Latest Mask Study Reaches A New Low (Which We Didn't Even Think Was Possible At This Point)

Just when you thought that The Science (TM) couldn't get any lower, it reached a new low today.  The latest pro-mask study, a preprint which has yet to even be peer-reviewed (though will probably be pal-reviewed at some point), is a classic example of cherry-picked junk science not even worth the paper it is printed on.

The ever-insightful Ian Miller of Unmasked does an excellent job of taking it down here.  In a nutshell, the so-called "systematic review" study took 1732 mask studies, and only looked at a whopping....13 of them.  That is less than 1% of all of the studies done to date, so why did they disregard over 99% of the evidence that they found?  Probably because it wasn't exactly flattering to the pro-mask side, that's why.  And the 13 studies they did include, with a combined sample size of only 243 people, of course yielded implausibly (and laughably) high estimates of mask effectiveness.  This clearly has "cherry picking" written all over it.

And that's before we even get into the obvious fatal flaws in at least some if not all of those 13 studies (lack of generalizability, not done in real world conditions, no comparison group, and of course small sample size).  Also, all studies after July 2020 (!) were arbitrarily excluded, because reasons.  This is apparently what passes for The Science (TM) these days, and it has gotten increasingly desperate now as the narrative has thoroughly collapsed by now.  We are now seeing naked Lysenkoism without so much as even the pretense of scientific integrity anymore.

We recently noted how the same Ian Miller so thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

A recent Australian study confirmed via experiment that surgical masks (and by extension, cloth masks as well) are utterly useless against aerosolized viruses, as are even N95s unless they are properly fit-tested and NO mistakes are made.  The latter, of course, does NOT apply to the general population, as Germany unfortunately learned the hard way when their general N95 mandate failed so spectacularly to contain or control their Covid outbreak.

Masks didn't work in 1918, and they clearly didn't work in 2020 or 2021 either.  So anyone who thinks they will somehow work in 2022 or beyond, clearly has their head in an anatomically impossible position.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a functional definition of either insanity or Lysenkoism (same difference).

What To Do Now? Hindsight is 2020

As the fearmongers are trying to dial up the fear factor over Covid once again, this time over the new BA.5 Omicron subvariant, most sane people two and a half years in would be tempted to respond to all this with a resounding (yawn).  But clearly we must still remain on guard--against tyranny, that is.  That may sound like we are boxing ghosts or strawmen, but we must never, EVER forget just how the easily March 2020 madness started, and how easily it is to slip back into it if we so foolishly allow it.  We simply cannot meet tyranny or insanity in the middle, and if we give them an inch they take a mile every time.  We must oppose them from the very first new or reimposed restriction, mandate, or the slightest attempt at coercion, period.  And we must counteract fearmongering with honesty and truth.

One restriction clearly leads to another, until We the People finally push back.  In March 2020, under the influence of 24/7 fearmongering, it started with "reasonable" sounding restrictions, which quickly got tighter by the day.  Lockdowns, closures, and the milder versions thereof that precededed it, led to mask mandates ostensibly as a way to avoid having to go back to lockdown.  But the places that imposed mask mandates were in fact the places that were MORE likely to return to second and even third lockdowns later.  And both mask mandates and the threat of lockdowns and closures independently and synergistically led to the vaccine mandates and passports that followed.  And all of it was for naught, as many studies and even the most casual glance at excess death rates have shown globally.

In fact, a very strong case can be made that doing nothing, or rather adopting the time-honored "flu strategy," would have been better than what was done.  At best, all that the restrictions did (or could do) was delay the inevitable, drag it out, and make it far more painful than it had to be, at very great social, economic, and health cost.  Once the virus was already "in the wild" in early 2020 in much of the world, if not even earlier, the "therapeutic window" for restrictive NPIs was permanently closed.  Notably, many countries, including the USA, UK, Australia, NZ, and others, all had pandemic playbooks that explicitly did NOT include and even discouraged these sorts of largely unprecedented restrictions, even if we were to face another "Category 5" pandemic like the infamous 1918 one.  Such playbooks were actually based on hard science, that is, what we have learned empirically (often the hard way) over the past couple of centuries.  But then suddenly in mid-March 2020, the powers that be had panicked and threw the wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage, and as they say, the rest is history.

Fortunately, most people simply don't have the appetite for more restrictions now.  Not only are people tired of it all, but also they see things like inflation, crime, the economy, etc. as being far more salient concerns than the virus today.  But that is not something we can automatically take for granted either.  Hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.

P.S.  Apparently "flurona", or co-infection of flu and coronavirus, doesn't exactly seem to be the threat the fearmongers claim it is either.  New research finds that an influenza virus infection actually somewhat mitigates a Covid infection if the flu infection occurs first, and co-infection with both viruses does not seem to make the combo worse.  So as our old frenemy inevitably returns, that is one less thing to fear.

Oh, and you're probably wondering why the phrase "protect the vulnerable" was not anywhere in this article.  That is because that once-noble phrase, which would normally go without saying in a civilized society, has sadly become a meaningless platitude once it had been thoroughly appropriated by the lockdown and mask zealots, who twisted it into making the perfect the enemy of the (reasonably) good.  And it had become a very handy excuse for not only draconian restrictions, but also cruelty and callousness towards the very same vulnerable people they claimed to "protect", often at the expense of other vulnerable people in other ways as well.

Ruh Roh. What Hath The Technocrats Wrought? (Children of Men Edition)

You may want to sit down and take a deep breath before reading this.  Seriously.

As the ever-insightful Igor Chudov has recently reported, in several diverse countries from Hungary to Taiwan to Germany to Switzerland to the UK to Sweden to Japan and many others, including some US states too, birthrates plummeted by double-digit percentages in the first quarter (or two) of 2022 relative to the same time last year.  This is not a trend, this is an event!  And that unusually steep drop in births did not begin until about nine months after those novel experimental gene therapy jabs misnamed "vaccines" were rolled out en masse to young people of childbearing age.  Funny how that works.  But I'm sure it is all just a "coincidence", right?  Move along, nothing to see here folks....

Riiiiiiiight.

Was it the lockdowns that caused it?  No, since there was no similar drop in 2020 or 2021, and notably Sweden experienced the same drop without any lockdowns.  Was it the virus itself, or its sequelae?  No, since Taiwan was practically free of the virus for the most part until April 2022, and yet they still saw birthrates drop as well.  Was it 5G, maybe?  No, since Taiwan and many other countries have been using 5G for years now, again with no sudden drop in births until 2022.  Was it climate change, perhaps?  Global warming is by definition global, so why does this trend only really seem to be noticeable in highly-jabbed areas rather than everywhere in the world?

And indeed, while birthrates have been gradually declining for years or even decades now in most of the world, this is a much, much steeper drop that cannot be explained by any of the usual suspects.

Looks like all of those VAERS reports of menstrual irregularities and even fetal abnormalities (!) correlating with the jabs were quite real after all, and the tip of a much larger iceberg.  And fellas beware, the reproductive effects are most likely NOT confined to only one gender either.  When many people last year would half-jokingly say, "clean sperm is the new Bitcoin" or something to that effect, that may not have been very far off from the truth, unfortunately.  (The recent epic Bitcoin crash notwithstanding, of course.)

Let's hope that this is just a short-term blip, because if it's not, this is literally Children of Men territory, and it will NOT end well for humanity at all.  Yes, we know the Earth is overpopulated and in severe ecological overshoot.  But if this current disturbing trend lacks an "off" button, and continues irreversibly, it will clearly do far more harm than good in the long run.

Moral of the story:  Mother Nature apparently does NOT like to be effed with!  Too bad people end up having to learn that the hard way sometimes.

UPDATE:  The Swiss Doctor offers an alternative explanation, namely that marriage rates plummeted in many countries in 2020 (and even into 2021) due to Covid and the restrictions on gatherings (since even Sweden had restrictions on large gatherings), and thus a large number of (mainly first) births may have simply been postponed as a result of weddings being postponed.  Let's hope that is the case.  However, the Swiss Doctor also cautions that this does not necessarily explain all of the observed drop in births.  Thus, the jabs are not really exonerated just yet.

In fact, as Igor Chudov reports later, in ultra-jabbed Germany, not only births, but even abortions are down too.  That means that even accidental pregnancies are down as well as purposeful ones, so it's not simply due to people choosing to delay or avoid procreation.  Really makes you wonder!

In A World Of Lysenkos, Be A Zelenko

We at the TSAP are saddened to hear that the legendary Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko has passed away from his four year battle with cancer today, at the age of 48.  He was truly a beacon of light shining in a world of darkness during the pandemic.  A real mensch indeed if there ever was one.

Dr. Zelenko famously devised an early treatment protocol, which later evolved into prophylaxis as well, against Covid all the way back in March 2020.  Originally consisting of zinc, HCQ, and azithromycin, this treatment really seemed to work wonders for one high-risk patient after another, keeping them alive and out of the hospital.  Later he added a recommendation for Ivermectin to the protocol as well, and he also devised an OTC nutritional supplement for general use called Z-Stack consisting of zinc, quercetin, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D, that is GMP and Kosher certified.  There is even a children's version now, and also a new detox version apparently designed with the jabbed in mind.

It bears repeating:  MARCH 2020.  April at the very latest.  Read that again.  Let that sink in.

If the powers that be had actually heeded his advice, instead of ignoring, censoring, and vilifying him, countless lives would have been saved (hundreds of thousands in the USA alone), hospitals would not have gotten anywhere even remotely close to overwhelmed, and even the slightest hint of lockdowns, closures, mask mandates, and related restrictions would have been summarily laughed out of existence as the utterly harebrained ideas that they were.  As for those novel experimental gene therapies misnamed "vaccines" that the powers that be have been pushing on the masses?   Well, Zelenko himself had some rather choice and colorful words to say about those!  He was certainly no fan.  And with the successful Zelenko protocol in place, the jabs would most likely have not so much have even gotten off the ground, being rejected as superfluous at best and far too risky to chance.  (And a fortiori for children!)

In fact, true natural herd immunity would have been reached much sooner, and much more safely as well if such sage advice was actually followed.  As it clearly had in Zelenko's very own hometown of Kiryas Joel, NY, who famously did everything "wrong" per the "experts".  Instead of the infamous lockdowns, high excess deaths, and then followed by the seemingly endless cycle of boosters, variants, and reinfections that continue to plague heavily-jabbed communities, states and countries to this day.

But NO, the powers that be not only censored and even banned the centerpiece of the Zelenko protocol in some places, they even had the GALL to try to fallaciously taint it in people's minds as "guilt by association" with Trump.  Never mind that the jabs that those same powers later came to obsess over, especially Moderna, were also developed under that very same president as well (Operation Warp Speed, anyone?).  And they knew that if anyone tried to seriously debate Zelenko himself, they would lose, so as time went on the mainstream media wouldn't even mention him at all, and would immediately pivot to Trump whenever the subject of HCQ came up.

Note as well that another legend, Dr. Dmitry Kats, independently devised his own Niacin-based protocol around the very same time.  Either way, hindsight is quite literally 2020.  March 2020, to be precise.

In a world of Lysenkos, be a Zelenko.  May he rest in peace.

Roe v. Wade Has Fallen

Well, after nearly half a century, it actually happened:  the landmark Roe v. Wade decision has officially fallen.  Today the US Supreme Court struck it down completely.  Forced-birther Republicans are thus now emboldened to further ban or restrict abortion at the state level, as several states have already done recently.  That is, women's hard-won reproductive rights are now in grave danger, and this goes WAY beyond abortion.  Undoubtedly, birth control and things like that will be next on the chopping block, and so on, and thus we are just a few steps away from Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare.  In fact, Clarence Thomas himself implied as much, actually saying the quiet part out loud.

Add to this the fact that the recent lockdown-induced "recession" (more like depression) has actually hit women harder than men and set back women's progress by decades by dumping even more unpaid work on them at home, and the future looks even worse still.

Democrats in Congress are still looking to pass a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, superseding the abortion bans in any state that attempts such bans.  But alas, success in that regard is far from guaranteed.

We at the TSAP are pro-choice, and hereby condemn this travesty in the strongest possible terms. 

The Root Cause Of All Economic Woes Of The Past Half-Century: "Financialization" Of The Economy

The year was 1971, just over half a century ago.  The utterly costly (in both lives and money) and protracted Vietnam War was gradually winding down but still raging, inflation was getting out of control, and the Bretton-Woods system of an international (fool's) gold standard and fixed currency exchange rates was rapidly collapsing on itself due to rampant cheating and attrition.  On August 15, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon decided to effectively suspend the gold standard, first temporarily, though it would soon become permanent by 1973.  And by 1975, any nominal and vestigial links between gold and the dollar had been severed completely.   

Since this "Nixon Shock" of 1971, the money creation capability of the federal government and the Federal Reserve were no longer constrained by gold or anything else (except the remaining arcane and archaic rules of Congress left over from the defunct gold standard, and thus no longer make any sense).  Thus, Congress could really create as much money as they wanted from then on, and the Fed could create as much as Congress would allow them to.   The money supply had clearly exploded exponentially since then, and a fortiori after 2008 and 2020.  

So where did nearly all of those newly-created dollars go?

Wall Street, of course.  The result?  A perpetually yawning chasm between the financial sector (which grew exponentially along with the money supply) relative to the real, physical economy (which has basically stagnated and hollowed-out ever since).  That absolute and relative advantage was then weaponized against the bottom 99% of Americans, as the financial sector is dominated by the top 1% and especially the top 0.01%.  Extreme inequality and very much harm followed.  Decades of utterly remarkable progress against poverty stalled and even reversed somewhat.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real root of all economic woes of the past half-century.

Prior to 1971, the financial sector moved largely in lockstep with the rest of the economy.  And not coincidentally, prior to 1973, wages grew largely in lockstep with labor productivity as well.  But ever since then, both have seen an ever-widening divergence, to the detriment of the greater working class.  While the oligarchs literally laughed all the way to the bank.  And that was clearly no accident, but rather by design.

Imagine if even a fraction of all that newly created-out-of-thin-air money since 1971 was rained down upon We the People directly instead of Wall Street and the big banks.  How different would America, and indeed the world, be today?  If that doesn't make you feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!

The cure for this disease is indeed very, very simple.  All it takes is a simple Act of Congress to 1) scrap the remaining arcane and archaic rules that prevent Overt Congressional Financing, 2) implement Overt Congressional Financing, and then 3) use it to benefit We the People instead of the oligarchy.  UBI, Medicare For All, expanded Social Security, free college, debt cancellation, Green New Deal, oh my! Basically, the entire progressive economic agenda and more can be paid by the federal government for without any borrowing or taxes unless Congress wants to.  

That is the real logical conclusion of Monetary Sovereignty:  when a government issues it's own currency, by definition it has infinite money, which is constrained only by the laws that the government passes.  Time to end the Big Lie and act like it for once.

(And no, going back on the gold standard now would be a dumb idea, as that would only lead to artificial scarcity of money.)

As for inflation, that can be cured by 1) raising interest rates (in the short term), and 2) counterintuitive as it sounds, increased federal spending to cure shortages by incentivizing increased production of goods and services that are experiencing shortages (food, energy, labor, computer chips, etc.) in the longer-term.  Problem solved.  Next.

(And of course, stop creating shortages via supply chain problems due to lockdowns!)

So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  We would be remiss if we did not also enumerate the more proximal causes in addition the more distal root cause of financialization.  Those include:  

• Legalization of usury (lifting of federal 12% usury cap on interest rates) (1978)
• Union-busting re-legitimized by Reagan against the PATCO strike, which made an example of them for the private sector going forward (1981)
• Legalization of stock buybacks (1982)
• General deregulation and tax cuts for the ultra-rich and corporations (1980s)
• General deregulation of big banks and Wall Street (1980s)
• Shrinking the social safety net by stealth, letting it lag behind inflation (1970s through 1990s))
• NAFTA (1994)
• Shrinking the social safety net again via welfare deform (1996)
• Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act, the firewall between commercial banks and investment banks (1999)
• China joining the WTO as a "most favored nation" (2001)
• More tax cuts for the rich (2001-2003)
• NOT learning the lessons of 2008, particularly the moral hazard created by the Wall Street bailouts (2008-2009)
• Offshoring/outsourcing of manufacturing jobs (ongoing)
• Pandemic relief money disproportionately going to, and benefitting, Wall Street much more than Main Street (2020-2021)
• And of course, the lockdowns which, when combined with the above, constituted the largest wealth transfer in history, from the poor and middle class to the ultra-rich and Wall Street, both nationally and globally (2020-2021)

Shout It From The Rooftops: LOCKDOWNS KILL!

LOCKDOWNS KILL.  We have always known from the get-go that collateral damage, up to and including excess deaths, would occur from lockdowns.  From delayed and denied medical treatment to missed cancer screenings to poverty and hunger to suicides to drug overdoses to violence to simply dying of loneliness and isolation, and so on, these brute-force blunt instruments are known to intrinsically inflict serious harm by design, and cannot ever be made "safe" in any meaningful sense no matter HOW many trillions of dollars (or pounds, euros, yuan, yen, rupees, bitcoin, etc.) you happen to throw at these problems.  Of course, poorer and/or more unequal societies generally experience the very worst outcomes of all, but even the very wealthiest and relatively equal societies still cannot be completely spared such consequences for very long either.

But now for the first time we can actually roughly quantify the magnitude of the short- and medium-term collateral deaths that occur.  In the USA, a new study the National Bureau of Economic Research found that lockdowns and related restrictions killed at LEAST a whopping 170,000 Americans, based on the number of non-Covid deaths among younger Americans in 2020-2021.  The Economist puts the number even higher at just under 200,000 deaths, and the NBER finds proportionally similar numbers in stricter European countries as well (but notably NOT Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and most types of mandates).  And having already established long ago that lockdowns don't really save any significant number of lives in the long run, this makes lockdowns all pain and no gain.  And the zealots who pushed these tyrannical policies, especially those who did so persistently in the face of mounting harm, have a LOT of blood on their hands!

Of course, those excess deaths include an unknown number of jab injury deaths as well from 2021 onwards.  But either way, the numbers are NOT flattering to the lockdown zealots OR the jab zealots for that matter.  And longer-term effects still remain unclear, though they are most likely NOT good at all.

And just like the Covid zealots themselves luurrrve to remind us all ad nauseam, deaths are merely the tip of a very large iceberg of overall harm.

And keep in mind that even "soft" or "organic" lockdowns (and ubiquitous masking) via social pressure are far from harmless either, at least when they drag on long enough.  Just ask Japan.  Their suicide rate, after two decades of impressive progress in reducing it, unfortunately spiked once again in 2020 and remained elevated through 2021.  Looks like antisocial distancing is still, well, antisocial, even when it is not formally mandated by the state.  That said, Japan's all-cause excess death rate was still ultimately better on balance than nearly every single "hard" lockdown country in the world.

Seriously, this was all a grave mistake that must NEVER, EVER be repeated.  Like, ever.

UPDATE:  Now even the UN admits that lockdowns killed hundreds of thousands of children globally.  Yes, really.  Let that sink in.  Lockdowns clearly took far more lives (and especially life years) then they saved on balance.  And it goes way beyond deaths too, as children's education, mental health, physical fitness, and overall development have also deteriorated as well, with associated long-term consequences that we will all have to reckon with at some point.  All this to very temporarily delay the inevitable at best.  In other words, we effectively destroyed a generation for nothing.  Will that generation, and future generations, ever forgive us?

Oh, and just in case you thought that lockdowns were still needed to prevent hospitals from being overrun in the short term, not only is there no hard evidence of lockdowns having had any such benefit in that regard compared to the Swedish no-lockdown strategy, but we also see that artificial scarcity from state-imposed policies was the real problem all along.

And next time someone says the "kids are resilient" platitude, be sure to show them this.

Further Evidence That Lockdowns, Closures, Masks, Vaccine Mandates, and NPIs Were Worse Than Useless

Still more evidence just keeps on piling up, from New York to Taiwan to Australia to Cornell University, that lockdowns, closures, masks, vaccine mandates, and NPIs have been utterly useless or worse than useless, as the ever-insightful Ian Miller (author of Unmasked) has noted recently.   It is so bleeding obvious now that no sane person can possibly deny it any longer.  Of course, as the old adage goes, people tend to go mad in crowds, but only recover one by one.

And school closures turned out to be even worse than we thought, per the latest evidence from Brazil, a country that famously eschewed lockdowns and most types of NPIs for the most part, but bizarrely had some of the longest school closures in the world, making it possible to readily tease out the costs and benefits of this one particular NPI.  One new study, which dovetails nicely with other studies in both rich and poor countries around the world, found that remote learning resulted in truly MASSIVE learning losses and increased dropout rates compared to in-person education.  And yet another Brazilian study found that it was ultimately all for naught, as the overall Covid death rates in communities who reopened schools earlier were not significantly different from those in communities who kept schools closed longer.  This was notably true even for high schools, which were once thought to be so much riskier than middle and elementary schools in terms of spreading the virus that even Sweden felt the need to close them during most of the first wave and again briefly at the very height of the second wave.  Thus, we can conclude that school closures at any age or grade level were basically all pain and no gain overall, at least for prolonged closures, and that remote learning simply does not work well.

(And of course there is plenty of evidence from the USA, UK, and elsewhere that not only are school closures exceedingly harmful to children, but also opening them encumbered with worse-than-useless dystopian restrictions like antisocial distancing and mask mandates is really not that much better either.)

In other news, study finds that water is wet, and that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

UPDATE:  Oh yeah, and about those jabs?  Well, those on balance also seem to be worse than useless as well for most people, and especially for kids.  Wonder no more where all those formerly rare but now ubiquitous reinfections are coming from these days.  That's not us just saying that, that is actually taken straight from Pf*zer's very own clinical trial of children under age 5.  Looks like Sweden, who never forced them on anyone and currently refuses to give these jabs to children under 12, and Florida, who also never forced them and currently refuses to purchase it for children under 5, are vindicated yet again.

And if you think Long Covid is bad, just wait till you hear about Long Lockdown and Long Jab Injury!  The data are piling up and increasingly showing exactly which side of the debate is on the right side of history.

As for efficacy, the Chinese inactivated whole virus vaccines (that is, actual vaccines) Sinovac and Sinopharm, really don't seem to be much better either, as evident in excess death rates in Chile, a country that largely preferred those ones at least three to one over the mRNA jabs.  And India's Covaxin, which is also made the same way as the Chinese ones, also seems to be quite lackluster as well.  Kinda like regular flu shots, in fact.  Same thing, different virus.

And once again, the ever-insightful Ian Miller thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

A recent Australian study confirmed via experiment that surgical masks (and by extension, cloth masks as well) are utterly useless against aerosolized viruses, as are even N95s unless they are properly fit-tested and NO mistakes are made.  The latter, of course, does NOT apply to the general population, as Germany unfortunately learned the hard way when their general N95 mandate failed so spectacularly to contain or control their Covid outbreak.

Are you listening, New Zealand?  Because the "clue phone" is ringing louder than ever now.

The Next Plandemic?

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic is basically over now as the virus and its descendents has transitioned to one degree or another of endemicity after reaching a level of functional herd immunity from mass infection (largely no thanks to the jabs!), no sooner does another potential one appear seemingly out of nowhere.  And that virus is.....MONKEYPOX! 

Monkeypox is mainly found in wild animals in parts of Africa where it is endemic at a low level, and related to smallpox but much milder and far less contagious between humans, hence it being quite rare in humans.  It generally requires VERY close contact to transmit it, and it is not known to spread in the absence of symptoms either.  But very recently there has been a rash (pun intended) of cases in several countries where it is not normally found among people with no history of travel to Africa, such as the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and now the USA.  The numbers remain quite small, less than 100 confirmed cases total and no deaths yet, but it is being closely monitored.

The ever-insightful Michael P. Senger (author of Snake Oil:  How Xi Jinping Shut Down The World) points out that, just like the COVID-19 pandemic was preceded by just a few months by a tabletop simulation of a SARS-like viral pandemic called "Event 201", so too was this monkeypox outbreak preceded just a year ago by another tabletop simulation of, and he quotes, a "global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox beginning in May 2022".  In fact, it takes place as beginning on May 15, 2022, accurate almost to the DAY.  Now, that is one eerie coincidence if there ever was one!  Or is it really a coincidence at all?  Things that really should make you go, hmmmm....

And Senger also points out that, at the center of both simulations is....George Fu Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control.  Yes, really.  And he and his colleagues have been awfully quiet lately.

But don't worry, they have plenty of vaccines ready now--smallpox vaccines to be exact, which supposedly also work on this related virus as well.  Bill Gates must be salivating like a Pavlov's dog as we speak!

Meanwhile, the NYC Health Department is currently a world outlier among public health agencies in recommending that people wear masks again (!) to protect against monkeypox.  Yes, really.  Not even the CDC is saying that, and there is really no hard evidence that masks work against monkeypox in the general population.  But that didn't stop NYC from advocating it, because reasons.  Or something. 

We at the TSAP do NOT believe that this will actually become a real pandemic, rather, this outbreak will most likely fizzle out on its own as a mere flash in the pan.  But as the past two and a half years has so painfully shown us all, we must never, ever underestimate what sorts of evil machinations the global oligarchy is capable of, both in terms of deliberate or "accidental" release of natural or manmade bioweapons, as well as collateral damage from illiberal and totalitarian responses to same.

And all this just as the infamous WHO pandemic treaty is being revised in an increasingly illiberal direction and being actively debated as we speak....

Either way, whether it is a hoax, a real threat, somewhere in between, or some combination of both, this has the fingerprints of the oligarchy all over it.

No More Excess Deaths!

While we officially crossed the grim 1 million threshold for cumulative Covid deaths in the USA since the beginning of the pandemic just the other day (based on official CDC numbers of course, which count all deaths "with Covid" and not necessarily "from Covid"), we also reached another significant milestone at the same time that the mainstream media did not seem to acknowledge.  According to the CDC's own data, there have not been any excess all-cause deaths at all since the week of March 12, 2022, despite "cases" rising significantly since then (especially in the Northeast) for the past two months thanks to both seasonality and the BA.2 subvariants.  Of course, it can take several weeks for excess deaths to be fully counted, but this is the longest stretch of time since March 2020 that we have gone without excess deaths.  In fact, deaths are currently running below normal, as the proverbial ferryman already got more than his fair share of money by now.

So what does this all mean?   It means that the virus is currently endemic, and that the pandemic is essentially over now.  It is basically the new seasonal flu and the new common cold rolled into one.  In fact, just before the different-enough Omicron variant hit, actual influenza made a comeback already before being temporarily suppressed by Omicron's viral interference.  And with no new major variants detectable on the horizon (only subvariants and sub-subvariants), it is unlikely that the resulting endemic equilibrium will be disrupted enough to create another major death and hospitalization wave anytime soon.  Even if there is a "casedemic" wave from time to time, herd immunity will prevail overall.

It is thus no wonder that even some top FDA officials are now finally saying that Americans should treat Covid like the flu.  What we at Team Reality have already been saying for a while now, in other words.

Bottom line:  Covid is endemic, Zero Covid is a pipe dream, and lockdowns, masks, and NPIs are useless or worse than useless.  The vast, vast majority of Americans, including children, have already had the virus at least once by now.  We know how to treat it effectively, and the largely failed "vaccines" have been around and available more than long enough to know that they weren't exactly worth waiting for.  It is long past time to adopt the "flu strategy" and move on.

UPDATE:  We are still learning more and more about how lockdowns, masks, and NPIs have done far more harm than good, especially for children, and also that "immunity debt" is in fact a real thing after all.  All for naught.  Hindsight is indeed, well, 2020.  Future generations will all surely look back with absolute horror and disbelief at the conduct of our "leaders" and their sheeple followers over the past two years!

We at Team Reality hate to say we told you so, but....

(Fortunately, the unusual spike in non-Covid excess deaths (read: mostly jab deaths plus numerous collateral deaths from lockdowns, closures, and NPIs) in the second half of 2021 and into very early 2022 now seems to have also since receded by now as well, though alas the damage is already done.)

Meanwhile, in Australia....

And for any natural immunity deniers still out there, particularly as regards to Omicron, this rebuttal is just for you.  Seriously, just take the L and move on.

Why A Cashless Society Is A Terrible Idea That Must Be Resisted At All Costs

In recent months, there has been more and more talk about phasing out cash in favor of a purely digital currency, especially a central bank digital currency (CBDC).  While the idea does have its benefits, such as making banking maneuvers and electronic transactions of all kinds simpler and almost completely frictionless, there is nonetheless one major, outweighing, and inescapable design flaw to such an otherwise promising idea that should make any reasonably sane and liberty-loving society reject the idea absolutely.   So what is this fatal flaw?

In a nutshell:  a purely digital currency would be controlled completely by whoever is in power, which generally means the greater oligarchy of government, central banks, and of course the elite "shadow government" who runs both.  It can be turned on and off at will by whoever controls it, which means that your bank account, credit cards, and stuff like that would effectively be turned on and off at will by these same oligarchs and technocrats.  Next up would be social credit scoring, and so on.  All of this would be a very effective way to control We the People in ways that the dictators of old could not have ever dreamed of!  And without physical cash as an alternative, there is no way to get around such a scheme (especially once they ban cryptocurrencies next on their agenda).

That more than outweighs any potential benefits of CBDCs.  It is inherently totalitarian, and one need look no further than China to see its rotten fruits in action.  Or Canada, when they cracked down on the Freedom Convoy and froze the bank accounts of them and their supporters, for an earlier stage of this.  Imagine what they could have done if cash no longer existed!

For the record, the TSAP fully supports a Universal Basic Income (UBI), provided it really is done with NO strings attached.  Done properly, contrary to the naysayers it will increase the bargaining power of the working class and will actually reduce perverse incentives and dependence on the government compared to the utterly broken status quo.  But we will NEVER, EVER support a CBDC or anything else that leads to the elimination of physical cash, period.

The oligarchs may be able control We the People to one degree or another regardless of the monetary system in place.  But they cannot control us 100% as long as physical cash exists as an alternative to digital currency.  Once cash is gone, all bets really are off!

A cashless society is, at best, a solution in search of a problem.  At worst, it is a sure gateway to an unprecedented level of irreversible dystopian totalitarianism.  We ignore all of this at our own peril.

Will Roe v. Wade Be Overturned?

A recent leak from the US Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority, reveals that the nearly half-century old precedent of Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned in the near future.  This, especially on the heels of one red state after another recently imposing more and more restrictions and bans on abortion, would be a disaster for women's reproductive rights, and slopes are FAR slipperier than they appear.  If a woman loses her reproductive rights, who knows what rights she can lose next?  This is one of the first of several steps towards Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare, at least in the red states.

This further drives home the point that we cannot afford to be complacent at all, even for major victories that were thought to be settled long ago.

If it does actually get overturned, women may want to go on a Lysistrata-style sex strike until either the SCOTUS reverses and restores Roe, and/or a federal law codifying Roe and/or a new constitutional amendment is passed guaranteeing reproductive rights to women.  Because otherwise, with the coming red wave (thanks in part to two years of the Democrats' self-sabotaging and illiberal Covid restrictions, and many years of silly performative wokeness), it really doesn't look very good at all.

UPDATE:  It should really go without saying, but we do NOT support, condone, or tolerate anyone vandalizing churches or places of worship of any kind, period.  That kind of behavior is grossly unethical, and also does nothing to address what governments are doing in regards to reproductive rights.  KNOCK IT OFF!

Also, here's another good piece exposing the rank hypocrisy of "pro-life" (anti-choice) zealots.

Surprise! New Study Finds Face Masks Are WORSE Than Useless

The ever-growing mountain of evidence can no longer be denied:  masks are literally worse than useless.  And a new study of European data confirms this by finding that higher rates of mask compliance had no statistically significant correlation with the number of Covid cases.  And worse, higher mask use was significantly correlated with MORE deaths.  

Reread that last sentence for a moment and let it sink in.  Indeed, more masks = MORE DEATHS.  (And more cases too, even if that was not statistically significant.)

This finding dovetails with the hypothesized Foegen Effect that was apparently observed in a recent German study that compared case fatality rates in various Kansas counties with different mask rules.  That is, face masks were hypothesized to backfire in terms of death rates by further concentrating and incubating the virus compared with no mask, as a result of repeatedly rebreathing the virus deeper into the lungs.  And the Kansas data bear that out, much like the new European data.  Only in the European data, there was no benefit in terms of reduced cases, while the Kansas data showed a modest reduction in cases, albeit with more deaths.  Thus, even the supposedly reduced cases in Kansas may have simply been an artifact of bias or residual or unmeasured confounding.  Either way, masks made it deadlier on balance, and perhaps even increased the likelihood of long-term sequelae in the survivors as well.

OOPS!  Maybe the powers that be should have thought of that before even recommending, let alone mandating, these worse than useless devices on the masses.  And maybe they should not have so casually tossed the wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage in their zeal to slake their overwhelming urge to panic.

And that's to say nothing of all the collateral harms of prolonged mask wearing as well, especially for kids (but really for all ages).  Those pushing mask mandates, and especially those who continued to do so despite mounting evidence against such illiberal and counterproductive measures, have a LOT to answer for (and a LOT of blood on their hands too).

The environment is also harmed as well by these ubiquitous "paper" (actually polypropylene plastic) masks.  Right now, there are more of these discarded non-biodegradable, single-use items in the oceans than there are jellyfish!  There is certainly nothing even remotely "green" about that at all.

If the True Spirit of America Party were to make a list of all of the biggest regrets we have ever had since our founding in 2009, our early and fairly brief advocacy of masks and mask mandates (albeit as an alternative to lockdowns) in the spring and early summer of 2020 would probably come in at #1, displacing our former foolish advocacy of fiscal austerity (and Austrian economics in general) prior to 2014 for the top spot on the list.  Done from a place of ignorance, we really should have listened to the past century worth of research that cast major doubt on (if not thoroughly debunked) the use of masks to stop airborne respiratory viruses of any kind.  The mosquito and chain-link fence analogy applies here.

The experts knew already that masks didn't work in 1918, and thus they were abandoned just a few months later in early 1919.  So why in the world did it take so much longer to realize that this time?

And to think that the mask mandates would only last a few weeks was naive at best.  The most important lesson of the past two years was that you cannot meet tyranny or insanity in the middle.  Give them an inch, and they take a mile every time.  Also, another lesson is that what appears to work in the lab, or at a small scale, does NOT necessarily work in the real world, especially on a large scale.  History has been made, all right.  Just not in a good way.

UPDATE:  A new editorial online at Yahoo! on May 6, 2022 now admits that there is no evidence that masks work.  For a mainstream editorial to say this shows that the Overton window has shifted dramatically in the past several months, in a very good way.

And yet another study confirms that masks lead to (re)breathing excessive and dangerous levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide) by the wearer.  Worse, the effect was larger in children than in adults.  In other news, study finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east.

And for the love of all that is good, STOP MASKING TODDLERS YESTERDAY!  It's no wonder there has been a mysterious increase in disease in that group recently.  NYC Mayor Eric Adams, I'm looking at YOU!  

And once again, the ever-insightful Ian Miller thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

Turmeric May Be Effective Against Covid, Particularly Omicron

The latest addition to the already-known 20+ possible treatments and prophylactics against Covid (particularly Omicron in this case) is apparently curcumin, the bioactive phytochemical component of the spice turmeric.  This is not actually surprising given that we already know that curcumin acts as a protease inhibitor (which Pfizer's magic pill does too).  And now a new study fleshed this out further with an additional effect, finding that curcumin also binds to specific amino acids on the Omicron-mutant viral spike protein, more so than chloroquine does.  Read that last sentence once more and let it sink in.

This may be one of several reasons why India, who really got slammed by Delta last year, did not get hit anywhere near as hard by Omicron or any of its subvariants to date, despite (or perhaps even partly because of) low vaccination rates and almost no mRNA vaccines (which seem to be a magnet for Omicron) used there at all.  Turmeric is famously used quite ubiquitously in Indian cuisine.  As is black pepper, which contains piperine, a compound known to boost the effectiveness of turmeric in general.

So turmeric (and don't forget the black pepper and/or olive oil to boost it) is one more thing to add to one's spice rack and medicine chest.  It is certainly a LOT safer than Big Pharma's latest nostrums.  Ditto for resveratrol, quercetin, and fisetin as well.  But remember, as the late Bill Sardi warns, do use caution not to overdo turmeric supplements, many of which can be far more potent than most people realize.

A Pandemic Report Card Study

Well, there is now finally a study comparing the several states in their performance during the pandemic.  The paper can be found here.  It looks at health, economic, and educational outcomes, and then combines them into a composite score and then converts to letter grades A through F.  Covid death rates are adjusted for age and metabolic health, while excess all-cause deaths are adjusted for age.

The results?  Spoiler alert:  Free and open states like Utah, Florida, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Vermont each got an A overall while the most stringent states such like New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, California, Illinois, and Washington, DC each got an F overall.  And the middling states were, well, somewhere in the middle overall.

Like the song says, some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.  And greater stringency only increases the odds of falling into the latter category.   The restrictions turned out to be not only useless, but actually worse than useless. 

How To Whip Inflation Now (WIN) In Five Easy Steps

Well, it's official.  The infamous "Inflation Dragon" has finally been rudely awakened after a long 40 year slumber, and what was thought to be merely "transitory" last year has turned out to be anything but.  This inflation has several causes, and the collateral damage from lockdowns (and the FERAL Reserve and federal government's attempts to paper it over with unprecedented spending, money creation, and rock-bottom interest rates), supply chain snarls, and corporate greed all played a part.  And that is before the most recent cause, namely the Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting sanctions that decreased fuel supplies and increased fuel prices, with knock-on effects on food prices as well.

We do know how to solve this though, despite the FERAL Reserve and federal government apparently being far too milquetoast to do so as of yet:

1. Raise interest rates, sharply and quickly, as high as it takes, until inflation drops below 3%.  Then, and only then, should rates be cut.
2. Shrink the Fed's massively bloated $9 trillion (!) balance sheet by ending Quantitative Easing (buying bonds) and beginning Quantitative Tightening (selling bonds).
3. Raise the reserve ratio to at least 10% and sterilize all excess reserves.
4. Suspend all fuel taxes for 90 days, if not all general sales taxes as well.
5. The federal government should buy fuel, food, etc. at a premium, and sell it to the population at a loss.  Just like the Pentagon already does with the military.  That would also incentvize production as well, and thus reduce the supply shortages that are the root cause of inflation.

And it should go without saying, but also we need to also end all remaining Covid restrictions and states of emergency, and yesterday is not soon enough.  And the Russia-Ukraine war needs to be brought to a swift and diplomatic end ASAP, or at the very least no further escalations.  The sanctions against Russia have basically served their purpose already now, so let's not cut off our proverbial nose to spite our face.

And even if raising interest rates high enough ends up triggering a recession like in 1980-1982, remember that persistently high inflation can have an even worse effect in the long run, so temporarily hiking rates is the lesser evil here.  And once inflation is under control, then cutting rates fairly quickly should ameliorate any lingering adverse effects of high interest rates.  Another round of stimulus checks may also be called for once inflation is finally beaten.

Raising interest rates works by increasing the demand for dollars via the reward for holding such dollars, thereby increasing the value of the currency.  It is this effect, far more so than the decreased supply of dollars, that really squeezes inflationary expectations out of the system.  Of course, keeping rates too high for too long increases "cost-push" inflation by increasing borrowing costs, so it is a balancing act.

As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell notes, the best way to cure stagflation is to 1) raise interest rates to cure the inflation, and 2) increase federal deficit spending to cure the stagnation.  Which is exact what happened in the early 1980s, albeit with a lag between measures 1 and 2.  Had there been no lag between the two, the effectively "engineered recession" may not have even occurred at all, or would have been much milder.  

As for oil (and thus gasoline, diesel, etc.) prices in the 1980s, well, the market ultimately worked its magic and the oil shortage eventually turned into an oil glut.  And prices subsequently crashed to levels not seen in a while, not to rise even close to their previous peak until decades later.  Funny how that works when markets are left to their own devices long enough.

One mistake NOT to make, of course, is government-imposed price and wage controls like Nixon did, which inevitably lead to shortages and rationing, making the problem worse in the long run.  Prices are essentially signals for the market, and trying to bluntly and artificially force prices down by legislative or executive fiat has a very long history of backfiring.  That said, a "windfall profits tax" on corporations would go a long way to taming the root causes of inflation from the corporate greed angle.

So what are we waiting for?

FINAL THOUGHT:  Some may argue that all of this inflation, and the policies that promote it, is a deliberate "controlled demolition" of the world's major currencies, so that the globalist oligarchy (WEF, IMF, World Bank, and all of their many tentacles including the various central banks and corporate banks) can usher in a global Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and global Universal Basic Income (UBI) after crashing the dollar and other national (or supranational) currencies.  That may be so, thus the best thing that Monetarily Sovereign nations like the USA can do would be to 1) Increase the value of their own currency by hiking interest rates yesterday, 2) Issue their own UBIs (with truly NO strings attached) in their own currencies to pre-empt the globalists by beating them to it, and 3) Do NOT even THINK about phasing out cash in favor of purely digital currencies of any kind, and/or giving up the nation's Monetary Sovereignty to any global or supranational entity!  What the globalist oligarchs want is a totalitarian's dream come true, with plenty of strings attached in the form of CCP-style "social credit" scoring on steroids--and the worst nightmare for the rest of us.

JUNE UPDATE:  The Treasury has another tool they can use, the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), to help increase production and thus reduce the large and widening mismatch between supply and demand.  That would actually target the supply side of the equation, something that merely raising interest rates cannot do.  So what are they waiting for?

State Of The Planet Address 2022

It is now 2022, and this year the TSAP will not waste any time giving our annual State of the Planet Address as we do every year.  Yes, we know it is a bit of a downer to say the least.  So sit down, take off your rose-colored glasses, and read on:

Our planet is in grave danger, and has been for quite some time now.  We face several serious long term problems:  climate change, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, overharvesting, energy crises, and of course pollution of many kinds.  Polar ice caps are melting.  Rainforests have been shrinking by 50 acres per minute.  Numerous species are going extinct every year.  Soil is eroding rapidly.  Food shortages have occurred in several countries in recent years.  Weather has been getting crazier each year thanks to climate change.  We have had numerous and often record-breaking wildfires, floods followed by long periods of drought, and a "storm of the century" at least once a year for the past several years.   And it is only getting worse every year.  In fact, 2020 is tied with 2016 as having been the hottest year on record.  Look no further than the three record-breaking storms in the past 15 years:  Katrina (2005, highest storm surge), Sandy (2012, largest diameter), and now Harvey (2017, a 1000-year flood, and overall worst hurricane on record), followed by Irma and Maria which devastated Puerto Rico, for a taste of the not-too-distant future.  And that was before Hurricane Michael devastated a rather large chunk of Florida.  And now Texas is being plagued by wildfires.

None of this is an accident of course.  These problems are man-made, and their solutions must also begin and end with humans.  We cannot afford to sit idly by any longer, lest we face hell and high water in the not-too-distant future.  Our unsustainable scorched-earth policy towards the planet has to end.  Yesterday.

While we do not invoke the precautionary principle for all issues, we unequivocally do for the issue of climate change and any other environmental issues of comparable magnitude.  In fact, for something as dire as climate change, as of 2015 we now support a strong "no regrets" approach.  With no apologies to hardcore libertarians or paleoconservatives, in fact. We are not fazed one bit by the naysayers' pseudoscience as it does not really "debunk" the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The only serious debate is about how fast it will happen, and when the tipping point (or points) will occur. It is not a matter of if, but when. And the less precarious position is to assume it is a real and urgent problem. We need to reduce CO2 emissions to the point where the CO2 concentration is at or below 350 ppm, ASAP.  And it is currently at an unsustainably high level of 400+ ppm, and growing rapidly every year.

Given the latest IPCC report, which is truly nothing short of horrifying, the general consensus among climate scientists is that we have only at most 12 years left (now more like 11) to act radically before truly catastrophic climate change is a foregone conclusion.  And 2030 will be here before we know it.  

Now THAT is a national emergency!  And a global one, in fact.  Thus, a full-steam-ahead, Green New Deal 2.0 is LONG overdue.  We have already squandered over a whole decade since Copenhagen, and we cannot afford to squander even one more day, let alone another decade.

Solving the problem of climate change will also help to solve the other ecological crises we are facing, for they all ultimately have the same root causes, not least of which is our insatiable addiction to dirty energy.  However, there is a right way to solve it, and several wrong ways.  Technology is important, but it won't be decisive on its own (economics geeks may recall Jevons Paradox).  The real problem is the paradigm that our society has been following, and that system is based on wetiko, the parasite of the mind and cancer of the soul.  It often seems that the only difference between capitalism and cannibalism is the spelling.

The TSAP endorses the ideas embodied in Steve Stoft's new book Carbonomics, most notably a tax-and-dividend system that would tax carbon (i.e. fossil fuels) at the source, and give all Americans an equal share of the revenue generated from this tax.  (Note that our proposal to tax natural resources and pay out an Alaska-like citizen's dividend already includes this.)  Yes, prices for various things would undoubtedly rise due to this tax, all else being equal, but the dividend will allow Americans to pay for this increase. The average American would in fact break even, but those who (directly or indirectly) use less energy than average will effectively pay less tax, while the energy hogs will effectively be taxed more, as they should be. Thus it is certainly not a regressive tax, and may even be mildly progressive. This is both the simplest and most equitable way to reduce carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution, not to mention waste of dwindling non-renewable resources. The real challenge is getting the feds to accept something that won't directly benefit them (in the short term).  Carbonomics also includes other good ideas, such as improving how fuel economy standards are done, and crafting a better verison of the Kyoto treaty.   

In addition to the ideas in Carbonomics, we also support several other measures to help us end our addiction to fossil fuels once and for all.  Our Great American Phase-Out plan would phase out all fossil fuels by 2030 at the latest, via alternative energy, efficiency, and conservation.  One good idea to further the development of alternative energy would be the use of feed-in tariffs for renewable power sources. 

Of course, it is not enough to stop emitting carbon dioxide, we also need to remove the current excess levels of it from the atmosphere as well, as that stuff can otherwise linger for centuries and continue wreaking havoc on the climate.  We support ending net deforestation completely, planting a LOT more trees, and putting carbon back in the ground through carbon sequestration. One method is known as biochar, a type of charcoal made from plants that remove carbon dioxide from the air, that is subsequently buried. This is also an ancient method of soil fertilization and conservation, originally called terra preta.  It also helps preserve biodiversity.  Another crucial method would be regenerative organic farming, which also turns the soil into an effective carbon sink as well.  And we will most likely also need to employ higher-tech methods of sucking carbon out of the air as well.

We've said this before, and we'll say it again.  Our ultimate goal is 100% renewable energy by 2030, but we need to hedge our bets.  We can phase out fossil fuels, or we can phase out nuclear power, but we can't do both at the same time--and fossil fuels need to be phased out first, and quickly.  Nuclear is doing a pretty good job of phasing itself out as it is.  So let's not get rid of it prematurely.  

LENR (low energy nuclear reactors) and fusion power are also worth considering.

But the biggest elephant in the room (make that the elephant in the Volkswagen) is overpopulation.  It does not make for pleasant dinner conversation, but it must be addressed or else all other causes become lost causes in the long run. We absolutely need to have fewer kids, or nature will reduce our population for us, and the latter will NOT be pleasant to say the least. The TSAP believes in voluntarily reducing the total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.5-1.9 children per woman to do so, but let us be clear that we do NOT support draconian and/or coercive measures of population control (like China has used).  We believe that more liberty is the answer, not less.  In fact, the two most effective means of reducing the birthrate are poverty reduction and female empowerment.

Fortunately, America's TFR has recently dropped to a record low of about 1.73 with no indication of rising back above replacement rate in the near term.  And with the massive social and economic fallout from the pandemic and especially the lockdowns, the TFR is forecast to drop to 1.6 for 2021 (and even that is most likely an overestimate).  But clearly we cannot keep growing and growing, that's for sure (in fact, we need to shrink). And our insatiable addiction to economic growth (despite being decoupled from well-being) is also every bit as harmful as overpopulation as well, if not more so.  Growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell,  is clearly one of the most asinine obsessions our nation (and world) has ever had.  We clearly need to transition to a steady-state economy, most likely following a period of what Naomi Klein calls "selective degrowth" as well.  And to do that, we need a radical paradigm shift to happen yesterday.  Put another way, we need to leave room for Nature, lest Nature not leave room for us.  We have been warned, decades ago in fact.  Unfortunately, such warnings have largely fallen of deaf ears until very recently.

Yesterday is the time to jettison the Twin Big Lies that "everybody must work for a living" and "everybody must procreate".  Because doing so is the sine qua non of any realist plan to avert ecological catastrophe.

Last but not least, the TSAP now believes that as long as men remain in charge, we are all merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Let's face it, it ain't gonna be us fellas who will save the world, as the past 7000 years or so have shown.  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it peace.  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, and our proverbial 15 minutes of fame is almost up.  Only when women finally take over and reclaim their rightful position as the new leaders of the free world--and they will--will there be any real permanent solution.

Bottom line: we need to take the environment much more seriously than we do now.  We ignore it at our own peril.  And while the current administration in DC clearly doesn't care, We the People must act nonetheless.  With no apologies to the deniosaurs or Big Oil, Big Gas, or Dirty Coal.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  Not saying it won't happen, of course--it will eventually peak and decline at some point--but climate change kinda supersedes it.  While conventional oil most likely has already peaked, there is more than enough total oil (including unconventional) to deep-fry the Earth--and most of which needs to stay in the ground if we wish to avoid catastrophic climate change.  Fossil fuels are, after all, what Buckminster Fuller referred to as our planet's "energy savings account", which we need to wean ourselves off of and save just in case of a planetary emergency--and he first said this in 1941!

So quibble all you want, but the truth must be faced head-on.  Hindsight is 2020, and we have a planet to save.  So let's roll!

UPDATE:  We never thought we would ever have to say this, but the TSAP does NOT support a "climate lockdown" or any other type of lockdown for that matter.  It is at best a category error, and would do far more harm than good in the long run.  And of course it flies in the face of the basic principles of anything remotely resembling a free society.  So take that off the table now!

It should also go without saying, but we at the TSAP DO NOT support the WEF "Great Reset", social credit scoring, or a cashless society (aka CBDC) either.  Those are a totalitarian's dream come true, and our worst nightmare come true for the rest of us.  We believe that the answer is MORE liberty and democracy, not less.