Category Archives: COVID-19

September 18, 2023 · 1:27 pm

What have we learned since the pandemic?

I’m still working my way through President Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, with a little over a hundred pages left to go. The protagonist, David Q. Little, in this story doesn’t have much in the way of character that I admire or respect and frankly, I find him to be a weak, self-absorbed truly “little” person. He too easily sacrifices his conscience by consistently choosing the path of least resistance, even as he realizes true tyranny is advancing and that America is falling apart before his eyes. He consistently talks himself around to conforming to the madness and the new Communist-enforced rules.

There’s still a hundred or so pages left for David Q. Little to redeem himself, but I’m less than optimistic, considering the choices he’s made thus far. One of the things that rings true in this novel to what I’ve read about various tyrannical regimes is the people who stand up loudly in the beginning become the primary targets and are usually eliminated quickly. Perhaps, standing on the rooftop screaming and bragging about how you will never surrender isn’t the best strategy for a long-term resistance effort and more discretion and caution would be needed to survive and work against tyrants in a situation than direct confrontation against overwhelming numbers, who have all the power.

It’s easy to talk big when life is going along normally or to believe you would be brave and heroic in a crisis. Once things are falling apart and you’ve got loved ones to try to keep safe and you’re trying to keep some semblance of normality and keep things together, I’d imagine it would become harder and harder to do anything that attracts more attention and that could endanger your loved ones. So, I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for David Q. Little.

The above video offers an explanation for why most people are so obedient. For myself, I’m an odd mix, because by nature I’m a contrarian and often hold views that go against the popular opinion of the day. I’m used to being the one person, who doesn’t agree in a crowd and mostly, I am used to being the odd person out and I don’t care really. At the same time, if there’s some “rule” – government or even a private business posts a sign with their rules of conduct, I generally strive to be polite and a good citizen. The pandemic forced me to reevaluate where I stand on being such a “following the rules” kind of person “to be polite.” And I’m still mulling that over.

We were manipulated by the use of emotional blackmail, with experts warning us that we would be jeopardizing the lives of our “at risk” loved ones (grandma and grandpa) if we didn’t comply. Who on earth wants to be labeled a selfish “killer” of the elderly? That deliberate use of emotional blackmail by our public health officials and political class has left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially considering these same people made rules blocking loved ones from seeing their elderly loved ones in nursing homes and being at the side of loved ones who died in hospitals and nursing homes. Then to top that off all sorts of crazy funeral rules were enacted around the country to interfere in families being allowed to grieve as they wanted. My late husband passed away in March 2021 – and the funeral home had a 50 person limit still in place and the veterans cemetery did not allow a graveside service at all. We could visit his grave late in the afternoon after the burial. I still think about how pointless so many of these pandemic rules were.

The new CDC director, Mandy Cohen, who was the giggling mean girl health director, in a video above, where she explained how they made decisions during lockdowns, now wants to turn the page:

The CDC wants your trust back: It’ll ‘take time to rebuild.’

I will never trust her or the CDC again.

With all their rules, it’s going to be all kinds of smaller people down the ladder, who will keep making rules, based off of bad information they believe that came from on high or that trickles down through their workplace. We’re going to be dealing with the damage from the pandemic social mitigation craziness for a long time. It’s easy for people to get fired up and rant that they’re not ever wearing masks again and I understand that feeling, but I ran into a situation back in July, when visiting an elderly friend, who had been placed in a nursing home. The nursing home required visitors to wear masks. I wore a mask, because I wanted to visit my elderly friend. She died shortly after that and I’m glad I went to visit her. If doctors I need to see start requiring a mask again, I’m going to wear a mask, because I don’t want to just stop my medical care. And that’s the dilemma a lot of people face when it comes to conforming and not conforming – sometimes we’re stuck in these daily life dilemmas. It’s very much a “pick your battles carefully” situation for most people, I think.

Back in the spring I mentioned trying to grow my own moringa tree. Moringa has all sorts of health benefits and I wanted to see if I could grow one. I had ordered moringa seeds and it should be able to survive in my zone 8b area. Well, it took planting seeds two times to get one moringa tree started. My little moringa tree isn’t much, but so far it’s growing. I’ve grown several herbs, and I’m working to learn more about herbal remedies, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just stop my prescription medications. I also discuss herbal remedies I take with my primary care physician. Getting some elderberry bushes is on my list too.

While it’s important to move on past the pandemic craziness, I also think it’s important not to forget what happened in America and how easily we just surrendered our rights under the guise of a “national emergency.” We were deliberately lied to and manipulated by our public health experts and political leaders. Here’s a video on where we’re at – no apologies and no real contrition or admission that their rules trampled on people’s fundamental rights:

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Filed under COVID-19, General Interest, Information War, Politics

August 28, 2023 · 12:46 am

Short follow-up on the 3.4% fatality pandemic hype

Last week, I wrote a post, “The Narrative is back” and I linked this X video about a Dem/liberal media spin effort hyping the WHO 3.4% fatality rate for COVID to kick off the pandemic hysteria:

This information is tacked at the end of that post last week:

I wanted to add this bit of information about that video with the hype about the 3.4% fatality rate from the WHO. Timelines matter and this was the spun up hysteria to scare people into complying with all sorts of draconian “social mitigation” policies, including shutting down the economy in March 2020.

Here are a few links to 3.4% fatality stories from early March 2020:

THE WHO ESTIMATED COVID-19 MORTALITY AT 3.4%. THAT DOESN’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

WHO SAYS CORONAVIRUS DEATH RATE IS 3.4% GLOBALLY, HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

TRUMP DISPUTES WHO’S 3.4 PERCENT GLOBAL DEATH RATE FOR CORONAVIRUS

Here’s a February 27, 2020 story about how China was handling their COVID outbreak:

SEALED IN: CHINESE TRAPPED AT HOME BY CORONAVIRUS FEEL THE STRAIN

There were reports of people in China being literally welded inside their apartments. Here’s an article that says it did happen according to a Chinese paper, but the government decided it was an overreaction:
Were COVID-19 patients in Wuhan welded into their apartments to enforce the lockdown?

Information coming out of China is often hard to verify.

Here’s an article on their zero Covid policy:

WHAT IS CHINA’S ‘ZERO-COVID’ POLICY?

So, for over two years people in China were living under these crazy lockdown policies, but in 2022, a deadly apartment fire in Shanghai led to protests and the government finally started easing some of their restrictions:

HOW A DEADLY APARTMENT FIRE FUELED ANTI-ZERO-COVID PROTESTS ACROSS CHINA: ANALYSIS

I’m adding all this information about China for a reason. The policies that America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many European countries adopted were social mitigation polices that China started employing in 2019 – after that WHO alarmist 3.4% fatality rate, which was dramatically wrong, was used as the rationale. There was no evidence that any of these Chinese draconian social mitigation policies worked. The actual fatality rate is well under 1%.

Iran temporarily released prisoners due to COVID and then very quickly there were liberals in America proposing that. NJ did release prisoners.

Here’s the March 3, 2020 story about Iran:

CORONAVIRUS: IRAN TEMPORARILY FREES 54,000 PRISONERS TO COMBAT SPREAD

Here’s a March 24, 2020 story:

NEW JERSEY SET TO RELEASE UP TO 1,000 COUNTY JAIL INMATES

Why was America adopting COVID policies from authoritarian regimes with terrible human rights records and also regimes where they routinely cover-up human rights abuses?

Even more disturbing in 2022, the Washington Post had a tech reporter still supporting China’s zero Covid policy and believes the US should adopt that policy:

WAPO’S TAYLOR LORENZ DEFENDS CHINA’S ‘ZERO-COVID’ POLICY WHILE BLAMING US FOR KILLING ‘MILLIONS’ BY REOPENING

The new “zero” hysteria is Net Zero… and I fear the radical policy prescriptions for Net Zero will be even more deadly and draconian than the zero COVID efforts.

I warned about any of these leftist utopian policies that have “zero” in the name before. The China zero COVID policy set the goal to get as close to zero cases of COVID as possible – by isolating people in their homes and even in one city there was a report of people with COVID being welded into their apartments.

In 2020, we were subjected to constant media-driven fear porn, to scare us into complying with all these rules and being emotionally blackmailed that if we didn’t comply we were going to kill those most at risk – “don’t you care about Grandma?” A lot of people lost their jobs, lost their businesses, were ostracized, endured orchestrated public shaming efforts, loved ones died alone in hospitals and nursing home – allowed no visitors.

The US military imposed a mandatory COVID vaccine policy. Here’s an article from Jan 2023:

“Roughly 99% of all active-duty troops received the vaccine. More than 8,400 service members were discharged from the military for refusing to take it. All of those kicked out of military service received at least a “general discharge under honorable conditions,” with others receiving the higher “honorable discharge.” The difference affects medical and other benefits service members receive after leaving the military.”

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-01-17/pentagon-no-back-pay-to-troops-discharged-for-refusing

Here’s the January 10, 2023 DOD press release on the DOD rescinds the COVID Vaccination Mandate

All that turmoil and over 8,000 servicemembers kicked out over vaccines that do not work – they don’t prevent the spread of COVID and they don’t prevent contracting COVID, as promised. There is the Faucian assurances that the vaccines are still vital and also claims that you’ll get a milder cased of COVID and that the vaccines are saving lives… Whatever. It’s important to not forget how the COVID “social mitigation efforts played out – massive political and media fear-mongering, hyping a global crisis, then pushing for the most extreme measures possible.

More is on the way – with a COVID wave starting again, with the “climate crisis” push ramping up and also with the political volatility in America. With Net Zero – the goal is to reduce carbon emissions as close to zero as possible. Part of that effort is to track and monitor every person on earth’s carbon footprint, then force radical lifestyle changes. Just pay close attention to the words Dems, leftist experts/activists and the media use. If you hear the same words and phrases being repeated to spread fear – that’s a signal to be very wary of the information they’re selling. If you hear “zero,” you know it’s another nothingburger, crazy plan.

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June 5, 2023 · 1:59 am

“She was like,” ha, ha, ha

The above video has been getting spread around on Twitter. Dr. Mandy Cohen, was reported to be President Biden’s likely choice as the new CDC director. Dr. Cohen giggles as she relates how she made COVID lockdown decisions and while critics of the pandemic social mitigation policies asserted there was no science to all the dire warnings and dictates coming from the “Trust the Science” crowd in America, this video is very damning validation. Cohen is an Obama-era health official.

While, I’d like to just move on from the pandemic, all of the drastically bad decisions shouldn’t just be ignored. Many Americans lost their jobs, their businesses and suffered extreme pain and suffering due to unscientific and untested social mitigation policies. Many Americans in hospitals and nursing homes died without their families by their side or were not allowed to have funerals in some cases or had strict restrictions on funeral services. In the end, none of these policies worked.

I don’t believe that trying to criminally prosecute individual people, like there’s a cry on the right about Dr. Fauci, especially from Trump-supporters, will ever happen. The truth is Dr. Fauci was given all that power by President Trump and the buck really does stop there. However, from everything I’ve seen with Trump supporters over the years, they absolve Trump of all blame for anything and make up excuses for his bad decisions. So, if Trump ends up being the 2024 GOP nominee and were to be elected again, I doubt he’d want to be in the position of pushing for accountability for the COVID policies that he authorized during his first term. Just last week Trump was praising Andrew Cuomo for doing a better job on COVID than Ron DeSantis in Florida. Trump later came out with some garbled walk-back that he was only talking about numbers of deaths. This little volley of comments looks to me like a good indicator, Trump would likely try to brush aside any rehashing of pandemic failures. Trump gave Fauci a commendation medal on his last day in office.

Biden ran in 2020 on being the COVID Preacher (Enforcer), so he certainly wouldn’t want to hold anyone accountable or even admit they made mistakes.

DeSantis is promising to stand up against the left’s culture war, but it’s too early to tell if he can defeat Trump in the primary.

What happened during COVID with the Dems “Trust the Science” effort was really the political left working to use the pandemic to gain more control and power over people.

I still get angry when I think about all the unnecessary suffering these “experts” caused during the pandemic and while this Mean Girl doctor, who might be the next CDC director, brought all those feelings to bear, mostly what I think about is how I trusted Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and these other “experts” in the very beginning. I quickly began to question things, like many other Americans. Then with the vaccines, I trusted they wouldn’t approve vaccines that weren’t safe, but evidence has been rolling in for the past year of problems with the vaccines, so that will be a whole other chapter in this epic pandemic fail.

Mostly, I think about how stupid I was to ever trust government overreach was for the public good or trust a media effort that tirelessly worked to stoke terror and pressure us to just give up our rights and con us that was required to not kill grandma or care about other people. Just do what we tell you, or you’ll be ostracized and labeled a threat to society (like evildoers, “The Unvaccinated”) I hope I won’t be fooled the next time there’s a massive power grab underway, no matter what the crisis is.

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October 25, 2022 · 12:18 pm

Politics, large and small

I’ll be glad when this election cycle is over. I haven’t voted yet, although early voting is open in my state and I plan to vote sometime this week. The political ads in this hotly contested GA senate race, between Warnock and Walker, haunt me on TV and online. Everywhere I turn there are ads for both. This is a politics post of sorts.

I am sick of being bombarded by political ads.

There’s always this argument people on both sides make about how this election is the most important election in our lifetime. Republicans are blabbing about how only Republicans in charge of Congress can save our country, while Democrats are blabbing about how only Democrats in charge of Congress can save our democracy. Whatever… I’ve been listening to this partisan claptrap for decades now and neither side has done much except spend, spend, spend. The US national debt is over 30 TRILLION dollars.

America is entering into a serious economic crisis, largely self-created, and all our politicians talk about is more programs for this and more programs for that. They also rant about how “the other side” is destroying America. The thing neither side in Washington does is slash wasteful spending or programs.

Rather than write about the inside baseball Washington politics though, I’ve been thinking about how the overall “global” Great Reset launch is going. Facets of that Great Reset are starting to impact hard in Europe and here in the US. Russia and China are dealing with a severe economic downturn too and although they aren’t embracing the WEF Great Reset plan, their own efforts to establish themselves as the alternative to the US dollar are not going smoothly. It seems like economic upheaval will be worldwide for the foreseeable future.

I’ve also been thinking about how this green-energy transformation might get derailed faster than anyone imagines. Honestly, I expect major corporations and banks to bail on this endeavor, if they start facing stiff resistance from consumers and start losing a lot of money. I expect them to be trying to regroup quickly, just like they’ve been doing since the COVID mitigation policies imploded. Public confidence in the COVID policies, which large corporations pushed as hard as Dem politicians, has crashed. Both Dem politicians and corporate America appear to be backpedaling and trying to distance themselves from the Dem COVID messaging. Far left corporate zealots like Bill Gates will likely cling to the Dem policies, but if it drives their consumers away and/or they start losing a lot of money, many others corporate boards won’t.

It’s one thing for small businesses to flounder and fail, but major corporations and big banks aren’t going to let social-engineering destroy their bottom line. While we’re likely in for a lot of upheavals and chaotic times, I just don’t think this unholy marriage of political and corporate power, that now works together to force political and social change in America, is between two equal entities. Corporations create jobs and wealth, while politicians create nothing – they’re parasites on the public and especially on big political donors. I can’t see major banks and corporate boards being the passengers on the Titanic who passively went down with the ship.

Just as Democrats have pretty much run from COVID this campaign cycle and even the most ardent BLM “defend the police” politicians are pretending they’ve always supported the police, I expect, in the not too distant future, they’ll be pretending this forced green-energy transformation wasn’t their policy. I expect many big banks and big corporations to jump from the green-energy/ESG ship in the not too distant future, as public outrage over the economy tanking grows and runaway inflation begins to seriously impact their own bottom lines.

Will Republicans in charge or Democrats in charge be better? Well, being a conservative, I would automatically answer: Republicans. However, at this point, I’m sick to death of all the politicians in Washington and more concerned about who is my state’s governor, which is a bulwark against federal overreach. I am thankful our founding fathers embraced federalism. Brian Kemp is an easy vote for me here in GA. Warnock v. Walker, well, I hate the binary choice arguments, so I won’t know for sure if I will just leave it blank on my ballot or swallow my conscience and vote for Walker… all so Republicans might gain control of Congress and not do all the things they promise… as usual. The devil’s advocate argument is Schumer and the Democrats have demonstrated they are more than willing to ram through all of the far-left policies without batting an eye. Choices, choices…

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Filed under COVID-19, General Interest, The Great Reset

July 15, 2022 · 10:35 am

Some thoughts on The Great Reset

I am posting this video, but I’ve been reading, COVID-19: The Great Reset, by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret and taking notes, so I’m going to add some thoughts to this Will Cain explainer, which does a decent job explaining some of the major policy objectives in The Great Reset and laying out some historical perspective.

COVID-19: The Great Reset was written by Klaus Schwab, a German economist, engineer, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum and Thierry Malleret, a French economic, investment banker, and founder of the The Global Risk Network at the World Economic Forum in July 2020. It’s important to keep this in mind, because their book lays out historical parallels to other pandemics and events, then their theorizing and predicting on how the unprecedented massive pandemic-related disruptions (especially economic ones) to all aspects of life around the globe would impact life afterwards. Then they put forth plans to not let the pandemic crisis go to waste. They planned to take charge of the post-pandemic chaos and be ready with plans for how to reshape the world to their vision of a more equitable, just, sustainable world.

So, let’s start with what is the World Economic Forum (WEF)? The WEF is one of the most influential international, non-governmental foundations in the world, that lobbies and advises governments, businesses and the influential elites of the world. The WEF was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab and is funded mostly by mega-rich companies (5 billion US dollars or more turnover-type mega-rich), who are members of the WEF and get invites to the annual meeting of the world’s elites in Davos, Switzerland.

From Wikipedia:

“Next to Davos, the organization convenes regional conferences in locations across Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and India and holds two additional annual meetings in China and the United Arab Emirates. It furthermore produces a series of reports, engages its members in sector-specific initiatives[3] and provides a platform for leaders from selected stakeholder groups to collaborate on multiple projects and initiatives.[4]“

“The Forum suggests that a globalised world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments and civil society organizations (CSOs),[5][6] which it expresses through initiatives like the “Great Reset“[7] and the “Global Redesign”.[8][9] It sees periods of global instability – such as the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic – as windows of opportunity to intensify its programmatic efforts.[10]“

Here’s a link to the WEF Global Risk Report 2022, where the WEF ranks the top risks facing the world, both short term, 0-2 years and long-term, 10-year. The pandemic fall-out impacted their 0-2 year risk report:

“Beyond environmental concerns, other top risks include livelihood crises, the erosion of social cohesion, and an uneven pandemic recovery. The report warns that the risks of growing social gaps will continue to be exacerbated by the pandemic, and experts caution that the global economic recovery will likely be uneven and potentially volatile over the coming years.”

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/global-risks-report-davos-agenda-2022-leaders-mobilize/

The WEF is a group of self-selected elites, who think they should run the world. Rather than get fearful or hysterical when hearing about “The Great Reset,” I think leaders and concerned people opposed to The Great Reset plans would do better to think of ways to build a better mousetrap, so to speak, for dealing with the very real post-pandemic problems. Republican leaders run around repeating lame catchphrases, but so far I’m not seeing any ideas or policies to deal with the problems, only reacting to the left’s policies. Democrats on the other hand have been ramming through policies and legislation pushing the global climate change agenda, regardless how disastrous or destructive to Americans’ lives and to American prosperity. Just yesterday, Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat, gave a speech asserting that climate change is the largest national security threat facing America: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6309536032112#sp=show-clips. I don’t like using all FOX News clips or all one news organization as a source, but I can’t locate the tweets I saw yesterday of Rep. Crow’s statement.

Democrats are fully-committed to the WEF policies, as are many wealthy Republicans, who may not be broadcasting that, because it’s politically-damaging to them when conservatives and most Republicans are opposed to the climate change agenda. The reason many wealthy Republicans go along with the WEF policies, is because that’s the entry pass to making big money in America.

In America, I believe, bolstering federalism in every way we can, can put the brakes on federal control over our daily lives and the encroachment of globalist policies that erode not only our personal freedoms, but even worse will crush small businesses, small farmers, and the middle class. Certainly, Democrat-controlled cities and states will advance the initiatives laid out in The Global Reset plans, but if more and more states and Americans pushback against these policies and come up with other ideas and ways to deal with the very real post-pandemic problems, perhaps America won’t go the way of countries, that will likely start to become a line of dominoes falling (like Sri Lanka), as the global food and fuel crises intensify.

The post-pandemic world has left many large systems we took for granted faltering, teetering, and some are already collapsing. The Great Rest crowd has plenty of global policy initiatives, but what Americans opposed to those initiatives should focus on is creating policy initiatives and streamlined plans, that allow Americans to weather the storms as the global systems begin collapsing all around us. Federalism, where our federal government has limited enumerated powers, with all other powers residing to the states, offers Americans a thin layer of protection that other governmental systems lack. On a personal level this could take the form of start building your own support network of family, friends and like-minded people, to share and help each other with supplies, services, figuring out alternatives and more local sources for goods and services.

At each level in America, from small town, to county, to state and then networking across America, creating less cumbersome and more flexible systems to keep America functioning could start creating more resilient communities, who aren’t waiting for Washington or some Davos-connected elites to advise us to eat bugs or just get used to shortages. Highly-motivated individuals can act without the chains of bureaucracy dragging them down. Small flexible systems can innovate, adapt and be more resilient than complex global systems. Certainly, wherever the global systems remain working, we should continue to take advantage of that, but getting some back-up smaller systems functioning quickly can help prevent mass panic and total chaos.

The global elites have been planning for how to reshape the world as post-pandemic chaos impacts, but so far the people opposed to those plans only react. It’s way past time for Americans who don’t want their daily lives controlled by The Great Reset plans to start planning and organizing ways to counter that and to do some reshaping of their own lives. If you don’t like the Davos crowd’s plans, start working to change it. America was founded by brave individuals, who forged their own path, not by the rich elites sitting in London, who were trying to micromanage the colonies from afar. Don’t wait for Washington or “experts” to tell you what to do and not do.

Update: We’ve been hearing about ESG scores a lot, and with Sri Lanka’s government collapsing, many news reports mentioned that Sri Lanka had a near-perfect ESG score of 98.1 So, what is an ESG score and who determines ESG scores?

An ESG score is a investment risk rating of companies and governments on environmental, social and governance issues. A high score makes you a good investment risk and a low score a bad risk. The idea of an ESG framework is being advanced to assess individuals too, so individual people could be given a social credit score.

MSCI, of which Morgan Stanley is the largest shareholder, manages and asses the ESG ratings. So, if you’re wondering why American companies have jumped on board the environmental, far-left social agenda, and the COVID mitigation bandwagon, well, this is why. Investment prospects depend on them falling in line, just as governments around the world jumped on board the ESG train, for the very same reason. This agenda is being driven by the wealthy elites around the world, not by some crackpot activists taking to the streets. In fact, I suspect much of the street theater global protesting on climate change and gender politics is funded by people and organizations with ties to the WEF crowd. The hyped fear of companies being cancelled by online activists masks the real drivers of the ESG agenda and the insidious advance of how this “woke agenda” has permeated major corporations, academia and how the environmental and social justice language has spread so rapidly in our institutions and in corporate America. I believe corporate America and the elite class in America’s institutions are pushing this. It’s a top-down movement by the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world masquerading as a movement of the people.

It sure looks like the World Economic Forum of self-selected elites want to (and do) run the world – literally.

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April 28, 2022 · 8:17 am

Another Amish blog post

Here’s an interesting Darkhorse podcast video raising questions about our government’s effort to fight COVID. I had posted the link to the news story mentioned in this Darkhorse Podcast video back in October 2021: https://rumble.com/vnpfkd-amish-covid-full-measure.html?mref=7gabl&mc=5lg0g

Considering the many unforeseen consequences of our Covid mitigation efforts, like dire economic problems, massive social upheaval, huge spike in suicides and drug overdoses, it’s worth asking if the Amish approach of dealing with Covid racing through their community worked better. It’s important to note that many people, some with science and medical bona fides too, predicted many of these dire consequences, but were loudly rebuked. Some even faced efforts to silence them in the public square of social media.

The Amish continued working, kept their families and communities together, while caring for the sick, like they had always done. They attended church services and continued their lives as normally as possible. Our liberal media went all in on selling the “trust the science” spin effort being pushed by the liberal elite crowd in Washington and liberal bastions of academia.

The Amish didn’t deny Covid existed, they just chose to work together as a community, like they always do, rather than try extreme social mitigation efforts our national health experts sold, because China was doing lockdowns and mass masking. There were even Democrats in early March 2020, who were embracing Iran releasing prisoners due to Covid spreading through some overcrowded prisons and they could no longer maintain those prisons.

Democrats crammed that prisoner release approach into the CARES Act, which was passed on March 27, 2020 and are still pushing that these prisoners, released due an emergency situation, be allowed to serve their sentences at home. The speed with which our ‘health experts” and some elected officials embraced Covid mitigation efforts being tried in other countries, especially despotic regimes, still boggles my mind.

What was “scientific” about rushing to embrace China’s or Iran’s mitigation policies? These Covid policies infringed on civil liberties, destroyed many Americans ability to earn a living, restricted families from being by the side of dying loved ones in hospitals, forced schools to close, prohibited church services in places of worship, and even interfered with funeral services across the country?

None of these mitigation efforts worked to “slow the spread” or “stop the spread.” In fact, even the vaccines haven’t slowed or stopped the spread – that’s the truth. So, the selling pitch shifted to the vaccines lower your chances of getting seriously ill, if you contract Covid. There has sure been a lot of Covid policy goalpost moving.

Are we just supposed to forget all of this happened and move on? Or are we still allowed to ask questions and expect a bit of accountability of our elected officials and government health officials?

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April 11, 2022 · 8:23 pm

Some thoughts on China’s latest lockdown

Many times a lot of Americans take a “who cares what happens in some far off country” attitude. The Chinese full lockdown story is important to everyone, not just the Chinese people and I’m going to give a few reasons why. This post is some current news on that situation and some review of Covid social mitigation policies and news reporting (more like mass media social conditioning efforts) since 2020. I’ll follow this post with some positive posts on things we all have the power to do, not just to survive tumultuous times, but to learn to thrive in not only the best of times, but in the worst of times too.

The Chinese government’s total lockdown of Shanghai has been getting a great deal of attention in the news media and generating some viral videos in the past few days:

Here’s analysis by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, on the medical side of information coming from Chinese officials one word – “implausible” referring to China reporting only one severe case and no deaths from this outbreak:

Here’s what everyone should know about Shanghai:

Shanghai is the largest city in China, with almost 25 million people, according to Wikipedia..

Shanghai is China’s center of commerce, trade and transportation, but also a global financial hub.

Shanghai is also the world’s busiest container port.

Here’s a report, China Port Congestion Leaves Everything From Grains to Metals Stranded, from Bloomberg today. This report states there are 477 bulk container ships waiting to dock and unload their cargo of everything from metal ore to grain.

The lockdown in Shanghai has created a ripple effect, as some ships have been diverted to other Chinese ports. A few paragraphs into this story it’s clear China’s lockdown isn’t only causing a problem with unloading and loading ships:

“A shortage of port workers at Shanghai is slowing the delivery of documentation needed for ships to unload cargoes, according to ship owners and traders. Meanwhile, vessels carrying metals like copper and iron ore are left stranded offshore as trucks are unable to send goods from the port to processing mills, they said.”

On a cable news report yesterday I heard mention that the lockdown in Shanghai has also created massive panic-buying across China, as people have become fearful of food shortages spreading.

This all brings me back to the weeks before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and our news media went all-in on Ukraine reporting and completely dropped the coverage of the Trudeau government in Canada imposing vaccine mandates on truckers crossing the US-Canada border, the Trudeau government crackdown on a trucker’s protest, and President Biden also imposing a vaccine mandate on truckers crossing the US-Canada border and the US-Mexico border.

I think all of these extreme Covid mitigation policies world-wide, that hamper free movement of people and goods, have proven both ineffective at “stopping the spread” of Covid and even worse have turbo-charged economic chaos, globally, for the foreseeable future. Once the Ukraine situation attracts less media focus, I suspect we’ll be back to dealing with our own US government creating more of the same Covid policies and programs that inflicted economic hardship on millions of Americans since 2020.

The news media hype seems to play on our emotions and push us to become invested in the emotional aspect of these videos, by dramatizing the “little people vs. the evil, big Chinese government (and yes, it’s an evil regime without question). The human rights abuse aspect does matter. Chinese people yelling from being locked inside their apartment buildings for two weeks looks horrifying, but it’s important to remember that the same Dems and liberal mouthpieces who bought into these draconian Chinese-inspired Covid policies in 2020 were still pushing them just a few months ago in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and in America. Dr. Fauci hailed the extreme Australian lockdowns. The liberal American news media were still pushing these policies, but now want to sensationalize the horror of Chinese people in Shanghai dealing with a full two-week Covid lockdown, so far.

The situation in these Chinese videos doesn’t look any different than Australia’s lockdowns, which lasted 107 days. That’s the truth. Here’s a BBC report from October 11, 2021, Covid Australia: Sydney celebrates end of 107-day lockdown. The liberal American news media (which is most of the American news media) didn’t all rush to Australia to cover the lockdown protests there and in fact, it seemed they were downplaying the protests and avoiding covering them much. There were videos that emerged on social media and in the news, like this story: EXCLUSIVE: WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: Elderly man collapses to the ground after being arrested for ‘failing to wear a face mask’ while walking in a park – as his desperate partner screams for help, from September 2021. When things happening in the free world of the west look indistinguishable from policies being carried out in China, that’s like a glaring red warning light to me. Two weeks into China’s latest lockdown and the media is hysterically hyperventilating about people starving to death and 107 days of Australia’s lockdown insanity and the American news media barely talked about it at all. The real question remains why on earth liberal democracies in the free world ever bought into the Chinese Covid lockdown policy in the first place???

This reminded me of how the American liberal news media in the beginning of the Covid lockdown social mitigation experiments tried to con us into docilely accepting government Covid lockdowns as an exercise in good citizenship and a show of virtue demonstrating we care about other people. I was very worried about Covid in March of 2020, because I believed my husband had Covid in late January 2020 when he got sick and had acute respiratory failure. I fell in line with social mitigation effort for about a month, but kept wondering what the follow-on plan was. I quickly came to believe all of these social mitigation efforts were political power grabs, not science and that is what I believe to this day. Here’s Italy in March 2020 – remember all the singing:

Funny juxtaposition between their news angle in Italy 2020 and China 2022, but I feel certain the Covid craziness isn’t over anywhere in the world. The economic fall-out from these disastrous social mitigation policies will continue to impact and grow. When you add in the war in Ukraine with the uncertainty with what happens there and the global economic fall-out that will have on agriculture and global commerce, well, the world seems to be pushing full-steam ahead toward some Titanic-level hitting an iceberg events.

If you follow the news and pay attention to what’s happened since Covid social mitigation policies took hold, well, nothing has really returned to the pre-Covid days, even if you took off your mask long ago. The shortage situations never resolved to pre-Covid, the economic fall-out from those policies is still reverberating around the world. Even in many red states remnants of those policies remain – like wearing a mask in some school districts, wearing a mask in the doctor’s office or hospitals, with airlines, etc. Not a single state in America is an all-red or an all-blue state, so there are plenty of people within every state with opposing views, especially on Covid policies. The Covid turmoil is not behind us and many people who opposed masks and/or vaccine mandates and/or vaccines are still fuming about the the social mitigation policies and angry at the liberals who pushed those programs. On the other side, there are liberals, especially in the news media, who are still true-believers in all of the Covid social mitigation policies, would support and promote them again in a heartbeat and who loathe Americans who don’t believe in all of those mitigation policies and rituals like masking between eating bites of a meal on a plane and total lockdowns.

This divide in America won’t be easily bridged and it’s important to remember it goes way deeper than just the Covid mitigation policies. These divides speak to not only differing political beliefs in America, but to an array of cultural issues where Americans break down into two hostile camps. It seems like people in the middle or who aren’t ideologically invested are disliked by both sides, but pulling more people away from the partisan extremes is our only hope to weather the coming storms. We need more people who will work together, not more people ready to fight over everything.

Finding any ways to unite us will be hard, but I remain hopeful it’s not an impossible quest to find some common ground and then build upon that. Unfortunately, it seems like the people with the largest megaphones focus on getting people riled up or spreading a whole lot of fear. America desperately needs some calm, positive leaders. In my next post I’ll talk about that more.

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Filed under COVID-19, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics

April 6, 2022 · 12:23 pm

Let’s not forget Covid social mitigation extremes

Do you ever see news stories where you feel like there’s a gaping hole in the information presented? When the Covid-19 pandemic started our health and government officials and a compliant news media propelled many news stories that stoked fear among people and that led to a great deal of complacency among the American people. Most Americans, according to polls, initially bought into into an array of social mitigation efforts and went along with them without demanding more information.

For most of America, people have moved past Covid-19 and it’s not even on their radar as a concern, being replaced with rising gas prices, talk of war, and warnings of looming food shortages, but we should think about all those social mitigation efforts, which pushed actions that we were told were based on “science.” The scientific research does not support them, but many of our political leaders still will use that “unprecedented” pandemic emergency as a model for future emergencies.

The Canadian truckers protest and the Trudeau government’s extreme reaction, citing a national emergency as the justification to begin freezing Canadian citizens bank accounts, fell to the wayside as a major international news story when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Here’s another timeline to think about:

February 21, 2022 – Putin ordered troops to Ukraine and western countries began issuing sanctions.

February 23, 2022 – Canada lifted the freeze on truck protester bank accounts.

February 24, 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine

February 26, 2022 – Some countries remove Russia from SWIFT and begin targeting Russia’s Central Bank.

It seems certain the the international crisis with Russia invading Ukraine and the need for a response from the West to that crisis superseded draconian domestic measures intended to intimidate Canadians opposed to Trudeau’s new COVID vaccine mandate pertaining to truckers crossing the US-Canadian border – which was the reason those Canadian truckers were protesting.

While the news media here in America has become all about Ukraine 24/7, Covid-19 and the social mitigation craziness aren’t gone. Even more concerning is too many Americans seem happy to just forget all about the government actions and even corporations acting as a surrogate White House enforcement force to impose social mitigation rules on millions of Americans. No one seems to want to look back, study what worked, what didn’t work, and more importantly why these policies were imposed on Americans.

Certainly it’s understandable that Russia invading Ukraine raised the specter of world war and even nuclear war, when Russia ventured into nuclear saber-rattling, but the pandemic craziness isn’t gone and it’s important to start seriously thinking about what happened, to prevent media-generated mass panic disarming our ability to resist government overreach again.

I bring this up because the lockdown idea was touted in 2020 by many prominent US health officials as an effective social mitigation strategy based on hyping that China was doing it and it was working. Let’s look back to 2020:

As COVID-19 spread rapidly across China, authorities took an aggressive stance to fight the coronavirus. They were slow to respond to the outbreak—at first suppressing information and denying that it could spread between humans even as it did just that. But, as case numbers skyrocketed, Beijing went to extraordinary lengths to fight the virus, identified at COVID-19, in a campaign Chinese President Xi Jinping has described as a “people’s war.”

The most dramatic, and controversial, of the measures was the lockdown of of tens of millions of people in what is believed to be the largest quasi-quarantine in human history.

Less than two months after the lockdown went into effect, it appears to be working, at least according to Chinese health officials, who announced on Thursday that the country had passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic. They reported just eight new cases of the virus the same day, the lowest number since they began publicly releasing numbers. At the same time, cases of COVID-19 across the world are skyrocketing.

https://time.com/5796425/china-coronavirus-lockdown/

Let’s move from China’s 2020 lockdown/Covid Zero approach to right now in China:

From the 2020 Time story I quoted the most important line is: “Less than two months after the lockdown went into effect, it appears to be working, at least according to Chinese health officials, who announced on Thursday that the country had passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic.”

What’s not known is how many people in China really died from the initial COVID-19 outbreak and how many have died since then. That’s been one of those gaping holes in the reporting since the beginning. The larger question now is why on earth did our government and health officials embrace a social mitigation policy trusting in “according to Chinese health officials” in the first place? Can it happen again in America?

With the war in Ukraine, it may move from a 24/7 news story that galvanizes new media time and resources to a regional conflict, as Americans lose interest in the story and other domestic news attracts more attention, plus as we move closer to fall, national elections, with control of Congress in the balance, partisan political news will dominate in our news media. Covid, showing every sign of being a virus that spreads in waves, will likely hit again and there will be American government and health officials clamoring for more social mitigation efforts and assuredly our American news media can shift on a dime to inciting Covid-panic once more.

Instead of just going along with this politically expedient “time to move on” effort to put Covid out of our minds, I feel certain, the same officials, pundits and media who pushed the Covid hysteria since 2020 will reemerge when another Covid wave hits in the US and they’ll be repackaging all of their made in China social mitigation lockdown ideas again.

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January 8, 2022 · 11:02 pm

A must-read Matt Taibbi take on 1/6

Today I read this Matt Taibbi piece, A Tale of Two Authoritarians, which delves into the post 9/11 security measure overreaches and the many similarities to government “social mitigation pandemic measures. Taibbi doesn’t cater to partisan political sides, but instead just lays out the chronology of new security measures since 9/11 and how those American government overreaches expanded since then. He writes about the Pelosi 1/6 event and the reemergence of Dick Cheney:

“Seeing leading Democrats nuzzling the man George W. Bush called “Iron Ass” summed up the essential problem of the ordinary person trying to find a political home in this landscape. Even if you find the Trump phenomenon troubling, his opposition is not only authoritarian, but organized and armed with the intellectual tools to understand and appreciate how the technological elimination of democracy might be achieved in the 21st century.”

“We’re living through a period where an unpleasantly likely outcome for the ordinary American is the invocation of emergency powers to eliminate basic rights. From which side is that threat most likely to come? The pattern during Trump’s presidency was hyping the Russian menace to justify increased surveillance and censorship. Russia has since been switched out in favor of two new emergency bugbears. The first is the rise of “domestic terrorism,” and if you don’t think Cheney-style democracy-canceling is on the minds of officials heading into the next presidential election, you haven’t been reading the growing pile of articles quoting military types advertising their preparations for counter-coup in 2024.”

“The second emergency of course is the pandemic, which ought to have been exhibit A in Trump’s uninterest in being a dictator — he could have legally invoked all sorts of powers and did not. Instead, it’s become part of a widening propaganda campaign designed to enlist the wine-cave MSNBC set behind full-blown Big Brother governance.”

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-authoritarians?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct

I wish I had even a tiny bit of Taibbi’s writing ability, but I don’t, so I recommend you read his piece a few times and then think about the issues he raised. He highlighted concerns about the new medical security state efforts that so many Democrats and government health officials have promoted since the pandemic began. He mentions Julian Assange and although I have never been sympathetic to his situation, I do admit that after 9/11, while having some concerns about the Patriot Act and many of the military actions, I still largely supported GWB and trusted our “experts” in intelligence and our military.

I grew up trusting authorities and I had a belief that there were mostly people with expertise, sound judgment, and most of all good character serving in public positions than there are. I was definitely too trusting and believed in public servants actually nobly serving the public interests.

When President Obama came along, he expanded on many of the Bush era Global War on Terror efforts and there were reports of more and more drone strikes in multiple countries, I began to wake up to the abuses of power. There were few clear answers from the Obama administration and Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, has failed to rein in any of the post-9/11 emergency powers and instead there’s a willingness to expand these powers in Washington and zero ability to effectively do any true oversight or demand any accountability.

When the pandemic happened, once again, I believe that initially I was way too willing to trust the medical experts that were rolled out and a large part of my trust was that I believed these government health officials were non-political and dedicated to public health. Silly me. Plus from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats had nothing but praise for Dr. Fauci and other health officials. I was too trusting again, that’s for sure, as we are now approaching two years into pandemic politics and seemingly endless efforts by liberal (mainstream) media, Biden officials, Fauci and CDC quacks, plus Democrat officials across America to incite fear, hysteria, impose new rules and to never let go of their failed pandemic policies (some of which began at the beginning of the pandemic and were approved by the Trump administration).

As corruption continues to spread among our federal governmental institutions, it’s becoming more and more disturbing to realize, not only how corrupt so many of the touted “experts” are, but how whenever anyone now gives glowing accolades about any revered official in Washington or that some official is respected by both sides of the aisle, it’s like a signal for me to put up my guard and be wary that we’re in for another snow job. It’s like when James Comey, the former director of the FBI, hailed Peter Strzok and other high-level FBI officials caught up in the efforts to spy on the Trump campaign and spread the Trump-Russian Collusion spin lies, as highly respected career professionals. As information trickled out, those career professionals turned out to be highly-partisan, liars and most definitely not adhering to any sort of professional behavior.

Twitter gets dismissed by most people as just ridiculous social media, but by following hundreds of journalists, pundits and politicians, and watching the interactions I came to realize why Trump relied on Twitter to wage his one-man spin war. He flipped Dem and liberal media spin cycles constantly with just a few tweets and that ability is why Democrats and powerful liberal elites were so desperate to try to muzzle Trump.

However, the more disturbing people on Twitter were retired generals, who joined with Democrats and liberal media to tweet their rage and anger about Trump and some, like General Michael Hayden, tweeted frequently to undercut Trump’s decisions. It was shocking to watch a retired general and former CIA director engage in berating, petty name-calling, and actively trying to undermine a sitting President of the United States. Hayden wasn’t alone, as former Obama CIA director, John Brennan, also spent many hours engaged in the Twitter spin war against Trump too.

When I tried to explain to my sister, who doesn’t use social media, about the importance of Twitter, she repeatedly has dismissed this, as just social media garbage and she points out that most Americans aren’t on Twitter and that’s true. However, the ones who are the big players in the news media, in politics and especially in the partisan messaging operations (they set the narratives in the news media) are all on Twitter a whole lot. This small group of elites, who dominate the politics Twitter space, are the ones who drive the mass media spin war, especially news media.

The social media efforts to silence people started in 2018 on Twitter with Alex Jones and Jones is an easy person to loathe. He spouted all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories. It was easy to dismiss his being banned from Twitter, but then the banning continued and last year Trump was banned after 1/6. Trump’s a lightening rod, he tweeted all sorts of lies too, but then more and more people who challenged the liberal Covid orthodoxy began to be banned. The liberal big tech, politically-motivated social media purges have escalated and they all go in one direction – those who challenge the liberal/Dem narratives.

Once again, while most people on the right didn’t care about Alex Jones being banned, as the bans continued, on YouTube, Bret Weinstein, a evolutionary biologist, who raised some concerns about Covid vaccines, had his YouTube channel demonetized and I believe a few of his videos were removed from YouTube too.

A week ago, Dr. Robert Malone, a prominent virologist, was banned from Twitter for ostensibly spreading “Covid misinformation.” Videos where Malone was interviewed by other YouTubers have been removed too.

Sitting Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a flame-throwing, Trump-supporter from GA, was banned from Twitter a few days ago.

Matt Walsh, a right-wing political commentator was suspended from Twitter today, for apparently some transgender language infraction. Walsh, upon his return to Twitter, tweeted:

One of the comments to Walsh’s tweet summed up the situation perfectly:

Mark Krikorian@MarkSKrikorian·Replying to @MattWalshBlogYou won the victory over yourself. You love Big Brother.

We’re heading into some disquieting and disturbing times. Everyone who uses social media or online platforms should realize that at any moment their online presence can be wiped out and they can be silenced across multiple social media platforms. Plus efforts for new social media platforms that aren’t controlled by the liberal big tech giants keep getting derailed at every turn.

Another disquieting thing I’ve noticed is beyond the efforts to silence opposing views, around the world, especially the Western world, there have been large protests against Covid lockdowns and rules, but you see very little liberal (mainstream) media news coverage of these protests. You’d think with Omicron being the hottest topic (besides 1/6), there would be a lot of news coverage of the large anti-Covid rules protests.

I’m going to end with this quote from Taibbi’s piece, which sums up the real stakes with this new era of trying to silence certain “undesirable” people on social media:

“Professionals” do make errors, about everything from terrorists to viruses. In fact, a fair number of the people seeking this enhanced authority are dumber than average. You don’t have to like Donald Trump to recognize the dire threat represented by a clique of mediocrities with just enough brains to use their offices to organize the criminalization of their opposition.”

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Filed under COVID-19, General Interest, Information War, Politics

November 19, 2021 · 10:42 am

The great mask dilemma explained

This sums up the masking issue:

The sad part with all this phony mask drama and virtue-signaling hyped via mass media every day is millions of Americans were deliberately lied to and manipulated by our top health officials. The damage and fall-out from the mask fearmongering will linger long after this pandemic has outlived its usefulness as a partisan political weapon.

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