Jul 8, 2022·edited Jul 8, 2022Liked by Kathryn DeFea
I would rather endure the wash of the virus over the river of superfluous bullshit emanating from the mouths of the lockdown enthusiasts. They have this idea that we must never get sick again! And that's not realistic.
Sarcasm aside, I have a friend like this and we have just stopped discussing it. Early on, I said the scientific arguments were lacking because there was no control group. That and if this was the true emergency that our government and media claimed it to be, you throw EVERYTHING you have at it. If the house is on fire, you don't tell people 'No, no - you can't use the fire extinguisher. You have to wait for the fire department to get here.' It was this attitude that made me suspicious from the get go.
We both are also in the Bay Area and in many ways, it is still July 2020 here. The other morning, I was outside early - about 4:30 as my husband was leaving for work. A guy was riding his bike down the street. With a mask. It was still full dark. Sigh...I don’t know what it is going to take to wake these people up. A co-worker of mine theorized that there is a mindset of not wanting to be associated with 'the dirty people' and I think she is onto something there. 95% of this debacle is psychological.
Thank you for posting this, Katie! Especially in light of what you said early on: "the COVID-19 response is unlikely to be an isolated example of medical tyranny "
It's a SURE thing that people -- both in positions of responsibility AND in the public at large -- are going to continue to listen to people who should NOT be listened to.
Your exposure of the likelihood that MORE than 25% of the deaths labeled as COVID deaths were NOT is so important! It's an astonishing statistic, and it points to several things. (1) we SHOULD have a VERY good idea of what is a COVID death and what is not. (2) What jaw-dropping INCOMPETENCE on the part of the "Public Health Authorities" must have been in place to cause this vital understanding to be nearly completely unknown. (3) The only OTHER reason besides incompetence on the part of these authorities is: Criminality. (4) There don't seem to be ANY efforts ANYwhere to remedy these failings, as there is STILL a widespread "understanding" that the handling of COVID was pretty good. There are still many in New York state who believe Andrew Cuomo did a good job of it.
And more. But it's too discouraging and disheartening to go into the rest of it.
Katie: Your dissection of your friend's critiques highlights so many of the areas where we need to do better as a nation and a people. Thank you again for it.
I know the type. They think of themselves as being really up on it all. Because they read propaganda and regurgitate it quite well. They are the dreaded 120 IQ types. Smarter than the average bear. But not actually smart. They got through life being verbally facile, memorizing well, and working the system. They’re the most pathetic.
Your friend is well educated by the look of his language. Don't know what he does for a living, but I'm kinda thinking white collar upper middle class, university educated and opinionated. Wore a mask outdoors and maybe still does. Supports a woman's right to choose and "my body my choice", yet endorses vax mandates without realizing the hypocrisy.
I noticed in talking with friends that it's extremely hard to change minds. People like your friend read mainstream media and trust in the CDC, so of course they view people like you as uninformed and incorrect.
While Asia was touted for low rates initially, those rates have since risen, especially after the max vax campaigns. So now, not so hot on the low Covid death and disease rates.
I'm also assuming your friend was not drastically inconvenienced from the shutdowns. For those that could work from home, order online, etc, it was all okay. For him to ignore the significant effect it had on those who lost businesses and jobs shows a lack of awareness outside of his own personal bubble.
Jul 8, 2022·edited Jul 8, 2022Liked by Kathryn DeFea
Bravo. A tour de force.
I particularly like: "It would have been possible, during this pandemic, to get closer to such a comparison, by universally testing for influenza by RT-PCR along with COVID-19, and quantifying flu deaths in exactly the same manner that COVID deaths were quantified --but we did not do this."
It seems to me that case count comparisons across countries for Covid 19 are also a bit difficult to make. I mean, we know that the US actually gave hospitals (which in many cases are corporate owned and profit centric) financial incentives to label and treat people as Covid 19 patients, and even to put people on to ventilators. So US hospitalization counts are affected by that. How did other countries count their cases? What incentives did they provide? Can we truly expect to be able to make such an unadjusted comparison between, say, South Korea, and the US in the first place?
To me, the winning argument is simply: East Asian style lockdowns like those implemented early in Taiwan and more recently in Shanghai are not constitutionally, politically or practically possible in the US. We cannot do that here. It will not work. A great many people will purposefully defy such lockdown mandates. They will do it publicly and they will do it privately.
And when enforcement of such a lockdown hurts a protected group in a visible way, watch the optics change from "lockdowns are protecting us" to "lockdowns are hateful." As we saw in the protests of the summer of 2020, if lockdowns conflict with another high priority political or social justice goal, the lockdowns will be abandoned and de-prioritized. That is not merely a "possibility," it is a guaranteed feature of the US system, of the US population. Why is your friend blind to that?
Or, again, observe the practical and political aspects of "closing the border." Can the US actually close its borders -- not in a legalistic theoretical way, but in a real, 100% complete, hermetic, practical way? When the US tried to do that, did it actually work? Did people on both sides of that border actively defy the closure? Did any politicians or federal judges protest or render void such a closure policy? Again, the bottom line question is: did the flow of people and commerce actually stop?
Your friend should stop trying to impose such a lockdown template over a vastly different cultural and political system. It's offensive to all US residents who still believe in personal, constitutional and practical day to day freedom.
Your Friend: "I see my Asia-based friends out in bars, things are completely open."
You could replace that with "Florida", "Ohio", "South Dakota", "South Carolina"....."Scandinavia".
I'm curious, when exactly did he say this to you? All of his claims, 2 years later, are easily falsified, no? South Korea recently hit a 80% increase in all cause mortality - surpassing even the US. Japan is exploding in cases, hitting all an time high. Australia on their 4th wave. Where can anyone point to, without data drudging, and show their talisman or remedy works? Why can't it be replicated?
I hope you’re not suggesting, and I fear you are, the arrows on the floor in stores was not needed! (For the record, I hope they remain forever as a reminder of the stupidity pandemic we endured, and continue to endure.)
Arguments cannot be won, but they can lead to solutions, assuming quite a few conditions are met. Here is a list, linked to one of Steve Kirsch's challenges:
Your friends thesaurus must be well worn. Also trying to insinuate that you are a child (Katie), that you couldn't possibly understand the 'real' situation. SMH
Thank you for saying this so succinctly. "your personal health is not private, but part of the community’s health; therefore, the government has the right to regulate it." See this link, where you'll find Brandon's chosen vendor for testing federal employees who did not consent to the injections. https://everythingwellnessllc.com/virtual-proctoring/
I would rather endure the wash of the virus over the river of superfluous bullshit emanating from the mouths of the lockdown enthusiasts. They have this idea that we must never get sick again! And that's not realistic.
Sarcasm aside, I have a friend like this and we have just stopped discussing it. Early on, I said the scientific arguments were lacking because there was no control group. That and if this was the true emergency that our government and media claimed it to be, you throw EVERYTHING you have at it. If the house is on fire, you don't tell people 'No, no - you can't use the fire extinguisher. You have to wait for the fire department to get here.' It was this attitude that made me suspicious from the get go.
We both are also in the Bay Area and in many ways, it is still July 2020 here. The other morning, I was outside early - about 4:30 as my husband was leaving for work. A guy was riding his bike down the street. With a mask. It was still full dark. Sigh...I don’t know what it is going to take to wake these people up. A co-worker of mine theorized that there is a mindset of not wanting to be associated with 'the dirty people' and I think she is onto something there. 95% of this debacle is psychological.
Thank you for posting this, Katie! Especially in light of what you said early on: "the COVID-19 response is unlikely to be an isolated example of medical tyranny "
It's a SURE thing that people -- both in positions of responsibility AND in the public at large -- are going to continue to listen to people who should NOT be listened to.
Your exposure of the likelihood that MORE than 25% of the deaths labeled as COVID deaths were NOT is so important! It's an astonishing statistic, and it points to several things. (1) we SHOULD have a VERY good idea of what is a COVID death and what is not. (2) What jaw-dropping INCOMPETENCE on the part of the "Public Health Authorities" must have been in place to cause this vital understanding to be nearly completely unknown. (3) The only OTHER reason besides incompetence on the part of these authorities is: Criminality. (4) There don't seem to be ANY efforts ANYwhere to remedy these failings, as there is STILL a widespread "understanding" that the handling of COVID was pretty good. There are still many in New York state who believe Andrew Cuomo did a good job of it.
And more. But it's too discouraging and disheartening to go into the rest of it.
Katie: Your dissection of your friend's critiques highlights so many of the areas where we need to do better as a nation and a people. Thank you again for it.
I know the type. They think of themselves as being really up on it all. Because they read propaganda and regurgitate it quite well. They are the dreaded 120 IQ types. Smarter than the average bear. But not actually smart. They got through life being verbally facile, memorizing well, and working the system. They’re the most pathetic.
Your friend is well educated by the look of his language. Don't know what he does for a living, but I'm kinda thinking white collar upper middle class, university educated and opinionated. Wore a mask outdoors and maybe still does. Supports a woman's right to choose and "my body my choice", yet endorses vax mandates without realizing the hypocrisy.
I noticed in talking with friends that it's extremely hard to change minds. People like your friend read mainstream media and trust in the CDC, so of course they view people like you as uninformed and incorrect.
While Asia was touted for low rates initially, those rates have since risen, especially after the max vax campaigns. So now, not so hot on the low Covid death and disease rates.
I'm also assuming your friend was not drastically inconvenienced from the shutdowns. For those that could work from home, order online, etc, it was all okay. For him to ignore the significant effect it had on those who lost businesses and jobs shows a lack of awareness outside of his own personal bubble.
Bravo. A tour de force.
I particularly like: "It would have been possible, during this pandemic, to get closer to such a comparison, by universally testing for influenza by RT-PCR along with COVID-19, and quantifying flu deaths in exactly the same manner that COVID deaths were quantified --but we did not do this."
It seems to me that case count comparisons across countries for Covid 19 are also a bit difficult to make. I mean, we know that the US actually gave hospitals (which in many cases are corporate owned and profit centric) financial incentives to label and treat people as Covid 19 patients, and even to put people on to ventilators. So US hospitalization counts are affected by that. How did other countries count their cases? What incentives did they provide? Can we truly expect to be able to make such an unadjusted comparison between, say, South Korea, and the US in the first place?
To me, the winning argument is simply: East Asian style lockdowns like those implemented early in Taiwan and more recently in Shanghai are not constitutionally, politically or practically possible in the US. We cannot do that here. It will not work. A great many people will purposefully defy such lockdown mandates. They will do it publicly and they will do it privately.
And when enforcement of such a lockdown hurts a protected group in a visible way, watch the optics change from "lockdowns are protecting us" to "lockdowns are hateful." As we saw in the protests of the summer of 2020, if lockdowns conflict with another high priority political or social justice goal, the lockdowns will be abandoned and de-prioritized. That is not merely a "possibility," it is a guaranteed feature of the US system, of the US population. Why is your friend blind to that?
Or, again, observe the practical and political aspects of "closing the border." Can the US actually close its borders -- not in a legalistic theoretical way, but in a real, 100% complete, hermetic, practical way? When the US tried to do that, did it actually work? Did people on both sides of that border actively defy the closure? Did any politicians or federal judges protest or render void such a closure policy? Again, the bottom line question is: did the flow of people and commerce actually stop?
Your friend should stop trying to impose such a lockdown template over a vastly different cultural and political system. It's offensive to all US residents who still believe in personal, constitutional and practical day to day freedom.
Your Friend: "I see my Asia-based friends out in bars, things are completely open."
You could replace that with "Florida", "Ohio", "South Dakota", "South Carolina"....."Scandinavia".
I'm curious, when exactly did he say this to you? All of his claims, 2 years later, are easily falsified, no? South Korea recently hit a 80% increase in all cause mortality - surpassing even the US. Japan is exploding in cases, hitting all an time high. Australia on their 4th wave. Where can anyone point to, without data drudging, and show their talisman or remedy works? Why can't it be replicated?
I hope you’re not suggesting, and I fear you are, the arrows on the floor in stores was not needed! (For the record, I hope they remain forever as a reminder of the stupidity pandemic we endured, and continue to endure.)
Arguments cannot be won, but they can lead to solutions, assuming quite a few conditions are met. Here is a list, linked to one of Steve Kirsch's challenges:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/steve-kirsch-is-challenging-again
Your friends thesaurus must be well worn. Also trying to insinuate that you are a child (Katie), that you couldn't possibly understand the 'real' situation. SMH
Thank you for saying this so succinctly. "your personal health is not private, but part of the community’s health; therefore, the government has the right to regulate it." See this link, where you'll find Brandon's chosen vendor for testing federal employees who did not consent to the injections. https://everythingwellnessllc.com/virtual-proctoring/