Why the sudden shift in mask guidance that surely marks the beginning of the end of COVID mania? It certainly isn't b/c the science changed. Its because society is completely broken and the status quo is unsustainable.
4. Crushing small businesses at the expense of large businesses
5. Which exacerbates racial inequality:
6. And wealth inequality:
7. Rents are in free fall:
8. As business closures have wreaked havoc:
9. And the deficit to GDP is now the 2nd highest ever, going back over 225 years, further screwing over kids as if they hadn't been enough already over the last year:
10. Oh and the prior vax messaging was a disaster (get the vax so that your life will STILL suck!), mask mandates didn't do anything anyway, and neither did lockdowns. So this was all for nothing.
Let's take a look at a few economic charts as it relates to current policy response:
1. This is a chart of the Chicago Fed National Activity Index, designed to gauge overall US economic activity.
Imagine thinking "the virus closed the economy, not the lockdowns"
2. Nursing Employment: perhaps not what you expected?
3. Share of wealth held by the top 1% (left axis) vs bottom 50% (right axis). Typically upper income wealth drops in proximity to recession; it has exploded upward in unprecedented fashion during "the pandemic" while bottom 50% received no benefit.
This short 1948 essay excerpt from C.S. Lewis is pretty incredible. I encourage you to read it and substitute "Covid" for "atomic"/"bomb" (and the like) each place it appears.
Thread below too for those whose eyes are as bad as mine:
1/8
"In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic
age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age...
2/8
when raiders from Scandinavia might land & cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already
living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let...
3/8
It remains unclear to me whether there is a path forward in the big Blue cities out of Covid myopia. Most of these cities have extremely high vaccination rates--certainly anyone that wants one has received it--yet only 20-30% of workers are back in offices.
1/8
New York City has not even recovered half of the ~1.1m jobs lost due to the lockdowns.
2/8
Having spent time in these cities myself over last yr or having friends/family residing there, you could effectively use the below (job losses) as a ranking for Covid monomania (though I think SF worse than NY. DC is Covid crazy but of course has thrived during the madness)
Even in the Zerocovid police states of Australia& NZ, pediatricians talk more sense than those in USA regarding child Delta:
"Its important to note that many [child hospitalizations] were for social reasons..so hospitalisation statistics do not provide a good marker of severity"
We "would like to reassure children and their parents that while the COVID delta variant has shown that
children are able to be infected and transmit COVID-19, COVID-19 is and generally remains a
mild infection in children."
"children are affected by...restrictions causing impacts on education and mental health.”
"Although one death has been recorded, the child in question was a 15-year-old boy who
was being treated for pneumococcal meningitis"
When COVID hit, I began hearing rumblings of a book called Unrestricted Warfare, written by 2 former Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonels & published by PLA
In short, it describes what war will look like in a post-nuclear, mutually assured destruction, age
1/17
I read the book cover to cover and I thought you might be interested in some quotes/passages I highlighted, which I encourage you to read w current events in mind.
“the media has become an immediate and integral part of warfare”
2/17
“China can pump propaganda into the American media while restricting American media’s access to the Chinese media landscape”
A non-military attack could “cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis”