Dale

This is getting a bit tiresome. I’m not arguing that people aren’t dying. Mortality ‘returned’ to 2003 levels ... https://medium.com/illumination-curated/a-year-of-coronavirus-how-deadly-was-2020-compared-to-other-years-3e51c0a42841 Based on the months gap between presence (in US 12/19 if not sooner) and the precipitous, anomalous - and synchronous with WHO declaration of March 11 - we witnessed panic like we’ve never seen. The Asian Flu of 1957 killed a population/age-adjusted 400k. No wholesale panic. No lockdowns. No finger-pointing. Back to 2020: that vast numbers died, in certain jurisdictions, points to something those jurisdictions were doing to people, moreso than what the virus was doing to people. There’s your Occam’s Razor.

For the purposes of discussion, it matters not, to me, who decided how to count. We know - and I posted an article on this - that the PCR test is unreliable. No reliable test, no reliable numbers. Setting Cuomo aside, an independent review, of FL, suggests deaths inflated by at least 40%. My favorite was the 35 year old roofer. Struck by lightening while on roof. Thrown to ground. Many broken bones. Severed spine. Brain dead. Died of Covid: https://rationalground.com/florida-death-certificate-review-raises-questions-about-official-number-of-covid-19-deaths/ I’m arguing that Covid as killer plague so uniquely pernicious as to insist on wholesale panic is the real conspiracy theory. This is what you folks should be angry about.

I’ve heard both. Surprisingly, auto fatalities were up! Homicides were certainly up. Perhaps most striking: at-home deaths spiked across all age groups. It is astonishing that no one, at least no one with any influence, had the temerity to ask whether the economy had an on-off switch and what would happen if we turned it off. Turns out “lives vs jobs” was a brain dead meme. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/23/covid-pandemic-rise-suicides/

I’m currently trying to determine whether 490k is significantly or wildly exaggerated. Presently, I’m leaning towards the latter, for reasons I’m happy to discuss. Hypothesis on 2020 I believe stands up best: Per CDC, Covid was in the US in Dec 2019 if not earlier. Nothing happened, until March, when that ominous declaration, from the WHO. Panic and chaos turned hospitals and nursing homes into killing fields. Deaths of despair followed. Add deaths due to vital treatments deferred and foregone. My surmise is that, had Covid not been ‘discovered’, we’d likely be looking at a normal all-cause deaths year. Prior to the WHO declaration, the US was coming out of consecutive mild winter burdens of death.

I reserved comment, on your personal loss, because I got the strong impression that I would not be allowed to say something like, “Sorry for your loss, but I believe our Reaction to Covid (RTC), has been deadlier than any virus.” Or put another way: we’ll be calculating the collateral damage, for years, due to RTC.

I believe it was Mark Twain who said it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled. What if testing is the disease ? Cue to: “D’uh, people are dying.” https://rationalground.com/visualizing-pcr-amplification/ My g-grandfather was sent home, from WWI Europe, with the Spanish Flu. Based on my research, Americans were KEENLY aware that the flu was afoot. KEY DIFFERENCE: in 1918, no one was debating about whether there was a deadly pandemic. Everybody knew someone who’d died. Family members were dying. People were literally dying in the streets. Of course there were disruptions and restrictions. But for the most part, Americans soldiered on.

Returned after a bit of a hiatus. Not a lot going on on the developments front. Busy on other platforms. Made a totally innocuous remark about Biden and being sincerely baffled by his Covid (non)strategy. Encircling harpyism ensues. General tenor ... ”Neo, stop this mad man before he kills another grandmother!” ”Don’t be an idiot. Block the guy like I did. It was like I was taking body shots before. I feel better now. But I still get winded when I walk the dog.” “I did some research and look what he said about WWII in 2016! BWA-HA-HA! Had we taken his advice we’d all be speaking German now AND be on ventilators with Covid!” Some of you should be embarrassed for not being embarrassed.

Don’t confuse being triggered with ridicule. I knew a woman who died of cancer late last Spring. Her family related that due to the acute preoccupation with Covid, to the exclusion of all else, her vital treatments kept getting pushed back. I too know someone who died “because of Covid.”

I should think I’d get a little slack if only for standing against The Great and Powerful Triggered. Whatever the case, I will thank you all not to regard me as the dangerous party. Masks afford the perception of efficacy, per Fauci, and symbolize the the wildly disproportionate response which will almost certainly prove deadlier than any virus by itself. But what does 180 years of virus science know ?

The courage of the hive mind.

Mark 2020 as the year Americans decided they could no longer live with viruses and branded dissenters as potential mass-murderers. Mark 2021 as the year unregulated speech became disinformation.

Science: “That’s a interesting observation that I hadn’t accounted for. Thanks and I’ll take that into account.” Science in 2020: “WTAF ??? What, are you a Trump-supporter ???”

We’re living in a milieu in which microbiologists become flat-earthers and goalposts are moved to extrapolate from surgery to Harris-Teeter shoppers. In March, Fauci was telling us we didn’t have any business wearing masks. That at best, they may provide for a ‘feeling’ of safety. In any case, I’ll simple it down: if masks are necessary, because viruses are always with us - and because they can play a role in deaths year round - we must wear them always and forever, right ? Alternatively, have any of us reflected on how many people have died, over the years, because we weren’t wearing masks ? I seem to recall MONTHS ago, former CDC Director Redfield arguing for back to school.

It’s fairly transparent that any contra-narrative perspective fosters agitation. Narrative: Black Plague hooked up with Andromeda Strain and had a love child Ebola.

Calling your bluff: no RCT’s with verified outcomes have demonstrated mask efficacy. Further, jurisdictions with mask mandates have not fared better than jurisdictions without mandates. Mark 2020 as the year science pretended we could hide from an aerosolized, submicroscopic particle. https://www.aier.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/

Okay, I get it. We can’t talk about science. And we can’t talk about the Bible. So how about this dreary weather ?

I would too. In the early going, out of wholesale panic, they were being used as first resource, rather than last recourse ... and we’re killing large numbers. I was just playing devil’s advocate. BTW, it’s reportedly the second thing the serpent told Eve, after having tempted her with fruit: “Wear a mask.” Curiously, that verse does not appear in extant copies.

If masks work, why is the CDC now recommending we wear two ? Cut to the chase: masks are a symbol of fear and fragility.

Read recently that London has lost a staggering 10% of its population.

Baffled by Biden. He is sitting in the catbird seat. He could easily declare himself ‘Virus Victor’ by asking states to cycle down PCR tests, watch ‘cases’ plummet and then point to the vaccine (which is really a fig leaf). Instead, the whole of his Covid plan seems to consist of sending us an extra batch of masks.

I was working and missed the Inauguration. Was the media outraged about the Garth Brooks super-spreader event ?

You’d probably have to go back to April to find a true 3,000 death day. And then you’d have to subtract 90 year olds falling off buildings and testing positive on the way down ...

Thanks for the welcome back. Incredibly, still alive! See: FL. Same mess applies. And you’re right. It ain’t the flu, bro! The flu kills young people.

I suspect the daily death ticker needs context. My home state of FL back dates and brings deaths forward in batches. Ex: 71 deaths were recorded Friday. But these deaths occurred on 28 separate dates going back to June 16. We should probably also discuss attribution of death.

It’s okay, we can talk. Is North Carolina here in the room with us ? Is Mike Pence putting Covid on you ? On topic, there is no such thing as a virus that destroys more livelihoods, in eight weeks, than the Great Depression destroyed in four years. Not by itself. Not without help. Not without a full-throated, furious and unrelenting campaign to frighten Americans into supine obeisance. The virus was sold to us as a once-in-lifetime uniquely pernicious killer plague. Really ? What killer plague worth its salt needs 90 year old diabetics to rack up numbers ? But thanks for running interference for the Department of Pandemia. Your $1,200 check is in the mail.