Depending upon when you mark the start of the Covid mass hysteria, we are either coming up on the one year anniversary or have just past it. Panic was setting in as early as January, but that was mostly with people who saw a profit in it. It was in February when the mass media started picking up on it. For example, no one was wearing a mask at CPAC 2020, which was in February. By March you could not buy a mask anywhere, along with toiletries and paper products.
A year on, we are getting a better picture of what happened in what may go down as one of the great mass panics in human history. Given that the panic is still with us, the picture that is emerging is blurry and incomplete. In parts of the US and Europe, Covid has turned into a weird religion. It is not just a public health issue to be managed and navigated, but a stand-in for Old Scratch. The faithful are not only vigilant, they are Covid vigilantes, minding everyone’s business about it.
One thing we are seeing is a collapse in the number of confirmed cases. This is in line with what we know about past pandemics. The number of cases is slow at first, often because we have no way of testing for the new bug. Then the number of cases rises quickly, partly due to awareness and partly due to panic. In the mass media age, the need for attention surely drove the case count. Contrary to media narratives, the drop in cases has nothing to do with government efforts.
In fact, there is no evidence that any of the measures, public or private, had any impact on the spread of Covid. The fact is the only way to slow the spread of a virus like this is what the Chinese did and that is lock everyone in their homes. Even the Chinese found this to be close to impossible. What the West could do and is doing is theater. It is about protecting the political health of the ruling class, by convincing enough people that the government is doing something about the virus.
Political theater is an essential element of liberal democracy. We live in the modern version of a Dionysian age. All public acts are public performances, and all public performances are part of the larger morality play of politics. Facts and the discourse upon facts is purely a private affair. It is why everything about Covid has been politicized and only came to our attention when it could be politicized. For a year we have been watching Covid theater, rather than a public health response.
Once the drama runs its course on the big stage, and it seems to be reaching that point now that Mumbly Joe is staggering around the White House, it will go off-Broadway and then close up shop entirely. The mass roll out of vaccines with highly questionable claims to effectiveness looks like the way out for government. Once the old people are vaccinated, they can then claim herd immunity has been reached and the rest of the public can get the jab at their leisure.
One caveat to that prediction is that the Covidians are getting worked up over the new strain of Covid. This is the super-Covid that the oracles prophesied back in the before times when this all started. This one is “armed with enhanced capabilities.” Apparently it has infrared vision and portable drones. Additionally, the Nth wave people will be with us forever, it seems. Then you have the Covid industrial complex that has invested heavily in lockdowns and all that surrounds it.
Assuming that the panic does end, and this drama moves off the stage this year, we will also start to get a sense of the degree of madness we have witnesses. For example, we are already getting a hint in the annual flu numbers. In Britain, the number of influenza cases was zero this flu season. Maybe we have witnessed a miracle or maybe Covid kills the influenza virus. Most likely, the flu numbers have been re-classed as Covid, which appears to be the case in the US.
The truth is most cases we call the flu are caused by unknown pathogens. In fact, only about 20% of flu cases treated by the medical system are known to be the flu. The rest are from something else. Since the medicines for treating the symptoms do the job, no one really cares what caused the symptoms. It is why we do not mandate testing for the flu or the common cold. Up until the past year, we just accepted the fact that people get sick in winter and sometimes need to be treated for it.
Once the dust settles and the sober minded can begin to look at the data, what we will find is that the number of deaths was wildly exaggerated. Similarly, the number of people needing hospitalization was also exaggerated. This is common to all pandemics in the modern age. Even the Spanish Flu was exaggerated. A lot of the deaths attributed to it were from other factors, like poor hospital conditions, poorly trained doctors, bad nutrition, and other pathogens.
Another lesson will be that modern government is not capable of managing a genuine crisis, even a mild one like Covid. The story emerging from New York shows that the people making the decisions not only lacked the basic skills to manage a crisis, but they were obsessed with the politics of the moment. Like everything about partisan politics, everyone chose sides. The left-wing states chose first, so the right-wing states were left with the right answer by default. That is no way to run a country.
It is not just a partisan political problem. It is a systemic one. This paper examining the political economy of this panic looks at the role of mass media. The initial reality of the virus was amplified by the mass media, which the decision makers in government rely upon as their primary information source. They acted on the exaggerated claims, which had the effect of confirming those claims to the public. This was picked up and magnified by the media and we had a vicious cycle.
The interesting bit in that paper is the parallel between how a virus spreading faster in a dense population and how panic spreads in a media dense population. Before the mass media age, most people were outside the media environment, in the same way most people were outside urban areas in agrarian times. Just as a pathogen needs a network of people, bad information needs a way to pass from person to person. Our connected age is now a breeding ground for informational pandemics.
Another aspect to this is a growing number of people seem to need the emotional energy that comes from crisis. We saw this in the early days of Covid. The auxiliary volunteer army of scolds were suddenly swarming the public square. That energy eventually transferred to fighting the virus that they call Trump supporters and insurrectionists but is now looking for a new host. They will need another panic this spring and you can be sure one will be supplied.
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They also need to maintain the panic a little longer to make it look like Biden saved us.
6
You have to wonder what it will take for the public to lose its fear. Whose signal are they waiting on? Fauci? The Dept. of HHS? El Presidente? Some form of media consensus? The helplessness of our population in the face of this panic has been the most troubling aspect of it. I’ve never been so disappointed in my fellow citizens as I have in the past year.
3
The few children I see outside playing are wearing masks, or at least more than half are. Where are the men stopping this nonsense? Probably inside playing video games. Whatever follows will be just as absurd and detrimental to our life now.
Remember all the squawking and rebellious talk after the Patriot act , creation of Homeland security and the TSA.? Yeah, all part of life that most accept now.
7
Agreed. The theatre will never end. The cloud people and their minions have the blueprint now on how to create and propagate hysteria whenever they want. And they will always want it as it gives them the power they crave, and with fixed elections now there is no longer any fear of looking bad or “owning” the crisis. They have no competition. There can be no dissent. Political resistance is futile.
8
except, they are fukking over their own people at the same time they are fukking their opponents over. this is Götterdämmerung, pure and simple; the death of the system in its entirety.
1
“Where are the men stopping this nonsense? Probably inside playing video games.”
Western society is not an honor bound warrior society, meaning western men are sheep. It’s an either/or situation.
2
As time goes by, I’m becoming more and more pro-Covid.
You know you’ll miss it once it’s gone.
I remember last March, when the TV’s local news was entirely about Corona Virus .. they hadn’t yet dreamed up the sexy name Covid; the news had no time to cover the usual car accidents, house fires, traffic jams, the human interest stories about some disdvantaged person trying to find their way in the world, weather and sports. No, it was non-stop Corona Virus.
I miss those days.
I remember the banging of pots and pans every evening at 7:00, to honor the front-line workers; The tearful stories about the survivors, the tik-tok nurses.
It all was like a war, it gave us purpose and meaning for our lives. What ‘ave we got now? Back to our boring little cubbyholes, our vapid dumb jobs, our remaining friends and family, if we have any.
No, not like a war. It was like being in one of those immersive Theater pieces, where the audience gets to be part of the play. We all had such Important roles!
that might have been satire.
but maybe not.
posting anonymously this time.
5
1
i live close enough to a freeway to hear it when out walking, and during the lock down it was…quiet 🙂
EU has agreed on a Vaccination passport. Another right-wing extremist conspiracy theory becoming reality.
They will be pushing the jab every year. Just like the flu shot. Same scam, but much tougher consequences if you refuse. Still totally voluntary though.
7
Heh. At one point the BBC was listing ‘deaths within 28 days of testing positive for Covid’. Make of that what you will.
All the while, the Diamond Princess slowly gets memory-holed. Let’s face it, the chance of a virus so deadly that it wipes out 80% of Earth’s population seems pretty unlikely. Imagine how lucky you’d have to be to witness such an event? For one thing, it probably won’t happen as it will just be too damn exciting.
4
Just this morning I revisited an article from a year ago on the Diamond Princess from Anthony Watts’s website. The author overstated the IFR by quite a bit, figuring it at 1.2, and totally whiffed on the ultimate number of U.S. deaths, but the general numbers in terms of infection couldn’t have been laid out any clearer. And then they were calamitously ignored. Sieg Health!
83% of the people on the ship didn’t get it, despite perfect conditions for transmission. If you get it, you have about a 50/50 chance of showing no symptoms at all. And the fatality rate is lower than the earlier estimates of 2% or above.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/
Virtually everyone we know, family or friends, have either gotten their jabs or are scheduled to get them/it. No one even questions the efficacy or potential, unknown risks and consequences. I just shake my head and wonder if I’m the crazy one – not willing to get it for the sake of society or the elderly or whoever… One way or another, the (((powers))) that be are going do their damnedest to force it on everyone. “Be a good little sheeple comrade and roll up your sleeve – do your part to save your community, country and the world – we can’t get back to “normal” without your help”.
7
If a female scold is a Karen, what is a male scold called.
I had the pleasure of going to my favorite bakery in a short sleeve shirt and as usual, no mask. There was a guy in the corner when I entered who had on a stocking cap, parka and boots. The guy was ready to tackle Everest. In addition, he had a heavy duty mask on with not one, but two filter canisters.
He started berating me about “where your mask? You wanna kill us all”? He then proceeded to motherf**k me up and down as he scrambled for the door. I ignored him as the staff diverted their eyes.
I think the best way to deal with these dingbats is to ignore them.
4
Julius Evola said that one cannot be free if one fears death. A non spiritual and economic man is just an easily manipulated little orc.
4
imagine the horror show inside that guy’s head! next time tell the person you are a muslim and they are attacking allah, and could you please have their name and address for the imam.
1
Always remember to laugh at them. It not only humiliates them, but it will signal to any witnesses that, yes, they’re the sane ones for questioning all this. They need to be reminded of that because on the flip side there’s the omnipresent firehose of propaganda telling them to question their instincts.
I never wear a mask in my local Wally World, and I’m almost always the only one out of 200-300 people inside without one. Yet, I’ve not had a single person go Karen on me. That leads me to believe that there has to be a large cohort who would gladly strip their masks if they weren’t fearful of the disapprobation of others. On those rare occasions where I cross paths with another person minus the fag rag — and it’s always a white male — we instinctively give each other the knowing head nod.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_rvE_8naJI
1
Zman, have you read any of Marshall Mcluhan’s writings? I only have a surface level understanding of his concepts (if that) but it does seem that his theories are in line with your post today.
Here is an interesting theory. When we are dreaming (in REM sleep) our brain does not know it is a dream – and this is by design. A chemical is released to paralyze the voluntary muscles. a failure in this mechanism results in “sleep walking”; when you are walking in a dream, your brain is sending impulses to your legs to actually move.
So we know there is one pathway into our consciousness, that bypasses direct experience. Maybe there is another such pathway, say, through the eyes in the form of high quality video. IMO there is a very strong likelihood that humans really are susceptible to being “programmed” by what they watch.
Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” is a fun movie on this theme.
4
The new hysteria will be a replay of the old hysteria of climate change. Same playbook with a dash of panic over white supremacist insurrection thrown in
2
One part of this whole Covidian Wokeness we have been living through that really stuck with me revolves around the way that people will spitefully torture other people when given permission to do so, which I guess I hadn’t seen in real life up to now. Sort of like how the Red Guards enthusiastically attacked old teachers and business men in China as the cultural revolution unfolded. Or how poor people in Russia attacked the kulaks under Communism. We have millions and millions of crazy women, loney women, angry non-white guys, etc… a whole rainbow of people… who have felt so wronged by society that they are happy to torture their fellow citizens the first chance they get. Democracy will not last in this context. Nobody believes in other people’s rights anymore. It started with the War on Terror though. That was a theatrical event that imposed policing on every aspect of life and everyone went along with it because of… fear and loathing of muslim terrorists. What goes around comes around as they say. It’s all well and good for America to have spent decades imposing vicious regimes on the world for profit but you can’t sit around moaning when the world turns the tables. The CIA used to and probably still does run black site prisons. That same tech will be used against us someday.
5
well, there was that famous study/test where they made people think they had control over giving another person an electrical shock when they answered a question incorrectly. the experiment (which was filmed) got more than one person to administer what they thought was extremely painful – or even fatal – shocks, under urging from the people running the experiment.
Oh, and notice how any new versions of the kung fru are now being referred to as “variants” instead of old fashioned strains or mutations – makes it sound so much scarier. I swear, the perversion of the English language and addition of bull**** words into the lexicon – continuously repeated and amplified by the mad stream media is off the fricking charts.
One possible improvement: hospital sanitation. Talk to an old RN in her 80s, and it was way better back in the 1960s, before standards slackened. COVID has improved that, at least for a while.
1
That paper on the political economy is interesting but they also acknowledge that we are in uncharted territory because what stops these panics is private property on the borders of the panics and now that we’re turning this into a global Panic there are no borders to the panic, place to stop it and also course we’re destroying private property.
I see more malevolence in this than the Z man. But I’m less of an optimist about this Earthly Realm
Time to start being practical; Found a way to really fund DR; all we need is a Nigerian Prince, and I hear that they are not hard to find.
https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-health-coronavirus-pandemic-asia-pacific-ohio-b651def05a8a049637c4a1047f788631
The Road Back (cont)
We’re all coders now.
Who needs mechanics, plumbers, & electricians when you can earn a gazillion dollars learning to code (plus fame & status, just ask a nerd)? The Elites love to snarl that we don’t need no stinkin’ tradesman with dirt under their fingernails. The workingman of the future drinks a latte while tickling a keyboard in his custom cubicle adorned with sci-fantasy artwork. Well, it’s time to give them a taste of a world without construction workers and repairmen, and let that reality sink in for a while. Perhaps a coordinated two-week vacation can be arranged right before the next voter fraud exercise. That would be kind of interesting.
If anyone catches wind of a manner in which to get documents showing you’ve had the jab it would be helpful to share it here, exercising as much caution as you feel necessary. I assume it’ll come down to a little baksheesh with a vibrant “health care provider” but desperate times and all that.