A Plague Of Madness

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt
This post came with a cover. Kind of. See, When I thought “it’s like we’re living in a seventies novel” this is the cover I saw in my head. The whole thing was done in less than half an hour, with three pictures from pixabay and a run through filter forge.
I just couldn’t come up with a name for the author.
At least if I can invent a time machine, I have a marketable skill…. in the seventies. Though it would be harder to do with cameras and photocopiers. I guess.

Some days ago, Michael Rothman posted — I think on MeWe — how the plot we’re living through was completely unlikely and it would/should have been rejected by the editor without a second glance.

Some of the things he said were of course giggle worthy, because that was exactly what he was going for. Stuff like “this virus is lethal, and everyone is locked down to avoid it, but you’re still encouraged to go to the grocery store.” Or “You have to wear a mask on entering the restaurant, until you sit at the table, and then you’re magically immune, and can take the mask off.”

But there’s a lot more he didn’t say. Which is even more insane.

I find myself routinely trying to talk my mom down from the crazy cakes sh*t they’re selling in Europe. Stuff like “America has lost more people in this virus than they did in two World Wars combined.” I told her I don’t know. I haven’t looked at the numbers. But if we did — so what? Our population at the time, now almost 100 years ago, was not that large. And the big difference was the population lost. In the two wars, it was mostly young, fighting age man. Now, it was mostly people who would have died within six months.

Or when she said “But the US has lost so many people.” And the answer is “Supposing the numbers aren’t doctored — and of course they are, since hospitals get more for treating Winnie the Flu than anything else, and were promised no audits and, well, when hospitals are semi-closed for anything else, how are they going to survive otherwise? — so what? There are three hundred million of us, mom. More than thirty thousand of us die in car crashes every year.” Because this is part of the problem, just like people in Europe can’t picture the size and breadth of our country, they also can’t imagine or picture the multitude we are. So they look at the raw and inflated death data, and think we’re all dropping like flies.

Mom of course, also tells me they’re dropping like flies there. Are they? I don’t know. She says they don’t inflate statistics there. Do they? I don’t know. Which is our very first problem. But there are others. Many many others.

Cast your mind back, past the gaslighting insanity, to the beginning of this, about a year ago. We were seeing pictures of China, of people dying in convulsions from cytosine storms; videos smuggled out of people being welded in their apartments. Careful analysis done of how the crematoriums were running over time.

Was that real? Was it an amazing psy-ops? We don’t know.

We do know what we expected. As Italy — which as I said at the time has a completely different population and culture, so not the same — sank under the lack of hospital beds, our media and the left went insane, and became convinced we’d all die like flies, in the millions.

But you kind of need to unpack their back brains to understand the origins of their panic. You see, these people know a lot of things that just ain’t so. Their picture of the world has some contact with reality — maybe — in that I think they recognize things like air, and trees and sometimes even humans But when you get into why things happen and how, well! They might as well live in an alien world, as the picture has bloody nothing to do with ours.

Part of it is that most of them work in professions that involve the manipulation of symbols, but also that the way to get there is to go through college degrees and at least pretend to be indoctrinated. I don’t think the leftists were pretending. They are, as I said before, the good boys and girls. The respect authority kind. I think they bought it.

So, in their heads quite divorced from any real history they have this mental map in which people are healthier, happier and have better health care, the closer a country is to socialism.

Besides, a lot of them have been to Europe, and saw lots of well dressed, leisure-enjoying people in coffee shops. If those people, with their free health care for all, failed to save themselves from the dread plague, how will the US fare: MILLIONS OF DEAD. MILLIONS.

Hence the lock down. They didn’t look at the relative number of ER beds. They didn’t look at the fact that Italy has what is even compared to ours, a geriatric population. They didn’t look at the fact that any culture in Europe has a lot more physical contact between strangers than we do — yes, even Germany — because they use public transport a lot more; their bars and restaurants cram more people together, and oh, yes, they live in apartments more, which means often shared air, etc.

They also failed to take into account what now seems almost sure: that Italian doctors were doing strange and bizarre things in panic. Like the craziness with respirators, which also started here. You know, put the very elderly on respirators and shred their lungs, which simply don’t take well to pressure. Even here, the respirators don’t seem to help, and might hurt. And part of it is that apparently they’re hellishly difficult to set right, and that the tissues of the elderly are fragile.

Anyway, so they panicked, and they came up with “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Which was bloody stupid, and costly, but might actually have helped, if the virus had been what we expected from China. MAYBE.

But then they were afraid to open up.

You have to understand: as far as I can tell leftists have a pre-scientific mind. They’re moved by impressions, and deep set beliefs. And, because most of them really don’t believe in anything beyond their personal life (and I don’t mean supernatural, they also don’t seem to care much for what happens to other people or the world, after they’re gone. They might in fact not fully understand that one day, inevitably, they will be gone) the most important thing in the world is to keep their own personal life.

And they’ve never looked at numbers. And are unlikely to understand them, if they do. Their ideas of the world are formed on the penumbras of entertainment, the “news” and the system they were taught in school.

I remember, back when this all begun, I was screaming about the Diamond Princess numbers not being that bad, even when you count the fact that these people were all pushed together, that most of them were elderly, and that cruise ships are floating virus palaces. And I got told that those people got first rate medical care…. in a cruise ship. You know, those things where flu can actually kill vast numbers of people, and where diarreah runs rampant.

So here we are, a year of two weeks to flatten the curve. I don’t even know what our governors THINK they’re doing. I understand Polis, who must be innumerate and have trouble counting his fingers and getting the same number twice in a row, still thinks if he unlocks completely people are going to drop like flies, and 10% of the population will die. But I also think somewhere, in his walnut sized brain, a suspicion might be forming that when people are let out to live normal lives they will talk to each other, realize almost no one died who wouldn’t have died of anything anyway, look at what he’s done to our capital and our beautiful state, and that he’s going to be chased out of the state by Coloradans wielding torches. If he’s lucky of course.

And he’s not wrong. But what’s plan B? Keeping us locked up forever?

Why not, the amazing geniuses who used this plague of madness to take over DC seem to think they can stay there forever, if they just keep it surrounded by razor wire, and keep hunting “extremists” and “insurgents” under everyone’s beds.

That CDC thing, instructing the armed forces to hunt down insurrectionists in their midst identifies things like supporting the 2nd ammendment, thinking you have constitutional rights, or, you know, being anti-abortion as being “radicalized.”

Yes, you read that right. In the US, in the 21st century, believing you have rights as an American, the rights enshrined for us by the constitution, means that you’re dangerous, and a terrorist.

Oh, and communicating online is “escalating violence.” I swear I’m not making this up. By the lights of that briefing, I’m engaging in violence right now. Against whom,you say? Well, their cherished beliefs.

Look, I don’t think — or at least I hope — that most people on the left believe this, but at college level, at least, there are a lot of people who believe that your beliefs shape reality. This is why we get the left doing things like trying to curse Republicans and/or levitating the mint.

They are right in a way, of course. Their beliefs change reality…. for them. Because they live in a savage’s world of miracles and wonders, of portents and images that might or might not mean anything. Because they bought into a system that has nothing to do with reality, they can’t examine reality, or reason in any sense of the word. So, you know “people are dying under socialism” means “More people will die here.”

Which is the only thing that can make sense of their bizarre decisions: you know, why pot dispensaries are safe, but churches aren’t. Why grocery stores are safe, but fabric stores aren’t. Why we must all hide and wear masks to protect ourselves from something that, if we kept proper numbers, might not even be a bad flu.

And the problem is this: In the real world, out there, this is unmaking civilization, and destroying mankind’s ability to look after itself and to advance.

Already, connections, and the ability to get food — which the US grows the most of for the world — is breaking down in other countries. Already, even here, we have people in serious trouble financially, physically, etc.

Someone posted on farcebook a while back that the biggest hit from this nonsense will be this year. We’re going to see people die in droves because — having pre-existing conditions — they couldn’t wear masks to go to the doctor. We’re going to see people die in droves, because a lot of medical professionals — I swear I’m not making this up — are refusing to touch their patients while giving physical exams. A lot of people are going to die because they didn’t get needed tests. (I live with two people who are a year late on blood tests, because they’d have to wear masks while waiting, and that gives them problems.) More, a lot of people are going to die — are already dying — from despair and depression.

And here I confess I’m not doing very well myself. The only thing that can be said is that I’m working more than last year, aka the year the locust ate, but I have a good week, then get slammed down by depression for two.
The calculation on that is simple and frankly makes perfect sense. I realized sometime in my twenties that a lot of my hard-depressions could be headed off at the pass if I took at least a day a week, got out of the house, went to see people, and do something different in a new environment. I was most productive if on top of that we took a weekend every two or three months and went to something fun a little further away (Denver, when we lived in the Springs.) But I’m asthmatic. And I live in Colorado. Which means I have the choice of wearing a mask even at the zoo, or the botanic gardens (which is the most anti-scientific lunacy ever, since even if the virus were that lethal, it dies in the sunlight.) Yeah, mostly I wear the face shield. Which is still uncomfortable. But honestly, just driving around depresses me. Like last time we drove through town, there was a couple about our age, out for a walk. Both wearing masks. NO ONE NEAR THEM, except people in cars. They presumably live together. They’re outside. On a sunny day. Masked.

So I don’t go anywhere, except when I absolutely have to, which is usually the grocery store, and then I run through it like a mad person, to avoid screaming “Have all of you lost your minds? What are you afraid of? Do you see corpses piled on the street? It’s been a f*cking year. If you’re going to have it, most of you have already had it?”

So I stay inside the house for weeks at a time and I get depressed.

More depressed when someone in my conference says things like “What’s the big deal with wearing a mask. It keeps you from catching something that if you catch it will probably kill you.”

Probably kill you…. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL. You have something like 98% of chance of surviving it. HOW will it likely kill you? Unless you’re over 90, of course. And even then.

And then there’s the mask lunacy. Don’t get me started on the mask lunacy. Because we’re going to lose people because of the f*cking masks. And we’re going to have people permanently impaired, too. If I had to work outside the house, I’d probably be disabled by now, because a mask is enough to bring serial asthma attacks. And apparently lung cancer — sudden and very aggressive — is on the rise, and one article I saw thought it was the masks, and rebreathing. The article disappeared, of course.

But all of this is on the background of the mask packages themselves saying they’re for “fashion” purposes, and don’t really deter infection. And hell, this was a known fact until this year.

In fact, the mask cosplay seems to be around for one reason only: to continue to keep people scared. To delay the point at which the population at large realize they’ve been taken for a ride by their “betters” who in fact have no idea whatsoever how the world works.


And if you think that bad, think of how the world will feel, since they caught the panic from us, since normally our science is more reliable than theirs. And they’re going to starve. A vast portion of the civilized world is going to know hunger this year, for the first time in centuries.

The extent to which none of this made sense — though I knew it of course — dropped on my head in September, during our cannon-ball run cross country. Because every state enforces the madness differently. And some places are really mostly open, either officially or not.

So? So, there is no difference in their rates of infection or death. Which — again — for most people in working years, most people under, oh, 80, are negligible.

And no, no one is disparaging grandma. Except that I come from a society in which sixty was old, not the age at which you started a second career. And eighty year olds were so rare I saw my first one when I was 14. What allows grandma to be in the age group most at risk of COVID-19 is wealth. Which we are destroying, while keeping grandma locked down and making her waning years a living hell, to ward off a largely imaginary danger.

Michael Rothman wasn’t wrong. This novel isn’t very convincing. It reminds me of those novels of the seventies, written by authors on drugs, and accepted by editors on drugs, which strove to me “far out” instead of rational.

So far, it gives me a Phillip K. Dick vibe. The novels, not the movies, which inject some coherence.

Only Phillip K. Dick was chaotic, not malevolent. His novels didn’t seem to gloat over the inherent destruction of humankind.

And I’m getting a very strong feeling that’s how the novel ends. Humans, having run away from reason (perhaps driven mad by the very pace of progress) take apart the civilization that allows them to exist.

Right now I see two ends. One of them has the astronauts in the ISS trying to get Earth and getting no response, because the madness escalated, and everyone is dead.

The other? The other cuts 100 years ahead to cavemen scratching the soil amid the ruins of the civilization of “the gods” who came before them.

I don’t like either. I always thought those endings were a cheap cop-out.

It’s time to realize that the curve is more than flat. That what we face (and mostly now have herd immunity to) was at WORST a bad flu. That our supposed betters are a bunch of arse-monkeys who don’t even understand plain facts, let alone science.

Is it time for torches and pitchforks. Oh, more than time. Because unless the torches and pitchforks come out, those two endings are all that is left.

They weren’t fun or clever even in the seventies. They were exasperating. And eventually people got turned off from reading because of them. Because anything is better than irrationality that thinks itself clever.

It’s even less fun living through this. The seventies are dead. Stop taking hallucinogenics and look at reality. The danger was never what you were sold. Keeping insisting that we’re all going to die doesn’t make you clever or superior.

It makes you a caveman who is afraid because the shaman told him only the magical fabric on face can protect him from the wrath of the science gods.

And frankly the rest of us are looking up how to make torches, and there’s about to be a run on pitchforks, as we speak.

I don’t care if you want to hide under your bed forever and wear five or six or even seventeen masks. It’s your business.

But the business of life is living. And to provide for life, humans need to work. Magical money from the government isn’t edible. And neither is that mask.

Go and hide if you wish. Let the rest of us go free.

572 thoughts on “A Plague Of Madness”

    2. Nope, because a cargo cult at least apes the forms of something that worked.

      The left doesn’t even do that.

      1. Well, they do sort of ape what they THINK worked… which is after all the essense of a cargo cult: failure to understand the working part, and merely imitating the forms.

        I do think it’s a useful model for understanding why they go so thoroughly wrong, and can’t see that they have.

  2. What about a semifeudal option of a rulling knight class and a mass of serfs and slaves who live at the sufferance of the elites who wil still have technology for themselves.

      2. Only because our elites refuse to do what your most illiterate medieval knight did for his hides of land: provide protection from external threats and justice from criminal threats.

        They really have no idea the work an actual feudal lord did. Hell, they don’t have an idea of the work a planation owner in the old south did and he was arguably closer to their idea of being a ruler than any feudal lord ever was.

        1. I’ve heard that the attitude of plantation owners was VERY feudal. They felt an obligation toward their “servants”, not to abuse or abandon them.

          Not to mention that a feudal lord had the right to demand 40 days service from his serfs…but the duty to provide protection, dispense the common justice (you didn’t have the crazywork quilt of laws), and keep the roads in good repair.

          1. The planter class of the antebellum South was explicitly neo-feudal.
            And members publicly expressed their horror at the industrial North’s exploitation of factory workers in no uncertain terms.
            (It was all well and good to pay your employees so little they could scarce keep body and soul together. You wouldn’t want them to become indolent, after all. But to just use them and discard them? That was beastly beyond words! They were in your service, and you had a duty to them!)
            They very strongly objected to people being merely interchangeable labor units, and denounced that materialistic view as evil.
            (Even if some were quietly, secretly jealous.)

          2. And fine them if they didn’t show up for those days.

            There came a point when he would annoyed if they did show up because he could hire better labor with the fine money.

            1. Oh yes, very fine sentiment among a class who could sell children away from their parents, and refuse to allow the Gospel to be taught to their valued livestock “servants”.

              The very best slavers were a better deal than the very worst factory owners. Short of genocides, that generally true of every system.

              And yet the northern states had riots from the depressed wages created as people risked death to flee to those same factory jobs. I think God gave us kings for the same reason he gave us divorce: for a remedy for the hardness of our hearts, not because they are good things in themselves.

              1. Errr? That’s feudal system. He could not sell them at all — they were bound to the land. And Christian.

      1. Do you have any links for the ability to get food in other countries being affected? My husband and daughter are still caught up in the CCP virus nonsense. Also, have you seen what’s going on in Canada? It’s crazy.

            1. Masks and fear porn freaking everywhere. At least one arrest I am aware of with a guy visiting his mom.

              Can put a kid in daycare but not have a grandparent visit.

              Insanity

              Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer

              1. I think he’s talking about the forced quarantines taking place at undisclosed locations, with families of the imprisoned bring stonewalled.

                1. Or the elderly with cognitive impairment literally locked away from their families, being not merely neglected, but physically abused, their family not allowed in to check on them or even remove them to safety until they crash hard enough to be sent to the nearby hospital’s ICU, whereupon the physical evidence of the routine torture becomes apparent.

              2. I wish I could make you feel how bereft I feel, and sorry for your situation. I’m so, so sorry it’s this bad where you are.

            2. And my wife, who talks disparaging about government propaganda, is lapping it up as facts

              Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer

                1. It is frustrating as hell, because she is *smarter* than this, but literally every “reputable” source is telling her the same thing

                  2. And if I remember correctly she is Asian. There are parts of culture that stick, and there might be something genetic too in “compliance with authority” (at least in animals that’s genetic.) and Asians are at the compliant extreme for humans (Statistically and large- population speaking. Tons of individuals don’t follow.)
                    Unless I have you confused with someone else. At any rate, women are more authority-compliant, outwardly at least than men.
                    (Women in my family being the loud and annoying exception.)

                    1. I recall the story (from where, who knows anymore) about the soft-spoken obedient Asian wife… who speaks up and is a bit argumentative, after gaining citizenship. “American now!”

                    2. >> “(Women in my family being the loud and annoying exception.)”

                      Trust me, we’ve noticed. 😛

                    3. What you can’t even imagine is how I’m the quiet and biddable one on both sides of ancestresses. Heck, all sides. Paternal grandad’s mom was….. If half the stories about her are true…. weirdly I resemble her physically, in voice and expressions, except I’m not 6’1″

                    4. I think you are conflating me with someone else, there. She is a happy North American mutt. British on her mom’s side (also Spanish Jewish via unbroken maternal line, go figure), there is Norse, reek, and Turk in there as well, with enough Sioux that she could theoretically get status.

                      What she is, is a high school teacher with empathetic instincts, excellent document research skills, and zero head for stats.

            3. The particular one that hit the news from Canada was parents being told to isolate children as young as four — and showing no symptoms — for two weeks from members of their own household. Has people up in arms about torture and child abuse.

          2. Details, please? We’ve got a friend in Toronto we’d like to visit before any of us become old and grey, or have her come along to Dragon Con this year (please don’t cancel, please don’t cancel)

            1. When you come into Canada on a plane, you need to get a swab test at the airport. Incoming passengers are also being taken to “quarantine hotels,” which you can’t leave for two weeks. There’s also talk that neither you nor your family are allowed to know where you’re going. Check out Viva Frei and Rebel News on YouTube for more info.

              1. Do they not allow you Internet access at those hotels? Do they take away your GPS-equipped phone? If they don’t take away your GPS-equipped phone and block Internet access, how in the world do they expect your family not to learn where you are?

                Something doesn’t add up about these reports.

                  1. Apparently they’re not actually supposed to take away people’s belongings and luggage, or refuse to let them communicate with family, but it’s happening at some airports.

                    1. See “Two sets of books” and “troublesome priest”. They know what their masters intended.

        2. Well, no links, because the MSM is sitting on it hard, but food prices are skyrocketing in Europe. THey’ve already done that in the third world.
          What the hell is America’s hat up to now?

          2. I just replied to jasnaash about the quarantine hotels, but Peel Region (think it’s near Toronto) also requires you to put your kid in what amounts to solitary confinement for two weeks if the kid gets the WuFlu. This is for as young as four years old. The Toronto Sun has an article up, as well as other places.

              1. They really are, and -nobody- is buying it around here.

                Today, my day was rather nice because for the first time in ages I was able to GO INTO STORES and actually buy shit I picked out myself. I took Maximum Maxwell in for a doggie haircut, I went and bought a woodworking machine I’ve wanted for 30 years (shaper!), and I picked up some raw materials for stuff I’m making at Princess Auto. And everywhere I went, people are rolling their eyes about the face diapers and the government. Still wearing them, but openly questioning the whole thing.

                So really, now that the super-emergency-ohmyghodwe’reallgonnadieeeee! lock down bullshit is over, everything is perfectly normal. People are driving around doing stuff like always. My clandestine informant at Princess Auto said their sales have been better than ever through the lock down, and today the place was as busy as a Saturday, but it was only Tuesday. There was a line waiting outside because the people shopping exceeded the mandated number for the store.

                As to flying, crossing the border and the Covid-hotel/jail nightmare, you can’t find out what to expect without going there and doing it. The Covid-hotel/jail thing is real, but inconsistently applied. One flight lands, they all go to Covid-jail. Next flight, they all walk out and don’t even take the test. The story at the border changes daily, I wouldn’t even try it these days. It’s like they’ve all been turned loose to do whatever the hell they want, and they’re all giddy with it and running in circles.

                Unless you Know Somebody Important in the Canadian government, I’d strongly hesitate to travel here these days. It would “probably” be okay, but there’s a good possibility it might become really not okay without warning.

                  1. I don’t know, and that’s the problem. They change the rules, you see. One day, you can go. The next day, you can’t go.

                    Personally, I would not want to be in their clutches. They’re power tripping @$$h0les at the best of times, but now they are -frightened- power tripping @$$h0les.

    4. Nope, because feudalism, even unrefined versions, is a two-way street.

      The serfs and slaves get protection in exchange for supporting the lord. Not just from the invaders across the ocean, but the bandits in the woods and their neighbor stealing their crops.

      The would-be feudal lords we have will provide even rough justice, much less a refined version, to the bandits They will invite the invaders from across the sea. They will help our neighbor steal from us.

      Thus, we have no reason to feed and clothe them.

      They wish to be the feudal lords of their horror stories of repression, not the real flesh and blood men of history.

  3. The curve’s been flat since last March. I just saw an article titled “The Evolving Science Behind Masks” and I thought…Oh, so it’s NOT settled? Huh. And I like how they use “evolving” to cover up for “lying”. Like you I want to ask people why the hell they’re wearing a mask *outside*. I’ve said for over a year that this is NOT the M. Night. Shyamalan movie with those killer-fog-dispensing trees.

    Now I just shake my head. I make sure to smile at everyone…even the woman the other day who asked us not to pet her dog because of Wuflu. I just feel sorry for people like her.

    1. “unmaking civilization, and destroying mankind’s ability to look after itself and to advance”is intended, because the left believes only that by completely wrecking and remaking the world can they achieve their “socially just” Marxist utopia, which of course the elite must rule with absolute power to ensure that all the widgets think the same thoughts and say the same things.

      The reason they refuse to lift the lockdowns is because they want to permanently keep the power they have seized and seize even more power. Have no doubt that as soon as pressure builds more to end the CCP VIrus “health emergency”, the left worldwide, including Democrats here (but not the CCP who are stoking the hysteria for their own gain) to impose a “climate emergency” and a “racial justice emergency”. Democrats when stating why some protests were more equal than others expressly stated that gatherings supporting leftist orthodoxy on race or climate were to be encouraged notwithstanding the lockdowns (and their condemnation of protests against the lockdowns as creating a health “disaster”) because those protests involved “emergent” problems.

      Democrats in Congress have already lobbied HarrisBiden to declare a “climate emergency” and a “racism emergency” in order to impose draconian policies that would give Federal government unlimited power in the names of “saving the Earth” and “equity”. They know that voters don’t support these policies and simply want HarrisBiden to ban use of fossil fuels, impose Critical Race Theory Orthodoxy, ban speech, ban guns, etc., and redistribute wealth, all by decree. HarrisBiden are of course embracing using dictatorial power:

      https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/02/white-house-senior-adviser-administration-to-start-acting-now-on-reparations/

      That’s right, they are moving ahead with race-based redistribution of wealth by decree. Anyone who objects of course will find themselves deplatformed and banned as a “racist”.

      Looking at other reports worldwide of how freedom is being strangled worldwide, it unfortunately appears that unless something changes for the better very fast, new global dark age is upon is. Those who believe in liberty must prepare to survive the dark age and to immerse it in light so that freedom and liberty can shine again once more.

      1. “The reason they refuse to lift the lockdowns is because they want to permanently keep the power they have seized and seize even more power.”

        Yep. I also think there’s an element of bad incentives that isn’t helping. There are lots of people out there who think the government is able to solve every problem and don’t care much about what form the “solution” takes, as long as it’s something. (It’s like that joke syllogism: 1) We must do something. 2) This is something. 3) Therefore, we must do this.) These people vote, and they loooove lockdowns, because lockdowns are “doing something.” Even if the lust for control weren’t involved – and it is – this poses a problem.

          1. And votes. Which I guess is a subset of profit. And probably fun, for most of the pols involved. It’s not like they got into politics because they disliked power.

      2. Federal government service is a combination of reparations and affirmative action for blacks. I became aware of it around 2003.

        1. Nothing white people have done isn’t racist.

          When everything is racist, nothing is.

          The left has done more to make racism meaningless than all the civil rights leaders of the past century. Of course, they’ve done so by making what used to be defined as racism as a concept without a label.

        2. Tonight they had a ‘noted educator’ on Hannity bloviating about the ‘racist messages’ in Dr. Seuss. Hannity and Leo 2.0 both missed the question I would have asked:

          “Which Seuss illustrations do you find racist? Hold one up to the camera so we can all see it, and tell us what’s racist about it.”

          I would expect either some sort of objection to ‘displaying such racist images’ or an excuse of not having access to one at the moment, to which I would say:

          “OK, then tell us which illustrations are racist. Book title and page number. No, don’t just repeat your vague accusations, identify the actual pictures you’re calling racist. Why won’t you name the books and page numbers? I know why. We all do. You don’t dare to identify any specific images, because then everybody could look and see for themselves that you’re lying to them.”

          Hell, most Seuss characters aren’t even HUMAN! They’re fish. Birds. Cats. Elephants. Critters that don’t even exist. What race is the Grinch, or the Whos? What minority group do the Sneetches belong to?

          That’s probably the problem. The Leftroids can’t fit Seuss characters into any of their Designated Victim Groups, so they have to be eliminated.

          1. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s portrayals of Native Americans in her “Little House On the Prairie” novels have been faulted so often that the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from a lifetime achievement award it gives out each year. The association still gives out the Geisel Award for “the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year.”

            Not for much longer . . .

          2. Always go on the offensive when accused of ridiculous, awful stuff.

            I got accused of being waycist when I worked at the University of Washington. I had a team working for me and one Filipina decided she wanted to play the racism card. Called me a racist and said she was going to call the union rep.

            Cool. I went to my office, called the union rep, told him I had a racism charge that I needed his help with, and invited him to my office. He came, and I gathered my lovely lady into my office.

            “OK. Here’s the union rep. Describe how I’m racist.” I gave her advance notice so she’d be able to gather resources. Gave her time off as well. I WANTED her to give me the detail.

            She was mad because I’d moved her from her hiding spot in the corner office where she liked to play games and talk to her family into a room where she could be seen from the door. The room where she moved had Oscar, a Filipino, and Churai, from Thailand. She accused me of creating a minority room. When I told the union guy about the behavior issue, he thanked me and left.

            1. Ran into something similar when working for the USFS. Out of the blue got a call from the district staff. They’d had an employee fired from another crew, female employee. I was called because she was trying to get on the crew I worked on, and had filed a discrimination suit because they said “No”. The crew didn’t work in groups. Went to a site area in groups, but then split off into pairs. My response was “No. Not if I’m going to be assigned with her all the time. I don’t have a death wish.” Would have thought the reason she was fired would have been sufficient, as a safety problem (drug/alcohol); but, hey, she was a local. When, the case worker and investigator went out with the crew, being one of two females in the crew that season (which was funny because the other female crew member worked in the office, not in the field, except that day) I was asked if this was a “Typical day”. The case worker was having difficulty keeping up. Her response to my answer was interesting. “Fairly easy day actually. Usually we have to go further off the roads, the units are a lot more steep, there is a lot more brush, plus we split off to work in pairs.” Don’t know if she ended up on another crew or not. She didn’t end up on our crew.

              1. That is work many men don’t have the stamina for. Wow.

                And well done for keeping the raging cancer out of the team. It’s honestly not personal in these cases–your behavior is crap, stay off the team. People die when competence hierarchies are destroyed in this particular field of endeavor.

                Go write crappy code.

                1. That is work many men don’t have the stamina for. Wow.

                  –
                  Wasn’t Fire Crew. Not much of Pre-Sale work is being done these days. Rumors I’ve heard (haven’t worked that district since ’77, and left USFS altogether ’79, left timber ’81 – stupid Owl) is most the pre-sales work late ’70s have been tied up in lawsuits … Do not know how the Days Creek Fire and subsequent fires south of Canyonville have changed all that.

                  A lot of Foresters ended up Coding. Some even by choice; not many, but … Oh. Wait. I wonder if that is where they got the idea? Waves to Coal Minors, Oil and Pipeline Construction crews – “Welcome to mid-life career change.” Timber must have been the practice run. In general, however, (not always, and i can prove this) coding pays better than timber. While there were days I envied hubby being outside, there were days, that I really, really, didn’t.

                    1. Someday, in a happier world, I’ll get to hear those timber stories.

                      –
                      Not a lot of stories. Pre-sale is pretty tame. Get to hike around woods off trails. Job was running lines for logging and. Perimeter lines (compass, chain measure, and slope devices, now one person would use a GPS and walk the lines or perimeter). Walk multiple lines through units marking either “Take” or “Leave” trees. Walk lines through units Timber Cruising. Marking usually was an entire crew moving through unit. Timber Cruise could be entire crew, one line per pair, or one pair doing an entire unit.

                      Worse problem the work had was steep units with the chain. Practice was for the back person to “drop chain” catch up with the front person, front person would take off with chain. On steep units, when the chain was “dropped” if it wasn’t looped around something, down the slope it went without help. If it was remembered to loop it, when the front person started moving on downhill the back person need to be sure to hold chain as it slipped through fingers, make sure it didn’t slip all the way through … In retrospect I was often started out carrying a good 30 – 40% of my weight in paint when crew was marking units (no more than the guys did, just I weighted at least 70% less than they did (I was NOT overweight in those days).

                      Weather … Full gambit, except generally no snow (not June through August, maybe into September). Did work one fall (through mid-December) … I was not prepared for winter work, only had half the rain gear I needed. Don’t remember bugs being a big deal, I can be allergic to bites. Nor Poison Oak, that can also have bad breakouts with.

                      Log Scaling was even tamer. Didn’t care for log rafts, particularly, but that was unusual. I think we saw 1/2 dozen first six months we were in training and none beyond that. Only other “excitement” was when logging opened up on Helens and loggers were pulling off everything they could reach. That was an intellectual fun. Measurement was easy. So were deductions (blasted and cooked). Determining species OTOH … (Also had an all but new born kitten that came to work with me to the truck ramp. Hubby could have taken him, but yard work didn’t allow checking on kitten as frequently. Truck Ramp meant ability to check on kitten between loads.) Only other adventure was “teaching” log truckers that tailgating a sedan with a woman driver up the highway wasn’t particularly a good idea. She just might be the Log Scaler whose turn it is to be on your truck. You see “Time” meant something to those paid by the load. One maybe-might-be tempted to take their time to be very, very, meticulous. Didn’t help when the trucker bragged they’d tailgated some lady who turned off at the scale ramp that very morning. I’m pretty sure the driver turned white when I picked up his load ticket …

                    2. To have lived and walked through the woods as you did, it lights up my imagination. I can smell the pine straw.

                      Even the tame stories are especially appealing right now. It feels like a better, more understandable time.

                  1. No you won’t have to maintain code they wrote. Because they won’t write anything.

                    I Retired when I did, from coding, because of someone exactly like that woman from so long ago. Working in the woods high or (and) drunk, or (and) whacked out of your two remaining brain cells, is a whole lot different than coming into the office high/drunk/whacked out … As long as the problem doesn’t escalate into violence. Short of that. This individual wasn’t working on code, didn’t even have to prevent. Coding was not happening.

                    How does someone like that get hired, you ask? Son of the boss.

                    Note. When what was happening was explained to hubby, which I played down FWIW, his response was two words: “Quit. Now.” (Have I mentioned hubby is a keeper?)

          3. People are panicking. Dr. Seuss occupies a very large portion of the Top Books slots at Amazon.

      4. Yep. This is why the left has already declared both climate change and racism to be healthcare emergencies. Makes it convenient to loop UN, WHO, and WEF into it.

      5. So, whose wealth do they plan to take to pay these ‘reparations’? or do they plan to just print it??

        …or is that what the “wealth tax” that’s being floated is for? (Taking 3% over $50M, last I heard.)

        3. I note the folks who say something is “for your own good” do NOT ‘lead by example’. And THAT tells me everything I need to know about the person/people and the ‘something’.

      2. >> “Falsey has admitted to lying a few times already “For our own good””

        Is there a compilation somewhere of all the times he and the others behind our Covid policies have lied and/or broken their own rules? I know someone who’s brought into the Covid hysteria and absolutely believes the inflated numbers, so I figure showing her how dishonest the people behind it are might be an angle worth trying.

        1. Most were come by via Insty or PJmedia, Linking to them, though is usually not going to work with “True Believers” because they are totally obvs a bunch of rightwing nutter conservatives (because CNN and Hufpo would never lie about something like that. So i don’t know, offhand, any one place for all the carp that’s fit to wrap.

          1. Both are aggregators, more or less – should be able to track their sources

    3. Hell, the curve has been nose diving in NH. Was an all time high of 6800 cases end of Dec beginning of Jan, now it’s down to 2363 and dropping.

      1. Well, assuming whatever labs were doing the tests were honest. Given how many have been caught simply marking all tests as “positive”, I don’t think that’s a supportable viewpoint.

    4. A LOT of this downward trend is caused by not running the tests as many cycles (anything after 40 cycles WILL show positive, whether or not the person has it). By shortening the number of cycles, Voila! The Biden-Harris team become WINNERS! Not like that AWFUL Trump!

      Sorry for all the CAPS and !!!!!

      1. “(anything after 40 cycles WILL show positive, whether or not the person has it)”

        What, you mean kiwifruits aren’t actually infected with Winnie the Flu? What is this madness?

          1. Somebody needs to mask up those goats. And the papaya too, for good measure. Can’t be too careful.

            2. About this time last year there were pictures going around of Peeps with tiny little masks. 😀

            1. That happens tomorrow, denierbigotunperson. Its SCIENCE! Look up exponential growth, hater.

              (Must i?)

    6. i carry my tiny 1kg poodle in my overalls when shopping . Here in Sin City we MUST wear MASKS . The ladies still come by and pet her.
      heh

    7. 1. If the masks worked, why are we still wearing them?

      2. If the masks didn’t work, why are we still wearing them?

      1. I’ve been saying from the beginning is that the reason they’re wanting us to wear the masks, is because forcing us to wear ball gags would be too obvious.

        After a year of Americans putting up with this bullshit, I fully expect the Branch Covidians would eagerly embrace the ball gags if Fauci said so. “tRuSt ThE eXpUrTs!!!”

        Remember: The Nazis put doctors in charge of *their* tyranny, too.

  4. As Italy — which as I said at the time has a completely different population and culture, so not the same

    and which people here pointed out runs out of hospital beds every year…..

    2. I saw several people posting about how the flu doesn’t overwhelm hospitals, therefore making covid worse. Except..it does. Hospitals deal with overflow and surges from influenza all the time. All hospitals across the nation at the same time? No, but then one wouldn’t expect to see that anyway unless the Horvath dropped a plague over the entire country at once.

  5. We are a big plane and these leftists are monsters on the wing, trying to tear out an engine. William Shatner’s character did what he had to do in order to save the people from the monster. We have to be willing to do the same. I refuse to pretend that there’s nothing wrong. And I think a growing number of Americans are figuring this out too.

    1. Just remember to keep 2 pennies in your pocket to pay Charon for the boat ride. Because many of us are going to have to pay that price to water the tree. Of course I’d prefer to use tyrants only; but the phrase clearly says “and”.

      Besides, pennies have a picture of Lincoln on them. Nickels work too, they have Jefferson, and of course quarters have Washington. Don’t use dimes though, unless you want to go to the OTHER place; dimes have FDR on them. Half dollars with Kennedy? Meh. Dollars with Susan B, Anthony? Okay.

          1. In context, we’re talking about coins for Charon.

            Some of the “silver drachmas” are known to be made of nickel. (Dating before Christ, at that.)

            Not the chemical, the color.

            1. And Charon is taking you to “the other place” so FDR dimes are perfect.

              Having to pay the ferry man to take you to He’ll. There’s a story there…

              2. That’s okay, I’ll just keep my money and stay here. That way I can haunt the evil bastards responsible…

        2. And that brought me to…

          Anyone know what the movie clips are from? Cuz I’ve gotta see more of that.

          1. I think this might be the official video? Don’t hold me to that, though.

            1. Someone in the comments said it was from a documentary that’s on YT, but what I could find with similar titles wasn’t it.

        1. She was okay. Perhaps overinflated legend, but she was probably a decent wife and mother considering the conditions she lived under.

  6. I don’t leave my house either because it’s too much energy to fight the mask crazies. Our county’s mask mandate states explicitly that people with health conditions don’t have to wear masks, no one is allowed to ask what medical condition prevents it, and no one is allowed to deny them service, but this is honored in the breach 99% of the time.

    Fighting with people is too hard. Going out and looking at perfectly healthy people guiding tiny children around or in strollers in masks is too hard. When even going somewhere is a fight, you can only go out when you’re mentally prepared for that fight.

    (I do go out and do it, but it’s exhausting. And it makes me sad for days.)

      1. Oh, I go out, probably about once a week, with the mask mandate rules on my phone in case someone corners me, and I shop and walk around and do my business without a mask. I don’t have a problem fighting things, and have had some insane conversations (including with my ex-hair salon, which not only refused to let me in, but then wanted to charge me a cancellation fee for an appointment *they* were canceling). I’m committed–it’s my health or theirs, and I’m not going to privilege theirs over mine. I refuse to go out and wear a mask: either I go without, or I stay home.

        It’s just that I run out of energy when every day is a fight.

        1. I understand. to concern. But in my experience, they can only upset you if you allow them to. If they have mask mandates, ignore them, make them try to force you to wear the stupid thing. If they do insist, just shrug your shoulders, tell them that there are plenty of other places not scared by this silliness who’ll accept your business, and walk out with your head held high, whistling a happy tune (which will probably set them off too, the whistling spewing your non-existent virii all over their no doubt pristine store…).

          1. Not in Colorado, Doug. People have been SHOT for not wearing the mask. And our police are quite willing to put you away for it, too.
            I just wear the shield, but–

            1. Y’all really need to relocate to a free state. Those police states will do you in. Here, anyone drawing on you for not wearing a mask is likely to be met with return fire.

              1. We have tentatively penciled in a two-day drive and a house shopping expedition for the end of the month. G-d willing.
                We can’t move except (earliest) in June, and it might be December, but it gives us time to take several trips with a U Haul, and make sure what we need for the new place.
                I’ll also change my license, and Dan eventually will change his (it’s complicated) so if we need to evacuate, we’re locals who went to pick up son in CO.

                3. I will merely say that there are a lot of places to refugee to beside Texas and Florida. Both fine states, but not at the top of my list.

                  1. I’ve lived in Big Pine Key and Key West, FL. Copperas Cove, TX and Lawton, OK. Also San Diego, CA. And other places.

                    I cannot do flat. I cannot do excessive sunshine.

                    “Mountains, Gandalf” is why I moved home. Now? Idaho, maybe.

                4. Come to Florida. Our Gov told the demented-pedo to “F*** Off” over his threat to stop vaccine shipments because De Santes opened the state.
                  Sidebar:
                  I’m 76 and the only time I’ve put on the “the mask of shame” is when I had to go see my dentist and oral surgeon. Think about that… these people are sticking their(gloved) hands and sharp knives into my mouth and they are worried that I might breath on them.
                  Just stay away from the larger cities with their little tin-pot commies running those places.

          2. I’m honestly not sure how much “people can only upset you if you let them” advice I am willing to take. (Not angry at you, to be clear, in case it’s not easily legible from the text.) The problem is, the extend to which I’m willing not to be bothered by what my fellow human beings do or say to me is the extent to which I become more sociopathic. To decide, consciously, not to care what people think about you, you have to stop caring about people and your relationship with them.

            I’m not saying I’m not willing to do this, to some extent–but I’ve noticed that the more I’ve become “don’t let people upset you”ish, the more I become unhinged, socially, in a way I’m not comfortable with.

            I think I’m going to have to stick with “This bothers me, but I do what I feel is the right thing anyway” for as long as possible. When it becomes “I don’t care anymore,” then I don’t like what the inside of my head feels like.

            1. I think it’s probably a cultural thing. Here in Appalachia, the feelings of “you can’t tell me what to do” and “it’s none of your business so long as I’m not affecting you” are strong and inculcated in us from birth. There are two ways to externalize those, though. One is to take offense at anyone trying to control you; that way lies duels and conflict. The other way is to let their attempts to control you roll off your back; ignore them and just go on with what you want to do without engaging them. I’ve found that I’m happier with that than with the conflict, and that it often bothers the putative controllers even more than the conflict–at least the conflict tells them that you’re considering their position even if you oppose it, but ignoring them says to them that their position isn’t even worth your notice.

              1. It’s possible? (It might also be a sex-related thing, since a lot more men I’ve seen seem fine with ‘don’t care what people think’ behavior than women? Not sure, that’s just anecdotal.) But I love people, and am easily grieved, and I think it’s been enough decades that there’s not much I can do about it. Though I hear once I reach grandma status I’ll be able to qualify for ‘little old lady who doesn’t give a flying fig’ status at some point. I’m looking forward to being the eccentric artist grandma. XD

                1. Probably sex related.

                  From observation, women who really do go the ‘don’t care what people think’ route tend to horrify the guys who in theory don’t care what people think.

                  It’s generally just setting the level of “how much input others should have” in a different place, which looks a lot like not caring.

                  In school “everyone knew” that I didn’t care what folks thought. Totally false, I cared deeply– I just wasn’t willing to sacrifice what I believed to be right and true to their good will.

                  1. I think it’s not so much “how much” input others should have, as “who” should have that input.

                    I care very much what my wife thinks, and if she tells me “I don’t think you should do X, for $REASONS” then I’m probably not going to do X; or if I do end up doing X, it will be because I carefully considered $REASONS and decided that $OTHER_REASONS are more important.

                    But if Joe Random Leftist-on-the-Internet tells me I shouldn’t do X, I won’t give his opinion a second thought; I’ll do X or refrain from doing X entirely based on my own decision. He doesn’t get to tell me what to do.

                    However, if my friends at church want me to refrain from doing X, I’m likely to refrain from doing X based on courtesy towards them. Because I do give their opinions some weight. Not as much as my wife’s opinion, but way more than Joe Random Leftist-on-the-Internet’s opinion.

                    How much attention I pay to your opinions entirely depends on who you are.

                    1. Problem being, what do you do when Joe Random is actually giving you good advice, which can and will save your life?

                      You don’t want to throw out everything that comes from someone that isn’t a dear friend; you also don’t want your leader listening to whoever spoke last or loudest.

                      Which is why it breaks down so strongly by sex– and we need both if we’re going to test things, and hold to what is true.

                2. I’ve noticed that most of the dirty looks we get when out and about with bare faces are from women. Only guys I notice giving dirty looks are the clearly beta-males and I’ve never cared what they think of me.

                  1. When I notice lack of compliance, it’s nearly always men, as well. I can think of only one woman I saw maskless, compared to multiple men (and often in a couple, the man will be maskless, or wearing it down to expose his nose, but the woman will be complying).

                    1. which explains the bizarre looks I get.
                      BUT the other day in the grocery store I saw a mom (mom white, child some African mix, so either mixed marriage or adoption. Just saying this, because being an idiot I expected MORE compliance.)
                      Kit was ADORABLE and just pre verbal, at the age they make tons of sounds that sound like talk but aren’t. He reminded me SO MUCH of my kids I went into face/making, smiling mode.
                      And then I looked up and mom looked…. worried and I thought “oh, no. She thinks stranger danger.” (the kid was, thank heavens, maskless.)
                      And then I realized mom was wearing mask ENTIRELY on her chin. Completely.
                      I gave her an INSANE grin, and two thumbs up, and she laughed. That encounter HEALED my soul.

                    2. Can confirm re my wife and myself. I am actually quite glad I generally go shopping alone, because it minimizes her telling me to wear the stupid mask properly

                3. I think you’re partly right that it’s a sex-related thing and men are more likely to go the “don’t care what people think” route than women. I also think that the whole “women like bad boys” thing stems from this sort of thing, but adding in the confusing of two attitudes that look similar only on the surface. The “bad boy” has an attitude of “I don’t care what the world thinks, I’m going to do what I want.” The mature grown-up man has an attitude of “I don’t care what the world thinks, I’m going to do what’s right.” A man with the latter attitude would make an excellent husband. A man with the former attitude would not. But if people don’t think deeply about the very different consequences of those two behaviors, they just see the “don’t care what the world thinks” part, and so the part of the hindbrain which controls attraction says “Hey, attractive guy”. Some people can think past the hindbrain and say “Maybe he’s attractive, but he’d make a terrible husband” but many people can’t, or at least don’t. (Similar thing with men who marry women who have good looks but bad characters: they didn’t think past their hindbrains to realize that she’d be a terrible wife in the long run.)

                  1. That’s an amazing analysis that I will be thinking about for a while (and it is dovetailing in an interesting way with the first chapter of Jordan Peterson’s new book, where he talks about the balance between the need to respect existing social orders, and find ways to modify them when they no longer serve the spirit they were intended to preserve. I think ‘bad boys who break rules’ might have several vectors of utility, in that sense. And they also appeal to the adolescent desire to test rules for truth, which is not a bad thing, as long as you mature into an understanding of why some rules are necessary.)

            2. Can you wear these?

              They are safe to wear, are as effective in stopping “droplet transmission” (aka spit guards) as the filthy fabric bacteria-sinks, are “green” and “sustainable” unlike the paper placebo disposables, do not spread infection if you accidentally touch them, and cover the legal backsides of the braver based businesses who just don’t want to get jammed up by the Covid Commisars.

              Best of all you will know to whom to give repeat business when you’ve explained the above to the friendly shop keep, “Oh, that looks so.comfortable!” “It is! And it’s so much healthier! And convenient! Just rub it with some sanitizer after you leave and hang it from the rear view mirror.” And when you go back, they’re all wearing them.

          3. I’m going to continue increasing my bravery until I go looking for diaper conflict every day. 🙂

            If we are to be the light of the world, then I’m not hiding my beautiful face under a bushel basket.

            1. **setting up gofund me for bail money for Kathy**

              I got your back! 😀

              Somehow I must be conveying through looks alone that I am all out of f*cks to give if anybody were to say anything to me. And I smile and say hello to everybody we pass.

              1. You just gave me a dose of courage, thank you!

                Today is my day to go out in public for all things: sister’s 50th birthday present from the jewelry store, Hobby Lobby for the cheap CCP junk for decorations. And I am going to push my personal envelope. I must get free.

              2. >> “**setting up gofund me for bail money for Kathy**”

                I believe GoFundMe is one of the ones that will drop you when the SJWs complain. Try SubscribeStar; I hear they’re very resistant to cancel culture.

      2. I need to just back to where I was 15 years ago. At that time I was angry, a lot. One of the drivers we hired at Dominos said I’d delivered to him once and he upped the tip when he saw me at the door.

        He said I looked like I’d ax murder him if I didn’t get enough of a tip.

        I need people to think that will happen if they ask me about a mask.

          1. [rolls eyes]

            Whenever you try to sound scary I keep thinking of this:

            …And beside, if you ever decided to kill I’m guessing it’s not your ax – or even your gun – that people would need to be afraid of.

              1. More like, “Beware an ox who seems to know a lot about poisons and explosives, and probably has the wit to apply said knowledge without getting caught.”

                Not matter if ox slow, if ox have enough time to plan.

                  1. Which is why you bring that comic to mind; I trust you not to go there without extreme provocation.

                    Although I worry that sufficient provocation may be coming soon. Hopefully I’m wrong about that.

    3. I’m fortunate to be in a position that I can work from home, and I’ve been to my office ONCE in the past 11 1/2 months (not counting one trip to another building in the same complex to pick up an office chair). All of us here are getting on each other’s nerves something fierce. I rarely leave the house any more just to avoid dealing with the COVIDiots and the mask nutters. Although I will probably break down and get my hair cut on Saturday just to get rid of this nine-month Quarantine Mullet I’m stuck with.

      Fortunately, proud to say in our little corner of the world that myself and SheSellsSeashells occupy, common sense is still strong. Yes, North Carolina is still full of mask mandates but most folks in our particular redneck of the woods quietly ignore them and nobody seems to care all that much. Although it’s a crapshoot depending on which business you decide to go into.

      1. I’m in California. It’s mask or nothing. But I am highly amused at the large numbers of people who walk around with their noses out. As for me, I made my masks according to guidelines, and the fact that I can smell things through them tells me how ineffective they are. (But I don’t wear them on walks, or at the park. Sheesh. I’m sitting off to the side, and anyone who comes close enough to complain is in MY space.)

        1. i wear them while driving and sometimes the scents that come through are not what is there… several perfumes, all i can smell are the esthers….

          1. If I have another stop soon that requires the damn mask, I don’t take it off, but it does come DOWN. And yeah, it’s been known since at least *1920* (studies of effectiveness in 1918) that masks do NOT work. And really, unless the surgeon is coughing and/or sneezing, even THAT mask is theater.

            1. Eh, surgical masks are to make sure the surgeon doesn’t get an unexpected meal, or hawk a loogie in an open wound.

    4. I’ve taken to wearing a bandana as a neckerchief, turned around like a bank robber with the tail in the front. I get out of the car, I pull my mask up (SO like a bank robber, I have to chuckle), and go inside. It’s kabuki. You play along, all the timme laughing inside at everybody else. I sometimes wonder how many others are doing exactly the same — lip service, but still cocking a snook at the whole thing.

      1. The bandit mask is all I can wear, and I pull it down below my snout so I can breathe.

  7. This ties directly to my experience yesterday. Yesterday’s title: Retail Brownshirts Do The Dirty Work.

    I’m on a leave of absence from my retail job because I can’t wear the slave diaper without going insane and my body physically starts to reject it.

    Yesterday I got a bill for my union dues. Contacted the union rep. Fixed the union dues. Was told:
    1. Slave diapers will be mandatory for at least a year for sure and probably forever.
    2. Slave diapers keep you from giving the virus to another person, and must be worn. Of course!
    3. This rep would get the regular flu a thousand times over in succession but she be really scared of the ‘Rona because it’s so bad bad bad.
    4. If you get the ‘Rona you lungs instantly look like you’ve smoked your whole life.
    5. The ‘Rona is not the flu, it is an inflammatory disease.

    Then subjected myself to thirty minutes of a union townhall. (Audio, not zoom.) I learned:
    1. Retail workers hate regular citizens, especially ones who refuse the diaper. Retail workers actively call the police and other agencies on customers when their store leadership refuses to hound the citizen out of the store. “Ten people! Ten people!” In a Fred Meyer….
    2. The call began with a woman detailing how her mother, father, husband, and five year old child had all gotten the ‘Rona and died.
    3. Retail workers want to force people to use slave diapers 24/7. Non diaper wearers are responsible for the ‘Rona.
    4. Retail workers think they are heroes and should be paid $4 more an hour, and cannot believe that the store would close rather than pay 150 people $4 more an hour!

    The majority of the call was screaming about how customers should be forced out of the store and made to starve (literally) if they refuse the ‘Rona.

    The call with the union rep scared me so much I had to walk outside to still the humming–It felt like right before you jump out the door in the airplane, overloaded on fear.

    These people are the willing brownshirts for the state and federal authorities. WILLING to be the “good Germans.”

      1. THIS!

        When I pushed back against the “smoker lung” thing I asked “Do you really believe this?” That’s when I got the “I’d rather have the flu a thousand times than ‘Rona.”

        Kids DO NOT GET THE ‘RONA. They don’t transmit it, either.

        But that was the plan–scare the crap out of low IQ brownshirts to elevate them to rage-porn level, then let them loose on an unsuspecting public. These people were bitching about delivering curbside groceries to maskless drivers.

        1. “scare the crap out of low IQ brownshirts …”

          Minor quibble – they are not necessarily “low-IQ” so much as what Rush called them: low information.

          And much of the information they’re fed is garbage.

          We can rightly complain that they do not more acutely examine the information they’re fed, but their entire lives they’ve been conditioned to uncritically accept what “the authorities” pour into their bowls.

          Which is one of the lessons taught above all others by Heinlein: LOOK at what you’re being fed and decide for yourself whether it is hamburger or Alpo.
          ~

          1. Point taken. It was unkind, and inaccurate perhaps.

            They are programmed. And it’s sad.

        2. > Kids DO NOT GET THE ‘RONA.

          That always seemed like a key datum, if true.

          *Why* don’t they get COVID-19? Or is it such a nothingburger it just looks like another case of the sniffles, as far as their parents are concerned?

          1. I suspect they do get the virus, but the effects are… negligible.
            Sometimes I wonder (but not enough to pay for an unreliable antibody test) if I’ve had the virus but was asymptomatic. I *have* had co-workers with the symptoms and positive tests – and when $BigBoss isn’t around, almost nobody bothers with a mask fwiw. However, I do tend to work rather alone so maybe the distancing thing (some exposure, but low dwell time, thus minimizing viral load, so…) does work. *shrug*. Or maybe the zinc, etc. have done me well.

            1. As I understand it, “coronavirus” is a whole family of similar viruses, not just COVID-19. They’re everywhere, like staph and influenze virii. Most of them are either innocuous or minor inconveniences, the same way that the bumps you get from shaving (usually minor staph infections) aren’t MRSA, or the sniffles isn’t the 1918 Plague.

              Though I’ve been lied to so much in the last 15 months, they’ll have to start new claims by establishing that there actually *is* such a thing as a coronavirus… the chain of trust is thoroghly broken.

              1. Staphylococci and streptococci are bacteria, not viruses. Most cases of pneumonia are bacterial, not viral.

                Rhinoviruses, coronaviruses and influenza viruses are extremely common, which is why colds and flu are equally common. COVID19 is a particularly nasty variant of the common cold.

                The sad part is not the stupid itself; it’s how many people are still going along with the stupid. And the lies.

          2. I’ve been desultorily poking around about that datum.

            One explanation is that, in most children, the immune system is actually at its peak effectiveness – look at all of the diseases (like measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc.) that are debilitating if you have them as an adult, but almost all children can have them, be unhappy for a while, and then be bouncing off the walls again within the week.

            Another concept I found is that there is a “virulence tipping point” – most viruses, including this one, are just unable to get to the point where they are life threatening, unless there are other health problems with the host. Children largely do not have those problems. Those who do are in danger from this virus, as well as just about anything else. (I’ve volunteered several times to cook at the Ronald McDonald House. When you do that work, you do not get anywhere close to those kids, or their parent/guardian that is with them – and all of those are constantly professionally masked by the permanent staff. Essentially the same conditions as in the hospital pediatric treatment ward.)

            Yet another point I’ve seen is that the pediatric fatality rates (as a percentage of total fatalities) has dropped precipitously even with the “common” flu. Many attribute that to the much better nutrition of children these days compared to, say, 1918 (my wife’s mother was born after that one – but she still had rickets as a child). Even among the poorest and most ignorant demographic, even if the parents have the “diet from Hell” – the kid is likely to be fed something more nutritious.

            Most likely it is a combination of these things, and others.

            1. The modern U.S.A. “diet from Hell” is still a wonderful surplus of so much. Lousy combination, and overly fattening, but still *usually* fails to be actually deficient. Which is pretty damned impressive, really. Screwed up six ways from Sunday and STILL no deficiency diseases unless you *REALLY* work at it. Yeah, I have heard the story of the game who managed to en-scurvy himself. Today that takes effort of sorts. At least in the U.S.

              Scurvy. Rickets. Pellagra. Beriberi…

              1. Well, you are certainly welcome. Not so much “data mining,” though, as picking up various “expert opinions” and being able to filter them through a rather odd medical background.

                (Dad was a veterinarian, Mom was a microbiologist. Those books were around the house. Not only was the female body (of a variety of species) without mysteries to me, but I was probably a very rare seven year old who could tell you the difference between gram+ and gram- bacteria (the first are mostly the “cocci” – staph infections for instance, the second encompass a variety of nasties, like salmonella). Although my pronunciation of “hexamethyl pararosaniline chloride” was, I’m sure, rather amusing!

                1. Good night in the morning. I’m glad I know you now and not when you were seven. That might unnerve me until we got to know each other. 🙂

          3. Yes, if as I believe it is true, then could I please get some investigation about why?

            It’s a frustration with the lies: no one investigates anything, so we’re on a mad treasure hunt to find legitimate information.

            I called the union today and they refused to divulge her name or any information. Apparently it’s been “too soon” and we need to give her “some space.”

            The hunt continues. I can’t even find a news report except in the Washington Post, and I refuse to subscribe to read it.

        3. Actually the “smokers lung” thing is ‘almost’ accurate, and perfectly illustrates the reason why ‘Rona is doomsday’ persists even now.

          Why? Smokers lungs have little to no changes, so much so that smokers lungs are regularly used (it’s an irrelevant factor) in transplants (ditto hearts). This is just ‘common knowledge’ and any ‘medical’ reluctance to use such is actually purely ‘political’.

          Rates of cancer et al are no different than non-smokers (the decisive factors are actually a genetic disposition towards – i.e.. you have a family history of – and/or you have been exposed to certain specific virus’ – e.g. Coxsackie B, etc. smoking is at best an irrelevance, at worst a minor exacerbating factor). Which is why they had to ‘invent’ the imaginary ‘second-hand smoke’ myth to explain why the majority of lung cancer sufferers (as statistically expected since the majority don’t smoke) were/are non-smokers. (Just like the whole ‘pipe-smoking gives you mouth cancer’ thing was eventually shown to be that smokers in general, and pipe smokers in particular, really do have an ‘oral fixation’ and are more likely to give … er ‘oral pleasure’ to their partners, and thus more likely to contract oral HPV infections, which … causes mouth cancer. Duh!*).

          The whole ‘nasty black tarry lung’ thing they use is a deliberate lie by using coal-miners lungs, or those exposed to asbestos, as an excuse (to gain influence, power and money as usual – and has been used as a ‘template’ for every ‘health’ emergency since).

          There is a measurable increase in emphysema, probably secondary to the increased mucosal secretion and mucocilliary escalator clearance. The ‘funny’ thing is this partly accounts for increased clearance of viral particles and the decreased levels of Rona infections in smokers.

          Just as everybody ‘knows’ smokers lungs are black, shrivelled wrecks. That even looking at a cigarette will kill you (at a hundred paces from the reactions of some people who start psychosomatically coughing when they see one). Everybody ‘knows’ anyone not wearing a mask is a dangerous viral Petri-dish who ‘will’ kill granny just by driving by.

          ‘We’ think it’s a load-of-cobblers, deliberate misinformation/manipulation, or doubtful at best. ‘They’ really do believe, and are seriously terrified (however irrationally, it has become ‘common knowledge’ and an ‘unassailable truth’ … just like smoking ‘gives’ you cancer. nothing you say, do, no fact will ever change that).

          [*And now you know why I ‘smirk’ whenever I see that gentile and respectable elderly couple hand-in-hand. Her, with an adoring look for ‘her man’ whilst smoking a menthol, him with a satisfied all-is-right-with-world expression, holding his meerschaum … You too will never look at Granny and Grandad the same ever again]

          1. Scene: me, just finished your comment, mouth open, eyes wide…. Gradual understanding…. This is almost too much to absorb, the layers of lies that I knew were lies but you just said they were, too. Truth in print still makes me catch my breath.

            Thanks so much. This is the most useful comment ever. Or at least today.

            1. It does make you think, doesn’t it?

              The ‘original’ seminal smoking research was published in 1947 (not sure if it’s open source even now). They had noticed a significant rise in lung cancers post WW2. The possible causes were smoking and … the increase in ionising radiation from particulates post ‘the bombs’. They used white rats in three groups: smoking, ionising radiation, control.

              Results? Smoking showed no significant rise in lung cancers. Ionising radiation showed a massive increase. But, this is where it gets interesting, there had been a mistake. One set of rats from the smoking group was used in the ionising radiation exposure tests and … that group showed a significant ‘decrease’ over the non-smoking rat groups (still a rise, but less). It was posited that the increased expectoration and clearance reduced exposure, thus decreasing rates.

              This was the beginning of the cold war. Security of the nation, the world, relied on acceptance of the bomb. So, they rewrote it so smoking was the cause and … the rest is history.

              Add in when the anti-nuclear commies were left bereft and wandering post the collapse, who migrated to eco, climate and health ‘advocacy’ (yeh right) groups and they realised they had a sure-fire winner (with pols lining up for free money and power from the precident of restricting and taxing a centuries old product, which they’ve both used as a template for every other restriction they want since).

              To be clear, I’m not saying it’s good for you (although it’s still the gold standard treatment for Crohns and IBS, yes really, the mechanism isn’t known but 1-2 cigarettes a day prescribed … works and is in, in very very small print in the text-books) but it really isn’t the automatic death sentence, coffin nail it’s painted as. I can’t remember the specific paper (I’d blame Alzheimers but I’ve always been this way) but an analysis found the increased risk (for no family history, no viral exposure) was less than keeping a budgerigar. Oh, and if you barbecue, or have a wood/coal fire you’ll inhale every toxic particulate found in burning tobacco leaves, except nicotine (which you’ll already be getting from potatoes, tomatoes and egg-plant). Half an hour barbecuing is the equivalent, in particulates, of smoking … 240,000 cigarettes. Yet nobody says barbecues cause cancer because there’s no power/money in it.

              I know this purely because it is both personal (I smoke, as do doctors and nurses at significantly higher rates than the general population … because they’ve generally read the research, even if they aren’t allowed to tell you) and because I had access to that ‘other’ research because of ‘work’.

              What about areas I have less, or zero, knowledge and expertise in? I wonder daily about what I’m missing (yet another reason/excuse I smoke lol).

              2. Most of what popular culture believes is gospel I dismissed a hundred years ago as bs. Climate change as an AGW thing, smoking causes cancer, secondhand smoke causes cancer, IQ is meaningless…. All bs.

                If someone asks me now for a reason? It’s been so long I can’t even remember why, it’s so obvious.

                I get the feeling my greatest impact in the weeks to come is just saying “No, I don’t wear a slave muzzle, and you are going to bring my sister’s birthday present out to the curb, where I will greet you with a smile.”

                I smoked for a long time, and only quit because it didn’t fit my image. Had zero to do with health.

    2. There must quite some ‘Karens’ where you are. Here, someone shops sans mask, nobody gives a damn. Or rather, some look with envy, since they’re stuck with the mask as part of the dress code now.

      1. After yesterday I’m praying for creative solutions–I cannot live amongst this level of fear and insanity.

        Virtually 100% diapers: on the street, walking alone. On the street, walking with one other. In the parking lot. At the bus stop. On the sidewalks. Every. Single. Person.

        It’s horrifying. I can barely go out into public, and then I have to restrict movement and restore when I get home. My heart breaks for Sarah–I empathize.

          1. Just north of Seattle, in Edmonds, WA.

            I was raised about three miles south of here, in what’s now called Shoreline.

          1. The cities in Florida are definitely insane. People keep talking about ‘free Florida’ but that’s only outside city limits. :,

            1. Depends on the city.
              Daytona Beach is pretty good these days. Some businesses require masks, some don’t. Convenience store didn’t care. Total Wine did. Hardly anybody wears them outside.
              Unfortunately the county I live in still requires indoor businesses to require masks – with the silly restaurant and bar mask required from door to table but the table magically removes the danger. A handful of local businesses ignore the edict but none of the grocery stores do. The good thing is you cannot be fined for refusing to wear a mask. The bad is that you can be refused entry.
              But the parks have been open (maskless) the whole time as have the beaches except for a short period after the Spring Break kerfuffle.
              Sarah, you definitely need a vacation somewhere where everyday life is normal, or nearly so.

              1. I feel fortunate that no one wears them outside here, or obviously in restaurants (though a lot of the restaurants do the stupid ‘wear it to the table, then take it off’ thing–the mall even does a ‘don’t wear it in the food court, but do wear it everywhere else’ which is utterly loony). But too many places in my particular city are still very hyperactive about it.

                1. I’ve seen a few wearing them outside alone walking and two joggers with them on, though one lady jogger I’ll give a pass to, as I think she was just staying warm, but only a nutter jogs in -2f weather. But I have seen her on warmer mornings without it.

              2. The Larger the company the more mask theater you will see. The board members can sit at home and phone / zoom everything. There is no cost for mask compliance to them and some potential for customer or employee liability suits if they ignore masking. Plus all the virtue signaling points.

          2. I wish I could just hug you and we could share a look that says “We’ll get through this. Bloody, maybe, but we’ll get there.” Hang in there.

            CPAC gave the lie that FL was “open.”

              1. Sarah, one of the reasons I enjoy your blog so much is that when you describe your depression and what this madness is doing to your spirit, it’s like you hold up a mirror to my face.

                The darkness comes in waves.

            2. Georgia, in the small town places
              I can’t even get a table the restaurants are all so packed.

              1. It makes me happy to know such places exist these days. Really, really happy for the people, the businesses, the kids. Everybody.

        3. “The Sound of Silence”
          Simon and Garfunkle

          Hello darkness, my old friend
          I’ve come to talk with you again
          Because a vision softly creeping
          Left its seeds while I was sleeping
          And the vision that was planted in my brain
          Still remains
          Within the sound of silence

          In restless dreams I walked alone
          Narrow streets of cobblestone
          ‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
          I turned my collar to the cold and damp
          When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
          That split the night
          And touched the sound of silence

          And in the naked light, I saw
          Ten thousand people, maybe more
          People talking without speaking
          People hearing without listening
          People writing songs that voices never share
          And no one dared
          Disturb the sound of silence

          “Fools”, said I, “You do not know
          Silence like a cancer grows
          Hear my words that I might teach you
          Take my arms that I might reach you”
          But my words, like silent raindrops fell
          And echoed
          In the wells of silence

          And the people bowed and prayed
          To the neon god they made
          And the sign flashed out its warning
          In the words that it was forming
          And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
          And tenement halls”
          And whispered in the sound of silence

                1. “we’ve received complaints from some supposedly non-existent E.L.F. program about disruptions to their communications, and we’ve tracked it back to some guys named Tim and Avi, and some other guys out there doing the Baritone to contra bass thing.”

                  I heard Tim can get under the ability of a normal speaker system to make the sound

          2. Man. I have hated that song my entire life. I’ve never listened to the words; the music made me ache inside and I didn’t understand it so I hated it.

            The words are perfect. And I feel like crying.

            The loss. The loss.

            1. I’ve always had problems with music because of my hearing issues. Mondegreens are a frequent, if not constant, problem without a copy of the lyrics. This one has always haunted me; but sitting here thinking about how the left wants total conformity and total silencing of all dissent, yeah, it hit me right between the ears.

              1. It did me, too.

                I’m being led to a lot of old things; old memories, old music I used to listen to, old places I used to love. It’s like an invitation, if I could understand what it’s saying.

                Where are those life lyrics when you need them?

        4. Kathy, you need to pay less attention to the yahoos. Lots of people walk around with masks here in TN also. I ignore them. And I haven’t been stopped yet in a store for going in free-faced. Sometimes you get a disapproving frown, to which I just grin in response and continue on.

          1. Thanks, man. It’s a lifelong trauma response, and I’m working hard to overcome it.

        5. If you can head Northeast and find employment in Snohomish or deep rural King County (but Snohomish is better and housing is cheaper) it is much less pinko.

          You are living in Crazytown Central U.S.A. It is kookier than San Francisco. When the CCPox Panic shut down ECCC I was relieved not to have to drive there *just for the day* to work a gig at the event. You could not pay me to visit, much less live there at this point.

          2. I feel so validated. 🙂

            It’s hard looking at my beloved home and realizing that I may honestly have to leave here or become a felon. Have you heard the rumors about weapons? They’ve got the power and are feeling fey, so I don’t think I have the luxury of staying in the state anymore.

            Snohomish is a great short term idea. Island County, if I could figure out how. (I lived on Camano Island for a year, overlooking Port Susan Bay. Crazy beautiful with the wildlife and the view of the Cascades. Great neighbors, too.) The Peninsula…

      3. It depends on a variety of factors.

        Here in LA County, I saw a bicyclist wearing a mask while out getting his exercise.

        I don’t wear one while at the gas pump, and sometimes see others doing the same. But otherwise if I’m out and about, it’s pretty much impossible to do *anything* without a mask on.

        1. i’ve been wearing one while at the gas pump recently because its freezing and it keeps my face warm 😛

        2. Yeah, I’m also stuck in CA. I skip the face diaper when I can – it’s the principle of the thing, I don’t even personally mind them – but if I insisted on going maskless everywhere, I wouldn’t even be able to buy food.

            2. in Michigan myself, but can hop into Wisconsin if needs be (its just years away) So while dealing with Whitless, I spend more time in WI and Evers, while a crapstone as well, has a far shorter chain that has been yanked a time or two for going too far.

            3. Left Illinoying last year as living behind enemy lines was not good anymore. Came to the sweet state of Tennessee which my ancestors helped settle lo these may years ago. Most folks around here go maskless except inside the stores. Corporate policy dictates wearing and no one wants to get fired. But off the job I never bother.

          2. Yep, that’s me. At least thus far nobody’s yelled at me for being maskless outside—and we’re far from the only ones. (And most of the folk I see wearing masks while walking are elderly or Asian.)

        3. Oregon is still pretty crazy, but the signs are getting better. I wore a “medical” mask to the doctor’s office and to the hospital. One clerk told me to cover my nose. Don’t go to her station when possible. Had to wear the face diaper while being wheeled to the OR. By the time I got to the operating table, the feelgood juice blocked memory. covid not an issue when I was under… No mask in recovery or post-op; best for me with a back history of asthma.

          In OR, they’re using OR-OSHA as covid stasi. Too many customers without masks and a “concerned citizen” rats out the business. I think we’re less crazed than Washington, but only a bit. So, a fair number of places will only do curbside pickup for the free-breathers.

          When I can get out and about on my own, I’ll go back to the shield. I’ve used the forehead version for several months, but will try the jaw mounted spit shield when I can get to the box.

          1. I’m in the N. Willamette Valley, and I wear a mask …. pretty much never. Not to Fred Meyer, not to Home Depot, or Wilco, or Lowes, or the local Lumberyard.

            I do wear one in a couple woodworking stores IN Portland, mostly because wretched hive and I am usually not in the mood to be bitched at, etc.

      1. This isn’t even an exaggeration.

        Writing is hard work–I’ll read Sarah and the other authors here. I talk a lot, and paint.

        Thanks for the validation. “Ugh” fits just right.

    4. > WILLING to be the “good Germans.”

      DEMANDING to be the “good Germans.”

      FIFY

      1. THIS.

        There was one particularly awful chick who screamed about “the ten people who came into the store! the whole family!”

        1. Did you scream back with her, “Oh, the humanity! Those poor people, all of them about to die! Oh woe, oh woe! Aren’t you glad that your magic mask protected you from the certain death that awaits them?”

          1. That’s why I had to quit the call. The union sets it up so they can bleat junk at you, then refuse to let people actually talk.

            I know her store, it’s about an hour north of here. I think I might head on up to Burlington and walk into the store, find her, and point and laugh. Or shout “I’m eleven!”

              1. Yep. It has to be a blatant lie because the statistics are such that a combination of young people like that dying in one family is effectively impossible.

                1. Statistically “impossible” things happen, but— I’m pretty sure it’s performance art.

                  IE, a bald-faced lie.

                2. And a lie that began the call, to prime us to be good brownshirts.

                  The union lawyer encouraged people to contact him so he could get their managers fired–for not acting the proper slave muzzle nazi.

              2. I pondered doing just that yesterday. I wanted to see how I feel today.

                I’m on it.

            2. Be happy to help. If nothing else, I can check the Burlington Phone Book for you. It was a nice little town. I hope she works at the outlet mall. Be a shame if the town proper had gone to the dogs.

              1. Thanks so much. I love Burlington, or what I remember of it. It might still be a good spot.

          2. LOL. Not laughing at the people who died, but at the ones running around like chickens. Thing is, for an entire family cluster to go like that, that leads me to think there was either a major detrimental environmental condition in the household (too much CO in the house? were all of them obese from poor eating choices?), or the entire family had a genetic susceptibility to the virus (or both).

              1. Of course it isn’t.

                I talked to my union rep today. “Hey, can I get this info on this woman and what happened? I only caught a couple of minutes of her story, and wow, how awful is that? I’d like to send her a card. What actually happened?”

                “Weeeellllll, yeah, I know her, and yeah…. I didn’t hear the call but yeah, she lost her son, some family members…. yeah. We need to give her some space to heal….. yeah…..”

                Yeah. Right.

            2. Really, had the money wasted on masks gone to purchasing CO, smoke, and fuel gas detectors much more good would have been done – and FAR LESS HARM.

            3. They died of CO poisoning and their corpses tested positive, most likely

              Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer

    5. Retail workers actively call the police and other agencies on customers when their store leadership refuses to hound the citizen out of the store.

      Reporting is to be the new normal. My employer actively encourages you to report people who post wrong thought on social media. It was in the recent Code of Conduct training (ie, last month recent). It included a scenario of two employees arguing about CRT on social media. The training said “select all the below that are correct”

      A. $WRONGTHINKEMPLOYEE overlooked the fact that $EMPLOYER’s expectations for conduct extend to personal social media use.

      B. It was inappropriate for $SNITCHEMPLOYEE to engage in this debate with $WRONGTHINKEMPLOYEE on social media.

      C. Whatever employees do on their own time is their business.

      D. $SNITCHEMPLOYEE should have escalated his concerns instead of engaging $WRONGTHINKEMPLOYEE on social media.

      Only C was not to be selected. The next slide reinforced D.

      Snitching is to be the new normal.

      2. I have a feeling that “snitches get stitches” is likely to be a thing at times.

    6. Part of the Kung Flu response – intentionally so IMO – has been to prepare Americans to snitch on each other. You see how eagerly people have been denouncing each other for not wearing the face diaper.

      Just wait until the purges of the “domestic terrorists” – Trump voters – really get going.

      And the gun confiscation campaign.

      At least we have fair warning which of our neighbors would turn us in for harboring Jews in the attic, no?

      1. “At least we have fair warning which of our neighbors would turn us in for harboring Jews in the attic, no?”

        Right? So nice of them to self-identify like that.

  8. Here in the U.S. almost 3 million people die of SOMETHING every year. Around 240,000 a month. More than 7,800 every day. That is NORMAL. It’s inescapable. It’s the result of people having a lifespan of approximately 100 years — that means about 1% die every year.

    There is no evidence that the failed communist Chinese bio-weapon has increased that number. They’re trumpeting “500,000 deaths in 15 months!!!” like it’s the end of the world when more than three and a half million were going to die during that time ANYWAY! How many died OF COVID19? We don’t know. The data collection and analysis have both been buggered beyond belief.

    What will it take to stop people from listening to the FICUS and the Lying Lawn Gnome? Are they ever going to OPEN THEIR EYES and SEE?

    I knew people were stupid, but they have exceeded my lowest expectations.
    ———————————
    Weep for the future, Na’Toth. Weep for us all.”

    1. The rewards for becoming a brownshirt are plentiful and strong.

      My former coworkers are ready to pull the switch of death on people who refuse the slave diaper.

        1. Dude, seriously. It’s like “Do you really want to know what necklacing is all about? Because you’re going to find out if you keep this up.”

          I got plugged into Simon Roche a few years ago. A breathtaking eye opener.

    2. Deaths in excess are not out of line, at all right now. At most it’s a Blip and a blip based on gunshots, accidents, and other ridiculous things being credited to WuFlu to gin up its numbers.

    3. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s only three million. The population was – last I checked – 325 million, which means that the death rate is less than one percent, in a country where the life expectancy is well under 100.

      1. According to COVID tracking, it’s about 500K dead in the USA with/because of Chinavirus. Worldometer says 2.5M worldwide. Flu deaths curiously negligible.Funny that. FWIW, that’s about the death toll in the US for parts 1 and 2 of World War.

          1. Agreed, and that’s still gunshots with COVID. Not sure why, but the Wike had 400K USA combat deaths in WW2, but they added 100k non-combat deaths. No idea where those would have come from (or were they including Phillipine Islands there?)

            1. Basically, combat deaths = military personnel deaths caused by enemy action, non-combat deaths = military personnel deaths not caused by enemy action, in a particular conflict.

              Accidents (vehicular, airplane, shipboard), weather (many ships were lost with all hands to storms, rather than torpedoes, shells, or nutcases in planes), disease of all sorts. (The Spanish-American War actually had more non-combat deaths from disease than combat deaths – mostly yellow fever and malaria, although quite a bit of cholera and other nasties too.)

          2. Sorry, posting under Norco makes for loopy memory. Not sure when I can go to Ibuprofen/Acetaminophen, my preferred combination.
            war combat other USA total
            WW1 53,402 63,114 116,516
            WW2 291,557 113,842 405,399

    4. “Why does any advanced civilization seek to destroy less advanced one? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources that can be cultivated and exploited, but most of all, simply because they can.”

      So far, that’s the only explanation of current affairs I can support…

    5. “Unavoidable” deaths, no less. Because it only appeared once we were able to Do Something About It, not several months before we knew it was here, and thus it was everywhere.

  9. OK, the mean, snarly bit of me is whispering, “If P0lis things opening up will cause 10% of the populace to drop dead, maybe someone should murmur ‘inheritance tax’ and ‘estate tax’ into his ear and stand back.” But I’m in a Mood, and gallows humor is not always so funny.

    2. Could be whispered in Brown’s ear too. Oregon’s inheritance/estate tax is anything over a million. Well less than the federal version (for now, anyway). Probably why they haven’t thought of it is because Oregon isn’t known for their 1%-er’s. The one I know of was smart enough to change their primary residency to Texas … (BIL’s sister and husband). Even their mom dropped below the max because she was in a nursing home long enough … That is with a house on 1/2+ acre in Lake Oswego, they’ll be selling.

  10. I’m reminded of Obama, as he was busily taking apart the country in the name of fundamental change. Critics who said he was in over his head, or naive on a national and world scale, were wrong. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, whether you agreed with him or not.
    Likewise, our supposed betters appear to be ass-monkeys, but they do understand facts and science. They also know how pliable many are under mass psyops, so they are pushing and pulling them into the corral of government dependence and control. Governors of CA, NY, IL, MI, okay also CO, seriously lack ethics, morals, and wisdom, but they have intelligence.
    Lockdowns and masks would be easy to collapse if people refused en masse, but it seems many are not ready for that yet. By the time they are ready we may be up against things much more difficult than social distancing and masks. So we continue on, seeing people arrested for walking where they “shouldn’t”, or committing the sin of running their small business. I don’t even want to start on the schools!

    1. No. You’re giving them way too much credit. WAY to much.
      In the end, yeah, they’re cunning, they’re doing this for a reason, but they’re CRAZY and it doesn’t work.

      1. Well, you’re right in that, in the end their schemes don’t work. But dumb as a rock people can’t climb as high as they do (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.). The problem is that their intelligence is not tethered to wisdom, common sense, morals, etc. They are like computers running on a certain ideology program which is devoid of those good characteristics. Sane people can’t talk sense into the computer or the ideologically brainwashed. We need to walk away en masse from the game that they have designed.

        1. some of the stupidest people you will meet are the supposed smart ones
          often it takes much schooling and “intelect” to be that effing stupid

            1. “I’m no intellectual; I try to think for myself. It depressed me to see these mostly well-meaning people made tools of the few whose aim was to bring the whole shebang down around their ears.”

              – Steve Matucheck, “Operation Chaos”, by Poul Anderson

          3. I’ve been talking to one of those people lately, some authoress of the Left. Baen’s Bar conversation. She thinks winning an argument with me will make the world move the way she wants it to go.

            The pretzel logic is kind of impressive. She just keeps framing the argument to exclude anything that doesn’t support her, as if that -changes- something. It’s like throwing tennis balls at the wall of the school gym, no matter what you say it’ll bounce off.

            Kinda makes me wish I had some metaphorical 10lb iron shot and a trebuchet. “Here, bounce this.”

            1. Ever see the kid who makes the unmissable basketball net and the automatic pool cue? Part of his running joke is he has a wife setting that ensures she will miss, in part because she keeps beating him in a fair game.
              That is how leftoids tend to argue. level playing fields don’t favor them, so they have to ensure no one else can beat them because they change the rules and game so hard and fast Calvin and Hobbes will be discouraged at how silly it is.

        2. The difference is that Obama was a figurehead, not the actual leader. As I usually put it, we already had President Hillary.

        4. Er… dumb as rock people can. They’re just going on the system much smarter people created. They’re fourth generation dumb. I’ve seen the ones advanced in my field. DEAR LORD.

        5. Dumb as a rock combined with absolute sincerity and confidence can go a long way.

        6. I would note the following: Josef Stalin died at age 74. Mao Zedong died at age 82. Pol Pot died at age 72. The only outlier there is Vladimir Lenin (54) – and one wonders about that “brain hemorrhage.” Not a single one of them faced the consequences of their failing system – only the little people.

    2. Governors of CA, NY, IL, MI, okay also CO, seriously lack ethics, morals, and wisdom, but they have intelligence.

      I can’t speak to the other states, but I’ve been watching Governor Polis ever since he started his political career. Trust me, he does not have intelligence. He’s never even been in the same county as intelligence.

        1. Which suggests someone with cunning ” managing,” him in the background.

          1. Kind of. Look, they took the structures. A parrot that says “”I’m communist” would get the push to the top.
            Getting there isn’t the hard part. Doing the job is. This is part of the cluster we’re in. They’re ALL insane.

            1. I will whole heartedly agree with you there. They are all insane.
              Pharisees in Jesus time had the book knowledge but couldn’t/didn’t apply it in wisdom. Their power was most important to them. The unlearned underlings were chosen to see the light.
              As you said before, our “leaders” are cunning and doing things for a reason. Right on both accounts.

  11. The chance of survival doesn’t drop to under 99.9% until 50-55 or so, and not under 99% until 65, last I looked, and 70 and over was the worst at 95%.

    Also, a lot of this is based on numbers spit out by that knob at Imperial College who has never been right in his predictions, but this time, well this time was different! Even trying their damndest to give us massive numbers he is still orders of magnitude off, but let’s follow them anyway.

  12. I’ve noted before I haven’t changed my habits much over this two week lockdown as it moves into year two. I do miss some group gatherings and am amazed at the number of folks that have given up living to keep from dying, but I grateful that I’ve at least a small circle of friends quite willing to masklessly get within 2 or 3 feet of each other.

    I miss some of the gatherings but I won’t make do with zoom or whatever, I’ve no problem finding other ways to entertain myself.

    Sorry, group, no I won’t join you in the driveby honk to celebrate so and so’s birthday, while she waves from her doorstep (really happened.).

    We don’t have a zoo but I’m thinking of heading in to town and do some absurd watching; see how many yellow bellied blue diapered beaked, gloved, tittle wallabers I can count.

    Hum, maybe even start an absurd watchers club; “Hey, I just caught a glimpse of the exceedingly rare 3 masked double goggled split tail with a packet of extra sanitary handwipes AND a jumbo sized bottle of disinfectant spray in her natural habitat, Cosco!”

  13. Thank goodness we don’t have neighbors so close they’re breathing down our necks, but when there aren’t any leaves on the trees we can just see into two other properties. Late last fall I noticed one of our neighbors outside, raking leaves alone, wearing a mask. It’s so sad, like seeing someone descend into mental illness.

    We wear the silly masks, but only when it absolutely cannot be avoided. Fortunately, there’s no requirement here to wear them while outside so we just slip our single-layer, thin-cotton, homemade masks up when we walk into an establishment. It’s all window dressing; those flimsy masks I made won’t filter out anything but criticism from other people – not that the heftier masks do much of anything either. I still hate being forced into it, but we so seldom need to go anywhere that it’s bearable.

    In defiance of orders from above, we spent Thanksgiving out of state with family; family from another state visited us for Christmas, too. We’ll be traveling for Easter. In the meantime, no one in the family has gotten sick; in fact, none of us even knows anyone who’s gotten the virus. Did we win the coin toss or is this virus just not as deadly/contagious as the screaming heads on the news tell us? Our governor, a certifiable idiot, along with his head of health services, allegedly a real doctor, told us earlier in February that Vermont is still seeing a surge from Halloween and the other holidays. Really? Halloween? October? Causing a surge now? It was clear they were all fear mongering before, but this just makes them sound really desperate.

    1. “It’s so sad, like seeing someone descend into mental illness.”

      THIS. It’s impossible to watch.

    2. It’s why you see them hyperventilating about “the danger of new strains” that they note are more contagious but remarkably (sarc) never mention the severity of the new strains. As with the Soviet Union, what they don’t say tells you the real story; yes the virus is getting more contagious, but the severity and symptoms are getting milder to the point where it is basically no worse than the common cold, i.e. a regular coronavirus. Admitting that however would take away their efforts to keep the dictatorial power they have seized.

    3. In defense of the neighbor raking leaves in a mask, it may have been because of dust, mold, or other problems. Here in Scottsdale when I finally break down and rake the dead leaves off the gravel and bag them for the trash, I wear an N95 dust mask and gloves, because I know there have been rats/mice in the yard, and I do not want to breathe the dust. Hanta virus is a thing here. But that is the only time I’d wear a mask outside. // On the other hand, last week I stopped before turning onto the main street, waiting for a biker to go by. Helmet, gloves, spandex shorts, usual serious biker clothes and gear – and a mask fully covering mouth and nose. I just shook my head.

    4. I look around me at the behavior of these people and ask, “If this were as virulent and deadly as they imagine it to be (albeit for only a rare number of people under 70, like a really twisted lottery) what would they do?”

      The answer is “Not that. Not act like it was fairies.”

      If one actually did believe that the virus was all that, one would have to realize very quickly that no-one in charge is behaving reasonably or reliability (BLM, Anti-fa, the banning of the anti-parasiticals, random quarantines, fake masks, random distancing, crack down on all non compliant sptraders not just middle class white people and a few Jews, etc.) And of course, while mask-wearing is enforced, if unevenly, *hand washing* is not.

      One would realize that *nothing* was going to stop the spread since people with the right Pokemon points could do as they please, hotbeds of disease vectors would remain based on political points, medical treatment would be catch as catch can. Even if the magic cotton talisman kept the dark spirits at bay. The only sensible thing to do is wash your hands and roll the dice.

      Only if you believe that the magic fabric talisman (no matter how you wear it) keeps the evil spirits at bay, does any of this make sense.

      1. The whole comment mirrors my thoughts almost exactly. But this:

        “The only sensible thing to do is wash your hands and roll the dice.” BEAUTIFUL.

  14. Because we’re going to lose people because of the f*cking masks.

    Quite sure we already have.

    Oh, incidentally… our house is down with a cold. Which we can’t risk passing on to folks who CAN’T stay home all the time.

    Kids brought it back from church class, where I can’t help because everybody is masked. By order of the bishop. -.-

    On the other hand, at least EWTN is getting some support for their good work? (Yes, I know televised doesn’t “work” for you– but my brother is “going to” mass, again, so yay?)

    1. Quite sure we already have.

      Very early on in the saga there was a murder-suicide (or maybe double suicide? who knows) here in Illinois of a couple waiting on a kung flu test.

      Sure there are decent odds of it being an existing situation with a convenient excuse like the pool cleaner murder, but that is only one.

      1. I was thinking more directly– one of the reasons my mom doesn’t have to wear a mask, in Washington state, is because she’s got lung damage.

        Got walking pneumonia from wearing a mask all the time when they had those nasty fires.

        Found out it hadn’t just been the smoke when her doctor ripped her a new one because he’d seen the damage on her lungs and she hadn’t told him….

  15. “It makes you a caveman who is afraid because the shaman told him only the magical fabric on face can protect him from the wrath of the science gods.” My favorite line 🙂

    I particularly detest the way they’ve re-defined the word “science” to mean anything vaguely resembling a study which supports leftist talking points.

    1. You don’t actually *need* a study, even a biased or entirely falsified one. Just cobble up an abstract that supports your platform and post it in a few places. Even that will just get skimmed for keywords. The chance of someone going through the trouble to look for the full study is close to zero, particularly since most of that stuff is paywalled.

      That’s what “science” has become.

      “You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.”

  16. “…they also don’t seem to care much for what happens to other people or the world, after they’re gone. They might in fact not fully understand that one day, inevitably, they will be gone) the most important thing in the world is to keep their own personal life.”

    And according to RAH’s definition of morality, none of them are living a “moral” life.

    “In the US, in the 21st century, believing you have rights as an American, the rights enshrined for us by the constitution, means that you’re dangerous, and a terrorist.”

    Oh, I’ve ALWAYS been dangerous. In fact, most people are dangerous. It’s just some of them may be your friends. And it’s a survival trait to develop the dangerous into friends. Terrorist though? Nope. The thing the left doesn’t get is just because you’re scared to death of someone, doesn’t make those someones terrorists. In most cases, it means those on the left are paranoid schizophrenics, ranging from just a bit, to mildly neurotic, through full blown psychopaths.

    “Let the rest of us go free.”

    Because if you don’t, you won’t like us when we are really, Really, REALLY angry.

      1. Rap you can listen to all the way through, you say? Well, there’s this one on economics, of all things:

    3. Oh, speaking of you liking online videos: I recall you liked the Mystery Skulls Animated series I showed you last year. The one starring your fellow kitsune, remember? The fourth episode is out, though for some reason it’s not been added to the playlist. Since you’ve probably forgotten them by now the playlist with the first three starts here (fourth coming in follow-up comment):

        1. Glad you like it. Oh, and here’s a bonus from the same animator (who REALLY seems to like head-bopping):

            1. In that case, don’t forget the Last Will and Temperament video if he hasn’t seen it already:

  18. I’ve been having my own issues with the black dog lately, but I was reminded today, they cannot win.

    Remember how the Congress purged the guard station in DC of any potential Trump supporters? Apparently they followed that up by storing them in parking garages like cordwood, and supplying them with tainted food. It’s bad enough that they had to switch to MREs to ensure the troops weren’t getting food poisoning or other injuries. The moral of their supposed Pretorian Guard is absolutely rock bottom.

    They are not even Sampson. They’ve just built a prison for themselves, and called it heaven.

      1. Yeah, I heard that too.

        And insufficient calories for the activity too. Apparently for some days breakfast was a dinner roll and SunnyD.

        I’m like, we have the logistics to set up an honest to God Pizza Hut in Mosul or pretty much any other patch of desert in the middle of nowhere, but we can’t manage it in DC?

        States need to pull their guardsmen out of there. Leave the fence; my only regret is the pols boil might up the Smithsonian for munchies, but that’s just stuff. Even the OG Constitution is just a relic; the important one is the agreement to abide by the system, rather than the paper itself.

            1. “BINGO! We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Hold your cards, there might be a mistake….” Not.

      3. YGBSM. I’d ask if they were idiots, but that’s obvious. The first rule of having a King’s Guard is to make sure they are paid, fed, and housed. Otherwise, they get ideas about coups d’etat.

        I wonder how many pizzas it would take… (evil grin)

        1. Calzone, BBQ (the good kind), pizza, and some really good burgers. And some fish stuff, for Fridays for the observant. If you sent the good stuff, not many and not long would be my guess. Oh, and really good breakfast burritos, the ones that don’t skimp on the meaty part of the filling.

          2. Speaking of meaty parts, remember to celebrate March 20 with a big juicy burger, steak, or beef product of your preference!

            Colorado Governor Betrays Cattle Ranchers with ‘MeatOut Day’ Declaration
            By Wesley J. Smith
            March 2, 2021 7:24 AM
            Colorado is a cattle state. The industry brings in billions of dollars a year to Colorado’s economy and is responsible for about 170,000 jobs.

            But so what? Left-wing governor Jared Polis puts his ideology in front of the welfare of his constituents by declaring March 20 “MeatOut Day” in Colorado, urging state residents to go vegetarian. From the Newslinez story:

            This year, Colorado Governor Jared Polis is declaring March 20 “MeatOut Day” as a way to promote meatless diets to his constituents. Started in 1985 by animal-rights group Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), the MeatOut initiative was created to educate consumers about the benefits of a healthful, plant-based diet. Polis signed a proclamation in support of MeatOut, joining governors and mayors in 40 additional states and cities who have signed similar proclamations in recent years.

            The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association responded with a call for making March 20, “Meat In Day:”

            Colorado Cattlemen’s Association is promoting “Meat In Day” on March 20, 2021. On this day, CCA encourages Colorado to meet in a restaurant and order your favorite meat dish, meet your family and friends for a meal featuring meat!

            The goal of this day is to not only promote the benefits of meat consumption to Colorado, but to also patronize our local businesses, restaurants, etc. that have been deeply affected by the economic struggles of the pandemic. CCA is working with multiple groups to promote meat products through discounts, specials, and more! As we approach this day, we will be posting a full listing of businesses and restaurants to show your support to on this day.

            Take to social media with hashtags #BetterWithBeef and #MeatIn to promote your business and to showcase how you will be celebrating “Meat In” day!

            I don’t care what people eat. But I do think that a governor who materially attempts to undermine one of his state’s most important industries is not serving constituents well.

            Wesley J. Smith is an author and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.
            ~

            1. Friday, March 19th is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, so Latin/Roman Rite Catholics should be able to eat meat on that Friday, even though it’s Lent. (Solemnity outweighs Lent Friday, IIRC.)

              And of course, Saturday the 20th is totally okay.

            2. The cattlemen do their thing out of the cities and out of sight. They’re almost certainly not masking or distancing as ordered. Therefore they must be punished.

              *Everyone* not in the privileged classes must bend the knee…

    2. The Enemy has said that they are keeping the NG in town for a year.

      Over / under on how long until the troops kill every single politician in D.C. purely as a survival measure?

      2. I doubt that would be necessary. I’d expect creative procurement to be a more likely thing, as well as a lot of pressure back home for the states to pull their troops out, especially in the blue States with recall petitions going around.

        The post Vietnam army did a *lot* of work to make sure the US could never run an unpopular war again. I think we’re going to start seeing more and more of that coming to fruition.

      3. My guess is the military will split along combat and support lines. The REMFs are the good Germans, the infantry/artillery are the guys who actually do the blowing up and killing most of the time. They tend to be old school because dying is dying no matter when you’re in combat.

        And those boys will frag their leadership before they’ll go for some civilian.

  19. “I find myself routinely trying to talk my mom down from the crazy cakes sh*t they’re selling in Europe. Stuff like ‘America has lost more people in this virus than they did in two World Wars combined.’”

    We haven’t lost all that many – they’re just misplaced, a common bureaucratic snafu.

    Heck, according to the Federal Gov’t, in the Flu Epidemic of 1918: “In the United States, a quarter of the population caught the virus, 675,000 died, and life expectancy dropped by 12 years.” So this is nothing; for a quarter of our population to die now would entail … (lessee, 330M times 0.25 …) 82.5 million, or about 165 million people. I don’t think we’re getting close to that.

    The real plague sweeping the nation at preset is Karenism. Not just tyrannical bureaucracy, not just Cancel Culture, not even Big Tech Bigfooting; those are mere variants of the disease of Karenism: the belief that we are on this Earth to tell others how to live their lives eve when there is no direct threat from their choices.
    ~

    1. Um…

      Just going to note that one quarter of the population didn’t die from the Spanish Flu, either.

      1. Oops – haste is not my friend.

        Given the population growth in the intervening century and change, we’re not likely to see anything like the per capita equivalent of that 675,000 flu dead … and since the WuFlu seems to primarily affect elderly, I suspect we’ll not see anything near a 12-year life expectancy decrease … much less an equivalent percentage decrease as I suspect the life expectancy in 1918 was considerably less than it was in 2018.
        ~

  20. US Population in 1920: 106,021,537
    Dead Americans from WWI: 116,516
    WWI deaths relative to population: 0.1098%

    US Population in 1940: 132,164,569
    Dead Americans from WWII: 405,399
    WWII deaths relative to population: 0.3067%

    US Population in 2020: 332,639,000
    Dead Americans from COVID: Fewer than 500,000
    COVID deaths relative to population: Fewer than 0.0015%

    Sorry, ma, but COVID is two solid orders of magnitude less scary than the World Wars.

    References
    —————
    US Population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States
    War deaths: https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/22209/interactive-american-war-deaths-by-the-numbers

    1. Wimki claimed an additopnal 200K in WW2 for noncombant deaths. I didn’t try a followup.

    2. Best estimates are that the Spanish flu killed .5% of the US population (675,000) in 1918. More than WWI and WWII combined. Our ancestors were made of sterner stuff.

    3. But… but… the hospitals ran out of morgue space, and are using reefer trailers to store the dead bodies, and state health authorities have commandeered refrigerated storage space for the bodies!

      That one runs through the news cycle every couple of months.

      2. In a few cases, the problem was that the mortuarys and funeral homes couldn’t get the families to make arrangements fast enough for funerals because of the stay-at-home and social distancing cr-p. In one case, IIRC, the governor had decided that funeral homes et al were not “vital businesses.” *facepaw*

        1. I know one case they did run out of room– it was the unclaimed bodies locker, and some had been there a VERY long time, had nothing to do with COVID deaths except making it harder to decently dispose of remains.

  21. Interesting admission by our primary care doc:

    “the problem is this vaccine provokes a mostly cell mediated response rather than an antibody mediated one. and the antibody tests that we do to look for past COVID infections do not correlate with the immunity provided by the vaccine. there really isnt a followup effectiveness blood test for this vaccine. (yet). ”

    So basically there’s no way to know if it immunized jack and squat.

      1. my new doc just said no referrals to other services until i am vaccinated.

        that and otehr reasons are why i am going to ask for another doc.

        2. Get another doctor. If he’s that arrogant, he’s dangerous. Medicine isn’t like flight test, where you are buried with your mistake.

            1. Ah! But it’s not “patient treatment”, it’s for “safety” for the providers.

              You can’t be AGAINST safety…

                1. Yeah, today’s “safetyism” is one of the reasons I worry for the entire world. As life becomes more and more safe, less and less dangerous things are perceived as extinction level threats. If this is a pattern that human nature will always tend to fall into, how do we break out of it?

                  Maybe it will be the frontiers in space that save us from ourselves.

                2. Freedom is safety, the only safety you can trust. Those who put “safety” before “freedom” are saying that they are putting the decisions about your (and their, although they often ignore that) safety in someone else’s hands. And despite many attempts, history has shown that there is no way to ensure that these other hands will prioritize your safety over their own desires.

                  https://thewriterinblack.com/2020/04/06/freedom-or-safety-a-blast-from-the-past/

            1. My mom has an awful woman doctor. Arrogant is soft siding it.

              Start pulling down equipment and emptying drawers of tongue depressors on the floor. They’ll get the point. You’ll get a new MD.

          1. And if you want to go full gander sauce, share on social media.

            Is your #DoctorDeath efusing to refer you to cancer treatment until you get vaccinated like NAME? Report him here: LINK

      2. Frankly, even if I were inclined to do that, I still wouldn’t take this one. I have negative trust in the “experts” at this point, thanks to their behavior. If they assured me the sky was blue, I’d assume it’d spontaneously turned to purple polka dots. No way am I injecting myself with something they tell me is safe and effective.

        1. Lord Fauci of Science has admitted that he lied to make people do what he wanted.

          Why anyone should believe anything else he says after that has yet to be answered.

          2. Envisioning Lord Falsie’s face under water when I go to my happy place helps some.
            Of all the smug, self-satisfied, evil people…..
            Read how he handled AIDS. I think he just likes killing people.

            1. I don’t know if it was Fauci, but I remember when the Centers for Disease Control’s official policy was that AIDS could only be transferred by male-to-male anal intercourse. They stood by that long after people were ridiculing it.

              Funny, Google and Bing have nothing about that.

              Pretty soon there will be three “pasts”; what people remember, what was fixed by print, and what is electronic and endlessly mutable to match the current Narrative.

      3. Hubby mentioned getting the vaccine the other day. That we (read me) needed to find out where and how to get on a list … Too bad it is so confusing … I did look …

        I’m waiting for the next medical shoe to drop … as in “Oh no! Another leaked virus. Wait! Why is it attacking those who got the vaccine?”

          1. I do feel fairly safe about it because the friends of mine who are experts have cheerfully taken it. (I know quite a few people in the medical field, and some of them even have a specialty in epidemiology.) Note that the side effects, at worst, have been “yeah, I felt absolutely wiped out for 12 hours.”

            1. If you know someone with average to high blood pressure who believes they absolutely have to get one of the vaccines (in this case Pfizer, but it could apply to the others) have a plan for them

              1. Make sure his doctor (cardiologist if he has one) is or has a nurse on call.
              2. Get a blood pressure cuff, get it calibrated and learn how to use it Get good baselines for morning, noon, and night.
              3. Get a prescription for something like Coumadin (sp?) a strong blood pressure med that is safe to use with your other meds (if any)
              4. Check your blood pressure every few hours, and have a range at which you take the meds and a range at which you call 911 worked out with said doctor.

              My fit and otherwise healthy normie Aunt stroked out. My aged and frail mother near did but had the meds and one call nurse to help her through.

            2. I won’t question their expertise, but they’re putting unwarranted trust in layers of organizations that have already been caught lying.

        2. There’s some speculation that the mRNA shot is prep for ChinaVirus 2.0. Mom’s 97 and wants it . I can’t stop her, but “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

          1. Mom is 87 and gets her second shot tomorrow …

            some speculation that the mRNA shot is prep for ChinaVirus 2.0

            –
            Exactly!

            It isn’t I’m leery of the vaccine … I don’t trust China …

          2. My wife’s family all scrambled to get in line for the jab, and they’re leaning on her hard.

            A friend succumbed to the propaganda and went to get the shot. He found out the vaccine was “free”, but the clinic wanted $225 for the jab, and then that his insurance wouldn’t cover that. I made a stab at trying to talk him out of it, but another few days on Faceborg and he’ll probably be standing in line with his credit card. [sigh]

    2. On the other hand, since the serious cases all seem to involve the virus ramping up the immune system so much that it attacks the bodies own organs, perhaps having the response not being mediated by antibodies is a good thing?

      Again, the serious cases that are not due to secondary infection from the things that cause pneumonia are atypical of coronviruses, and support the premise that the virus was engineered. The fact that regular antibody tests tend to be negative after 3-4 months even after confirmed infection seems to support this. Thus an atypical vaccine might, or might not, be the better way to go. I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn as to the vaccines themselves as of yet.

    3. The main question is:

      A) does it do something other than “immunize against COVID-19”
      or
      B) is it just a placebo with nasty side effects

      1. With the new tech (mRNA shots have been tried, with some horrific results in animal tests on the SARS virus), I’d be concerned about C) D) and E).

        I don’t think it’s a placebo, but it ain’t a flu vaccine, and I’m not going that way. My body is a wreck because of the things I did. I don’t need nor want outside “help”.

  22. > they bought into a system that has nothing to do with reality

    No. They were *taught* a system that has nothing to do with reality, and carefully shielded from the consequences.

    In most cases, you’re dealing with the second generation. In a few, the third, since that kind of indoctrination became the norm.

  23. over 500k people have died in the us from Covid

    100k of them have been since Biden took office

    Gee, i thought he was going to wave a magic wand and we’d all be vaccinated?

    oh right, even once vaccinated we can still spread it and thus we still have to stay home(seriously, this is what people are being told)

  24. I said in a Book of Faces post months ago, that this time is like living in a dreary dystopian English science fiction novel from the sixties, that starts with an absurd social premise, and runs with it.

        1. Brunner. Ballard. Was there ANY English SF writer working in the Fifties/Sixties who <I<wasn't writing dystopian dreariness? Hoyle? (It’s been a long time since I read anything of Fred’s.) Moorcock assuredly was even if he was writing Sword & Sorcery.
          ~

          1. I think a big chunk of it was, those were the kinds of stories the editors (a few dozen of whom covered the whole genre) were paying money for.

            1. yep. Judging authors for what they published under trad pub is a LITTLE unfair, as to theme, etc, because it was what they were accepting.
              I turned my back on further advancement early because I couldn’t take what I’d have to do for it.

          2. Hoyle did one (“Inferno” novella, Not going to check; I’ve stood as much as I can stand for the while) about the galaxy going Seyfert, and the world barely surviving. Scottish lead who bugged out to his highlands home just before the balloon went up. Most of the rest is dealing with the wannabe warlords from the flatlands (tanks 0, chainsaws and snipers 10). It ends with the professor’s musing that God Himself shielded the Earth from utter destruction.

            Not dystopia. Looking at Brunner’s works, he seemed to have been pulpy in the 50s and early 60, then went dystopian. I almost liked Shockwave Rider at the time, probably more a commentary on my own state of mind in ’75. The rest pretty much were read-once and toss. Never quite walled any, but came close.

            1. I agree with your opinion on Brunner. I didn’t mind the pulpy stuff; some of it was quite good, and almost all of it was readable entertainment. But the likes of “Stand on Zanzibar”, “Total Eclipse” and “The Squares of the City” were downright depressing. But Brunner wrote a *lot* of stuff before that period; I found a bunch of it on archive.org.

              Heck, I actually like the old pulps. They generally had a beginning, a middle, an end, and someone ended up better than they started off. Or as Citizen G’Kar said, “…no moral ambiguity, no .. hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say, we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor!”

              I still like “The Shockwave Rider”, though my perception of it has changed a lot over the years.

              1. Not sure I have a copy of Rider anymore. Liked it back then, but now? Lots of better boss fights to see. Rather hated Eclipse. Can’t remember which one had the ergot-chem warfare leak. Meh.

                I missed the pulpy Brunner; at least the titles don’t ring any bells.

  25. My wife and I had decent teeth and gums until late last year when suddenly old fillings and crowns got worse. I was wondering why we both had problems and then found out about “mask mouth”.

    The mask isn’t just bad for lungs, like with people who have asthma, but it also increases gum disease. Our bodies are meant to exhale, but the masks makes us recycle all that stuff.

    It makes me really angry. I see all these smug people enjoying wearing their masks, and enjoying scolding other people, and the two of us have no choice but to comply because they all make reports to our employers if we are caught without one on, but we’re the ones who have to deal with the repercussions.

    1. Dang. One nice thing about knowing how to sew is that I made a whole lot of masks, so that, for example, when I was on jury duty, I was able to change out the masks regularly.

    2. Under the nose and breathe through the nose if you can. It is how I’ve been getting around the rules in IL since the fines were imposed.

      1. That’s what I do. I’ve not had anybody say anything yet…if confronted I plan to become a confused old lady. 😀

        1. You know…. There’s something wrong with my brain. It ONLY NOW occurred to me that if confronted I could speak in voluble Portuguese. Worse, village-dialect Portuguese. 😀

          3. As a former retail worker I would not only pay for your groceries but I’d call a limo to drive you home if you came in sans slave diaper and berated everyone in sight, loudly, in Portuguese.

            I need to learn just enough to be convincing. It’s an awesome language. I used to listen to a fellow in the service speak it–he married a Portuguese lady–and it was like music, lyrical to listen to.

  26. I left Facebook and stopped commenting about COVID on MeWe. The choir doesn’t need another sermon and the people who believe whatever CNN told them last night aren’t going to listen to me.

  27. Probably kill you

    *Snort*

    “Probably” means “more likely than not”. I.e. a greater than 50% chance.

    Using a Veterans Health Administration calculator, a 90 year old man, with diabetes with complications, Peripheral vascular disease, and Congestive heart failure has a 48% chance of dying if he gets COVID.

    A person in that situation probably shouldn’t be attending conventions to start with. Just sayin’.

    Here’s the calculator:
    https://www.mdcalc.com/veterans-health-administration-covid-19-vaco-index-covid-19-mortality

    For me, it gives an 8.8% chance (and, BTW, I had it–several positive tests so unlikely to be a false positive) and for me it was maybe just a hair worse than the H1N1 I had a few years ago–coughing up a lot of phlegm and the irritation from that cough causing a really painful sore throat.

    1. And that assumes VA quality care. Not something acceptable, like Cuban back alley doctors.

      1. now now
        seriously depends on the VA in question.
        Dad is currently intubated in the VA in Memphis as he developed a pneumonia after his chemo/radiation treatments (he has a past history of it happening and it killed him once years ago. He got better (~_^))

  28. For the past year, I feel like I’ve been living in the world’s most boring cyberpunk dystopia. All of the dreary, soul crushing conformity and authoritarianism, but none of the rebels have any of the cool fashion or magic hacking powers or whatever.

    1. a) cool is subjective, so my clothes are totally cool.
      b) in all seriousness, how about that cold snap?
      c) modern hacking is perhaps more magical when you understand how it works
      d) the information warfare has at least been interesting

      1. I bought one of these and it looks awesome! Unfortunately, it fogs up whenever I wear it. Does yours not do that?

        2. I cut two air holes in the bottom of the ‘beak’ and glued black plastic screen over them. Some fogging under some conditions, but I only wear it indoors, under protest.

          And I protest a LOT. 😛

      2. I’ve been wanting to do that, but so far all I’ve found are made out of rubber (which I refuse to wear), or way out of my price range. Need to get off my duff and get the leather, awl, and sewing needles out and make me a good one.

  29. So I’m going to fess up…
    I’m one of those “wear a mask to avoid conflict” sorts. Wife and I go to a restaurant, right at the door to go in I’ll put on a “mask” and it comes off the instant my butt is in the seat.
    Going into a store for whatever reason, same thing.

    Oh, the mask? Yeah, it’s one of those that you CAN NOT get a good seal with, that when you talk will work its’ way down your face until you stop it from moving, and because of the massive gaps around the sides probably couldn’t filter out a log thrown at your face…

    I was starting to stare at the black dog myself, late last year. Then we started getting back together with some friends of ours (who are not pro-mask) for dinner occasionally, and that helped IMMENSELY. I know it’s not a solution for all, sadly.

    I have noticed quite a few less people wearing masks outdoors around here, though.

    1. If you think avoiding conflict is the right idea, for you, and you’re doing it, then good.

      You know what that makes you?

      The guy who is able to pipe up and totally ruin some Karen’s day, when she goes to town on what she thinks is a safe target, not knowing that you don’t agree with her.

      Better yet, that vulnerable target is very likely to be someone who cannot wear a mask.

    2. One of the odd things about Oregon is that if you are wearing the face diaper, you’ll get the occasional Karen (including Costco staffers, grr) demanding that you cover your nose. I’ve had asthma 20 some years ago and recognize the signs, so the nose comes out ASAP. However, face shields are perfectly OK. I wore one from mid-summer (modulo doctor’s visits, especially the retina doc) until I blew out my knee. Now, visits to town are medical, so the diaper.

      Even in Costco, the shield is OK, and if it’s tilted up to give ram air, it’s OK. My resting bastard/berserker face slows down the Karens some. Some people use the spit shield–I have a pack, but have to unearth them.

  30. Was that real? Was it an amazing psy-ops? We don’t know.

    At the time I thought it was real. Seeing the experience in the “free” world, I’m now inclined to think it was a psy-ops to cow the rest of the world and buy the CCP some breathing room, at least until Pooh Bear’s Evil Twin dies. After that, what does he care.

    in that I think they recognize things like air, and trees and sometimes even humans

    That last is too far if their reaction to the dictionary definition of a woman, an adult human female, is any indication.

    Anyway, so they panicked, and they came up with “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Which was bloody stupid, and costly, but might actually have helped, if the virus had been what we expected from China. MAYBE.

    Here is where their stupidity hurts them. If it had just been two weeks to flatten the curve or fifteen days to slow the growth (the first annual celebration of which is now fifteen days away) and in retrospect had turned out to have no effect, I think it would not have hurt credibility. It would have been like what we were taught in nuclear power school: unless the ship needs power for a more sever emergency, put the reactor in the condition which will render it safe for the worst possible cause of current indications. Sure, that meant over-reacting sometimes, but in the times it didn’t you were covered and in the times you did recovery was relatively painless.

    Two weeks to flatten the curve would have been relatively painless for nearly the entire population. Most loss cash for workers who couldn’t work would be made up by overtime getting things back up and moving. Short lived shortages would goose prices enough to keep most businesses stable.

    So, being excessive while getting a grip and then getting back to normal would have ruled and the minor losses from it being found unnecessary would have been forgiven.

    After a year, not so much.

    A vast portion of the civilized world is going to know hunger this year, for the first time in centuries.

    The vast portion of the civlized world spent the last century outsourcing icky jobs like defense and agriculture. Now they are paying the price.

    In the words of Dennis Leary, “Like sucks, get a helmet.”

    Only Phillip K. Dick was chaotic, not malevolent. His novels didn’t seem to gloat over the inherent destruction of humankind.

    Dick was also competent. Surreal and chaotic as he was, there was a story in there and often a love for human beings.

    Certainly there was enough of both that RAH was willing to send a check to help out as he did with so many younger authors.

    I doubt RAH would urinate on the authors of this plot if they were on fire. Especially if they were on fire.

      1. And unlike too many moderns, PKD also had a general dislike of tyranny, even the supposedly beneficial ones.

      2. Everything of Dick’s I ever read was a combination of incoherent and depressing.

        I could never understand why so many people claimed to like his stuff.

          1. Meh. French music is depressing too. And I listen to it, in a certain mood.
            Dick is not really incoherent. And I don’t think he was AIMING for literary. he was just being himself.

            1. He may not have been aiming for it — from what I understand his mind was disintegrating — but the reaction of literary types was that.

                  2. That may be uncoupled.

                    Specific mental illnesses can strongly flavor writing, and especially sensitive reader can pick up on that flavor, even if the authors manage it well, and are not terribly ill.

                    Take bipolar. Adams was obviously ill enough with it that Hitchiker’s, etc., may have suffered a little from it. There are less ill bipolar writers, who are mostly making design choices from skill, and only rarely misjudging the audience because of the illness.

                    Thing about mental illnesses, they are rare, so the dysfunctional thinking of a specific illness would normally be found rarely in books. Also, dysfunctional people might have a harder time finishing writing a book.

                    If literary is an artifact of being bored by the books that are common, and books are common because most people enjoy them, we might expect literary to prize novelty. The rarity of a dysfunctional book written from illness would provide that novelty.

                    Anyway, I actually got into reading in the literary way with Kratman. I enjoyed them ordinarily as ordinary stories before I got into them enough to find out about the layers, etc. So I think that style of reading is legitimate, I’m just hugely skeptical of telling others that they must read that way. A skill that adults can develop by reading a lot does not automatically mean a skill that should be trained for adult reading ability.

                    That fallacy would also imply that, say, software architecture and systems engineering should be learned by every highschooler. a) You couldn’t teach that many disinterested people without dumbing down the material to the point of uselessness b) the people who could manage to learn the real thing anyway have the label diluted with the silly stuff. Literary instruction in absence of fannish obsession is not only useless, it is also harmful, because it discourages reading instead of encouraging it.

                    1. “If literary is an artifact of being bored by the books that are common, and books are common because most people enjoy them, we might expect literary to prize novelty.” TBH, I’ve always assumed that the point of literary writing was virtue signaling and the patina of superiority that it provides to both the writer and the reader. I guess “smug” is what I mostly get from it. Sometimes I think I should make more of an effort to read literary fiction, but every genre appeals to different human emotions and superiority and smugness are not ones that I get off on.

                      I’m sure that people who are fans of the genre would say they’re looking for other things. To each their own.

                    2. I picked up Pratchett’s issues in Thud, before he died. Probably because I was having similar issues with a different cause. Most people didn’t see it.

                    3. Yeah, I think Thud may have been the point where I quit, because I wasn’t up for watching the last of the decline. Combination of hitting home with some family history, and not being in a great mental place at the time.

                    4. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty

                      Good book. I recommend

        2. I dunno. My first Dick work was Clans of the Alphane Moon. Psychedlic (somewhat incoherent), but entertaining. Weaponized mental illness FTW? Cool! (But then I was, what, 13-14 years old when I encountered it.)

    2. “Seeing the experience in the “free” world, I’m now inclined to think it was a psy-ops to cow the rest of the world and buy the CCP some breathing room…”

      Bioweapon attack. Certainly the CCP behaved with a callous disregard for the norms of controlling infectious diseases – which civilized nations regard as the common enemy of all humanity. And they had a reason – cripple the economies of the West, torpedo Trump’s reelection if possible. And ultimately cripple the efforts of the United States to pivot to cope with the threat in the Pacific.

      1. If so, they had best be *damned* sure the truth doesn’t come out. You lot tend to have…. issues with sneak attackers. Things tend to mushroom, as it were

        Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer

        1. The truth IS out. Everybody in a position to do anything about it is just pretending it’s not.

          The virologist from Hong Kong who fled to the U.S. before the communists could make her ‘disappear’ laid out the complete design of COVID19 in a scientific paper. Steve Hilton has dug out how money funneled to the Wuhan lab by Anthony Fauci through EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak was used to fund COVID19 development. Patient Zero was a worker from that lab. The WHO spent months helping the communist Chinese cover the whole thing up, while they were deliberately flying thousands of disease carriers all over the world.

          And now a group from the WHO, led by that same Peter Daszak, is ‘investigating the origin of COVID19’. Gee, I wonder what they’ll find?

  33. Late last fall I noticed one of our neighbors outside, raking leaves alone, wearing a mask. It’s so sad, like seeing someone descend into mental illness.

    My neighbors, with one exception – a woman in her 70s – all seem to be wearing masks everywhere. I just saw my landlord/neighbor walk by wearing two masks. I’ve seen him and his wife in their car, just the two of them, both wearing masks. They put them on before they leave the house and don’t take them off until they’re safely inside with the door closed and locked.

    It is extremely sad. It’s especially sad to see otherwise perfectly healthy younger people wearing them too. But, on the other hand, I think I’m seeing more unmasked people out and about. I may be overly optimistic, but it seems that way.

  34. I went to a certain public function this past weekend (I won’t identify it so the venue doesn’t get in trouble) where there were many hundreds, if not a couple thousand, people wandering around looking at “stuff” and interacting with each other. About half were wearing masks of some sort, the rest of us weren’t. If I don’t end up with the bug in a couple of weeks, I’ll be convinced the mess is more overblown than even I thought it was, looking at the local numbers.

    Oh, and while restrictions are still in place here where I am, the NCAA is coming to town in a couple weeks and LO! the restrictions are easing because “the numbers look better.”

    Uh huh.

    1. “Gun show crud” is about as likely as “con crud” or “airport flu.”

      Any time you get a bunch of strangers together, some of them will pass on whatever it is they have.

      1. ‘Recruit Crud’ in the military. Take 80 guys from all over the country and put them all in one big room full of bunks for two months to swap germs. With one big bathroom.

        1. well, its really never been 80 guys in one big room, and really isn’t now. The largest bays were a platoon, and modern barracks are 8-man rooms for trainees.

          1. That’s what it was when I went to boot camp. One big room with two rows of 20 double bunks.

          2. Daggit, this MUST mean I’m getting old. MCRD San Diego, MCRD Paris Island, and the (new) recruit barracks at the range at Pendleton were all open squad bays in the 1990s.

            1. Also the “school barracks” at Dam Neck for NMITC.

              Dorm rooms you didn’t see until you got to the fleet.

            2. When i was in the army in ’89, the 80 man rooms were the old barracks that we spent two days cleaning up. They kinda try to split up the platoons now.

          3. In my basic in 1979 it was a big bay full of ladies; guys the same in a different building. And we were in the new barracks. The old splinter village two story wooden monstrosities held most of the trainees. Fort Jackson, SC. Took 24 hours for one cough to become 100.

            The new ones are like college dorm rooms. Big mistake.

            1. Well, at fort jackson, they’re platoon bays in the so-called ‘starships’

              The starship type barracks were still under construction when i was there. I was in the squad bay size rooms in what was called the ‘hollywood’ barracks, which as i understood were the old AIT barracks. As mentioned above, we spent two days cleaning out some of the ‘splinter village’ barracks up on tank hill.

              1. Oh, goodness, the memories.

                I was in Hollywood for my AIT, B-11-4. Still running in boots.

                Went to college at the University of South Carolina, Columbia campus. We did all our ROTC work (ROTC scholarship for college) in the same places I’d trained in Basic. It felt weird.

                1. our platoon had a tendency to get everywhere first… because instead of marching over tank hill, we ran around the base of it.

                  all the running in boots may have had an effect on later events…

    2. Well I say well done going free-face.

      If you get the flu, it’s cold and flu season. Good luck!

  35. “As Italy — [SNIP] — sank under the lack of hospital beds, our media and the left went insane,”

    Welllll …. they were already insane, but it flared up instead of being in remission. Under the Trump Nightmare they’d been insane to such a degree and for so long that it had been background noise. But yes, this was a full on fit of hysteria.
    ~

  36. “they have this mental map in which people are healthier, happier and have better health care, the closer a country is to socialism.”

    They also suffer the delusion that having health insurance is equivalent to having health care. As if having a coupon for an out-of-stock grocery item is equivalent to having the mac’n’cheese or toilet paper.
    ~

  37. “I also think somewhere, in his walnut sized brain, a suspicion might be forming that when people are let out to live normal lives they will talk to each other …”

    The old adage about having a tiger by the tail comes to mind; you’re okay so long as you can hold on but once you let go you’re dinner. So they hold on, and hold on and hold on and hope something will come along to get them out of this fix.
    ~

    1. N.B.: That is also why they’ve been hyperbolic about Florida’s governor deSantis and are about to go nuts over Gov. Abbott’s decision to reopen Texas “100 percent” and lift the mask mandate.
      ~

      1. John Hinderaker, at Power Line, asks:

        ARE MASK MANDATES CRUMBLING?
        [SNIP]
        Is the mask dam starting to break? I think so. In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds has lifted her state’s mask mandate. In Texas, too, Governor Abbott has said businesses can operate at full capacity, and no more masks. In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves has revoked the state’s mask mandate in all counties. And I believe there are a few more who have taken similar steps, like Montana and North Dakota, joining South Dakota which never had a mask law in the first place.

        As I say, the dam is breaking. Weirdly, many of the states that require masks are taking an anti-science line toward them. They, with help from the ever-unreliable federal government, are promoting the idea that even after you get vaccinated, you still have to wear a mask. Not to protect yourself, but to protect others. How you can transmit a disease you don’t have to someone else remains a mystery.

        Why do the authorities insist on such a patently unscientific position? Simple: you can’t tell, visually, whether a person has been vaccinated or not. Thus, authoritarian politicians and bureaucrats fear that if they admit that vaccinated people don’t need to continue wearing masks, then everyone will stop wearing them. And they won’t know whom to shame.
        [END EXCERPT]
        ~

        1. While calling Iowa’s still-too-much thing a mask mandate, we did indeed get rid of what we had.

          And cases, hospitalizations, etc, dropped.

          Any bets on if the places in state that do have mask mandates (like Des Moines proper) suddenly became sane, it’d drop even more?

        2. This: “authoritarian politicians and bureaucrats fear that if they admit that vaccinated people don’t need to continue wearing masks, then everyone will stop wearing them. And they won’t know whom to shame.”

          And on top of that, they’ve been loving being tinpot tyrants and really don’t want to give it up.

  38. “… we must all hide and wear placebo masks to protect ourselves …”

    Fixed that for you.
    ~

  39. “we have people in serious trouble financially”

    Cities likely have the highest concentration of renters in the United States. When tenants can’t work they can’t pay their rent, when tenants can’t pay their rent their landlords cannot pay their taxes nor do routine maintenance of their properties.

    To the astonishment of Progressives, this does ot lead to Jubilee.

    Albany has to move fast to prevent a housing disaster
    Pandemic lockdowns have left all too may New Yorkers unable to pay the rent — and deeply in debt to landlords who themselves are often in deep peril. Yet the state government is sitting on over $1 billion in emergency relief that the feds sent to alleviate the crisis.

    In December, Washington OK’d a second major COVID-19 rescue package that included $1.3 billion for rental assistance here: funds to cover tenants’ back rent, providing landlords with desperately needed cash.

    Yet Albany has dithered, raising the possibility that it’ll fail to hand out the funds by the federal deadline — again. The feds could then channel them to states with better records.

    New York muffed its first go-’round with federal rent aid: Of $100 million from last spring’s CARES Act, it’s disbursed just $41 million. If not for a last-minute extension by the feds, the state would’ve had to return an unused $59 million. Even now, it remains on a shelf, along with the new $1.3 billion.

    Meanwhile, landlords are “at the edge of the cliff,” pleads Rent Stabilization Association President Joseph Strasburg. On Wednesday, the Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents 4,000 city building owners, reported that unpaid rent (by 17 percent of tenants in February) and high vacancy rates (12 percent) have left hundreds of landlords “running out” of reserves and “struggling to pay their bills.”

    Yet state powerbrokers want to keep sitting on the cash until passage of a new budget and possibly a new law, with more “guidelines.” Landlords need that cash now.

    Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature need to move fast to OK release of the funds.

    Hoarding emergency money that’s needed to prevent a housing-market collapse: Can New York’s leaders sink any lower?
    ~

      2. Despicable Kate Brown thinks it’s perfectly fine to screw over rural Oregon counties and small landlords (and other small businesses) in favor of her cronies in the Portland-Salem Axis of Evil. She claims to have “science” on her side for the lockdown stuff, while being careful to keep anything out of sight. St. Sikorsky, hear our plea!

    2. They’re not handing out the assistance because they believe landlords have giant piles of money just sitting around to swim in, when they’re not finding ways to blame the plumbing exploding on the floor above on the tenant whose apartment became a swimming pool.

      Wonder how many landlords are going to just walk away from their rental properties by the end of this madness. The ones they’ve been on the hook to keep paying taxes, utilities, upkeep on, but thanks to the “can’t kick out renters for non-payment” crap, haven’t had a positive cash flow in months…

      1. I just wonder if they’re trying to find a way to divert that money to something useful….like state employee pension funds.

        1. They’d never do that! They ALWAYS use money for exactly what it’s supposed to be for! /S

          1. Heck. They won’t have to divert a dime. There is sure to be a hidden billion (two, three, or ???) to bail out public pension funds off the backs of tax payers and at the expense of public pensions that have been conservative, that don’t need bailing out.

            We only hear/read about how bad CA and NY pension funds are. They aren’t the only ones. Oregon (PERS) has been forced, a couple of times, to adjust. I’m sure they are in line to grab as much money as they can.

            1. Remember that money is fungible. If they get X dollars to spend on, oh, education, they just reduce the budget for education from the general funds.

        2. They need time and legislation to launder the funds to the various NGOs and community organisers and all the other activists and corporate hacks who need time to appoint their relatives and clients to lucrative make-work positions and the whole co-founder of organized grift and grundie-ism we know as the Deep State.

          That they would rather lose the payola entirely and screw over desperate people if they cannot direct nearly all of it to themselves and their pets is the part that gives me the grue.

          Narcissist psychos. Running everything.

          Pensions. Heh. Pensions would be a *good* sign.

      2. I think it will be a massive buyout of medium properties by the big guys, while the one-house landlords/small bizs will go under and the properties will go to receivership.

        1. Yeah. This whole thing starts to look like an attack on medium and small businesses by mega crony corporations and their government minions. If you squint and you don’t have to squint very hard.

  40. “So? So, there is no difference in their rates of infection or death. Which — again — for most people in working years, most people under, oh, 80, are negligible.”

    Jim Geraghty, yesterday in his “Morning Jolt” newsletter:The ‘Right People’ in Government Won’t Save Us
    … As Andrew Cuomo admits to “unwanted flirtation” and various media institutions begin to realize that Cuomo’s record on the pandemic isn’t as great as the hype suggested — and that the story in most European countries is the same — Ross Douthat contends that this reflects the media yearning for a heroic figure who “Got the Pandemic Right.” I would point out that it reflects a separate, broader belief: that when a crisis hits, the “right people” in government will save us. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that state policy decisions really altered the outcomes of the pandemic as much as everyone hoped.

    [SNIP]

    The moment people realized they were dealing with something new and frightening in the pandemic in early 2020, they hungered for leadership. Some people turned to Anthony Fauci with a reverence sometimes bordering on religious. Those who were convinced that it couldn’t be that bad, and that everyone was overhyping the threat, turned to the likes of Alex Berenson. Everybody wanted to find their expert who really understood everything that was going on and knew what to do and had all the answers.

    Over the past year, I’ve been pretty darn critical of elected leaders at a bunch of levels — former President Trump, Bill de Blasio, Cuomo, Whitmer, and all the idiot governors and mayors who broke their own quarantine rules. I’ve pointed out that the media don’t just overpraise Democratic governors; they overpraise the wrong ones. There is a lot to criticize in the federal-, state-, and local-government responses to the pandemic.

    But a lot of evidence also suggests that a nation’s or state’s success in preventing coronavirus deaths had a lot to do with geography, population density, poverty, mass-transit usage, preexisting health problems, and other factors that government really can’t control. Policy choices probably have some effect, but most likely less effect than impassioned supporters and critics think. If sweeping lockdowns worked as well as their supporters believed, shouldn’t California be doing much better at preventing cases and deaths? By one measure, the state with the fewest COVID-19 restrictions was Oklahoma. The state ranks eighth in the country in cases per million residents and 36th in the country in deaths per million residents. That same study ranked California the most heavily restricted state in the country; the Golden State is ranked 26th in the country in cases per million residents and 30th in deaths per million residents.

    A few weeks ago, The Economist pointed out that despite dramatically different policies, California and Texas are generating similar results:

    [SNIP]

    If you really want to terrify a political junkie or health-policy wonk, tell them that all of the policy decisions they’ve been arguing about for the past year didn’t matter that much, and government-imposed quarantine restrictions only had a modest effect on the pandemic’s outcomes.

    [SNIP]

    When people are facing something that frightens them, they want a leader, and they may not-so-secretly want a savior figure. Think of all of those prayer candles featuring political figures. A lot of politicians sell themselves to the public as savior figures anyway. (“I alone can fix it.”)

    Life throws a lot of problems at us that we have no real control over — earthquakes, hurricanes, heat waves, viruses — and those are the natural disasters; we’re not even getting into manmade disasters such as terrorist attacks, wars, waves of refugees, hackers, the violence of transnational criminal organizations, human trafficking, etc. We establish government to protect our rights and to give us some tools for collective action against problems too big for any one person to fix. You might be a genius or fabulously wealthy or immensely talented, but when a hurricane levels your community, you’re going to need some help from FEMA and the National Guard and the Red Cross.

    But there are significant limits to the effectiveness of government, at all levels. And while government can often mitigate the damage of those terrible events in some ways, it can rarely prevent them. We still live in a fallen world, and every once in a while, something terrible is going to come our way — and all of our expertise, all of our riches, all of our tools and technology will not be able to insulate us from hardship and pain.

    Particularly for people who think about (and write about) politics a lot, there is an intense belief that every disaster that befalls us must be, on some level, a policy failure. We can improve our construction codes, but an intense enough earthquake or hurricane or flood is still going to do a lot of damage. We can try to avoid war, but sometimes somebody’s going to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers and start one with us. We can be the country best prepared for a pandemic — but if a new virus is contagious enough and gets into our population undetected, we’re going to be playing catch-up until a sufficient number of people are vaccinated.

    A lot of people act as if they believe, “If we just elect the right people, then bad things won’t happen in our lives.” And if bad things are happening in our lives, it must be because we elected the wrong people. The other party doesn’t just disagree with us on the right ideas; it prevents the utopia that our guys could easily enact if its guys would just get out of the way.
    [END EXCERPT]

    If the right leadership, the right policies, the right superstitions don’t mean we can be safe, we’re left with rolling with the blow and accepting what losses we take.

    You know: we’re left with living.
    ~

  41. What bugs me about this whole business is that 13 months ago, there were three choices. Do nothing, a hard lockdown for 15-30 days, or a compromise. I can understand not Doing Nothing, although history has shown that to have been the correct COA. A hard lockdown, letting the infection burn itself out, would have worked. But the compromise…as with most compromise solutions, it was a worst of all worlds.

    In any event, I expect the Mask Raj to collapse starting in April. People are catching wise…and the hysterics are likely to catch a fist or worse come mid-May.

  42. I’m tired of this game that is being played, for all of the benefits that I’ve gained from it. Savings in the bank, bit better personal health, bit of writing done, no longer at the dumpster fire of a job. But, the cost, the cost!

    I haven’t seen some of my friends, at all, in a year. Tried talking to them on the phone, via the webcam…but I miss them. And, their smell. And their voice and bodies.

    I haven’t been to any of my usual social locations in a year. No conventions, no real events.

    This deep, dark feeling that I’m the only sane human in a society of vampires, as everybody else changes but me. That I have tried to explain these things to people, only to have those I love call me a monster.

    To watch these people not want to really fix things, or let them fall into further disrepair because that seems to be the right thing to do.

    Have I gone mad? Truly mad and insane? Wondering if I have lost that last point of reference to maintain my sanity?

    Or…am I the only sane one in an insane world-a fixed point in space and time as chaos rolls around me a storm?

    I have no answers. Only more questions.

    And, only more fears.

          1. It’s more that they’re being used. They’ve been taught how to stampede on cue, and they’re being driven all over the landscape to exhaust themselves, cull the weakest members of the herd, and doing it all over again and again.

            The game these people have been playing costs. It costs too much and too many of us-and none of them will be punished like they should.

            In fire, blood, and pain.

    2. No, it is me that is the lone sane man; humanity in general is SOL.

      And while I am feeling tired and a little bit down, I’m not anywhere near depressed enough to be that blackpill, so I am joking. 🙂

  44. One real “victim class,” seems to be elderly (in this area, white) women. I spoke to one lady today who’s had covid, but she’s been “self isolating,” for a year and she’s getting vaccinated because he heard that the experts say you’re only immune for three or four months. She was very sick and she’s terrified of getting it again. Also her neighbor was found dead in his home, allegedly from the virus. Had another woman, at a guess in her 70s, wearing a paper mask under her cloth one. These ladies were brought up to believe what they’re told by authority figures and may (or may not) have ben sheltered by their husbands. Even if they’re surviving as widows, they’re inclined to believe what they see on TV.

  45. I’m hoping we don’t have to be vaccinated to travel. Looking forward to hitting the road is how one keeps one’s sanity in the tax office. (We have the magic hanging plexiglass shields, which is a huge help).

    1. I’m hoping that vaccination is not required for travel. But, my brother lives in Ireland and I’m afraid that I’ll have to vaccinate to get to see him.

  46. US Excess Deaths with and without the CCP-C19 virus:

    Dark blue is C19, green is not C19, from CDC National Center for Health Statistics through today, so don;t trust that green bar dropoff (but maybe it’s real).

    1. Here’s a link to the Santa Clara County ICU bed capacity reporting by week – red and orange are C19 positive, blue is C19-negative, and grey is unoccupied but staffed ICU beds.

      Note the primary driver for our State color-coded lockdown level is % ICU beds available thus grey bar as % of total, and also note the variation in the grey bar extent above the redline “Standard ICU Capacity” – basically this shows a bunch of ICU beds were staffed up after the peak of ICU C19 cases passed.

    2. Actually a shot of here’s that chart with one more week of data (WP, delenda est, won’t let me post the full link – I’ll have to go use one of the link shorteners to get it past):

      So what does all this stuff mean?
      The total C19-assigned deaths as of 13 Feb was some 497k, so in a country with 323 million people that means one C19-assigned death for every 661 people.

      And if the gap between the green and blue bars and that orange expected line are to be believed and the last reported week of deaths including C19-assigned deaths (ending 13 Feb 2021) really is ~10k under the expected, either Death is taking a bit of a holiday after a hard year of work or a bunch of those “expected deaths” that were expected to be happening about mid-February in the annual seasonal influenza cycle got pulled forward.

  47. For what it’s worth, I got the Pfizer vaccines and didn’t have any problems with it. 2000 vaccinated hospital workers with either the Moderna or the Pfizer vaccines and no reported major side effects. And the data on the vaccines shows they have fewer and milder side effects than the ones for Yellow Fever or Typhoid. Between the ACE2 inhibitors I take to control high blood pressure, and the Covid shots, I figure I’m as immune as it gets. Screw the mask.

    Now for folks who have immunological problems (like eczema, or severe allergies) they might want to hold off on the vaccines.

    2. Ma & her nearly 98 yro friend got the first dose of the Moderna* vaccine just over two weeks ago. Will be getting second dose in just under two weeks. Supposedly they can then resume “normal activity” two weeks after that. No reaction(s) at all beyond standard ‘stuck with a needle’ soreness.

      Have suggested they stay together at least one night after that second dose, just in case anything screwy happens then.

      * Aunt works giving the shots, at one location they had eight doses left and they MUST use them. Can’t go back into storage, can’t be wasted. So calls were made and that happened.

  49. OT (well it was a topic some time back)
    I got some of the Mars blend coffee. Milady ranted about it and I technically should avoid the stronger teas because of kidney stones (sigh) so I decided to try it, and thought to get some of the dried berries too just to see.
    touch of the berries, and a french press grind of the Mars, and just sugar, and Oh My!.
    Coffee I like that isn’t half condensed milk and other adulteration just to make it palatable! a regular cup and 2 sugars is great. Made some without the berry addition and it too was very good.

    1. Yes. Curiously, since I lamented son had stolen it, they just sent me another pound free, and also a pound of their new “mercury”. They’ve also promised to send pictures of the coffee plantations. 😀

  51. I know this is -extremely- forward, but… are you still in CO, Sarah? Your post is exactly what I’ve been snarling at my best friend for the past six months, but she’s in CA and I’m Polis’ polis (or lack thereof) so there’s a lot of time wondering how to get adult interaction outside of my husband. It’s been really hard to try to find people who actually think this whole insanity is in fact insanity. If you are… would you be interested in company? Even if it’s an unknown weirdo from the interwebs. 🙂

    1. Yes, I’m still in CO. For reasons, but mostly because of steady leftward feel the last 5 years, and the fact the area is depressing, we stopped having Huns meetings first Saturday at Pete’s Kitchen on Colfax.
      I’m wondering if we should have them fur Saturday Brunch at Toast in Littleton. The owner is a friend of Oleg Volk’s (and mine too) but the place closes at one or two pm.

  52. Happy Texas Independence Day! (from Mexico). Abbott has ended the mask mandate and the restrictions on restaurants etc.

  54. Re: Europe and their “free healthcare for all”, earlier this week someone in the Jim Butcher fan group posted a very leading question about a particular scene in Battle Ground where Dresden had negotiated for everyone injured in the invasion of Chicago to have their medical bills paid for. She wanted to know if that scene was “jarring to non-US readers.” I left a quite snippy comment about US readers fantasizing about “free healthcare” and how much their fantasy was nothing close to the reality. When Americans fantasize about “free healthcare” they think that they would be able to get the same quality and quantity of care as they do now, and not have to pay insurance, co pays, or anything at all. Their taxes definitely won’t rise at all, either.

    Such fantasy has no idea of the reality of “free healthcare”. The public-private partnerships, the necessity for supplemental health insurance coverage, or anything like that. Definitely nothing abotu delays and prioritization and rationing. It’s just “the same care I get now, but free.”

    1. Having grown up in the Deep South, amongst many descendants of a Certain War’s veterans, and having studied history from first sources on up… I am ALWAYS concerned when someone brings up a return to slavery.

      Which is what we are discussing when you take an essential service, such as medical care, and make it “free,” because that is where we will end up.

      First, they enact the law. Then doctors, nurses, and support staff start leaving the industry. Fewer people enter it. Why? Because the first thing they do is mess with the paycheck of those who work insane hours at a very tough job and have spent a lot of money on education to do said high stress, difficult job. I say that as a man who worked 24 hr on call shifts in a hostile environment. *I* wouldn’t want to do *their* job, may Himself bless ’em.

      Once the lack of doctors reaches critical mass, what do you think they’re going to do? Throw up their hands and say, “oh well, it’s a free service. You can get your liver checked sometime after January 31st, 2076.”? Nope. There will be a “mandate” because people need their free health care. These are people that think government force solves everything. Of course they will do it. For the “good of the people.”

      I sincerely hope we never find out if my expectation is correct or not. Because by then there will be, or have been, a shooting war on American soil.

      And that will indeed be a sad day.

      1. But ‘Everybody Has A Right To Health Care!’

        If only I had one of those spiked gauntlets from Rollerball every time I heard some dipshit spew that one… They’d be needing some serious health care, all right! Mostly dental.

        “So, you believe you have ‘a right’ to force SOMEBODY ELSE to provide you with health care? We used to call that slavery, bub.”

        Which is what socialism and communism always boil down to — forcing some people to provide goods and services to others. It’s immoral to hire employees and pay them for working, but perfectly moral for the government to punish them for not working.
        ———————————
        As long as sex and money exist, they will be exchanged.

  55. Boog watch, revolutions happen after conditions improve.

    Red State front page today.

    a) Arizona Fox 10 journalist resigned, citing the information operation that resulted in the covid lockdown.
    b) Coumo is being stripped of his ‘plague’ emergency powers.

    Ergo, the plague tyranny may come crashing down, and take Biden with it.

    1. That prospect is certainly one of the several developing possibilities that has Dot-not-Black cackling and rubbing her hands together with glee over in the Eisenhower building.

  56. }}} And frankly the rest of us are looking up how to make torches, and there’s about to be a run on pitchforks, as we speak.

    Fuck you, I’m bringing a shotgun and a small arsenal. Those worthless assholes have bodyguards.

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