“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” ~Noam Chomsky,
Jan 26, 2022·edited Jan 26, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
If you are really interested in honest conversation, I must tell you that I found this post beyond awful. Appalling. I'm afraid that I must leave the "conversation" now.
I notice that those who are most disturbed by anyone claiming "individual rights" are the ones who are most vigorous in asserting the right to control others.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
You are defining "tyranny" very broadly indeed, if you include it to mean "temporary measures that apply to everyone for the good of the group." I don't think that definition is tenable. Taken to its logical conclusion, you go back to living in a totally free state of nature where there are no laws: you're totally free to steal from, murder, and assault others. On the downside, life is "nasty, brutish and short."
Personally, I would take the sort of "tyranny" in which I had to stay at home for three months and then go back to living life as normal. And I'd have not just the delight of living life as normal for the past year and eight months and counting -- but the delight of knowing that with the Chinese-style lockdown, 1400 Americans instead of 860,000 would have died. Wow, 858,000 people would not be dead; 858,000 families would not be mourning, but would have been living regular lives after a three-month effort that benefitted everyone. It's likely that 100,000 health care workers wouldn't have left their jobs, either (although I sometimes wonder how many of that number died.)
Temporarily imposing rules to save 858,000 people is not "tyranny." That's leadership; that's being concerned about your neighbors and realizing a temporary inconvenience is worth it. Was butter and sugar and rubber and nylon and meat rationing in World War 2 worth it? Or was that "tyranny"? I can imagine today's Americans bitterly opposed to rationing too. Tyranny!
I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could be opposed to something that was a whole lot less terrible than what we've lived through, but anyway -- you're welcome here, and I enjoy dialoging with people who hold all sorts of opinions.
You think I am defining tyranny too broadly, and that the alternative is anarchy, leading to the Hobbesian "nasty, brutish, and short" life. That a belief in individual freedom leads to freedom to steal from and murder others. These are false dichotomies. No rational person would ever advocate such a thing.
My belief in freedom includes a belief in non-coercion, which is not a concern for those who think it is their right to control others (for the common good of course, to be determined by the select few who know what's best).
For my part, I have a very hard time understanding anyone who can extol the virtues of China, advocating similar policies be instituted here, with the dubious assumption that they would be only temporary. Also dubious that "temporarily imposing rules" would have saved 858,000 lives, basically all who died from the virus.
"Let's emulate China" is really a bridge too far for me.
And yet they did way better than us. Why are all our people dead and theirs aren't? Why were they free to resume life after 3 months, and we aren't? I think it's sad personally, that even authoritarian China made better choices than us, and now they are living more freely than we are.
And the point is non-coercion is not tenable either. You are coerced to stop at stop signs. You are coerced not to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. You are coerced to pay your taxes to fund schools and fire departments over which you have no control. You're coerced to vaccinate your kids to attend schools. You're coerced all day every day -- and that is, bluntly, the price we all pay NOT to live the Hobbesian nightmare of "nasty, brutish and short." We all agree that is the price we pay, in exchange for the benefits of society. A three-month lockdown to save nearly a million people and resume our normal lives would have been a good price to pay. That's not tyranny.
Since I don't object to laws regulating the flow of traffic, why should I object to allowing the government (which you admit has performed abysmally) to completely control every aspect of life for some indeterminate period???
You’re missing the point. You think you’re perfectly free and you’re not. You’re just accustomed to the government controlling you with its traffic laws and laws against stealing and its tax schemes. If the government asks everyone to stay home for three months for a valid reason (like we’ll save hundreds of thousands of people), then you, me, and every other decent person should do it. You’re controlled by the government all day every day and don’t realize it. So you’re balking at this one thing that is unfamiliar to you, but staying home for three months would have done more good in the world than every cent of tax money you’ve ever paid.
For one, the virus was contained in Wuhan while it was seeded throughout the United States (and world) before it was recognized. (Remember when China halted domestic flights but allowed those in Wuhan to fly internationally?) Sure, they have continued have had continued success, but one could argue that they’ve had an advantage from the beginning, given the origin of the virus—and it doesn’t hurt to be a totalitarian dictatorship that can disappear dissenters at will.
And yet: there was indeed a time when (1) we knew the virus was coming and could have controlled it, and yet (2) we didn’t prepare. For a good couple of months we didn’t prepare. We knew about it around New Years, and it didn’t even start to make a blip here till March (although now we knew isolated cases were here sooner).
Just saying there was two solid months in which we could have developed testing, tracing, quarantine plans, communication strategies, plans for PPE needs, and a coherent federal response—and I can’t emphasize this to you enough:
Hmm, maybe China benefits, in this case, from one party rule. The rest of us weren't so lucky. OMB made one move relatively early- canceling travel from the country of orgin. How did that turn out? We got a full dose of our fearless leaders marching us into Chinatown
Perhaps you covered it in more detail, but it's outlandish to claim Chinese transparency as early as New Years. Admittedly my tolerance for "news" disappeared long ago. But I'm no hermit. I don't recall seeing much of anything in the news until at least mid- January. This from a supposed anti-Chinese media. The same media that blasted "OMB!!!!" 24/7
The CCP bolted apartments shut. They severely limit internet access under normal conditions. (My daughter studied abroad in China. She and my visiting wife returned about 6 months pre-covid). Dissenters disappear. These are inarguable facts
None of this means they didn't "outperform" shutting down covid, assuming anyone can believe whatever it is they publish. (Peter Daszak unavailable for comment). They, by sheer coincidence, also successfully shut down access to databases and information that might enlighten us non-collevtivists as what the f"@# actually happened. Maybe home field advantage means something (though the folks at 1265 Lombardi apparently missed the memo)
It's hard to argue, as you have quite successfully, that science points to lab orgin (despite complete non-transparency from every governmental form, ugly as they are), then use "official" numbers from China to cheerlead their response. Do our agencies frame responses so as to limit debate? Of course. Thus, Substacks are born
What other outcome would you expect from a country that dictates everything down to how many kids you can have? From a country that makes a top ranked tennis player DISAPPEAR until she falls in line? From a country where workers live in camps, away from family, with zero breaks or days off. Frankly, if that's the bargain, I think most would exercise their no-trade clause. Go ahead, enjoy the covid victory lap. Flawed as it is, as pissed off as I get, I'll take my chances. I'm staying put
I’m kind of…bewildered. By the nonsense people are spouting. My family actually did lockdown: we stayed home for several months, I would go to the grocery store alone if necessary or use the pickup option, we didn’t visit extended family (it’s not a bubble if there are like 15 people in it) and when we socialized with friends (walks, kids playing) we would do so outdoors (not masked!) For two years nobody got sick with anything.
Same here -- we stayed home except for grocery stores and work. We didn't socialize. We had a "major" wedding anniversary and a bunch of our friends surprised us with one of those car-parades that people were doing to mark occasions! (Very sweet and memorable.) They dropped off a few bottles of wine and anniversary cards and then they were on their way.
Point is, yes -- we didn't go anywhere or do anything, and we stayed healthy too. On the one hand, I felt like we all needed to "do the right thing" -- no matter what anyone else was doing. But I was also chronically angry that no one in a position of leadership tried to get people to understand how this worked and to cooperate.
I'm less angry now. Possibly because I gave up on leadership emerging. Possibly because the vaccines made the consequences of terrible choices somewhat less dire (except for the people frightened of the vaccines).
Yes and the bubble thing. Great point. Some bubbles were rather large, and a lot of people's bubbles overlapped. Isolation means you are trying to give the virus nowhere to go. If it's "you and the six families you spend most time with" and each of those families has you as one of "six families they spend most time with" everyone is six degrees to Kevin Bacon--and it doesn't really help.
I think public buy-in is key. I'm not surprised that California's COVID death rates don't seem to be much better than Nevada's (or they might be worse, I don't remember of the top of my head).
IIRC, when all the public stuff closed down in California, people went around and caught COVID in private parties. No one in California was going to arrest people for private gatherings (especially since Cops are literally the devil, I guess), so we end up with the all the economic cost and little of the benefit. In Nevada, we said fuck it and let people catch COVID at taco bell.
For US-style lockdowns to really work, we'd need the public to buy in to them and stay inside. And I think we had that.... for like a month. After that, vaccines were the only hope.
Yeah we had some half-assed semi-please-stay-home-really-please lockdowns that were never going to be effective, and so at that point, yeah, you might as well let people go to Taco Bell and the Raiders games and get sick there.
Also, we had no test and trace for months. MONTHS. We had deathly ill people who we assumed were sick with covid but whatever, no tests, no public health infrastructure to contact trace them. If they'd all stayed at home, of course, (1) they wouldn't have gotten sick, most of them and (2) their contacts would be the people in their house.
Our strategy in the US -- well, we didn't have a strategy -- but the measures we took were _weak_.
It's all pretty bad, in every state. We have 78,000 dead in California out of about 40,000,000; and 8,800 dead in Nevada out of about 3 million. So 1 in 513 people dead in California versus 1 in 340 dead in Nevada. Last I looked Vermont had the best results. Also -- quite coincidentally I'm sure -- the highest vaccine rates.
Oh I had to look -- 521 dead in Vermont out of about 620,000. One in 1190 dead there. And they are 79% fully vaxxed. California is 68% fully vaxxed, and Nevada is 58%. Funny how the deaths seem to match the rate at which people are vaxxed, despite a big chunk of the population convinced that they are deadly poison.
Your lack of rational skepticism at a government generated number is the dead giveaway your conclusions are incorrect. I am not confident in the Chinese numbers either, but I also know the Chinese still have a civil service exam and bureaucracy that serves the Party (whereas ours was intent on throwing out its head of government in a fairly obvious coup d’etat in 2020). 240k / 1.45Bn = x / 330m. Solve for x. X = 55k. Hmm. And let’s assume the west’s lack of exposure to corona virii and higher obesity rates means it is twice as deadly here once it arrives, a fair estimate imo.
One other stat of note is that by year end 2020, assisted living facilities had approximately 40% of all 350k Rona related deaths. Of those roughly 150k facility deaths, 40k came from states (NY, CT, MI, PA and NI) who ordered hospitals to send patients w/ the Rona back to their assisted care facilities. In order to have a pandemic, you need some actual deaths, ya know?
We have plenty of deaths. Interesting though how the Chinese are talking about this event as if it was in the past, and we're still very much living it.
The argument is, like counting votes, who and how the counting is done (and then binned) matters more than the actual number. The last rational argument for team #zerocovid is 850K deaths!!?!?!?. I am postulating that since everything else they have said is wrong, there is a strong argument that number is too (in the sense that COVID was the primary cause of death).
Except we have excess death figures — which even the most ardent anti-vaxxers and conspiracists can’t talk their way out of. People are dead. You can count them. They are dead in excess of the predicted (very reliable) numbers by about 850,000. They died of something. They died of this virus.
A friend of mine is studying in Beijing. When the pandemic hit he had been travelling the week before. Within days, he was able to enter his high-speed rail ticket number on a website and got instant confirmation that there were no confirmed positive cases in his train car. When we started to lock down in Germany, he was already sending me videos of the outdoor cafes reopening. And when we were hit by the first serious wave in winter, China reported almost no cases.
Now these facts are known and reported in our media, but always with the condescending sneer that brands all that as symptoms of an iron-fisted autocracy. Or even disputes basic facts because it must all be propaganda. But in my discussions with my friend he told me of something I had never heard of before: Xi Jinping proclaimed a "8 point-regulation" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-point_Regulation ) that basically stipulates that the government is supposed to serve the people. Reportedly, there is an enormous amount of scrutiny on party officials since that. They are seen as true public servants and if they fail, they are swiftly replaced.
I find it really tiring that China is only being reported on through this weird Neo-Cold-War lens.
One thing I cannot overemphasize is how little we know about them. See... I am German, I can read all your US articles, I can understand and read on all your silly culture war minutiae. I know about stupid shit like Central Park Karen or this Joe Rogan/Neil Young thing going down. But what is the internal discussion in China? We rely on rare translations to even understand what the political debate is there. We assume it's a top down autocracy because we simply cannot partake in their political debate. Which I am assured is very vivid. But who knows. This could all be propaganda. I do not read Mandarin.
I love your contributions, Tilman! I hope you and your family are well.
It is so interesting about your friend, and yes, exactly: " these facts are known and reported in our media, but always with the condescending sneer that brands all that as symptoms of an iron-fisted autocracy. Or even disputes basic facts because it must all be propaganda."
This is indeed all one hears. Things must be terrible over there because it's China and "everyone knows" (from Western media reporting) that they are all very oppressed there. "Everyone knows" they lie about their death numbers (never mind that life is normal over there! I guess that's all part of their elaborate communist fakery!) "Everyone knows" their people are oppressed and exploited.
Meanwhile the YouTubers are painting a very different picture. (Several of them have posted very enviable-looking food and shops.)
No political system is trouble free. But there are political systems that responded nimbly to the pandemic, and political systems that did not. The differences are stark. And here we are in the US, with more people dying per capita than most places in the world, still believing we hold the crown as "the most wonderful place to live."
The only places that have more deaths than the US are Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and most of Eastern Europe.
I just read the "Eight-point Regulation" Wikipedia entry and it's very interesting. The first one especially is interesting: to get to know people at the grass-roots level and understand their needs. Then the rest of them do read like cautions against self-aggrandizement, which of course help to promote item #1. There is a lot of permission-seeking from higher-ups, compared to our Western notions, and of course that only works out well if the people higher than you in the hierarchy support what you're trying to do, and if they themselves have good judgment.
I wish I did read Chinese (and knew which news sources were reliable).
The US is such an insulated culture that the public rarely knows of anything happening elsewhere, unless it's used as an example of how wonderful we are here. (We can't even go to the doctor when we're sick!) If there were ever a more deluded people, I can't think of who.
Jan 30, 2022·edited Jan 30, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
Yes, me and my family are well. Thanks for asking. We have all recovered from covid and I really hope we have acquired some kind of long-lasting immunity now. Well you never know.
Sorry that I did not find the time to reply to some of your responses yet. I had some catching up to do after the quarantine.
Check out this article about Chinese politics. It gives some context to the cultural crackdown occuring in China at the moment (I think the videogame story you quoted above is a part of this as well)
Thank you so much! I'll look at it for sure! :) So glad you're recovered and yes, hopefully you're done. My neighbors, unfortunately, are very healthy people but they are triple vaxxed and also are having covid for the _second_ time. :/ Hopefully you won't have it ever again.
I did have a free subscription to TheUpheaval I see, but I hadn't seen this. I want to know more about Wang Huning now! Will check out about the Gnostics too if I can find it. For some reason I saw a YouTube video recently about the Gnostics which was interesting.
Maybe their vaccine is better than our vaccine? Our vaccines do not prevent transmission they do prevent hospitalization and “serious disease and death.” But it seems to me to me preventing transmission would also prevent serious disease death and hospitalization and all the possible long term problems. We got a very very disappointing vaccine and no early treatments. The Chinese developed their own vaccine, but I can’t say I know anything about it. And we are a nation of sick people to begin with. I think that should give us pause as a country. We are older and fatter and sicker to begin with.
I think if anything their vaccine is actually a bit worse, although I admit I have only looked into this on a very surface level.
They are a poorer country than we are with few resources. They are bigger and harder to manage. They too must protect their people against mutated forms of the virus that none of the vaccines were designed to fight. And yet they are living life very close to normally and so are their kids (so much of our dialogue revolves around “but the children!” who are used as crude emotional props to support whatever anyone wants to say).
We are fatter and sicker, but not to a degree that translates to those enormous differences in deaths. I think we really can’t get away from “it’s the policies and the leadership.”
I’m not saying China’s leadership is amazing or trouble-free. I’m saying our leadership is so horrible that it makes China’s look amazing. And that should (1) give us pause and (2) cause us to radically evaluate our pandemic response from top to bottom. But instead of reevaluating, our leaders have given up and consigned more of us to death and to restricted and shortened lives. “We’ll all get it now.” Yes, if they continue to lead this poorly, that’s true. And “we’ll all get it now” is not some sage bit of wisdom we’re all obligated to parrot, though, to let them off the hook for their gross failures to lead and to problem-solve.
They might have let us down but we don’t have to support their propaganda too.
Actually you could consider another option in South Africa. The areas that couldn’t lockdown hard were badly hit in the first wave and then less and less. They developed herd immunity quickly and life returned to normal - well as normal as possible for those suffering job losses from a cruel lockdown. The lap top class too have achieved herd immunity now., just more slowly. Its time you considered what the lockdown and vaccines have done to increase covid cases in the USA. As for us, we’re living almost Normal lives. Our government is trying to extend this pandemic due to the unwanted influence of western vaccine stakeholders and greedy corporations. That’s more worthy of investigation.
The notion that "the spectrum of acceptable opinion" is "strictly limited" here in the US is simply absurd. Have you never heard of Fox News? Their audience is at least five times larger than that of the NYT. Pretty sure Fox (current headline: "Special Report's bombshell report outlines what Fauci was told about COVID origin") is not onboard with this.
Furthermore, here you are, publishing a contrary opinion. No one from the gubmint is stopping you. Try doing that in China. Ask the arrested leaders of the Hong Kong democracy movement about freedom to speak in China.
Furthermore, the NYT labeled this piece as "OPINION" (in all red capital letters no less) and "GUEST ESSAY".
Yes, the essay is dumb, and should be critiqued. But using its existence to claim censorship is pure nonsense.
Did I claim censorship? Did Chomsky? No, you misunderstand him. Read the quotation again.
Let me tell you what is not censored, at all (because here I am writing it), but what is still beyond the pale, something that will _never_ be discussed seriously in public by anyone in "gubmint" or in the pages of the NYT: suggesting that the Chinese ****did a really great job**** controlling this pandemic. And by the way, we will never acknowledge that we sucked. We beyond sucked. Almost a million of us are dead because of completely incompetent leadership, an ineffective government, a rotting public health infrastructure, and a weak-willed, spoiled, entitled population who want what they want when they want it.
Because how could that be true? Aren't we the best country in the world? Doesn't everyone know that? Duh.
The problem is not that anyone is "censored," Mark. That is the very point of what Chomsky is saying. The people at Fox news and the people at the NYT are both discussing what every American understands is "reasonable" to discuss. We think we're getting the full range of discussion there:
Should we let the virus rip and "live with the virus" but also ask people to get vaxxed and wear a mask sometimes? Or should we let the virus rip and "live with the virus" but not ask people to get vaxxed and wear a mask sometimes?
Those are two "lively extremes" of our policy debates. The stuff about Fauci and how "the other side" is the evil cause of all our problems is just a distraction. If we have two factions at each other's throats, it distracts us from realizing that both extremes are talking about the same set of failing policies with very minor differences.
Do you know what's never been discussed in the US in this pandemic? Health care for all. A better public health infrastructure. An organized national response. Better communications. A massive overhaul of indoor ventilation systems. And we certainly, most of all, never ever discuss how much better than us -- Better with a capital B -- almost every other nation on earth did, responding to the virus.
No one CENSORS you (or me). They present an information-environment so dense with "truths" (like "we should let the virus rip" and "everyone will get the virus" and indeed it's the only choice, and it will be "endemic soon, so there's that") that you don't realize that the very thoughts you think are floating, quite willingly, in the narrow channels that the people who set the media narrative present to you as the full possible range of truths.
Have you ever really tried to go looking for information about how they're doing in China, or did you just assume that they're still locked in their homes, gray and joyless, two years in, because we think their government sucks? Their government does suck, by the way, and yet their leaders much better for their people than ours did.
Most of the time we're all so enmeshed in the information environment -- no censorship needed -- that we don't see how limited the conversation is. So much so that you get really incensed that I would write anything different, even though it's just thoughts and words.
"something that will _never_ be discussed seriously in public by anyone in "gubmint" or in the pages of the NYT: suggesting that the Chinese ****did a really great job**** controlling this pandemic."
Apparently you don't actually read the NYT, because they've had a lot of stories about China's success in controlling the pandemic.
I stand corrected. There’s one article— from last February when we thought we, too, were next to beat the virus with our amazing vaccines (we were wrong). I guess we could afford to be a little generous.
Now all we hear about is the inevitability of all of us getting sick with a virus that we don’t even understand yet, but we know lives on in some people’s brains, even after mild covid. How many people’s brains? What will those brains look like in 10, 20 years? Will we have widespread early Alzheimer’s ? Widespread Parkinsonism? Who the hell knows?
People in their 30s and 40s get better from covid, then have a stroke. No big deal right? All these young people with strokes?
The strokes, the microclots, the brain fog, the forgetfulness. None of this gets written down as covid, either.
When that insurance company in Indiana mentioned how many extra young people were dying, the antivaxxers took it to mean there must be a lot of people dying of the vaccine and being covered up. It’s much more sensible to suppose that these are people who got “all better” from covid and then died of other things they never would have had without covid.
And there are the long term heart and lung problems, the long-term inflammatory problems.
But we’re all supposed to settle for a weak (nonexistent) policy of “oh well, we’re all going to get it” when many (arguably more functional) nations aren’t settling for that.
The army of millions article screams propaganda because, now that it’s been decided that we must all settle on the idea of getting covid eventually and “living with it” we need the zero-covid efforts to look bad or stupid. Every time covid tries to come back, the Chinese are all over it. That’s their winning formula. It’s been working for them. Good for them.
"Now all we hear about is the inevitability of all of us getting sick with a virus that we don’t even understand yet"
I continue to dispute this, as there are many voices. Do you think there is some vast conspiracy with the NYT, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, One America, etc etc etc (as well as Facebook and Twitter, where a lot of people get their news) are all in on it? Sorry, but that is just beyond absurd.
I myself am isolating to the max extent possible, wear an N95 indoors with strangers, etc etc. How many in my extended family do this also? Zero. And nothing you or I or anybody else says is going to convince them otherwise. Look at Freddie deBoer's posts on covid. Is he also part of the vast conspirary?
There's no conspiracy. Chomsky is very anti-conspiracy theories (his co-author, Herman, is a bit of a nut tho) in general. It's just a matter of understand the political economy.
Now does manufacturing consent apply in our new media landscape? Where I can find any matter of apeshit at any time? I'm not so sure.
I think so. I think the apeshit is baked right in. “We CANT keep wearing these damn masks! Masks don’t WORK!” Versus “We MUST keep wearing these masks! They save LIVES.” And no one talking about how we need everyone to have health care and we really need better public health infrastructure and every school in America needs to be retrofitted with HEPA.
You get some crazy apeshit about masks will kill you with carbon dioxide but we don’t get to discuss things that cost money and save lives.
We also never talk about “Hm, how many of the 100,000 Americans who have supposedly ‘left’ health care are, you know, dead?” We just expect HCW to be infinitely self-sacrificing through this bungled mess.
What Klaus said. There is no conspiracy. Kids all learn long division in a certain way, so they do long division that way; that’s the only way they know to do it. There was no conspiracy on the part of the teachers.
We all understand that koro is a weird culturally created idea, but don’t understand that cutting is too, because we’re swimming in it.
The idea that “nothing can be done” and “we’re all going to get it” is the current water in which we’re swimming — no conspiracy. Just most people aren’t trying to think outside of our little American fish bowl.
Hong King is completely run by other mechanisms, albeit nominally part of China. A lot has been written on the differences. They have Western style pandemic control in Hong Kong, and Western-style bad results.
I don't believe the 'covid death rate' for either the US OR China. The first killed people with drugs and ventilators and recorded gunshot victims as dying from covid if they had a positive test. The second...well I'd trust their numbers about as far as I could throw them because they likely lied about the virus in the first place showing us videos of people dropping dead (if they did, it was from the murderous smog there, not covid) and scaring the rest of the world into severe over-reaction.
Besides, there's a pretty good arguement for getting rid of the Olympics, it's called the IOC and it is corrupt as hell and up to it's eyeballs in the business of our rulers.
I usually like your posts, but this one misses the mark, sorry.
I’m afraid if you believe that stuff about gunshot wounds etc and the numbers being off, then you “believe what you believe” regardless of facts, and nothing I say will change that.
850,000 “extra” people died. There is no disputing that. Many “extra people” died all over Europe too, where they have health care for all and no one is even _hypothetically_ incentivized to lie about what people are they for and what they’ve died of.
There’s no evidence that doctors are lying about this. Do you believe all our hospitalists (doctors working in hospitals) are that corrupt? Many are salaried, for one thing. Those guys get nothing. And even for the subset who might hypothetically be paid more or less depending on how they code, they get paid the MOST for discharging people as quickly as possible which is why we (pretty brutally) treat things like mastectomies as outpatient procedures. Get ‘em out.
So for your hypothetical gunshot victim: sew him up , give him a shot of antibiotics and shove him out the door: that’s how they get paid. No incentive to give him a nasal swab and call him a “covid patient”— they also have too many patients to deal with to mess with that.
Now, if your GSW comes in and also has a dry cough, then yes, test him because then if he’s covid positive you have to take precautions —precautions which cost time and money and which slow you down— yes the insurance company will give you some extra money for that, but really you do it because you don’t want to get sick, not because you’re sitting in a gold mine.
That’s just silly.
Look, perverse financial incentives for health care in true US are a real thing; but “inflated covid numbers” are NOT the problem.
Nearly a million people are dead. I personally know a bunch of them, and when I hear this nonsense about the numbers being faked, it really is frustrating because there is SO much that is wrong with our handling of covid, but THAT is not one of the things.
You could say covid patients are UNDER counted because after a certain period of time, after they’re in the hospital bed on the vent for 30, 60, 90 days, on the vent, they are not counted as a “covid patient.”
But really: this stuff about widespread gross undercounting is simply false, and anyone who works in a hospital knows better.
If you are really interested in honest conversation, I must tell you that I found this post beyond awful. Appalling. I'm afraid that I must leave the "conversation" now.
I notice that those who are most disturbed by anyone claiming "individual rights" are the ones who are most vigorous in asserting the right to control others.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Be well.
I hope you'll reconsider.
You are defining "tyranny" very broadly indeed, if you include it to mean "temporary measures that apply to everyone for the good of the group." I don't think that definition is tenable. Taken to its logical conclusion, you go back to living in a totally free state of nature where there are no laws: you're totally free to steal from, murder, and assault others. On the downside, life is "nasty, brutish and short."
Personally, I would take the sort of "tyranny" in which I had to stay at home for three months and then go back to living life as normal. And I'd have not just the delight of living life as normal for the past year and eight months and counting -- but the delight of knowing that with the Chinese-style lockdown, 1400 Americans instead of 860,000 would have died. Wow, 858,000 people would not be dead; 858,000 families would not be mourning, but would have been living regular lives after a three-month effort that benefitted everyone. It's likely that 100,000 health care workers wouldn't have left their jobs, either (although I sometimes wonder how many of that number died.)
Temporarily imposing rules to save 858,000 people is not "tyranny." That's leadership; that's being concerned about your neighbors and realizing a temporary inconvenience is worth it. Was butter and sugar and rubber and nylon and meat rationing in World War 2 worth it? Or was that "tyranny"? I can imagine today's Americans bitterly opposed to rationing too. Tyranny!
I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could be opposed to something that was a whole lot less terrible than what we've lived through, but anyway -- you're welcome here, and I enjoy dialoging with people who hold all sorts of opinions.
You think I am defining tyranny too broadly, and that the alternative is anarchy, leading to the Hobbesian "nasty, brutish, and short" life. That a belief in individual freedom leads to freedom to steal from and murder others. These are false dichotomies. No rational person would ever advocate such a thing.
My belief in freedom includes a belief in non-coercion, which is not a concern for those who think it is their right to control others (for the common good of course, to be determined by the select few who know what's best).
For my part, I have a very hard time understanding anyone who can extol the virtues of China, advocating similar policies be instituted here, with the dubious assumption that they would be only temporary. Also dubious that "temporarily imposing rules" would have saved 858,000 lives, basically all who died from the virus.
"Let's emulate China" is really a bridge too far for me.
And yet they did way better than us. Why are all our people dead and theirs aren't? Why were they free to resume life after 3 months, and we aren't? I think it's sad personally, that even authoritarian China made better choices than us, and now they are living more freely than we are.
And the point is non-coercion is not tenable either. You are coerced to stop at stop signs. You are coerced not to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. You are coerced to pay your taxes to fund schools and fire departments over which you have no control. You're coerced to vaccinate your kids to attend schools. You're coerced all day every day -- and that is, bluntly, the price we all pay NOT to live the Hobbesian nightmare of "nasty, brutish and short." We all agree that is the price we pay, in exchange for the benefits of society. A three-month lockdown to save nearly a million people and resume our normal lives would have been a good price to pay. That's not tyranny.
Since I don't object to laws regulating the flow of traffic, why should I object to allowing the government (which you admit has performed abysmally) to completely control every aspect of life for some indeterminate period???
You’re missing the point. You think you’re perfectly free and you’re not. You’re just accustomed to the government controlling you with its traffic laws and laws against stealing and its tax schemes. If the government asks everyone to stay home for three months for a valid reason (like we’ll save hundreds of thousands of people), then you, me, and every other decent person should do it. You’re controlled by the government all day every day and don’t realize it. So you’re balking at this one thing that is unfamiliar to you, but staying home for three months would have done more good in the world than every cent of tax money you’ve ever paid.
For one, the virus was contained in Wuhan while it was seeded throughout the United States (and world) before it was recognized. (Remember when China halted domestic flights but allowed those in Wuhan to fly internationally?) Sure, they have continued have had continued success, but one could argue that they’ve had an advantage from the beginning, given the origin of the virus—and it doesn’t hurt to be a totalitarian dictatorship that can disappear dissenters at will.
And yet: there was indeed a time when (1) we knew the virus was coming and could have controlled it, and yet (2) we didn’t prepare. For a good couple of months we didn’t prepare. We knew about it around New Years, and it didn’t even start to make a blip here till March (although now we knew isolated cases were here sooner).
Just saying there was two solid months in which we could have developed testing, tracing, quarantine plans, communication strategies, plans for PPE needs, and a coherent federal response—and I can’t emphasize this to you enough:
We did none of it.
Hmm, maybe China benefits, in this case, from one party rule. The rest of us weren't so lucky. OMB made one move relatively early- canceling travel from the country of orgin. How did that turn out? We got a full dose of our fearless leaders marching us into Chinatown
Perhaps you covered it in more detail, but it's outlandish to claim Chinese transparency as early as New Years. Admittedly my tolerance for "news" disappeared long ago. But I'm no hermit. I don't recall seeing much of anything in the news until at least mid- January. This from a supposed anti-Chinese media. The same media that blasted "OMB!!!!" 24/7
The CCP bolted apartments shut. They severely limit internet access under normal conditions. (My daughter studied abroad in China. She and my visiting wife returned about 6 months pre-covid). Dissenters disappear. These are inarguable facts
None of this means they didn't "outperform" shutting down covid, assuming anyone can believe whatever it is they publish. (Peter Daszak unavailable for comment). They, by sheer coincidence, also successfully shut down access to databases and information that might enlighten us non-collevtivists as what the f"@# actually happened. Maybe home field advantage means something (though the folks at 1265 Lombardi apparently missed the memo)
It's hard to argue, as you have quite successfully, that science points to lab orgin (despite complete non-transparency from every governmental form, ugly as they are), then use "official" numbers from China to cheerlead their response. Do our agencies frame responses so as to limit debate? Of course. Thus, Substacks are born
What other outcome would you expect from a country that dictates everything down to how many kids you can have? From a country that makes a top ranked tennis player DISAPPEAR until she falls in line? From a country where workers live in camps, away from family, with zero breaks or days off. Frankly, if that's the bargain, I think most would exercise their no-trade clause. Go ahead, enjoy the covid victory lap. Flawed as it is, as pissed off as I get, I'll take my chances. I'm staying put
**94%_with_the_virus, median_age_81
Suspicion confirmed: you’re a Chinese agent.
I’m kind of…bewildered. By the nonsense people are spouting. My family actually did lockdown: we stayed home for several months, I would go to the grocery store alone if necessary or use the pickup option, we didn’t visit extended family (it’s not a bubble if there are like 15 people in it) and when we socialized with friends (walks, kids playing) we would do so outdoors (not masked!) For two years nobody got sick with anything.
Same here -- we stayed home except for grocery stores and work. We didn't socialize. We had a "major" wedding anniversary and a bunch of our friends surprised us with one of those car-parades that people were doing to mark occasions! (Very sweet and memorable.) They dropped off a few bottles of wine and anniversary cards and then they were on their way.
Point is, yes -- we didn't go anywhere or do anything, and we stayed healthy too. On the one hand, I felt like we all needed to "do the right thing" -- no matter what anyone else was doing. But I was also chronically angry that no one in a position of leadership tried to get people to understand how this worked and to cooperate.
I'm less angry now. Possibly because I gave up on leadership emerging. Possibly because the vaccines made the consequences of terrible choices somewhat less dire (except for the people frightened of the vaccines).
Yes and the bubble thing. Great point. Some bubbles were rather large, and a lot of people's bubbles overlapped. Isolation means you are trying to give the virus nowhere to go. If it's "you and the six families you spend most time with" and each of those families has you as one of "six families they spend most time with" everyone is six degrees to Kevin Bacon--and it doesn't really help.
I think public buy-in is key. I'm not surprised that California's COVID death rates don't seem to be much better than Nevada's (or they might be worse, I don't remember of the top of my head).
IIRC, when all the public stuff closed down in California, people went around and caught COVID in private parties. No one in California was going to arrest people for private gatherings (especially since Cops are literally the devil, I guess), so we end up with the all the economic cost and little of the benefit. In Nevada, we said fuck it and let people catch COVID at taco bell.
For US-style lockdowns to really work, we'd need the public to buy in to them and stay inside. And I think we had that.... for like a month. After that, vaccines were the only hope.
Yeah we had some half-assed semi-please-stay-home-really-please lockdowns that were never going to be effective, and so at that point, yeah, you might as well let people go to Taco Bell and the Raiders games and get sick there.
Also, we had no test and trace for months. MONTHS. We had deathly ill people who we assumed were sick with covid but whatever, no tests, no public health infrastructure to contact trace them. If they'd all stayed at home, of course, (1) they wouldn't have gotten sick, most of them and (2) their contacts would be the people in their house.
Our strategy in the US -- well, we didn't have a strategy -- but the measures we took were _weak_.
It's all pretty bad, in every state. We have 78,000 dead in California out of about 40,000,000; and 8,800 dead in Nevada out of about 3 million. So 1 in 513 people dead in California versus 1 in 340 dead in Nevada. Last I looked Vermont had the best results. Also -- quite coincidentally I'm sure -- the highest vaccine rates.
Oh I had to look -- 521 dead in Vermont out of about 620,000. One in 1190 dead there. And they are 79% fully vaxxed. California is 68% fully vaxxed, and Nevada is 58%. Funny how the deaths seem to match the rate at which people are vaxxed, despite a big chunk of the population convinced that they are deadly poison.
Your lack of rational skepticism at a government generated number is the dead giveaway your conclusions are incorrect. I am not confident in the Chinese numbers either, but I also know the Chinese still have a civil service exam and bureaucracy that serves the Party (whereas ours was intent on throwing out its head of government in a fairly obvious coup d’etat in 2020). 240k / 1.45Bn = x / 330m. Solve for x. X = 55k. Hmm. And let’s assume the west’s lack of exposure to corona virii and higher obesity rates means it is twice as deadly here once it arrives, a fair estimate imo.
https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/the-great-american-hospicide/
One other stat of note is that by year end 2020, assisted living facilities had approximately 40% of all 350k Rona related deaths. Of those roughly 150k facility deaths, 40k came from states (NY, CT, MI, PA and NI) who ordered hospitals to send patients w/ the Rona back to their assisted care facilities. In order to have a pandemic, you need some actual deaths, ya know?
We have plenty of deaths. Interesting though how the Chinese are talking about this event as if it was in the past, and we're still very much living it.
The argument is, like counting votes, who and how the counting is done (and then binned) matters more than the actual number. The last rational argument for team #zerocovid is 850K deaths!!?!?!?. I am postulating that since everything else they have said is wrong, there is a strong argument that number is too (in the sense that COVID was the primary cause of death).
Except we have excess death figures — which even the most ardent anti-vaxxers and conspiracists can’t talk their way out of. People are dead. You can count them. They are dead in excess of the predicted (very reliable) numbers by about 850,000. They died of something. They died of this virus.
A friend of mine is studying in Beijing. When the pandemic hit he had been travelling the week before. Within days, he was able to enter his high-speed rail ticket number on a website and got instant confirmation that there were no confirmed positive cases in his train car. When we started to lock down in Germany, he was already sending me videos of the outdoor cafes reopening. And when we were hit by the first serious wave in winter, China reported almost no cases.
Now these facts are known and reported in our media, but always with the condescending sneer that brands all that as symptoms of an iron-fisted autocracy. Or even disputes basic facts because it must all be propaganda. But in my discussions with my friend he told me of something I had never heard of before: Xi Jinping proclaimed a "8 point-regulation" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-point_Regulation ) that basically stipulates that the government is supposed to serve the people. Reportedly, there is an enormous amount of scrutiny on party officials since that. They are seen as true public servants and if they fail, they are swiftly replaced.
I find it really tiring that China is only being reported on through this weird Neo-Cold-War lens.
One thing I cannot overemphasize is how little we know about them. See... I am German, I can read all your US articles, I can understand and read on all your silly culture war minutiae. I know about stupid shit like Central Park Karen or this Joe Rogan/Neil Young thing going down. But what is the internal discussion in China? We rely on rare translations to even understand what the political debate is there. We assume it's a top down autocracy because we simply cannot partake in their political debate. Which I am assured is very vivid. But who knows. This could all be propaganda. I do not read Mandarin.
I love your contributions, Tilman! I hope you and your family are well.
It is so interesting about your friend, and yes, exactly: " these facts are known and reported in our media, but always with the condescending sneer that brands all that as symptoms of an iron-fisted autocracy. Or even disputes basic facts because it must all be propaganda."
This is indeed all one hears. Things must be terrible over there because it's China and "everyone knows" (from Western media reporting) that they are all very oppressed there. "Everyone knows" they lie about their death numbers (never mind that life is normal over there! I guess that's all part of their elaborate communist fakery!) "Everyone knows" their people are oppressed and exploited.
Meanwhile the YouTubers are painting a very different picture. (Several of them have posted very enviable-looking food and shops.)
No political system is trouble free. But there are political systems that responded nimbly to the pandemic, and political systems that did not. The differences are stark. And here we are in the US, with more people dying per capita than most places in the world, still believing we hold the crown as "the most wonderful place to live."
The only places that have more deaths than the US are Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and most of Eastern Europe.
I just read the "Eight-point Regulation" Wikipedia entry and it's very interesting. The first one especially is interesting: to get to know people at the grass-roots level and understand their needs. Then the rest of them do read like cautions against self-aggrandizement, which of course help to promote item #1. There is a lot of permission-seeking from higher-ups, compared to our Western notions, and of course that only works out well if the people higher than you in the hierarchy support what you're trying to do, and if they themselves have good judgment.
You're so right that we really don't know what's happening there. I only hear the occasional odd news item, which is intended to show how authoritarian they are (such as the story about limiting video game time for youth --https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/08/30/china-now-limiting-video-game-play-to-just-three-hours-a-week-for-minors/?sh=1a5d93a0312a).
I wish I did read Chinese (and knew which news sources were reliable).
The US is such an insulated culture that the public rarely knows of anything happening elsewhere, unless it's used as an example of how wonderful we are here. (We can't even go to the doctor when we're sick!) If there were ever a more deluded people, I can't think of who.
Yes, me and my family are well. Thanks for asking. We have all recovered from covid and I really hope we have acquired some kind of long-lasting immunity now. Well you never know.
Sorry that I did not find the time to reply to some of your responses yet. I had some catching up to do after the quarantine.
Check out this article about Chinese politics. It gives some context to the cultural crackdown occuring in China at the moment (I think the videogame story you quoted above is a part of this as well)
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-triumph-and-terror-of-wang-huning
(I think you should check out this whole theupheaval substack. Read the article on Gnostics! It's great)
Thank you so much! I'll look at it for sure! :) So glad you're recovered and yes, hopefully you're done. My neighbors, unfortunately, are very healthy people but they are triple vaxxed and also are having covid for the _second_ time. :/ Hopefully you won't have it ever again.
I did have a free subscription to TheUpheaval I see, but I hadn't seen this. I want to know more about Wang Huning now! Will check out about the Gnostics too if I can find it. For some reason I saw a YouTube video recently about the Gnostics which was interesting.
in 1998 Noam Chomsky nailed it, in 2021 he definitely didn't!
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/
Exactly why I made that point. ;)
Just checking! ;)
Maybe their vaccine is better than our vaccine? Our vaccines do not prevent transmission they do prevent hospitalization and “serious disease and death.” But it seems to me to me preventing transmission would also prevent serious disease death and hospitalization and all the possible long term problems. We got a very very disappointing vaccine and no early treatments. The Chinese developed their own vaccine, but I can’t say I know anything about it. And we are a nation of sick people to begin with. I think that should give us pause as a country. We are older and fatter and sicker to begin with.
I think if anything their vaccine is actually a bit worse, although I admit I have only looked into this on a very surface level.
They are a poorer country than we are with few resources. They are bigger and harder to manage. They too must protect their people against mutated forms of the virus that none of the vaccines were designed to fight. And yet they are living life very close to normally and so are their kids (so much of our dialogue revolves around “but the children!” who are used as crude emotional props to support whatever anyone wants to say).
We are fatter and sicker, but not to a degree that translates to those enormous differences in deaths. I think we really can’t get away from “it’s the policies and the leadership.”
I’m not saying China’s leadership is amazing or trouble-free. I’m saying our leadership is so horrible that it makes China’s look amazing. And that should (1) give us pause and (2) cause us to radically evaluate our pandemic response from top to bottom. But instead of reevaluating, our leaders have given up and consigned more of us to death and to restricted and shortened lives. “We’ll all get it now.” Yes, if they continue to lead this poorly, that’s true. And “we’ll all get it now” is not some sage bit of wisdom we’re all obligated to parrot, though, to let them off the hook for their gross failures to lead and to problem-solve.
They might have let us down but we don’t have to support their propaganda too.
Actually you could consider another option in South Africa. The areas that couldn’t lockdown hard were badly hit in the first wave and then less and less. They developed herd immunity quickly and life returned to normal - well as normal as possible for those suffering job losses from a cruel lockdown. The lap top class too have achieved herd immunity now., just more slowly. Its time you considered what the lockdown and vaccines have done to increase covid cases in the USA. As for us, we’re living almost Normal lives. Our government is trying to extend this pandemic due to the unwanted influence of western vaccine stakeholders and greedy corporations. That’s more worthy of investigation.
The notion that "the spectrum of acceptable opinion" is "strictly limited" here in the US is simply absurd. Have you never heard of Fox News? Their audience is at least five times larger than that of the NYT. Pretty sure Fox (current headline: "Special Report's bombshell report outlines what Fauci was told about COVID origin") is not onboard with this.
Furthermore, here you are, publishing a contrary opinion. No one from the gubmint is stopping you. Try doing that in China. Ask the arrested leaders of the Hong Kong democracy movement about freedom to speak in China.
Furthermore, the NYT labeled this piece as "OPINION" (in all red capital letters no less) and "GUEST ESSAY".
Yes, the essay is dumb, and should be critiqued. But using its existence to claim censorship is pure nonsense.
Did I claim censorship? Did Chomsky? No, you misunderstand him. Read the quotation again.
Let me tell you what is not censored, at all (because here I am writing it), but what is still beyond the pale, something that will _never_ be discussed seriously in public by anyone in "gubmint" or in the pages of the NYT: suggesting that the Chinese ****did a really great job**** controlling this pandemic. And by the way, we will never acknowledge that we sucked. We beyond sucked. Almost a million of us are dead because of completely incompetent leadership, an ineffective government, a rotting public health infrastructure, and a weak-willed, spoiled, entitled population who want what they want when they want it.
Because how could that be true? Aren't we the best country in the world? Doesn't everyone know that? Duh.
The problem is not that anyone is "censored," Mark. That is the very point of what Chomsky is saying. The people at Fox news and the people at the NYT are both discussing what every American understands is "reasonable" to discuss. We think we're getting the full range of discussion there:
Should we let the virus rip and "live with the virus" but also ask people to get vaxxed and wear a mask sometimes? Or should we let the virus rip and "live with the virus" but not ask people to get vaxxed and wear a mask sometimes?
Those are two "lively extremes" of our policy debates. The stuff about Fauci and how "the other side" is the evil cause of all our problems is just a distraction. If we have two factions at each other's throats, it distracts us from realizing that both extremes are talking about the same set of failing policies with very minor differences.
Do you know what's never been discussed in the US in this pandemic? Health care for all. A better public health infrastructure. An organized national response. Better communications. A massive overhaul of indoor ventilation systems. And we certainly, most of all, never ever discuss how much better than us -- Better with a capital B -- almost every other nation on earth did, responding to the virus.
No one CENSORS you (or me). They present an information-environment so dense with "truths" (like "we should let the virus rip" and "everyone will get the virus" and indeed it's the only choice, and it will be "endemic soon, so there's that") that you don't realize that the very thoughts you think are floating, quite willingly, in the narrow channels that the people who set the media narrative present to you as the full possible range of truths.
Have you ever really tried to go looking for information about how they're doing in China, or did you just assume that they're still locked in their homes, gray and joyless, two years in, because we think their government sucks? Their government does suck, by the way, and yet their leaders much better for their people than ours did.
Most of the time we're all so enmeshed in the information environment -- no censorship needed -- that we don't see how limited the conversation is. So much so that you get really incensed that I would write anything different, even though it's just thoughts and words.
"something that will _never_ be discussed seriously in public by anyone in "gubmint" or in the pages of the NYT: suggesting that the Chinese ****did a really great job**** controlling this pandemic."
Apparently you don't actually read the NYT, because they've had a lot of stories about China's success in controlling the pandemic.
Here's a big one from one year ago: "Power, Patriotism and 1.4 Billion People: How China Beat the Virus and Roared Back" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/world/asia/china-covid-economy.html
Here's one from two weeks ago that also talks about some of the negative consequences: "The Army of Millions Who Enforce China’s Zero-Covid Policy, at All Costs" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/business/china-zero-covid-policy-xian.html
I stand corrected. There’s one article— from last February when we thought we, too, were next to beat the virus with our amazing vaccines (we were wrong). I guess we could afford to be a little generous.
Now all we hear about is the inevitability of all of us getting sick with a virus that we don’t even understand yet, but we know lives on in some people’s brains, even after mild covid. How many people’s brains? What will those brains look like in 10, 20 years? Will we have widespread early Alzheimer’s ? Widespread Parkinsonism? Who the hell knows?
People in their 30s and 40s get better from covid, then have a stroke. No big deal right? All these young people with strokes?
The strokes, the microclots, the brain fog, the forgetfulness. None of this gets written down as covid, either.
When that insurance company in Indiana mentioned how many extra young people were dying, the antivaxxers took it to mean there must be a lot of people dying of the vaccine and being covered up. It’s much more sensible to suppose that these are people who got “all better” from covid and then died of other things they never would have had without covid.
And there are the long term heart and lung problems, the long-term inflammatory problems.
But we’re all supposed to settle for a weak (nonexistent) policy of “oh well, we’re all going to get it” when many (arguably more functional) nations aren’t settling for that.
The army of millions article screams propaganda because, now that it’s been decided that we must all settle on the idea of getting covid eventually and “living with it” we need the zero-covid efforts to look bad or stupid. Every time covid tries to come back, the Chinese are all over it. That’s their winning formula. It’s been working for them. Good for them.
"Now all we hear about is the inevitability of all of us getting sick with a virus that we don’t even understand yet"
I continue to dispute this, as there are many voices. Do you think there is some vast conspiracy with the NYT, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, One America, etc etc etc (as well as Facebook and Twitter, where a lot of people get their news) are all in on it? Sorry, but that is just beyond absurd.
I myself am isolating to the max extent possible, wear an N95 indoors with strangers, etc etc. How many in my extended family do this also? Zero. And nothing you or I or anybody else says is going to convince them otherwise. Look at Freddie deBoer's posts on covid. Is he also part of the vast conspirary?
Chomsky is referring to the propoganda model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent#Propaganda_model_of_communication
There's no conspiracy. Chomsky is very anti-conspiracy theories (his co-author, Herman, is a bit of a nut tho) in general. It's just a matter of understand the political economy.
Now does manufacturing consent apply in our new media landscape? Where I can find any matter of apeshit at any time? I'm not so sure.
I think so. I think the apeshit is baked right in. “We CANT keep wearing these damn masks! Masks don’t WORK!” Versus “We MUST keep wearing these masks! They save LIVES.” And no one talking about how we need everyone to have health care and we really need better public health infrastructure and every school in America needs to be retrofitted with HEPA.
You get some crazy apeshit about masks will kill you with carbon dioxide but we don’t get to discuss things that cost money and save lives.
We also never talk about “Hm, how many of the 100,000 Americans who have supposedly ‘left’ health care are, you know, dead?” We just expect HCW to be infinitely self-sacrificing through this bungled mess.
What Klaus said. There is no conspiracy. Kids all learn long division in a certain way, so they do long division that way; that’s the only way they know to do it. There was no conspiracy on the part of the teachers.
We all understand that koro is a weird culturally created idea, but don’t understand that cutting is too, because we’re swimming in it.
The idea that “nothing can be done” and “we’re all going to get it” is the current water in which we’re swimming — no conspiracy. Just most people aren’t trying to think outside of our little American fish bowl.
I hear Shanghai is lovely this time of year…
I hear they still don’t have a million dead people in China.
Hong Kong is presenting a problem for this thesis...
Hong King is completely run by other mechanisms, albeit nominally part of China. A lot has been written on the differences. They have Western style pandemic control in Hong Kong, and Western-style bad results.
One other difference between China and most other countries you didn't mention. They never subjected their population to the mRNA vaccines.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/no-mrna-jabs-in-china-day-426/comments
I don't believe the 'covid death rate' for either the US OR China. The first killed people with drugs and ventilators and recorded gunshot victims as dying from covid if they had a positive test. The second...well I'd trust their numbers about as far as I could throw them because they likely lied about the virus in the first place showing us videos of people dropping dead (if they did, it was from the murderous smog there, not covid) and scaring the rest of the world into severe over-reaction.
Besides, there's a pretty good arguement for getting rid of the Olympics, it's called the IOC and it is corrupt as hell and up to it's eyeballs in the business of our rulers.
I usually like your posts, but this one misses the mark, sorry.
I’m afraid if you believe that stuff about gunshot wounds etc and the numbers being off, then you “believe what you believe” regardless of facts, and nothing I say will change that.
850,000 “extra” people died. There is no disputing that. Many “extra people” died all over Europe too, where they have health care for all and no one is even _hypothetically_ incentivized to lie about what people are they for and what they’ve died of.
There’s no evidence that doctors are lying about this. Do you believe all our hospitalists (doctors working in hospitals) are that corrupt? Many are salaried, for one thing. Those guys get nothing. And even for the subset who might hypothetically be paid more or less depending on how they code, they get paid the MOST for discharging people as quickly as possible which is why we (pretty brutally) treat things like mastectomies as outpatient procedures. Get ‘em out.
So for your hypothetical gunshot victim: sew him up , give him a shot of antibiotics and shove him out the door: that’s how they get paid. No incentive to give him a nasal swab and call him a “covid patient”— they also have too many patients to deal with to mess with that.
Now, if your GSW comes in and also has a dry cough, then yes, test him because then if he’s covid positive you have to take precautions —precautions which cost time and money and which slow you down— yes the insurance company will give you some extra money for that, but really you do it because you don’t want to get sick, not because you’re sitting in a gold mine.
That’s just silly.
Look, perverse financial incentives for health care in true US are a real thing; but “inflated covid numbers” are NOT the problem.
Nearly a million people are dead. I personally know a bunch of them, and when I hear this nonsense about the numbers being faked, it really is frustrating because there is SO much that is wrong with our handling of covid, but THAT is not one of the things.
You could say covid patients are UNDER counted because after a certain period of time, after they’re in the hospital bed on the vent for 30, 60, 90 days, on the vent, they are not counted as a “covid patient.”
But really: this stuff about widespread gross undercounting is simply false, and anyone who works in a hospital knows better.