Dec 202021
 
 December 20, 2021  Posted by at 2:43 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

 

Sometimes the best information comes from unexpected sources. That is certainly true this weekend. Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson had a very revealing Twitter talk with Graham Medley, chair of COVID modeling for UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). But first, to get in the mood, a graph on Omicron from South Africa, because that’s what they’re all talking about:

 

 

And if you don’t find that convincing (because it’s “only” South Africa), Robert Malone has your back with his take on a Danish study.

The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark

Denmark, as of December 9, 2021. Denmark has one of the highest RT-PCR testing capacities in the world and screens all positive RT-PCR tests with an Omicron-specific PCR – allowing screening for Omicron. There have been 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases identified in Denmark. The earliest Omicron cases in Denmark occurred before South Africa announced the emergence of this variant. Most cases were fully (76%) or booster-vaccinated (7.1%); 34 (4.3%) had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of cases with available information reported symptoms (509/666; 76%) and most were infected in Denmark (588/644; 91%). One in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases, indicating widespread community transmission. Nine cases have been hospitalized, one required intensive care and no deaths have been registered.

Highlights:
· 1.2% of cases have been hospitalized
· 0.3% in intensive care
· 0% deaths.

· 83% were fully or booster vaccinated, 17% not vaccinated (including 2.6 vaccine started)
· 4.3% had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection
· 91% have no travel history, 9% reported travel

My take: this study is important because although there are studies and spokespeople from South Africa stating similar results, the Danish population in terms of age, body weight, life expectancy, etc. is more similar demographically to the US population. This Danish study suggests that Omicron will affect the American population similarly.

I wrote earlier today: “Mild” is a four letter word. Well, for politicians and media and drugmakers, that is.

 

Then, the UK. Where word today is that 12 people have died WITH Omicron and 104 are in hospital WITH Omicron. Dying WITH Omicron is not the same as dying FROM Omicron, and being in hospital with it says nothing either, if you don’t know a patient’s age, history, comorbidities etc. And a “case”, as that word is abusively used all the time, is in reality just a positive test with the inherently flawed PCR procedure, and 99.7% of positive tests never go anywhere. Meaningless.

The UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, predicts “anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day” (42,000 a week) from Omicron, and I read somewhere there’s a 2 million cases per week prediction. But there’s something about SAGE’s working methods that you really should know: they only focus on bad or worse scenarios. And it’s not even strictly their fault: good or mild scenarios are simply not their assignment.

Here are Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson and SAGE chair of COVID modeling Graham Medley:

My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee

The latest Sage papers have been published, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. He’s a professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron with very gloomy scenarios and making the case for more restrictions. But JP Morgan had a close look at this study and spotted something big: all the way through, LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients. Adjust for this, it found, and the picture changes dramatically:-

“Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’ So JP Morgan had shown that, if you tweak one assumption (on severity) then – suddenly – no need for lockdown. Why was this scenario left out? Why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact on Omicron modelling not presented by SAGE modellers like Prof Medley to ministers – and to the general public? I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out). The Spectator data hub has a page devoted to past Sage modelling vs actual, and I wanted to make sure I was not being unfair to Sage in my selection or presentation of those charts.

The latest Sage paper-drop – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – refers to ‘scenarios,’ not predictions. Prof Medley emphasises the distinction: saying something could happen is not saying that there’s a realistic chance of it happening. But then why do SAGE modellers publish some scenarios and not others? I then jumped to ask Prof Medley.



Revealingly, he seemed to think my question odd: if it’s quite plausible that Omicron is mild and doesn’t the threaten the NHS, what would be the point of including that as a ‘scenario’? He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are. “We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.” Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown? “Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.”


Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are? From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

Isn’t that the craziest thing? I think Nelson may be right, and politicians may not be looking for deliberately misleading (to the downside) studies. But those are still all they get, and base their policies upon.

And for some people involved, I am not so sure. Like for Anthony Fauci, and for Pfizer. And of course, the problem with SAGE modeling is probably repeated in 100 other countries, by all the so-called experts, and they feed off each other. Count your blessings.

 

Meanwhile, the UK increased its PCR testing by some 65% recently, so what are we really talking about, if not apples and bananas?

Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing

Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday. Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands. It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth. It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph below with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows. Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.

But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing. How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.

 

The CDC doesn’t like the term “mild”, and neither do the media. because it makes for poor clickbait. They all prefer terms like “grim”, “soar”, “rocket”, “leap”. And they love the words “patients” and “deaths”. As US deaths were down by, what, 30%? (Note in the graph how deaths decreased).

CDC issues grim forecast warning that weekly COVID cases will jump by 55% to 1.3 MILLION by Christmas Day and that deaths will surge by 73% to 15,600 a week as Omicron becomes dominant strain

Grim new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have predicted that US COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73 per cent to 15,600 a week by January 8, and that cases will rocket to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day. The agency revealed projections on Wednesday afternoon that show America will suffer up to 15,600 new Covid deaths a week as of January 8 – or 2,228 deaths per day – a 58 per cent increase from 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, equivalent to 1,285 deaths a day. Another CDC prediction estimates that between 620,000 and 1.3 million Americans will have been diagnosed with Covid by the week that ends on December 25 – Christmas Day. That represents a 55% leap on the 840,000 cases that have been recorded over the last week.

Omicron will likely become the dominant Covid strain in the coming weeks, and cause a massive surge of cases shortly after Christmas, one expert has warned, likely fueling the surge the CDC predicts. Dr Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told DailyMail.com that an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner. ‘As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,’ he said. ‘This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.’

He believes it will become the dominant strain in the UK – which recorded a record 78,610 cases on Wednesday – in the coming days, and that the U.S. will follow around two weeks later. Cornell University in upstate New York is suspected to be home to the first US Omicron cluster, after 930 students were diagnosed with the virus in recent days. The college says every one of the positive tests it has sequenced so far has been the Omicron variant. A Cornell spokesman hasn’t said exactly how many Omicron cases have been identified, but added that they expect most, if not all, the 930 cases to be caused by the new variant.

Read more …

And Tony Grinch Fauci is not about to be outdone by the CDC.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said on Sunday that record-breaking death rates could occur as the COVID Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. Fauci made an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper pressed the leading infectious disease expert on where he believes the pandemic is headed. Tapper asked, “Do you expect new record high numbers for cases? And what about hospitalizations and deaths?” “Yes, well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen,” Fauci replied.


“We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.” [..] “It is going to be tough,” Fauci said. “We can’t walk away from that, Jake. We can’t, because, with Omicron that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”

If and when you’re suffering under yet another lockdown and/or any other restrictions, you should know they are for naught. There is no indication to date that Omicron will fill up hospitals, or ICUs, or that it will kill millions of people.

But that for now refuted scenario is still why those restrictions are being put in place, why you are being told not to hug your intensely lonely grandma for Christmas. Useless. And why everyone is told to get a booster, and soon another. Also useless.

It’s time for all of you to grow a spine and a pair of balls (sorry, ladies, just a manner of speech) and start living your lives again. Time to get rid of Fauci, and of Pfizer, and SAGE, and fill in your local/national bunch of experts. Because as long as they are there, they will hog the limelight, and you will never be able to start to live your life again.

A simple Christmas message.

 

 

 

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Home Forums A Simple Christmas Message

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 44 total)
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  • #95740

    Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935     Sometimes the best information comes from unexpected sources. That is certainly tru
    [See the full post at: A Simple Christmas Message]

    #95748
    Enginer
    Participant

    It appears to me that there are two main issues in this current Pandemic. One is the >well-intentioned< decision by coordinated “movers-and-shakers” to use the real (or artificial) pandemic to demonstrate the value of mRNA genetic programming to solve all of man-kind (and ladies’) ills. They may have even considered that eventually this may include genetic disposition to violence and covetousness. At tremendous cost to civilization, this first test is arguably failing.
    Then there is the possibility that the small cadre of Later Day Marxists including some extremely successful American industrialists believe that absolute social control is the best route to aggregate happiness-or to the Club of Rome goal of a population of 6E8 people. In this case, I believe they are wrong. Improving population standards of living, or at least reduction in average family stress automatically moves populations back to the natural (2 child) replacement rate or below.

    #95751
    Professorlocknload
    Participant

    ‘By god, if the Omicron doesn’t kill, maime and dismember you, the governments reaction to it will!’

    Just how many cushy revolving door jobs do these political hacks think big pharma can offer them, after these opportunist tyrannical regimes collapse?

    #95752
    Noirette
    Participant

    Snips from article in The Conservative Woman:

    —In 2001, Ferguson’s modelling of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak influenced the UK government pre-emptively to cull well over 6 million animals at an estimated £10 billion cost to the economy. As a result, the farming community was utterly devastated, giving rise to more centralised power by the EU…..

    —In 2005 Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people worldwide would die during the bird flu outbreak including up to 750,000 in the UK. This led to the stockpiling of Tamiflu in the UK from 2006; this was widely prescribed later in the swine flu pandemic. The WHO was able to link only 78 deaths worldwide to the bird flu virus.

    —In 2009, Imperial’s model led by Ferguson gave rise to the prediction of 65,000 deaths from swine flu in the UK; in fact only 457 deaths were linked to the virus. Based on Ferguson’s model, the government spent £1.2billion to prepare for the swine flu pandemic. As a result, more than 20 million unused doses of vaccine were left over.

    —Once more it was Ferguson’s ‘doomsday’ modelling prediction in the March 16, 2020 report from the Imperial College Covid-19 response team that gave the dire warning of  510,000 UK deaths by the end of May 2020 if the government continued with its ‘herd immunity’ response to the pandemic.

    Sage’s covert coup Part Two – Project Fear

    The ‘models’ are pure corporate propaganda, they aren’t even ‘junk’ science, as that might be contested. Advisory / regulatory boards, bodies, institutions (e.g. SAGE, FDA, SwissMedic, etc.) have been corrupted and taken over, how, why, yes, important topic, anyway the upshot is they no longer fulfill their mission. At all.

    In France (one ex.) the trad. structures have been ditched and a new advisory board was set up, in March 2020, a Scientific Council to advise the President, re. COV-19.

    Composed of 11 members who are ‘experts’ and come from all over academe / prof. med. – an expert in ‘social media’ (?!), a sociologist specialised in health economy, a modeller who studies the speed of transmission of the virus (!?), a GP, and epidemiologist, etc.

    These ppl have nothing in common and their meetings are role-play and posturing (imho.)

    One description of the Comité (in F)

    https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/coronavirus-qui-sont-les-experts-du-comite-scientifique-charge-de-conseiller-macron-20200313

    Their advisories, position papers, on various topics (in F, included for reference.)

    https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/actualites/presse/dossiers-de-presse/article/conseil-scientifique-covid-19

    #95754
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    In Ontario, fully-vaxxed case numbers have dramatically increased this past week:


    https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/stunning-data-about-vaccine-failure/comments

    #95758
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Oops. That house:

    ugf

    #95760
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “…cull well over 6 million animals at an estimated £10 billion cost to the economy.”

    What is $6 million? Vapor, an infamous rumor. What are 6 million mammalian lives? Just another partial genocide, part of modern human standard practice.

    Like a briefly famous movie from the 70s said: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? As I often say: how convenient for the Nazis to have all those cattle cars for sending humans to the human abattoir.

    “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:37–40.)

    We are treated by TPTB to whom we grant dominion just like how we treat the animals over whom we hold dominion. I’m sorry about the economy, the scamdemic, the dissolution of the dream of some Great Modern Human Civilization, I really am, but I feel less pity for the homo saps causing all this then I feel for the poor countless critters to whom we’ve been doing shit like this for millennia, but never so much and so horrifically as during Modern Industralia’s domain.

    We deserve to experience the bullshit we endorse or merely tolerate happening to others, human, animal, vegetable, and for all I know, ghostly.

    I envision running an orphanage in a year or two. Well, subsidizing one. I’m getting almost too frail to even read a children a bedtime story; talking that much will often give me a horrific nosebleed. It’s a crazy dream but I’m a crazy man, we all need a dream, and one never knows, right?

    The orphanage I have in mind has space and pasturage for many animals, preferably stolen at shotgun-point or via baseball-bat impact from the local meat factory.

    Anyway, this human needs a dream. Otherwise I’d stop mojoing against all these morbid maladies and just let the wind take my breath away one last time. I could care less about me. Or you, for that matter. I care only about each and every one of us, even the funny-looking mutant microbes brewed by the likes of Fauci, why, even that over-sized microbe, Herr Fauci himself. Poor dumb cluck. Caring for less is chump change, and I’ve literally lived on chump change more often than I wish to even remember.

    And yet, the best we can do is care for a few at most… except in our dreams. I dream of an orphanage. In a big white house.

    Like this:

    cvlkj

    Why, in fact, that very house, located at the very tiptoe of the tsunami evacuation zone in that region.. And now that I’m finally healthy enough to resume working on serious fiction, I retire to my dungeon of dreams to type out some kind of miracle that just might sell big. I already know I’m a lunatic, so why not try and cash in on it?

    The odds say I’ll fail before I start but a) fuck the odds, and b) I’ve managed to make a woman know that I deeply and dearly love her for 34 years; and if I can do that, I can do anything. And I have PROOF.

    Exhibit A:

    eru

    Exhibit B:

    fkj

    “It is better far for us to strive
    Our useless cares from us to drive.
    Do this and joy, your hearts will swell:
    All is well, all is well.”

    Come On

    #95761
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Wordpress has mood swings, I think.

    #95762
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Comes with its own dollhouse, even:

    sjh

    Me and Wendy gonna find some Lost Boys and Lost Girls and provide a home for them. Or die trying. Well, we’re gonna die someday, and we’re trying. Close enough.

    #95764
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Dam just gave in, … La Belle Province – a nickname for Quebec – goes first, other provinces and territories will follow:

    “Our health system is already in crisis.”

    Bars, gyms, movie theatres, concert venues and spas must close as of 5 p.m. Monday. Restaurants will have to reduce their capacity to 50 per cent and limit their hours from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. Professional sports will have to be held without audiences.

    Schools will close early for the holidays, shutting down as of Monday evening and returning on Jan. 10. Elementary schools will remain open only for vaccination campaigns and the distribution of rapid test kits.

    Working from home is now being mandated for all non-essential workers, including civil servants. The provincial government is pausing all ministerial public activities, such as news conferences that are not related to COVID-19.

    Hours before the announcement, Quebec reported a record number of cases for the past 24 hours, with 4,571 new cases, three more deaths and 21 more people in hospital.

    Hospitalizations, at 397, are already higher than half of the province’s capacity.”

    … bold added.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/new-closures-covid-19-quebec-1.6292622

    F.S.

    #95765
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Looking at two different “scientific” approaches to dealing with Covid-19, one is mostly model-driven, and the other is mostly empirical. “Remarkably, we find using each paradigm leads to diametrically opposite conclusions…”

    Abstract
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have adopted responses revolving around the open-ended use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including “lockdowns”, “stay-at-home” orders, travel restrictions, mask-wearing, and regulated social distancing. Initially these were introduced with the stated goals of “flattening the curve” of hospital demand and/or the eradication of the virus from the country (i.e., “zero covid” policies). Over time, these goals have shifted to maintaining sufficient NPIs in place until such time as population-wide vaccination programmes have achieved an appropriate level of herd immunity to allow lifting of these measures without excessive hospital demand. Supporters of this approach have claimed to be “following the science”, insisting that criticism of any aspects of these measures is non-scientific or even “scientific misinformation”. This idea that only one set of scientifically valid opinions on COVID-19 exists has encouraged the media, social media and even scientific journals to suppress and/or dismiss any differing scientific opinions as “erroneous”, “discredited” or “debunked”, resulting in discouragement of open-minded scientific inquiry or discussion. Accordingly, in the current article we identify two distinct scientific paradigms to analysing COVID-19 adopted within the medical and scientific community. Paradigm 1 is primarily model-driven, while Paradigm 2 is primarily empirically-driven. Using these two paradigms we have analysed the epidemiological data for 30 northern hemisphere countries (with a total population of 882 million). Remarkably, we find using each paradigm leads to diametrically opposite conclusions on many policy-relevant issues. We discuss how these conflicting results might be reconciled and provide recommendations for scientists and policymakers.

    Paradigm 1, mostly model-driven, implies that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are effective and essential until a population-wide vaccination programme has been completed. By corollary, Paradigm 1 implies that a public perception that therapeutics might reduce the severity of COVID-19 would be dangerous if it led to the premature lifting of NPIs.

    Paradigm 2, mostly empirically driven, is unable to find compelling evidence that the NPIs are particularly effective, but plenty of evidence that “the cure is worse than the disease”. Meanwhile, Paradigm 2 finds no need for a population-wide vaccination programme, although smaller-scale voluntary vaccination programmes may potentially be helpful in shielding the vulnerable and health-care workers. Paradigm 2 also implies that research into identifying effective therapeutics to reduce the severity of COVID-19 should be actively encouraged.

    A TALE OF TWO SCIENTIFIC PARADIGMS: CONFLICTING SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS ON WHAT “FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE” MEANS FOR SARS-COV-2 AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
    AUTHORS Gerry A Quinn, Ronan Connolly, Coilín ÓhAiseadha, Paul Hynds
    https://osf.io/s9z2p/

    #95766
    absolute galore
    Participant

    Re: The vaccinated making up most of the cases.

    I love the part when The Expert intones:

    This is to be expected, since more and more people are vaccinated.

    Huh?! So you’re saying, for example, if 85% of the people in the hospital due to covid are vaccinated, that corresponds to 85% of the local population being vaccinated. Do I have that right?

    Exactly! Very good!

    Thanks! And what a convenient easy to remember formula!

    You’re welcome, I’m sure.*

    Math! It’s the New Science!

    *Note that in some cases, percentage of vaxxed in the hospital may exceed percentage of vaxxed in the population. We’re not sure why. But be safe, get boosted!

    #95770
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    This seems pertinent:

    Fred Meyer, grocery union reach settlement, strike over after less than a day

    “Tigard, Oregon – Almost a year-and-a-half ago, Fred Meyer and QFC stopped paying hourly hazard pay. In the time since then, workers have continued to deal with the pandemic, while the company has enjoyed record profits. The hazard never ended.

    “Fast forward to today, Fred Meyer and QFC continue to refuse to deliver the wage increases that workers deserve. We are asking for substantial wage increases to be able to afford to live in the community we take care of. The company is currently offering long term employees a 50 cent raise for the next 2 years, and a 40 cent raise on the third year of the contract. They have not offered any raises for a vast majority of employees.

    “After nearly two years of breaking labor law to continue paying their employees less, Fred Meyer has upped the ante by systematically ignoring the law and trampling on employee rights. It’s absurd, and abhorrent.” said Dan Clay, President of UFCW Local 555.

    “Fred Meyer’s callous disregard for their own essential workers is stunning considering the sacrifice these employees have made throughout the pandemic. While so many were able to stay safely in their own homes, essential grocery workers showed up to work helping feed our communities. These employers should recognize their sacrifice by treating these workers with the basic respect they deserve,” said Sandy Humphrey, Secretary Treasurer of UFCW Local 555.”

    I see the corporate hypocrisy behind this being called out more and more. This will add to the growing general discontent. I don’t see said discontent producing anything like a decisive turnaround of prevailing covidiotic policies, but I do see it adding to the general disintegration. I see revolution (shudder) not reform.

    #95772
    WES
    Participant

    Bosco:

    In Canada, all the unvaxxed frontline hospital (I.e. gov) employees were fired as their reward.

    So government is better than corporations?

    Sometimes corporations realize shooting their employees in the foot is going to hurt them too.
    Governments never seem to worry that shooting others might hurt the government.

    #95773
    WES
    Participant

    Doc Robinson:

    Notice that preventative measures (vit D3, zinc, ivermectin) are not on the table in all of this!

    #95774
    WES
    Participant

    F. S.:

    Yes, Quebec always goes the maximum socialist route!
    Pfizer is getting their money’s worth from Quebec!
    Graft is afterall Quebec’s “favorite indoor sport”!
    In 1972, Rene escorted me to the border and said “Don’t come back, yea hear!”

    #95775
    WES
    Participant

    Bosco:

    We share something in common! My wife says I am different too!

    #95776
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    WES: “Notice that preventative measures (vit D3, zinc, ivermectin) are not on the table in all of this!”

    Yes, as explained by the study I posted above,

    “Paradigm 1 implies that a public perception that therapeutics might reduce the severity of COVID-19 would be dangerous if it led to the premature lifting of NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions including “lockdowns”, “stay-at-home” orders, travel restrictions, mask-wearing, and regulated social distancing..]”

    #95779
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Loss of narrative control:

    Omicron spreading and infecting the vaccinated – WHO

    “GENEVA, Dec 20 (Reuters) – The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

    “There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing for Geneva-based journalists, held at its new headquarters building.

    “And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected,” Tedros said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)”

    “A slight rephrase would read ‘people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 are more likely to be infected or re-infected’..

    Tell that many lies so often, broadly, and sloppily, and the narrative collapses of its own. This is not to say that a collapsing narrative will fix things; but loss of narrative control goes together with loss of power. Loss of power leads to loss of stability. Things are already losing stability at an increasing rate.

    The Davos Summit was cancelled due to Omicron. While this fits their narrative (‘omicron is vewwy vewwy dangewuss’) it also interferes with getting business done. Davos summit articles

    I was too sick to remember to share this until now: we went to Yakima, WA for Thanksgiving. The Inland Pacific Northwest is as red as coastal Pac NW is blue. People wore masks if they felt like it, period. At least half the people in the grocery store were maskless despite Mandatory Mask signs on the door. AN observation on such signs: in blue areas, such signs are often custom, written with feel-good guilt-inducers* worthy of Big Bird. Glossy, colorful, tres au courant. Owners/mngmnt of the places displaying these signs wanted to herald their emotional investment in the concept of “we’re all in this together and so should you”.

    *oxymoron alert

    In Yakima, they were usually barebones B&W printouts of some standard, probably state-issued format: masks required by state law. Period. No endorsement, just due diligence. In Ellensburg, a college town north of Yakima, there is some blue influence from the state university and its nearness to Seattle (which has pretty much bought out the town). Downtown in the trendy useless shopping stores, the signs showed some investment. Away from that, masks were mostly absent. Seated next to us at an ancient truck stop near the mouth of Yakima River canyon, some guy who is an ex-jarhead or I’m Marilynn Monroe, wore a FUCK Joe Biden T-shirt.

    The tide should soon be noticeably turning soon. Speaking paranoiacally, it seems not ludicrously improbable that Team Biden will pay Putin that $50 billion he wants paid up front before he kicks our ass out of Ukraine for us and gives the USA’s ruling dingbats the emergency war footing they surely want to place elections on hold. Not that said hold will hold. They’re obviously too stupid to know when their ass has been kicked.

    #95780
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “We share something in common! My wife says I am different too!”

    Indeed you are, WES. A bit of a treasure, in my opinion. Your genuineness is plain to see. But then, bullshit and mines= dead/wish you were dead. In mining, your engineering mistake will not only kill others but probably you too. Makes a man embrace reality for what it is: something one experiences only when alive and conscious.

    Re: Canada, Australia, UK, NZ: all three nations are headed for major governmental overhauls. So are most nations of the world, but these British Commonwealth stencil-states are practicing ferret-legging with honey badgers: they’re going to get their weenies eaten off by an angry public when this covidiocy carbuncle erupts.

    #95781
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Another note on red state mentality as I’ve seen it here:

    they’re big on buying ammo and Don’t Tread on Me flags, but the pronouncedly redneck neighborhood that our godson lives in had gobs of spacious backyard and not.a.single.food.garden: they’ll just shoot each other apeshot comes scarcity. Whatever the common man’s view on government is, it is filtered through Modern Civilization, which is clueless concerning the necessities of life. After all, “your credit rating is your most important possession as an adult”. Portland’s quasi-neo-hippies are big on little food plots, but their back yards are mostly tiny and no one wants to cut down tress so they can produce full yields.

    How red was this Yakima neighborhood? Red enough to have one of these:

    bg

    On one of these:

    egf

    This is my fave, tho. One of the local boys ran into some serious money and is refurbishing a derelict gingerbread mansion into a show-off place. This was atop the mansions two-story one-car garage:

    sdf

    He’s covered what little yard the place has with white gravel. Nobody seems to know where food comes these days.

    #95782
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Music’s good and the violinist owns the cross-dressing:

    Arooj Aftab

    They’re from Brooklynn, arguably hipster folly central of USA E of the Mississippi. Only San Francisco can begin to compete with Brooklynn’s insufferably PC crowd.

    #95784
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    P.S. Want to practice civil disobedience? Tell the store owners insisting on masks to call the police. Even in Australia, I suspect the cops are growing leery of arresting anti-maskers. Take a day off, 5 or 10 of you, and target the same store arrest after arrest. Cops arrest and leave, enter maskless # 2. Rinse, repeat.

    Make sure you have a solid attorney on retainer, I suppose.

    But that’s a lot of dirty dramatic work and jail can be seriously awful and bad for your health.

    I recommend going in maskless, and when they insist on you donning a mask, pull out a wad of crisp $100 bills. Like a grand. Count it so that the bills unfold TOWARD the store owner as you say Mask Off, Get Money. Count it again refolding the money AWAY from the store-owner as you say Mask On, Go Broke.

    Say, “Enjoy your bankruptcy!” if they insist you leave. If they counter with, “Enjoy dying from covid!” say, “You first” with a quiet grave voice and look. “You first.”

    Dress spiffy when you do this. Not over-the-top fancy, but the kind of threads that people associate with success and $$$. People are very impressed by superficialities. Something to do with being mostly supoe5rficial most of the time?

    In larger stores like grocery stores, do as you like. I doubt anyone will harass you. I’ve never been harassed when I did this, even in purple-haired Portland. I’m too sick these days to get out much or endure the nonsense stress of such actions, but people are REALLY sick of this shit — even ardent Blue Covid True Believers.

    If you don’t vote with your money, you’re not voting, just playing a shell game.

    $$$

    Yeah, Bono’s a self-righteous wealthy dickweed sellout, but the man can sing, and there was a time when U2 could really kick it.

    #95785
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ‘ all three nations ‘

    OK, 4.

    #95786
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #95787
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Women are obviously smarter than men:

    “An attempt to introduce a female version of the sport—ferret busting, in which female contestants introduced ferrets down their blouses—proved unsuccessful.[11]”

    #95788
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “It’s time for all of you to grow a spine and a pair of balls “

    ‘Gonads’ is wonderfully gender-neutral.

    #95789
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    WES: other non- Canadian readers here may not be aware of the historical animosity between English and French (Quebec) Canada. You have illustrated it here in your representation of la belle province.
    Quebecers were long subjugated by Anglo business interests, as well as the Catholic Church. When Quebecers finally took control of their province out of the hands of both groups of overlords and refocused on their own unique culture and values, they were roundly snubbed by English Canada for their audacity. As a region less influenced by huge American media and their overwhelming corporate allegiances, their take on world events is quite often refreshingly richer and more nuanced -not perfect of course. If you have the capacity (Parlez-vous francais?) do tune in to their offerings- you may gain a better understanding of what this unique province contributes to Canada.

    #95790
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Oh my:

    Saint Fauci on Fire

    from today’s Russia Observer which I checked, ironically, to see if any of the Russophiles I follow was ever going to touch the covid issue. (Orlov did early on but then backed off; he’d overstated his position via classic Orlovian arrogance and got drowned in conflicting data.)

    Still, no major trustworthy Russian expert has said much of anything about Putin joining the covidiotic rhumba line.

    Everybody’s jumping at shadows these days.

    #95791
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Bosco I loved your “Christmas story” of a few days ago – just got around to reading it thru.

    John Day your note on Vitamin D was very illuminating.

    Dr. D you make me laugh every day – I am beginning to think that your satirical approach is the best one to use, seeing as how logic no longer works.

    #95792
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Shit, I can hardly hear Peter Green’s solo work these days with my rapidly failing ears.

    One of a kind, Mr. Green:

    Timeless Time

    #95793
    Kassandra
    Participant

    “It’s time for all of you to grow a spine and a pair of balls “

    ‘Gonads’ is wonderfully gender-neutral.

    The word you are looking for is “breasticles”

    #95794
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Making sumac.carol smile makes me proud. Reminds me of something Charlie Musselwhite said on stage after an upbeat boogie number got some women shaking it on the floor: “Man, when I get pretty women out dancing on the floor, I feel like I done accomplished something.”

    Cadillac Wimminz“>Cadillac Wimminz

    #95796
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    More thoughts (too much coffee)
    I ponder the fate of small organic farmers (of whom I know a decent number). Many of these folks have come to the realization that, our current paradigm bring what it is, they will have a very hard time making a decent living. However, what also strikes me more recently is that some in this group would likely not prosper even under more favourable economic and political conditions because of a lack of any one if the capacities required to succeed at farming. There are many ways to fail (50 ways to lose your shirt at farming?): selection of land, selection of crop/niche, finding markets/marketing, knowledge of techniques for crop-raising, capacity for work… This was a bit of a revelation for me – all challenges are not necessarily caused by big bad external stuff- sometimes we visit them in ourselves thru our own errors or omissions.

    #95797
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    I include myself in the “challenged farmer” department!!!

    #95799
    John Day
    Participant

    WES: I hope you keep feeling OK, whether it’s mystery-road-de-icer or the free-airborne-vaccine.


    @Kassandra
    : I hope you find a true karass, however that might come to be.


    @PhoenixVoice
    : I salute you, Sister. You will be rewarded I believe. I hope you and your “kids” can hang on until they reach majority, then move from Phoenix, though there are so many human connections for you there…


    @Boscohorowitz
    : It’s OK to follow divine guidance/God at any age. You know it is. Hard to know what stories to believe about Jesus, but you can look into your own heart and see that it is also God’s heart.
    Might take awhile. Start early, or now, whichever comes first.

    #95800
    John Day
    Participant

    @Sumac,Carol: I am a vegetable gardener, experimenting with Mexican avocados in the Texas coastal plains as a service to humans in the area, should it work out.
    I’m no good at business, but I like trying out ideas, to see how they work.
    Always have…

    #95801
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    The Fear of Omicron is growing in Oz. Just got this email from the ACT Government:

    Mandatory face masks reintroduced for indoor settings
    The ACT will reintroduce the requirement to wear a mask indoors and tighten visitor restrictions for residential aged care facilities to help keep the community safe from the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
    Wearing a mask is a simple and practical way to minimise transmission of COVID-19.
    From 11.59pm tonight (Tuesday 21 December), mask wearing will once again be mandatory in indoor settings in the ACT.
    Additionally, some restrictions for residential aged care facilities will be re-introduced. Residents will be restricted to five visitors per day with a maximum of five visitors at any one time. There will be no daily limit on the number of visitors for end of life care visits. Masks will be mandatory for staff and visitors.
    From 11.59pm tonight, masks must be worn in all indoor settings other than a place of residence, including:

      Indoor retail settings
      Public transport
      Hospitality venues (except when seated, or eating or drinking)
      Offices
      Visitors and staff in a residential aged care facility

    Exceptions for mask usage can be found on the COVID-19 website.
    When you’re outside your home, continue to check in at all stores using the Check In CBR app, regularly wash and sanitise your hands, and stay 1.5 metres away from people you don’t know.

    At least we can still hug people we do know. Better still, get to know them by hugging them.

    I’m hopeful that Omicron proves to be the undoing of all of this. If it does, won’t it spoil the fun of a lot of people! Nothing to live for, nothing to fight against, no great purpose, back to their humdrum lives of two years ago.

    #95803
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    boscohorowitz wrote, “Even in Australia, I suspect the cops are growing leery of arresting anti-maskers.”

    Not yet, but I have heard that the courts in NSW are dismissing many if not most cases.

    We’ve got a federal election planned for early next year sometime (the campaigning is beginning now). The incumbent conservatives have shown themselves to be corrupt, cruel and stupid. Big problem: the labor opposition appear flabby, flaccid and indecisive. As Shakespeare wrote, there is small choice in rotten apples.

    #95805
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Sumac/DrJDay:

    Here’s another perspective: food deserts will become more common. Big box stores will increasingly fail even after making fat profits from covid. Before we moved to Portland, and when my health was still tolerable if limited, we’d planned to run a produce stand from our driveway. We lived on a busy stoplight intersection that was either business or school on each corner, our house being a tiny pocket of residence toward the back of one corner.

    The Albertsons grocery store kitty-corner from us had predictably closed around… 2014? 15? even though it served a mostly upper income neighborhood and was directly across the street from a grammar school and an attendant sports complex. Major foot/car traffic.

    It seemed fairly easy for me to get commercial zoning permission since I was engulfed by business. Our non-commercial zoning was like a tiny cavity on an otherwise perfectly white smile.

    The foot traffic from the school, especially, would make a simple produce/flower stand an easy success, especially now that the nearest grocery was 3/4th of a mile away. Even if Albertsons was still in business I could pay MORE for good organic produce than Albertsons could because my home mortgage was my primary business expense, see? I could buy the best and still charge a little less. I had way more margin room, jah?

    As the Big System crashes, itty-bitty systems will pop up like mushrooms because people don’t like to starve. (A god named Cronus told me this in a bar in Baghdad in a dream around my left ear about 10 years ago.) I suggest you look for and cultivate persons who fit profiles like the one I just described.

    Meanwhile, be glad you’ve got acreage to till, hopefully water if the municipal pumps go and/or a windmill to run a rural operation water pump, and a defense system/plan setup to protect your property when the cops become a) less likely to respond to burglary calls and b) are increasingly likely to charge you protection money, maybe in the form of food, if they do respond.

    ***

    ezlxa (sounds like a dyslexic OT prophet), the cops generally turn around when a few of them get shot or baseball batted.

    Baseball bats are still legal in Oz, right? Also, bows’n’arrows are legal, right? And it’s amazing what a wrist-rocket can do with a proper caliber smooth stone. Some guy named David told me in a hospital ward in Palestine.

    “But you killed Goliath, right?”

    “Yeah, but I was so busy doing my victory dance I didn’t realize he was falling on top of me. Talk about a head-butt!”

    The various constabularies and legislatures of these currently mighty-seeming regimes are virtually untested forces against real civil disobedience. Real opposition pulls them up short real fast. All this BLMatter stuff in the USA obscures something else: cops are being shot and killed an awful lot lately. Chicken-shit bully-boys don’t like real danger.

    The supposedly most mighty military in the world got kicked out of shithole Afghanistan after bombing it back into the Stone Age, ruining a great many soldiers’ lives precisely because they get killed less but maimed more (including psychologically) while spending several fortunes, much of it given away to the people we were supposedly ruling.

    That was with attack helicopters and drone missiles and and and… Oz ain’t gonna do that to its own people. Not for moral reasons although that will likely be some kind of factor, but because you can’t even begin to control a people on their home turf without blasting the whole thing to smithereens and still losing. It’s not like the Oz police live in fortified compounds. They have families and homes and…. they’ll back off right quick once a few courageous lunatics do the heavy lifting that 99.9% won’t until someone shows them it can be done.

    Elections? They already mean next to nothing, and will mean even less next year. As elections, that is. As pivotal events unraveling the major players of Euromerica and its affiliates like Oz, those elections will likely be VERY important. But not in terms of whom they elect but rather, what they reveal about things like AI surveillance/analysis, the internet, mass media, political machinations and public sentiment manipulation, etc…

    A black box/Chinese box like the AI complex that got Biden elected, fraudulence and all, is WAY smarter than humans in many ways… and unfathomably stupid in others. The latter aspect will reveal itself glaringly, I predict, around the next election cycle/ collapse of the covid narrative like a bad surfing wave that peters out just as you’re getting some rise, along with whatever stupid thing the NATOites do with Russia (a scenario in which overdependence on AI is certain disaster heaped upon an already certain disaster i.e. crossing Putin’s red line).

    What looks mighty now will fall, and it will be like Hemingway said of going bankrupt: “It’s slow at first, then all at once.”

    Why waste energy on sham elections when real politics is just outside your door? Political entrepreneurialism, yea, even “disruptive entrepreneurialism”, is the next big thing. Get in on the ground floor!

    Meanwhile, in the States, I think Dr.D has the basic drift right: balkanization. Boy, are we gonna celebrate diversity or what?
    ***
    DrJDay: if one really follows divine guidance, shit happens, and it can be one crazy roller-coaster. With an extremist like me (reality being extremely real, you see, and me being extremely addicted to reality, it being where I keep my stuff including breath of life), you can count on seriously manic lunacy. That’s how miracles are made, best I can tell. You lose most or all of your friends, very often your wife*, you question your sanity 60/60/24/7/365, so does everyone else, and you do what inner guidance tells you, period.
    *I won’t. We’re tried and tested and then some.

    What stories about Jesus to believe? What stories about ANYONE, living or dead, ancient or recent, to believe? Stories are illusions, even the details of a person’s diary. The only truth is action/consequences. Remove the illusion that one knows what one is doing, let the dao speak and act freely through you, and lord have mercy, you’d better talk real fast or run even faster.

    I move really slowly these days, but boy can I talk fast. 😉

    Roller Coaster 1

    Roller Coaster B

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