Also, it’s been linked elsewhere, but don’t miss the Glenn Greenwald article on our newly minted Bourbon Burlesque Aristocracy.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-masking-of-the-servant-class
“The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace
While AOC’s revolutionary and subversive socialist gown generated buzz, the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants is grotesque.”

Thanks for your interest. I am now fully recovered. I would rate my illness as an average flu with the exception of losing my senses of taste and smell. I wouldn’t have been concerned at all about my illness if I hadn’t heard all the horror stories.

As far as I know there were no hospitalizations. Although I did hear that one guest may have infected someone who was already very ill. What I found unusual were the number of people who not only became infected but became sick, several of these people were young and healthy (including my son). This made me think that this must be happening to other vaccinated people. I long ago lost my faith in the CDC but now I am even more skeptical of anything they say.

I hope I now have strong immunity. I’m not changing any plans based on this experience. I plan on going to Europe in October to visit my in-laws.

Are you and the other wedding guests recovering well? Has anybody been hospitalized?

The Key POINT:

WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT INFECTIONS?

No one gives a rat’s ASS about being infected. They CARE if they are hospitalized, experience a serious complication (i.e., losing their sense of smell), or die.

The first two stats are literally impossible to get any actual contextually significant information on, and the latter tend to get thrown about without context, as well… i.e., age group and co-morbidities. THAT info is out there, on the CDC site (age data, at least) but not much else.

It’s the lack of CONTEXT surrounding data, perceptions, and reporting which is the main issue.

I had some idiot who had posted “kids are dying and getting hospitalized in mass numbers from the delta variant”. I challenged this — he cited a report that said, no, there wasn’t any overall increase (i.e., he was either lying or just too fucking stupid to actually comprehend the news article).

Actual facts: (At that time, about 6w ago), Florida had seen an upsurge of 300% of “kids hospitalized”… Only far lower down — para 12 or so, was it mentioned that this “upsurge” was from 4 to 12… out of 2.6 MILLION SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN. Yeesh.

SMH.
Give me a fucking BREAK!

And yet this is the kind of shit idiots everywhere are yammering about and supporting idiotic mandates over.

I think a lot of the CDC Covid guidelines have been similar.

(War Bonds, I’m told, were mostly intended to suck up all that extra cash that was being paid out as war wages and therefore keep inflation down.)

The CDC did say at one point not too long ago, that if a family has an infected family member living in their household, they should disinfect surfaces frequently.

My suspicion is that there may be this “noble lie” factor where the CDC and other officials don’t want to provoke a panic where people stop seeing doctors and stop eating for fear of supermarkets, etc.

Sometime in May/June of 2020 Johns Hopkins had an entire layout on how fomite transmission was a non-factor in transmission– a very thorough analysis of sources and findings. I wondered when the adjustments were going to be made at public places. I was telling my friends not to worry. When one of them wanted proof, I went back to the site and lo and behold that information was wiped. The best you could get was the CDC stating that “it isn’t the main way it is transmitted.” I was already in a place of not trusting the “authorities”. There was much work to do, to stop the Trump rallies and to ensure that mail-in voting be instituted for the election. Our science, truly became political “science” via the government/social media response to the pandemic.

Apparently, some people are so addicted to crunching numbers and offering analysis that they will do so no matter how bad the data. Sad. It’s like climate science only worse. Rumpelstiltskin only claimed to turn straw into gold. Today’s covid number crunchers are claiming to do it with crap.

I’m reminded of the Wall Street con artists who claimed that they could slice and dice bad mortgage debt into “tranches” and make most of it investment grade quality.

Sorry, it ain’t chicken salad. No matter how much mayo they add.

Yes, I’ve read those arguments, and I don’t find them persuasive, at least not so far. Viruses always mutate and there’s always a chance that a more virulent form will emerge. But usually these new variants are both more easily spread and less virulent. Even with the vaccine so far, that seems to be holding – more easily spread and less virulent. Viruses are successful if they spread and don’t kill their hosts or even make them too sick, the better to spread. After all, if you’re alive and moving around, you can infect more people. That’s something I remember learning long ago, and I think for the most part it will still hold true.

I’ve done all those things – fly, stay in motel, stay in air b&b – and so far so good. I don’t think there’s much transmission through inanimate objects.