Way back in the spring of 2020 , non-expert me knew this was all BS. I railed at the craziness put out by the Pence task force, especially its lack of a timeline with hard criteria for reopening. When it became even more obvious in summer 2020 that this was a scam, I said that those in charge must know it but needed the phased reopening and mask kabuki theater to avoid admitting their mistakes and making themselves, in their minds, look foolish. The longer they kept it up, and amplified it further, the harder it became for them to reverse course. Then at a certain point, many got Stockholm Syndrome and in self-defense believed their own nonsense.
The good-ole-boy types I talk to in the grocery store checkout line have less fear and more common sense than most politicians. I'm 67, am immunocompromised, have been out and about sans mask for the duration, have not had COVID (or if I have I never noticed it) and am afraid only of the creeping totalitarianism I see engulfing the western world.
Well said, blogger. At the beginning I wondered whether the dictatorial reaction by the Chinese government was mainly a reflection of the ages of the ruling classes there.
The reaction of Mrs Merkel to the virus (like the reaction of Mrs Thatcher to Global Warming) shows that the belief that the world needs more politicians who have a scientific training may well be wrong. What politics needs is more people of a sceptical disposition and a critical intelligence. In other words the sort of people who are almost certain to avoid politics.
Well said. All these politicians are old, weak & unhealthy. Why they have become tyrants. Look @ Biden, cannot even complete a coherent sentence, will keep getting boosters, then blame the unvax if he has a severe bad reaction. Meanwhile. 99% of the global world, fully recovered.
Thank you for such an elegant description of why the "hive mind" is performing in superior fashion. It reminds me of Hayek's observation that spontaneously organized markets transmit information far better, and with far more richness, than central planners. The internet is perhaps a real-time experiment in Hayek's economic theories applied to information.
I life in a city (SF, USA) that is governed top to bottom by the apparatchiks of Official Information which is why one of the world's shining beacons of opportunity is now like living in a third world country. But, I look forward to moving my family out of this bubble, where I will only have to pay lip service to it virtually.
"All of the terrified Angela Merkels of the world act within an environment of outdated, poor-quality information, all the time."
This.
Peter's Principle (promoting people to a position a power that they are officially incompetent to hold) is at work here to an extreme. If you have an absolutely incompetent boss, the immediate underlings must be Yes Men by default. If you are a sane person, you walk away from that post. The current posts of control around the world are supported only by Yes Men and the entire system operates in a hive-mind echo chamber.
The good news is that the echo chamber is becoming increasingly more ridiculous, therefore everyone outside the echo chamber walks away.
This might seem a little off-topic, maybe even mean-spirited (not meant to be so); but we have eliminated courage as a cardinal virtue and sign of great character, and let it be replaced by it's inverse, the vice of safety and the impossible childish goal of security.
Our ancestors would roll in their graves to see how pathetic and weak a collective group of people we appear to have become.
Get rid of the current crop of cowards, and replace them all with real leaders who have demonstrated and developed real courage and character in their lives.
I agree that the Corona measures are stupid and pointless, but I'm not convinced that Merkel, Johnson, Ardern, etc., are afraid of the virus. Maybe they were in the spring of 2020 but no longer. I watched video of Merkel as she arrived at the G7 last month. She got out her limo, put on a mask, walked across the courtyard in front of masked guards, walked into the building, and then took off her mask. Macron was wearing the mask when he exited his limo, but he did the same thing. It was viral theater...like they were giving the rest of us the middle finger. Biden regularly violates 'mask protocol', but that could be the result of his obvious mental impairment.
I remember the initial reaction of the UK and Germany. Given the scenes from Wuhan and Lombardy, it was hard to know what to think. Were they being reckless?
And, then, suddenly, they changed their approach. Why? Why did they throw out a hundred years of pandemic response wisdom?
"All the while, though, Team Lockdown was hard at work behind the scenes, to bend policy in their direction."
Who is Team Lockdown? Why were they pushing lockdown? How did they convince so many governments to go along? What power do they have over them?
I've been down a few rabbit holes in the past year, and I've heard many "crazy" ideas. I've made a policy of not judging...for the most part. I just put them on my "WTH is going on? Shelf" for future consideration.
Something is very wrong is the world. Nothing makes sense. I don't know who. I don't know how. I don't know why. But I'm not convinced that the bizarre times we live in can be explained by greed, incompetence, avarice, CYA, hubris. I joke that we will all wake up one day to learn that "our leaders" have been replaced by space alien lizards because it would make more sense. Perhaps I've watched too many sci-fi shows.
It's hard to suss out why so many governments aren't acting for the benefit of their people. This is a global phenomenon...and that doesn't make sense.
"The prime minister of Austria is so afraid that he has confined all unvaccinated Austrians to their homes. When asked, he declared that this measure would have no end date. The Chief Minister of Australia’s Northern Territory is terrified. New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is terrified."
Do you really believe these people are afraid of the virus??
May I suggest that they are much more afraid of something worse if they fail to deliver on their promises/orders?
You are right. I read from several people in different states, that life is almost back to normal. Herre in Georgia, there are a few people still wearing masks, some probably because they work in government buildings. I read the same continuous panic in Belgium. 88 % vaccinated, and look at the numbers
Why are they so blind ? They must see that even with so many jabbed, so many already healed, with natural, lasting immunity. But no, now they are going to jab the 5 year olds.
Well hopefully, like here, many parents will frown on that. Only a handful pushed their kids. And I think a whole lot saw that 12 year old girl in a wheelchair at Senator Johnsons conference.
Great insight about the fear of our leaders. You could smell it in the air at the very beginning: for the first time, here was an outbreak of a dread disease that could affect THEM! There was a slew of high-profile infections. Tom Hanks. Boris Johnson. A bunch of jet-setting ski bunnies. Unused to personal danger, the laptop class crumpled with terror, including of course the politicians, who are the ne plus ultra of the laptoppies. It was a mass betrayal of self and duty. A disaster.
But that is far from the end of the story. What happened next fits the pattern described in Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.” Whether a disaster is natural (tsunami) or man made (Iraq war), it’s chum in the water for the practitioners of disaster capitalism. They seize, have seized, on the chaos and disenfranchisement of disaster victims to grab what was formerly held in common by them.
In this case, our economies.
Follow the freaking money, guys. It’s not just Big Pharma. They are rather new to the disaster capitalism game. Look at the usual suspects, chiefly politically-connected financial outfits (the Too Big To Fail Gang). They’re the ones pushing for financial reconstruction and CBDCs, i.e. expropriation of the common good above all common goods, which we had hardly been aware of, taking it for granted: our freedom.
This could not have happened in a civilization led by Christians. Or in fact people who believe in anything apart from their own survival.
The ease with which New Zealanders have surrendered fundermental civil liberties in response to Jacinda Ardern’s curated panic porn is dismaying. Like Merkel, Ardern is terrified. She locked down her own city of Auckland for three months while hiding away in the capital, Wellington. When she was finally forced to make an appearance in Auckland it was laughably stage managed insincerity on display, together with gloves, masks, sleeves taped closed, and with a white dress and floral headpiece designed to create a messianic image. Truly the most narcissistic PM in our history.
They are functionaries for the Elites. Like the squares in the squid game. They know what they say makes zero sense, like vaccine mandates and passports, but they do it anyway like good orderly totalitarian foot soldiers for the coming global enslavement.
An important category of people often overlooked in the epidemiology are those who had functional cross-immunity to Covid due to prior exposure to other HCovs. This class was estimated at 40-60% for UK and higher for Germany. In fact, the overwhelming number of current cases are those who took the useless 'vaccine' and haven't, up to now, had a chance to develop proper immunity.
Way back in the spring of 2020 , non-expert me knew this was all BS. I railed at the craziness put out by the Pence task force, especially its lack of a timeline with hard criteria for reopening. When it became even more obvious in summer 2020 that this was a scam, I said that those in charge must know it but needed the phased reopening and mask kabuki theater to avoid admitting their mistakes and making themselves, in their minds, look foolish. The longer they kept it up, and amplified it further, the harder it became for them to reverse course. Then at a certain point, many got Stockholm Syndrome and in self-defense believed their own nonsense.
The good-ole-boy types I talk to in the grocery store checkout line have less fear and more common sense than most politicians. I'm 67, am immunocompromised, have been out and about sans mask for the duration, have not had COVID (or if I have I never noticed it) and am afraid only of the creeping totalitarianism I see engulfing the western world.
Two things can be true:
1. These policies are being publicly promulgated by stupid and fearful people.
2. Malignant forces lurking in the shadows are pushing the whole thing forward.
Does anyone believe the Merkels, Trudeaus, and Bidens of the world are making meaningful decisions?
Well said, blogger. At the beginning I wondered whether the dictatorial reaction by the Chinese government was mainly a reflection of the ages of the ruling classes there.
The reaction of Mrs Merkel to the virus (like the reaction of Mrs Thatcher to Global Warming) shows that the belief that the world needs more politicians who have a scientific training may well be wrong. What politics needs is more people of a sceptical disposition and a critical intelligence. In other words the sort of people who are almost certain to avoid politics.
Well said. All these politicians are old, weak & unhealthy. Why they have become tyrants. Look @ Biden, cannot even complete a coherent sentence, will keep getting boosters, then blame the unvax if he has a severe bad reaction. Meanwhile. 99% of the global world, fully recovered.
Thank you for such an elegant description of why the "hive mind" is performing in superior fashion. It reminds me of Hayek's observation that spontaneously organized markets transmit information far better, and with far more richness, than central planners. The internet is perhaps a real-time experiment in Hayek's economic theories applied to information.
I life in a city (SF, USA) that is governed top to bottom by the apparatchiks of Official Information which is why one of the world's shining beacons of opportunity is now like living in a third world country. But, I look forward to moving my family out of this bubble, where I will only have to pay lip service to it virtually.
"All of the terrified Angela Merkels of the world act within an environment of outdated, poor-quality information, all the time."
This.
Peter's Principle (promoting people to a position a power that they are officially incompetent to hold) is at work here to an extreme. If you have an absolutely incompetent boss, the immediate underlings must be Yes Men by default. If you are a sane person, you walk away from that post. The current posts of control around the world are supported only by Yes Men and the entire system operates in a hive-mind echo chamber.
The good news is that the echo chamber is becoming increasingly more ridiculous, therefore everyone outside the echo chamber walks away.
This might seem a little off-topic, maybe even mean-spirited (not meant to be so); but we have eliminated courage as a cardinal virtue and sign of great character, and let it be replaced by it's inverse, the vice of safety and the impossible childish goal of security.
Our ancestors would roll in their graves to see how pathetic and weak a collective group of people we appear to have become.
Get rid of the current crop of cowards, and replace them all with real leaders who have demonstrated and developed real courage and character in their lives.
I agree that the Corona measures are stupid and pointless, but I'm not convinced that Merkel, Johnson, Ardern, etc., are afraid of the virus. Maybe they were in the spring of 2020 but no longer. I watched video of Merkel as she arrived at the G7 last month. She got out her limo, put on a mask, walked across the courtyard in front of masked guards, walked into the building, and then took off her mask. Macron was wearing the mask when he exited his limo, but he did the same thing. It was viral theater...like they were giving the rest of us the middle finger. Biden regularly violates 'mask protocol', but that could be the result of his obvious mental impairment.
I remember the initial reaction of the UK and Germany. Given the scenes from Wuhan and Lombardy, it was hard to know what to think. Were they being reckless?
And, then, suddenly, they changed their approach. Why? Why did they throw out a hundred years of pandemic response wisdom?
"All the while, though, Team Lockdown was hard at work behind the scenes, to bend policy in their direction."
Who is Team Lockdown? Why were they pushing lockdown? How did they convince so many governments to go along? What power do they have over them?
I've been down a few rabbit holes in the past year, and I've heard many "crazy" ideas. I've made a policy of not judging...for the most part. I just put them on my "WTH is going on? Shelf" for future consideration.
Something is very wrong is the world. Nothing makes sense. I don't know who. I don't know how. I don't know why. But I'm not convinced that the bizarre times we live in can be explained by greed, incompetence, avarice, CYA, hubris. I joke that we will all wake up one day to learn that "our leaders" have been replaced by space alien lizards because it would make more sense. Perhaps I've watched too many sci-fi shows.
It's hard to suss out why so many governments aren't acting for the benefit of their people. This is a global phenomenon...and that doesn't make sense.
"The prime minister of Austria is so afraid that he has confined all unvaccinated Austrians to their homes. When asked, he declared that this measure would have no end date. The Chief Minister of Australia’s Northern Territory is terrified. New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is terrified."
Do you really believe these people are afraid of the virus??
May I suggest that they are much more afraid of something worse if they fail to deliver on their promises/orders?
You are right. I read from several people in different states, that life is almost back to normal. Herre in Georgia, there are a few people still wearing masks, some probably because they work in government buildings. I read the same continuous panic in Belgium. 88 % vaccinated, and look at the numbers
https://www.hln.be/binnenland/overzicht-maandag-hoogste-aantal-nieuwe-besmettingen-in-een-dag-sinds-begin-pandemie-werkelijke-cijfers-drie-tot-vijf-keer-hoger~ae0f34cf/?utm_source=hln&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=daily&utm_userid=&ctm_ctid=16f74cb186970f994fc6bf8ee2ba2c52?utm_source=hln&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=daily&utm_userid=&ctm_ctid=16f74cb186970f994fc6bf8ee2ba2c52
Why are they so blind ? They must see that even with so many jabbed, so many already healed, with natural, lasting immunity. But no, now they are going to jab the 5 year olds.
Well hopefully, like here, many parents will frown on that. Only a handful pushed their kids. And I think a whole lot saw that 12 year old girl in a wheelchair at Senator Johnsons conference.
Great insight about the fear of our leaders. You could smell it in the air at the very beginning: for the first time, here was an outbreak of a dread disease that could affect THEM! There was a slew of high-profile infections. Tom Hanks. Boris Johnson. A bunch of jet-setting ski bunnies. Unused to personal danger, the laptop class crumpled with terror, including of course the politicians, who are the ne plus ultra of the laptoppies. It was a mass betrayal of self and duty. A disaster.
But that is far from the end of the story. What happened next fits the pattern described in Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.” Whether a disaster is natural (tsunami) or man made (Iraq war), it’s chum in the water for the practitioners of disaster capitalism. They seize, have seized, on the chaos and disenfranchisement of disaster victims to grab what was formerly held in common by them.
In this case, our economies.
Follow the freaking money, guys. It’s not just Big Pharma. They are rather new to the disaster capitalism game. Look at the usual suspects, chiefly politically-connected financial outfits (the Too Big To Fail Gang). They’re the ones pushing for financial reconstruction and CBDCs, i.e. expropriation of the common good above all common goods, which we had hardly been aware of, taking it for granted: our freedom.
This could not have happened in a civilization led by Christians. Or in fact people who believe in anything apart from their own survival.
The ease with which New Zealanders have surrendered fundermental civil liberties in response to Jacinda Ardern’s curated panic porn is dismaying. Like Merkel, Ardern is terrified. She locked down her own city of Auckland for three months while hiding away in the capital, Wellington. When she was finally forced to make an appearance in Auckland it was laughably stage managed insincerity on display, together with gloves, masks, sleeves taped closed, and with a white dress and floral headpiece designed to create a messianic image. Truly the most narcissistic PM in our history.
They are functionaries for the Elites. Like the squares in the squid game. They know what they say makes zero sense, like vaccine mandates and passports, but they do it anyway like good orderly totalitarian foot soldiers for the coming global enslavement.
Bravissimo. Now we're getting somewhere...
The real data: Frightened old cubicle plankton throwing their grandchildren overboard so they can live forever in The Metaverse!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FE5d5tRVEAQKbMd?format=jpg&name=small
Wunderbar written. You forgot Bill Gates in respect of fear. - But, didn‘t Chomsky call for lock away the unvaxxed?
An important category of people often overlooked in the epidemiology are those who had functional cross-immunity to Covid due to prior exposure to other HCovs. This class was estimated at 40-60% for UK and higher for Germany. In fact, the overwhelming number of current cases are those who took the useless 'vaccine' and haven't, up to now, had a chance to develop proper immunity.