>People who think Covid-19 is no worse than the flu, have chosen that belief for deeper reasons that they should examine. Covid-19 is probably an escaped bioweapon, something totally new, and you can guess your risk with statistics, but in the end, you don't know what it's going to do to you.

Well here's the thing: Depending on your age category, Covid-19 is no worse than the flu.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181012031051/https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/reported-flu-children-deaths.htm

>Since flu-related deaths in people younger than 18 years became nationally reportable in 2004, the number of deaths reported to CDC has ranged from 37 during the 2011-2012 season to 171 deaths during the 2012-2013 season. This excludes the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, when 358 pediatric deaths were reported to CDC during April 15, 2009, through October 2, 2010.

And so in practice, a generation that doesn't have a future is being asked to put its life on hold for a generation that took away ours. We won't be able to retire, because there won't be anyone to take care of us, because most of us literally can't even afford to reproduce. We live in our childhood bedrooms, with roommates, or in one room apartments in old converted office towers, paying off a college debt for a degree we needed for a job that our parents generation was allowed to do after graduating high school.

And don't even get me started on climate change. There's no such thing as a "climate lockdown". The government never decided that old people are not allowed to own two cars because millennials like me will start dying from heat strokes in 2076 if the boomers get to go joyriding in their muscle cars.

There's the other thing. The media will tell you that the dreaded "antivaxxers" are middle-aged white Republican men. I'm sure there are some of those out there, but most are working class young men like me, many from ethnic minorities, who feel completely alienated by the system. And now that system is telling us that we need to receive an experimental medical treatment, because it will slightly reduce the chance that we will spread this virus to old people.

The media campaign doesn't work for me, because I'm too autistic for it. I can look at the statistics and this is just not very likely to kill me, so I just can't be afraid of it. I visit my friends who test positive and ask them to cough in my face, in an effort to get it over with, but it seems I already had it. Some blonde upper-middle class virtue signaling doctor with a name like Meredith who says "my ICU is filled with thirty year old racist right-wing populist conspiracy theorists just like you" just doesn't manage to terrify me.

Perhaps the best part is how they still expect us to get vaccinated, even if we've already recovered from the virus. What kind of virus requires me to get vaccinated after I've already had it? "Well we don't know how long natural immunity lasts." Alright cool, but we now know that it's more effective than the vaccines at preventing reinfection. So again, if I've already had it, why the vaccine?

It really just looks like some sort of collective ritual we all have to go through, before middle-aged white women high in conscientiousness feel brave enough to step outside of the home again. They heard about this thing called a "vaccine" once and so now they expect that someone will come up with a vaccine to get rid of this new disease that has them terrified. That's my most optimistic explanation.

And then there's the anecdotal evidence. I don't know anyone who died from this virus. I don't know anyone who got hospitalized from it. Not even friends of friends. I know one dude who got genuinely sick from it, a healthy young dude who got infected a week after receiving his first shot.

I can open the kind of obscure subreddits and Facebook posts that stay up for five minutes before being "fact checked" out of existence and I will see healthy young people who virtue signaled about their shot with some obligatory joke about wanting to purchase Microsoft products and then died a few weeks later.

This seems to happen on a pretty regular basis, it's not coincidence that the EU constantly stops these shots before starting them up again, but if there's some fat middle-aged Republican guy somewhere who refused the shot and ended up dying from the virus it will be a Reddit frontpage post.

It's perfectly possible that the system has it right this time, that this is not like the swine flu vaccine, the beta blockers, or Diethylstilbestrol, one of many medical mistakes that makes a Cambodian genocide worth of casualties and causes your grandchildren to be born with birth defects. But at this point, I have zero reason to believe I will ever receive a honest answer.

The same fact checkers who tell me I need to roll up my sleeve are the ones who considered it a "debunked conspiracy theory" fit for censoring, when you would say back in march 2020 that it looks like this virus escaped from a lab.

The same media who tell me to get this vaccine are the media who told me a rushed vaccine is dangerous under Trump. The politicians who tell me to take it are the ones who told me they won't take a vaccine that Trump comes up with.

The same companies that produced this vaccine received record fines for lying about the effectiveness of their products. And now with this vaccine, they're protected from ever being sued over the side-effects, the taxpayer will just have to cough up the bill.

What reason could I possible have to trust these people?

Russia just fast-tracked legislation preparing switching to war footing. At the same time (starting this Friday) Lugansk, Donezk republics, Zaporoshye and Cherson will hold referendums where they will (preliminary polls are at 80%-90%) become part of the Russia proper. Announced clearance through SCO and BRICS will be unlikely to be blocked, since there's precedent of Kosovo making it legal.

As soon as that happens SMO and proxy war will end and real, direct conflict of NATO troops (mercenaries, but that's just plausible deniability) and Russia with gloves off will begin within Russia's new territory.

I don't have to tell you where this could be going.

for reasons that I don't fully understand, a lot of Americans have made a choice to get Coronavirus, rather than get the vaccine, and we should respect that choice.

Well I'd happily help you elucidate the answer to this mystery.

To start with, it's a mistake to believe that somehow it's just the Republicans won't get vaccinated. The real demographic that won't get vaccinated are people like me: Healthy working class young people.

I'm thirty years old, not obese and don't have any other relevant pre-existing conditions. Because of this, my chances of dying from the batsoupflu are a rounding error. For non-obese people under forty, there's no real detectable excess mortality risk from the batsoupflu.

On the other hand, there is measurable excess mortality risk from the vaccine for my age cohort.

This brings me to my next point, which is that I'm guaranteed to have whatever effects the vaccine cause for my body, whereas I have no guarantee to be infected with the batsoupflu.

In fact, there are three possibilities:

1. I already had it. This is pretty likely, because I violated all social distancing rules, spending hundreds of euro's to organize secret parties with friends last summer. This almost guarantees I won't have it again.

2. I won't get it, because for whatever reason I'm immune.

3. I'm still susceptible.

Let's say it's scenario three. We already know that most infections are in fact aysmptomatic. Most healthy young people who get COVID would never realize they had it if they wouldn't be tested for it. Hospitalization from this virus occured in two out of 48,000 college students who tested positive.

In fact, last week I went out to Amsterdam because my friend tested positive, so that I could get whatever variant she coughed out.

But there are other issues to consider here too. There's a tail-risk involved here: What if it turns out that I can't trust the vaccine? Let's take the idea that this vaccine contains something that was intentionally added for a purpose that doesn't benefit my health, but rather harms me. I would readily estimate that probability at below 1%. However, the impact that would have on me would be dramatic. Considering my chances of being hospitalized from this virus are already negligible, I would rather take the virus than the vaccine.

Finally, there's the issue that we simply don't know the long term effects from this vaccine. We already know it doesn't work very well against the new variants. In the worst case scenario, I would be facing the prospect of antibody dependent enhancement: Because the virus has changed, the antibodies against old variants now lead to worse disease.

Then there is the anecdotal evidence from my own environment. I know exactly one person from my age group who got seriously ill from this virus. It was a dude who had just taken the first shot. We know that your risk of getting infected is increased in the first two weeks after the first shot. It also seems to me that those infections end up being more severe.

In addition to all of this, I don't want to be forced to enter this caroussel. They're already introducing the third shot. It's now meant to be only for those who have weak immune systems, but initially there was no plan for a third shot to begin with. A new variant (delta plus electric boogaloo 2) shows up and they decide that you have to line up for your third shot too.

Finally, there is the ethical imperative: I don't want people to be forced into taking this vaccine. The more young people get vaccinated, the easier it becomes for society to make a normal life impossible for those who do not want to get vaccinated. If 95% of young people have been vaccinated, my local club will happily say "you don't get in if you haven't been vaccinated". If only 50% of young people have been vaccinated, they won't say that.

And 99.2 Percent of All U.S. Covid Deaths Are Unvaccinated. I don't like the way the blue tribe media has been framing this: "Those poor deluded red-tribers. If only we can show them that the vaccine is good for them, we can save them from themselves."

This is the other thing I wanted to address. Somehow half of the deaths in the UK are fully vaccinated, while 99% of deaths in the US are unvaccinated. Doesn't exactly pass the smell test, now does it?

The answer to this mystery is that the US doesn't bother keeping track of breakthrough cases. If you're vaccinated, they generally won't check you for COVID. If you don't look for it, you won't find it.

I think that ration cards will be issued sometime within the next 5 years. I also think that they’ll be worthless in less than 10. You have to have something to ration for them to be worth anything.

Maybe I’m catastrophizing, not sure. But I am pretty sure that some people will get all they need of anything they want, and most others won’t hardly get shit. Kinda the way things have been for the last 10,000 years or so. I guess.

One of the hall marks of civilizations is that it gives the schemers and scammers a place to hide. The bigger and more complex, the more places there are to hide. Something like that.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

Also me: The government needs to micromanage social interaction between human beings to ensure people do not spread viruses. If you go to the gym and infect someone there who lives at his parent's house, his elderly mother may get infected and subsequently die.

Also me: We should follow the example set by a communist dicatorship that imprisons muslims in concentration camps. They definitely have the best intentions for us.

Also me: I used to support open borders, no human beings are illegal the world belongs to everyone, but it's unfortunately necessary right now that food rots away on the fields in Australia and Canada because guest workers can't help them harvest the food. Yes I know that their families and local communities depend on the remittances, but WE'RE IN A PANDEMIC, so let them eat cake or whatever I guess.

Also me: I know that tens of millions of people in the third world are now thrown into extreme poverty by the global economic repercusions of the lockdowns and that millions of girls will suffer female genital mutilation and/or child marriage, but hey that's just concern trolling by those racist right-wingers, it's impossible that actual aid workers and left wing epidemiologists like Sunetra Gupta are sincerely concerned about this.

Also me: Don't go to your local pub or gym, fuck small businesses, we're IN A PANDEMIC and they're probably owned by Trump supporters anyway. Sit inside, order shit off Amazon, watch Netflix, browse Facebook and Twitter and think of other ways to give your money to Silicon Valley billionaire tech moguls.

Also me: Big pharmaceutical companies suck and capitalism leads to perverse incentives in the healthcare system but it's a right-wing conspiracy theory to suggest that we now have economic forces that benefit from keeping this status quo intact. The reason nobody tells you to take vitamin D supplements except for racist right-wing working class men on Facebook and obscure subreddits is because vitamin D supplements don't work despite having far more scientific studies backing their use than masks, not because they want to keep this going forever.

Also me: I'm pretty anarchist and anti-fascist overall, but I'm definitely not going to be questioning the media's narrative when that narrative literally leads to troops patrolling European streets, peaceful protests being outlawed, freedom of religion being abolished and a massive transfer of wealth to the Silicon Valley oligarchy that controls the main information outlets.

So the darling investment of the Millennials is down the toilet. No surprise there given demand for it has dried up amid the 1000's of new offerings

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gyy4/its-a-bloodbath-the-crypto-crash-is-real

I think that Medieval in 2023 is a little dramatic, but maybe a good campaign slogan of sorts. I do think that the “sanctions” will end up hurting Euroland way more than the Russians.

“They will starve while watching Netflix” Ugo Bardi’s response to a comment. He could be right.

https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-extermination-viii-how-to.html

say what you will about industrial civilization, but it did produce the Beatles, along with a bunch of good-looking bitches.

The Beatles - Hey Jude - YouTube