essaysbysean.blogspot.com
Michael Lewis not just an excellent researcher, not just an excellent explainer, he is also an excellent writer. You can see all three qualities just by picking up any of his books, summoning your focus, and reading at random a couple paragraphs without skimming.
You may examine his latest, because it is out in hardcover, in glaring yellow, maybe in multiple piles, at your local bookstore. I won’t review it here, but it’s about individuals trying to make a difference against the system, aka the establishment, aka the big government siloed departments. The Premonition is subtitled A Pandemic Story.
In his forward Lewis still thought covid was a mutation, not a laboratory construct. This week’s scandal (footnote) is that western scientists, including a household name, secretly pretty much knew it was from a lab, based on the virus unnatural structure, although I don’t see anything on the BBC News site—so maybe the e-mail quotes of scientists are wrong.
Lewis reminds me of something I had realized during the Trump years, but had allowed myself to forget: Covid, in the eyes of the world, has been the “Suez moment” (1956) when the US demonstrably lost credibility for being a world leader. As the world now knows, having Biden in power will not, cannot, change the irrefutable fact that the U.S. governmental organs are broken, the civil servants nonfunctional. The Centre for Disease Control cannot control even a paper bag from blowing in the wind. (For example, the CDC would pull Americans in from Wuhan, but wouldn’t test for covid before releasing them to go, asymptomatics and all, without recording their addresses, off to their far flung states)
So yes, I learned from Lewis is that it was needless for Americans to have so many more covid cases, per capita, than other nations including their neighbour to the north. Not because of President Trump, (Lewis called him a comorbidity) but because of “the establishment.”
I was sorry to realize things about some countrymen in my comments on the international blog of writer John Scalzi, for An Omicron Update. (Link)
For the sake of my sanity, I don’t face reality of what people are like. Like how for WWII society was surprised at how many folks were not mentally or physically fit to serve.
During the heyday of blogs I was astonished to learn how many adult still had a reading comprehension level like those tests in elementary school. It is bizarre to look at the comments after a Youtube interview or debate, and see how some people didn’t listen well at all.
Now I’ve had my nose rubbed in the fact that folks can live in a society based on science, graduate high school, and believe the most ludicrous social media.
I guess people had been like that during all these past decades and had never changed.
You know in WWI how so many thought the rains were from the cannons? Back when we had the space shuttle the lady next door, during tornado season, pounded the table to say, “Those dam astronauts!”
I want to be proud to be a member of society, and therefore as soon as Covid is over I’m probably going back into denial. Either that or be nosy about how science and library research is managed in local schools.
UNQUOTE
All sorts of readers were contributing their observations to Scalzi’s post about surviving the pandemic amongst covidiots. I wrote:
“The Puzzle of America’s record Covid hospital rate” is the headline on a European news website, as of seven hours ago. As you say, needless infections.
Of course the anti-vaxxers won’t see the article, as they believe in “American Exceptionalism,” as when they didn’t care to research how other rich nations have handled “socialized medicine.”
As for freedom, a freedom lover said, “The right to swing your arms stops where my nose begins.”
Also, I am reminded of how Survival “Preppers” were happy to sacrifice their holiday to the Pacific in order to fund supplies or a cabin. Similarly, a freedom lover should be willing to happily sacrifice going to bars, restaurants and sporting events in order to keep poison from his arm. Should but won’t.
UNQUOTE
Scalzi also wrote a post, How Badly Should We Feel When the Willfully Unvacinated Die? (Link) I contributed there too:
Call me an amused historian, but I see two people have mentioned “eugenics” from the word eu meaning good, and gen.
Back in the day, if you were one of those scandalous “free thinkers” such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a member of the fabian society (for slow socialism) or Eleanor Roosevelt, who got “Eleanor’s troops” (African-Americans) permission to go into combat, then you too might believe in eugenics as they did.
Given that I am myself the sort who is asked to join left-wing movements, this can be a humbling ironic fact.
UNQUOTE
As for people having a vested financial interest in persuading others to believe what social media says against vaccines, remember the first anti-vaccine story?
It was back in 1998 that a doctor reported that vaccines cause autism. Even though his study sample was only—count ’em—12 children, and even though the issue has since then been exhaustively researched and debunked… (nobody anywhere in the world could replicate the study) the social media readers are still “true believers” about the autism-vaccine link.
As for conflict of interest, the guy did not reveal, as he was ethically bound to do, that, as the Washington Post reported someone hearing him say, “(he) predicted he could make more than 43 million dollars from selling test kits.”
He has been forbidden from practising medicine in Britain.
I confess I have not told my friends about this false study, nor told them not to believe in social media. Was I too polite? Too scared? When covid came along last year that was my chickens coming home to roost.
I think it’s never too late to start spreading the word that social media is not as accountable as traditional media.
UNQUOTE
My own blog comments were, of course, just a few among many good Americans on Scalzi’s blog trying to grapple with covid—call it citizen leadership at the individual level. What I would conclude, as shown by my writing here, is that the infections were needless not just because of covidiots, but because America can no longer lead itself, let alone lead the world.
…
Sean Crawford
Isolating in a time of pandemic
Except tonight my bubble is having a nice birthday supper for me
Pizza or Chinese food
January, 2022
Footnote: The Calgary Herald and National Post story for January 13, 2022, page NP7, is from a The Daily Telegraph story by Sarah Knapton. The first paragraph: Leading British and U.S. scientists thought it was likely that COVID-19 accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show. The last paragraph: James Comer, the Republican congressman who secured the unredacted emails, said it showed that experts like Fauci had taken the Wuhan lab leak theory “more seriously” than they had let on.
Meanwhile, from a report to Members of Parliament: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1536643/wuhan-lab-leak-origin-theory-mps-china-who-covid-coronavirus-bat
One thought on “Needless Stupid Pandemic”