I’m still in the process of editing The Devouring Mother book which, due to the inconvenience of having a day job, means I don’t have much time for anything else right now. Nevertheless, I wanted to write a quick note about something I realised during the week. I was watching this video with Reiner Fuellmich (thanks to Helen for the link) where they were talking about the connections of big tech companies to the vaccines. We all know that Bill Gates is heavily invested in vaccines but so is Google who, along with some of the other big tech companies, are also involved in various plans to offer a brand new system of medical care based apparently on artificial intelligence and run via the internet (I talked about this desire for automating the medical industry in a previous post). Of course, this partly represents modern capitalism at work. You have these huge corporations allowed to grow well beyond what is healthy for society and they run around trying to take over the world. Big tech has a vested interest in having as many office workers work from home because they offer companies the teleconferencing and other tools that enable that to happen, all for a tidy profit no doubt. They would love to get in on the medical industry too cos there are enormous sums of money to be made. So, big tech is out to disintermediate the office rental market and the medical industry just like they already disintermediated newspapers and other business models. They want nothing more than for every human being in the world to spend their entire lives in front of a computer screen. In the meantime, this leads to a situation where the companies who control the flow of information increasingly have a vested interest in manipulating that information to their own ends. It’s obvious that big tech has been actively censoring dissenting opinions on the vaccine. The most notable must be Robert Malone, the very guy who first came up with the idea of an mRna “vaccine”. Malone pointed out recently that if you now google his name, the first article that comes up is one claiming that he did not, in fact, invent the idea. Just a coincidence, I’m sure, that Malone has been speaking out against a product that google is invested in.
What occurred to me while watching the video, however, was how the business model of the big tech companies matches the way in which the testing and the vaccines have been sold to the public. That business model involves giving away the service for free. You don’t pay to use facebook. You don’t pay to use google search or gmail. You don’t pay to use twitter or Instagram. The companies that have taken over the internet have done so by offering stuff for free. But as the saying goes – if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. The product in this case is mostly advertising but also subsidiary services that these companies offer. The average person over the last couple of decades has gotten used to the idea that the internet is “free”. It’s free in the same way that free-to-air tv is free, which is to say that the cost is hidden. The real cost is your mind. In a very real sense, you hand over a segment of your psychic real estate to others who will fill it with whatever they please, usually advertisements about potato chips or sugared water drinks. The big tech players also sell advertising to the highest bidder but they have the ability to distort the information that you are exposed to in their interests. That goes beyond just filling your mind with nonsense. The stakes are actually much higher but the average person seems blissfully unaware of it.
Everything about corona has been “free” too. Free testing. Free apps and internet systems to back them. Free hotel quarantine (sometimes). And, of course, free vaccines. That’s how government has presented these things to us. In Australia, we are used the idea of “free” healthcare which has always seemed like a weird concept to me as whenever tax time comes around and I see how much I am paying for it, I’m reminded that it is absolutely not free. It’s bloody expensive. During corona, the medical industry has unilaterally decided to reduce the quality of service it provides in exchange for that money. They can do this, of course, because taxpayers have no way to opt out. This has had the ironic effect of overwhelming hospitals because GPs are refusing to see patients. That’s another problem with things that are “free”, you don’t have a lot of control over their management. Money has its problems but it’s generally a good way to allocate resources. If a company drops the quality of the product without dropping the price, people go elsewhere. But not in our “free” systems where the price is already “zero”. Of course, none of it is free. Neither have any of the corona measures been free. Quite the opposite. The government is paying for all this stuff with our tax dollars and racking up trillions of dollars of debt in the process all while telling us it’s “free”.
All this reminds me of the story of Snow White. The evil Queen, having given a huntsman the mission of disposing of Snow White in the forest, later realises that she is still alive. The Queen sets out to do the job herself. She visits Snow White, who is now living with the seven dwarves, in three different disguises. Firstly, she is a peddler who offers Snow White a laced bodice. Snow White accepts and the Queen ties up the bodice so tight that Snow White faints. The dwarves arrive home in time to save her. Next the Queen dresses up as a comb seller. Again, Snow White falls for it and allows the Queen to comb her hair with a poison comb. Again, the dwarves rescue her. Finally, the Queen dresses as a farmer’s wife and offers Snow White a poisoned apple. Snow White, finally learning, is now more suspicious but the Queen still tricks her into eating and this time the dwarves cannot save her; it will be left to the handsome prince to do that later on. Snow White continually falls for all the “free” stuff offered to her. The fairy tale, like all the Brothers Grimm stories, contains a warning: don’t trust things that are free. This message is so important that our language has a number of inbuilt warnings for it. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Those that dance must pay the piper. Money doesn’t grow on trees. You can’t get something for nothing. Clearly we humans have a problem with taking everything at face value without questioning ulterior motives (to do otherwise is to be a “conspiracy theorist”). Offer us some “free” stuff and we’ll happily take it. That is what people have done with the big tech giants and that is what they are doing with the tests and the vaccines. It’s all “free”.
All posts in this series:-
The Coronapocalypse Part 0: Why you shouldn’t listen to a word I say (maybe)
The Coronapocalypse Part 1: The Madness of Crowds in the Age of the Internet
The Coronapocalypse Part 2: An Epidemic of Testing
The Coronapocalypse Part 3: The Panic Principle
The Coronapocalypse Part 4: The Denial of Death
The Coronapocalypse Part 5: Cargo Cult Science
The Coronapocalypse Part 6: The Economics of Pandemic
The Coronapocalypse Part 7: There’s Nothing Novel under the Sun
The Coronapocalypse Part 8: Germ Theory and Its Discontents
The Coronapocalypse Part 9: Heroism in the Time of Corona
The Coronapocalypse Part 10: The Story of Pandemic
The Coronapocalypse Part 11: Beyond Heroic Materialism
The Coronapocalypse Part 12: The End of the Story (or is it?)
The Coronapocalypse Part 13: The Book
The Coronapocalypse Part 14: Automation Ideology
The Coronapocalypse Part 15: The True Believers
The Coronapocalypse Part 16: Dude, where’s my economy?
The Coronapocalypse Part 17: Dropping the c-word (conspiracy)
The Coronapocalypse Part 18: Effects and Side Effects
The Coronapocalypse Part 19: Government and Mass Hysteria
The Coronapocalypse Part 20: The Neverending Story
The Coronapocalypse Part 21: Kafkaesque Much?
The Coronapocalypse Part 22: The Trauma of Bullshit Jobs
The Coronapocalypse Part 23: Acts of Nature
The Coronapocalypse Part 24: The Dangers of Prediction
The Coronapocalypse Part 25: It’s just semantics, mate
The Coronapocalypse Part 26: The Devouring Mother
The Coronapocalypse Part 27: Munchausen by Proxy
The Coronapocalypse Part 28: The Archetypal Mask
The Coronapocalypse Part 29: A Philosophical Interlude
The Coronapocalypse Part 30: The Rebellious Children
The Coronapocalypse Part 31: How Dare You!
The Coronapocalypse Part 32: Book Announcement
The Coronapocalypse Part 33: Everything free except freedom
The Coronapocalypse Part 34: Into the Twilight Zone
The Coronapocalypse Part 35: The Land of the Unfree and the Home of the Safe
The Coronapocalypse Part 36: The Devouring Mother Book Now Available
Over here in CZ, tests will no longer be free starting in September. People who submit to gene therapy don’t need tests, though, so this is supposed to be an incentive to get people to submit.
Irena – that’s actually good news. The number one thing that needs to happen now is people must stop getting tested and making them pay is one way to do that. Go and compare the number of tests being done in the UK to other European countries right now. It’s absurdly high and part of the reason why their “case” numbers won’t go down.
“Clearly we humans have a problem with taking everything at face value without questioning ulterior motives”
This may be true, but it is a strange thing. We evolved in a highly social environment for millions of years. Why would we have so little understanding of social mechanisms? Of the water we swim in? This would not require a conscious awareness.
I think a mentally healthy human will see ulterior motives everywhere. It is just that most of us are very far from mental health. Have been for a while. Just another sign if a society in decline i think.
Roland – we don’t seem to be born with that understanding. Hence, it must be transmitted to us via the culture as in fairy tales (or maybe the culture is there just to allow us to discover that understanding before we learn it the hard way). Our culture no longer educates children about it, hence the infantilisation that we see around us. Or, in other words, the world is now full of acquiescent children (Orphan archetypes).
@Simon
Yes, I suppose that’s a good point. I am somewhat concerned, though, that I’ll need a negative test (or gene therapy confirmation) in order to go to work, and that I’d have to pay for that test (since I have no interest in gene therapy). That could get unpleasant for TPTB, though, especially with an election coming up in a few months. The real concern, though, is that they might mandate gene therapy. So far, hasn’t happened.
Irena – yeah, I still think the upcoming northern winter is the crucial time. If we can get through that unscathed then it should be over. If not, who knows?
Hi Simon,
Yes it’s amazing how we’ll rush to something that doesn’t immediately affect our hip pockets.
I mentioned that to a friend that went for the test, due to the niggling of her partner.
Many of the “virtuous” people, doing it for the country and for grandma, would probably um and ah and perhaps do a bit more thinking and research if they had to reach into their wallets and pay up – at the $ amount governments are handing over to the gazzilionaires.
I mentioned before, this podcast.
Here’s the link.
https://runesoup.libsyn.com/h2-2021-astrological-forecast-austin-coppock
You really don’t need much of idea about astrology to get something out of it.
Ive just listened to it (again) and I would encourage everyone to do the same.
Hi Roland, sorry about your cancelled trip. 😷🤧🤦
My French friend who wants to go to see her mother in France one last time (she is 90 and has cancer) and therefore has to get jabbed against her wishes to go, is also experiencing travel woes of a sort.
Here’s part of a text she sent me this morning:
My exemption to travel to France has been accepted, it came through last night.
Rang to get the Pfizer vaccin😭..make me sick just thinking about being vaccinated but i have to choice🤬
Need to leave asap but no booking vaccin before the 17th of August then the second shot the 7 of Sept…in Noarlunga shopping center.. he could see one today in Wayville at 3 45pm but by the time he asked my details it was gone. Grrr
Looked for flights leaving from Adl..very hard to get a seat on ecomomy for my return home, so far what i saw if with Quatar Airways on business class..cost a fortune $8000 plus will need to pay for my 2 weeks quarantaine $3000…$11 000 to go to France..crazy..crazy time.
A later text said she got an earlier jab booking.
I feel so sorry for her, she uses a lot of natural therapies, especially on her two dogs and really doesn’t like to use pharmaceuticals unless absolutely necessary, so I know this is tearing her apart.
Helen – I had a listen to that podcast. Interesting stuff. Do you know if either of those two predicted corona with their astrology? As they say, all astrological models should pick up the “big stuff” so if you didn’t predict corona it’s a pretty big inditement of your model. So, you’ve got to the get the “vaccine” AND pay for quarantine? Isn’t it amazing that governments are behaving as if the “vaccine” doesn’t work all while demanding everybody take it. Saw the same thing in Israel where there they are re-implementing vaccine passports even though it’s obvious the vaccinated are testing positive. Greer pointed out that if you are in a cult, you don’t give up when reality proves you wrong, you double down. We may be about to see that.
Maybe it was Greer who pointed that out, but he can’t claim credit for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
And it is exactly what we are seeing. As one apocalyptic prediction after the other fails, the tone gets shriller and more hysterical, the measures get stricter and punishments get more draconian.
@Helen, i must admit that i am not a believer in astrology. I try to keep an open mind, but after Greer’s total failure to predict the current situation, that has become quite hard. What makes it worse is that he refused to admit that failure and analyse it to learn from it and improve the method.
Can you point me to predictions that predicted the mess we are in?
From JMG’s subscribe star:
Lunar Eclipse 10 January 2020
Cancer, the sign in which the eclipse takes place, is a cardinal water sign. Lunar eclipses that take place in cardinal signs predict trouble in foreign affairs in the countries where they are visible. They indicate trouble for governments and heads of state, and sometimes predict crop failures. In combination with other indications, they can warn of major political changes in the offing.
Eclipses that take place in water signs predict excessive rain, floods, and destruction by water. They can also warn of epidemics, and of serious unrest among the lower classes.
At the same time I was listening to the Rune Soup podcasts, here’s the one at the end of 2019.
Crappy times ahead basically.
https://runesoup.libsyn.com/h1-2020-astrological-forecast-austin-coppock
I’d like to see the two of them get together to discuss their methods, JMG uses Placidus and leaves out Pluto, Coppock uses whole sign houses and retains Pluto.
It makes me think of the idea of 1+
1=3. Who knows what new revelations could come out of it?
In fact throw in Martin Armstrong to their meet-up too.
Do you ever get that? You listen too or read stuff from different people and think, these guys need to get together over a weekend and start talking to each other.
This man also spoke to Reiner, here he’s talking to James Howard Kunstler
Much of what he says when talking about gene sequences and the like makes my head spin but it may make perfect sense to the more scientifically literate
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-347-chatting-with-david-e-martin-about-covid-19-vaccinations-and-other-mass-casualty-events/
Hi Roland,
I agree about the failure to predict the duration.
As I mentioned previously, he leaves out Pluto, which really changes things.
There were posters trying to persuade him to include Pluto but he wasn’t having it.
I suppose it shows he can be just as stubborn and commited to his “models” as anyone.
See my comments above regarding positive collaboration with those that may have different views to your own.
As far as belief, Ive gone from being a skeptic and disbeliever in all things ‘woo woo’ to, well I just don’t know, so I’ll keep an open mind.
Helen – interesting. I suppose it’s fitting that respiratory viruses are transmitted by droplets (water). To me, though, I don’t see that it’s enough just to say some bad stuff might happen. Shouldn’t astrology have been able to say “this is going to be a year like no other in recent memory”? Or is astrology not able to get that level of precision?
And here’s some intentional comedy:
“In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/vaccinated-america-breaking-point-anti-vaxxers/619539/
The guy clearly hasn’t heard of a country called Israel. Well, it’s a leftist magazine, so maybe he believes Israel has no right to exist, which clearly negates its infection disease experience.
(Yes, of course we should go back to normal. Duh. But not because mandating gene therapy – which is what he’s advocating – would lead to herd immunity.)
@Roland
Re: When Prophecy Fails
Brilliant! And that Atlantic article that I linked to would be a great example. People like you and me, you see, are the reason the flying saucer (I mean herd immunity) hasn’t arrived. Obviously.
Hi Simon
I’m not on astrologer, most of the technicalities go over my head, although I did manage to cast my own natal chart quite a few years back. Since then I’ve learnt that the approximate time of birth Mum gave me was wrong!
As the saying goes the stars don’t compel, they incline
I think for me I just use what they say as an early warning system to what is generally going in the world.
Sometimes from that I get some gut feelings about things, which is a bit hard to articulate obviously.
A bit like those tarot cards perhaps?
I don’t take everything said as gospel, just use it as one way to see how the winds are blowing.
For more than that, you’d probably want to talk to a practicing mundane astrologer!
My brother seems to think our cages will be opened as stated on
Tuesday.
When is your “Freedom Day”?
Irena – have you seen the recent address by the Prime Minister of Israel? Gaslighting on steroids – https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1418633230861979649
Helen – the part that I find useful about astrology is simply that it’s an invitation to think about longer term trends which is especially helpful right now with everybody thinking of nothing else except today’s “case” numbers. Not sure when we’ll be “free”. I don’t even pay attention to it anymore. I wrote the year off back in January. They normally don’t drop the mask requirement for a couple of weeks after they “lift the lockdown” anyway and I refuse to participate in a society where I have to wear a mask outdoors (indoors is bad enough). We had the first decent sized protest in Melbourne yesterday. Looked like tens of thousands. I didn’t even know it was on. Will definitely try and get to the next one.
@Simon
That Israeli PM address was, as they say, rich.
The Western culture (broadly understood: Israel certainly counts) has turned into one gigantic hall of mirrors in which goals and metrics routinely get conflated, to the point where it’s hard to remember what the original goal actually was. In the case of COVID, the goal, as I remember it, was to stop hospitals from collapsing. That collapse (or threat thereof) was driven almost entirely by the over-60’s, and to a lesser extent by the younger obese and diabetic people. That’s not to say that no-one else ever landed in the ICU with COVID (clearly, this sometimes happens, as the MSM keeps reminding us), just that this happens so rarely that COVID in this everyone-else population was never going to be more than a miniscule factor in any ICU collapse. Fast forward to today, and suddenly, the goal is to bully the 12-50 year-olds into accepting gene therapy “for their own good.”
It reminds me of the push to get as many people as possible to go to university. Do you even remember what the goal behind that was…? I guess they noticed that petroleum engineers made more money than baristas, they figured that a B.A. (which petroleum engineers had and baristas generally lacked) was the active ingredient generating that inequality, and they concluded that if you just got yourself a degree, then your barista job would suddenly pay as much as a petroleum engineering one. Or maybe they just figured baristas would vanish and we’d all be petroleum engineers, because clearly, there’s an infinite demand for petroleum engineers, and who needs baristas? It doesn’t matter. The point is that it didn’t work as advertised. It just wasted quite a lot of young people’s time and landed them into debt. But somehow, our betters failed to notice and change course accordingly.
And that’s actually why I’m worried. They are in the process of making “vaccination” the goal, regardless of what it does or does not accomplish. And just as some employers now require a B.A. for jobs that you could easily train a 16-year-old of ordinary intelligence to do, so it appears that they intend to demand “vaccination” proof in more and more spaces, regardless of whether this actually accomplishes anything worth accomplishing. The funny thing is that, if these “vaccines” end up causing serious problems in the mid-to-long run, this may lead to (say) oncology being overwhelmed. But let’s not worry about now, shall we? We’ll just train extra oncologists, and problem solved!
Irena – it’s an unfortunate side effect of the way we measure economic activity that causing great damage adds to GDP. There’s money to be made in fixing problems that should never have happened in the first place. Frederic Bastiat pointed this out very nicely back in the late 1800s – http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
“They are in the process of making “vaccination” the goal, regardless of what it does or does not accomplish. And just as some employers now require a B.A. for jobs that you could easily train a 16-year-old of ordinary intelligence to do, so it appears that they intend to demand “vaccination” proof in more and more spaces, regardless of whether this actually accomplishes anything worth accomplishing”
IMO both vaccination and BAs do accomplish exactly what they’re supposed to accomplish.
Vaccination produces profits for pharmaceutical companies. Lots and lots and lots of profit, because there is always another crop of kids to be shot up with a gazilion vaccines before they reach adulthood, and then lifelong customers to be shot up with annual jabs for the rest of their lives.
BAs – or rather, the pursuit of BAs – generates profit for the companies making the student loans. Lots and lots of profit, because there’s always another crop of high school grads needing a BA to get any job, as well lots of graduates who can’t pay off the loans and just keep servicing the debt, year after year after year.
I think both of these things work as intended and accomplish exactly what they’re meant to accomplish – to make the rich richer.
And as for digital IDs, just think of all the money to be made off of providing the technology for that. Lots and lots of profit there too.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the PM’s speech or the cheering on by many in the thread.
One can only hope that their self righteous acceptance of the ‘master’s’ orders, combined with the meanness to their fellow citizens isn’t indicative of the general population.
If it is, god help us!
El – yes, that’s the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about. Once upon a time, the media saw its job to ask questions like that but those days are long gone and they can successfully stifle dissent by calling anybody who asks such questions a “conspiracy theorist”.
Helen – Israel went from fully open to turning the population against itself in about two months. If the politicians think it’s in their interests to do that, that’s exactly what we will see. All the conditions are in place for it.
Hi Simon,
Disintermediation is an astute observation. Yeah, never would have thought of that but it makes a weird sort of sense. I’m going to cogitate upon that observation for a while. Thanks for the insight.
Years ago I was working on a job when the folks there began banging on about how one day an AI would do my work for them. It was an odd experience, and I was thinking to myself: You guys know that I’m in the room don’t you?
But I don’t worry about such talk because maybe two years back an automated system made a decision to change some paperwork that we’d lodged. I tell ya what, that was a devil of a problem to fix and it seemed pretty random. All up it took about 8 hours of work spread over 2 months to get the situation fixed, and we couldn’t charge for any of the work – and there were no apologies from the system.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – I was once at a professional conference where the keynote speaker was a C-level manager at one of Australia’s major banks. He told us all our jobs were going away but in the process of explaining why he inadvertently revealed that he had no idea what our jobs really were. All he knew was that AI was going to do it. These are the people making decisions worth billions of dollars and they spend an awful lot of money on useless automation for purely ideological reasons. Thankfully for us, none of it works and so we get to keep our jobs.
There are dedicated software programs around to do the job I do, which is colour separation and layout for printing plates, in the packaging industry, but in a small business of about 10 people, the boss seems to prefer a human!
Hi Simon,
Yup, that was exactly how it worked out. And interestingly enough over the course of the past few years those folks and I have built a very good working relationship.
The ancients did their best to stamp out Set, but who else can you turn to in a crisis? Him of the: Relax, I’ve got this, no need to worry, nothing to see here, kind of vibe. Oh well, the times, they be strange indeed.
Cheers
Chris
Helen – it’d be pretty boring if it was just 10 computer programs and one boss.
Chris – wasn’t Set the instigator of confusion? Seems fitting.
News from CZ: apparently, the “Supreme Administrative Court” (whatever that is) of CZ has ruled against the indoor mask wearing requirements, saying that the government hasn’t sufficiently justified it. The government has the right to appeal, and it plans to do so. Moreover, the new rule (no government-mandated mask requirements indoors) doesn’t come into effect immediately, but three days (or maybe three working days) after the ruling. However, I was out and about in Prague today, and I noticed that in quite a few shops, people weren’t wearing masks! But they were in others. Me, I went to a bank (no masks), and then a store (everyone wore a mask). So, there seems to be some confusion.
I don’t know what to make of it. That is: I don’t know if this will be the end of masks (fingers crossed!!), or if the government will simply submit some extra documents tomorrow and all will be as before.
My current understanding on masks is as follows. It’s been known from the beginning that they do not protect the wearer. However, it was claimed that they helped protect others *from* the wearer. This would have been true if this virus spread (only) by aerosols. However, it turned out to be airborne, which means that masks do squat, and it’s all one big theater.
Irena – well, that’s a positive bit of news. I still don’t know how the PCR tests are in use. I would have thought a court case would have ruled them illegal by now but maybe I have too much faith in the legal system. Czechia is a good example of why masks are useless. Didn’t you have very few “cases” back in the first half of 2020 when nobody was wearing masks and then a huge spike at the end of 2020 when they were mandatory?
@Simon
Oh, everyone here was masked in the first half of 2020 (starting in March). Even outdoors. There were very few cases then. Many people (both here and internationally) took that as proof of mask effectiveness. I myself believed it for a while. (I hated wearing them, but I didn’t really complain because I believed they worked as advertised.) But then in the fall/winter, cases went through the roof (despite indoor masking; they stopped requiring them outdoors at some point, though I don’t quite remember when). In fact, at some point, CZ had the largest number of COVID deaths (relative to population size) in the world.
My conclusion is that none of this had anything to do with masks. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe the virus just arrived in CZ a bit later than elsewhere, and then there wasn’t much transmission during summer (due to seasonality). And then – boom. A decade from now, I’m sure they/someone will have a reasonable sounding explanation for how/why this happened. And the explanation won’t involve masks.
Irena – ah, yes. Correlation is not causation. In Australia, we got to zero “cases” in early 2020 without anyone wearing masks. Now, more than a year later, Sydney is in lockdown with “cases” refusing to go down despite universal mask compliance.
First time I’ve heard a journalist ask a real question about the PCR test and the chief health officer answers by claiming that we no longer have the flu in Australia. It’s a miracle! – https://twitter.com/camus37/status/1420138010423746567
Hi Simon,
I’ve been wondering for a while now whether the reduced Vitamin D – i.e. sunlight on skin during winter, has been one of the driving factors of incidence in both directions? I’m no expert, but that particular Vitamin has I believe links to the immune response function. Incidentally, the flu claim was made last year too. Flu deaths drop in Australia as coronavirus restrictions save hundreds of lives. Incidentally, influenza is no joke and I’ve had it twice, and every year people young and old, but mostly the elderly die from it. Nobody escapes the grim reaper.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – I’m pretty sure nobody is testing for influenza this year or last year. Many doctors are even refusing to see people with flu symptoms and are sending them straight to hospital so there’s long waits to get treatment. Yeah, we talk about the flu as if it’s nothing. I was in bed in winter 2019 and again in early 2020 (hey, might have actually had corona) for three days with a fever. If I was old and had a couple of other co-morbidities, it’s not hard to imagine what would happen.
Simon: “Yeah, we talk about the flu as if it’s nothing. I was in bed in winter 2019 and again in early 2020 (hey, might have actually had corona) for three days with a fever.”
Three days, you say? The flu knocked me out for two weeks a couple of years ago, and it took me three months to fully recover. (No, it wasn’t COVID. The only way it could have been COVID would be if the thing had arrived in Europe about a year before being detected in China.)
There! Long flu. No joke. I still don’t want lockdowns and gene therapy, either for the flu or for COVID.
Irena – there’s no logical reason why it couldn’t have been “covid” given that “covid” has no symptoms that would let you distinguish between it and flu. The only way we know something is “covid” is through the test and, as the reporter pointed out, if the test can’t distinguish between influenza and corona then there really is no way to know. Incidentally, this has been the argument of dissenting experts right from the start.
@Simon
Well, the mainstream media claims that “PCR cannot distinguish between COVID and flu” is fake news. So, maybe it’s fake news. On the other hand, the mainstream media has been an excellent source of fake news (hehe) for quite some time now, and it’s gone into high gear over the past 18 months. So, I don’t know.
And I’ve been saying this for a while now: it’s perfectly possible that lockdowns will become a seasonal event moving forward, i.e. that we’ll see them every winter (at least to some extent) in order to combat the flu.
Irena – that’s why I say the key time is the upcoming northern hemisphere winter. The average person still believes that a) the vaccines work; b) the vaccines mean a return to normal. If politicians reintroduce lockdowns over winter, they will have broken the promise and not finished The Plague Story properly. The question then is how the average person responds. Do they give in and accept endless vaccination/lockdown/health restriction or do they get angry and reject the whole thing? The outcome of that will determine the kind of society we live in for the next years.
@El
I’ve been thinking about what you said. There’s something to it, certainly, but I don’t think it’s quite direct. Take the current COVID hysteria. Plenty of people (such as Amazon and Big Tech) have made quite a lot of money. But it’s not that Amazon sent people to the White House and its equivalents in other countries and demanded lockdowns so as to increase its (Amazon’s) profits. In fact, it’s highly unlikely Amazon et al had anything to do with it. No, the media and medical professionals panicked, which caused the political class to panic, which caused anti-COVID measures that we’re still living with, which caused Amazon et al to make a lot of money. Okay, now that all that has happened, it may well be that Amazon et al are reluctant to part with all this extra profit and are therefore putting pressure on the political class to keep these measures in place long term. For now, they’re probably putting it purely in public health terms, but if this continues for a few more years, they may get emboldened and make very straightforward monetary arguments to politicians (“if you lift restrictions, this will cost us money, and then we won’t donate to your campaign”).
The mechanism has probably been something like that in other situations. In the case of BA’s, the political class was probably convinced by earnest idealists that if only half the population had a BA, then blah-blah-blah. The blah-blah-blah didn’t materialize, but profits for loan companies did, and it’s quite likely that *now* they’re putting pressure on the political class to keep the whole charade going. But I rather doubt they initiated it.
“If politicians reintroduce lockdowns over winter, they will have broken the promise and not finished The Plague Story properly. The question then is how the average person responds. Do they give in and accept endless vaccination/lockdown/health restriction or do they get angry and reject the whole thing?”
Of course, the story that will be pushed, in every mainstream media channel, relentlessly, will be that the reason the plague story hasn’t ended is because of “anti-vaxxers.”* And the verbal attacks on, carefully-stoked hatred and scapegoating of, and pressure to force-vaccinate the refuseniks will continue to escalate. It’s only going to get worse.
*I’ve been following the use of this term for a while now. It was probably almost 20 years ago that I noticed that there seemed to be a deliberate effort not just to demonize “anti-vaxxers”, but to conflate the “true” anti-vaxxers (e.g., people who really did not believe in and refused all vaccines) with anyone who refused any vaccine or questioned any aspect of official vaccine policy. So people who selectively vaccinate their kids by skipping some of the more-dubious vaccines on the schedule, people who have had some vaccines but don’t want annual flu vaccines, people who are not categorically against all vaccines but think there are issues with the quantity, timing, quality, or safety of current vaccine dogma – guess what? They’re all “anti-vaxxers” now. So it doesn’t matter if your kids have had many or even all recommended vaccines, or if you got your tetanus booster or even the annual flu jab – if you don’t want this experimental gene-therapy jab, congratulations, you are now a filthy, pro-plague “anti-vaxxer”, and no different from someone whose kid died of tetanus or rabies because they turned down that vaccine after suffering a dirty puncture wound or rabid-animal bite.
That construct has been in the making for a while. I assume that the force behind it is the pharmaceutical companies, who I am convinced have been deliberately trying to change the dialogue to re-categorize and demonize anyone who turns down or questions any of their very lucrative jab products. I’ve watched it work, too. Most of the PMC members I know have, in recent years, developed a hatred of these “anti-vaxxers”, who they believe to be various combinations of selfish, reckless, ignorant, backwards, and dangerous.
Simon: “The average person still believes that a) the vaccines work; b) the vaccines mean a return to normal.”
Is that actually true? With all the talk about boosters, that is. Does the “average person” plan to get jabbed once every six months…?
The other thing to keep in mind is that the working class in rich and rich-ish countries has been thrown under the bus (and let’s not even talk about the Third World poor). The average salary class person has as little say as the average working class person, *but* people who have a disproportionate amount of say are generally in the salary class (unless they’re independently rich). In that sense, to figure out what’s likely to happen, one should pay less attention to what the average person thinks, than to what the average salary-class person thinks, since this will be somewhat more indicative of what the decision-makers think.
Okay, so what does the average salary-class person think? The thing is, one part of this class freaked out from the virus, and another part actually had a grand time initially (large house/apartment, more time with the kids, no commuting, secure job that can be done remotely; yes, I actually know some of these people). Well, another part of the salary class (::raises hand::) thought the whole thing was mad, but alas, we were outnumbered and outvoiced by the combination of the previous two, both of which were perfectly happy with the lockdowns. But here’s what I’m starting to notice: these salary-class lockdown enthusiasts are getting antsy, mostly because they want to travel. So, they may push for the lifting of restrictions. However, they may also be perfectly happy with the medical Apartheid. After all, all the smart people have been “vaccinated,” and the deplorables are deplorable (ahem). But if it turns out the “vaccines” stop working after just a few months, then I don’t really know what happens, i.e. I know how they’ll react.
El – that’s a good point and the rhetoric to scapegoat the unvaccinated has already been rolled out most clearly by the Israeli Prime Minister but also in Britain. On the other hand, it’s becoming clear the vaccines don’t work and that’s going to piss off an awful lot of people. I imagine republicans who have been going along with the story so far will start to blame Fauci and the whole thing will split along party lines. You’re right though, some big pharma people have clearly been working behind scenes for decades changing the meaning of words in their favour so they can profit off something like this. Same with words like “vaccine” and “herd immunity”. Those things do enormous damage to society.
Irena – the decision makers are still the politicians. They’ve been hiding behind the public health bureaucrats because it’s in their political interests to do so. The second it is no longer in their political interests, they will take charge again. That’s exactly what DeSantis has done, for example. The salary class are the Branch Covidians. They will blame the unvaccinated for everything wrong in their life from now on. The average person just wants life to go back to normal and, it might take years, but eventually they will vote for the person who promises to make that happen.
Simon: “The average person just wants life to go back to normal and, it might take years, but eventually they will vote for the person who promises to make that happen.”
Well, yes, but that’s just the point, isn’t it? It might take years. It might take a decade or more. And if that happens, the devastation will be so profound that “normal” will be off the table anyway (though you might finally be able to see your friends and family without government interference).
And you and El are quite right: they’re busy scapegoating the “anti-vaxxers” (even those of us who are nothing of the sort). I wonder how long they’ll be able to keep the game going, given that the “vaccines” seem to be rapidly failing, and you can pooh-pooh the side effects only for so long.
Actually, here’s a prediction. So, the “anti-vaxxer” label applied to people who don’t want experimental gene therapy is implicitly predicated on an argument like this:
* Vaccines in general are safe.
* COVID “vaccines” are vaccines.
* Hence, COVID “vaccines” are safe.
Okie-dokie. Now let me modify that argument just a tiny little bit.
* COVID “vaccines” are dangerous.
* COVID “vaccines” are vaccines.
* Hence, vaccines in general are dangerous.
And here’s my prediction: within a few years, as side-effects of these “vaccines” become impossible to hide, public health bureaucrats will be shouting until they’re blue in the face that COVID “vaccines” are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from other vaccines, and in fact, those “vaccines” weren’t even vaccines but gene therapy, and PLEASE get your kids vaccinated against polio! Most people will listen, but a non-trivial minority won’t, and hello polio. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Oh, and here’s another thought. So, anyone who refuses gene therapy is an “anti-vaxxer.” Yes, that’s ridiculous. But the stigma is very real. This may well lead to an increase in COVID gene therapy uptake. *But* it’ll come at a price: the number of actual anti-vaxxers (the old kind, i.e. the people who don’t have their kids vaccinated against polio) will go up.
Think about it. You’ve been labeled an “anti-vaxxer,” which is another way of saying a “bad person.” You’ve been excluded from polite company. So, what do you do? Well, you may just find your tribe among the old-fashioned anti-vaxxers, just because they’re so much nicer to you than everyone else. Sounds like a lovely public health disaster in the making, doesn’t it?
Irena – the year is 2030. The conservative party runs on a platform of being able to leave your house for more than one hour a day during the yearly winter lockdown. The liberal party runs on a platform of encouraging vaccination to get the latest outbreak of polio under control.
@Simon
Re: 2030 election
It’s not funny! That could actually happen, you know. 🙁
Irena – I have no doubt it will happen. The only question is whether it’s 2030, 2040 or 2050.