*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
you'd think, having posted on Jan. 1 and again on Jan. 2, that I could hold off for a bit, and maybe get back to my usual routine of weekly posting... but so many important posts keep popping up, with which, quite frankly, I can barely keep up, so much so that it's making me question if there is any point in me even trying to do so; but, in any case, while I consider whether this exercise is even worthwhile anymore and it may be time to cease and desist, I will instead go the polar opposite direction for now and post an update for the third straight day (unsurprisingly, predominantly with pandemic and pandemic-response related links):
Mitchell: The Japanese denial story – Part 1
Well, its 2022 already and we enter the 18th year of this blog. Regular readers will know that I have studied the Japanese economy in considerable detail over the course of my career and when it experienced one of the largest commercial asset price bubble busts in history in early 1992, the questions I was asking and the data I was looking out were important in framing the way I have done macroeconomics since. I consider Japan to be one of the nations that was early to embrace the madness of neoliberalism – credit binge, wild property speculation then crash – and the first nation to abandon it in favour of more responsible fiscal policy – which given the circumstances required on-going fiscal deficits exceeding 10 per cent of GDP at times. Its policy approach – including the relatively high deficits, the zero interest rate policy of the Bank of Japan, and then the massive bond-buying program by the same, became the target for various New Keynesian macroeconomists (including Krugman) to prophesise doom. Their textbook models predicted the worst – rising interest rates, accelerating inflation, rising bond yields and then government insolvency as bond markets bailed out and the currency plummetted. Nothing like that scenario emerged. Japan was playing out policies that ran counter to the mainstream consensus in the 1990s and beyond and I learned so much from understanding why things happened there as a consequence. This is Part 1 of a two-part discussion about why Japan demonstrates key MMT principles and how those who wish to deny that reality have to invent a parallel-universe version of MMT to make their case. .....
To understand the horns of the dilemma on which the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee finds itself in responding to inflation, I wanted to turn to a subject that I do not think is receiving sufficient attention: zombie companies. Simply defined, a “zombie company” is a company for which the interest payments on its corporate debt exceeds its revenue. The only way it can survive is by borrowing more.
How significant a problem is this? Extremely. Since 1980 the percent of zombie companies was 4%. Now it’s nearly 20%. ....
Other Charts: (sources: one, two..)
COVID-19 notes:
so, yeah, not just a flu:
We performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the human body, including brain, from acute infection through over seven months following symptom onset. We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple pulmonary and extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. Further, we detected persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset… Our data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for months.
COVID is making Americans stupid: Study shows worrying about virus leads to people making bad choices and performing poorly on simple cognitive tests
- COVID-anxious people were found to perform worse on information processing tests and had a distorted view of risks, according to a study
- It was done by McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital
- In all, people got more sensitive to risk and slower at processing information as the pandemic progressed
... To be clear - we know virtually nothing about this new strain aside from the fact that it exists.
Other / Fun Fare:
Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can
Contrarian Perspectives
Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:
*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
Regular Fare:
The demise of Scientific American:
One week ago, E. O. Wilson—the legendary naturalist and conservationist, and man who was universally acknowledged to know more about ants than anyone else in human history—passed away at age 92. A mere three days later, Scientific American—or more precisely, the zombie clickbait rag that now flaunts that name—published a shameful hit-piece, smearing Wilson for his “racist ideas” without, incredibly, so much as a single quote from Wilson, or any other attempt to substantiate its libel (see also this response by Jerry Coyne). SciAm‘s Pravda-like attack included the following extraordinary sentence, which I thought worthy of Alan Sokal’s Social Text hoax:
The so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.There are intellectually honest people who don’t know what the normal distribution is. There are no intellectually honest people who, not knowing what it is, figure that it must be something racist.
On Twitter, Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief now running SciAm into the ground, described her magazine’s calumny against Wilson as “insightful” (the replies, including from Richard Dawkins, are fun to read). I suppose it was as “insightful” as SciAm‘s disgraceful attack last year on Eric Lander, President Biden’s ultra-competent science advisor and a leader in the war on COVID, for … being a white male, which appears to have been E. O. Wilson’s crime as well. (Think I must be misrepresenting the “critique” of Lander? Read it!)
...
Guest post by Ashutosh Jogalekar
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No more. Now the magazine has done me a great favor by allowing me to wipe the slate of my conscience clean. What happened seven years ago was not just a misunderstanding but clearly one of many first warning signs of a calamitous slide into a decidedly unscientific, irrational and ideology-ridden universe of woke extremism. Its logical culmination two days ago was an absolutely shameless, confused, fact-free and purely ideological hit job on someone who wasn’t just a great childhood hero of mine but a leading light of science, literary achievement, humanism and biodiversity. While Ed (E. O.) Wilson’s memory was barely getting cemented only days after his death, the magazine published an op-ed calling him a racist, a hit job endorsed and cited by the editor-in-chief as “insightful”. One of the first things I did after reading the piece was buy a few Wilson books that weren’t part of my collection.
Ed Wilson was one of the gentlest, most eloquent, most brilliant and most determined advocates for both human and natural preservation you could find.
...
Tariq Ali: Winston Churchill Was Not Your Friend
Winston Churchill has become all but deified in modern Britain. But in his own lifetime, Churchill was often recognized for who he really was: an unrepentant imperialist and racist, a foe of trade unions and women’s rights, and a defender of elite privilege.
The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter believed that the triumph of socialism was inevitable, but he rejected the Marxist view of how capitalism works. His ideas are a stimulating challenge for those seeking an alternative to capitalism today.
Unsustainability / Climate Chaos / Collapse Fare:
***** Jacobson: 2022 is Going to be The Most F**ked Up Year on Planet Earth Since -66,000,000
The title refers to the approximate year that an asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico causing the fifth great extinction (the latest research places the asteroid at 65.95 mya, ± 40k years). In particular, it was the event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs.
We are now in the midst of the sixth great extinction and we are the dinosaurs. In my opinion, 2022 is the year that the metaphorical asteroid will hit humanity and the planet. This is the year the cataclysmic impacts of climate change will strike en masse, affecting all species of plants and animals, no matter where they reside, air, sea or land. In this blog post, I will be making my predictions for what’s ahead in 2022.
...
I note that there is a small chance of a massive methane burst coming from permafrost melt in Siberia or the East Siberian Arctic Sea (ESAS) methane clathrates that could radically increase global methane in 2022. What is more likely is that increased methane from these sources will lead to further acceleration of global methane. This increase will defeat the politicized mitigating path forward decreed in COP-26 of 30% reduction in global methane by 2030.
Next, expect novel and tragic climate disasters to escalate. The Canadian province of British Columbia is the model for what’s to come to your neighborhood in 2022. From record heat (Canadian record of 121F), to the fire that destroyed Lytton, to floods that destroyed transportation infrastructure throughout BC, to record cold, the beating BC is taking continues into 2022. The recent wildfires in Colorado near Boulder at the end of December, 2021, fueled by 100+ mph winds and a historic drought, burned with a ferocity that had never been seen in the region for as long as humans have documented such events. The scale, scope and duration of catastrophic climate events to come in 2022 is terrifying.
....
... This year, the U.S. is poised to see the “autocratic party” usurp power for good.
Expect more people to become aware of the inevitability of the collapse of global industrial civilization in 2022. Expect more movement towards the bright green lies of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and nuclear. Expect more children and working poor to be enslaved in lithium and cobalt mines to feed the first-world’s hunger for clean energy. Among the wealthy, owning a Tesla and having solar on your rooftop (with battery backup) will be the symbol for having done your part to save the planet.
As food becomes more scarce and supply chains continue to degrade, necessities will be harder to find and prices will go up. Expect inflation to accelerate. In the other direction, a long overdue stock market correction will be set in motion by monetary policy and fear. In short, 2022 is the year that the financial “everything bubble” will pop. Expect the filthy rich to get filthy richer.
...
This is going to be one f**k of a tough year to be a plant or animal on planet Earth. As much as you are able, be kind, be generous and be of service.
Here are the top 22 impacts of climate change that we will see in 2022:
- Acid rain
- Algae blooms
- Ash & smoke
- Bees dying & pollination loss
- Climate refugees & migration
- Coral bleaching
- Crop failures
- Disease, pandemics (plants & animals)
- Droughts
- Extreme cold
- Financial/bank/stock collapse
- Fires
- Floods
- Food & water riots
- Heat waves: frequency, power, duration
- Hunger, famine & starvation
- Infrastructure collapse
- Price instability & inflation
- Storms — more frequent, power, duration
- Supply chain & transportation collapse
- Unemployment & poverty
- War & terrorism
.... How surprising is it, really, that those tasked with formulating policy miraculously come up with policies that barely touch themselves at all while falling most heavily on those who have practically no ability to effect the change notionally intended? And talk about undemocratic!
COVID Fare:
I am increasingly coming across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Metatron and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Pierre Kory, Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts
the big story of the day, from multiple sources:
A report from an Indiana life insurance company raises serious concerns.
....
But I am wandering from a point that I am afraid to clearly state.
It is starting to look to me like the largest experiment on human beings in recorded history has failed. And, if this rather dry report from a senior Indiana life insurance executive holds true, then Reiner Fuellmich’s “Crimes against Humanity” push for convening new Nuremberg trials starts to look a lot less quixotic and a lot more prophetic.
...
Take a moment to read the entire article.
Now.
Then let’s continue on, assuming that you have.
AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.
IF this holds true, then the genetic vaccines so aggressively promoted have failed, and the clear federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life.
AT WORST, this report implies that the federal workplace vaccine mandates have driven what appear to be a true crime against humanity. Massive loss of life in (presumably) workers that have been forced to accept a toxic vaccine at higher frequency relative to the general population of Indiana.
FURTHERMORE, we have also been living through the most massive, globally coordinated propaganda and censorship campaign in the history of the human race. All major mass media and the social media technology companies have coordinated to stifle and suppress any discussion of the risks of the genetic vaccines AND/OR alternative early treatments.
Verdict -- true
... So I decided, as I usually do when I hear something outlandish, is to try some fact checking.
... Therefore, the alleged claim by Scott Davison, echoed by the Center Square and Dr Malone is TRUE.
Rated: TRUE and also: VERY DISTURBING AND WARRANTING FURTHER INVESTIGATION
Make a call to your insurance company and ask if you're covered if injured from injections.
Davison made some pretty amazing statements at this conference. Among them, was that young people are suddenly dying at higher rates - like historically unheard of rates - and no one seems to know why. He said that the death rate is 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels among working-age people and that most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths. So, what are they dying from at unprecedented rates, you ask?
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”
So we’re talking about levels that are 4 times worse that what would be considered a catastrophe.
A 12-sigma event is where geeky statisticians who have seen enough tables to know the round-numbers by heart have to look up the capacity of their software package to see if it's well enough powered to perform the calculation. Whatever it is, it's far more likely that an asteroid collides with Indiana tomorrow, ejecting 400 basketball-sized fragments as it falls that each make a perfect swoosh through the nets in every cornfield basketball hoop in the Hoosier state two seconds before destroying all of human civilization (really, I computed that in my head).
This is huge. Something is killing healthy people at an unprecedented rate. It isn't COVID. Could it be the "safe and effective" COVID vaccine? I think so. Here's why.
This is big. Really big. And I’m not the only one that thinks so.
Key points:
- Deaths among 18-64 year-olds (who don’t normally die) are up by 40% in 2021 vs. pre-pandemic levels
- This is huge. HUGE. They’ve never seen anything like this before in their history. Normally death rates don’t change at all. They are very stable. It would take something REALLY BIG to have an effect this big.
- Others in the industry are seeing it too.
- It isn’t COVID. COVID deaths are down this year.
- Whatever it is that is causing this, it is bigger and more deadlier than COVID and it’s affecting nearly everyone.
- The CDC is totally on top of this… ok, just kidding… the CDC is clueless as usual.
All of this means that “something” is causing MASSIVE numbers of excess deaths in 2021.
I wonder what is killing all these people?
Here are the clues we have, so we need someone really smart to piece this mystery together:
- These deaths started only after the vaccines rolled out
- The deaths are “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica. That’s not to say 65 and over aren’t affected as well. What’s key is that we’re seeing effects in young people
- There are more excess deaths than anytime in history, so it is likely caused by a new threat, never seen before in history, like a novel vaccine that has never been used before or something new like that that a huge number of people would be exposed to (such as by a state that pushes vaccination).
- Not due to COVID (COVID deaths are way down).
- They are dying from a variety of causes, not just a single cause. So this rules out food or air-based pathogens. I note that the variety of causes of death is consistent with the wide range of adverse events caused by the COVID vaccines, for example.
- It has to affect massive numbers of people to get an effect size that high. So it is something new affecting at least half the population, like a new mandated vaccine for example.
- There is a huge push for vaccines by the Indiana governor, he wants to have everyone vaccinated. Interesting. “Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb doubled down on the drive to get everyone in the state vaccinated.”
- Useful fact: Adults 65 and older account for 16% of the US population but 80% of COVID-19 deaths in the US, somewhat higher than their share of deaths from all causes (75%) over the same period. We’ll use that 75% stat later.
- It isn’t just the one life insurance company, they are all seeing this huge rises at other insurance companies. So this is something huge and national in scope, like a vaccine mandate in the entire US, or something like that.
- “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” This suggests it has to be a novel pathogen (like a novel vaccine, for example). It has to be something first introduced in 2021, you know, like a new COVID vaccine.
- The company is seeing an “uptick” in disability claims, saying at first it was short-term disability claims, and now the increase is in long-term disability claims. So whatever it is is killing people and those that aren’t killed are disabled. You know, like what the COVID vaccines are proven to do (since I believe VAERS).
- Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.” In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing. So this could all be caused by the COVID vaccines.
- The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago, and in fact is higher than it’s been in the past five years, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana’s chief medical officer, said at a news conference with Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday. So again, whatever is killing people is worse than COVID. It can’t be COVID since we have so many vaccinated people with our safe and effective vaccine that prevents COVID deaths.
- The CEO of the insurance company doesn’t think the vaccines are causing the deaths and disability. Check out this tweet: he is requiring his employees to be vaccinated! So it cannot be the vaccine, even though it fits all the facts! Darn! The CEO knows that the vaccines are safe and effective. He has no evidence to back that statement up, but we should believe him since he’s an authority figure (you know, like the CDC). We can always trust authority figures, and even more so when they have no evidence. Who needs evidence? Science has been displaced in 2021.
So I must say, I’m baffled. I had thought it was the COVID vaccine because it fit all the evidence except the last item. I was so close…
....
...
Reaction from the mainstream press was predictable: they ignored it
but not zero hedge:
The death rate for those aged 18-64 has risen an astonishing 40% over pre-pandemic levels, according to the CEO of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica.
...
"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic."
"So 40% is just unheard of," he added.
nor naked capitalism:
although, admittedly, despite the title, that was not the focus of that post
as big as that story is, that's not all; with covid and our collective insane response to it, there is ALWAYS more:
Alexander: Serious female genital trauma following mRNA COVID vaccines. My role is to present the data and science to ensure you get it as we are being spun by the media, both sides, CNN and FOX; lying to us
I am sharing and hoping that you be informed for your decision making; these vaccines appear to work for some (I do not support it) but harmful, seriously, for others...mass casualty event unfolding?
If by this time you have not been vaccinated, do not get it. If you have been , NO booster. Do not let your children be vaccinated with these vaccines.
I wanted you to see what many are going through with the vaccines…the suffering…I was asked to remove the photos after initially posting, and they were very brutal and painful, and so I did.
...
Thrombosis is a rare complication of COVID-19 vaccines that typically affects cerebral and visceral vessels. However, skin involvement is largely unknown. Here…genital necrosis associated with cutaneous thrombosis following COVID-19 vaccination. skin necrosis should be recognized as a possible manifestation of thrombosis associated with COVID-19 vaccination.
This seems now to be a mass casualty event unfolding…
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.17837
https://doi.org/10.1111/jdv.17837
***** Lyons-Weiler: Studies Needed on the Oncogenic Potential of COVID-19 Vaccinations
Fact Checkers deny it but present no new data. We're doing Science - and taking deep dive into the question of plausibility using molecular evidence using Systems Biology
...
Autoimmunity or other molecular antagonism against important cellular processes can lead to cancer. Disruption of processes that mediate DNA replication and repair, for example, or regulate cell division can be oncogenic. Given the importance of immune surveillance in our bodies against new precancerous cells, autoimmunologic impairment of the immune proteins and cells would not only spell disaster for infections, but could also lead to unchecked cancer growth.
...
While pooh-poohed by so-called “Fact Checkers”, Dr. Ryan Cole of Idaho saw and in Aug, 2021 reported an uptick in uterine cancers in women who had been vaccinated.
Dr. Cole reported that he was seeing increases is herpes virus, mononucleosis, shingles, human papillomavirus, and uterine cancers.
...
Other Observations
Dr. Burkhardt reported that 93% of post-inoculation autopsies showed lymphocyte penetration in all organs and tissues, and Dr. Bhakdi commented on autopsy findings that cells in the lymph nodes being destroyed following vaccination.
el gato malo, with a serious question:
why don't public health agencies and regulators track vaccine efficacy by vaccine type?
i struggle to even conceive of an argument for not doing so or why such data ought not be collected and widely disseminated.
i struggle to even conceive of an argument for not doing so or why such data ought not be collected and widely disseminated.
how can any "public health agency" claim actual service to the public health while abrogating this basic duty to generate the data that allows people to make the best health choices?
If the data were accurate, and if the vaccines worked as claimed then what we should see when we plot the vaccinations against deaths is something like this
...
But it is still surprising that the following is the actual plot:
COVID Tweets & Quotes of the Week:
this awesome thread was tweeted over the summer, but I missed it until Toby Rogers pointed it out:
***** Forrest Maready: I want to explain why so many in government, tech, public health, pharma, and philanthropy are SO dedicated to pushing the coronavirus vaccine, no matter what. Got a minute?
If you haven’t noticed, all rational thought seems to have left the planet. Governments, health officials, technology companies, and everyone else are pushing an experimental medical therapy—the coronavirus vaccine—on anything with two legs.
They are censoring any message, video, tweet, or post that questions the coronavirus vaccine at any level—even from some of the most prestigious doctors, scientists, and epidemiologists on the planet.
It doesn’t matter if thousands of people are dying from the shot. It doesn’t matter if you’re the guy that invented mRNA vaccines. If you don’t push the narrative that the coronavirus vaccine—and only that—will save us, you are seen as the enemy.
Why is that? Why are people SO incapable of rational thought or discussion on this issue? It seems like scientists would WANT to have open and transparent conversations about this. But they don’t.
...
...
The main reason most of these government officials, public health officials, tech and pharma companies, and everyone else are so aggressive about protecting the coronavirus shots is because they have a RELIGIOUS devotion to vaccines.
People tend to think of religion as based purely on an unseen deity, but in the last few decades, something else replaced this traditional definition: Science. Progress. Technology. For many people, these things have become that thing they worship.
Humans are designed to worship something. It is in our DNA. It is unavoidable. And any people unwittingly found themselves worshiping at the altar of Science & Technology. They may still go to church. They may still pray. But their faith is more easily put in “science” than God.
I can’t overstate how important this is to understand. All humans worship something. Even atheists. Many people, Christians included, have replaced God with Science and Technology as the most important entity in their lives.
...
For those who worship Science and Technology, protecting the vaccine story is paramount. There is nothing else more important to maintain the faith of its followers than to sustain the myth that vaccines saved humanity from destruction.
...
This is why honest reporting about the experimental nature of the coronavirus vaccines will not be allowed. This is why stories about people who have been killed or their lives ruined by the vaccine will not see the light of day.
This is why rational decision making is not going to happen regarding the coronavirus shots. This is why they’re recommending children who developed myocarditis after the first shot go ahead and get their second.
Vaccines are the cornerstone to this modern religion. Nothing else matters. Not medicine. Not antibiotics. Not ground-breaking surgery.
Vaccines are the savior. Everything else is a distant second.
People who subscribe to the religion of Science and Technology do not realize they’re being irrational. They cannot see it when you point it out to them. They are behaving rationally (as far as they can tell) because they believe in Science and Technology’s savior: vaccines.
So as you try and unpack and understand all the irrational behavior so many otherwise intelligent people appear to be exhibiting regarding the coronavirus vaccines, just remember: They are religious zealots who are protecting their savior. Nothing else matters.
*** Tessa: They are lying. They are lying about everything important. It’s uncanny how obscenely they are lying. Yes, the politics and the media have always been for sale—but today, to my senses, the scale and the confidence of lying can be only compared to my early childhood and the stories of saintly little Lenin and the mighty communist party. It’s obscene.
*** Ilargi: If I say that 2020 was the year of the virus, and 2021 the year of the vaccine, most people would probably agree. But 2021 was so much more than that; it was also the year of propaganda, media capture and narrative control at levels beyond anything we’ve ever seen. Even if many -most- people haven’t experienced it that way.
el gato malo: truly, the flagrance of the feckless fauci is enough to beggar belief.
he’s a human highlight reel of tactical position adoption, reversal, and disavowal.
the man has no idea what he’s talking about, never did, and worse, never cared. this has all been spin, politics and bluster. .... i for one have had about enough of this mephistophelean meddling and false faucian bargains. this man has been blighting public health in the US for 40 years.
CO-VIDs of the Week:
Australian Medical Whistleblowers Speak Out About Horrific Reactions Right After Vaccines
All things COVID Pushback Fare:
*** Rigger: And so the masquerade begins again
We wake on the third day of the third year that’s going to be Pfucked up by our response to covid.
The SCIENCE™ has been spectacular.
...
...
Millions and millions of people across the world will now have heard both Peter McCullough and Robert Malone talk about covid and our response to it. Irrespective of whether they are ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ - and it would be rather absurd to imagine they are simply getting everything wrong - what shines through is their obvious expertise and cool-headed rationality.
Once you take those first steps of properly questioning the narrative - looking at the data for yourself, asking questions - there’s no going back. You won’t be able to listen to the BBC again without your forehead having more wrinkles than dunes in the Sahara as you try to process the talkish they are gibbering.
...
After nearly 2 whole years of this nonsense, spanning 2020 to 2022, only the dimmest lightbulbs still believe the SCIENCE™ stuff has actually “worked”. Even the poster-child of the zero-covid morons, Auschwitzralia itself, has found things starting to get out of control as their idiotic approach begins to fall apart.
...
But masks are in again - and THIS time they will work - the SCIENCE™ has to be right someday soon, surely? We spent so much on it, invested so much belief in it, it can’t be wrong, surely? Please don’t tell us we paid for a Bugatti Veyron, but were sold a skateboard. Without wheels.
Let’s just focus on masks (again). I don’t think they can possibly work. At least not the typical surgical mask (or the cloth masks) so beloved of the anti-facers. Might I be wrong? Sure. But the data suggests I am not. The actual benefit of mask-wearing in reducing transmission cannot be found in the data - although a large number of seriously crappy “studies” that have been published suggest otherwise. The few I have read are appallingly bad - even by the already low standards of the SCIENCE™.
Masks might work if the virus hitched a ride on great globs of phlegm (the ‘droplet’ theory). But it doesn’t. It is aerosolized, whizzing about on very mobile particles of around 1 to 2 microns in size. A typical aerosol of this size can stay in the air for well over 2 weeks.
You don’t need to have more degrees than boosters to figure this one out. Walk within twenty feet of the group of smokers in the supermarket car park and you’ll know what they are doing without having to witness it with your eyes.
What is the key property masks must have if they stand any chance at all in being effective?
They must catch and keep a sufficient number of virions to make an appreciable difference.
Once you understand this all else follows.
...
The idea that the mask is significantly reducing the viral load is just so laughably nuts I don’t even know where to begin. But the anti-facers still cling to their Holy Scripture and believe with all their tiny little minds that these sacred talismans work like, umm, magic. They follow the SCIENCE™.
And let’s not forget the wanton application of more post-covid “logic” that would have us believe it’s fine to take off your mask in a restaurant when seated, but kids seated in school? No - too dangerous for them to take their mask off.
Meanwhile, those of us who just follow the science (or rather the scientific method) have one or two serious questions about the effectiveness of masks.
The problem is that once you’ve climbed the magic mountain, once you have invested so much of your belief and emotion in getting to the summit, it’s one helluva long way down. This doesn’t just apply to masks, but pretty much all the SCIENCE™ crap we’ve been fed for the last 2 years.
*** Quackenboss: Happy New Year: A Poem
First they told us it was essential to kill small businesses while Walmart stock soared.
It was essential to deprive children of an education.
Just 15 days, they said.
To save the nurses, who were overwhelmed from practicing their TikTok dances.
“Stay home!” they said.
“Stay home unless you are burning buildings and looting stores in the name of anti-racism, in which case, carry on.”
“Lockdowns save lives!” they said.
But what about the suicides, the overdoses, the alcoholism, the domestic violence, the child abuse, the depression, the untreated heart disease and cancer?
They didn’t mean those lives.
They said not to wear masks, then we should wear masks, then we must wear masks, and we’ll land on no-fly lists for eternity if we can’t keep a mask on our toddlers.
But why did you say not to wear masks? “We had to lie to you. You can’t handle the truth.”
“You must not do your own research,” warned the New York Times.
You’ll get used to it, they said. It’s the “new normal.”
Man, they were fast with that phrase.
Almost as fast as Facebook was at banning “COVID misinformation” to keep us safe.
The fact checkers are paid by pharma but does anyone have the energy to care?
The hospitals sedated patients with death row drugs and then murdered them with ventilators.
It’s the best they could do.
How did they protect the elderly, our most fragile citizens?
They imported thousands of sickened people into nursing homes, that’s how.
Don’t worry! The Governor of New York gave the nursing homes legal immunity because they once gave him a million-dollar donation.
It’s no one’s fault now.
We’re all in this together.
Hydroxychloroquine and zinc, with one acting as an effective vehicle to deliver the other, was saving lives.
“No, it’s not,” Fauci said. “It is!” we said. “We’ll do a study,” Fauci said, and used toxic loads of hydroxychloroquine and no zinc on patients just days from death, who then died.
“See?” he said. “I told you so.”
Quick, someone put this guy’s face on a cupcake.
People treated themselves with NAC, a precursor to help the body make glutathione.
“Enough of that,” the FDA said. “NAC was approved as a drug, not a supplement. We didn’t say anything for 57 years, but sell it now and we’ll arrest you.”
And poof! NAC was gone.
Great news in the vaccine trials! Almost no one in the vaccine group caught COVID except the 3,140 cases of “suspected COVID” but don’t look behind the curtain.
“We must grant emergency use authorization to the vaccines!” they said, “because we’ve looked high and low but we have no effective treatments for COVID.”
Sorry your grandmother died in the hospital all alone.
Hope you enjoyed her Zoom funeral while Gavin Newsom enjoyed a five thousand-dollar dinner at the French Laundry.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
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Silly labs. Whoops.
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Don’t read reports from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting system.
It’s inaccurate, despite the fact we built it, it’s the only public tracking system we’ve got, and we’ve refused to improve it for the last 20 years.
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Let’s kick Alex Berenson off of Twitter for stating the obvious, that will keep people safe.
And bring back the masks not because we were wrong but because the science changed and we do nothing if not follow the science.
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Emergency cancelled! We meant “with COVID,” not “from COVID.”
Sorry for the alarm. That was out of line, even for us.
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COVID Corporatocracy / Idiocracy / Conspiracy Fare:
Kunstler: Crimes Against Our Country
The year of sickening global psychosis ended with virologist and vaccine-uberspecialist Dr. Robert Malone truth-bombing the Internet with three hours of straight talk about the US health authorities’ campaign to destroy the lives of at least half a million US citizens (so far) and, leading by example, to harm multiples of that number of innocent people across all of Western Civilization. Podcaster Joe Rogan assisted skillfully in an interview that is finally rocking the world out of an epic consensus trance. (Listen.)
By health authorities I don’t just mean Dr. Anthony Fauci, the designated National SARS-CoV-2 Coordinator, or his accomplices in the Dept. of Health and Human Services agencies, CDC, NIH, NIAID, etc., but also the purblind US medical establishment of actual doctors in clinical practice, researchers, hospital administrators, and pharma executives who acted with a collective stupid malevolence not seen since the crematory-stuffers of the Nazi bureaucracy carried out their final solution.
We know what you did. You engineered and patented a gain-of-function virus at the same time you conspired with pharma companies to devise and patent pseudo-vaccines, and then you loosed both of them on the public. You didn’t just fail to adequately test the “vaccines” cooked up by Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, but you deliberately botched the trials and lied about it. You created rich $$ incentives for hospitals to mis-treat Covid patients by failing to use known, safe, effective anti-virals. You conspired with social and news media to suppress information about those common anti-viral drugs that would have informed many patients’ decisions and saved thousands of lives. You treated late-stage patients dying of Covid-induced vascular disorder with the ineffective and toxic drug remdesivir that Dr. Fauci had developed unsuccessfully for an ebola outbreak years ago. (Nurses turned so cynical about the remdesivir protocol that they nicknamed it “run-death-is-near.”) You prompted government officials to lockdown society, force useless masking, and now to coerce “vaccination” by threatening to deprive citizens of their livelihoods.
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Every effort is being made to extend emergency use authorizations for unsafe and ineffective “vaccines” in order to sustain shields against liability for the benefit of their manufacturers. Pfizer refuses to release in the USA its FDA-approved comirnaty version of the EUA-protected BioNTech product for that reason
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The perfidious news media is scrambling now to adjust its narratives, but they won’t escape the record of falsehood they’ve sedulously laid down. They can’t delete or rewrite every story in their archives
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*** Ilargi: 21/22
If I say that 2020 was the year of the virus, and 2021 the year of the vaccine, most people would probably agree. But 2021 was so much more than that; it was also the year of propaganda, media capture and narrative control at levels beyond anything we’ve ever seen. Even if many -most- people haven’t experienced it that way.
And that has likely had more negative impact on us than the vaccine itself. A close call perhaps, I know. The good thing that has come out of this is that so much of it has been exposed. Much of the underlying tendencies towards authoritarianism, and disregard for truth, and blind desire for profit, for a Great Reset, population control, abandonment of freedoms and human rights, it’s all there now for us to see.
We need to act upon that exposure. Get rid of Fauci, Walensky, Pfizer, CDC, and their peers across the planet, of the WHO, of all health “experts” that receive income from/via Pfizer et al (which is the vast majority), put a halt to the influence of money (Bill Gates) on health policy. A society, a country, need to be their own boss over their own fundamental policies. And that means paying for it ourselves.
And not have policies easily changed by a group of politicians and unelected officials (“experts”) who happen to have grabbed power at a particular point in time. A society needs roots, and ours have been uprooted. From principles, from laws, from rights. This will not be easy, we already gave them a 2 year advantage, but if we don’t use this time when the spotlights are directed at them, we will lose even much more than we have already lost. We’ve let them play their games, virtually uncontested, and we cannot afford that.
This appears to culminate in Twitter’s handling of Joe Rogan and Robert Malone recently, and that’s fine, Twitter is not big enough to tackle Rogan, while CNN and MSNBC audiences are drops in the ocean compared to Joe’s. They bit off one too big for them to chew.
But that’s just the US, and that’s just one podcaster, one voice. The control virus that has come with the corona virus has delved much deeper into the world’s various societies. Just yesterday, we saw video from my country of birth, Holland, where police set attack dogs on peaceful elderly protesters, and say what you will, but that country is neither free nor a democracy. That claim is 100% obsolete.
That it is accepted regardless gives credence, and a lot, to Matthias Desmet and his “Mass Formation Syndrome” theories, but we should not really need his analysis, useful as it may be, to figure out what is going on. All we need to do is take a step back and wonder what the hell is going on. To ponder how we saw our societies 2+ years ago, how we ourselves would have seen these recent developments in the light of back then. We can’t have forgotten all of it?!
That Anthony Fauci is still in his job is absolutely insane. He became head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 40 years ago, he’s 81, older than Joe Biden. He’s been building ties to Big Pharma, especially Pfizer, all that time, in the shadows, the best place for such deals.
He was in his position when Pfizer received the biggest criminal fine in US corporate history in 2012, of $2.3 billion, for lying and cheating and more. Now, a few years later, Fauci works with Pfizer and the rest of Big Pharma, and makes their owners billionaires and their shareholders very rich. He is the very last person who should have been in his where he is, both 2 years ago and now.
Fauci is not the best doctor in the US, he’s just the best connected to the pharma industry. That guarantees Americans the worst deal they could get, not the best. And of course anyone else at the upper echelons of the NIAID, CDC, FDA, they need to go too. Fauci et al put them there.
In the US and elsewhere, any politician, individual or through their party or otherwise, and any health experts, individual or through their organization or company, who have received funds from Big Pharma or Bill Gates, should be discarded, put out by the curb. We should be able to figure this out, because it’s NOW that they stand exposed. Perhaps not TO Covid, but certainly BY Covid.
It’s the only way we can cleanse the system. Which is needed if we want to survive, with our health, our conscience, and our freedoms and rights.
******* Toby Rogers: The "existential abyss" is key to understanding the crisis we face
The technocrats created a false idol that failed and now they are lashing out
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I think Maready is exactly correct. And I want to go one step further with the analysis.
The scientists, philosophers, and technocrats of the Age of Enlightenment killed God. God was probably due for a new understanding or at least a bit of reframing after hundreds of years of corruption and dogmatism in the church. But I think it was more than that. Brimming with the enthusiasm/arrogance/hubris of extraordinary new discoveries (after centuries of stony silence) I think these scientists, philosophers, and technocrats saw God as competition and were more than happy to install themselves in his stead.
It does not help that the wealth of that era was funded by global conquest based on slavery and genocide so I think that the scientists, philosophers, and technocrats of that era were more than happy to push aside thorny questions about ethics and morality as well.
The die was cast and that’s the system we live under today — with science and medicine as the new high priests and the technocrats eager to serve them.
But as Maready wisely reminds us, “all humans worship something.”
The technocrats created a Golden Calf to worship — a belief in the infallibility of science, vaccines as the new Eucharist, and an entire economic and social system to serve these high priests and this vision of the world.
If the technocrats’ false idol was working, there would be no need for them to worry. But it’s not. Everywhere they look their false idol is in ruins. The replication crisis. The rise of chronic illness. The complete failure of the coronavirus “vaccine” campaign. Everything they believed about how the world worked, and the entire “meritocratic” system they set up to propel these beliefs forward, has been revealed to be a fraud.
And so the reason that they are behaving so badly right now is that they are staring into the existential abyss and it terrifies them more than anything else in life. Their worldview has become, ‘there is no God; our attempts to create a new God have failed; life is empty, meaningless, and short; why am I here?’ This is beyond fear, this is total panic and the cold dread of annihilation. And they blame this existential crisis on the critical thinkers who had the audacity to point out that their junk science vaccines do not work and cause tremendous harms.
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It seems to me that the panic, the pandemics, and the genocide will continue until we are able to help them navigate their fears about the infinite abyss.
This is a much more difficult task than it would appear.
These people are not likely to choose traditional religion nor any of the modern feel-good evangelical praise services.
Science and medicine have failed.
They are going to want to make a move to transhumanism. But that’s just another false idol that will accelerate the emptiness and collapse rather than provide inner harmony and stability.
It seems to me that there are a few different ways for us to respond:
1. We can say to them ‘look, if you want to worship science, great, but in that case follow actual science not this preposterous Pharma junk science that is killing you, your family, and most of the developed world right now. You have been worshipping the worst toxic mimic of actual science and you look like a fool. Actual science is characterized by a deep humility, questioning, critical thinking, proper methods, endless doubt, failure, surprise, mystery, paradox, uncertainty, and an appreciation for the sacredness of all life. Actual science is ever-changing and nothing like what passes for science in the mainstream press today.’
2. But I also think there is space for a new version of Christianity (and/or other religions) to emerge that blends the best of science and faith. I think it starts with the question of, “Why is there something rather than nothing.” Ken Wilber was very good at this for a while — blending all human knowledge into a map that he called a theory of everything. Wilber’s book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is one of the finest religious treatises ever written. Rob Bell and Charles Einstein also seem to blend a deep reverence for faith with an understanding of science. I just think, now more than ever, there is space for new approaches to faith that transcend either the boredom of traditional Protestantism, the fluff of much of modern evangelicalism, and the idolatry of the current sci-tech crowd.
3. Or maybe we insist on the old ways and make the case that something crucial was lost in our modern approaches to faith? Gnostic Christianity, Zen, and deep meditation practices are brilliant, experiential, and fascinating. Maybe we utilize their existential panic to convert them into true believers who can learn to practice age-old wisdom traditions?
Solving this problem is among the most pressing issues facing the world today. As long as the bougiecrats are staring into the infinite abyss and freaking out, they are going to keep trying to throw us in to the pit to appease their junk science idol.
Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:
GeoPolitical Fare:
Lawrence: The non–West ‘stands up.’
CaitOz Fare:
Those Who Support Internet Censorship Lack Psychological Maturity
Lawrence: The non–West ‘stands up.’
CaitOz Fare:
Those Who Support Internet Censorship Lack Psychological Maturity
.... In reality nobody ever gets banned for “Covid misinformation”; that’s just today’s excuse. Before that it was the fallout from the Capitol riot, before that it was election security, before that it was Russian disinformation, foreign influence ops, fake news, etc. In reality the real agenda behind the normalization of internet censorship is the normalization of internet censorship itself. That’s the real reason so many people get banned.
.... The danger of this is obvious to anyone who isn’t a stunted emotional infant. The danger of government-tied monopolistic tech platforms controlling worldwide speech far outweighs the danger of whatever voice you might happen to dislike at any given moment.
... This should not be an uncommon perspective. It doesn’t require a lot of maturity to get this, it just requires some basic self-preservation and enough psychological growth to understand that the world should not be forced to align with your personal will. It says bad things about the future that even this kindergarten-level degree of insight has become rare in some circles.
Satirical Fare:
The Babylon Bee's Top Predictions For 2022
Pics of the Week:
Satirical Fare:
The Babylon Bee's Top Predictions For 2022
Here is a definitive list of things that will happen in 2022:
January 1 - USPS will deliver your Christmas package
January 6 - Second insurrection attempt canceled
January 20 - Pfizer unveils booster shots 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8
January 21 - Men break every record ever held by women
January 22 - Harvard gender studies professor discovers five new pronouns
January 23 - The Babylon Bee discovers a 3rd conservative joke
January 25 - Obama releases another memoir
January 27 - Mark Zuckerberg finally learns how to smile with his eyes
February 1 - WHO runs out of Greek letters for variants and starts naming them after the Muppets
....
Pics of the Week:
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