So this kind of framing may seem like an acknowledgement of risk, but it's actually propaganda designed to mollify & placate people. This is a known propaganda technique. It's called appeasement propaganda. The idea is to give people something familiar so they don't "over react" & do something crazy like trying to avoid infections. 🙃🫠 There are key differences between influenza and covid even if some of the mechanisms of cardiovascular risk are the same. The risk profile is

Soooooo I'm pretty convinced that China is going to take a real run at removing the USD as the reserve currency of the world & I think it has a real chance. These last BRICS+ conferences have explained the reasoning behind the massive uptake in gold. They are going to try to replace the USD with a gold backed currency with distributed holdings to remove the threat that the US created when it just told everyone to pound salt in the 70's. I'm also pretty convinced they have a really good chance at success. It's looking like this year or early next

Climate change deniers, SARS2 minimizers, Anti-vaxers, tobacco companies, etc all use the same techniques. They are AMAZINGLY effective. It was laid out pretty clearly in Merchants of Doubt. Here is the step by step. 1) Identify a target with high social or practical stakes

Choose a topic where public opinion matters (e.g., climate policy, vaccines, pandemic measures). The bigger the perceived consequences, the more leverage the tactic has.

Pretty good thread, that captures most of what is going on. It misses out one thing, inoculum level. There are actual modeling formulas to help describe this, but they aren't very public friendly. I've made various stabs at coming up with a public friendly formula.

https://twitter.com/1goodtern/status/1962783319243792655

I think the best I've done so far looks like this:

Infection Risk = (Exposure × Inoculum Level × Variant Escape) ÷ Immune Protection

Where:
Exposure = how often and how intensely someone encounters the virus (crowds, ventilation, masks, etc.).

My parents & in-laws have all passed away, but it wasn't long ago. I spent a solid year trying to prevent my mother from prematurely dying from COVID. That year allowed her to spend another Christmas with her grandkids. It allowed her to share some birthdays. It allowed her to form memories in my kids. Memories that will have to last them a lifetime now. That year was really important.

The fact that I have to sign petitions & fight for basic disease control in environments that she would have been forced to visit. Environments where she should

Hmmm so public health has spent at least 20 years deliberately lying about the mode of transmission of many reparatory diseases. This lie is/was so prevalent that the vast majority of people never questioned it, even when there were actual inquiries held that proved it during previous pandemics. That very same public health when faced with another pandemic chose to once again lie about the mode of transmission & most media doctors & scientists propagated that lie because they were too feckless to even bother reading the previous inquiry.

Not sure why studies like this don't freak other people out as much as they do me ....

nature.com/articles/s4159… Maybe it's because I've witnessed the ravages of dementia first hand. Seen people morph with my own eyes.

If you can rationalize that millions dying & millions more being disabled is meaningless in the larger picture of whatever reality you have constructed, then truly nothing matters, so stop pretending it does. I bet people don't realize that the 1918 pandemic for a LOOOOONG time was called the forgotten pandemic for EXACTLY the same reasons. There's a reason books were written about it almost 100 years after it was done asking why no one talked about it & nothing was learned.

I know we live in the time of nothing matters, but I'm still a little gob struck that we have excess mortality charts that look like this & in the before times we would have moved heaven & earth to figure out & stop what is going on, but now because we know what is going on, we are just in full on eugenics mode where we pretend everything is normal. On top of that even the demographics that are deeply impacted have been mollified into some zombie state.

Anyway just an ape flailing into the ether.

There are quite a few studies that show that sars-cov-2 could not sustain an outbreak in outdoor environments. Not that transmission can't happen, but that it doesn't happen at a level capable of sustaining outbreaks. Some good ones out of China from pretty early in the pandemic. Communities that still live primarily outdoors have consistent lower levels of transmission (like some pacific island communities). I'm always amazed that we seem incapable of learning from clear ground breaking science. By this point, we should be cleaning indoor air

So I've been reading more about Surkov's techniques & it's amazing how much it has been normalized in the west. I don't think this is 100% his idea's but he perfected many of them. I'm going to try to make a small thread about it for those that are interested:

https://twitter.com/DcrInYYC/status/1927758396331077854

Not all of these ideas are totally his, some predate him, but they have been worked on and refined. Some of the scholars I've read talking about this call it “political technology” & there are a few books about it. The main thing that blows me a way is how much of this is so

I've been reading about Vladislav Surkov. A name I bet almost no one in the west has heard of, but you should. He is the mastermind behind Putin's ability to retain power. Not only that, his techniques are now a fundamental part of the western world. The thing that really strikes me about his techniques is the absolute genius behind them. I'm going to say that society is actually out classed by them. Unequipped to deal with it. Truly evil genius that uses the very corruption in our societies to sustain corruption.

So I'm going to tell a little story. It's disturbing, so if you don't want to hear it stop reading now. One of the people that I know that died from COVID refused to get vaccinated, because he was certain that he knew the situation better than the people

https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/1924965913037598943

that were telling him to get vaccinated (including myself). There's a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which was that he employed a doctor in his business who was a vaccine skeptic. About a year after he died, I had the opportunity to speak with someone who

I've been reading about Identity-Protective Cognition. If you want an explanation for why everything is so weird now, look no further. Want to know why it's all the rage to spread disease or only partake in certain ways of resisting it? Want to know why people that should be taking action on climate change are instead doubling down on fossil fuel promotion? Want to know why there has been a rise in people like Rogan & others? Look no further. This paragraph sums it up pretty well.

As we see pictures of some of the most villainous & traitorous people in our society gather in Mar a Lago, I want to post a thing I've been working on to help me understand a portion of what is happening in the world today. Step-by-Step Explanation of Wealth and Power Retention with Impact on Population and Democracy

1)Tax Cuts for the Wealthy and Corporations
-What Happens: Policies reduce taxes for the rich and corporations, leaving the government underfunded.

So here's what I keep in my grab & go bag. First I have a separate bag for each person & one for my dog. So assume what I'm listing here is for one person. 1) Water
- I keep about 2L of water in each bag (3 would be better)
- I keep at least 1L of that water in a stainless steel bottle that can be used to heat water.
- I keep 1 metal cup in that can also be used to heat water.
- I keep 2 instant electrolyte drinks mixes

I'm going to make a short, but incomplete thread that I've been mentally compiling for a while now that may help other people to classify who you are dealing with in today's post truth world. 1) architects/grifters

These are the individuals or entities that intentionally create false information.

Who are they: Governments, intelligence agencies, corporations, or powerful organizations with an agenda (e.g., sowing confusion, destabilizing societies, gaining power).

I like to make models to help me understand things. I've been doing this with COVID since early in the pandemic. I made a simulation that would run X number of people through simulated infections with a 5% per infection risk of developing LC & then within that a 40% mild, 40% medium & 20% severe rating of LC. I've broken it down into 5 person groups because I'm guessing that's how many people most would know IRL well enough to share their health issues with them. It helps me to understand why this is such a hidden prevalent problem.

It's so hard to have conversations with people that have never thought about anything in their lives. One of the common responses to suggesting that we begin the transition off fossil fuels in earnest is "okay stop using it!!". They say this because they know that it's very difficult, if not impossible to totally remove yourself from consuming fossil fuels currently. The problem is they don't actually put any thought into why that is. It's certainly not a technical problem. We have a wealth of technical solutions to draw upon. So what is going on

Holy cow. This whole study is worth reading, average age of 18 & obviously super fit ....

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1849496209485930884

Also another confirmation of roughly 50% asymptomatic cases.

"A total of 307 participants had an asymptomatic infection,"

If your entire field is about the study & prevention of disease & then when the largest one in your life comes along you choose to embrace the disease ... I really don't know what to say. When you use all the things your have learned to create nonsensical arguments to promote the spread of disease ... Have you just been training to be a propagandist for disease?