I feel the same way about me and my political friends. I have a friend who used to be left wing and has done 180 because of covid mandates. He lived in California for 20 years. Now he lives in Texas near Austin. He now wants to leave Austin for some place more rural.
He also has a greater appreciation for federalism and the founding fathers.
He started watching Tucker Carlson and can’t stand Ben Shapiro.
His transformation has been remarkable. The main reason was covid insanity
He still dislikes Trump but will still support him over Biden because Biden is so terrible in so many ways.
While everything you said is factually correct, I don’t believe for a second that all of these entities, if left to their own devices, would have done what they did if it wasn’t imposed on them by some “external force”. In other words, the level of coordination and harmonization of message wasn’t spontaneous or organic.
I think you know where I stand on all of this. I’ve completely divested myself of any sense of patriotism or political affiliation…I no longer define myself in those terms. My only hope and faith is in God and my only allegiance is to my family and the decent people around me.
Yeah but guys like Hayek never understood what the function of a Declaration of War is and that’s because they never understood the foundation of civilization was not their wishful thinking about “nonaggression”. That fantasy of theirs was interior decoration of a 600M year old cavern of individual sexual aggression between males.
Now we have Trump with his great big beautiful wall and a great big beautiful gate with hoards of legal immigrants coming in to do the jobs Americans won’t do. Never mind that we’ve already lost the cyberwar to India and that it is going to require killing the urban areas – and most of the people in them – to escape this nightmare.
This is priceless. It is the most absurd effort to blame the Russkies since the Russian Collusion hoax.
The number of sunspots at solar maximum has also decreased since the rise of Putin. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Not to worry: the next solar max is predicted to stabilize at about the same level as the last one. Crisis averted! This must mean that Putin will be deposed or die. You heard it here first, folks.
The mortality caused by C19 was underreported. This is the extent of damage:
Now, if eradication was the goal (as it should have been if WHO leadership complied with their own constitution), there’d be 3x fewer lockdowns, and the virus would have never spread outside of Wuhan. Unfortunately, the flu mindset of ‘preventing healthcare meltdown’ was implemented with predictable results.
Let’s see. Did you not claim that Putin was the cause? I quoted your text verbatim. He claim is laughable on its face. Linking to some idiotic ‘fallacy’ web page is not an counterargument.
But, please, continue to provide entertainment. I’m sure everyone is enjoying it. My sincere thanks.
With deepest respect, Eggspurt, let’s try to get a handle on scale.
There are perhaps 9 Billion human beings on Planet Earth, with an average life span of about 70 years. Recognizing that the population average age is skewed lower (outside the under-replacing West), let’s estimate this means a normal annual death toll of around 100 Million people – about 3 people per second.
Our base expectation is that in a normal year, 100 Million people will die from all causes. In the approx. 4 years between 2020 & 2024, that amounts to 400 Million people dying … normally.
Confirmed Covid deaths are listed at about 7 million – a little more than 1% over the expected numbers of deaths in those years. Even using the Upper Bound estimate of around 35 Million extra deaths, that is still less than 10% of the expected total. It certainly was not the Black Death.
Given that there is room for major fudging in the classification of death statistics (80 year-old man with multiple health issues dies – what killed him?), the most likely interpretation is that Covid-19 was just another one of those “Influenza-Like Illnesses” which the CDC has been following for years.
I’ve too been asking for a QALY-based estimate, but some data is better than no data. You can actually calculate the age of death yourself contrasting the excess mortality with the change in life expectancy.
Things would of course be a lot worse without the interverntions countries have taken.
I think this also covers some very valid arguments from @Gavin. As for whether Covid is like flu, well, this we know it’s not:
In part we know it because SARS1 is very similar to SARS2, and China tried to cover it up the first time:
There have been only a few reports in the local media about the current situation of a small self-help group of survivors in Beijing, but not about the majority of SARS survivors. The domestic media reported in 2009 that there were approximately 300 SARS survivors struggling with long-term complications in Beijing; 80% of these were forced to quit their jobs and 60% suffered from avascular necrosis, pulmonary fibrosis, or depression. In the first few years after the SARS outbreak, reports about the aftereffects of SARS were banned in the media. As a positive development later, both the central and local governments became aware of these problems and began taking steps to address SARS-related morbidity and reduce the financial burden on survivors.
I think Umberto Eco had funny terms for types of people. You’ve engaged in category #3, by misinterpreting my distinct statement of correlation (‘coincides’) as a statement of causation. Now you’re doubling down on your error, adding category #2. Your underlying pre-existing condition is probably #4, but from now on I’ll just assume you cover all 4. Bye.
