Corona (archetypal) update

I wanted to throw in a quick post about Biden’s speech this week which represents a new phase in the evolution of the corona event. It came at the same time as this deeply weird article in the Australian media. In the article, the scientist who designed the Astra Zeneca vaccine admitted what has been obvious from the start which is that the vaccines do not stop you getting the virus. Thus, both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated can expect to be infected. She stated that the goal of eliminating the virus is over. This should have been good news because if somebody with a high profile is finally telling the truth, then maybe we can start to deal with this issue properly. Did the article point that out? Did it say that the only way forward is to assume that everybody will catch the virus and devise a strategy based on that fact? Of course not. It promptly went on to tell the reader that the unvaccinated needed to be “shunned”. This is both a non sequitur and a logical contradiction of what the expert had just said. If everybody will test positive anyway, your vaccination status is completely irrelevant. This new rhetoric against the unvaccinated marks a dark turn in the corona event and Biden’s speech, which announced new measures against the unvaccinated, was indicative of the new phase we are entering.

Readers of the posts in my Coronapocalypse series may have recognised the language Biden used. There were a couple of key quotes that mark the change in rhetoric that has occurred in the last month or so starting with the Israeli Prime Minister (Israel is the canary in the corona coal mine) and then eagerly picked up by Trudeau in Canada as well as the state premiers here in Australia. It was always going to be a very small change to take the language used about the virus and start to apply it to the unvaccinated. That is what we are now seeing. Let’s look at the key phrase from Biden’s speech:

“We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”

The vaccines, of course, are supposed to protect people from the virus and our leaders assure us that they do in fact protect people. Biden himself was at pains to point out how well the vaccines worked. According to this logic, the vaccinated are already protected against the virus. So, why would the vaccinated need further “protection” from the unvaccinated? This makes no logical sense just as the article in the Australian media made no logical sense. Of course, as we know by now, we are not dealing with logic here but with the archetypal takeover of the rational mind; specifically, The Devouring Mother. Biden’s phrase is the exact catchcry of The Devouring Mother who hides her intentions behind the pretence of protecting her children. Until now, the children have needed protection from a virus. Now they apparently need protection from the other children. Again, this makes sense within the archetype. The vaccinated are the acquiescent children and the unvaccinated are the rebellious children. So, the whole thing maps on to the archetype perfectly. The Devouring Mother is rewarding the acquiescent children and punishing the rebellious. What we are seeing with this new change of rhetoric and the new measures against the unvaccinated is the full and unvarnished manifestation of the archetype unencumbered by any last vestiges of science, logic or reason. I can’t make any sense of Biden or Trudeau or others except in archetypal terms. These people are supposed to be the leaders of their countries and leaders do not divide the public. What is going on now is punishment, pure and simple. Another quote from Biden’s speech makes this clear:

“We have been patient but our patience is wearing thin”.

Is this how a president, a public servant, a leader talks to the public? No. But it is how a parent talks. It is how The Devouring Mother talks. The rebellious children need to be punished. That is the explanation for these measures which not only don’t make scientific sense, they don’t even make political sense. Let’s take the current situation in Australia. Apparently each state government is going to individually implement its own vaccine passport. They will do this even though the federal government controls the data on vaccination status and has said it will not make that data available to the states as this would be a violation of the law. The solution? Each state will need to create its own system to track vaccination status. They will make people download an app and then upload their vaccination paperwork to the app. All this will need to tie in with the QR code system. Bear in mind that Australian government IT is famously incompetent and the states have about a month or two to get these systems up and running so the promised freedoms can be delivered to the vaccinated. Even if they miraculously get the systems to work, the whole thing is a disaster in the making. Twenty percent of the population will not be vaccinated and I’d estimate at least another 10% will not use these apps either because they can’t (elderly people who aren’t tech savvy) or out of moral principles. How many restaurants, cafes, pubs etc are going to be financially viable with a 30% reduction in revenue? Not many. Then consider that you’d need multiple apps to use if you travel interstate. The whole thing is a logistical and political debacle waiting to happen and a total waste of money. Our Devouring Mother-in-chief here in Victoria, Dan Andrews, called this a “vaccine economy”. If ever there was economy designed to fail, it is that. What that should mean by extension is political failure. I’ll be watching the upcoming Canadian election with great interest as this is the first time a western public will be able to vote on such measures. We have an Australian federal election due next year just in time for the failure of the vaccine program and the vaccine passport program to become a reality. That’s going to open up all kinds of possibilities.

I noted in a previous post that things were about to get weirder and now they have. We are now, I think, in the peak of the archetypal takeover. The Devouring Mother is out to discipline her rebellious children. Will it be a slap on the wrist or something far darker. We’re about to find out.

55 thoughts on “Corona (archetypal) update”

  1. Hi Simon,

    In rural areas we are out of lock down as of Friday. Not to worry, if the past is any guide it will be a brief reprieve. When I was in Daylesford yesterday, believe it or not, I was ID checked at a business. Then the person behind the counter stated bluntly that my address was a metropolitan address (a fine joke and I corrected their error). I have to say though, that the vast majority of small businesses are trading on lower incomes, previous levels of bills to pay, and probably can’t afford to take such a heavy handed approach with their customers. Like everything there will be nutters, but I’m not entirely certain how much public support there is for such deeply weirdness stuff.

    We are in for some seriously crazy days. And from all that I’ve read the IT systems are rubbish and full of holes.

    Cheers

    Chris

  2. Chris – do businesses even have the right to ask for ID? Even if they did, I can’t fathom why a business owner would do it. Prefer to go broke than stand next to a person for half a minute? In Denmark they just dropped the vaccine passport idea apparently cos it was bad for business. Who knew?

  3. The thing which really struck me is that the parts of the speech where Biden tries to talk the unvaccinated into taking the vaccine directly undercut the part where he claims this is for the protection of the unvaccinated. The entire speech felt very schizophrenic…..

  4. Anonymous – agree. In a perverse way, it’s fitting to have a half senile old man talking such obvious nonsense. I find it scarier when non-senile politicians get up and speak nonsense.

  5. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I grew up with an actual “devouring mother”, by which I mean a mother with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). These days I feel like I’m reliving my dysfunctional childhood on a global scale. The government has become not just a parent, but an NPD parent.

    Narcissists punish people who disagree with them, and, most specifically, those who question or otherwise threaten the rigid world view they have created and with which they demand everyone comply (wherein the narcissist is always right and everyone else is always wrong unless they fully agree with and flatter the narcissist).

    The problem with the unvaccinated (much like the problem with the deplorables in America) is not really anything they are or aren’t doing, per se, but rather, the fact that by refusing the vaccine, they are refusing to comply with an entire belief system. They won’t take the “oath of loyalty” and swear allegiance to the preferred narrative by taking the vax. (Sort of like C.J. Hopkins describes in his Cult of Covid discussions.) The unvaxxed aren’t just wrong; they’re HERETICS who dare to be defiant and threaten a whole world view. In this case, I’d argue that JMG is largely correct, and it’s the whole world view of modernism and progress that is being “attacked” by the non-believers, at least in part.

    That’s why they are so hated and have to be punished and stamped down at all costs, logic be damned.

  6. El – agree. Such a stupendous overreaction must be touching on some deep elements of the world view and vaccines were one of the great discoveries of modern science. What are you thoughts on Tom Luongo’s idea of active non-reaction as a way to deal with the devouring mother (https://tomluongo.me/2021/09/10/quietly-say-no-to-joe-bidens-call-for-civil-war/)? This seems like a good strategy to me as it would force the narcissist to face the consequences of their actions without being able to scapegoat the rebellious children. Although, arguably, not everybody is capable of not reacting, especially if your livelihood is on the line.

  7. I also grew up with an NPD mother and the parallels have been disturbing, to put it mildly. I wrote about them some in February. It seems to be easier to see the phenomenon in the cultural/political landscape when you’ve experienced it and done some recovery work in the family setting. https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/no-country-for-skeptical-women

    On the Canadian elections, I also am interested to see what the voters do (setting aside the manipulation of vote counts which could impact the results as reported to the public, potentially not the same as the actual results.

    I live in Pennsylvania, and we did have an opportunity to vote on some of the fundamental issues. Our state legislature managed to pass an amendment to the state Constitution in two consecutive sessions (late 2019-2020 session and early in the 2021-2022 session) to be able to put the measure on the May 2021 primary election ballot. It was an amendment to establish more clearly that the executive (Governor Tom Wolf in this case) does not have the power to declare and extend a state of emergency indefinitely and unilaterally without legislative ratification and over legislative votes to end the emergency. The amendment explicitly empowered the legislature to stop an emergency declaration, and also explicitly requires all emergency declarations to expire after 21 days unless extended by a vote of the legislature.

    Anyway, even though Wolf’s staffers wrote the ballot questions to be as off-putting to “yes” voters as possible, Pennsylvania voters approved the amendments, and while Wolf and his Secretary of Health continue to try executive overreach, the legislature has been able to strip him of some of the extraordinary executive powers he was using previously, because the voters got to grant the legislature those oversight powers. (Arguably the legislature already had those powers, but the state courts here are heavily Democratic, and when the Republican legislature brought challenges to the Democrat governor, the judiciary either refused to hear the cases, or left the executive power in play on the grounds that they shouldn’t be second-guessed during an emergency.

    A little bit of background is here:

    https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/liberty-v-tyranny-pennsylvania-edition

  8. Forgot to say, I also saw Luongo’s essay, and think it’s a good strategy.

    It’s clear the elite’s goal is to provoke violent reaction from the unvaccinated, to “justify” harsher crackdowns.

    But it also seems like a ton more people than usual understand that approach by the elites, understand false flag events, and infiltration of dissenter groups by the feds, and that the best way to move forward is to stay calm, keep saying “No,” and force the elites to increasingly show their own violent hands.

    This is similar to what CJ Hopkins has been saying lately too.

    And similar to MLK’s approach.

  9. KW – thanks for that. Well, you’ve got more democracy in Pennsylvania than we have here in Australia where we have absolutely no political opposition whatsoever. The results of that have been seen worldwide by now. Absolute power corrupts and all that. Although we’ve had mass psychoses before, I think corona is unique in a couple of ways. First, it encompasses the whole of society. Second, when all this is over, there is will be nobody to blame but ourselves. Now, people may still find a way to project their shadow onto the unvaccinated which is clearly what is happening now. If that doesn’t work, as I suspect, then there is nowhere left to turn but inwards. Jung had already very clearly warned about the psychic dangers that western society has stepped into in the 20th century. The question I’ve been pondering recently is could corona trigger a mass “individuation” event to use Jungian language. I think it’s a long shot but it could happen. If you’re right that lots more people can now see the psychological manipulation for what it is, then there is hope.

  10. On that news article you linked to, which I had also linked to on JMG’s thread, if you read the text below the guy holding the vaccine vial, they have it spelt vile.
    I know you’re discussing Jungian archetypes, but “Freudian slip” anyone?
    Here in SA we are still being made to wear masks indoors with no bug circulating.
    I only go to the supermarket about once a fortnight (no nappy last 2 times) and get petrol about 3 times a year (no nappy last time). Or at the pet food shop.
    No-one said anything.
    I have no “apps”.
    Where I can do this I will. I see it as small measures to collapse the narrative.

  11. Helen – hah. Good pickup. I hadn’t noticed that spelling error. Maybe the sub-editor at the newspaper is a subversive. Small acts of resistance do make a difference. I remember in April this year (God that feels like years ago!) half the people weren’t even wearing masks on the train here in Melbourne even though that was the last place they were still mandatory. Once enough people stop doing crazy things, it catches on. Of course, it’s currently against the law to refuse to do crazy things.

  12. Hmmm, I’ve got ten bucks that says that after letting them stew for a month or two (so we can get some outrage going over crappy gov vax apps), good ole Bill Gates, vaccine evangelist and software nerd, will ride to the rescue with a global turnkey solution based in the Blockchain. Problem solved!

  13. “Such a stupendous overreaction must be touching on some deep elements of the world view and vaccines were one of the great discoveries of modern science. ”

    I posted a thought on this over on Mark L.’s (Musings from Mark) blog which I’ll repeat here, because I think it’s relevant.

    I think one of the things that’s making people crazy has to do with the point of diminishing returns for medicine, science, and modernism in general, and vaccines are a sort of flashpoint for this very upsetting (to some) problem of Progress(tm) petering out.

    Truth is, vaccination – up to a point – was one of the great discoveries of modern science. The elimination of smallpox with the help of vaccines was a high point of the use of modern science to defeat disease. So people understandably think that the elimination of disease via vaccines is a great accomplishment – because in some early cases it was.

    The problem, however, is that all of the low-hanging fruit and easy victories in the “war against disease” (and science in general) have already been achieved. Modern medicine has done a lot to preserve and prolong life, but the truth is, most of the accomplishments have already long since been made. Clean water and sanitation, adequate nutrition, and many of the older, more basic surgical, dental, and medical treatments – think antibiotics, insulin, basic surgery we could do by the middle of the 20th century, and a handful of older vaccines against the most virulent diseases – did a lot to get childhood mortality way down and life expectancy way up in the first world.

    But we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns. New medical developments (including new vaccines) at best provide marginal benefit to a small groups of people, not dramatic “miracles of science” to vastly improve our health and lifespans. Beyond some tinkering around the edges for mild medical improvements, we’ve mostly come about as far as we can go. First world people now have a historically good shot at living into their 9th decade, but not much more. We’ve maxed out on great society-wide medical miracles.

    For people who believe in Progress ™, this is unacceptable. Things must always get BETTER, and certainly not worse.

    I think a lot of what we’re seeing around the covid vaccine hysteria is a desperate desire for a replay of the great smallpox victory of last century. I would posit that cultures that are past their prime want, like people past their prime, to relive their greatest glories to convince themselves that “we still have it”. That’s part of what I think is feeding the covid vax hysteria: a desperate desire to replay the great smallpox victory so that society can maintain the illusion that medicine/science in general are still capable of delivering miracles, aka, Progress.

  14. Tas – the vaccine booking system in Australia is a Microsoft product. I’m sure Microsoft’s salesmen are wining and dining some bureaucrats as we speak. Remotely, of course.

    El – the US Surgeon General said back in 1967 (I think) that it was time to “close the book on infectious disease”. He was right. There has been no further reduction in infectious disease in western countries since then. 1968 was the Hong Kong flu which was, if you believe the statistics, the same magnitude as corona and nobody lost their mind over it. Very little has changed scientifically during that time but an awful lot has changed psychologically and culturally.

  15. As for the question about how best to deal with the devouring mother, well…I’m not a political strategist.

    So I will answer as best I can from the personal, microcosmic perspective of the child of an NPD mother.

    My experience with trying to convince people about what an NPD (devouring) mother is really like by explaining it to them is that it simply does not work. You can TELL people all you want that she’s horrible, she’s not what she seems, she’s a phony, she’s manipulative, she’s a liar, she doesn’t love anyone but herself, trust me, I am TELLING you, I KNOW her, these are the facts, this is the evidence, please believe me, etc., until you are blue in the face, and it will make no difference to all but a few. Most people are naive; they believe that “all mothers love their children”, and fall easily for charming facades and self-serving justifications, because it’s just easier and more reassuring to not have to think too hard about how some seemingly pleasant person may be a total phony who is fooling almost everyone around her. It’s much easier to think the accusing child is just, you know – a bit crazy, perhaps a little spoiled, doesn’t understand or appreciate what she has, is confused, over dramatic, prone to exaggeration, etc. All mothers love their children and want what’s best for them, even if they “aren’t perfect”.

    The only thing that works to change their minds, in my experience, is having actual direct experience with the NPD person long enough for the mask to slip and the spell to break. Aside from a few people whose own life stories led them to believe me, the only people who wound up concluding that my NPD mother was in fact horrible were the people who got to know her and saw her in action for a while (narcissists slip up eventually). The good news is, once people finally get it, they GET it; once the spell is broken, it’s over.

    Which is a round about way of saying, I think maybe CJ Hopkins is right. If you want people to turn against totalitarianism, they have to see it unmasked and ugly. Facts and arguments won’t do it; the monster has to somehow show its hand.

    So how do you break the spell of the devouring mother on a society-wide scale?

    I’m not sure, but suspect it’s going to take some sort of actual direct experience with the darkness to wake people up. Most people are naive; they want to believe that government is benign and politicians serve the people and those in power generally want what’s best for everyone, even if “we don’t all agree” on the details. Trying to explain otherwise just gets you labelled as paranoid, recalcitrant, stupid, selfish, etc. They aren’t going to come around until they see it for themselves.

    How that will happen, I just don’t know. I wish I had a better answer.

  16. El – thanks for that. It’s really interesting to me to hear stories from people with real experience in these matters as I’ve approached it purely through the lens of Jungian theory but without any personal experience of a NPD type. By the way, KW had a link in the comments above with some of her personal experience with a NPD mother that you might find worthwhile reading. It is a genuinely interesting time right now (also genuinely worrying). Entire populations are being subjected to Devouring Mother type behaviour. Whether people will be able to see it for what it is remains the question. In order to do that, they would also have to see through the blatant propaganda as well. If that were to somehow happen en masse, the results are very unpredictable.

  17. I think that very, very few people actually believe that these vaccines are the Second Coming of the Holy Smallpox Vaccine. Well, I don’t know, with all the hysteria that’s been whipped up, maybe a certain part of the population actually believes that(?).

    So, are we witnessing the narcissistic rage of the meritocratic elite, whose merit is increasingly being disputed by the general population? The old fashioned understanding of meritocracy is that the job candidate most likely to perform well at the job in question should get that job. But increasingly, it means something like “the smartest and most hard working people should get a lot of money, plus the right to tell the proles how to live their lives.” Never mind whether these super-smart workaholics actually improve anything for anyone else, or are just asset stripping for their own benefit. Well, if you put it that way, it doesn’t sound particularly good. So, the super smart workaholics (let’s leave aside whether they really are as smart as that) frantically insist that being a super smart workaholic does translate into super-amazing goodies for everyone else because [handwave, handwave, handwave] it does, damn it, and if you don’t see it, that just proves you’re stupid and lazy!

    And that’s why these vaccines are the Second Coming of the Holy Smallpox Vaccine. They must be! How else do the meritocrats get to justify the resource grab at the expense of everyone else?

  18. Irena – you’ve touched on a subject that I’ve been thinking about recently. I would argue that the modern elites don’t believe in meritocracy and don’t even pretend to be meritocratic anymore. That’s especially true in the US. What they do believe in is will-to-power and will-to-power is one of the traits of The Devouring Mother. Specifically, it’s an untamed eros which belongs to the “feminine”. I would argue meritocracy is associated with logos and is therefore “masculine”. Sport is the ultimate meritocracy in modern society and that’s why men love sport. That’s also why the elites are really eager to ruin sport eg. the whole transgender athlete thing even if the only thing they are ruining is women’s sport. So, I think the general public still believes in a meritocracy even though the elites don’t even bother to pretend to run one anymore. Will to power also has in foundation in various postmodern theories which is why the modern elites love their Foucault etc.

  19. Re: merit(ocracy)

    I haven’t really thought about it in masculine/feminine terms. What I think is going on is that the notion of merit has been re-aristocratized. You know how aristocrats were once “obviously” better than everyone else, and the reason this was obvious was because they were “noble”? Then, for a while, we believed that your merit or lack thereof was determined, roughly speaking, by how well you performed some worthwhile task(s). And now we’re back to the better-because-noble story, though “noble” now means “smart and workaholic,” even if your wits and workaholism are being used for asset stripping. (Seriously, I never understood why “I’m smart and work hard” proves you have merit, whereas “I’m strong and have big guns” does not.) I think this view is particularly prevalent in the United States, where people think (for instance) that it’s entirely appropriate for bankers to be paid exorbitant salaries because they’re so smart and work 80 hours a week. Never mind the actual results of their work mania.

  20. Hmmm, isn’t the whole point of merit that it’s something you earn by doing? “I’m strong and have big guns” is the might-is-right argument which I wouldn’t think of it as merit. The old aristocracy was based on genetics/heredity and was a kind of might-is-right argument. The New World ethic was the self-made man who by definition had to earn merit. It seems to me that the modern elite in the US is based on neither which is why it represents a pure kind of will-to-power.

  21. @Simon

    Re: merit

    Yes, you’re right: it’s not merit in the usual sense. But they insist on calling it that. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that merit has been re-aristocratized, since aristocracy didn’t think of itself in those terms. I should have said that what many meritocrats think of as merit is in fact nobility, 21st century style. “I’m brilliant and work 80 hours a week and therefore deserve a lot of money” is roughly equivalent to “I have noble blood and therefore deserve the fruits of my peasants’ labor.” Of course, both the brilliant workaholics and the nobles can sometimes be useful. (Nobles, after all, used to provide protection to their peasants.) What’s interesting is the idea that even if they (meritocrats/nobles) cease to provide anything useful, they still deserve all the goodies. Hence, the workaholic asset stripper (hehe) “deserves” an enormous salary, and the libertine with a wig who’s never held a sword except to pose for a portrait “deserves” the fruits of the peasants’ labor. Due to their, y’know, merit/nobility.

    Anyway, the libertine poses with a sword, and the meritocrat poses with the Second Coming of the Holy Smallpox Vaccine.

  22. Irena – this is where we need to come back to the rise of bureaucracy as the main organisational form of society because the modern elites are the ones at the top of the various bureaucracies, whether public or private, and the whole point of bureaucracy was that it was “meritocratic” i.e. you could rise through it based on “hard work” whereas in the old world you gained position based on birth alone. Thus, the myth of the modern elite is meritocratic/workaholic because of the internal ethos of the bureaucracy and not based on whether the bureaucracy actually produces anything of value.

  23. Hey mate,
    For the first time in history I can infect a vaccinated person with a virus that I don’t have. Amazing times indeed.
    At my new workplace they are stepping up the pressure to get vaccinated. I was actually asked today if i had the shots. All in a very casual conversation. Wonder how long this job will last…
    Since i am getting one or two calls from headhunters every week, this might not be too much of a problem. Plus if push comes to shove i can afford a timeout for a couple of years.
    So at the moment I am actually having fun being a black sheep.
    Almost like a second wind in late midlife. I haven’t been this aggressive and confrontational and itching for a fight since my twenties. And it feels good.
    Am I the only one who gets this?
    It might not end well, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
    Maybe i caught an archetype as well…

    @irena aristocracy means roughly the same as meritocracy. Aristos is greek for “the best”.
    I can think of two problems here straight away.
    1) best at what? At securing social status and power? What is the unit for merit? May i suggest the “Karen”. With 1 Karen = 1 virtuesignal / 3600 sec.
    2) even if there is a meaningful answer to 1), this will apply only to the first generation. Humans being what they are, will pass social status on to their offspring irrespective of the offsprings quality. This means meritocracy, even if it should work in the first generation (i am not saying it does) , will quickly degrade into a caste system.

  24. G’day Roland – yes. Another inversion to add to the seemingly infinite list of corona inversions. So, the people who didn’t take a medicine are responsible for the people who did take it getting sick with the disease the medicine is supposed to protect against? Ok. Back away from the crazy person.

  25. Roland: “best at what? At securing social status and power?”

    Bingo. See my comment about being strong and having big guns.

  26. If I remember my Aristotle, the Greeks had the concepts Monarchy (hereditary rule), Aristocracy and Democracy alongside their negative forms of tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule. Aristocracy sort of implies meritocracy but not exactly. You need a selection mechanism to determine who really is the best and in Plato that would have been selection based on potential. Thus, the best would choose the (potentially) best to replace them. Meritocracy on the other hand is more like the free market in that you reward people based on results, not on potential. The “system” chooses the “best”. Note also, the Greeks would have found it absurd to think that the person who works the hardest is the “best”. Only slaves worked hard.

  27. ” Thus, the best would choose the (potentially) best to replace them.”
    Sounds like the half baked thinking that Plato was so good at. A bit like Marx: some useful insights in the analysis takes them straight to an obvious and, in the real world, perfectly insane solution. Next stop gulags to adjust human nature.
    I think it was Whitehead who said western philosophy is just footnotes to Plato. That certainly explains the madness of the last centuries.

  28. I re-read some of The Republic recently and agreed with it more than I remember. Actually, it occurs to me that corona is a combination of all the negative forms of government. You’ve got a legal tyranny through states of emergency advised by an oligarchy of unelected, unaccountable “experts” and enforced on the ground by psychological mob rule.

  29. I probably should read a bit more of Plato, but most of the times i come across one of his ideas, it feels quite undercooked and theoretical. But i guess the Greeks in those days were generally not very practically minded. This does not sit well with my thought processes as an engineer.
    How are the protests going down your way? Good to hear, that there is still a bit of life left in this country.
    Deranged Dan seems to soften up a bit too.

  30. The protests in Queensland looked to be a decent size and not a cop in sight. Must be nice. Not sure how much Dan has softened looking at his roadmap to nowhere. Although, apparently we align with the “federal” plan in December. Dunno what that means but it sounds better than what we’ve been getting so far.

  31. Helen – Surprising to read that in a woman’s magazine. I had a flick through some of their other articles and they do seem to have at least a non-crazy perspective on corona. Maybe I should start getting my news from women’s magazines 🙂

  32. I’ve been thinking about El’s diminishing returns points. This quite obviously plays a role. Imagine you’re a young (or no longer young) vaccinologist. You’re as smart as the people who came up with the polio vaccine (let’s not even talk about the smallpox vaccine), and if anything, you’ve worked harder than they have. And yet, deep down, you know you will never come up with anything remotely resembling the polio vaccine. And chances are, neither will any of your colleagues, even the best and brightest among them. Because, well, diminishing returns. That’s somewhat demoralizing. And so you might be tempted to convince yourself that this not-particularly-effective and not-particularly-safe “vaccine” against a not-particularly-dangerous virus is the Second Coming the Holy Smallpox Vaccine. And you might get very angry when people suggest otherwise (even if it’s just by not taking the Second Coming). If you take that a step further, you can even see how people working in research and development in unrelated fields might be willing to buy into the story. After all, most of them are running into analogous diminishing returns problems. A victory for the mRNA people is, in some sense, a victory for research in general. Where this gets a little more difficult to follow is when people in completely different lines of work (say, journalists) jump on the bandwagon. What’s in it for them??

  33. Irena – sounds like part of the myth of progress. If you believe the myth, then you must also believe that you would be working on/doing things so much more impressive than your predecessors. And yet, you aren’t. This could also lead to feelings of inferiority and worthlessness (both Orphan traits in archetypal analysis). The same psychology would be present for journalists and, in fact, entire generations.

  34. The thing is, quite a lot of people either refuse to take the Second Coming, or roll their eyes as they take it (and they only take it because it’s easier than arguing with that crazy person). I don’t think the myth of progress is quite as strong as it used to be.

    For journalists etc., maybe it’s a matter of class. They belong to the educated meritocracy, and the educated meritocracy gets its prestige from things such as the smallpox and polio vaccines. But if that’s all largely in the past, then how do they justify their position? Hence, the Second Coming. Maybe. (Did minor barons feel strongly invested in the divine right of kings…?)

    On the other hand, the whole culture is perfectly schizophrenic, of course. Just as science(TM) produced this lovely Second Coming, so math and precision and work habits are racist. Ah, imagine being a historian some time in the 23rd century, and writing a book about it all!

  35. BTW, it appears that the pressure in CZ is being reduced. Now, keep in mind that there’s an election coming up in October, and what they say before the election has no bearing on what they do/say after the election! Nevertheless, the “vaccine” pushers don’t sound as aggressive and self-righteous anymore. And there was even a story on the Czech Radio recently about how the hospitals were ready for the winter surge in COVID cases. (They said they were chronically understaffed, but basically ready.) So, maybe the worst is behind us! Though obviously, we’ll have to wait and see what happens after the election.

    The US, on the other hand, is going quite insane. Biden’s behavior is easy enough to explain: the man is senile, and he just says whatever his minders tell him to say. If he spouts complete nonsense, that’s fine, he’d be the last person to notice. The real question is: who are his minders and what are they thinking?

    Possibility #1: His minder (at least in COVID-related matters) is Anthony Fauci. Fauci is a power-hungry egomaniac, whose main goal is to remain in power (and out of jail, while we’re at it). But then it would appear that he’s not thinking much more than three months ahead. Otherwise, how exactly does he think this ends?

    Possibility #2: His minders are some people behind the scenes, and they are preparing to blame the whole COVID fiasco on Biden and Fauci, throw that duo to the wolves, and (or so they hope) strengthen and improve their own positions. Maybe it’ll even work.

    As for Australia: I am really, really sorry. 🙁

  36. Irena – good to hear about Czech. Seems Germany is also headed in a similar direction. Denmark recently dropped all measures. On the other end of the spectrum is Lithuania which makes Australia look like a day at the beach by comparison. This is a first hand account of what is going on there – https://txti.es/covid-pass/images

  37. I think Lithuania is where Australia is going as well. I am sure that most of my colleagues here would love the idea.
    Been a while since I had to deal with office fauna. Fuck me sideways, i can’t believe the level of stupidity and groupthink. I’m surrounded by madness. I know the advice is to slowly back away from the mad person, but that only means you bump straight into another one.
    With people like that in charge, Australia has no chance whatsoever.

  38. Roland – you’ve probably seen the scenes from Melbourne today – https://twitter.com/i/status/1440197875049242634

    This could get interesting. They’ve all been laid off for two weeks too, so have nothing better to do. This strikes me as a very Australian thing. Shut down all debate for a year and a half and then just let it all erupt in a dumb outburst that, while completely understandable, will solve nothing.

  39. I certainly have seen what happens down your way. It may not be a smartest way to handle this situation, but it seems to me that we are right out of smart options at this point.
    We’ll have to see what comes from it, but if the protests continue it could be a game changer. At least the political class has to take notice.

  40. I was watching it live via this guy – https://m.facebook.com/therealrukshan/videos/572417687290324/

    He was interviewing a lot of them as the protest went on. The tradies are certainly better informed than your average salary class professional. Interestingly enough, they’ve been allowed to work all through this which means they’re one of the few groups of people who have been allowed to congregate and actually talk to other human beings. Makes a difference, I’d say.

  41. Okay, that Lithuania thing is crazy…

    When it comes to COVID tyranny, I think it comes in two (not fully distinct) flavors. One COVID tyrant group are the rabid ideologues (you know, the Second Coming true believers); if you want to see them in action, go read the _Atlantic_. The other are the old fashioned bullies. I think this is going on in places like Serbia (where I’m originally from); the people in power just really, truly enjoy being able to tell everyone else what to do. (I may have mentioned this before, but at some point last year, people over 65 – this was in Serbia – were not allowed to leave their apartments for any reason at all, except to go shopping at a time designated specifically for them, which was at something like 4-7 am one particular day per week. I guess there must have been exceptions for medical care, but basically, most people above 65 spent weeks shut in their apartments.) Anyway, I’m going to guess that TPTB in Lithuania are in this second group (old fashioned bullies), but I could be wrong. And as I said, there is some overlap. For example, which group does Anthony Fauci belong to? I think he’s actually in the second group, but his captive audience are people from the first group, which produces some interesting results. And what’s the deal with Macron…?

    Meanwhile, some politicians sense that COVID is messing up their chances of reelection, and are trying to bring the mess to an end. BoJo over in the UK would be an example, but his problem is that he’s surrounded by rabid ideologues. But maybe the wind is changing by now…? I think the Czech Prime Minister is somewhat like BoJo. So, assuming he gets reelected, and assuming the hospitals more or less manage the winter surge (over here in CZ, that is), he may just declare victory over COVID, try to avoid the topic of “vaccinated” people getting infected, and leave it at that. Fingers crossed! Interestingly, CZ does not seem to have that large of a contingent of rabid ideologues. There are some (they mostly seem to be in the academia, but it’s not like all of academia consists of rabid ideologues), but they just don’t seem to have quite as much influence. I am not aware of a Czech equivalent of the _Atlantic_.

    BTW, is it true that Australians are now being randomly SMSed, and required to upload pictures of themselves and their surroundings within 15 min, with the police going after them if they don’t? Or was that fake news?

  42. Irena – it’s certainly hard to get any firm read of which way things are going. For every Denmark and Sweden you get an Italy and France. 65 weeks locking old people in their own homes! For their own safety, of course. Honestly, if I was 80y.o., i’d rather take a chance dying of covid than have one of the few remaining years of my life wasted by moronic bureaucrats. Do people in Serbia follow such rules? What, did they have the cops checking birth certificates in the street?

    That story about the random photo thing is partially fake news. The state of South Australia is trialing a mobile phone app for home quarantine where you will have to upload a photo at random to prove that you were home. It was all done by volunteers and I think they only had about 20. As bad as that is, it’s better than the hotel quarantine alternative which sounds like a nightmare. Worst part is, if somebody tests positive while you’re in the hotel, they start your two week stint all over again. Pretty sure such nonsense wouldn’t even pass animal cruelty laws.

  43. Re: Serbia

    So, I was in CZ the whole time, but as far as I can tell, compliance with the house arrest for the over-65’s was very high. And mind you, that was far from the only “brilliant” thing they came up with. I should also say that some of these ideas (I’m not entirely sure which ones) were actually Chinese: they invited Chinese advisors to Serbia to tell them what to do.

    Among other brilliant ideas were the all-weekend curfews, when no-one was allowed to go anywhere from Friday afternoon until Monday morning (some people got special passes for specific reasons, but this was quite limited). This caused some distress among dog owners, and so eventually, they relaxed those rules to allow them to walk their dogs for something like 15 min, within 150 m (or was it 200 m?) from the place of residence, so that the dogs could do their doggy business.

    And then there were the concentration camps (of course, they didn’t call them that). Basically, if you tested positive for COVID and had only mild symptoms, you were to be transferred to this concentration camp-like facility until you were negative. (There was some confusion about whether there was hot water for showering at this facility. To this day, I don’t know if this was available.) And then there was this utterly brilliant idea that if both parents tested positive, but the child tested negative, then the parents would be taken to the concentration camp, and the child to an orphanage, until the parents tested negative and were released. As you can imagine, this caused quite a bit of terror among parents with young children. (It was also a completely idiotic idea even from a pure COVID-suppression perspective, and for completely obvious reasons, but never mind that now.) In the end, the concentration camp never really filled up, and I am not sure if any children were taken to orphanages for this sort of reason, but it sure scared quite a lot of people. (Heck, it scared the bejesus out of *me*, and I was in CZ the whole time!)

  44. Simon: “For every Denmark and Sweden you get an Italy and France.”

    Yes! And it keeps changing. CZ had some quite strict COVID restrictions early on (they weren’t as crazy as Serbia’s, but still), and now, maybe, we’re coming out of it. Except that maybe it’s just posturing until the election, and then it’s jail time. Who knows. France is really weird. I am trying to decide if it’s something about France, or if it’s a consequence of Macron’s personal megalomania, and the French just got kind of unlucky this time around. And who would have thought Australia would go batshit crazy?! (Speaking of Australia: thanks for clarifying about the photos/police/quarantine.)

  45. Irena – wow. For some reason I had the idea that eastern Europe didn’t go crazy but obviously I was wrong. And at the end of all this, all this nonsense will have achieved absolutely nothing. Everybody will get this virus and the normal immune system response will be the thing that keeps it in check, not the vaccine. I suspect that’s why places like the US, CZ and the UK will be ok in the coming winter. There should be enough natural immunity in the population. Here in Australia, I expect next winter (mid-2022) is going to be nuts.

  46. Hi Simon, both of your Rona books have now arrived.
    Also today a copy of JMG’s Paths of Wisdom arrived.
    I had thought it was lost in transit, as I ordered it so long ago and I’d received the other 2 books in the order.
    Anyway, 2 days ago, I reordered it from another website, of course…
    Do you have the book, and if not are you interested in it?
    If so I can send it to you, when it arrives, as an early Xmas present. ?
    If not I’ll post a notice on JMG’s site to see if anyone else in Oz would like a copy.
    Pretty crazy about that earthquake.
    Talk about omens, and ‘cracks starting to appear’.
    So if there had been major building damage, I wonder who would have had to do the rebuilding?
    Hmm not all those crazy, right wing, selfish N&#i strikers…

  47. Helen – glad to hear it. Hope you get something out of them. Thanks for the offer of Paths of Wisdom. I had a browse through it a while ago and remember it being very full on in terms of theory. I’m currently working through the Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic with the ecosophia book club which is apparently going to take 4 years! So, I won’t have the time to look at it for now. Maybe offer it on ecosophia and hopefully it can find a home with somebody who will be able to make use of it. The earthquake came on the day Melbourne equaled the most number of days in lockdown of any city in the world. Even the gods are angry at our stupidity.

    Irena – if only we could get the President of Croatia on the phone with the Prime Minister of Australia.

  48. A side note: I’ve by now heard of several cases of fully “vaccinated” people catching COVID. I’m talking about people I personally know, and it’s not like I have a huge social/professional circle. Further, it appears that an assortment of other respiratory ailments is coming back! I’m currently recovering from what appears to have been the good old flu. (I had all the classical symptoms, and COVID tests repeatedly came back negative.) And it would appear I’m not the only one. Actually, this winter could be a bit of a mess. I hope they don’t decide to lock down because of the flu!

  49. I saw that epidemiologists in Britain are predicting a very bad flu season. They also had an outbreak of RSV in the middle of summer which is unheard of. The theory is that by locking down we interrupted our usual exposure to viruses and therefore the immune system of the population was “out of sync”. This was, of course, exactly what the dissenting doctors and epidemiologists were saying right from the start but we didn’t listen to them. Whoops. In Australia it’s going to be even worse as we have had the borders closed and will have missed two whole years of variants on all the existing flu viruses. Now we have to catch up the hard way.

  50. I’d be even more inclined to believe that the British health authorities are preparing the groundwork for a very deadly flu season caused by a vax side effect. That’s what my standard mental model has been: that if (a big if based on Biblical speculation) the shot was purposefully designed to be deadly than a great loss of life would begin during the fall flu season.

  51. Irena – yes. Complete ignorance of the theory of evolution even among scientists and doctors. If we’re lucky, we’ll get “herd immunity” and the politicians can take the credit for the vaccines working. Theoretically, we have to there eventually even if it takes years. The political problem is that the majority of hte population still think the vaccine will prevent them getting “covid”. What will happen when those people do eventually test positive?

    Nate – agree. The next northern hemisphere flu season will be crucial. If things get really bad, all kinds of even worse possibilities open up.

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