Was weird how some would-be leftists went from several years of saying 'austerity kills' in relation to economic policy, to furiously insinuating that anyone who tried to discuss the effect of lockdowns on the economy was callously disregarding human life. Now, all of a sudden, there was no link whatsoever between the two. I say that as someone who is against austerity and generally can see see that lockdowns were probably necessary.
In general, a lot of people on the supposed left really lost their shit during Covid. I think it exposed a deep need in some people to identify as sensible and just, like as if this would get them through a difficult situation, regardless of the actual implications or realities of their behaviour.
It would be nice if part of Covid being over could involve a return to vaccine normalcy for the standard childhood vaccines. Vax your kids, you fucking morons.
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates were such a massive error. Morons like Scocca never once gave a thought to how fucked the lower classes were vs the shut-in laptop class they belonged to.
I will always be proud that, as HR director, I was able to block vaccine mandates for my entire company of nearly 600 people. I simply refused to implement them and leadership wasn't willing to fire me for it. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Thoughtful piece. I hope for health and flourishing for all who continue to suffer.
The PMC seemingly is unable to admit error.
- Lockdowns didn't work
- Masks didn't work
- We knew early on that children were not at risk, but millions of kids were kept out of school anyway. Predictably, the results across every metric of learning and mental health are a mess.
- We were told the vax would stop us from contracting the virus and would prevent us from spreading the virus. The goalposts on these promises moved at a record clip.
- "Stay home, save lives" unless it's taking to the streets with thousands of other people in a pandemic to protest a PMC-worthy cause.
I don't think it's necessary for healthy young people to get the vaccine, so I didn't. I don't care nor judge anyone who decided to get the vaccine. Their choice.
I knew masks didn't work, but I wore one anyway in public because I'm not a dick. I don't mind at all if people choose to still wear a mask. I won't say anything.
In my opinion, the memoryholing is happening with all the lies that were told by government and public health officials - not to mention the media.
Hopefully lessons were learned, but I'm not optimistic.
My attitude toward the pandemic relaxed when I started tuning in to Vinay Prasad at UCSF. He was meticulous with the evidence and, as a Bernie supporter, gave permission to lefties like me to second-guess the party line.
I think part of the liberal overreaction was tied in with the racial reckoning. When evidence (that I never fact-checked but assume to be true) emerged that black Americans were dying of Covid at higher rates, it became incumbent on white liberals to take every conceivable precaution. To do otherwise was to exhibit anti-black racism.
"In hindsight we perhaps should not have pushed vaccine mandates on the young and healthy, given what we now know about their risk profile, but public officials were making difficult decisions in the middle of a disaster."
We knew the risk profile at the time, though. Polling at the time showed everyone and especially self-identified liberals overestimated the risk of hospitalization or death for young and healthy by a huge magnitude, yet we were making consequential decisions about people's ability to earn a living and participate in society based on that deeply flawed understanding and acting like the danger of misinformation was solely on the other side.
COVID is really globalist fear manufacturing to leverage for authoritarian power like is climate crisis. We have become pansies that think we are entitled to live forever without any risks or impacts to the "natural" world... ignoring completely that humans are in fact part of the natural world and death is inevitable.
This "thinking" causes us to WAY over-react and create more misery and pain than the actual thing we are afraid of. Mass hysteria pushed through the Matrix too many of us to twitch the same.
My neighbor still wears a mask everywhere. She told me she is afraid to catch it and die. I told her that everyone dies and why does she drive a car because the risk of dying in a car is higher than dying from COVID. She does not like talking to me now. People clutch their irrational fears like their life depends on it.
I had both shots and a booster because I had a vacation scheduled to liberal Italy. But I still got COVID twice and it was a cold.
And 2014 - 2022 there was a global cooling trend.
And extreme weather has always happened. Just read the historical Farmers Almanac.
This airborne virus can severely damage the human immune system. I am someone who hasn't dined indoors since the outbreak and who wears an N95 mask in public indoor spaces. I have dear family members who are at risk for severe illness or mortality if they were to become infected. Thankfully, none of us has. The reason for that is that we all care about each other so that we test before we gather (48 and 24 hours before) and mask with N95s when we know we're going to be in crowded spaces with lots of people and poor ventilation. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2021, and I don't want to find out what could happen to my body if I become infected with COVID-19.
This whole conversation seems wrong-headed to me. The public health establishment used to operate more or less in the service of public health. Measles was eradicated in the US, but it is now making a comeback. Where's the guidance from our CDC? Smallpox was exterminated thanks in part to cooperation among countries across the world. Polio killed far fewer people than COVID-19 has, but it has been thoroughly defeated thanks to public health efforts.
It now seems as if demanding, let alone politely asking for, a robust, sensible, fact-based public health response to an ongoing global pandemic that is inclusive and all-encompassing has become some kind of identity politics game piece that people use to yell at each other.
Covid was successfully politicized so we are never going to manage the disease unless a miracle happens. Even now, 4 years later, no one pays serious attention to improved ventilation which would remove much of the threat of an airborne virus. Most of us appear to understand that principle when someone is smoking a cigarette but for some politicized reason, we are unable to apply that reasoning to viral spread. And then there is Long Covid which I am most concerned about. With every re-infection, the chances of developing Long Covid increase so if the virologists are right, we can look forward to becoming a nation of zombies. Meanwhile, the CDC has disgraced itself for generations to come, our ruling class pays no attention to improved ventilation unless the venue is Davos, and Covid remains the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
Myocarditis is not thst rare in young men and the risk goes up with subsequent shots as any additional benefit rapidly goes down in this already really low risk of COVID death group. Evidence for boosters was much weaker than you think and it was nutty that prior COVID infection wasn't taken into account. Masking kids was always nutty and there was no evidence community masking helped and an understandable reason why it didn't. Vinay Prasad is hardly a conspiracy theorist. He lays out in this talk to Heterodox Academy what had good evidence (1 or 2 shots of MRNA vaccine) and what didn't (nearly everything else). He talks about the actual risk of myocarditis and how the "rare" as far as young men goes isnt quite right starting at 21:45. Risk/Benefit for young men wasnt there after 1 dose. https://youtu.be/S9MVwhFlViM?si=1gwHlpa6Wg3LgYJ2
Masking does nothing. The harm to certain cohorts from vaccines is probably equivalent or greater than the risk of Covid itself. This stuff should be obvious by now but because the pandemic was politicized the left cannot admit that they were (disastrously) wrong because it would be interpreted as points scored for the right.
Love that FBD is writing about this. I wish that the rage felt by many of us wasn't distilled to essentially right wing vaccine birtherism. For many people, the Lockdowns continue to be a source of immense and sustained anger because of the smug refusal of those who advocated for Lockdowns to acknowledge the obvious and now proven iatrogenic or second order consequences like learning loss.
Also keep in mind that excess mortality rates have not declined in many industrialized countries even after the end of the pandemic. Very curious indeed.
Thanks; I thought you were on target. I'm old and will avoid attending large meetings for the rest of my life. I have immunocompromised friends whose lives have become more complicated. Stuff happens, and most of it isn't the fault of the government.
Some elements of government policy WERE misguided, but retrospective critique of the management of an extraordinary catastrophe is kinda cheap. Despite some errors in judgement, NIH bureaucrats and 100,000+ scientists worldwide were responsible for remarkable new vaccines (with the assistance of a hundred years of basic biomedical research). Ironically, Trump also deserves plaudits for Operation Warp Speed.
Sorry to hear that some things are not going so well. Godspeed brother.
Was weird how some would-be leftists went from several years of saying 'austerity kills' in relation to economic policy, to furiously insinuating that anyone who tried to discuss the effect of lockdowns on the economy was callously disregarding human life. Now, all of a sudden, there was no link whatsoever between the two. I say that as someone who is against austerity and generally can see see that lockdowns were probably necessary.
In general, a lot of people on the supposed left really lost their shit during Covid. I think it exposed a deep need in some people to identify as sensible and just, like as if this would get them through a difficult situation, regardless of the actual implications or realities of their behaviour.
It would be nice if part of Covid being over could involve a return to vaccine normalcy for the standard childhood vaccines. Vax your kids, you fucking morons.
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates were such a massive error. Morons like Scocca never once gave a thought to how fucked the lower classes were vs the shut-in laptop class they belonged to.
I will always be proud that, as HR director, I was able to block vaccine mandates for my entire company of nearly 600 people. I simply refused to implement them and leadership wasn't willing to fire me for it. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Thoughtful piece. I hope for health and flourishing for all who continue to suffer.
The PMC seemingly is unable to admit error.
- Lockdowns didn't work
- Masks didn't work
- We knew early on that children were not at risk, but millions of kids were kept out of school anyway. Predictably, the results across every metric of learning and mental health are a mess.
- We were told the vax would stop us from contracting the virus and would prevent us from spreading the virus. The goalposts on these promises moved at a record clip.
- "Stay home, save lives" unless it's taking to the streets with thousands of other people in a pandemic to protest a PMC-worthy cause.
I don't think it's necessary for healthy young people to get the vaccine, so I didn't. I don't care nor judge anyone who decided to get the vaccine. Their choice.
I knew masks didn't work, but I wore one anyway in public because I'm not a dick. I don't mind at all if people choose to still wear a mask. I won't say anything.
In my opinion, the memoryholing is happening with all the lies that were told by government and public health officials - not to mention the media.
Hopefully lessons were learned, but I'm not optimistic.
My attitude toward the pandemic relaxed when I started tuning in to Vinay Prasad at UCSF. He was meticulous with the evidence and, as a Bernie supporter, gave permission to lefties like me to second-guess the party line.
I think part of the liberal overreaction was tied in with the racial reckoning. When evidence (that I never fact-checked but assume to be true) emerged that black Americans were dying of Covid at higher rates, it became incumbent on white liberals to take every conceivable precaution. To do otherwise was to exhibit anti-black racism.
"In hindsight we perhaps should not have pushed vaccine mandates on the young and healthy, given what we now know about their risk profile, but public officials were making difficult decisions in the middle of a disaster."
We knew the risk profile at the time, though. Polling at the time showed everyone and especially self-identified liberals overestimated the risk of hospitalization or death for young and healthy by a huge magnitude, yet we were making consequential decisions about people's ability to earn a living and participate in society based on that deeply flawed understanding and acting like the danger of misinformation was solely on the other side.
COVID is really globalist fear manufacturing to leverage for authoritarian power like is climate crisis. We have become pansies that think we are entitled to live forever without any risks or impacts to the "natural" world... ignoring completely that humans are in fact part of the natural world and death is inevitable.
This "thinking" causes us to WAY over-react and create more misery and pain than the actual thing we are afraid of. Mass hysteria pushed through the Matrix too many of us to twitch the same.
My neighbor still wears a mask everywhere. She told me she is afraid to catch it and die. I told her that everyone dies and why does she drive a car because the risk of dying in a car is higher than dying from COVID. She does not like talking to me now. People clutch their irrational fears like their life depends on it.
I had both shots and a booster because I had a vacation scheduled to liberal Italy. But I still got COVID twice and it was a cold.
And 2014 - 2022 there was a global cooling trend.
And extreme weather has always happened. Just read the historical Farmers Almanac.
Just stop with the fear porn people!
This airborne virus can severely damage the human immune system. I am someone who hasn't dined indoors since the outbreak and who wears an N95 mask in public indoor spaces. I have dear family members who are at risk for severe illness or mortality if they were to become infected. Thankfully, none of us has. The reason for that is that we all care about each other so that we test before we gather (48 and 24 hours before) and mask with N95s when we know we're going to be in crowded spaces with lots of people and poor ventilation. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2021, and I don't want to find out what could happen to my body if I become infected with COVID-19.
This whole conversation seems wrong-headed to me. The public health establishment used to operate more or less in the service of public health. Measles was eradicated in the US, but it is now making a comeback. Where's the guidance from our CDC? Smallpox was exterminated thanks in part to cooperation among countries across the world. Polio killed far fewer people than COVID-19 has, but it has been thoroughly defeated thanks to public health efforts.
It now seems as if demanding, let alone politely asking for, a robust, sensible, fact-based public health response to an ongoing global pandemic that is inclusive and all-encompassing has become some kind of identity politics game piece that people use to yell at each other.
Covid was successfully politicized so we are never going to manage the disease unless a miracle happens. Even now, 4 years later, no one pays serious attention to improved ventilation which would remove much of the threat of an airborne virus. Most of us appear to understand that principle when someone is smoking a cigarette but for some politicized reason, we are unable to apply that reasoning to viral spread. And then there is Long Covid which I am most concerned about. With every re-infection, the chances of developing Long Covid increase so if the virologists are right, we can look forward to becoming a nation of zombies. Meanwhile, the CDC has disgraced itself for generations to come, our ruling class pays no attention to improved ventilation unless the venue is Davos, and Covid remains the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
Myocarditis is not thst rare in young men and the risk goes up with subsequent shots as any additional benefit rapidly goes down in this already really low risk of COVID death group. Evidence for boosters was much weaker than you think and it was nutty that prior COVID infection wasn't taken into account. Masking kids was always nutty and there was no evidence community masking helped and an understandable reason why it didn't. Vinay Prasad is hardly a conspiracy theorist. He lays out in this talk to Heterodox Academy what had good evidence (1 or 2 shots of MRNA vaccine) and what didn't (nearly everything else). He talks about the actual risk of myocarditis and how the "rare" as far as young men goes isnt quite right starting at 21:45. Risk/Benefit for young men wasnt there after 1 dose. https://youtu.be/S9MVwhFlViM?si=1gwHlpa6Wg3LgYJ2
Masking does nothing. The harm to certain cohorts from vaccines is probably equivalent or greater than the risk of Covid itself. This stuff should be obvious by now but because the pandemic was politicized the left cannot admit that they were (disastrously) wrong because it would be interpreted as points scored for the right.
Love that FBD is writing about this. I wish that the rage felt by many of us wasn't distilled to essentially right wing vaccine birtherism. For many people, the Lockdowns continue to be a source of immense and sustained anger because of the smug refusal of those who advocated for Lockdowns to acknowledge the obvious and now proven iatrogenic or second order consequences like learning loss.
Also keep in mind that excess mortality rates have not declined in many industrialized countries even after the end of the pandemic. Very curious indeed.
Thanks; I thought you were on target. I'm old and will avoid attending large meetings for the rest of my life. I have immunocompromised friends whose lives have become more complicated. Stuff happens, and most of it isn't the fault of the government.
Some elements of government policy WERE misguided, but retrospective critique of the management of an extraordinary catastrophe is kinda cheap. Despite some errors in judgement, NIH bureaucrats and 100,000+ scientists worldwide were responsible for remarkable new vaccines (with the assistance of a hundred years of basic biomedical research). Ironically, Trump also deserves plaudits for Operation Warp Speed.