August 8, 2021
What do my Facebook friends think they are doing expressing this kind of hostility?
Here are 2 memes I encountered the other day. I suppose the people who put these up think of themselves as funny and scientifically correct. The first one exults in punishment and the second one makes casual use of the Holocaust.
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The illogical structure of “Click it or Ticket” bugs me every time I see it.
Setting aside the parallel illogic, “Mask it or casket” would be self-discrediting. “Wear your seatbelt or you’ll get a ticket” only works as a threat if you then have a fairly high chance of getting a ticket if you don’t. “Wear your mask or you’re going to die,” for a malady with a case fatality rate under 2%, tells people who aren’t already on their side, Yes. You people are panic-mongers.
More and more, I suspect masks make an incremental difference anyway. It’s getting hard to find the recent interview with Michael Osterholm where he says your basic masks are probably not all that effective. He said this on CNN and I can’t find it using CNN’s search tool. Not finding it on YouTube or Google. I only find it on certain right-of-center sites. I suspect it was being used by the wrong people, to argue against mask mandates, and is getting de-emphasized. (Osterholm is pro-masking, he’s just saying if we’re serious, we need N95s.)
Something has changed in the way people are accepting conformity that is enforced in one way or another. A mask mandate: if the evidence is in dispute, we are asked to believe the onus is on citizens to prove the inconvenience is comparable to being shipped to a concentration camp and perhaps killed. Isn't the onus on public officials and their alleged experts to prove there is some good goddam reason to do all this? Isn't liberty precious, even during a pandemic? I'm not anti-vaccine, I'm anti-lockdown for anyone under 30, I tend to be anti-mask but I wear a mask inside stores, etc. I welcome Berenson and others for asking good questions.
"What do my Facebook friends think they are doing expressing this kind of hostility?" They think they're attacking Republicans, where everything goes. But in my Baltimore, there are basically no Republicans. Just a lot of poor black and brown people, largely not vaccinated. I doubt your Facebook friends would even think about talking this way to them.
What event or events will it take to make leftists admit to any error at all? The exposure of the Russian collusion hoax? The exposure of the anti-Kavanaugh frauds? The historical errors of the 1619 Project? The false accusations of conspiracy regarding those who understood early on that the Wuhan lab was the most likely culprit in the release of Covid-19? The growing evidence of significant voting fraud in the 2020 election?
No one who indulged these errors -- like the New York Times, one of your worst contributors to our problems and social division -- ever admits they made an error.
So pushing for mandatory vaccination against our medical rules (EUA) and then noticing that the "vaccines" have very limited efficacy -- will that wake them up to their hubris? Will that make them doubt their certainties?
What if the "vaccines" turn out not only to be of limited efficacy, but in their "leakiness," are actually reversing patient health and could lead to more resistant Covid mutations?
Will that make them question their vicious certainties?
Will it take financial reverses? Collapse? War?
If so..... if it will take much worse than we are already experiencing, will we already have been totalized by the Times, Wapo and the Democratic Party, and had most of our liberties removed? Will it take them coming for Dr. Jill? For silly liberals?
What will it take?
Althouse, from your blog post's content, it is not clear to me whether you were aware of this, but...
The "Star of David" reference is purely reactive in the context of the vaccine debate. The list of Trumpublicans who began this odious chapter in the saga of the COVID vaccine have made specific references to the Jews' holocaust-era forced wearing of the Star of David is almost too long for a single comment. But...
A GOP state representative in Washington actually wore a yellow star:
https://www.newsweek.com/rep-jim-walsh-wears-yellow-star-david-protest-covid-vaccine-mandates-washington-1605698
Congressional maniac Marjorie Taylor Greene did it back in May:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-holocaust-vaccine-b1853545.html
The Chairman of the Oklahoma GOP engaged in the comparison:
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/08/01/john-bennett-oklahoma-gop-defends-comparing-covid-vaccine-mandates-treatment-jews-holocaust/5447961001/
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) made a more general holocaust comparison. Check out this delightful takedown from The Bulwark:
https://www.thebulwark.com/should-lauren-boebert-visit-auschwitz/
There are many, many more links. But you get the idea.
There ought to be a museum of panic porn to be studied in preparation for future pandemics. Both sides do it. We do have a fairly comprehensive case study of what not to do in the next one, however. But since "don't politicize it" is first on the list, you can look for that dearly bought body of knowledge to be ignored.
The second one seemed pro mask. The first obviously is. The problem is that mask wearing is now more political than medical. Overall, states did about the same whether they did heavy masking or little of it. Many people got vaccinated so they wouldn’t have to wear masks, and then, when the majority of the country had been vaccinated, we are supposed to start wearing masks again? To compound things, it looks more and more like the authorities overreacted to the pandemic, shut the country down when it didn’t need to be, destroying millions of jobs and small businesses, then utilized that to (often illegally) mandate mail in balloting in the last election, in order to perpetuate massive voter fraud to deprive Trump of a second term and the Republicans of the Senate. As the evidence continues to mount of the stolen election, more and more people are skeptical about the motives of those authorities demanding masking. After all, they were the ones who stole it.
The science was never there that the type of masking done in this country did any good whatsoever, and there is some evidence that it harmed kids. Again, as with CAGW (now Climate Change), it’s mostly built on models, that through their simplifications, don’t seem to reflect reality as well as their proponents claim. Still, last year, for much of the country, no one knowing really how dangerous the virus was, it was worth the effort to wear a mask. But we know now, and the evidence seems to be that we are well over the hump now. And, indeed, there seems to be some correlation between those who believe CAGW models and COVID-19 masking models, and those who don’t. Biden voters and supporters do, while Trump voters and supporters are less likely to. Which is why the decision to wear a mask or not seems more and more to be political and tribal.
And from that, the answer to Ann’s original question, is that much of the hostility comes from the partisan split. It reminds me of a verbal dispute I was in in late May by the University in Missoula. Most of the state was maskless by then, but not around the liberal school. I walked into a grocery store without a mask, and one of the other customers was irate at it. Despite both of us having been vaccinated, he was adamant that masking was necessary because the (local) authorities demanded it. And irate that I wouldn’t willingly comply (by then, I was wearing a mask, but only because the store had something I needed). I no longer ceded him, or the left wing mayor, the moral authority in this matter.
Isn't the onus on public officials and their alleged experts to prove there is some good goddam reason to do all this? Isn't liberty precious, even during a pandemic?
Yes, but to be charitable to the mask mandaters, they can argue that the person who gets COVID from a non-masked person has been deprived of liberty. So, as economists say, it's all trade-offs. Those economists would also say that you should do a cost-benefit analysis. How much does a mask reduce transmission? How costly is getting COVID? How costly is wearing a mask? Etc.
Alas, people give very different answers to those questions, and some in authority seem to proceed on the assumption that getting COVID is almost infinitely costly and wearing a mask is costless.
The will to power is strong, especially in people who have never really had any (cf. HOAs and condo boards). Some people will seize any apparent justification for bossing everyone else around and becoming the center of attention. Hence the "Karen" phenomenon, of which this is a variant.
Althouse; I have a second comment. As such, I'll keep it really short.
There are two profoundly different sorts of vaccine "mandates" that we are confronting as a society. One is some sort of government-directed mandate. We've seen a few of those, but only a few.
More prominent, and the category that I have felt is most worth discussing as a conservative, is the category of all of the private mandates. Retail stores, bars and restaurants, employers, theaters, stadiums; most of our private economy... I am interested in the conservative argument that those private operators ought to be able to impose mask and vaccine mandates where they think it is what most of their customers want, and what is good for business.
This casual bullying makes me long for the days of “my body my choice” and the way we used to hold health care experts in high esteem for preaching acceptance of HIV-positive people to push back against discrimination based on medical condition. We even got HIPPA as a legal backstop to intrusive questions. Yeah those were the days!
My favourite part if “click it or ticket” inspiring “mask it or casket” is that it equates the government with the virus.
"Much of politics is about hating imaginary people." - Scott Adams
It’s interesting that the examples you focus on are about masking and not vaccination. Vaccination is really quite effective — but it’s hard to tell if someone is vaccinated just by looking at them. Masks are not very useful, but wonderfully visible and performative. If you’re the type of person who wants to remove a 70 ton bolder because someone called it a bad name 95 years ago, you probably looove masks.
On Chuck’s point about private mandates, I came across to restaurants with “mask required” signs, and happily avoided patronizing them. I would probably pay a little extra if I came across a “masks not allowed” establishment.
I’m warming to “click it or ticket” as an analogy to the vaccine issue more than masks. And I’m not the first to bring up the vaccine instead of the mask issue because there’s a lot of Karening right now on both subjects. When I choose to wear a seatbelt it is similar to the choice whether to vax or not. The risk is almost entirely mine. If you’re wearing a seatbelt you have nothing to fear from me. Especially if you really understand epidemiology, you understand that the number of immune Americans is approaching herd immunity when recovered COVID-19 victims (best immunity!) and those with natural immunity (18 and younger, excellent immunity) and vaccinated (darn good 80%+ immunity) are added up. Unfortunately that term has been purposely confused by Fauci telling his “noble lies” to bully us into compliance. And he is Public Health Enemy number one for demonstrating why we learned far more about tyranny and politics of health policy than useful info or facts about epidemiology. If you already knew a lot and had studied the Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu outbreaks and previously discussed the events with people who survived those (like I had) then you were horrified and continue to be by the ascientific and unsound proclamations by authorities over the last 18 months. Add in censorship of even discussion on many platforms and this is shaping up to be a very consequential period in our history.
Other than we survived it and can live with it the rest is ALL bad news and America is dumber and sicker because of it.
" the conservative argument that those private operators ought to be able to impose mask and vaccine mandates where they think it is what most of their customers want"
So,
If a gay man comes into your bakery wanting a wedding cake; Can you demand that he wear a mask?
If an infidel comes into your halal bakery wanting some pita; Can you demand that she wear a burka?
There is no “conservative argument” for fascism, where the government favors businesses that bully the people on their behalf, which is how I see both the censorship and the “private vaccine requirement” issues. Either we believe medical decisions belong to the patient and doctor and should be respected as private or we don’t. A bad flu is not a good reason to chuck our principles and reverse progress on privacy law. The exceptions should be debated vigorously and subject to oversight. What is happening now is the end stages of a 2-year panic. Cooler heads will eventually prevail.
What are the costs of masking? They do seem minimal compared to some protection offered, and so the grow up message really resonates.
Also, Ann, did you just call for more civility???
A large segment of the population seems imperious to facts or logic.
One can quote the statistics on the small number of CV-19 deaths since April, the low risk of anyone under 50 who isn't morbidly obese dying of CV-19, the massvie number of vaccinations - especially high in the over 65 y/os, the millions who already had CV-19 and are immune, the studies showing masks have only minimal effect, and the number of people who Cannot wear masks for medical/pyschiatric reasons.
And...it doesn't matter to them. All you get from them in response is a blank stare. Their love of masks seems to be rooted in emotion and displaying how much they care. A mask say "I care". Hectoring other people says "I care".
We're being told simultaneously at the UW now to come back into work because it's safe and everyone is vaccinated and also to mask completely. And there's no acknowledgement of the dissonance between the two messages.
I assign people who forward memes to those who have facebook on their phones, and too much time on their hands.
To Mike (MJB Wolf): It's not "HIPPA." It's HIPAA. And HIPAA doesn't have anything to do with inquiries about vaccination status in ordinary societal interaction:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/hipaa-vaccine-covid-privacy-violation/2021/05/22/f5f145ec-b9ad-11eb-a6b1-81296da0339b_story.html
And yes, I think there is a very strong conservative argument against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' ban on cruise lines requiring that passengers be vaccinated. The conservative argument is that cruise business operators know better about their business than some government official who has never in his life run a business. The cruise line operators know their customers; they know what sort of safety measures work for their cruises; they employ private attorneys and risk managers who can best appraise safety risks and the attendant costs. Most of all, they know what they need to do, to maintain a profitable private cruise line. Where they are battling a public perception in some quarters that ocean liners are now petri dishes for infectious diseases.
In the face of all of that, DeSantis' anti-vaccine stunt is downright perverse. Speaking as a conservative, that is.
To Lucien: I take it that you won't pay for a cruise on a liner where vaccines are required. Be assured that businesses are counting on people like you to express your choice with your pocket book. And their considered decision in many cases is that you don't matter to them. Not enough to change the decision. They are banking on the 75-90% of wealthy and educated consumers who are getting vaccinated.
To gilbar: You've raised general civil rights issues that are multifaceted, some statutory, some Constitutional, some federal, some not. Too much to belabor here. just take note that so far in this young (legally speaking) pandemic, everywhere that a mask/vaccine requirement has been challenged, the challenge has failed.
I doubt there have been any real world studies done on the efficacy of masks against COVID 19. To start off, the control group should take a little baby blue mask, wad it up and stick it in their car console, purse, gym bag, etc. The take it out 15 seconds before you go into some place that requires masks. Smear your fingers across it regularly. Take it off 15 seconds after leaving the place you needed to wear it, and stick it back where you kept it. Use the same mask until you lose it, or forget where you put it.
After a couple of months, test to see how well those masks keep people from getting or spreading any disease.
For restaurants, your control group will be folks who put on a mask 15 seconds before entering, keep it on until seated, then take it off for the remainder of the meal (except to put it on if you need to use the restroom). Then leave without putting the mask back on, because what are they gonna do -- ask you to leave? Compare that group with restaurants where patrons never wear a mask at all.
I await the results of such studies so we can follow the science.
In some ways the Star of David comparison is apt. I like to joke with my wife that you can tell who all the Democrats are now. Maybe this is Q's secret plan to herd all the Dems into camps?!
One can only hope...
Sigh. Has anyone come across ANYTHING that describes what this pandemic has been like for those of us with germaphobes in the family? I despair at the incessant politicizing of this, when these people exist. My partner is such a person.
Conflict over anything 'germy' started a looooong time ago for me. "Did you eat that old rice that has been in the fridge over a week?" Or "Did you wash your hands after being on the bus - I see you touching all kinds of things?" Or "No way am I using that porta-potty and you shouldn't either." Or "I am banishing sponges from the house as they are germ traps." I am so used to coming home to the smell of bleach - can't remember a time I didn't. He is just one of those people that can't stand the thought of bacteria, viruses and mold.
The **nanosecond** I heard this virus landed in the U.S. - I thought to myself "Oh crap here we go...." He read "The Hot Zone" years ago and has been saying "We are going to have a pandemic one of these days.."
It isn't always about politics. Sometimes it is just plain old germaphobia.
If I’m going to be addressed by name (and I prefer not) then the commenter should address the issue I raise, in this case that HIPAA signaled a trend toward more privacy for medical decisions, even public health ones. I don’t care if WaPo thinks about the relevance of this vaccine to HIPAA. Also I find attempts to “own” Desantis distasteful. Again we actual conservatives either believe in personal choice and personal responsibility or we don’t. How important consistency is has already been raised once today in response to this commenters confusion. Again reading comprehension is important but alas cannot be enforced.
Professor, I'm curious if you really believe that meme is making casual use of the Holocaust. It seems somewhat obtuse to suggest that without acknowledging that it's in response to anti mask and vaccination memes that frequently traffic in Holocaust comparisons. Perhaps you're unaware of those, although that borders on unbelievable.
Ah, "inappropriate" references to the Holocaust. By all means, allow someone who did postgrad research on this to remark:
- The Nazis only began excluding Jews from cinemas, beaches, and concerts in 1938. By contrast, many blue states are excluding people now!
- Doctors could be forbidden to treat non-Jewish patients as early as 1933, but the Nazis only made it official policy in 1938. Now, of course, you will have your medical license revoked for not going along with whatever nonsense is coming out of the CDC at this very moment. Dr. Anthony Fauci's lies, of course, will remain completely unpunished.
- It took years of war and 1942 before Jewish Germans were denied rations of milk and eggs. Meanwhile, Quebec is contemplating denialuB of "essential" services if vax numbers don't pick up. Coming soon to a city near you.
Now, it's possible that the vaccines have better prote ction against Covid than advertised. It's even possible that there are no future side effects, and that the globalists are truly doing this for our own good! But at this point, you're like the train passenger who's admiring the Wagner broadcast.
PS: There are those who deny any possibility of genocide in all this, but do remember that the top rank of the SS was putting death camps into action and celebrating their use even as they denied their existence.
https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/decrees/decrees.html
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitic-legislation-1933-1939
"Professor, I'm curious if you really believe that meme is making casual use of the Holocaust. It seems somewhat obtuse to suggest that without acknowledging that it's in response to anti mask and vaccination memes that frequently traffic in Holocaust comparisons. Perhaps you're unaware of those....."
I don't care that other people do it too. This is the epitome of a childish argument. I say STOP IT. It's WRONG. I don't care that someone else started it. And I am reading my Facebook feed, seeing what my friends and family are up to, not showing up on a political site where there's an ongoing debate. These things are intruded on me. And I am not involved in trading in Holocaust analogies! They are a jamming this into my face.
I find your comment repugnant. I only put it through because it's at least the second time someone made this argument and I need to take a strong position here. It's not that I'm "unaware" of what other people are saying.
Do seatbelts impede a life-essential bodily function like breathing?
Let's not even get into the fact that over 95 percent of the money you spend on those paper masks goes to China, where they are made. And many of the cloth ones too.
“What are the costs of masking?”
Too high:
Masks harmful to children
“ I doubt there have been any real world studies done on the efficacy of masks against COVID 19.”
I had a peer reviewed COVID-19 masking study in a too journal, throw at me the other night at Volokh/Reason. The problem, as always, was that it was based on a model. And totally ignored how masking is actually done in this country. Theoretically, if you wear a surgical or N95 mask properly, it should reduce the spread of COVID-19. Except that doesn’t cover bandanas or masks made by underwear companies, or masks that aren’t frequently exchanged for new ones, or masks that are continually adjusted with unsterile hands, etc.
My point then was that many of the people who believe in these models also believe in the models that show imminent CAGW warming, again based on unreplicafiability.
Lucien's description of real-world mask wearing is spot on, not to mention entertaining.
But it is incomplete. What happens later on. You exhale a warm, moist mist of droplets containing your stuff. It, as is the purpose, is caught by the mask. It does not, however, disappear into another universe where it will never bother man nor beast. It stays on the mask, refreshed by each following warm, moist exhalation bearing even more of your stuff. You are breathing in through a petri dish of your stuff, and refreshing it continually.
Then you touch the mask. You take it off, put it on, adjust it, scratch your chin. Your stuff, concentrated and alive and ready to go is on your hands. Until you touch something. In public, items you touch are designed for people to touch. Stair rails, door knobs, chair arms, handholds on public transportation..... So, within moments if not seconds after depositing a load of your stuff on a surface, the next person gets a handful and....touches his face, mask, ear, eye.
You meantime, are getting friendly with the stuff left by a dozen people who've preceded you.
So what is your stuff? Might be the 'rona. Could be a cold, flu, bronchitis. Tummy flu.
Point is, masking is, at best, not worse than not masking. But the advantages lie solely with N95-level masks used with strict hospital protocols.
But it does make some people feel good. One guest for dinner grabbed her unused knife and spoon as I was clearing the table. She thinks that it's a waste to put them in the dishwasher since they don't need to be washed and takes more energy to wash them in the dishwasher. She's saving the planet. Also believes in masks.
Friend ran across this the other day, posting a link because I can't get the picture to show:
https://gunfreezone.net/they-are-constantly-proving-that-vaccination-status-has-nothing-to-do-with-controlling-covid-and-everything-to-do-with-political-totalitarianism/
Straight-up "We should start killing people who don't get the vaccine." Followed, apparently, by "Hey, why are all you people mad at me!" and deletion of the account.
I love that even while threatening this he won't call it mass graves, just 'ditches'.
I would like to see a Venn diagram of folks demanding everyone be vaccinated and folks who oppose GMO crops.
So I was talking to the wife about masks and she said well they must work, surgeons use them. Seeing as now just about everything I am told by the cdc/fauci is either wrong or politicized I thought, hmm wonder if the masks on surgeons really are necessary. Turns out like so much conventional wisdom it’s really up in the air, no actual clinical study has been done. Right now it appears that a large portion of them wear a mask to protect “themselves” from stray bodily fluids, not to protect the patient.
I saw elsewhere, an observation that many people's reaction to those who don't agree with their political/cultural worldview is the equivalent of Donald Sutherland, pointing and screeching at the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". This seems to be true, across a wide swath of subjects.
It is not the 'look' they think it is...
The great British philosopher Michael Oakeshott nailed it back in the 1960's:
“…The “mass man,” as I understand him, then, is specified by his character, not by his numbers. He is distinguished by so exiguous an individuality that when it meets a powerful experience of individuality it revolts into “anti-individuality.” He has generated for himself an appropriate morality, an appropriate understanding of the office of government, and appropriate modifications of “parliamentary government.” He is not necessarily “poor,” nor is he envious only of “riches”; he is not necessarily “ignorant,” often he is a member of the so-called intelligentsia; he belongs to a class which corresponds exactly with no other class. He is specified primarily by a moral, not an intellectual, inadequacy. He wants “salvation”; and in the end will be satisfied only with release from the burden of having to make choices for himself. He is dangerous, not on account of his opinions or desires, for he has none: but on account of his submissiveness. His disposition is to endow government with power and authority such as it has never before enjoyed: he is utterly unable to distinguish a “ruler” from a “leader.” In short, the disposition to be an “anti-individual” is one to which every European man has a propensity: the “mass man” is merely one in whom this propensity is dominant…”
“…But this condition of human circumstances [the right to live in a social protectorate which relieved him from the burden of “self-determination”] was seen to be impossible unless it were imposed upon all alike. So long as others were permitted to make choices for themselves not only would his anxiety at not being able to do so himself remain to convict him of his inadequacy and threaten his emotional security but also the social protectorate which he recognized as his counterpart would itself be disrupted. The security he needed entailed a genuine equality of circumstances imposed upon all. The condition he sought was one in which he would meet in others only a replica of himself. What he was everybody must become…”
Michael Oakeshott
“The Masses in Representative Democracy”
How cute, she wrote her little sign and then posted a picture of her holding it. How very brave of her! Now if she ONLY cared enough to go beyond making a sign and instead actually followed the science. That shots have been around for a while now and either you have gotten the shot, you have gotten sick, or you haven't. At this point, what difference does a mask make? If it actually ever made any difference since most folks did not get the right masks, did not wear them the right way, did not not touch them, did not change them frequently enough, and did not dispose of they properly. But you do you and get your dose of smug for the day.
This pandemic ends when herd immunity is achieved by either enough people being vaccinated or enough people getting the virus. Seems like masking is delaying the desired outcome if it does indeed work. We know how to treat those who are infected. Let people make their own choices. If you are that afraid, wear 3 masks and live in you basement. Might I suggest loosing some weight?
Studies have been done on surgical masks in the surgical theater. They aren't effective at preventing post-operative wound infection. If they can't stop a bacteria, I'd adjust my priors on their ability to stop an airborne virus.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27115326/
The Left can't meme.
"You're not being shoved into a cattlecar..." Not yet, dear reader, not yet...
They Want to Arrest and Jail All Unvaccinated Adults!
There's literally no less effective way to get people to agree with you than telling them to "grow up!". (Of course, people who say stuff like this aren't looking to change any minds -- they just want to vent. No thanks.)
To Lucien - there are two good studies of which I’m aware comparing masks to no masks. One is a randomized controlled trial involving thousands, half randomized to masks and half not, published in the annals of internal medicine. There is another case control where they compared cases (covid positive) to controls (negative) to see what risk factors distinguished the two groups. Both studies found that mask use did not distinguish the groups - that is to say masks were not protective.
In response to unknown - I work as a surgeon. My understanding in my training was that masks are used for several reasons -
we are standing on top of an open incision and our spit and breath are literally within arms length of the incision. The reason we wear masks is because otherwise we would be spitting droplets directly into an incision. As I understood in my training it’s use is for spittle and droplets and not aerosols. My understanding was and is masks are useless against aerosols that are resistant to the effects of gravity and instead follow the flow of gases around the sides of the masks. Why do you think glasses fog up? Because the gas of your breath escapes via the open sides of the masks (in this case the superior edge for glasses). No surgeon to my knowledge ever thought masks help prevent virus transmission. In fact iirc surgeons who cauterize polyps get nasal polyps because the virus goes up in smoke and is breathed in by the surgeon.
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