re organizing and we’ll work with law enforcement or without law enforcement but you won’t stop us when the time comes because our families are starving!” he said.
“This is a warning for what’s coming because it’s not going to be peaceful for much longer! It’s gonna get real!” Zapata said adding he went to war for this country and he’s ready to fight for this country even if it’s against its own citizens.
Well, the usual swearing-in oath taken by military personnel, police, and elected officials DOES mention defending the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” after all. There’s a reason for that.
Lepers, unmasked.
Purity rituals now extend to almost the entire populace and to every aspect of life. Go to get food at a grocery store and violate the mask or social distancing rule, and you will be called out by the reigning religious authorities — much as Jesus was when he and his disciples were rebuked for gathering and eating grain on the Sabbath.
If you dare to go outside the parameters permitted you, be it travel to another state or to the dentist, the ritual priests will test you to see if you are fit, taking your temperature, testing for antibodies, and then pronouncing you clean or unclean. Go to church and be masked, socially distanced and don’t dare sing.
Persist in your transgressions and you will be at least temporarily cut out of the community by having to live outside the camp until you are healed. You will be a leper.
The Coronavirus has provided the extreme left with a reason to create a huge class of outcasts while also affording the opportunity to fundamentally transform society. Those who previously had been designated as outcasts, including those considering themselves to be disempowered in any way, may now find themselves uniquely qualified to enter the holy circle of the pure.
Ominously, also now outside the camp are those who were once powerful authority figures, namely, the police and the military who were appointed to confront and contain the dark side of society.
But even more worrying, in states like Maryland, one’s neighbor is encouraged to snitch on neo-lepers who endanger public health, as happened in the USSR and East Germany. This is to say nothing of those designated as having leprous minds by Twitter, YouTube and Facebook’s determiners of mental health. Spies now determine who belongs outside social discourse because of criminal thoughts and “hate” speech — which is generally defined as any speaking or writing that opposes the left.
In fact, the leftist elite believe that America’s moral health was compromised irrevocably by the events of 1619, the introduction of slavery now seen as irredeemable original sin. So inherently leprous is America and the West in general that all diseased institutions and cities need to be set on fire, much as physicians once cauterized gangrene.
Rest assured the establishment of the new caste system will continue after the fires. The current virus has set the template for future government dictates. Other diseases will follow Covid-19. More citizens will be placed outside the camp and more kulaks of private enterprise will be destroyed. Society will continue to require purification until the last virus of bad thinking is exterminated.
The authoritarian Left’s work is never done. But they’ll have to do it without any help from me. Myself, I’ll just stick with good ol’ Bob Marley.
My kneejerk response to the collapse of New York City at the hands of Hizzoner Bill DeBalledZero goes something like, “Too fucking bad, assholes. You elected the bastard, now you can stew in it. Enjoy the socialist hellhole of your votes’ devising, and don’t you even DREAM of moving here.”
On the other hand, some of the most wonderful, memorable times of my life were spent in NYC. Heck, I even married a born-and-raised Manhattan girl and remain close to her mom now that she’s gone, along with several good friends I made over decades of living and playing music there. I still have a certain fondness for the place, even now.
But frankly, I can’t say I care anymore if I ever go back there.
The New York Times reports that national retailers and restaurant chains such as J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Le Pain Quotidien, and Subway are permanently closing locations in New York City in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a “mass exodus” of residents and businesses.
Business leaders warn that the city is facing a crisis of “historic proportions,” according to the Times.
Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, which owns the popular Bryant Park Grill & Cafe, told the New York Times he would never open another restaurant in the city. “There’s no reason to do business in New York,” Weinstein said.
With tourists staying clear of the city and surrounding office towers mostly empty, the restaurant has been forced to close its 1,000-seat dining room and move service to the patio. As a result, Weinstein says the restaurant brings in only about $12,000 a day—an 85 percent drop in revenue.
Here’s a real grabber for ya:
The flagship Victoria’s Secret store at Herald Square in Manhattan has been closed for months and has not paid its $937,000 monthly rent in the meantime. “It will be years before retail has even a chance of returning to New York City in its pre-COVID form,” the retailer’s parent company recently told its landlord.
Dear God, how many lacy underthings must they have been selling to be able to meet close to a million bucks a fucking month in rent before this mess started? David Marcus, for his part, explains the rapidly-dissipating appeal of the New York Groove:
Why I Won’t Leave New York City, But Probably Should
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why people are leaving and I don’t really blame them. Living in New York City is an expensive transaction, not just in terms of money but in terms of lifestyle. We often pay more money to rent a small apartment than most Americans pay for the mortgage on their house. The city is not easy to get around, and we all navigate the panoply of cultures and tongues, our Lingua Franca a kind of unwritten “rules of the city.”But then there is the other side of the transaction, the wonderful restaurants, bustling bars and jazz clubs, the Cyclone at Coney Island, the rushing mass of pedestrian frenzy assuring us that yes, this is the center of the world, the current Rome. Today, for now at least, all of that is gone. All of the bad things are still bad, worse actually with the crime wave and all, but the good things are all still locked down, which means we are too, locked in those little apartments.
And it gets worse. Schools are only partially opening, leading parents to look for pods in some vain hope that their kids can be educated. Empty apartments sit unrented, sparsely populated subway cars have an air of fear not felt by most for a very long time. But for all this, for all of these overwhelming reasons to get the hell out and find a picket fence in Jersey, I just can’t do it. New York is stuck with me. For better or worse.
There are some things I know about New York City. I know that as the Great Depression dragged along, Gotham was home to the birth of Method Acting and changed theater and film forever. I know that while World War II ravaged nations, New York stole the title of center of the visual art world from Paris. I know that in the drugged out riotous 1970s and 1980s, the city built Disco and pop art and hip-hop. I know that in the shadow of a skyline with teeth knocked out, white belt Williamsburg hipstered in an Electroclash revolution.
Do not mistake this for a childlike nostalgia for the bad old days. Nobody who was an adult back then wants that. It is rather a matter of being resigned to see this thing of ours through. So no, I will not be on the midnight train to Georgia, or Florida, or the Oranges. I have to stay in the husked out shell of greatness that even Bill de Blasio can’t blunder into oblivion because I have a chance to help bring it back. And I trust my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who stay to be just as committed to that.
Even in the best of times one has to be a little crazy to want to live in New York City. These days, one has to be a stark, raving mad lunatic. But that is kind of the point of New York City. After all, even raving mad lunatics need someplace to live. And in the Big Apple those kinds of people have a really successful track record.
Marcus expects NYC to make a comeback once the DeBalledZero lockdown is lifted and life gets “back to normal,” but he’s missing something: the lockdowns aren’t GOING to be lifted, in NYC or anywhere else, without massive, serious, overwhelming pushback all across the nation. Actually, my money is on the opposite: anybody out there seriously think there’s going to be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade this year? Will the Power allow a Thanksgiving holiday gathering of any kind? Will people be social distancing around their T-day feast, chatting gaily through their masks, scrubbing surfaces and utensils down every five minutes with bleach to stave off the Great Plague?
Will there be a huge, beautiful Christmas tree brightening up the Rockefeller Center ice rink in 2020? Those famous midtown store-window displays to attract the gaze of celebratory shoppers who just aren’t around anymore this year? Anybody out there planning on letting their kid sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s? Will old Kris Kringle be able to hear and understand as the kids recite their wish-list through the mandatory proper face-covering? Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve? Christmas Day services? Carollers strolling the neigborhood, their voices muffled and unclear because of those same masks?
I seriously, seriously hope none of you have made plans to attend the Times Square ball-drop on New Years Eve this year, I really do.
You say that Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years Eve displays, parades, and festivities all being wiped from the calendar by our esteemed rulers seems a bit of a stretch, do you? Well, they damned sure cancelled Independence Day fireworks all across the nation this summer, now didn’t they? Didja ever imagine you’d see such a thing as that?
Even after a mass rebellion that at the moment looks like a no-show, alas, recreating New York as anything other than the miserable, oppressive, and life-threatening ghetto it’s been “fundamentally transformed” into will be a Herculean task—one which will be vehemently opposed by at least half of the lunatics who live there, just as the Giuliani Renaissance was back in my own New York days. I’ll be rooting for it; New York was a unique and wondrous place, the greatest city on earth, for a long time. But I can’t say I’ll be counting on it.
But maybe there’s a small, fragile seed of hope taking root in Wisconsin:
On Sunday, Wisconsinites protested a new state-wide mask mandate by Gov. Tony Evers at a “We Will Not Comply” freedom rally held in the rural town of Mosinee. It was also a protest against the recent Marathon County online reporting tool for violations of the mask mandate.
Marathon County Health representative Judy Burrows said the online complaint form and tracking process will help officials identify businesses or organizations with multiple reports. “Our primary intention is to educate on the need and benefit to wearing a face covering to prevent the spread of COVID,” Burrows said.
The event was organized by Get Involved Wisconsin, a grassroots organization that was also responsible for an April rally held at the same location to protest Evers’s stay-at-home orders.
The rally this past weekend drew national speakers such as Dr. Simone Gold and local physicians, including cardiac surgeon Fernando Riveron. Both doctors asserted medical experts are being silenced by corporate media and big tech companies about the true risks of coronavirus and weighing those against other medical concerns.
Doesn’t seem like much, I admit. But from tiny acorns, mighty oaks sometimes grow, right?
Update! Did someone say rebellion?
It appears that government-imposed restrictions on travel, business, and social contact don’t become more palatable with age. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to simmer, the one competency that officials have consistently displayed is in tightening the screws, using the licenses and permissions they require as enforcement tools. For people tired of being bossed around, the obvious response is to carry on without the government’s imprimatur—and they’re doing so in droves. It’s an attitude likely to live on long after the crisis has passed.
“Our businesses are doomed,” Chris Polone, co-owner of a Fort Worth bar that was one of more than 800 such establishments to open in defiance of Texas closure orders, said at the end of July. “We have nothing to lose. We can either fight this thing, Or we can starve ourselves out.”
As apocalyptic as that sounds, it’s a reasonable statement when the review site Yelp reports that 55 percent of all businesses shut during the pandemic are believed to have closed their doors forever. For many entrepreneurs, breaking the rules may be the only way to survive.
Bold above mine, and absolutely critical; as in just about every conflict, numbers matter. Any nascent citizen uprising can only come to grief unless it occurs en masse. As long as only a sad handful of Americans are willing to risk getting up to stand on their feet again, they will all continue to live on their knees. Doesn’t have to be universal; doesn’t even have to be a majority of the populace, even. But it absolutely has to be more than a handful, and when you’re trying to face down governments that have far eclipsed their rightful boundaries, the more the merrier.
At least some encouraging news regarding the overdue groundswell of grassroots defiance in this article, though—very little of which will be reported by Old Media media, assuming any at all is. Bottom line:
Officials in Los Angeles have run into so much push-back that now they’re threatening to cut water and power to businesses and homes that don’t comply with lockdown orders. Depriving people of electricity and running water seems an unlikely means for improving public health, but officialdom is always more interested in compelling submission than in achieving reasonable outcomes.
But submission is harder to come by when the stakes are so high. The government is actually ordering people to refrain from earning their keep, and instead to humbly submit to bankruptcy and beggary. To some, submitting to the rules can look foolish and suicidal—like baring your throat to a predator.
And once you’ve battled government officials threatening your ability to make a living during hard times, why would you assume, after the crisis passes, that they’ve suddenly become wiser and better disposed to your wellbeing? People who have questioned officials’ judgment and defied their orders are unlikely to lose that habit after the pandemic passes. Sure, they’ll probably continue to apply for licenses to operate just to make life easy. But they’ll remember that officials tried to strip them of the “privilege” of putting food on the table and they’ll realize just how dangerous it is to rely on such permission.
Viewed from the historical perspective, would-be despots always end up sowing the seeds for the own destruction. They may reign for a while, even a very long while, yes. But sooner or later, their subjects get a belly full of it and take them out, one way or another. We Will Not Comply indeed, you commie motherfuckers.
The entire restaurant industry is “on the brink” of economic collapse as COVID-19 shutdowns and restrictions have cut sales nearly in half in some cities, according new figures released by the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
The group estimates that five out of six restaurants face permanent closure, and up to 16 million jobs could be lost.
Well-known TV chef Andrew Zimmern is behind a new TV ad detailing the restaurant industry’s politically-induced woes. The ad is narrated by Morgan Freeman who intones in that way of his that restaurants are “facing extinction.”
This comes as no surprise. The restaurant industry has high fixed costs and razor-thin profit margins typically not much better than 3%.
Already successful restauranteurs will take hits, sure, but it’s the mom & pop places — and all the people they employ — whose businesses, savings, and dreams will be crushed by this economic collapse.
“Two weeks to flatten the curve” has morphed into “however long it takes to crush the economy.”
That’s not COVID-19. That’s your city or state government at work.
The destruction so wantonly wrought on this country by an unholy combination of power-drunk demi-tyrants, opportunistic Democrat-Socialist politicians, a wholly-complicit media establishment, and a fearful, easily-stampeded populace is way beyond criminal.
STILL think this is really about a virus, do ya?
Thou fool.
Physical distancing, mask-wearing could be in place for 2-3 years even with vaccine, Dr. Tam warns. COVID-19 vaccine won't be a 'silver bullet,' chief public health officer says. https://t.co/hJ4rqD5qGz
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) August 4, 2020
She really thinks Canadians will put up with that!
I pray she’s wrong, and that we don’t put up with it.
There’s never even ever been a vaccine for coronaviruses; who’s to say we’ll even get one, so, what, we’ll remain locked down indefinitely?
NOW you’re getting it, buddy. I repeat: goalposts. On wheels. Forever and ever, amen. As for “not putting up with it,” early indicators are extremely discouraging on that score, and by no means only in Canada, alas. Now for another one a bit closer to home, at least pour moi.
It’s truly incredible how we went from “we need a brief pause to build hospital capacity” in March to “we must indefinitely suspend any activities that could allow the virus to spread” in August. https://t.co/rFheB88iF0
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) August 6, 2020
My God, the balls on that sleazy sonofabitch.
They’re not even bothering with PRETENDING to try to fool us anymore. They’re just waving the bloated, blubbery Phallus Of Contempt—grotesquely engorged, an obscenity—right in our very faces, shamelessly defying the hapless Sheeple to utter Peep One of protest over it.
But hey, never mind all that stuff. Y’all just be sure and always wear your little Mask Of Submission now, y’heah? It’s IMPORTANT.
The top immunologists and epidemiologists in the world can’t decide if masks are helpful in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, we’ve seen organizations like the World Health Organization and the CDC go back and forth in their recommendations.
The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.
Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.
Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”
The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.
The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.
They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.
That is not just a violation of the Effectiveness Principle. It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.
NOW you’re REALLY getting it, buddy. That’s precisely what they’ve done, all right; horrifying, to be sure. But even more horrifying is how handily they’ve gotten away with it so far. I dunno, it begins to look as if we may have waited a bit too late to start in on thumping the living daylights out of Ken and Karen a la my earlier post. We should’ve been doing it from jump, just on general principle.
They matter far more than you might realize.
Due to the draconian responses to COVID-19, America has been seeing the temporary triumph of the new ax wielders. A whole network of institutions that are the bedrock of neighborhoods are under attack, including shops, bars, pubs, restaurants, concert halls, movie theaters and churches. Even some church choirs are silenced by a ‘no singing’ rule.
The smashers of neighborliness and camaraderie are, like Carrie Nation, doing so in the name of righteousness and the improvement of American’s physical health—a principle that seems fair enough.
But if the health of Americans was truly the issue, there would not be so much arbitrariness and inconsistent application of rules and regulations. The people who are under the laws of the new Prohibition can see the inconsistencies clearly. It seems odd to them that COVID-19 virus is apparently far more active in churches, small businesses, and eateries, than it is in densely packed crowds of protestors whose righteous ideology apparently immunizes them from the virus’s deleterious effects.
It even would be acceptable if it were a sensible means of protecting one’s and others’ health. Most reasonable people are open to sensible precautions. But even when the State has allowed the denizens of the cities and small towns it is “protecting” from the virus to gather, government officials continue to regulate venues in ways that have nothing to do with health but which make the public discourse and camaraderie of bars, cafes and eateries nearly impossible.
For example, recently the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board updated their COVID guidelines to define the acceptable purchase of alcohol at a restaurant or bar. If you want a drink, you have to purchase a meal, defined as “food prepared on the premises, sufficient to constitute breakfast, lunch or dinner.” Just to be absolutely clear, “a snack, such as pretzels, popcorn, chips, or similar food, does not meet the definition of a meal.” Also, no drinking after eating your meal! “Additional drinks may be purchased while the customer is consuming the meal, but no further drinks may be purchased after the meal is finished.”
Not only is the customer told when, where and how to eat and drink, but more arbitrary regulations ensure no friendly give and take is allowed. Customers who formerly enjoyed shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow discussions have been replaced with expressionless, masked and muffled anonymous clients who sit at tables six feet apart from one another, only daring to lower their masks to eat, not to talk. Meanwhile, the familiar senior citizen coffee klatsches at McDonald’s have been abruptly disbanded and sausage biscuits are now impersonally dispensed from the takeout window.
What do all of the minute regulations have to do with public health? Not very much.
One cannot help but wonder if in addition to suppressing free discourse, something else is at work; namely H.L. Mencken’s view of puritanism, which he called “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
People who knew who you are and with whom you amiably rubbed elbows at the bar or in the pew, are now excised from your life. At the local café, it’s been your neighbor you’ve been talking with. It’s your neighbor whose business you’ve been supporting. The camaraderie, humor and mutuality of belonging to the human race is there at the local tavern. The mutuality of the faith community that recites creeds, sings hymns and prays together is found when meeting in person, not in cyberspace. ‘Tavern’ and ‘tabernacle’ spring from the same Latin root, taberna.
Just as bad, the demise of the familiar pub, the neighborhood restaurant and cafes; and the shutting down of church fellowships seems to have left protest marches as the only viable outlets for free speech.
Something is profoundly wrong with a society when the only acceptable and freely chosen social gatherings are protest marches rather than humble camaraderie as the unifying emotion. Something’s desperately amiss when the chief form of socialization is angry protest. It’s on the local level that true diversity exists, not on the macro stage with blaring megaphones drowning out all other voices.
Those whom you would rule, you first make afraid: dehumanize them, demoralize them, isolate them, confine them, terrorize them. Anybody out there seriously think the Left doesn’t understand all that, better than anybody ever has?
Odd how closely it parallels our farcical post-9/11 Security Theater, innit? Why, it’s almost as if the goobermint only has one tune in the whole hymn book.
If you go to a restaurant in Gotham right now, you might be subjected to a temperature check. It’s no big deal, it takes a second — but it’s pointless; plenty of COVID-positive people don’t have a fever. So why do we do it? It’s part of a growing trend of COVID-19 security theater. We do things that have no bearing on our actual safety but that make us feel safe.
Take masks. It makes sense to wear masks inside businesses or for any close contact with strangers.
But why are people wearing them outside, when they’re not near anybody? Neighborhood message boards across the country are filled with complaints like: “I saw a bicyclist without a mask today!”
The problem is messaging from the top. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guru, is the man we all look to for direction. In March, he said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Now he’s gung-ho, yet his mask instruction is very convoluted.
He wore a mask to throw out the first pitch at the Opening Day game at Nationals Park — while standing more than 60 feet away from the nearest person. Then he sat down in the stands with his wife and friend, and they all took turns wearing and removing their masks.
In restaurants in New York, you must wear a mask to your seat. But then you take it off to eat, drink and talk, which is clearly where all the danger lies.
Not to worry; once the dwindling few NYC restaurants still hanging on by their fingernails are driven under too, that little conundrum pretty much solves itself. Of course, the, ummm, flexible standards the “elite” hold themselves to are yet another indicator that this whole shamdemic thing is just so much smoke. But speaking of NYC, there IS some truly hilarious news:
The governor of New York has begged the city’s wealthy, who fled the coronavirus outbreak, to return and help it recover.
Andrew Cuomo said he was extremely worried about New York City weathering the Covid-19 aftermath if too many of the well-heeled taxpayers who fled to second homes decide there is no need to move back.
“They are in their Hamptons homes, or Hudson Valley or Connecticut. I talk to them literally every day. I say. ‘When are you coming back? I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll cook,’ “ Mr Cuomo told MSNBC, naming popular getaways for the rich.
Lawmakers have proposed a wealth tax targeting the city’s 100 billionaires to help fill a $30 billion (£23bn) budget shortfall created by the Covid-19 crisis.
However, Mr Cuomo, a Democrat, said he could not support greater taxes on the ultra-wealthy as rich people already have one foot out of New York City and he fears they will leave for good if their taxes go up.
Instead, he wants the federal government and New York’s congressional representatives to send billions of dollars in aid.
LOLGF, asshole-eyes.
Update! What the hell, more NYC hilarity.
.@NYCMayor: I’m laying off 22,000 city workers if the feds don’t give us a bailout pic.twitter.com/iWkSh4N8yJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 4, 2020
Thanks to the COVIDIOT scam, everything old is new again.
Governments’ response to the coronavirus pandemic is driving a resurgence of diseases that may be deadlier than COVID-19, according to health experts.
Diagnosed cases of tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria have plummeted across dozens of countries. Clinics, equipment, and medicine used to diagnose and treat patients for these diseases have been converted en masse to fight the coronavirus pandemic, leaving health officials grappling with what they fear may be a massive resurgence in disease, according to The New York Times.
Government shutdowns have also disrupted supply lines, making it difficult, especially for impoverished countries, to get access to medicine to treat malaria and HIV. Consequently, patients are dangerously stretching the limited amount of medicine they have left, or have stopped taking medication altogether, leaving themselves and others at risk.
Dr. Giorgio Franyuti, who heads the advocacy group Medical Impact, has seen a similar trend in Mexico. Sick people with tuberculosis are coming into hospitals with flu-like symptoms, being diagnosed with COVID-19, and being sent home only to return months later with serious health problems related to their misdiagnosis.
“Nobody is testing for TB at any facility,” Franyuti said. “The mind of clinicians in Mexico, as well as decision makers, is stuck with Covid-19.”
“TB is the biggest monster of them all. If we’re talking about deaths and pandemics, 10 million cases a year,” Franyuti continued. The current global death toll from the coronavirus is nearing 700,000, though that number may vary widely do to misreporting in countries such as Iran and China, both of which the U.S. State Department has said inaccurately report their data.
The resurgence in deadly diseases follows reports that vaccinations for deadly diseases are plummeting in the United States and around the world as parents elect not to get their children vaccinated for diseases such as diphtheria, cholera, and measles. Parents are afraid that a trip to a hospital or clinic to get necessary vaccinations would leave them exposed to the coronavirus. Now, diseases long thought to be handled are reappearing at alarming rates.
Just great. Can a resurgence of smallpox, cholera, and polio be far behind?
Following the science. The ACTUAL science, that is, not the self-serving, overhyped malarkey fed to us by Feckless Fauci and his dimestore dictators.
Nothing like this has been tried in the whole history of humanity, certainly not on this scale. You might suppose, then, there was absolute certainty that there would be a causal relationship between lockdowns and the trajectory of the virus. Just as the FDA doesn’t approve a drug unless it is proven to be safe and effective, one might suppose the same would be true for a policy that shattered every routine and trampled human rights in the name of disease mitigation.
Surely! It turns out that this is not the case. It was pure speculation that lockdowns would suppress this virus, and that speculation was based on a hubristic presumption of the awesome power and intelligence of government managers.
For five months, governments all over the world have been freaking out, ordering people around to do this and that, passing mandate after mandate, and yet there is no evidence that any of it matters to the virus.
Already in mid-April questions arose. Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program at Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, looked at the data around the world and concluded that the virus comes and goes after 70 days regardless of the policies deployed. He found no relationship at all between locking down and transmission and death.
Fast forward to mid-July. Data scientists investigated the experience from the spring. They too found no relationship between the virus and policy. Putting it very bluntly: “Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people.”
That’s awesome to consider. Billions of lives fundamentally altered. Economies wrecked. Centuries-old traditions of liberty and law thrown out. Police states everywhere. And to what end? The data indicate it was all for naught. Apparently, you cannot control a virus with state policies. The virus just doesn’t seem to care.
Neither do our masters. They ginned up a panic amongst a cowardly, ignorant populace, then used it to ring the bell on pretty much every last item on their letters-to-Santa wish lists. “All for naught”? I think not, alas.
At some point, we are going to have to throw in the towel. Whether a country locks down or stays open has as much predictive power over deaths per million as whether it rains today is related to the color of my socks. Or whether hurricanes are controlled by literacy rates.
In other words, the claim that lockdowns control viruses is pseudoscience or magical thinking of a deeply dangerous sort; it wrecks economies and lives.
Why, it’s almost as if we’ve been sold a pig in a poke, by people harboring nefarious intentions or something. But no, that just CAN’T be right.
Can it?
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." – Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." — Daniel Webster
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." - GK Chesterton
"The only way to live free is to live unobserved." - Etienne de la Boiete
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." — Dwight D. Eisenhower
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil." - Skeptic
"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork." - David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine." - Joseph Goebbels
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” - Ronald Reagan
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it." - NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in." - Bill Whittle
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