During my internet travels over the past couple of weeks I stumbled across three takes on corona from well-known thinkers that highlighted a facet of the corona event that I have touched on in previous posts but which is now taking on increased importance given that events in Europe are escalating into new and very dangerous territory. The three thinkers are all self-confessed “rationalists” who have constructed a story about corona which is not only incredibly naïve but also dangerous. My first encounter with this story was a tweet by Richard Dawkins which read as follows:
“Ingenious scientists worked around the clock to find vaccines, with spectacular success. Will their noble efforts to beat the virus be defeated because of a new epidemic – new virus, a virus of the mind, the memetic virus of anti-vax propaganda spread by gullible fools?”
There is much to unpack in these two short sentences. Let’s start with semantics. Are these “vaccines“ really vaccines? By the old-fashioned definition of a vaccine they are not because they do not prevent infection. That used to be part of what it meant for a vaccine to be a vaccine and it’s also what the general public still thinks is meant by the term vaccine which is causing all sorts of cognitive dissonance at the moment. Because the “vaccines” do not prevent infection, on what basis can they be called a success let alone a “spectacular success”? The original dreams of reaching herd immunity have gone up in smoke. The vaccines have been rolled out on mass and yet the pandemic continues including in places such as Israel, Gibraltar and Iceland where uptake was as good as universal. Dawkins is always going on about how science is about empirical evidence. Where is the evidence that the vaccines are a success? And what are they a success at? They are not a success at getting us to herd immunity. The next best claim would be that they are a success at preventing serious illness but even that claim seems uncertain giving that any lasting protection seems to rely on booster shots. In the grand experiment that is corona, I would say there is little evidence for success so far and, in any case, we need to gather more evidence. The experiment isn’t over yet and yet Dawkins is already claiming victory. Or is he?
In the second sentence we find out that the supposed success of the vaccines is under threat but not because of any actual problems with the vaccine. No, it’s under threat from gullible fools spreading propaganda. The “virus” that threatens our ability to defeat the biological virus is a virus “of the mind”. How exactly could this virus of the mind stop the vaccine from working? Isn’t the whole point of science that it works whether or not you believe in it according to materialists such as Dawkins? If Dawkins means that the virus of the mind will prevent people from taking the vaccine, how would that negate the success of the vaccine given that we know herd immunity cannot be achieved via the vaccine? And, again, given the examples of Israel and Gibraltar where as good as universal uptake of the vaccine has not prevented further lockdowns, isn’t there numerous grounds to call the success of the vaccine itself into question?
The dichotomy that Dawkins sets up between the noble, enlightened scientists working tirelessly to save humanity and the fools whose ignorance will bring the whole thing undone has very little to do with the reality around corona and everything to do with the Enlightenment values of reason which “rationalists” like him ascribe to. The distinction between the men of reason (the Enlightenment was almost exclusively male) and the mob had been present ever since the start of the Enlightenment. Back when the Enlightenment was really kicking into gear, there was no universal suffrage, for example. Voting was an activity exclusive to land owners and the gentry. Even though the Enlightenment was ostensibly about removing the power of the state and opening up the “public sphere”, in reality the intellectuals congregated in closed societies in coffee houses and salons. The mob, the people who couldn’t see the light of reason, has always been a problem for Enlightenment thinkers because reason is supposed to be universal and yet there exists people who can’t be made to see the light. The Marxists resolved this by creating the notion of “false consciousness” a terrible affliction by which the working class were made blind to the superior reasoning faculties of their intellectual superiors. Nowadays, we don’t call it false consciousness, we call it conspiracy theories or anti-vaxxer. The underlying principle is the same. Thus, by invoking the dichotomy between “scientists” and “fools”, Dawkins follows in a tradition that has been around since the start of the Enlightenment.
This leads me on to the second “rationalist” that popped up on my computer screen in the last weeks; a snippet from Stephen Pinker’s new book called “Rationality”. Pinker is one of the most enthusiastic exponents of Enlightenment values and is the author of Enlightenment Now, apparently one of Bill Gates’ favourite books. Pinker’s new book on Rationality makes explicit reference to the corona event. In the precis for the book, Pinker states “Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding–and also appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing?” This is, of course, the exact same dichotomy as presented by Dawkins. The noble, rational scientists set off against the ignorant conspiracy theorists. Later in the book, Pinker would also echo Dawkins’ claim that the vaccines are a great success. For him, they represent a “glorious new achievement in the history of rationality” as vaccines “likely to end a plague” were being administered less than a year after the arrival of the plague. Again, we have semantic quibbles here. Pinker has no problem with calling them vaccines or accepting that we are in a plague. He does, however, at least appear to understand that the idea that vaccines could end a plague is new. This harps back to something that has been present in the corona event from the start, namely the idea that corona could be a “glorious new achievement in the history of rationality”. This was the dream of the “rationalists” right from the get go. But it was just that; a dream. At best it was a hypothesis and a scientist and rationalist should understand that a hypothesis needs to be proven before it becomes a fact. The dream that the vaccine could work needed to be tempered by the inherent risks involved and yet none of the so-called rationalists have ever acknowledged those risks at least as far as I have seen.
This leads me to the third and final “rationalist”, the Australian writer and founder of the Quillette website, Claire Lehmann. Like the other rationalists, Lehmann has been all on board for the vaccine since day dot. She has also become an apologist for the actions of the Australian government variously praising them and lately ignoring the more extreme measures taken. As Quillette is a popular site in the US especially amongst the libertarian and centre-right crowd and as the situation in Australia has become a hot topic among that demographic in recent months, Lehmann has found herself at loggerheads with her US readership who look on in horror as the Australia state governments have done things that would be impossible in America. Thus, Australia has found itself in a strange position of being vilified by the centre right in the US while also becoming something of a poster child for the “rationalist” cause by virtue of having a heady combination of low covid numbers and high vaccine uptake. In order to get there, of course, we have had to trample on the human rights of the population and it is this which Lehmann’s US readership have been up in arms about with particular focus on the Howard Springs “camp” in recent weeks. Lehmann has been happy to write off these human rights abuses as being a necessary element in the “success” of Australia’s response as measured by the low death count relative to the US. As with Dawkins and Pinker, Lehmann seems completely untroubled by how the death statistics were arrived at, how accurate the PCR test is or any of that. She is happy to take the numbers at face value and note that Australia is doing far “better” than the US. Of course, we already know what is in store for Australia. It is the same as happened to Israel, Iceland and Gibraltar. It is still too early to call Australia a “success” but that is what Lehmann, Pinker and Dawkins have done. If it does happen to “fail”, it won’t be the fault of the scientists but those pesky online fools who like to point out that locking healthy people in camps for two weeks without their consent is a betrayal of other Enlightenment values such as the concept of natural rights. Watching the state trample on those rights should have been at least a concern of so-called rationalists who claim to believe in the Enlightenment but apparently this is not the case.
The irony of all this is that the Enlightenment was supposed to be about removing the power from a small handful of people who claimed to be the sole repository of truth and wisdom by democratising access to the public sphere where everybody could have input. The internet is perhaps the ultimate expression of that and yet we now have proponents of the Enlightenment who lament the fools and conspiracy theorists poisoning that public discourse. All this while there are enormous problems with the accepted narrative on perfectly logical and rational grounds. It doesn’t seem to occur to the rationalists that their abject dismissal of reasonable concerns is precisely what is fuelling the “conspiracy theories”. The less we are able to acknowledge the real issues with the vaccine and with the government response to corona, the more likely people are to look for other explanations including that the government no longer has their best interests at heart. In the real world, there are trade-offs and simply ignoring the legitimate concerns and objections of people and pretending everything is a “spectacular success” is not a recipe for a functional discourse.
Of course, it’s worse than that. By invoking the dichotomy of the noble scientists versus the ignorant fools, the rationalists are now providing intellectual cover for what is increasingly looking like a genuine atrocity in Europe where governments now feel empowered to openly discriminate against people based on private medical decisions to the point of locking them in jail. Doesn’t sound very Enlightenment to me. Sounds more like The Inquisition. It sounds like exactly the kind of thing that the Enlightenment was supposed to prevent from happening. That is should be promulgated by people who advocate logic and critical thinking and yet have apparently applied neither to the corona event is all the more strange.
Pinker defines rationality as goal fulfilment. Rationality is a toolkit for achieving goals. The standard of rationality is therefore that which achieves the goal, preferably in the most straightforward way. So, we have a “pandemic” and our goal is to put a stop to it notwithstanding the fact that we have never been able to put a stop to a pandemic in history. We know that “vaccines” prevent the infection and spread of viruses. Ergo, the only thing preventing us putting a stop to the pandemic is the absence of a “vaccine”. Coming up with a “vaccine” to stop a pandemic is “rational” according to Pinker. Anybody who disagrees is by definition irrational. Could such a naïve, literal understanding of the world really be what counts for rationality in these people’s minds? I don’t see why not. Pinker’s book begins with a number of “trick questions” of the type presented in a logic 101 class. The kinds of questions that the average person always gets wrong because they are framed in such a way as to lead them down the wrong path. Rationalists love to get the “right answer” to such kinds of things just like the kid who always put their hand up in school dying to show the teacher how smart they are. The right answer to the pandemic question is the vaccine. End of story.
If rationality is goal fulfilment, who is setting the goals? In school, we know it’s the teacher and behind the teacher the education bureaucracy. The rational answer is that which pleases the teacher just like a good employee will give the “rational” answer which is exactly what their boss wants to hear. Is it rational once in a while to give the wrong answer just to see what happens? Is it rational to refuse to enter into the game of giving the right answer and thereby question the validity of the game? According to Enlightenment thinkers it is not. That is “postmodernism”. It gets into the messy business of power games and psychology which lie in the dreaded realm of the irrational. By definition, the irrational is chaos and disorder and so must be avoided at all costs. And yet even cognitive science has learned that it is the irrational that drives human behaviour. Decisions made on purely rational grounds are rarely followed through at the individual level and are often complete failures at the institutional level. People blindly following the (rational) means to an end without questioning the end is the definition of Kakfaesque and the whole 20th century provided ample evidence of what happens in those circumstances. Yet here we are in 2021 about to go down the same horrific path and we have the rationalists not only not questioning the matter but actively egging the whole thing on happy to scapegoat those with genuine disagreements. As any good rationalist should know, such scapegoating is an ad hominem fallacy. We appear to be right in the middle of another fallacy: the sunk cost fallacy of “just one more booster”. These are things rationalists might be talking about in more enlightened times.
The level of blind-faith the rationalists have in their own beliefs has got to be one of the great ironies of history. It has long been that way, I recall once reading an essay by a theologian lamenting that he had no-one to engage with in genuine debate as all his self-proclaimed opponents made such fundamental errors in logic based on unreasoned beliefs that discussions with them were a waste of time.
And yet knowing that I continue to be shocked as each step taken leads further and further into madness. Intellectually it is not a surprise, this is a madness after all. But still, it is shocking to witness.
Daniel – these days I think of “rationalists” as “conventionalists”. Like your theologian, they know how to extrapolate from (pre-defined, conventional) premises but seem incapable of questioning the premises. More than that, in fact, they are terrified of questioning the premises. That is one way to madness; when the premises are clearly wrong and yet you can’t bear to change them. It is also a problem for the goal oriented nature of rationality. What if you have more than one goal and what if your goals conflict with each other? Rationality cannot solve that problem for you, only wisdom can.
Simon: “the sunk cost fallacy of “just one more booster””
Ha! That’s a good one.
Anyway, don’t forget that the Enlightenment culminated in the French Revolution, with all its horror. The problem is hubris. You get it into your head that you can (nay, must!) stop the pandemic, and then you (correctly) argue that nothing other than a vaccine will work, from which you (incorrectly) conclude that a vaccine (or whatever passes for it) *will* work. And then when it doesn’t, you blame everyone other than yourself. Well. Good thing they aren’t setting up guillotines quite yet…
Irena – it reminds of something in Jung where he says that goal fulfillment must occasionally be paid off by psychic breakdown. So, in a society where most goals are fulfilled effortlessly, people get into the habit of thinking all you need to do is just come up with a goal and it will be fulfilled as a matter of course. Just plug your goal into the science machine and it will spit out the solution. The science machine is clearly in need of a tune up at the moment. Maybe even a complete engine overhaul.
“Science and Rationality”
Both seem to be circling the drain at this point. I know I’ve lost whatever faith I had in even conventional vaccines. How much of what I believe, was just repeated talking points?
Like you, I was quite dismayed that Taleb didn’t change course, from what at first could have been seen as a reasonable reading, very early on.
The man rails against GMOs for goodness’ sake! Quite rightly. As he points out, what are the long term consequences?
Look at all these lying GMO shills with their conflict of interest!
For so many, it’s become a religion. Vaxentology.
A couple of examples closer to home, my niece’s physio, who she said was very holistic, has implemented a vaxed only policy.
Not going there anymore…
Today, I went to stock up on incense for summer, I hate driving and even more so in the heat, and the place is a bit over 1/2 an hour away. Yes, for me, that’s a huge journey.
Anyway, it’s a crystal, new agey shop, owned by a lady who would appear to be into all that sort of thing.
She wasn’t there this morning, but, another lady who often serves me was and she told me that all employees have been told no jab no job. She said, well she’s going to have no staff if she sees it through.
This lady also told me that parents of a 12 year old girl, didn’t want her to be jabbed but the girl wanted it .
Right off, what’s going on, that a 12 year old wants a jab??
So she got it and was rushed to hospital and underwent an emergency hysterectomy.
Do I have proof? No. But why would someone make that up.
Maybe they would, but at the very least, it gets filed in the rumour basket.
Back to my niece, 4 young, strong, fit, healthy young men at her gym got the jab and have not been back since.
Are all these anecdotes part of the mind virus proclaimed by Dawkins?
Of course, he would say yes.
Funny, because I’ve been saying it’s a mind virus for the longest time.
Just not from the Dawkins perspective.
Hi Simon,
Of late, I’ve been attempting to come to terms with the possibility that most of the major perspectives in this entire saga are both right and wrong all at the same time. It is admittedly an uncomfortable perspective to consider, and the ideas are swirling around of slowly coalescing. And underlying it all is the decline of our civilisation.
I’m not entirely sanguine that the present institutions are capable of addressing the underlying decline.
Just about to begin re-reading a most excellent book by the author William Catton Jr. The book is titled Overshoot. I highly recommend the work.
Cheers
Chris
And so we lost Dawkins, too. Another person I respected a lot, gone to the dark side. I can’t understand what’s happening to people’s minds. Maybe there is another, undetected, virus that gnaws at people’s brains?
Helen – Vaxentology. Hah, I like that. Like scientology only worse. People have been conditioned not to trust the stories we tell each other these days which is very convenient for the powers that be. “Don’t listen to each other, listen to me”. That’s almost exactly what Jacinda Ardern said several months ago. With that in mind, here’s a story from Melbourne: I was going to a friend’s house whose wife is a doctor that works in the main hospital that handles patients from road accidents. As I got near his place there was a huge traffic jam which it turned out was due to a major car accident where one car had flipped onto its roof. I mentioned it to my friend when I finally got to his house and his wife said that there has been a huge rise in the number of patients they are seeing from major car accidents. Of course, this is the same anecdote you can hear on various online forums. It’s just correlation but it points to something going on.
Chris – did you see the cricket broadcast from the GABA was interrupted yesterday because of a power outage? Australia can’t even manage to broadcast cricket anymore. Seemingly trivial things like that have become an everyday occurrence now. Maybe we’ll get a demagogue politician in five years and part of the platform will be to make sure the cricket broadcasts actually work.
Ugo – I think it’s psychic in nature. The rationalists seem to have the idea that reason is somehow independent of the subconscious and, in fact, the subconscious is almost the definition of error. This idea was already debunked by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Jung. If you assume the conscious mind is built out of the unconscious then things make more sense although you do get a paradox. As Nietzsche pointed out, that would mean “truth” came from “error”. I believe the Buddha had a similar idea. The lotus grows out of the mud.
A correction, the girl was 13 not, 12.
They’ve only just “qualified” as announced last Friday I believe?
So, are we all Merinos, to be continually shorn for our fleece, or Spring lambs (to the slaughter) ?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1469522546085494786
Helen – funny. It used to be just the “conspiracy theorists” who were referring to people as sheep.
My impression from the times Ive heard him is that he’s never been keen on any of this.
He’s going along because he’s a coward, and he feels he has to.
Another great chat by JHK with Dr Martin
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-352-another-lap-with-dr-david-e-martin-investigating-the-origins-of-the-covid-19-vaccines/
Helen – it would be interesting to know whether any of this is legal or whether there has been nothing Morrison could do. Although, we may about to find that out anyway. I heard that Flight Centre might be taking WA to the high court if they close the border again. Although, I think Palmer already lost one case against WA so who knows.
Well, as Dr Martin pointed out, at least in the US, they have actually approved the very suspect Remdesevir as a treatment, plus one other which I can’t recall the name.
By having approved treatments, however dodgy available, the EUA is null and void.
If those treatments or any others have actually been approved here, then, I imagine the same thing would apply?
As Martin also points out, the vast majority of lawyers have been a letdown, (along with MDs), with their complete lack of knowledge about most of the blatant lawlessness that’s being permitted.
But, it only takes one brave or crazy or both lawyer to educate themselves and mount a case.
I imagine that will happen at some point, when the thumbscrews really start getting painful.
Helen – well, the courts in the US have done a far better job than the courts anywhere else, as far as I can tell. So fingers crossed they pull one out of the hat.
Hi Simon,
I missed the cricket power outage sorry to say. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t that happen at a Super Bowl recently?
My original comment was perhaps unclear. What I meant to say was that it becomes a question of timing. From Richard Dawkin’s perspective, in the short term he is possibly correct in his assertion. But in the longer term, the evidence will accrue. After all, science concerns itself with evidence.
Science as a tool is no more or less guilty in this regard than most people. And scientists are just people like the rest of us. Take for one example, the Green Revolution. This was touted as an achievement of science. But in the longer term, the Green Revolution is unsustainable. And with the craziness going on with mineral fertilisers, the system is unravelling and the achievements are falling into the past.
To put it bluntly, people are taking credit for responses and techniques without actually posing the hard question: Is this possible to sustain over the longer term? And why would they ask such a question when the answer is horrendous and might possibly reflect very poorly upon them?
Cheers
Chris
Chris – I’m not prepared to let Dawkins off so easily. A scientist of all people should know when an experiment isn’t finished and there is plenty of evidence against the “success” of this experiment which he simply writes off as propaganda. Whatever that is, it ain’t science.
Re: Dawkins
Meh. Why would you expect anything else from the man? He’s a “rationalist.” That has a couple of corollaries. The first is that he’s probably terrified of death, especially now that he’s 80 years old. Corona could very well kill him, and he’s panicking. The second is that, well, it’s been a while since science accomplished anything truly spectacular. As far as I can tell, this last happened more than half a century ago, with the Moonshot. Oh, sure, there have been “numerous breakthroughs” since then, and I could name some of those myself. But nothing I’d characterize as “truly spectacular.” Poor Richard Dawkins would really, truly have liked this to have been the new Moonshot. Alas! And as I already mentioned: he’s 80 years old. So, if he’s not as sharp as he once was, why should anyone be surprised?
Honestly, I was more disappointed by Claire Lehmann. We lost Quillette. Oh, well. At least we have Unherd.
Simon, have you seen Paul Kingsnorth’s latest post (https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-moment-part-two)? He quotes you extensively.
Irena – true. I haven’t had much respect for Dawkins for some time. Still the most surprising one of all for my money is Taleb who is now singing the same tune as the “rationalists” that he previously ridiculed. I dare say Quillette is going to lose quite a large chunk of its readership now too. Oh well, that’s the free market at play.
I was pleased to see the Kingsnorth post and not so pleased that my prediction about an extended war between the technocracy and democracy has come true.
For some reason I thought the Russian leadership would have had more sense, it appears that they are ruled by big money just as much as anywhere
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-covid-chaos-in-russia/
Helen – technocrats gonna technocrat 😉
Don’t forget good old Noam Chomsky, who recently said the unvaccinated should be segregated from society and if they have trouble getting food, that’s their problem.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/noam-chomsky-unvaccinated-remove-themselves-171900487.html
The scary thing to me is that when I’ve brought this up to my friends, they don’t immediately scoff. I’ve found myself saying “Please tell me you oppose concentration camps.” a few times now. They all eventually did, but I’ve been discouraged enough to stop bringing it up.
Hi Simon,
I agree.
However, you wrote: A scientist of all people should know when an experiment isn’t finished, and there you made an assumption as to motives. And motives are always very difficult to divine.
Are you certain that scientists are paid to, or have a moral imperative to, take a longer term perspective than anyone else does in society? I suspect that they are paid to respond to a particular matter, and this highlights the inherent risk in over specialising. And solving one problem can create other unintended consequences.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Simon,
Further to my previous comment. I guess what I’m attempting to explore is that at some level, scientists are like anyone else, they have their failings and blind spots. It interests me that they’re held in such high regard, and are actually attempting to utilise that regard. Things can and probably will turn for them if they can’t deliver, or if they fail. I have a hunch that as a group they may be setting themselves up to become the classic fall-guy. You can hear that possibility in politicians speech: ‘we’re following advice, blah, blah, blah’.
Cheers
Chris
Alex – Chomsky didn’t surprise me but I did my degree in linguistics which involved a lot of Chomksy study so I have a different perspective on him than most. He looks like hammered shite in that video. Funnily enough, reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Mr Burns becomes a raging germaphobe. Compare the pair –
Chris – that excuse might work for line level scientists with a mortgage and a pension plan to protect but Dawkins is now an Elder of Science and I like Stephen Jenkinson’s definition of an elder as somebody who is supposed to protect against cultural insanity. Given that corona is being done in the name of science, that should have been Dawkins’ job. There are others who have filled that role admirably including Professor Bhakdi who is also retired but has gone out of his way to explain the underlying science to a lay audience while also calling for unity. Meanwhile, Dawkins is stoking hatred and division. In doing so, he is doing more damage to science than any conspiracy theorist could hope to do.
I think Dawkins is also driven by rage and jealously.
Many of his new atheist acolytes have jumped ship and jumped on board the Jordan Peterson ship.
From there they have discovered others such as Jonathan Pageau and Paul Vanderklay, just to give two examples. They’re discovering or turning back to religion.
Maybe Dawkins is lashing out at the most convenient scapegoat, as he sees much of his base crumbling away.
A metaphor for the times?
https://everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros-restaurant-lecce-we-eat-at-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/
G’day mate,
one of the more interesting things about the last two years was how people dropped their masks, exposing what they are made of.
Just read this in the speccie and something clicked. I remembered where I had seen this all before. 2001. The movie, not the year. More specifically the conversation between Dave and HAL. We are stuck in a neverending loop of a discussion with a machine that has gone insane.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/12/covid-free-and-painfully-satirical/
@Ugo you said you can’t understand what goes on in people’s heads, but it seems to me there is a wealth of information and research into why societies go crazy and what drives people to join cults. A question that I find more interesting is, why are some people more or less unaffected. I was subject to the same pressures and exposed to the same information as the people around me. Yet my worldview is very different. It is rather unusual behaviour for a human to oppose consensus. Are we smarter and wiser? Or are we the crazy ones (mind you, that does not mean we are wrong).
There is something that scares the majority of the population in ways I cannot even imagine, yet it simply does not affect me the slightest bit.
Why?
Helen – good point. The “elders of science” these days are all mostly militant atheists. Dawkins reminds me more of a religious zealot than a scientist. As for that dinner story, isn’t that what those kinds of places are supposed to serve? I’ve only ever done it twice and both times I was very glad somebody else was paying.
Roland – “Hal, please stop doing things that have already been shown not to work.”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”
Hi Simon,
Fair enough. Perhaps Mr Dawkins is imitating what he is cogitating? People can easily fall into the trap of chasing their shadow.
Cheers
Chris
Poor Chomsky. Place the man in a rocking chair by a fireplace, place a cat on his lap, and leave him alone! Asking him for interviews given the shape that he’s in surely counts as elder abuse.
Irena – that’s better.
@Simon
Hahaha! Awesome. 🙂
Interesting ready from a blog linked in JMG’s weekly Wednesday post
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-problem-with-a-spike-based-vaccine-induced-immune-response/
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-vaccine-wont-work-against-omicron-even-if-youre-boosted/
Similar to the above, but I’m more layman’s terms
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/boris-johnsons-biggest-blunder
Stock up people, lockdowns could be coming (back) to a town near you
Re scientists setting themselves up as fall guys:
Adam Curry started calling this the Boomerang Theory on NA a while ago.
Whenever a person or group starts ecploiting the velocity and reach that mainstream media channels have to offer, and comes to dominate, the force with which the same media outlets will turn against them if it happens to suit their programming will increase proportionally.
Helen – it’s interesting that the time frame of The Plague Story is getting shorter and shorter. We now roll out “the cure” just weeks after finding “the virus”. Feels like the end game to me although I can’t actually see what will bring it to an end (although a good hard dose of ADE would probably do the trick). Hold on tight in any case.
Michael – oh yeah, “science” is going to take a beating in the years ahead most likely from some populist demagogues. That’s the main reason why the elders of science needed to step in and put a stop to this but they didn’t.
I just spoke to my niece, she was out to lunch with friends.
Two have babies, 1 month and 3 months.
The mother of the one month old is getting the booster tomorrow.
The mother of the three month old is jabbed.
The child has had blood in her poo.
Her doctor told the mother to “stop drinking milk”
She then paid over $300 to see a specialist, who told her to basically, monitor the situation.
Oh and the one month old I think it was had the iPhone put next to her head with white noise playing to keep her relaxed.
The god of progress reins supreme.
Simon, as a Victorian, you must be super proud of the Moderna deal?
🤑💰
I’m jealous, all we do here in SA is make millions of masks 😤😷
So lo-tech!
Helen – imagine, Moderna hadn’t even released a single product to market prior to 2020 and they only got the “vaccine” through cos of emergency authorisation. And now we’re throwing billions at them. You have to admit, as an extortion racket, it’s impressive. The greatest mafia boss could not have done better. Meanwhile, we Victorians got a slight reprieve today in that unvaccinated can now go to most places including retail shops. Still have to wear masks indoors though which is annoying. At this point, I’m seriously considering a move to NSW.
That’s funny. Victoria opens up for the unvaxxed whereas qld shut down for us on Monday.
I also seriously consider moving back to NSW. Gotta stay here for another 4 months for tax reasons though.
Roland – Victoria seems to feel the need to follow NSW so thank god for Dom Perrottet is all I can say. Otherwise, I’m sure we’d be in the same situation as you.
Er, am I paranoid, or does this sound like next year there will be an attempt at a military coup?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlpYFkY11JE
Helen – dunno what to make of Bosi. 95% of the time he sounds ok and the other five he sounds like a whack job. Although, probably he would say the same about me 🙂
That could probably apply to most of us, the difference being most don’t aspire to power.
As with all of this ongoing shite-show, time will tell.
I wonder if people will ever get that they are being softened up now, for mRNA jabs for everything, for ever?
Probably not. Most people have never heard of CRISPR.
Pray that the whole thing collapses under its own weight, sooner, rather than later.