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Home » The UK’s fundamental transformation through COVID restrictions

The UK’s fundamental transformation through COVID restrictions

The New Neo Posted on by

On how COVID restrictions have transformed the UK – not COVID itself, mind you, but the response to it:

What was once the land of “keep calm and carry on” could now be the “most frightened nation in the world.” So says Laura Dodsworth, author of A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Data seem to bear her impression out. According to an Ipsos MORI poll conducted in July, an impressive 27 percent of Britons want to impose a government-mandated nationwide curfew of 10 PM—not then in force—“until the pandemic was under control worldwide,” which might be years from now. A not-inconsiderable 19 percent would impose such a curfew “permanently, regardless of the risk from Covid-19.” Presumably, these are people who don’t get out much. While 64 percent want Britain’s mask mandate in shops and on public transport to remain a legal requirement for the duration of the global pandemic, an astounding 51 percent want to be masked by law, forever.

There’s more: some 35 percent want to confine any Briton who returns from a foreign country, vaccinated or not, to a ten-day home quarantine—permanently, Covid or no Covid. A full 46 percent would require a vaccine passport in order to travel abroad—permanently, Covid or no Covid. So young people today would still be flashing that QR code on whatever passes for smartphones in 2095, though they might have trouble displaying the device to a flight attendant while bracing on their walkers. Likewise, the 36 percent who want to be required to check in at pubs and restaurants with a National Health Service contact-tracing app forever. A goodly 34 percent want social distancing in “theatres, pubs and sports grounds,” regardless of any risk of Covid, forever. A truly astonishing 26 percent of Britons would summarily close all casinos and nightclubs forever. Are these just a bunch of fogies who don’t go clubbing anyway? No. In the 16-to-24 age bracket, the proportion of Brits who want to convert Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London’s Soho into a community lending library, even after Covid is a distant memory, soars to a staggering 40 percent.

I haven’t come across a poll in the US asking the same or similar questions, but my guess is that the numbers for permanent restrictions of this type would be somewhat smaller. Only somewhat, however. The US has a more robust history of valuing individual liberties (free speech, for example, and having no official state religion). However, the UK numbers are still shocking, because the UK certainly has some of that tradition as well.

One of the very first things I said to a friend when the COVID restrictions began was: “We’re all going to end up with OCD.” “OCD” is obsessive-compulsive disorder, and although I was making a joke I was also somewhat serious. My early sense was based on the tenaciousness of OCD symptoms, once induced and adopted. If a person has any tendency towards OCD at all – and a lot of people do even though they haven’t actually displayed OCD symptoms prior to COVID – and that person has been doing a bunch of things that the person thinks has kept that person safe from disease, it can be very hard to give them up. It generally requires an active decision and effort to do so. It’s an effort a lot of people won’t make.

And for some, all of these restrictions offer secondary gains. For example, if a person has any sort of social anxiety, it’s easier to stay away from people, once you’ve gotten used to it. Computers make isolation less onerous, too.

Lastly, youth has been so protected compared to earlier generations. So many diseases have mostly been vanquished that were horrific scourges even in my lifetime – polio, leukemia (which was virtually always a death sentence when I was young, and struck a considerable number of children), and mumps and measles (the latter of which had the possibility of significant and highly serous complications such as encephalitis). These advances are great, but they have made the younger generation less willing to shoulder any health risks, and that makes them more susceptible to advocating restrictions on liberty in the name of health.

Comments

The UK’s fundamental transformation through COVID restrictions — 66 Comments

  1. I would add ‘and their parents’ to your last sentence or to be even more precise ‘their mothers’.

  2. No single group has driven this hysteria as much as middle and upper middle class women.

  3. YES.

    Advances in medicine “have made the younger generation less willing to shoulder any health risks, and that makes them more susceptible to advocating restrictions on liberty in the name of health.”

    This whole phenomenon leads us to an entirely new challenge: re-socializing ourselves.

    Bring back (touring versions of) Woodstock Fests that re-enact the hedonism and foolishness of a lost time and place? A mini Burning Man fest…before we can accept Ye Olde Renaissance festivals as fun and legit again?

    Does history help guide us through this strange and challenging terra incognita? Made all the stranger by isolationist hi tech non intimacy?

  4. Griffin:

    I didn’t make it clear, but I wasn’t referring to people who are presently children under their parents’ roofs or control. I’m talking about adults from around 21 to 40 who don’t care what their parents think and whose parents probably are considerably more willing to take risks than they are. I’ve noticed a basic generational trend it that direction among people I know.

  6. The problem with survey research to ascertain preferences is that talk is cheap (and often wildly at a variance with revealed preferences). Eventually, people get tired of useless shticks and there isn’t enough manpower to enforce them anymore.

  7. See my comment in an earlier post about the 20 something lady I encountered with 3 masks on. What a sad person.

  8. Art Deco,

    I want to say you are correct but you also claimed ‘forever masking’ would never happen because people would stop following the rules but certainly in blue areas like mine that has not happened so I’m not so sure that all this will fade away in the near future.

  9. See my comment in an earlier post about the 20 something lady I encountered with 3 masks on. What a sad person.

    Yeah, she’s sad. So are people with tats all over their upper body, people who are 60# overweight, people who insist on coloring their hair, people whose social life consists of driving to a place where liquor is sold, people whose children all have different fathers (or different mothers), and people who dispose of others for inane reasons. Whole lot of ruin in a nation, and rather more than when my parents were in their prime 50 years ago.

  10. physicsguy,

    Yep a couple of weeks ago I saw a woman of around 30 coming out of an office building with two masks and one of those stupid clear face shields on and I’m sure she was vaccinated also and probably angling for a booster if she doesn’t have it already.

  11. Could this be an attempt (maybe even an unconscious one) to reign in immigration and crime? Since it’s socially unacceptable – especially among self identified liberals – to oppose immigration and increase policing of crime ridden neighborhoods, this is a value free way to achieve those goals (curfews and monitoring travelers). And masks provide privacy in an increasingly camera cluttered world.

  12. I want to say you are correct but you also claimed ‘forever masking’ would never happen because people would stop following the rules but certainly in blue areas like mine that has not happened so I’m not so sure that all this will fade away in the near future.

    It’s happened in my blue neighborhood. Give it more time.

  13. Well I’m not talking about in homes I’m talking about in public places and all I know is the mask thing is almost as strong as ever with a few outliers like me that wears it around the neck and I’ve observed these freaks long enough now to know it will be getting even more so as winter comes along.

    This is in the deep blue Puget Sound area of WA.

  14. Regarding OCD. I know a thing or two about that since I had strong issues with it as a child, though I do not recall anyone using the term “OCD “ as a child. They just called me a “germ-a-phobe” as one expression was obsessive hand washing. I remember being at a friends house and his mother getting upset because I had soaked the hand towel from washing and drying my hands repeatedly if I thought I had touched something his younger brother had touched. Yet , in my crazy mind, “ inside germs” from people bothered me way more than “ outside germs” when playing in the creek catching crawfish or petting the dog.
    I would build something out of Legos and tear it apart just in case someone else may have put two pieces together and I did not do it all myself. Repeatedly starting over on the same project and becoming increasingly distressed and frustrated.
    From an early age, having a fleeting momentary bad or malicious thought about someone and they later died and I blamed myself.
    I could go on. The struggle is real for some people.
    As for the pandemic, keeping a bottle of hand sanitizer in the truck and using it every time I get in is what I still do. Masking, not so much. I would rather just keep more personal space between me and the next person than wear a mask. And now I that I have had Covid, I am not too worried about it.

  16. One of the most truly depressing things about this is it seems almost certain that in many places the masking and other forms of hysteria in flu season is almost guaranteed to be a permanent thing.

    Every year maybe some more than others but there is now an entire class of people that get off on this stuff and they ain’t going nowhere any time soon.

  17. Neo: I am struck by your thoughts on “re-socialization” and the psychopathology we have suffered with Covid lockdown. Not sure if I posted this poem previously, but it captured some of my sense of the situation.

    Vaccination

    After the shots
    Not a fever
    No side effect
    Except this pause

    Or call it fear
    Of going back
    To the old life
    The world of flesh

    I am thinking
    This is how ghosts
    Floating edgewise
    Near visible

    And when given
    Another chance
    To be with us
    Would turn it down

    Would turn away
    From stink and filth
    And all the mess
    Of being real

    Would choose to stay
    Thin and empty
    Among the dreams
    To which they’re bound

  18. The UK has long been moving toward Police State status. In fact, most if not all the Commonwealth nations are doing so.

    There’s no doubt about the effect of Covid in facilitating that trend. That said, there may be a much greater danger emerging; the vaccinated’s immune systems appear to be deteriorating. Someone more knowledgeable than I take a look at this:
    “A comparison of official Government reports suggest the Fully Vaccinated are developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome”

    https://keyabsage.wordpress.com/2021/10/16/a-comparison-of-official-government-reports-suggest-the-fully-vaccinated-are-developing-acquired-immunodeficiency-syndrome/

  20. Geoffrey Britain,
    Your link about the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, do you think it is talking about the original test subjects for the vaccines, or the general public?
    And trends do not always continue….

  21. Well I’m not talking about in homes I’m talking about in public places and all I know is the mask thing is almost as strong as ever with a few outliers like me that wears it around the neck and I’ve observed these freaks long enough now to know it will be getting even more so as winter comes along.

    You’re too invested in this and prowling around scoping people out instead of going about your business.

  22. Seriously?

    What, the mighty Art Deco can make all his proclamations here but if someone mildly challenges him then they are ‘prowling around scoping people out’?

    What does that even mean? I read your damn comment you posted, is that ‘prowling’ or ‘scoping’.

    My mistake was trying to engage with you in the first place. Won’t happen again.

  23. Based on news reports, Australia appears to be even crazier than the UK.

    What changes am I making going forward? Well, as an introvert, I was never very comfortable with the European habit of hugging and cheek-kissing acquaintances. I’ll hug people close to me, and not others. And I’ll probably receive communion by intinction, or bread only. Flu season is coming, perhaps.

    But I’m not going to be wearing masks or face shields unless I’m the one who is sick.

  24. JimNorCal:

    The Australian response is a good example of what I mean about how OCD works. At the moment, Australia still has one of the lowest death rates from COVID in the world: it’s 60 per million. That isn’t just low; it’s astonishingly low. For comparison, the US currently has 2,243 per million, and that still isn’t all that high for a pandemic, especially considering the probable inclusion of deaths with COVID rather than from COVID. Most countries are in the range of 1000 to 2500, with a few outliers such as Peru with nearly 6,000, and a few low countries such as Australia (many of the low countries are in Asia). Australia is an island, although it is a very large one, and in many parts of Australia they clamped down pretty early and pretty hard. But their very low death totals have had the effect, IMHO, of making them extremely risk-averse.

    I believe their calculation is that their lockdowns have been responsible for the low incidence of COVID there. It’s something that cannot be proven, and I think it’s highly likely there are many other factors at work. But now they are convinced that if they relax their rules they will experience many more deaths and they are loathe to do that. The vaccine seems to them to be a way out of the dilemma. People will still get infected but they’ll be much less likely to die.

  25. Geofrey Britain:

    I read the long link that article you mentioned gave (here’s the study), and as far as I can see it says nothing of the sort. The stats basically say the vaccine is quite effective and there’s nothing about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and nothing relevant to it.

  26. Geoffrey Britain —

    I can’t find a link in that Keyab Sage blog post to the PHE (Public Health England?) chart that supposedly shows that “[e]verybody over 30 will have lost 100% of their entire immune capability (for viruses and certain cancers) within 6 months.”

    That’s a pretty extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, and they don’t provide it. I think it’s much more likely that PHE is charting the loss of immune response to the Covid virus, which is something we’ve known about for months.

    If it was really the entire immune system, we’d be seeing a giant spike in non-Covid infections and cancers among the least immuno-capable (the elderly), and as far as I can tell we’re not.

  27. Owen:

    I like the poem.

    We are. among other things, creatures of habit. Our fears have been nurtured and we’ve been told to adopt new habits. It all can be hard to give up.

  30. Yeah, like the cop said to handcuffed me as he was putting me in the backseat of the patrol car

    “Your neighbors behavior is not the problem. Your reaction to his behavior is the problem”

  31. Part of the problem is the same as many younger people not understanding economics. In life there are tradeoffs. Nothing is perfect. Everything has limits. You can’t trade freedom for health. Health is not just based on one thing. No matter what we do sickness and death comes eventually. We have already seen how loneliness effected us during the major lockdown time. But the accept no risk people have focused on this one factor and are going to remove it no matter the cost.

  32. I remember polio in the 1950’s, some kids ended up on crutches and one of my favorite classmates Jeannie S. ended up mostly paralyzed in a wheelchair and we, about 64 in our graduating class took care of her going through school together. Each year as we moved along through the grades one girl was assigned to help her with her personal needs during the day, in our two story high school there were alway two football player guys assigned to carry her wheelchair up and down the stairs to her next class. Our beautiful, and she was incredibly lovely, Jeannie lived to be in her 40’s and she was always loved by her classmates and we just took it for granted that sometimes stuff happens. Life happens and smart people learn how to deal with it, polio kids were not uncommon in the old days and it was such a good thing when they developed the vaccine.

  33. Neo, on “The stats basically say the vaccine is quite effective….”
    To say the least, knowledgeable folks don’t buy that.
    See e.g. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3720620 (on UK stats on vaccines):
    “for anyone over 30, you are more likely to get infected, yes, adjusted for the population that is vaccinated, if you are vaccinated. Indeed in the 40-49 age group, you’re close to *double as probable* on a per-population basis.”

  34. LOL. Funny! A nation brought to its knees by psychologically disturbed gurls of both sexes. Again, what percentage of young progressive white females polled was it who admitted to PEW Research that they had mental disorders?

    Now, only Christians or ex-Christians will get this reference, but with a population like we now have emerging, getting many or most of them to accept an implant or an authorizing mark on the forehead or hand which conditionally allows them to engage in economic activity, would not be a difficult task.

    They would probably clamor for it. ” … he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. …”

  35. What, the mighty Art Deco can make all his proclamations here but if someone mildly challenges him then they are ‘prowling around scoping people out’?

    Now it’s you, huxley the other day, om forever. Grow a thicker hide.

  36. To put things into the proper perspective, here is the story of a different vaccine:

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science/science-diphtheria-plague-among-children-180978572/

    It would seem the populations today, at least the ones being reported on, are insufferably insulated from real life. I hope that doesn’t mean they are due to spend some time on a battlefield sometime soon, in a conflict To Be Determined. The behavior of some of the policemen though…tackling people who have done nothing wrong, refusing Last Rites to dying victims….What can their leadership possibly be thinking. That’s the stuff that fuels uprisings.

  37. OldTexan on October 19, 2021 at 8:26 pm said:

    I remember polio in the 1950’s, some kids ended up on crutches and one of my favorite classmates Jeannie S. ended up mostly paralyzed in a wheelchair and we, about 64 in our graduating class took care of her going through school together.

    I’m sure Neo has covered it once or more times, but it may have some relevance to reflect on the fact that the debilitating form of polio experienced by children and others beginning in the late 19th Century, was supposedly in part the result of children not being naturally “inoculated” as a result of changes in social behavior.

    That may not be the precise explanation, but I don’t feel like making sure the formulation is exact.

  38. I live in West Michigan. Almost nobody masks outdoors and few but employees–depending on employer–do indoors.
    Medical facilities are different, of course.

  39. Aggie mentions Diphtheria.

    I have a very woke female relative who is a family physician in Australia.

    About a decade ago she told me about a standing room only lecture theater autopsy. People almost got into fights trying to get in to watch. Why?

    A third world ‘refugee’ had upped and died of Diphtheria. Wasn’t diagnosed properly until way too late as you just never see (saw, anyway) cases in first world countries. Needless to say the deceased, had gotten into Australia with all the correct vaccination records. Australia like most countries full of woke white cattle actually believes medical records from turd world #$%^holes.

    Was this ever reported in the media? Hell no! Did woke relative have any epiphany regarding wisdom of mass immigration of disease-ridden (at best) half-civilized people? You know the answer.

    Reminded me a bit of a similar case back in the 90s of a Filipina maid who went back home on vacation, got bitten by a dog, came back to HK and died of Rabies. Took them a while to figure out what it was as that kind of thing just does not happen here.

  40. I agree that overprotection could be a reason for the OCD-ness. I saw a kid about a foot and a half tall on a little scooter about a foot long, keeping up with her mom. Not fast at all. Wearing a helmet.

    OTOH, our ability to handle the really tough stuff–we were a million years coming up the hard way–might be needing some exercise and Covid, or losing a football game could be the subject, actual tough stuff not available.

  41. You can bet that as the Old Diseases make their return, the UK and Australian governments will continue to throw money at Covid grifts and social controls.

    I’m just waiting for Ebola to make the jump. Only a matter of time. Stopping it getting out of Africa would be trivial but Rayciss… so everybody just gotta die in an aura of sanctity.

  42. aNanyMouse:

    I’m very knowledgeable about it and have read a great deal of research on it, and what I say is true. I have explained many times (including in comments in this thread) that a positive test is not the measure of vaccine effectiveness, what is important is whether it reduces severe symptoms and deaths. Simply put, it does.

    I find it to be a red herring whether more positive tests occur in a certain age group that is vaccinated. This link (which I referred to in an earlier comment) goes into all of this in great detail. The vaccine is indeed effective in every way that is the least bit important.

  43. Aggie @8:46 pm–

    Thank you for the link to the Smithsonian article about the diphtheria vaccine. I remember getting the DTP vaccine as a kid and complaining about it to my dad because (unlike the Salk polio vaccine), it stung after it was injected into the muscle. My dad told me that he understood that shots are no fun (he had to be immunized against several different diseases when he went into the Army during WWII) but that he was glad that my generation of kids would be protected against diphtheria. I later found out from my grandmother (his mother) that my dad contracted diphtheria when he was 9 years old (in 1921) and almost died of it.

    Aggie goes on to say: It would seem the populations today, at least the ones being reported on, are insufferably insulated from real life. I hope that doesn’t mean they are due to spend some time on a battlefield sometime soon, in a conflict To Be Determined.

    Apropos of my dad’s experience of Army medicine (the immunizations he received were smallpox, triple typhoid [typhoid, paratyphoid A, and paratyphoid B], typhus, tetanus, and influenza), it’s worth noting that WWII was the first major war in which more American soldiers died of wounds than of disease.

  44. Richard Aubrey,

    “I agree that overprotection could be a reason for the OCD-ness. I saw a kid about a foot and a half tall on a little scooter about a foot long, keeping up with her mom. Not fast at all. Wearing a helmet.”

    I was born in 48. When I was around 10 we lived in one of the suburbs in the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. area. Some of us kids really got into roller skating on the neighborhood sidewalks.

    No roller blades, the old fashioned metal skates.

    We all got into skating as fast as possible, we could keep up with other kids on their one-speed bicycles. No helmet. Quickly learned to fall on the grass next to the sidewalk. After a while scrapes and skinned knees were rare but we didn’t worry about it, part of the game. Much healthier time both mentally and emotionally.

  45. I really don’t believe that the people who answered the poll questions that way actually meant it. I think it’s much more likely that they were giving what they thought was the socially approved answer, because in the United Kingdom cops do monitor speech and social media and arrest people for things they say. In that kind of environment would you answer honestly?

    I’m sure polling people in China about whether Xi Jinping should be crowned emperor could get you similar numbers, for the same reason.

  46. Neo,

    “We’re all going to end up with OCD.” “OCD” is obsessive-compulsive disorder, and although I was making a joke I was also somewhat serious. ”

    I wonder what’s the status in the originating country of this virus (china)?

    May this matter take us with the pass of the WMD liar who push for the invasion of Iraq with his UN scaremongering speech So what you things million of that country citizens under 18 years of chose and distraction because of Colin Powell for “big mistakes”?

  47. Geoffery Britain. Mentioned the sight to a relative. Her response was, “Do you know how bad a fall on the sidewalk can be?” Having done so, yes, but I forbore. Kid was probably two years old. Can’t imagine what my relation would have done had the kid fallen and gotten road rash on one palm.
    I wondered what I might have said had she asked hypotheticals about my granddaughters–going on ten and about fourteen and a half.
    I suspected I’d have said I would want them capable of looking at a contingency, the response for which included some risk, and guessing they could handle it.
    There aren’t always deplorable guys around to take the hits.
    And my relation would–stretching here–say something like’ We can’t all be soldiers.”

  49. I wonder if opinions in the UK favoring strict controls against Covid have any connection with their success in eradicating rabies. As an island nation with rigid quarantines for rabies prevention, the UK hasn’t had a case since 1922, according to Wikipedia. We moved there in 1969, and before we left found a new home for our dog, rather than subject him to the 6-month quarantine in England which was in force at the time. We would have been able to visit him at the kennel, but it just seemed like it would have been an unhappy life for him. I assume the quarantine rule hasn’t changed. Maybe their elimination of rabies has some effect on the popular mindset for extreme protective regulations against Covid.

  50. Lots of people didn’t support independence in 1776. Lots of people didn’t support the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Lots of people were soft on communism in the 1980s. On just about every great moral, cultural, or political question in human history, lots of people gave the wrong answer.

    One of the roles of elites in any society is to lead the public to the right answers. They don’t always do a great job but at least in healthy societies, they try. The great challenge facing us today is that while Americans as a whole are troubled but not completely lost, our elites are making the Weimar Republic look like Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show.

    Mike

  51. The “vaccine” is a therapeutic that lowers chances of serious illness, but does not prevent you from getting or spreading covid. We have no idea of the long term effects, so it’s ridiculous to be giving it to children for a disease that does not harm them, with a drug that does not stop infection or transmission.

    I was sooooo happy to get the vaccine. After seeing lie after lie after lie I am starting to regret that decision. As someone who really didn’t like shaking hands pre covid I do like how it is okay now to just nod at business meetings and like how people back off in a queue, but refuse to wear a mask and will quit my job before I ever provide proof of my jab to my company. And we do have more than 100 people so that will be interesting, but don’t think it will happen.

  52. Fundamental transformation gets waylaid by fundamentalism.

    The always eloquent Brendan O’Neill is gobsmacked by the response of the British political and media elite:
    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/19/the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name/
    Key graf:
    “…It feels increasingly unhinged. It feels like a displacement activity of epic proportions. A possible act of Islamic terrorism takes place, and the chattering classes gab about how horrible Twitterstorms are. What is going on?”

    As the “conditioning” (otherwise known as “brainwashing”) of the masses—throughout the West—proceeds right on schedule, might O’Neill be “the last angry man” (at least in journalism)?…

  53. “Fundamental transformation” can now be said to have surpassed COVID, becoming, in fact, the most widespread pandemic, currently.

    Unfortunately, there seems to be no defense against it. No medication. No HCQ+. No Quercetin. No zinc. No aspirin. No vaccine. In fact, this pandemic is being encouraged and promoted by all the “right people”….

    Not to be left behind, His Holiness has decided to enter this minefield and in all earnestness truly steps in it:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/pope-demands-silicon-valley-name-god-censor-hate-speech-conspiracy-theories

    Needless to say, this will likely present several problems.

    To paraphrase Pontius Pilate: “What is HATE SPEECH?”

    (To be sure, “Biden” knows the answer to that one. Garland knows. Obama knows. Austin knows. Hillary knows. Pelosi knows. The corrupt media and info-tech know….etc.; but what about the rest of us?)

    File under: My children, You MUST SCOUR HATE from the recesses of your heart and embrace…”Biden”…

  54. Long before the pandemic, I got into the habit of using hand sanitizer before eating in restaurants, after pumping gas, etc. I keep a bottle in my car and another in my purse. I’m convinced that this has dramatically decreased the number of mild and severe colds I used to get on a regular basis (throughout cold and flu season). I’ve never been persuaded about the efficacy of masks, however, although I’ve worn them “as required” on and off throughout the pandemic (mostly to make others, including family members, feel more comfortable). I’m also vaccinated. It’s impossible to eliminate risk, however, so I try not to worry about things I can’t control. I recently travelled to Boston with my two sisters, both of whom chided me from time to time for not strictly following posted “mask rules.” We’re all sixtyish, but they are both liberal Dems and I left that party a decade ago.

  55. Insty, in linking to the Brendan O’Neill piece Barry Meislen linked above, hits one key nail on the head in his comment. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/480158/

    “When you realize that the ruling class wants to use Islam to break the power of the bourgeoisie, it makes more sense.”

    Left unsaid is the other nail that Islam is using the ruling class for its own end too. Its end is to see the entire world in submission to it same as the ruling classes real end.

  56. Bingo. We have a family member with manageable OCD before covid, who went off the rails during. (And a second whose eating disorder reached the crisis point as well.)

  58. “Neo, on “The stats basically say the vaccine is quite effective….”
    To say the least, knowledgeable folks don’t buy that.” ANanyMouse

    I concur with you ANanyMouse. The idea that there are less serious cases and deaths among the vaccinated depends on forgetting that greater than 98% of people survived this virus from the beginning without hospitalization and that continues to be the case. I had it and never took so much as an aspirin to recover. My husband suffered the cytokine storm because he was sent home without so much as fluids, oxygen or steroids when that would have been SOP for a respiratory infection from times past. Sadly, not treating people is still going on as I know of 2 cases personally of recent date. Add to all this the fact that a person with 1 shot or in under 14 days after a 2nd shot is designated “unvaccinated” and you see the continuation of the narrative as disclosed by the governing authorities, none of whom I trust for any information whatsoever. Why would I? Our friend’s daughter is an RN and due to requirement to keep her job she got 1 shot, but having immediately suffered an attack, the result of a lifelong inflammatory condition, which hadn’t happened in 4 straight years until the day of the shot, she applied for exemption and has it for now. A fellow nurse at Kaiser, a very big fan of the vaccine (designated as such, according to the new definition) told her 2 weeks ago that the ICU was full, but all the patients were stroke victims. No 2+2=4 for him.

  59. “Not to be left behind, His Holiness has decided to enter this minefield and in all earnestness truly steps in it:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/pope-demands-silicon-valley-name-god-censor-hate-speech-conspiracy-theories”

    The Vatican was the first institution to impose the vaccine mandate. As a devout Catholic I disavow this Pope as a false prophet. Gave him the benefit of the doubt for years, but as of this year I’ve determined to use the ancient scriptures as my guide and anything or anyone that contradicts what even a child can determine from this book, I judge to be outside the wisdom of God. This man recently gave the right hand of fellowship to Nancy Pelosi. On the basis of Ezekiel 33, as her leader, he is now equally bound by the iniquity of her vial acts regarding protection of life in the womb. Prayers for them both, as I want to obey the command to pray for my enemies.

  60. Here comes the influenza as a cadenza, the cold that is so bold, our fears will force us to our knees. Let us bray.

  61. Claire Berlinski, in her book ‘Menace in Europe’, talks about recurrent millenarian/apocalyptic cults which have erupted from time with a focus on *purity*. She sees this phenomenon as being represented at the present time by “crop worship” and the French activist Jose Bove, who she sees as merely one in a long line of historical figures who hawked similar ideologies. They range from a man of unknown name born in Bourges circa AD 560, to Talchem of Antwerp in 1112, through Hans the Piper of Niklashausen in the late 1400s, and on to the “dreamy, gentle, and lunatic Cathars” of Languedoc and finally to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Berlinski sees all these people as being basically Christian heretics, with multiple factors in common. They tend appeal to those whose status or economic position is threatened, and to link the economic anxieties of their followers with spiritual ones. Quite a few of them have been hermits at some stage in their lives. Most of them have been strongly anti-Semitic. And many of the “Boves” have been concerned deeply with purity…Bove coined the neologism malbouffe, which according to Google Translate means “junk food,” but Berlinski says that translation “does not capture the full horror of bad bouffe, with its intimation of contamination, pollution, poison.” She observes that “the passionate terror of malbouffe–well founded or not–is also no accident; it recalls the fanatic religious and ritualistic search for purity of the Middle Ages, ethnic purity included. The fear of poisoning was widespread among the millenarians…” (

    See also this interesting piece on environmentalist ritualism as a means of coping with anxiety and perceived disorder:

    https://reason.com/2014/08/22/environmentalism-and-the-fear-of-disorde/

    Quite related to the excessive panics about Covid, I think.

  62. Sharon W:

    I respect the experience you and your husband had and am very very glad you both survived.

    But of course I’m not “forgetting that greater than 98% of people survived this virus from the beginning without hospitalization and that continues to be the case.” I’m well aware of the statistics and have written many times (even at the start) about that, but those statistics aren’t relevant to what we’re discussing here.

    I’m written posts about this with links, and I’m not going to go back and write about it in detail here. But suffice to say that the relevant statistics are to compare the recent percentages of the total vaccinated population hospitalized or dead from COVID who were fully vaccinated and the recent percentages of the total unvaccinated population hospitalized or dead from COVID. The chances of a serious or deadly case in the unvaccinated is much greater. That of course is not the case for people who have actually had COVID, such as yourself and your husband. They are protected most strongly and in my opinion do not need to be vaccinated.

    In the research I’ve read, the statistics for people who are partly vaccinated are usually separated out as partly vaccinated and are in an intermediate category. And by “research” I don’t ordinarily mean “newspaper articles or blog posts,” which seem to get it wrong time and again if one looks at the actual research.

    Lastly, of course the hospitalization and death statistics are complicated by the tendency in many states to list the death of anyone with COVID as dying from COVID even though they didn’t really die from COVID. But at the moment that is an unknown number and will probably remain so.

    And of course I support anyone’s decision to be vaccinated or remain unvaccinated, for whatever reason.

  63. I believe Covid will fade into the background as another endemic disease with which we live.

    People will keep getting it and some will die, as with flu and pneumonia. (I just got my vaxxes for those yesterday, though I know neither gives perfect protection and I’m not sure which pneumo vaxx I got.)

    If that’s true, it follows that just about everyone will get Covid eventually unless they are naturally immune or their vaxx does the trick (no guarantee).

    So with all the lockdowns, masking etc. we have spread out the rate of transmission and reduced the likelihood of medical resources being overwhelmed.

    But at what cost? And will we ever revisit the choices made in 2020?

  64. I’m reminded, as I often am these days, of a passage in Walter Miller’s great novel a Canticle for Leibowitz:

    “To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”

  65. There are all kinds of arguments about masks and vaxxing and lockdowns and whoever. People spout numbers and trends and risks and hypos.
    Do you ever get the feeling that some of them LIKE being oppressed? Like being told what to do, “for their own good’? MAKE ME DO STUPID STUFF! Or, MAKE other people do stupid stuff they don’t want to do.

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