The Brightest Star in the Sky

[Gavin]

Back in 2018, before the CovidScam changed the world, a middle school student choir made an interesting video of their upbeat performance of a rather doleful song – The Brightest Star in the Sky. The video clearly hit a mark, with Youtube noting it has been watched more than 17 Million times – definitely a larger audience than simply proud parents and grandparents.

I have to admit to having felt a twinge of jealousy on seeing this video. If my school had had facilities like that library, I might have made something of my life.

More to the point – this was filmed 7 years ago. Those fresh-faced enthusiastic middle school choir members are now +/- 20 years old, and facing a world with high youth unemployment and the prospect of AI destroying many of the traditional professions. What are their lives like now? File under: “Things I will never know”.

厦门六中合唱团全新演绎《夜空中最亮的星》

[smagor]

While I am always curious about what is going on in China, this piece seems like government-sponsored propaganda (provincial or central, we do not know). This, in itself, is also a signal when seen with such understanding.

@Gavin

File under: “Things I will never know”.

A lot more balanced, realistic and interesting views can be found in interviews on the ground, e.g.:

Why Are Young Chinese Letting it Rot? - China's Bai Lan Phenomenon - Chinese Street Interview

How Do Chinese REALLY Feel About Their Economy in Late 2025? - Chinese Street Interview

[eggspurt]

@Gavin

The Brightest Star in the Sky

Here’s a quick AI translation of the lyrics to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXYh3N6PyFM

–

O brightest star in the night, can you hear
The loneliness and quiet sighs
Hidden in the heart of the one who gazes up at you?

O brightest star in the night, can you recall
The silhouette that once walked beside me
Before it drifted away into the wind?

I pray for a soul as clear as glass,
For eyes that still remember how to weep.
Grant me the courage to believe again—
O let me slip past every lie just to embrace you.

Whenever I lose all sense of purpose,
Whenever I wander lost in the darkness—
O brightest star in the night,
Please guide me closer to your light.

Brightest star in the night, do you know
Where the one who walked with me has gone?
O brightest star in the night, do you ever wonder
If dawn will rise first, or fate will intervene instead?

I’d rather bear all the pain within my heart
Than let the memory of your eyes fade away.
Grant me the courage to believe again—
O let me pass through every lie just to hold you.

Whenever I cannot find why I exist,
Whenever I lose myself in the night—
O brightest star in the sky,
O shine upon the road ahead.

I pray for a soul as clear as glass,
For eyes that still remember how to cry.
Grant me the courage to believe again—
O let me slip past every lie just to reach you.

Whenever I cannot find the meaning of my being,
Whenever I am lost in endless night—
O brightest star in the sky,
Please light the path before me.

O brightest star in the night, can you truly hear
The solitude and sighs buried in the heart
Of the one who looks up at you?

–

@Gavin

CovidScam

Can you explain the scam part?

[Gavin]

@eggspurt

Can you explain the scam part?

We now know with total certitude that the asserted Covid global pandemic was a washout. Just like the annual flu, it brought on the inevitable deaths of some of the old and the sick, along with a few unlucky unusually-susceptible individuals.

All the shut down of schools, the masking, the clot-shots, the firings of those who refused to subject themselves to an untested injectant … were unnecessary – while causing real damage, real distress, and actual deaths. And this was obvious from the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident in Japan early in the process.

Is there a better word than “scam” to describe this governmental overreach?

[pturmel]

I find that Winston Sterzal and The China Show to be excellent antidotes to gushing Chinese propaganda.

[drlorentz]

@Gavin

Is there a better word than “scam” to describe this governmental overreach?

Here are a few candidates, submitted for your approval:

Crime against their own citizens.
A display of their hatred of the people.
Callous disregard for the lives, aspirations, and wellbeing of their citizens.

Admittedly, scam is more compact and convenient but it fails to capture the enormity of the crime. I’m open to shorter, yet equally evocative, descriptors.

Never forgive, never forget.

[drlorentz]

@pturmel

Winston Sterzal and The China Show

I followed those guys on YT while they were still in China, including the story of their escape. As I recall, both had Chinese wives, one of whom is a physician (Winston’s?). I credit their reporting for our being well prepared for the run on paper products around March 2020; we had enough extra to share with a neighbor. The motorcycle trip to Mongolia was especially interesting.

[Gavin]

@smagor

A lot more balanced, realistic and interesting views can be found in interviews on the ground, e.g.:

Thanks for those language education videos. You are focusing on exactly the point – a point which one of the young Chinese women who was asked about “letting it rot” made: namely, the Covidscam changed everything. The middle school students of 7 years ago are today facing an uncomfortable world with high youth unemployment.

Just as the Covidscam was a world-wide phenomenon, the issue of generational inequity seems to be world-wide. We old guys might be living quite comfortably, but many young people are facing hard times. The only country in the world today where a young person can easily find a job is Russia, and we all know the unfortunate reasons for that.

Remember the recent Gallup poll that 40% of young American women want to leave the US?

40 percent of young women want to leave US permanently: Poll

Sure, I thought, when I saw that. But just last week, I was engaged in idle conversation with a young woman while waiting for her computer system to complete a transaction. Apropos of nothing, she said that she wanted to leave the US. Unfortunately, the computer system then responded and I did not get a chance to follow up with her on where she wanted to go. That Gallup poll may have been accurate – for young people, the US and China have some of the same problems.

It may be worth adding that the young woman to whom I was speaking was well-spoken, seemed educated, and was (as is so typical these days) obese and tattooed. Houston, we have a problem!

[eggspurt]

@Gavin

washout

China mortality rate (intervention: zero Covid in 2020-2021, mass vaccination with a non-mRNA vaccine, opening in 2023 - data truncated/eliminated since then):

USA (intervention: voluntary precautions & vaccination):

Iran (intervention: none - Covid was thought to be a ‘scam’)

It looks like persistently elevated mortality rates even years after.

Death rates are not to be compared between countries due to different age distributions.

What’s your data?

[Gavin]

@eggspurt

What’s your data?

99+% survival rate in all countries. The Covidscam was not quite the Black Death, was it? Or even the 1919 flu epidemic!

Then one would need to adjust the death rates to account for all those unfortunate people – we all know they existed – whose lives were cut short because they could not get appropriate medical treatment for other conditions during the lockdowns.

Yes, there was a communicable disease mainly affecting those with a predisposition like sickness or advanced age. No, it was not the threatened global pandemic that was used to create fear, panic, and genuine harm throughout much of the world.

[drlorentz]

@Gavin

99+% survival rate in all countries. The Covidscam was not quite the Black Death, was it? Or even the 1919 flu epidemic!

It was something like 99.7%.

The COVID thing was litigated years ago. Asking for data at this point is sealioning. In short, all the things we were told were lies: masks will protect you, the vaccine prevents transmission, and the vaccine will prevent you from getting sick. I can’t remember them all. Every single word was a lie, including and and the.

Addendum (revised for better source): “ Early seroprevalence studies and meta-analyses estimated a global median IFR of approximately 0.15–0.27% (corrected for biases), with substantial variation by location and population age structure.”
Much lower estimates for later variants. Important to distinguish CFR and IFR.
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw_05e3625f-d402-4171-83c4-0dac05a739e4

[eggspurt]

@Gavin

99+% survival rate in all countries

Bulgaria lost well over 1%:

Interestingly enough, Bulgaria had some of the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy:

Bulgaria: The Wild, Wild East of Vaccine Disinformation - EU DisinfoLab

They also didn’t care much for face masks:

[Gavin]

@eggspurt

Bulgaria lost well over 1%:

This reminds me of the news during the AIDS “epidemic” – remember Clinton’s lady claiming we were going to lose an entire generation? – about an American killed in a traffic accident while vacationing in an African country: his family were shocked to find that his cause of death was listed as AIDS. Of course, the World Health Organization provided subsidies to countries with high AIDS deaths.

Anyway, the population of Bulgaria is about 6.5 Million people. From your graph, pre-Covidscam, about 110,000 were dying per year ~1.7% of the population. Interestingly, if the population were stable and Bulgarians lived an average of 75 years, then only about 86,000 Bulgarians would die per year. Clearly, Bulgaria’s population was heavily weighted towards much older (or sicker) people – exactly the sub-group most susceptible to flu or Covid.

That aside, deaths jumped to about 150,000 per year during the Covidscam – consistent with the Bulgarian population being disproportionately in the at-risk group. That was 2.3% of the population in the peak year – a Covid-related increase of little more than half a percent. The overwhelming majority of the Bulgarian population survived the dreaded Covid!

[eggspurt]

Words are cheap. You made a statement and I proved you wrong. We can keep going. Lorentz was off by an order of magnitude, so he should probably check himself before posting.

[drlorentz]

@Gavin

Bulgaria’s population was heavily weighted towards much older (or sicker) people – exactly the sub-group most susceptible to flu or Covid.

Indeed, it is so weighted. There’s a special kind of dishonesty that certain ‘influencers’ like to use in drive-by posts that includes failing to age-adjust mortality data for the WuFlu and using raw numbers instead of per capita. The data give the superficial appearance of being significant but quickly evaporates under the slightest scrutiny.

Another trick is to cherry-pick an outlier case instead of using a large data set. Bulgaria is a dying country. The population has been in decline since about 1990: hardly a representative case.

[drlorentz]

@eggspurt

Lorentz was off by an order of magnitude, so he should probably check himself before posting.

Explain where I was off by an order of magnitude. Include citations. Meanwhile, @eggspurt should probably check himself before posting intentionally deceptive data as explained above.

[eggspurt]

@drlorentz

@Gavin

99+% survival rate in all countries. The Covidscam was not quite the Black Death, was it? Or even the 1919 flu epidemic!

It was something like 99.7%.

Here, reposting your inane statement. You’re generating far more noise than signal on this forum, and you should be blocked.

[drlorentz]

@eggspurt

Here, reposting your inane statement. You’re generating far more noise than signal on this forum, and you should be blocked.

Unlike you, I cite my sources. Specifically, the following finding:

Early seroprevalence studies and meta-analyses estimated a global median IFR [infection fatality rate] of approximately 0.15–0.27% (corrected for biases), with substantial variation by location and population age structure.

This is my claim that you allege is “off by an order of magnitude.” Since you appear to be arithmetically challenged, let me walk you through the steps. I wrote that the survival rate was about 99.7%. That means the fatality rate is 100-99.7=0.3%. Thus, I slightly overestimated the fatality rate. On the other hand, your deceptively cited case of Bulgaria was debunked, above.

If you are looking for someone to get blocked, I suggest looking in the mirror. However, I do not advocate your being blocked. On the contrary, the best way to deal with stupid or dishonest claims is to expose them to public scrutiny. Blocking people with differing opinions is strictly a tool of the Regime and its operatives or fellow travelers.