all one ever needed to know to conclude that covid was a hoax, or at minimum the panic was a hoax, was the early pronouncement that 'computer models suggest'......
You mean the same computer models that have been predicting climate doom in ten years for the past forty years ?
The objective of climate change has always been control over energy use in particular but standard of living in general.
All of those long term predictions were supposed to have gotten people to worry that 'gee, there might be something to this,' but forty years of failed predictions convinced people that there was no There there.
Covid provided the opportunity to do in one fell swoop what collectivists weren't able to do by measures ranging from gentle prodding to electric shock. This was the opportunity to impose in "2 weeks" what they had failed to do in 4 decades. Thanks to a few holdouts like Sweden and Florida, it became obvious that covid's predictions were every bit as much a hoax as climate change.
The new Republican House has the opportunity to defund the WHO, UN, CDC and Fauci's outfit in preparation for the next President doing to government agencies and employees what Musk just did to Twitter and its employees.
All true Ann, and I'd also wish to urge people to remember HOW the shutdowns were implemented.
Instead of intelligently targeting the at-risk populations (primarily the unwell elderly) for special focus and care, Government entities eagerly embraced the full breadth of their available Emergency Powers to inflict draconian measures upon everyone, regardless of their risk level. They enforced this with the heavy-handed totalitarian zeal that's so common on the Left, There were daily stories of middle-aged people being violently harassed and even beaten in the streets either by law enforcement agencies devoid of reason due to decades of Affirmative Action hiring and a corruption of their forces through cancerous politicization, or by wild-eyed members of the public who viewed the Covid shutdowns as an opportunity to unleash their Inner Brownshirt or Gauleiter.
It was amazing how little it took for friends, family and neighbors to embrace the petty tyrants that had been lurking, dormant, deep in the recesses of their weak minds throughout their lives. They embraced this opportunity with a smug, self-righteous zeal that shocked many of us who thought that we knew these people. The clear data showing that these massive shutdown tactics caused far more harm that good had been freely available for a year but it meant precisely nothing to people who saw their beloved Dr. Fauci say something demonstrably false on Oprah.
Drunk on their emergency powers...and the tsunami of cash these powers made available to them...politicians refused to acknowledge their errors and doubled-down on iron-fisted rules that caused children and adults to lose their way and have their lives needlessly destroyed...sometimes to the point of suicide. We still haven't assessed the full scope of the needless damage caused by the Covid Hysterics because much of it is still in place, primarily in the unenlightened, hard-Left backwaters of deep-blue cities.
Remember also the endless hypocrisy of the politicians and celebrities who would self-righteously lecture The Little People about how they need to curtail every activity in their lives and the next day would be photographed dancing at parties or eating at restaurants, unmasked, and of the ludicrous excuses they gave. "I just got caught up in the fun of the moment" doesn't sit well with parents who have watched their children decline in every way during these needless Dark Days.
The Covid Madness taught us a LOT...chiefly among them that Democrats are totalitarian at their core and do not deserve to be anywhere near the levers of meaningful political power.
Thank you James for your exceptionally kind, gracious and complimentary post. :-) Sorry, when you say you're at a loss, do you mean to say you're at a loss as to understanding why people would act and react as they did during the shutdowns?
I believe that a LOT of it can be explained by understanding that a great many people are simply very, very weak of mind and are easily flummoxed by radical changes. They are accustomed to getting all of their news from legacy/Democrat sources which tell them what to think and they never really learned 'how' to think critically about things, and the idea of questioning authority would cause them to leave their comfort zone. The easiest thing in the world to do is to be a liberal, because everything from academia to entertainment to much of popular culture supports your worldview. You never have to defend your point of view with logic, fact and reason because you're in your safe little bubble where everybody agrees with you. This is why liberals frequently become nasty, violent and apoplectic when communicating with conservatives...they are unable to defend what they believe because they don't fully understand it themselves, and so they tend to lash out in frustration, either verbally or physically.
And so when you have a situation where the Government and the Left tells you that there's a pandemic and in order to stay alive and to Be A Good Citizen you have to do x, y and z. It's so easy to fall into the Brownshirt mode and become a little automaton. It all becomes problematic when a conservative comes along and says "hey, the Government is wrong. Sweden has done this and Japan has done that, and Florida has done this and there are sixteen longterm studies, all of which prove the Government to be wrong and Fauci is a liar." This requires critical thinking to understand and process and if you're a liberal you might not be able to do that, so you become a shrill and hysterical Keith Olbermann or a Karen.
Sometimes, the simple (and correct) answer is "it's because you're far smarter than liberals" ;-)
Two months before 9/11, the overlords conducted a pandemic simulation called “Dark Winter.” One week after 9/11, the “terrorist” Anthrax Mailings occurred. Shortly after that, the government issued to the States “model” legislation to enact to allow them to institute Lockdowns, etc. in the event of a pandemic. It was called the Model States Health Emergency Powers Act.
(It is easier for the States to get away with issuing Dictats than for the federal government to do so.)
The overlords then practiced annually how to deal with pandemics. The last one occurred in 2019 at Johns Hopkins University and was called Event 201. Then Covid-19 occurred.
Thank you for the articles, the update, the back up historical information. It really is dumbfounding behavior displayed and projected onto persons. Distraction of the worst kind. Will vote accordingly. Thank you for follow up Ann.
Do you not believe that limiting mass gatherings reduced the number of Covid cases? There are many examples of such gatherings causing increased cases.
Do you not believe the vaccines saved lives? Do you not believe that mask wearing reduced covid cases?
and if you believe that those things happened, make sure your vagina has no sand in it before you put on your dress for your drag performance. I'm sure those family members you mentioned are so happy they survived so that they get to be around you for the rest of their lives.
Your worthless example of whom you think was saved by covid measures is impossible to prove; you can't prove a negative. "well if the Reagan tax cuts hadn't been implemented, government revenue would have been much higher and inflation would have frittered out out of its own loss of momentum."
"if we don't take dramatic action now, the climate will be unlivable in the near future"
Were the riots one of the examples of increased causes?
"The vaccines do not prevent one from getting covid,"
Then they're not really vaccines, and they are not the product they were sold as being. Recall the meme, 'if you think that an unvaccinated person is a threat to a vaccinated person, you don't really believe in vaccines, do you?'
"they reduce the chance of severe illness and death. They work very well." Again you make an unprovable claim. You are suggesting that covid has a 100% mortality rate, or at least a rate of mortality far higher than the .2 -.5%.
You probably believe deeply in climate change, too, which is based on nothing but supposition; not a single prediction of the alarmists has come true. Kind of like Xiden telling the unvaccinated that they were in for a winter of mass death.
"Imagine a vaccine so safe you have to be threatened to take it for an illness you have to be tested for to know you have."
And let me make a further guess: you support vaccine passports but oppose voter ID.
The rate of severe illness, and death, is higher among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. This is proof that the vaccines work in preventing severe illness and death.
The unvaccinated who end up in intensive care beg for anything that will keep them alive, such as Paxlovid. If they had gotten the vaccine, most of them would not have ended up in intensive care.
No one threatened me. I got the vaccine as soon as it was available.
It appears that a great many of our fellow citizens thought that government mandates and arbitrary power exercise were just great and they’d like more. They have a deal - just take care of me and I’ll do anything you say.
Florida got DeSantis, Ohio got JD Vance, South Dakota got Noem, Utah got Lee, Texas got Abbott . . . and can anyone explain how Pennsylvania got FETTERMAN??? We knew Oz would not be the perfect candidate, but certainly he was better than the alternative - Obama & Oprah picked FETTERMAN as one of their favorite things. People still believe the commercials: they believed Oz wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security. That was a big belief. Because Obama said it! And I guess many want abortions, the ability to smoke dope and to let all the prisoners out of jail. How sick is our society that FETTERMAN would win. Yep, we are Unsafe.
all one ever needed to know to conclude that covid was a hoax, or at minimum the panic was a hoax, was the early pronouncement that 'computer models suggest'......
You mean the same computer models that have been predicting climate doom in ten years for the past forty years ?
The objective of climate change has always been control over energy use in particular but standard of living in general.
All of those long term predictions were supposed to have gotten people to worry that 'gee, there might be something to this,' but forty years of failed predictions convinced people that there was no There there.
Covid provided the opportunity to do in one fell swoop what collectivists weren't able to do by measures ranging from gentle prodding to electric shock. This was the opportunity to impose in "2 weeks" what they had failed to do in 4 decades. Thanks to a few holdouts like Sweden and Florida, it became obvious that covid's predictions were every bit as much a hoax as climate change.
The new Republican House has the opportunity to defund the WHO, UN, CDC and Fauci's outfit in preparation for the next President doing to government agencies and employees what Musk just did to Twitter and its employees.
Yes 10 percent death rate wasn’t it University of Washington?
But, but, but...WE HAD GOOD INTENTIONS!!!
Standard leftist excuse for every failure.
All true Ann, and I'd also wish to urge people to remember HOW the shutdowns were implemented.
Instead of intelligently targeting the at-risk populations (primarily the unwell elderly) for special focus and care, Government entities eagerly embraced the full breadth of their available Emergency Powers to inflict draconian measures upon everyone, regardless of their risk level. They enforced this with the heavy-handed totalitarian zeal that's so common on the Left, There were daily stories of middle-aged people being violently harassed and even beaten in the streets either by law enforcement agencies devoid of reason due to decades of Affirmative Action hiring and a corruption of their forces through cancerous politicization, or by wild-eyed members of the public who viewed the Covid shutdowns as an opportunity to unleash their Inner Brownshirt or Gauleiter.
It was amazing how little it took for friends, family and neighbors to embrace the petty tyrants that had been lurking, dormant, deep in the recesses of their weak minds throughout their lives. They embraced this opportunity with a smug, self-righteous zeal that shocked many of us who thought that we knew these people. The clear data showing that these massive shutdown tactics caused far more harm that good had been freely available for a year but it meant precisely nothing to people who saw their beloved Dr. Fauci say something demonstrably false on Oprah.
Drunk on their emergency powers...and the tsunami of cash these powers made available to them...politicians refused to acknowledge their errors and doubled-down on iron-fisted rules that caused children and adults to lose their way and have their lives needlessly destroyed...sometimes to the point of suicide. We still haven't assessed the full scope of the needless damage caused by the Covid Hysterics because much of it is still in place, primarily in the unenlightened, hard-Left backwaters of deep-blue cities.
Remember also the endless hypocrisy of the politicians and celebrities who would self-righteously lecture The Little People about how they need to curtail every activity in their lives and the next day would be photographed dancing at parties or eating at restaurants, unmasked, and of the ludicrous excuses they gave. "I just got caught up in the fun of the moment" doesn't sit well with parents who have watched their children decline in every way during these needless Dark Days.
The Covid Madness taught us a LOT...chiefly among them that Democrats are totalitarian at their core and do not deserve to be anywhere near the levers of meaningful political power.
Thank you James for your exceptionally kind, gracious and complimentary post. :-) Sorry, when you say you're at a loss, do you mean to say you're at a loss as to understanding why people would act and react as they did during the shutdowns?
I believe that a LOT of it can be explained by understanding that a great many people are simply very, very weak of mind and are easily flummoxed by radical changes. They are accustomed to getting all of their news from legacy/Democrat sources which tell them what to think and they never really learned 'how' to think critically about things, and the idea of questioning authority would cause them to leave their comfort zone. The easiest thing in the world to do is to be a liberal, because everything from academia to entertainment to much of popular culture supports your worldview. You never have to defend your point of view with logic, fact and reason because you're in your safe little bubble where everybody agrees with you. This is why liberals frequently become nasty, violent and apoplectic when communicating with conservatives...they are unable to defend what they believe because they don't fully understand it themselves, and so they tend to lash out in frustration, either verbally or physically.
And so when you have a situation where the Government and the Left tells you that there's a pandemic and in order to stay alive and to Be A Good Citizen you have to do x, y and z. It's so easy to fall into the Brownshirt mode and become a little automaton. It all becomes problematic when a conservative comes along and says "hey, the Government is wrong. Sweden has done this and Japan has done that, and Florida has done this and there are sixteen longterm studies, all of which prove the Government to be wrong and Fauci is a liar." This requires critical thinking to understand and process and if you're a liberal you might not be able to do that, so you become a shrill and hysterical Keith Olbermann or a Karen.
Sometimes, the simple (and correct) answer is "it's because you're far smarter than liberals" ;-)
Two months before 9/11, the overlords conducted a pandemic simulation called “Dark Winter.” One week after 9/11, the “terrorist” Anthrax Mailings occurred. Shortly after that, the government issued to the States “model” legislation to enact to allow them to institute Lockdowns, etc. in the event of a pandemic. It was called the Model States Health Emergency Powers Act.
(It is easier for the States to get away with issuing Dictats than for the federal government to do so.)
The overlords then practiced annually how to deal with pandemics. The last one occurred in 2019 at Johns Hopkins University and was called Event 201. Then Covid-19 occurred.
The Silent majority will be silent no more there will be a large roar!
Yes it does seem to have some value.
One solution with several parts:
Stop paying them. Term limit of one. Install voting requirements.
Thank you for the articles, the update, the back up historical information. It really is dumbfounding behavior displayed and projected onto persons. Distraction of the worst kind. Will vote accordingly. Thank you for follow up Ann.
Yes be like the Mafia and Michael Corleone. Just remember they first used the lockdowns to get rid of Trump and to exert their power.
Yes the shutdowns saved people's lives.
Without evidence.
Umm, no.
Do you not believe that limiting mass gatherings reduced the number of Covid cases? There are many examples of such gatherings causing increased cases.
Do you not believe the vaccines saved lives? Do you not believe that mask wearing reduced covid cases?
Give us the names of those saved.
My Brothers In Law, My Sister in Law and her husband, my brother and his wife and many, many others
Lacks scientific factual evidence and many many other names. Maybe these people were say, just lucky.
Perhaps all the people who got the polio vaccine were just lucky also.
Doubt it. Polio vaccine is an effective vaccine. There is ‘evidence’ confirming that fact.
Ok that’s it for me.
There is evidence that the covid vaccine is effective.
and if you believe that those things happened, make sure your vagina has no sand in it before you put on your dress for your drag performance. I'm sure those family members you mentioned are so happy they survived so that they get to be around you for the rest of their lives.
Your worthless example of whom you think was saved by covid measures is impossible to prove; you can't prove a negative. "well if the Reagan tax cuts hadn't been implemented, government revenue would have been much higher and inflation would have frittered out out of its own loss of momentum."
"if we don't take dramatic action now, the climate will be unlivable in the near future"
Were the riots one of the examples of increased causes?
You're sick, get some help.
The vaccines do not prevent one from getting covid, they reduce the chance of severe illness and death. They work very well.
Paxlovid has been proven to help those with covid.
"The vaccines do not prevent one from getting covid,"
Then they're not really vaccines, and they are not the product they were sold as being. Recall the meme, 'if you think that an unvaccinated person is a threat to a vaccinated person, you don't really believe in vaccines, do you?'
"they reduce the chance of severe illness and death. They work very well." Again you make an unprovable claim. You are suggesting that covid has a 100% mortality rate, or at least a rate of mortality far higher than the .2 -.5%.
You probably believe deeply in climate change, too, which is based on nothing but supposition; not a single prediction of the alarmists has come true. Kind of like Xiden telling the unvaccinated that they were in for a winter of mass death.
"Imagine a vaccine so safe you have to be threatened to take it for an illness you have to be tested for to know you have."
And let me make a further guess: you support vaccine passports but oppose voter ID.
The rate of severe illness, and death, is higher among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. This is proof that the vaccines work in preventing severe illness and death.
The unvaccinated who end up in intensive care beg for anything that will keep them alive, such as Paxlovid. If they had gotten the vaccine, most of them would not have ended up in intensive care.
No one threatened me. I got the vaccine as soon as it was available.
Are you suggesting that the vaccine causes death?
Yo Ann..
If you ever needed proof that Paul Krugman is either a propagandist or an idiot..
per the latest CDC data:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge
NY Deaths from #Covid19 => 75,302
NY Population => 20,365,879
that's a mortality rate of 0.3697%
FL Deaths from #covid19 => 76,249
FL Population => 22,085,563
that's a mortality rate of 0.3452%
I wonder if Krugman failed to add NYC's deaths and non-NYC NY deaths to get total deaths for the state of NY?
It appears that a great many of our fellow citizens thought that government mandates and arbitrary power exercise were just great and they’d like more. They have a deal - just take care of me and I’ll do anything you say.
Florida got DeSantis, Ohio got JD Vance, South Dakota got Noem, Utah got Lee, Texas got Abbott . . . and can anyone explain how Pennsylvania got FETTERMAN??? We knew Oz would not be the perfect candidate, but certainly he was better than the alternative - Obama & Oprah picked FETTERMAN as one of their favorite things. People still believe the commercials: they believed Oz wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security. That was a big belief. Because Obama said it! And I guess many want abortions, the ability to smoke dope and to let all the prisoners out of jail. How sick is our society that FETTERMAN would win. Yep, we are Unsafe.
Yes, yes, yes