We’ve had
The War on Drugs
The War on Terror
The War on Sniffles1
We’re obviously gearing up for the War on Food Energy Movement Freedom Climate. We’re in the middle of a War on Biology. We’ve witnessed a War on Paying for Stuff Racism during the riots of 2020. There’s a War on Whiteness going on and a War on Stuff your government doesn’t want you to know Disinformation.
I think we’re in set of battles that might collectively be described as a War on Reality - or maybe, more accurately, a War on Sanity.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all that as a result of the Climate Minor Variation Crisis governments will ban aerobic exercise. Someone jogging will typically exhale about 3 litres of carbon dioxide every minute. The desire to look good and be healthy, prime examples of white heteronormative fat-phobic cis-patriarchal something or other, is literally causing small villages in Africa to spontaneously combust - which is, of course, why we need to begin paying billions in climate reparations.
The level of Global Buffoonery we’re currently experiencing is unparalleled in human history.
OK, in the past, the great sky goat UnctiousUdders might have imparted indigenous knowledge that told one tribe to go and massacre another, but at least they had the excuse that the world was a magical place in their eyes. They didn’t know any better2.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Did he just say “better”?
Yes. I think I did.
I mean it. Fuck off with your “cultural relativity” shite.
We do know better. There is a reason why the demonstrably better tools of science and reason and logic and rationality find themselves under such an onslaught today. Because these things are dangerous. Dangerous to the ‘powers that be’ at any rate.
Point out some anti-narrative fact about covid and you were labelled as some fringe weirdo, a conspiracy loon, an anti-science nut-job, far right, and even a domestic terrorist or a threat to democracy. You were on the dangerous people list.
If you want to impose a degree of control on the ‘plebs’, the last thing you want is for them to be able to think properly. Why do you think the Khmer Rouge executed over a million professionals and intellectuals?
These people could argue, effectively, against the idiocy that is Communism.
Governments seem to have taken upon themselves the role of parents, these days. And not particularly loving ones at that. Us plebs, the great unwashed, are an obstreperous and rambunctious bunch that needs controlling and putting in our place.
‘Children’ should be seen, and made to work and do what they’re told, but never heard.
That’s what our governments think of us (source : the recent revelation of the WhatsApp messages exchanged by UK government ministers and civil servants).
It isn’t the people who are currently dangerous - no, that epithet is better applied to our very own governments.
The other day I was trying to think of something our governments (most of them) did right during The War on Sniffles.
They did stuff like this
Here’s a modern country, fully on board with stuff like science and reason and logic and rationality - and I’ve worked with some really smart folk from South Korea (they produce some brilliant scientists and have some world class universities).
But they still did this?
Did the sky goat UnctiousUdders make some appearance and tell the leaders what to do?
Here’s a Korean Shaman strutting his stuff (great pageantry and very colourful and a culturally important tradition)
The Korean government could have spent a fraction of the money employing some of these - and it would have been every bit as effective as spraying the streets.
But we, in the UK, were just as deranged when it came to our version of The War on Sniffles.
Lockdowns
Asymptomatic transmission
Fomite transmission
Masks
One-Way systems in shops
Business Closures
Closing ‘non-essential’ aisles in supermarkets
Social Distancing
Bubbles and the Rule of Six
Keeping people indoors
Not allowing people to sit, outside, anywhere
Test and Trace
Mass testing of asymptomatic people
Running PCR at a ridiculously high cycle threshold
Categorising any death within 28 days of a positive PCR as a covid death
School closures
Vaccinating the young3 (under 50's - as a very conservative cut-off point)
The safety of the vaccines
The effectiveness of the vaccines
Vaccine passports
Sacking unvaccinated healthcare workers
Plastic screens everywhere
They didn’t get anything right
The list above can be added to. Think about it for a while.
They didn’t get anything right
These are the unconscionable buffoons who are going to tell you what is and isn’t “misinformation”?
Seriously?
And we ‘trust’ these egregious fuckwits to be able to “fix” the climate (which doesn’t need ‘fixing’ anyway)?
I know that many have argued that everything that happened during The War on Sniffles was a confluence of clusterfucks rather than some grand conspiracy, but I still have difficulty believing that they could get SO many things SO wrong.
And not just in one country - but everywhere. At the same time.
In many ways I want to believe that they actually ARE this irredeemably moronic - the alternative is much darker.
They’re coming for your freedoms, they’re coming for your kids, they’re coming for your money, they’re coming for every right we’ve taken for granted - but above all of this, they’re coming for your sanity.
It’s a bit of a judgement call here because Covid was pretty serious, and fatal, for some. I don’t want to disregard the seriousness for this small percentage of people and their families. On the other hand we really need to stop thinking like we were living in some sort of Sci-Fi movie, or an episode of 24. As offensive as it might be to call Covid the “sniffles” to some, I think we need to de-scarify it - big time. None of the seriousness and tragedy justified the response we were forced to endure - a response that was only widely ‘accepted’ because people were afraid.
Let’s face it, before the advent of the Age of Enlightenment and the growing understanding of the world through the tools of science, reason, logic and rationality, no-one knew any better.
There is, still, the outside chance that the data supports the notion of vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable. I’m not, personally, convinced. I would like to say vaccinating anyone here - but there’s a smidgeon of doubt left. It might have just about come in on the right side of a cost/benefit analysis for the really vulnerable.
The War on Sanity
Excellent polemic Dr Rigger.
Regarding the vaccines, five of my (now ex) colleagues died prematurely in the second half of 2021, and another just died a few weeks ago. My niece, a 24 year old athletic trainer and one of the fittest people I know now has myocarditis. She struggles to get up from a chair, and can't stand for any length of time. My Mum developed blood clots in her lungs out of nowhere last year, and having almost got over that she suddenly developed a hyper aggressive ovarian cancer a couple of months ago. One of my uncles also now has blood clots in his lungs FFS. Two of my friends have suddenly developed prostate cancer in the last few months. Prostate cancer is supposed to be extremely slow growiing. One just doesn't develop it "suddenly".
Well, one didn't, before the covid vaccines.
I have never, for one second, regretted not being jabbed with that shit.
"Covid was pretty serious, and fatal, for some"
Shouldn't that read "what they were told to call covid".
And yes if you were at least 82 years old and/or had at least 2.6 co-morbidities that were killing you anyway it was fatal, even more so when the medical profession got hold of you.
In mid-2020 even the ONS was reporting on their weekly death statistics that most covid deaths would have happened anyway, they were just brought forward a bit.
Here's an example, it's in Section 2:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending17july2020