October 14, 2023

"This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name ('elite panic') among some scholars...."

"[R]epeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This 'moral calm'—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat.... [S]ome experts and public figures have uncritically advanced the idea that if the public appears to be tired, bored, or noncompliant with public health measures, then the pandemic must be over. But pandemics are impervious to ratings; they cannot be canceled or publicly shamed. History is replete with examples of pandemics that blazed for decades, sometimes smoldering for years before flaring up again into catastrophe. The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic.... Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical—yet a great deal of the Biden administration’s management of Covid-19 has rested on this confusion...."

98 comments:

mikee said...

Is this an example of something needing to be done, so they did some thing, although that thing has nothing to do with what needed to be done?

Jersey Fled said...

Dear God. When will these fools give it up?

rehajm said...

There’s a strong correlation between white people who read The Nation and white people still wearing masks outdoors. A ‘robust’ statistic. About as robust as statistics get…

BUMBLE BEE said...

Panic is OK for these whippersnappers! Gets them in a compliant groove.
Life is not contained in your IPhone15.
P.S. Hamas is here already!

Leland said...

I'm ok with the irrational self identifying.

tcrosse said...

For some people covid was a proxy for Trump, and the danger has not passed.

Aggie said...

"It's a Pandemic, dammit ~!" (stamps foot).

BUMBLE BEE said...

Germs... graduate level lecture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Ptk6EHT8I

Quaestor said...

They sorely miss their moment of autocracy.

Koot Katmandu said...

All I can see LOL. That pegged my bull shit meter.

Jamie said...

Telling us to panic over an illness that is now so mild for most that they may not even know they have anything but a cold is also "not health care."

They blew their wad on getting the public to panic over COVID, even when it quickly became clear that the old, the overweight, and those with comorbidities like diabetes were the only people at serious risk. When the next Black Death comes along, the public's first response is likely to be, "Sure there's a wolf." Nice job, public health officials.

tim in vermont said...

Yawn.

William said...

The other day I heard some doctor on television discussing the new weight loss drugs. In response to some of the interviewer's questions, he responded by saying that he didn't know. It was refreshing to hear. I think public health officials would have a lot more credibility if they just admitted that there's a lot of questions that they don't know the answer to....A lot of human progress has been based on serendipity. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let people try ivermectin or that stuff I don't know how to spell. Where's the harm, and maybe it will work..... I don't mind people who wears masks in their walks around Central Park. It's totally ineffectual, but where's the harm. I do wish, however, that such people would extend the same amount of tolerance towards me....I guess the first response to any plague is to burn the witches, but we can't nowadays agree on who are the witches.

gilbar said...

examples of pandemics that blazed for decades, sometimes smoldering for years before flaring up again into catastrophe. The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic...

how many people died in THOSE pandemics? percentages?
how many people died in the Covid panicdemic? percentages?

Coronavirus Cases: 696,594,621
Coronavirus Deaths: 6,925,998


Did the Antonine Plague have a ONE PERCENT fatality rate?

tommyesq said...

"Telling us not to panic isn't healthcare."

Neither is telling us to mask, to social distance, or to avoid ivermectin. Neither is telling us to gather in large masses and highly close proximity and shout at the top of our lungs over perceived DEI deficiencies. Neither is seeking to eliminate citizen gun ownership. Neither is elevating Fauci to sainthood and Science to mysticism. Yet I am willing to bet that the Nation was onboard with all of that - indeed, the article is critical of the CDC's 2021 recommendation that masking was no longer necessary for vaccinated people. (Ironically, the vaccine turns out not to have prevented spread, but then again neither did masking).

jnseward said...

The never-ending lies are causing me to panic.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Except for the first time in American history the public health system induced panic, acted panicked, and was horribly wrong. Ignoring their panic was the safest option in the end and i am so glad my wife knew so much about epidemiology. Now we know Fauci’s reaction had more to do with him covering his ass than keeping us safe and calm.

Trust once lost is extremely difficult to restore. Big government Big Pharma and Big Healthcare blew it. And all of us are still paying the price. Everything here applies in spades to the Climate Cult with the exception of tracing back to Fauci.

The Crack Emcee said...

"Pandemics are impervious to ratings; they cannot be canceled or publicly shamed,...Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical"

It makes sense that a society steeped in New Age would respond exactly like this:

"Paranormal beliefs and [so-called alternative medicine] SCAM belief do not only share ontological confusions as a predictor, paranormal beliefs are typically the best predictor of CAM belief. However, comparing those belief forms, it becomes clear that they share many concepts and approaches to explain reality in an unscientific way. Therefore, both belief forms, paranormal beliefs and SCAM beliefs, could also be seen as a result of a world view in which scientific evidence is valued less and, instead, emotional and spiritual explanations are consulted."

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

The Nation = take your bogus booster.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Six feet apart and two weeks to stop the spread were unscientific and completely worthless too. Fuck these people. It has turned into a normal cold or flu type virus just like I wrote here in April of 2020. It was obvious but so many people in power were invested in Panic by then the truth was lost in the chaos.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Hey leftwing The Nation - your side brought this all about.

The virus was released on purposed... by the Chim Coms and the world order.

Barry Dauphin said...

Lighten up, Francis.

whiskey said...

Counterpoint: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2023/10/12/coronamonomania-lives-forever-part-226-2/

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Six feet apart and two weeks to stop the spread were unscientific and completely worthless too. Fuck these people. It has turned into a normal cold or flu type virus just like I wrote here in April of 2020. It was obvious but so many people in power were invested in Panic by then the truth was lost in the chaos. From start to finish it was a man made disaster.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Maybe this stupid article has some valid points but I have hunch the rest follows this excerpt. I noticed a complete absence of comparison to the Spanish Flu pandemic of the early 20th century or the Hong Kong Flu of the late 1960s. C19 is more like those than the Black Plague. This article is dangerous and pisses me off. What exactly is their point?

wild chicken said...

Haha,just so.

And the experts weigh in:

Sally327 said...

Panic, on a mass scale, creates a separate and distinct public health emergency with its own potentially dire consequences. In a public setting, the thing that causes the panic can kill fewer people than the hysterical reactions of the crowd, for example, someone yells he's got a gun and everyone tramples everyone else with a mad dash to the exits.

I don't think it's silly to advise calm but it's far better, I think, to demonstrate competence and show us why it's okay to go about our business in a calm and reasonable fashion. This, however, is not something that our government officals, with a few exceptions, have done over the last 3+ years. It's one of the reason I find the decline and fall of Rudy Guiliani to be so sad because he was temendous after 9/11 in projecting competence and acting in a sane and rational fashion despite the horrors he and his city and everyone else had to deal with at the time.

PJ said...

Public officials (and those hoping to influence them) usually have an interest in either downplaying or overhyping any perceived threat. Prudent citizens must always be on guard against both gambits, and to the extent this passage makes the point that downplayers are not to be trusted, it isn’t nonsense. Pandemics are not Tinkerbell; they don’t fade out just because people stop believing in them, and they can’t be revived by getting everybody to chant “I do believe.” People generally get this, and when they say things like “if the public appears to be tired, bored, or noncompliant with public health measures, then the pandemic must be over,” they presumably mean that the opportunity to exploit the pandemic is over. Also, if you want to impress me with your guilelessness, don’t use words like “deeply.”

Narr said...

So, The Nation is still a thing.

I recall reading it back in the '70s and '80s, when their European correspondent would wax lyrical about Yugoslavia, where they really had--no, really--replaced all those nasty old class, ethnic, and religious divisions with a form of moderate, popular, Socialism.

A beacon for the world, it was.

Joe Bar said...

If nothing had been done about COVID-19, if it had never been mentioned, we would never have known anything happened.

robother said...

"Arijit Chakravarty is the CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, which focuses on applying mathematical modeling to drug discovery and development."

When your business model depends on panic, you sell Panic!

Buckwheathikes said...

What I've noticed about the COVID 19 vaccine isn't that it doesn't work.

What I noticed is that they're not even TRYING to make one that does work. They keep selling the one that doesn't work and that we know doesn't work.

They're content to sell one they know doesn't work.

The polio vaccine works. Because they kept on trying until they got it to work.

Not so much with COVID19.

Isn't that kind of noticeable?

Randomizer said...

Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.”

Fauci told us a lot of things. Lying and manipulation are not healthcare.

We don't have any confidence in the experts offering public advice, but nobody is panicking.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Oops

hombre said...

Time for the Granscians to stir the pot again so we can have a continuation of mail order government. By Democrats, of course.

Fredrick said...

Bacterial pneumonia was the primary killer in 1918. The Nation should actually read the NIH data on that, but it would violate their narrative.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

The more I think about it the more “concern about public panic” is like “climate change” in its ambiguity and the great utility it has to those who want to rule over us as opposed to government of and by the people. Too bad the virus didn’t wipe out the evil expert class.

Original Mike said...

I read the article. That was a lot of words to get to what they wanted (besides more panic):

"Concrete interventions are required—including improvements in air quality and other measures aimed at limiting spread in public buildings, more research into vaccine boosting strategy, and investments in next-generation prophylactics and treatments. Rather than damping down panic, public health messaging needs to discuss risks honestly and focus on reducing spread."

So, they want more money. Fine, I don't have a problem with that, BUT I want something in return; honesty, which to date has been sorely lacking. Honesty about the failure of their prescriptions to date; honesty about the effectiveness of vaccines and masking. And honesty about where this virus came from. Until we get that, and I'm not holding my breath, the whole lot of the public health community can eff off as far as I'm concerned. They have failed us.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Rand Paul has a new book out on the subject of Fauci and the covid lies.
What FAcui said publicly does not match what he was saying privately. (for starters..)

I use my local friends and neighbors to help assess the situation. first - the peer pressure to get the jab when the vaccine first came out - was off the charts. Good job - communists.
A creepy hive reminder.

Now - after years of "boosters" and all the dems and progs lining up to get the jabs - I take notes.
Curious how awful people feel all the time and all the memory issues. Next of course if the covid virus itself. I know many people who have had every booster shot - and these same folks have gotten covid several times.

This past late summer - a couple I know both got covid and they described it as really awful. I asked them about the boosters - and sure enough - they had all of them.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

These a-holes locked down our children and kept them out of school for 2 years. for no reason other than - the grand scheme to control us.

forcing jabs on children is another crime.

pacwest said...

You mean I have to wash my tennis shoes again?

Dave Begley said...

The Left never quits.

Bruce Hayden said...

I think that this skepticism is good. The trust of expertise was built up over centuries. The left seized control of the institutions. And squandered their trust on pushing political goals as if they were scientific truths. Very little of what the experts told us about COVID-19 turns out to have been true. Masking didn’t work, even inside. It couldn't. It really hurt kids the most. Shutting down the schools likely didn’t prevent anyone from dying - it just gave teachers a nice vacation, at the cost of losing a year or two of education, greatly reducing the numbers of students across the country operating at grade level. We weren’t going to reach herd immunity even if the vaccines had been sanitizing. It was a mathematical impossible, after Delta (7/21). And, of course, they were far from sanitizing, ultimately reducing, not increasing, people’s resistance to the virus, the more times they were vaccinated. Side effects in the original tests were ignored. Worse, it turns out that the process used to manufacture the vaccines were quite different from those used to initially test them - and the process used to produce the billions of doses of the vaccines used around the world were never tested. And in cases like this, where the process is the product, each process change must be completely tested. Or are supposed to be by long term FDA rules, that were completely ignored by both the agency and the manufacturers. And then we find out that the virus involved very much appears to have been created in a Chinese lab, using US government funding, authorized by the highest paid government employee at the time (Dr Fauci). Indeed, the entire cabal at the top of these public health were the highest paid government employees, thanks to generous kickbacks from the pharmacy companies they are supposed to have been regulating (supposedly as royalties for work used by these companies, that had been done at public expense). And elite opinion leaders are still pushing all of these aspects, from masking to shutdowns to more vaccinations. No wonder no one trusts them any more.

The record for CAGW/Climate Change is no better. It’s all built on models that invariably run hot. The theory works, in a lab. There is some moderate heating with CO2 in a closed environment. But its not a closed system in reality, and it doesn’t generalize, because it ignores both feedback and external factors. Yet, according to elite opinion, we’re all going to die in the next 10 to 100 or 500 years, if we don’t radically change our economy. $Billions$ for unworkable solar and wind, while banning gas stoves and ICVs, and now, in CA, gas generators to cover the rapidly increasing holes in the state’s electrical supplies caused by decommissioning hydrocarbon and nuclear fueled generators, and trying to replace them with “renewables”.

Everything that these elite opinion leaders touch quickly turns to shit. No wonder they are quickly becoming the laughing stock of the rest of us.


The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Hysteria in the service of corruption is the way the Donks roll now. And as someone insightfully observed above, Trump!/Covid! can be used interchangeably to panic the herd.

I’m a tail-end Boomer and I was thinking the other day that, for the most part, I don’t much like my generational cohort. Self-absorbed, prone to hysterics, squanderers of their patrimony, and staggeringly bad critical-thinkers. The wingnuts excluded, the capable young I meet these days seem like much kinder, and much more mature, people than my peers ever were.

Quayle said...

Democracy gives each citizen the vote, not just in the voting booth but also in how they spend their dollars as well as how they choose to respond to information. The role of true leaders is to inform and let the citizens decide.

Jupiter said...

"Arijit Chakravarty is the CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, which focuses on applying mathematical modeling to drug discovery and development. Over the past three years, he has led a team of volunteers who have published peer-reviewed papers applying an interdisciplinary mathematical modeling framework for risk management of the Covid-19 public health response."

What a maroon.

Jupiter said...

"Martha Lincoln is an assistant professor of cultural and medical anthropology at San Francisco State University."

So, you're paying for this.

Jupiter said...

God, do you remember? How completely insane they went? I got called for jury duty during the height of the madness. They had us march all over the courthouse, six feet apart, with those stupid fucking masks on. What a joke.

That stupid whore Governor Brown got pissed off because we weren't social-distancing to her complete satisfaction, so she stamped her tyrannical little foot and closed the beaches! That'll teach 'em!

She should hang for that.

n.n said...

Empathetic panic with leverage.

Oligonicella said...

telling us not to panic isn’t healthcare"

Panic porn.

Telling us to take near-worthless shots for the rest of eternity - for a virus that is < .1% fatal - isn't healthcare.

Paul Zrimsek said...

Keep despair alive!

Night Owl said...

Covid 19 is just another cold or flu, which is why the so-called vaccines don't work. There is no "vaccine" against the cold or the flu. You nust get an updated flu shot every year.

Commonsense, of which there is a shortage, says to take the covid shot along with your flu shot every year if you're old and/or have high risk comorbitities. If you're young and/or healthy, the risks of an untested shot, that may lead to a higher risk of blood clots,heart problems and strokes is probably higher than the risks of getting COVID-19.

Pushing experimental covid shots on healthy babies and children is all about money. It's evil and it's a crime against humanity. And it means I no longer trust the so called health experts.

Oligonicella said...

pan·dem·ic

a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time:


iow, say, common colds and flus. Don't let words scare you into behaving like a headless chicken. Esp if those words come from a gov.

Oligonicella said...

pan·dem·ic

a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time:


iow, say, common colds and flus. Don't let words scare you into behaving like a headless chicken.

Oligonicella said...

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Six feet apart and two weeks to stop the spread were unscientific and completely worthless too. Fuck these people. It has turned into a normal cold or flu type virus just like I wrote here in April of 2020.

Same. Remember being told to quit posting that (not directly) or get censored?

Oligonicella said...

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

This article is dangerous and pisses me off. What exactly is their point?

Priming the charge for more panic and control.

This time they have wet powder.

iowan2 said...

Fauci was in charge of the covid response and the HIV response.

With HIV there could be absolutely ZERO restrictions put on those infected.

With covid, For the first time in the history of pandemics, the healthy were quarantined, instead of the infected.

The experts keep saying the just didn't know what was going to happen. That was all a lie, after the fact. We knew by the experience of Italy, covid was deadly to the elderly. Experience quickly informed us that other medical conditions were co comorbidities. Meaning if you were less than 70 and healthy, risk to you was virtually nil. That bit of science was deemed misinformation and the CDC worked against the fact.

rcocean said...

THe black death killed 1/3 of Europe. Covid by comparison was child's play and most of the deaths were among the elderly and those with severe medical conditions.

Anyway, can we move on? Or is Biden going to give us a fake emergency so he can demand nationwide mail in ballots and vote fraud in 2024?

The Crack Emcee said...

The things we don't get hysterical about are worse.

Jersey Fled said...

The more you test, the more Covid you get.

Strange, huh?

Dr Weevil said...

When I read something like "Concrete interventions are required" I can't help thinking "Maybe we should hit the author of this crap over the head with a cinder block: that would be a really useful 'concrete intervention'!"

P.S. Before you call the police, I do not favor actually doing so, I just can't help thinking of doing so.

Skeptical Voter said...

What blather. Those old folk tales reflect wisdom. The boy who cried wolf (spreading "misinformation" if you will) and then got eaten when a real wolf showed up.

The hardwon knowledge reflected in , "Fool me once, it's your fault, fool me twice, it's my fault".

Or simply a general elevation of the sensitivity of the BS detectors in the common herd.

You can only blow smoke up people's posteriors so many times before people become impervious to it. And we have reached that point.

iowan2 said...

That means next spring you’re gonna have a bumper crop of grubs

Grub population has nothing to leaving the leaves

Adults lay their their eggs under the turf in July/August. eggs hatch into grubs and overwinter.

Iman said...

I never look to the Commies at The Nation for answers or opinions.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

leit·mo·tif
/ˈlītmōˌtēf/
noun
a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation.
"there are two leitmotifs in his score marking the heroine and her Fairy Godmother"
————
lit·mus test
/ˈlitməs ˌtest/
noun CHEMISTRY
a test for acidity or alkalinity using litmus.
a decisively indicative test.
"opposition to the nomination became a litmus test for political support of candidates"

FullMoon said...

In California, churches were closed, or heavily fined if holding services.
All while potential president Gavin Newsome attended dinner parties and weddings with his un-masked compatriots.

How about a nightmare ticket? Newsom/Whitman.

loudogblog said...

Wow! These people are really cheerleading for another Covid-19 pandemic. I can see why. The initial arrival of Covid-19 allowed for major governmental control over people's lives. I don't know about you, but the State of California banned me from actually leaving my house except for grocery shopping or doctor visits. I felt like I was under house arrest. We all know the far-left mantra: "Never let a crisis go to waste."

But the truth is that Covid has mutated into a much milder strain and the pandemic is over. And, with the effective vaccines, it's a matter of personal choice how much risk you want to take with it.

I got my Covid booster this week and it kicked my ass for 24 hours, but I'm willing to put up with that to avoid full blown Covid.

FullMoon said...

God, do you remember? How completely insane they went?

Vax card required to enter facilities.

Richard said...

Terrified people are more malleable. Got it.

cf said...

"Elite panic" is very true, but even more true was "Elite opportunities" for corraling & subjugating us pesky Normals and making smart inve$tments.

21stC America has devolved to having our Worst Ruling Class Ever, a great example is the lying, Pol Pot Leftie @NPR nooz.

Sebastian said...

"unchecked transmission"

And the oppressive authoritarian experts "checked" it how?

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical"

So is conflating the Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD). But they know that.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"I don't mind people who wears masks in their walks around Central Park. It's totally ineffectual, but where's the harm."

Where's the harm? You're kidding, right? Or are you really that obtuse? It makes their face tan unevenly.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I read this as 'we don't need your permission to take away your rights', which is the precursor to the taking away of rights, again. It also avoids the discussion these alarmists don't want to have, the essence of which I'll frame in the form of a question. What constitutes a legitimate emergency?

Covid is not the fucking black plague!

Drago said...

Hmmm....

Why would The Nation publish this article now?...

....(check's election calendar)....

...oh. Right.

Now it makes sense. That lawfare angle might not deliver the desired result so additional "fortification" of the 2024 "election" might be necessary.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"What I've noticed about the COVID 19 vaccine isn't that it doesn't work."

Do not try to protect yourself with the vaccine, That's impossible. Instead...only try to realize the truth.

What truth?

There is no vaccine.

There is no vaccine?

Only then you will see that it is not the vaccine that protects you. It is only yourself.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Dave Begley said...
The Left never quits."

Rust is like that. Corrosive.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Quayle said...
Democracy gives each citizen the vote, not just in the voting booth but also in how they spend their dollars as well as how they choose to respond to information. The role of true leaders is to inform and let the citizens decide."

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!"

The Master, by residing in the Tao,
sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn't display himself,
people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove,
people can trust his words.
Because he doesn't know who he is,
people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind,
everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said,
"If you want to be given everything, give everything up,"
they weren't using empty phrases.
Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Pol Pot Leftie @NPR nooz."

You misspelled noose.

Joe Smith said...

"The Nation," you say?

It must be taken as gospel.

The crazy left in this country made it almost impossible to live a normal life if you didn't get vaccinated and boosted.

But that's what fascists do...

Jamie said...

I was just listening to a Matt Taibbi/Walter Kirn podcast in which they were talking about the fun new trend of politicians' denying policies they unequivocally supported, like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. (It was filmed/recorded prior to the Arab and leftist world's full-throated declarations of the latter end of this week that the atrocities committed, videoed, and uploaded by Hamas last weekend were actually Israeli propaganda - no Israelis were killed, tortured, or captured, you see - it was all a big psyops play to provide cover for Israel to destroy the Gaza.)

Matt and Walter were wondering whether the goal of these denials, given that the Internet is forever though you might have to do some work to find the old stories, is to create a kind of "truth fatigue" in which those who might initially try to do their own research, or take screenshots of statements they believe might later be withdrawn or denied, would reach the point that, since the fix is in and the narrative is both set and universal, they just can't be bothered any more.

In short, that we might all just give it the eff up and love Big Brother.

Again I say, when they actually need everyone to believe them next time, they might find believers thin on the ground. Unfortunately it is we who will suffer for their precautionary principal or thirst for power and control, depending on what motives you attribute to them.

Kirk Parker said...

loudogblog,

"And, with the effective vaccines..."

Whoa. Could you tell us where to find one of those?

Eric said...

The Nation has always been okay with certain types of totalitarian rule.

rehajm said...

"Telling us not to panic isn't healthcare." Neither is telling us to mask, to social distance, or to avoid ivermectin.

A pharmacist threatening the RN in my doctor’s office because she’s requesting Ivermectin isn’t healthcare either but I’d bet global GDP someone in my government put the pharmacy up to it…

Freeman Hunt said...

It's far milder now. No need for an endless freakout.

effinayright said...

In 2021 I took two jabs of covid vaccine to "protect me" from getting the virus.

I got it anyway. It wasn't that bad, even though I'm a geezer.

Yesterday I got a flier in the mail from Pfizer telling me to get another shot, this time claiming it will "HELP protect me" from getting a new strain of covid.

Not a freakin WORD about the many side effects, including sudden death among formerly healthy young people, from getting the "booster".

I immediately round-filed it, with great vigor.

Aught Severn said...

I got my Covid booster this week and it kicked my ass for 24 hours, but I'm willing to put up with that to avoid full blown Covid.

The question is: will it prevent you from getting full blown covid?

Mason G said...

this time claiming it will "HELP protect me"

So if you don't get covid, it worked. And if you do, they never said you wouldn't.

Is that about right?

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Yes Olig I do remember. As the greasy Senator Schumer likes to say it was seared, seared into my memory.

Still some on here willing to take the nonsense shot mislabeled as a vaccine. Why? It literally is doing more harm than good and enriching that evil elf Fauci. My mother has had nonstop heart problems since her third jab.

walter said...

"I got my Covid booster this week and it kicked my ass for 24 hours"
Tells you it's..working.
Turning your body into a spike protein generator and pushing inflammatory lipid nanoparticles across the blood brain barrier. Yeah..the body will protest a bit in the beginniing. There are concerns over the excess death increases and aggressive cancers accompanying the jabs, but that's just paranoid nuttery.

I was working an outdoor sporting event and still saw a few folks all masked up in the bleachers. I can't imagine the fear they have been trained into.

walter said...

gilbar,
Small % death rate with embargoed early treatment options and destined to fail hospital protocol$.

Bruce Hayden said...

“But the truth is that Covid has mutated into a much milder strain and the pandemic is over. And, with the effective vaccines, it's a matter of personal choice how much risk you want to take with it. “

Prior to 2021, these novel, marginally tested, gene therapy products would not have been considered “vaccines”. Then, mysteriously, and coincidentally, in roughly 1/21, the FDA/CDC and Wikipedia definitions were revised to include said gene therapy products. They were marginally effective throughout 2021, in reducing the severity of the viral infections - until the virus mutated around the ModRNA gene therapy product vaccines, resulting in the Omicron (et seq) variants (which pushed out the Delta variant in the US in 12/21). Subsequent to that happening, these ModRNA vaccines became countraeffective at preventing or fighting the virus.

Why were the “vaccines” counterproductive starting in 12/21? Step back a bit. The original vaccines used modified mRNA (ModRNA)to produce the two (S1 and S2) spike proteins for the original (Wuhan) decoded variant of the virus. Those who had a single jab, had their immune systems taught that these two spike proteins were antigens. Then, on subsequent injections, their immune systems robustly responded to the presence of these two spike protein antigens generated by the ModRNA in the vaccines. Except that very quickly, the virus very naturally mutated around the vaccines by changing its spike proteins to no longer be recognized by the immune system as the Wuhan S1 and S2 protein antigens. Meanwhile, their immune systems were busy generating Wuhan S1 & S2 antibodies for a month or so after every jab.

Roughly 9 months, after Omicron pushed out Delta, the vaccine companies came out with bivalent vaccines, that produced both Wuhan and Omicron spike proteins. That sounds like it would work. It didn’t. Why? Because of what is termed “Original Antigenic Sin” (OAS). Immune systems overimprinted with the Wuhan spike proteins, and thus underimprinted with the remainder of the virus and the Omicron spike proteins. Notably, the vaccines produced massive amounts of Wuhan spike proteins on every injection for maybe 20 months after the Wuhan portion of the vaccine was obsolete. (1/22-9/23). Because of OAS, the remainder of the virus was never fully imprinted on the immune systems of most of those who were repeatedly vaccinated. And thus why your chances of getting repeatedly infected are significantly higher for the repeatedly vaccinated, versus the unvaccinated.

So, no, the vaccines were never really effective.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

To paraphrase Bruce’s excellent 1 a.m. but highly technical post. The vaccines are counterproductive because they exhaust your immune system fighting the last virus making you more likely to get this year’s version. This battle with common viruses is the reason why the annual Flu shot contains a mix of sometimes five of the viruses that show up in the southern hemisphere (their flu season hits earlier than ours in Australia).

MadTownGuy said...

rehajm said...

"There’s a strong correlation between white people who read The Nation and white people still wearing masks outdoors. A ‘robust’ statistic. About as robust as statistics get…"

10/14/23, 7:57 AM

Hey, Instapundit quoted you! Props.

jbspry said...


"Telling us not to panic isn't healthcare."

But nurses flashdancing in hospital hallways while the entire nation is under house arrest in an effort to "flatten the curve" and "prevent hospitals being overwhelmed" IS healthcare.

FJB

Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D. said...

Mask leakage around the seal to the face and some penetration of the mask material made them almost ineffective. If you were less cautious because you and your colleagues were masked, the masking could even be counter-productive.

Bruce Hayden said...

“From "The Coronavirus Still Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings The Covid-19 pandemic is not a state of mind—and telling us not to panic isn’t healthcare" (The Nation).”

Telling everyone to panic isn’t healthcare either. And we are still waiting for firm evidence that the vaccines do more good than harm, esp in younger age groups (anyone younger than, say, 50/60 or so, without serious comorbidities). Anymore, for most of the population, the virus is just not that dangerous. The bulk of the population has been infected, and almost all recovered. Those under 20 may not have even known that they were infected. A virus that kills roughly one in a million kids infected, is just not something to panic over with that demographic. The deeper you look into the subject, you realize that there is less and less to worry about with the virus, and more and more to worry about with the ModRNA vaccines.

I am still curious why these two authors were considered experts in the field, or even more competent than many here. They are telling us to panic, but can, apparently, only go on second, third, etc, hand evidence that they don’t seem to personally understand. Neither apparently has an MD, MPH, or even a relevant PhD (her training appears to be in cultural anthropology).

Bruce Hayden said...

“The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic.... Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical—yet a great deal of the Biden administration’s management of Covid-19 has rested on this confusion...."

Note something - the death toll for the Black Death was roughly 1/3. The death toll for children 0-10 for COVID-19 was roughly 1/1,000,000. This means that the death toll for those in that age bracket was roughly 333,333x times worse for the Black Death. Absent several well known cormorbidities, COVID-19 just wasn’t that deadly for those under, say, 70. Calling it a “pandemic” doesn’t make it one.