So, via everyone’s favorite homnicidal Dalek, a study which finds that 51 percent to 80 percent of people who get Covid (pdf) get Long Covid. Often it’s asymptomatic, but asymptomatic cases still do damage to the body, just like you can have high blood pressure for a long time without knowing it or feeling anything. As the Dalek notes, this is potentially civilization ending now that we’ve decided to let everyone get Covid eventually.
The extra sauce on this idiot doomburger, is that each time you get Covid, you can get Long Covid and there is NO lasting natural or vaccine immunity to Covid. None. And each time you get Covid, any Long Covid you have can make it harder to resist Covid and can make your Long Covid worse.
The old figures for Long Covid ranged from 20 to 30 percent. Even those numbers, given repeated infections and compounding damage, were disastrous. These new numbers are catastrophic. Eventually, if we don’t control Covid (and remember, there have been multiple new variants since BA2) we may literally have billions of disabled people unable to work and needing care.
Probably you’ll know one of them, or be one of them. Probably someone you care about will have Long Covid. Then your government, which after all couldn’t be bothered to control Covid, will decide it costs too much to support them, will cut health care and disability care, and they’ll die. Probably miserably.
Welcome to the future.
Either replace your leaders, at any cost, or you and people you care about (I know most people don’t give a damn about strangers) will get sick, suffer immensely, wind up homeless in many cases, then die miserably.
Also India is having a heat wave in April/May which has spiked over 60 celcius (140f) in some locations, and where 40-50- celcius (104-122F) is routine. We’ll never know how many people it kills (India’s very bad at counting and doesn’t much want to), and on top of that, it’s causing crop failures. Given that we’re already in for a year with less food and higher prices than usual (thanks to the Ukraine war, Western sanctions related to the war, and various problems in China (and certainly other extreme weather events)), a lot of people are going to die from famine in the next year and a half, and there will then be massive political instability, probably including some revolutions and war.
We’ll talk more about this soon.
Your leaders are culling you. Deliberately. They know what they’re doing and they’re okay with it. Are you okay with it? You may not be able to do anything yet, but the first step is to understand, in your gut, that they are a threat to you; enemies of yours.
NR
And they have willing and enthusiastic accomplices in 20-40% of the population, depending on where you are.
bruce wilder
For some reason, this timely essay reminded me of the response I got back around, guessing, 2006 about the necessity of “taking power”. It sounded awkward to me and ludicrous to those comfortable academic liberals secure in varying sorts of self-regarding “radical leftism”.
We are passive, more inclined to personal preparedness than collective and practical political action. It isn’t healthy individually or for society, but it is what we all have been doing for at least half my life — upwards of 35 years! Lots of us can scarcely conceive of any political action other than “protest”.
The political realignment long expected is emerging out of a rising Right while the remnant liberal-left, no longer liberal nor left, relaxes thru Weekend at Bidens. If Long Covid does not extinguish the excess population, WWIII is in the offing.
The majority of reasonable people are (in my circles) disspirited, detached and depressed. And still as stupid as a dish of marbles about all of it.
Carborundum
Probably not. Reading the study, I’d say there’s a goodly number of factors at work here consistent with this being an ultra-high bound estimate.
That said, not so sure that folks have a good understanding of what incidence constitutes a civilizational challenge over meaningful timeframes (generally decline and collapse occur over longer timeframes than people think – a consistent few percent “drag” over a short handful of generations has often been enough). Probably won’t look like collapse to anyone currently alive, but might look that way in retrospect for those in the future…
different clue
@Bruce Wilder,
If the reasonable people you know are dispirited, detached and depressed, then how is it they are stupid about it all.
It seems to me that the ” this is fine ” people are the stupid ones.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A2KLfR0efnBiSMUA2ABXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZANMT0NVSTAzNl8xBHNlYwNzYw–?p=this+is+fine+images&fr=sfp
bruce wilder
I think staying “stupid” may be a kind of coping mechanism, a way to keep open the relief valve of fantasy. If you do not see any way of supporting responsible policy in any substantive area of domestic economic policy or foreign policy, what good is it to to be smart or knowledgible enough to know anything or to think critically about what you are told?
Worried about global warming? If you remain “stupid” you at least get the ephemeral joys of reading any of the steady stream of news stories of the outstsnding promise of the latest clean energy technology.
Disturbed by the deeply corrupt, senile Biden and his top-notch team of Hillary-bots bumbling into an open-ended war in Ukraine? “Fighting” the Russkies with such ineffective, but profitable “weapons” as simply stealing billions of dollars? And enacting “sanctions” likely to crash the globalized economy, sparking probable famine? Why trouble yourself when the New York Times is serving a steady diet of heart-tugging human interest stories? And, such proofs of Russian depravity as stealing farm equipment from a John Deere dealer!
For lots of people “stupid” is medicinal, numbing the pain.
Eric Anderson
I seem to recall commenting early on in the pandemic that we’re literally embodying Eliot’s “Hollow Men,” the end result being us going out not with a bang but a whimper.
William Gibson’s newest novels, ‘Agency’ being the last, focus on the cumulative impacts of a thousand little cuts bringing us down as well. I know I’ll give them a read sooner or later because, well, it’s Gibson. Though, I gotta admit I’m not too inclined toward the inevitable waves of rage and depression it’ll inspire. That I can predict the read will inspire an emotional response is actually remarkable. It means I’ve not totally been conditioned to a state of learned helplessness as our dear leaders work so rigorously to impose.
Trinity
“The majority of reasonable people are (in my circles) disspirited, detached and depressed.”
In mine, it’s looks more like actual stupid. For example, I endured a team meeting last week in which our very own self-described genius declared that all will be well as soon as all the Boomers are dead. I guess if that’s what gets him through the day, more power to him. He’s got a surprise coming in the next twenty years, however.
Bar-Yam in the posted twitter is the father of complex systems, or something similar. He brought it to the next level, however that’s described.
I don’t think nuclear war is imminent. It would not be in the oligarchs interest to scorch any land at this time. I do think they are inciting the idea in order to get ordinary people distracted and afraid. For example, favored previously private vendors of mine continue to be bought up by hedge funds, with associated plummeting of product quality and increased prices. I can name three in just the last two months. These mentally ill oligarchs remain very busy feeding their illness.
But I definitely can see their wanting a long, slow decline in the overall population.
Blueberry Hill
I figure if the NSA can read it, you should be able to too. The NSA should not have exclusive rights to our privacy. Note particularly the part about Covid. This brother and his wife are New York Times Democrats and emphatic NeoLIberals even though they do not know that term. I am now entirely estranged from my entire family — four brothers and three sisters.
Me: “We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at least bring a proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything “better” is purchased at the price of something far worse.”
Me: That’s Carl Jung on so-called “progress” and “prosperity.”
Me: A great quote to share with the S&P team in your next meeting discussing ESG strategies.
Me: “In a 1928 essay called “Economic Possibilities for Our Grand children,” the famous economist John Maynard Keynes imagined the world a century into the future. Things would be so good, he predicted, that no one would need to worry about making money. The principle problem people would face would be figuring out what to do with their overwhelming amount of free time.: “For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem,“ Keynes wrote, “how to use freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy leisure, which science and compound interest will have won.”
Well, here we are in that much anticipated and heralded future, and the average American is as frazzled and desperate as ever, “working” as many hours today as he or she did in 1970 let alone 1928 and lucky to get a couple weeks off per year. It’s technically true that measures of global wealth have increased tremendously in the century since Keynes’ bold and optimistic proclamation, but, at least in Europe and The United States, almost all that surplus wealth has gone to those who need it least, leaving the rest further behind than ever.”
Brother: Can’t dispute any of that and yet we wake up every morning and do it all again. If we are going old school I have a different view.
Brother: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt
Me: Teddy Roosevelt was a murderous cowardly bully.
Me: “The reputation of Theodore Roosevelt has become as bloated as the man himself. No one of course can deny his fundamental significance in American history, as a central player in the transitions from republic to empire, laissez-faire to regulated capitalism, congressional government to imperial presidency. It should come as no surprise that professional historians still pay close attention to his career. What is surprising is the cult-like status that Roosevelt enjoys outside the academy, especially in Washington. In political discourse, his name evokes bipartisan affection, bordering on reverence; few presidents are safer for politicians of either party to cite as an inspiration. (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both claimed him as a model.) For several decades now, hardly a year has gone by without another PBS documentary or popular biography producing another brick in the ascending tower of tribute. Not bad for a man who, despite his undeniable bravery and public spirit, spent much of his life behaving like a bully, drunk on his own self-regard. How does one account for the contemporary adulation of this man?”
Me: ”Yet when it came to the realities of modern war, Roosevelt was not much more than a swaggering sentimentalist. This becomes clear when one contrasts Roosevelt’s admiration for General George Armstrong Custer with Ulysses S. Grant’s indifference toward him. Grant took no formal notice of the disastrous battle at the Little Big Horn, which he viewed as a tactical blunder of no strategic significance. To the veteran of Cold Harbor and the Wilderness campaign, the massacre of Custer’s 266 men was hardly worth notice: what stood out was their ambitious commander’s unnecessary risk-taking. But Roosevelt, according to Custer’s widow, Elizabeth, celebrated Custer as “a shining light to all the youth of America”—a man who would plunge forward even against overwhelming odds.
The difference between Grant’s perspective and Roosevelt’s was the difference between the professional soldier and the amateur moralist. Custer embodied Roosevelt’s ideal of heroic struggle. “Far better it is to dare mighty things,” T.R. said, “… than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” From this view, doing something—even something foolish and destructive—was always better than doing nothing. Especially something military.”
Brother: So it’s a quote – I never said I revered the man.
Me: It’s macho bullshit. Teddy Roosevelt would have been exposed for the bloated bully he was if he had to spend more than an hour with 3-6 year olds and guide them constructively to be the best humans they could be versus pummeling them and pacifying them with violence. In that sense he’s not even half or one tenth the “man” my wife is and my wife isn’t even a vaunted “man.” Hell, even the rich fuck parents my wife devotedly provides this service for, parents like our nephew Tim and his wife Jessica, are wholly incapable of doing it. That’s why they pay people like my wife a pittance to do it for them and then spit on people like my wife in the process and treat her and her colleagues like trash.
Brother: Tim is a good guy and you don’t k ow him. You do remember my wife is a school counselor and teacher?
Me: The Great Resignation is the most positive thing I have seen in years. It’s the beginning of the end of this farce. The mistreated unwashed, the servant class, is saying no. It couldn’t come soon enough.
Brother: Right – so you don’t want a future for your kids – nice foresight.
Brother: The great resignation is bullshit. If that is the case then I’m part of it. People have more options so they can make change and good for them!
Me: The Corporate Cultists, what I call the Professional Managerial Class, the class that occupies overpaid bullshit jobs, are about to get their comeuppance in spades. There will be justice for their decades, nay a century, of sycophantically coddling and enabling psychopathic tyrants who occupy the Corporate C Suites and the fucking shareholders who are hellbent on the destroying the living planet and all life on it.
Me: Apparently you’re not paying attention. What future? The Shareholders and their Corporations have stolen the future. THEY are the ones who didn’t and don’t want a future for their vaunted progeny. THEY stole it.
Brother: Wow so anyone that has a 401k or portfolio is evil?
Me: Read up on the Banality of Evil.
Brother: No – I can’t live your world view that all is evil and coming to an end. You said Covid would be the death of us. Because you are like others and believe you are correct in all things – no one has it all figured out. I do think you are a good guy but super fucking depressing for sure.
Me: “Can one do evil without being evil? This was the puzzling question that the philosopher Hannah Arendt grappled with when she reported for The New Yorker in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for organising the transportation of millions of Jews and others to various concentration camps in support of the Nazi’s Final Solution.
Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). Instead, he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit[ted] crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’.
Arendt dubbed these collective characteristics of Eichmann ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: he was a man who drifted into the Nazi Party, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief. In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’.”
Me: If you’re so sure of yourself, why would anything I say be depressing to you? It’s called cognitive dissonance. Look it up. Burying your head in the sand and continuing to conform doesn’t make it go away.
Brother: Well now you are comparing the Nazi regime to corporate life – that’s a big jump but one I can see you making. You worked in corp America for 20 years and have a Masters – so what does that make you?
Me: Are you saying Covid is over? Tell that to China who is still containing it rather than letting it run wild. Covid isn’t over and the pervasive economic and political effects of it are still being experienced and will continue to be experienced. Covid has changed everything.
Brother: I know it’s still here but it will not eradicate all of mankind.
Me: It’s not a big leap or jump at all. Corporations are totalitarian and fascist all wrapped up into one. If you can’t see that, you’re blind.
Me: I never said Covid would be the end of mankind. I said it will be the end of our civilization as we know it and knew it. It’s the beginning of the Age of Pandemics.
Brother: You should write a book about your philosophy and worldview.
Me: With so much money, so much wealth and so much science and technology and automation, no, most people don’t have to “work” and shouldn’t be “working.”
Brother: What would we do all day?
Me: Why write a book? So you and Tim can laugh about it and spit on it, or better yet, burn it? Maybe you should write a book about how much you’re like Teddy Roosevelt.
Brother: Again with Tim. I knew I never should have told you. I am better read than you in terms of the classics – sorry I don’t enjoy Nihilism.
Brother: You trying to make things super personal – let’s not go there eh.
Me: What would we do all day? This is at the crux of the original quotes I presented. The answer was, Civilization. People had too much time on their hands. They were too content and happy. We couldn’t have that so Civilization was invented to make sure people slaved all day instead of being content and happy.
Brother: You don’t sound happy.
Me: You’re better than me in all things. Your wife is better than my wife, your kids are better than my kids, you’re smarter than me and stronger than me and wealthier than me. You have won the Great Game of Life. Doesn’t it feel great to win? What a great feeling it must be. You are the WINNER.
Me: You, on the other hand, sound incredibly happy. What’s it called? Soma? From one of the classics?
Brother: That’s you putting your shit on me – I’m better than no one – I just try and do my best. Yes great book and I will be the Christ figure at the end.
Brother: So I have to get back to destroying the world.
Me: Why did you keep insisting on knowing what is up with my children? It’s not as if you really care about them. Out daughter arranged to see you in Florida a couple of years ago and it was scheduled and when she reached out to you to say she was on her way, you never responded to her. If you cared about her at all, you wouldn’t have ignored her and dissed her and yet you want to know about my children’s “progress” and “accomplishments?” Why? I’ll tell you why. So you can compare yourself to the lowly yardstick that is me and win again. And again. And again. Because life after all is a competition, isn’t it?
Me: Has Tim visited you and stayed with you and gotten drunk with you and stoned with you?
Brother: So your daughter absolutely did not reach out to us. You told us she was coming but she never called or texted – we would have been super happy to see her. We do care.
Me: I know I’m depressing to you and you, in turn, are depressing to me. It’s probably best we go our separate ways. We really don’t have any semblance of a relationship and we’re merely grasping at straws. We are further apart in every way than you and [our other brother] are apart or the rest of the family for that matter. I never belonged and that was evident since I was a wee lad. One of these kids is not like the other.
Brother: Sounds fine.
Me: She did reach out to you. She showed us the texts. All of us were very disappointed. The same wouldn’t have happened to any of the other nieces and nephews in the family, I’m sure. Either way, it’s all water under the burnt bridge. Adios. Have a wonderful life. I know you will.
Ché Pasa
And that cull will continue to gain momentum.
“Civilization ending?” Nah. I suppose it depends on a definition of terms. What is this “civilization” of which you speak? If you mean the status quo, US hegemony, advanced technology, space travel, ordering goods and services from bloated mega-companies, being paid less to work more, dysfunctional/nonfunctional, irresponsible governments, wars and rumors of wars without end, and on and on, then yeah, we’re seeing the shuddering of a possible end to that kind of “civilization.” Or rather, I should say, its retreat.
The spreading and eventual universality of “progress” has halted and is on an accelerating reversal path — at least in the West. If “progress” is equivalent to Western Civilization then we could easily say it’s been over for quite a while. Close to 50 years.
And we have no means of turning it around. The consequences of Long Covid are dire — but only for some, and most of those aren’t needed anyway, are they? If they die in a ditch sooner rather than later, it’s no real loss, is it?
Think of Third World endemic diseases and how many of them continue to hamstring and retard otherwise viable societies. That’s where we’re headed — if we aren’t actually already there and just don’t know it yet.
But then that’s just one of so many crises we face. It’s all good for the overclass. Not so much for the rest of us.
Tallifer
Not culling, but perhaps pacification. Look how docile most serfs and peasants were, rebelling only when things became impossible and then so weak and disorganized as to be bloodily defeated every time. Even the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions resolved themselves in either bourgeois domination or inhumanely exploitative dictatorship.
Mark Level
I share the pessimism of other folks here. Americans have no agency whatsoever, and they simultaneously seem to realize it and be in denial. The oligarchy is entirely predatory, corrupt and stupid, and a few of us are hanging onto generational wealth or status while the country as a whole sinks into 3rd world hellhole status. Resource shortages are coming due to the idiotic Ukraine war disrupting the Global system that barely provided while slowly immiserating people in poverty. So now the immiseration process will speed up. (Ian has covered this topic elsewhere.) There’s a great Hannah Arendt quote about propaganda that when people are lied to constantly by TPTB, it’s not that they swallow the lies whole hog, instead they “no longer believe anything.” And to repeat myself, Americans have no agency against the tiny, incredibly privileged and ignorant elite (HRC actually thought she could win against Trump by declaring “America is already great”) so even if they could see through the lies it’s not like they’ll lift a finger to help themselves (except in the ways commenters above mention, personal preparation for disaster). The desire to REALLY shit on the little people by the Theocrats in SCoTUS last night will have some shock waves, but again, Weekend at Bidet’s promise to the donors will prevail, “Nothing will fundamentally change,” & the downhill slide will accelerate with no apparent stop via social cohesion, community (God the Father forbid) or common sense, I guess.
Ven
Shouldn’t this also be tested against the population who rec’d early tx protocols (that can’t be spoken of), and also against an unvaxed control group You would have thought it would have been quite easy to capture the latter data at least.
anon
Public health “experts” like Dr. Fauci have from the very beginning of the pandemic attempted to be optimistic rather than honest about the realities of Covid. Because of their lies along with Trump acting as if Covid is like the flu and politicizing mask wearing, the public never got the truth from our leaders. Impatience and wanting to return to normalcy has caused people of all political affiliations to now forgo masks without fully understanding how Covid works and the long term risks that they are taking.
I know someone who has suffered immensely from long Covid for nearly two years. It doesn’t surprise me that I’ve heard stories about long haulers committing suicide. These are not the type of symptoms anyone wants to live with for the rest of their lives. The person I know is wealthy and will at least be okay financially when she decides to quit her job, not that any amount of money in the world is going to give her back her health and quality of life pre-Covid ever again.
I’ve come to terms with the possibility that I will spend the rest of my life wearing a mask in indoor and crowded settings. I understand that most people aren’t like me and have chosen the risk of dying or getting long Covid rather than wear a mask. Because our leaders refuse to lead, public health decisions have been left to personal choice on these matters. Most people won’t understand the catastrophic affects that Covid will have for generations until years from now when societies have been crippled and long haulers die off prematurely.
StewartM
Pretty soon (post-2024, I’d say) we’ll have a government in-place where doing anything to fight Covid or prevent a climate catastrophe will be outlawed.
But not to worry, as–according to the our wise “balls and strikes” SCOTUS–you’ll have plenty of dying unwanted babies to provide you company, courtesy of our variant of Christianity that allows everyone the ‘freedom’ to agree with it, and no more than that. Plus, like Putin’s Russia, our new shiny government will be acclaimed by the support of a full 15 % of the electorate! If that’s not the will of the people, what is?
BTW, Ian–is the 140 F value the “heat index” value? I’m seeing more like 105-109 F for the raw temperatures values. Though that doesn’t mean this is not life-threatening heat.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/heat-and-humidity-near-the-survivability-threshold-its-already-happening
Willy
Speaking of accurate predictions from the long-lost better commenters…
It seems that during this Trump era the definition of words like “corruption” and “integrity” have been changed. Now it’s okay for supreme court justice wannabes to lie all they want to the public, but wrong for somebody to leak what supreme court justices are up to in private when it impacts everybody in unpopular ways and opens up even more unpopular cans of worms.
In such a world Trump is no big deal and Biden is our worst enemy.
In my world we get to choose between conservative Christian fascism, where we’ll get inundated with irrational freedom robbing laws, diseases, climate change and the whims of plutocrats like Elon Musk, or slightly repentant neoliberal-neocons who’re only beginning to suspect that they caused all the mess and the mob is getting angsty.
If that’s the only choice, then I choose the latter. OTOH, if there are any hopeless angry incels out there intrigued with going out in some meaningful way instead of the usual senseless mass violence…
SteveInNC
The one thing that Western leadership will not accept is personal risk. Therefore, for the thesis of intentional population control by COVID to be true, there has to be a truly robust, safe, and effective preventative and/or treatment for the disease that also negates the possibility of long COVID, this treatment being only available to the privileged few. We can’t have oligarchs and their spawn catching one of the most transmissible viruses ever, and becoming debilitated slugs now can we?
There’s been a lot of talk about various substances like ivermectin and HCQ. Studies seem equivocal, but then who pays for the studies, and can we trust them? Still, we can be fairly sure that the oligarchs are not self-medicating; someone is treating them, so those someones know what is actually being given. I have no connections in this sector, so I have no one to ask. Has anyone else heard anything about this?
different clue
@SteveInNC,
I share your conviction that the upper classes know in their hearts that they are safe from covid’s long term effects, given that they will get all the best treatment which is reserved for themselves.
I pray that their knowledge is ill-founded and gets entirely disproved by developing facts. May all their covid be long and may God smash them flat under the knuckles of His fist.
@Bruce Wilder,
Ahh . . . I see what you mean now by “stupid”. Actually, I suspect a lot of people at the middle end and low end of society have “gone Joker”. They know it is not their world. They just live in it. Perhaps they want to watch the world burn in a last desperate hope that it will burn down the people who own it along with the rest of us.
I think more voting choices going forward will be based on a desire to fly this plane into the side of the mountain, and a decision on who is the best pilot to fly this plane into the side of the mountain.
different clue
. . . . actually, now that I think about it, I would re-word “under His fist” to read ” under His Stark Fist of Removal”.
EnHate me, Dobbs! O enHate me!
different clue
@anon,
Those of us who have decided to wear the mask or the respirator will be able to recognize eachother. Perhaps we can share survival-enhancement information among our mask-wearing selves in such a way that the no-mask Freedom! people are not able to access. They, of all people, do not deserve to have any survival information.
How can we deter attacks by screaming no-mask Karens who are triggered by us wearing masks in their presence? Perhaps we should all wear Hannibal Lecter hockey goalie masks over our respirators to keep them away from us. We could all begin to carry pepper spray, bear spray, mace, etc. if Hannibal Lecter masks are not deterrent enough. Perhaps they will learn that someone wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask indoors might also be carrying chemical spray and a strong desire to use it on any Karen, MAGAtard Trumpanon pro-covid leper, non-validated or triggered yuppie, Anthony Fauci fan or anything else that gets too close.
Our Hannibal Lecter hockey masks would hopefully make us look something like this:
https://www.lifesizecutouts.com.au/hanibal-lecter-celebrity-mask-692.html
Forecasting Intelligence
Why don’t you talk about the negative impact of the vaccines.
Yes, covid has negative impacts, Long Covid, but what about the genetic vaccines?
https://hiddencomplexity.substack.com/p/reverse-aids-part-iv?s=r
Reverse AIDS, look it up…
Mark Level
I would really like to go Unicorn hunting (or maybe leprechauns?) with Willy some day– he obviously has some special skills in detecting anomalous cryptids if he has come in contact with “slightly repentant neoliberals–neocons” who detect any reason for “mob” anger at them . . . David Brooks admitted to “mistakes in judgment” in passing but neither he nor the rest of that crew have gotten a scintilla smarter or more humble in 2 decades since the Iraq debacle was rolled out. That PMC class continues to blame the evil “Left” for everything, how dare the Left injure their betters’ fists with their sad little faces? Didn’t Hillary lose in 2016 due to Bernie Bros, and what about Hillary fulminating that the dirty f–ing hippies tolerating gay marriage and abortion cost the Dems votes with the good, religious Latino populace, etc? Anyway, I’ll respectfully ask for the names of anyone in the Elites who has expressed real regret over 2 decades & counting of mass death and impoverishment since AlGore stood aside and let li’l Bush and the Supremes steal POTUS from him openly and the ongoing sh^t show we all suffer under. (My bet is the list of names would not reach five fingers on my hand.)
different clue
@Mark Level,
Are there any links to Hillary fulminating about how the dirty effing hippies cost the Dems a lot of good religious Latino votes? It would be nice if that material could be looked up and linked to specifically.
Why do I care? Because I think it is possible that the DemParty will nominate and run Hillary yet again in 2024 if they can’t run Biden. I think they’ve had deep buyers remorse about Harris and would rather not run her . . . unless maybe as Hillary’s running mate.
So in the event of Hillary/Harris in 2024, it would be good to have that material and those quotes to wave under the nose of any dirty hippie sympathisers who might respond to it.
If 2024 is Trump or DeTrumpis or CottonTrump or some such creature versus Hillary, a fantastic opportunity will be opened up for Gabbard to get on the ballot in some electoral-vote-rich states and run very hard as an Independent in those Electoral Key States. What if such an effort would deny enough Electoral votes to both of the Brand Name candidates that neither had enough electoral votes to get elected? Such an outcome would give Gabbard and her Gabbardists ( if any) a good further opportunity to jam a tire iron in the gears of politics as usual.
different clue
@Blueberry Hill,
President Murderous Cowardly Bully left us a National Forest System with about a hundred million acres or so of National Forest Land in it. Also some National Wildlife Refuges which were the stub of a system we have grown out since then.
All still with us ( though some of it savagely dismanaged since his day).
someofparts
When I must go out in public I still wear a mask. I also have a full head of shiny silver hair. So far nobody has given me even so much as a hard look for keeping my mask on. Maybe the trick to wearing a mask without getting hassled by some random Karen would be to dye your hair gray.
Tallifer
I will put on my country hick hat from the countryside of my youth: the fellows I worked with on the mink ranch would say that Long Covid is the Chronic Fatigue of this decade, what folks in Carleton County call lazyitis (or what the Victorians diagnosed as hyperchondria).
I suspect politicans know there are enough voters who feel that way. Politics unfortunately determine policy.
Tallifer
Also, also. I wonder if many North American critical covid cases and long covid are not due to their grotesque gluttony.
Ché Pasa
Why would our rulers be actively engaged in a deliberate cull of what they consider to be the useless eaters?
What do you suppose the Plan is? We could note that the first to be eliminated in the Covid cull were the old and sick and confined in nursing homes. Infamously, the Cuomo regime in New York was quite openly deliberate about packing the nursing homes with Covid patients, to infect the well and the sick and the staff equally, leading to tens of thousands of deaths. It worked wonderfully for a while. Many thousands of lower-order workers (deemed “essential”!) were next. And so it went through the ranks, until more than a million had perished almost without notice — the key to all of this misery and death. If nobody who matters notices, has it really happened?
And so with Long Covid, which doesn’t kill immediately so much as it debilitates. Diminishes “usefulness” to the overclass. If eventually almost everyone is infected and debilitated and therefore useless, then there’s no loss in losing them — oopsy! Much to gain, right? Ideally, they kill each other off, saving our rulers the bother of doing it themselves.
But Long Covid is far from the only means of taking care of the surplus population. Climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation, among so many others, loom over us every day.
What’s the point, though? Is it really the end of civilization as we know it? To what object?
Mark Level
Hi, Diff Clue– Yes, the link to what I referenced was people rebutting Duchess Pelosi’s Duquesa daughter Christine Pelosi’s idiotic Tweet blaming all of us on the actual Left for not sucking it up and voting for the NeoCon, blood-soaked reactionary HRC– you have to read the whole thread, a couple folks who rebut her covered this– link athttps://twitter.com/sfpelosi/status/1521294980488204289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1521294980488204289%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2022%2F05%2F200pm-water-cooler-5-03-2022.html Thank Dog for the Naked Capitalism Water Cooler’s they often share gold . . . btw, this Christine is the same one who I believe made a movie about Bush II which is very favorable to him, and has shared in many interviews that he is “smart”, “cultured”, a good man, etc!! As George Carlin noted, it’s a small club, and we are not invited to be in it! (Yet we are told to suck it up & “Vote Blue no matter Who” when someone like HRC who is 99.5% opposed to our political and human values is running, ‘coz the system only lets Monsters run, the Lesser Evil is allegedly better.
Blueberry Hill
Of course different clue, and Hitler made the trains run on time. The good, the bad and the ugly many times wrapped up in one as was the case with Teddy.
https://the-toast.net/2014/09/16/dirtbag-teddy-roosevelt/
Astrid
Everyone in Harrisburg (okay, not everyone since we rarely go out anymore) seems to be “back to normal” with sub 10% mask wearing, but I will note that the Philly show I attended on Sunday was not just masked and vaccination checked as mandated, but the bands actually took time to thank the crowd for wearing masks and helping them feel safe. A friend of one of the bands mentioned that this was the first show she attended. If people feel that wearing masks is a sign of love and respect for each other, and a small price to pay to connect with each other, then masking becomes another thing you do to be sociable amongst people, like showering and wearing pants.
So far nobody has Karen-ed us for our mask wearing, but the previous weekend, we did attended another show in DC and maybe 20 out of 600 (at least 2x age of the Sunday show) concert goers were masked. Seeing a bunch of rich old people (these weren’t cheap tickets, especially the seated ones) act like they’re still 30 and the world isn’t on fire is something. I think I just fell out of love with the band.
Willy
Mark I said “slightly repentant” and not “our new and improved FDR!” Big difference.
There were many articles around 2007 talking about half the DC Democrats regretting their Iraq votes and only 3 Republicans. Around 2016 discussing the failures of neoliberalism became more mainstream with only a handful of right wing “pundits” mentioning “the working man”, which in hindsight, was solely for votes.
I prefer to (at least try to) take advantage of momentum instead of hitting bottom.
I saw something about Siberian methane releases leading to uncontrollable disasters of biblical proportions, something Trumps Supreme Court apparently either ignores or desires. Would that be worth the protest vote? We’ll be finding out soon the scientists say.
BC Nurse Prof
I-Recover Protocol:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-recover-protocol/
different clue
@someofparts,
Interesting idea and worth an experiment. Since my hair is also part gray by now, perhaps I will just naturally run that same experiment too.
If it doesn’t work for me, then I will have to get a Hannibal Lecter “overmask” and if that doesn’t work all by itself, then I will have to also get and carry with me some pepper spray/ bear spray/ dog spray/etc. . . . . as I walk among those ” Karens in the Mist”.
Mark Pontin
Very Pinfoldian thread here on Ian’s blog today.
Pinfoldian as in “There was a phrase in the ’30s: ‘It is later than you think’, which was designed to cause uneasiness. It was never later than Mr. Pinfold thought.”
(From the E. Waugh novel ‘The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.’)
Not to say that y’all are wrong.
different clue: ‘Are there any links to Hillary fulminating about how the dirty effing hippies cost the Dems a lot of good religious Latino votes? It would be nice if that material could be looked up and linked to specifically.’
Oh, that strand of Dem thought is ever present. Neera Tanden, for instance, is current White House Staff Secretary —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neera_Tanden
— and Neera Tanden has never sung any other song. Here she is in 2019, forex —
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/us/politics/tanden-sanders-.html
There’s plenty more like her and you’ll to have pry such power as these people possess from their cold,dead hands. And as far as they’re concerned, it must be the dirtbag left’s fault — it could never ever be that they’ve done something wrong.
different clue
@Tallifer,
If the “country hicks” you referrence as referring to chronic fatigue syndrome as “lazyitis” and most likely thinking of “long covid” as the equivalent “lazyitis” of our own time were to get both chronic fatigue syndrome and long covid, I would be well pleased.
Would that be my schadenfreudian slip showing?
@ Blueberry Hill,
Your historical referrence is incorrect. It was Mussolini who got some credit early on for making the trains run on time.
someofparts
The Hillary/Pelosi/Tanden branches of the Democrats are doing a lot more than just fulminating about the left. I know they actively campaign against progressive candidates, but had no idea how massive and comprehensive their efforts are.
https://www.downwithtyranny.com/post/sleazy-democratic-pacs-working-to-defeat-progressives
different clue
If Hillary Clinton her own self could be shown in video or other media vehicle as specifically saying those specific things, that could be weaponisable against her.
As long as it is her surrogates saying it “for” her, she has deniability, however implausible; and can say ” I didn’t say it. She said it. He said it. They said it.” And the surrogates would say the very same thing.
VietnamVet
The managerial elite are addicted to quarterly profits. Nothing else matters. They support refugees. It proves that they are good. Also, more workers keep wages down. They simply cannot conceive of a world without servants. But, a million Americans cannot die early without leaving ripples. There is a trucker shortage. Reports indicate that 30 to 50% of those infected with coronavirus, even the asymptomatic and mild cases, are coming down with a debilitating long-haul COVID. If true, this pandemic will have the impact of the Black Death as the world goes quiet.
The FED just raised interest rates to fight wage inflation when it is food and energy shortages plus profiteering that are rising prices; the exact opposite of the real cause. Healthy sane young are disappearing. Soon, there will be no soldiers or workers, just quiet whimpers in emptying cities. Maybe deep in a bunker under a mountain, the cognitive disabled (but still in charge) leaders will push the red buttons to try to be the last human to win a world war.
Blueberry Hill
Hitler, Mussolini, what’s the difference? One liked pasta and the other sauerkraut. Otherwise, birds of a feather. Men of the people, so to speak, or so they proclaimed. As did Teddy. Teddy was a populist autocrat who exploited and furthered the autocratic power of the Executive. Yes, a few good things came from that but the precedent it set was ultimately used for so much bad any good that came of Teddy’s use of it has been long overshadowed. Woodrow Wilson took that baton and ran with it, as did FDR. For different respective reasons perhaps, but the effect today is the same regardless.
More from Dirtbag Teddy Roosevelt because Teddy aside from his autocratic proclivities was a number of things and one of those things was an imperialist.
Ché Pasa
So. “Civilization ending….?” While doing my routine skimming of stuff on the intertubes the other day, I came across something by Phil Torres, ostensibly about Elon Musk and his strangeness, but more to do, it seemed with a fairly pervasive cult-belief he shares with plenty of other squillionaires and academics called “longtermism,” that actually seems to go farther to explain the bizarre times we’re living in and the peculiar actions of our overlords than we’re used to seeing in the media and discussions.
Indeed, we may be looking at deliberately engineered “end times” on behalf of a Better Future. A distant future of human-kind (or something like it) spread throughout the galaxies and numbering in the trillions of very happy descendants of…. who? Well of course, descendants of our current rulers and overclass. Not of we, the rabble.
Get it?
Initially, these longtermers decried the possibility of global pandemics and nuclear annihilation and claimed to want to do everything to prevent/avoid such risks to humanity. But that was five years ago. Now? Maybe they’re not such a problem, certainly not world-ending or extinction events, and besides, they are useful in speeding up the cull so as to ensure that only the best of the breed survive to people the Galaxy of the Future.
Check it out. See what you think.
https://www.salon.com/2022/04/30/elon-musk-twitter-and-the-future-his-long-term-vision-is-even-weirder-than-you-think/
https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo
anon y'mouse
trucker “shortage” is artificial. there are many with CDLs but they don’t stay in the business because of the wages and working conditions.
yet the gov’t is providing some kind of kickback for “training” new truckers, so to the big companies, running a training department that is constantly cycling through people is a kind of profit center for them.
that’s why they get their industry rags to whine about “trucker shortage” and that’s why they don’t care about churning and burning through their employees.
everything in this country, like terms like “trucker shortage” or “demographic bomb (re: SSI)” is a carefully constructed lie you have to do a lot of research and thinking to tease out the truth of.
Trinity
“a carefully constructed lie you have to do a lot of research and thinking to tease out the truth of”
Not really. If their lips are moving, they are lying.