Saturday, July 26, 2025
Fascism Begets Fascism
Thursday, January 9, 2025
Once Again, The Official COVID Narrative Goes Up In Flames
It's 2025 now, five full years after the "novel coronavirus" that became known as COVID-19 made its official debut. Aside from a few dead-enders and true believers here and there, nearly everyone has long since moved on from the pandemic, which officially ended somewhere between the second half of 2022 and the end of the first half of 2023, depending on the country and whose source you follow.
And just recently, a pair of new studies came out that were pretty damning indeed about practically everything that was done during the pandemic in terms of countermeasures. That's in addition to all of the other studies we at the TSAP have cited over the years.
One new multi-country study found that school closures were basically useless or worse than useless, at least in the long run. Specifically, they found no correlation between school reopenings during ether Delta or Omicron, and trends in adult Covid deaths and hospitalizations. This is especially damning to the narrative because the biggest justification they had was that the school closures weren't to protect the kids themselves so much as to protect the adults around them, consequences to the kids themselves (and boy, were there plenty!) being a mere afterthought. Thus, even on their very own Machiavellian and cold utilitarian terms of essentially using children and teens as human shields to protect adults, such medium- to long-term school closures have clearly been shown to be an EPIC FAIL, and need to be permanently removed from any serious consideration going forward.
Another study, this one in Japan (arguably the mask and jab champions of the world), found that the jabs were also quite counterproductive indeed in terms of contracting the virus. That is, the odds of contracting Covid actually increased with the number of jab doses, which is negative efficacy. Wow. And adjusting for confounders only made this perverse correlation even stronger:
The odds of contracting COVID-19 were higher among vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated individuals, with an unadjusted OR of 1.65 (95% CI: 1.27-2.14, p < 0.001) and an adjusted OR of 1.85 (95% CI: 1.33-2.57, p < 0.001).
That explains how Japan, a country with one of the highest jab rates in the world, has had roughly a DOZEN waves (!) of the virus, give or take depending on who's counting, and how the biggest (and deadliest) waves of them all didn't come until AFTER the jabs. Let that sink in. Oops, maybe they should have thought of that possibility BEFORE bringing these jabs to market in the first place.
But wait, there's more! That same Japanese study also looked at other behaviors as well. As one Redditor, MembraneAnomaly, put it so well:
This bit is very interesting:
Preventive behaviors assessed included regular gargling, mask-wearing, bathing frequency, avoiding crowded places, room ventilation, eating habits, sleep patterns, exercise habits, and maintaining humidity in living spaces.
Behavioral analysis indicated that a reduced frequency of bathing and exercising was significantly associated with higher COVID-19 infection rates (p < 0.05).
Now look at the table under "Demographic characteristics" to find p-values for the association between reducing bathing and exercise and contracting COVID (0.016 and 0.01), compared to mask-wearing (0.644) and avoiding crowds (0.664). Nuff said! Stay healthy, exercise, keep clean - and dump the mask!
Great advice indeed, which is basically what used to be called common sense. Which unfortunately, is not nearly as common as it should be. (For those who are unfamiliar with what p-values mean, this means that the effect of masks, even in the land of mask champions, was statistically insignificant, indistinguishable from being due to chance.)
And just in case anyone cries "but source control!", the fact that Japan has still had a dozen or so waves even with all of that masking really puts the lie to that specious claim too.
So jabs and masks are also revealed once again to be useless, and in the case of the former, worse than useless. Again, masking for the general population should also be permanently removed from any serious consideration going forward, and any vaccines in the future for any disease need to be properly designed and properly tested before we even THINK about unleashing them on the public, and certainly never forced or coerced in any way.
And just like with masks, we have already completely laid waste long ago to any case for lockdowns and business closures and and stuff like that as well. Those were the easiest to debunk, in fact. And again, going forward, those need to be removed from any serious consideration as well.
And so once again, like the song says, the official Covid narrative goes up in flames...in 24 frames.
(Mic drop)
UPDATE: One of the very few bright spots in the new Trump regime is that RFK Jr. (if confirmed) would of course be a decent bulwark against this sort of thing happening again under his watch. And while Trump himself is not exactly trustworthy, to put it mildly, he did begin the process of pulling the USA out of the World Health Organization.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
To Refurbish Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), One Must Admit That Lockdowns Were Indeed Harmful On Balance
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been taking quite a drubbing lately. Some say it has been thoroughly discredited since it was de facto practiced (to an extent) during the pandemic, and massive inflation resulted. But that glib commentary misses the real root cause of the inflation: the shortages of goods, services, and labor resulting from the massive global supply chain disruptions, which in turn resulted from the lockdowns and related restrictions.
(And it's not entirely due to ignorance, since those naysayers actually DO admit as much about the lockdowns, but yet they still speciously put most, if not all, of the blame on MMT, because reasons.)
MMT per se was never the problem. But to refurbish it, one must admit that lockdowns and related restrictions did very real harm, something that the pseudo-left is loath to do. Not that MMT is flawless, by any means. But Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's related theory, Monetary Sovereignty (MS), essentially fixes those flaws, especially when he (belatedly) jettisoned the specious idea of interest rate hikes (which only deepened the stagflationary quagmire) as an inflation-fighting tool. A good essay about the differences between the two can be found here.
In a nutshell, when you literally shut down the broader economy in most of the world for an extended period of time (which greatly disrupts and shrinks supply), AND then try to paper over it by printing unprecedented amounts of money (which stokes demand), that WILL be inflationary. But the money printing was NOT the root cause, and remember that if the powers that be didn't do that, there would have been a full-blown depression, if not a complete collapse of civilization as we knew it, and within a couple weeks the masses would have been furiously calling for their heads with torches and pitchforks. Or, they could have simply adopted the "flu strategy" and NOT imposed any restrictions, and perhaps implemented a more modest (but more brief and front-loaded) stimulus package, and this whole stagflationary quagmire could have been avoided. And as the experience of Sweden and other countries has famously shown, it would not have resulted in any more excess deaths than occurred with lockdowns. Hindsight is quite literally 2020.
It's not that lunch cannot ever be free. It actually can be, at least to a point. But truly lockdowns can never be a free lunch, no matter how much money gets printed to paper over the massive holes they make.
As for the specious notion that MMT (and by extension, MS) is a "luxury belief", well, we know that the real luxury beliefs are austerity and artificial scarcity. Not to mention lockdowns as well.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Hindsight Is Literally 2020
Hindsight is quite literally 2020.
Four years ago (roughly) today, the world lost its marbles and began to shut down. And as we have noted before, it was effectively all for naught. In the end, the lockdowns, masks, and jabs did more harm than good on balance.
From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article last year, in a nutshell:
"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.
"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."
That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"
Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in. Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc. Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.
And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again. And again and again.
Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.
It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic. And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections. And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons. A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.
Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.
What should have been done? "Letting it rip", that is, "adopting the flu strategy", ultimately would have in fact been the least-worst alternative in the long run, all things considered. That is precisely what a properly right-brain dominant person would have advocated from the get-go, at least if they were properly informed and NOT bombarded 24/7 with fearporn news media.
Looks like "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be renamed "Melbourne Syndrome" because #SwedenGotItRight. The verdict is in. In terms of cumulative all-cause excess mortality, Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and masks and such, actually came out as one of the best in Europe, and not very different from their much stricter neighbors in the long run. Ditto for other countries and US states that largely ignored the plandemic, but did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors. Lockdowns, masks, and jab mandates were thus worse than useless.
On March 12, 2020, interestingly enough, the band The Killers released the song "Caution". The song, while not about the virus, is nonetheless basically about the theme of "throwing caution to the wind". And in hindsight, that is ironically pretty much what should have been done in regards to the virus, at least for the vast majority of the population who was at relatively low risk overall, whose resulting "herd immunity" would have thus ultimately protected those who were truly vulnerable to the virus. Lockdowns, on the other hand, merely dragged things out and ultimately put the genuinely vulnerable at greater risk. The science of epidemiology and public health didn't really change, but the politics sure did.
And failing that, once those who were genuinely fooled (including myself somewhat as well, regrettably) had wised up early on, the second least-worst policy would have been to, as the same song says, "go straight from zero to the Fourth of July" in terms of reopening and ending all restrictions at once. That's right, ALL at once, all the way back to 2019 normal, period, and don't look back.
But instead, the unholy "public health" trinity of collective action problems, prevention paradox, and precautionary principle had all been turned on their heads and weaponized against We the People. Benjamin Franklin spins in his grave.
Moral of the story: NEVER give up any rights "temporarily", that you are not willing to say goodbye to forever. Or at the very least, you will not get them back without a fight.
Indeed, hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.
Saturday, July 1, 2023
How To Create A Deadly Plandemic In Five Easy Steps
- "Accidentally" release a fairly ordinary virus (ordinary because one's GOF abilities were quite inferior), that can only be detected with a special test (that is conveniently easy to manipulate), and then blame it on the Chinese (even if it was probably a joint venture).
- Euthanize old folks, typically done with midazolam, and blame it on the virus.
- Deny regular early treatment with antibiotics and corticosteroids, for those who one cannot easily euthanize.
- Introduce a "cure" in the form of a novel and experimental "vaccine", which (oops!) turns out to be deadly in itself, and then have the GALL to blame it on the unvaccinated.
- Slowly and quietly re-allow the use of various antivirals and such that were previously mocked, discouraged, censored, or banned, in addition to antibiotics and corticosteroids, and then let the "vaccine" take credit for any improvements that result.
Saturday, April 1, 2023
What Was The Cruelest April Fool's Joke In All Of Recorded History?
What was the absolute cruelest April Fool's joke in all of recorded history? "Two weeks to flatten the curve". After all, had it actually been true, it would have literally ended on April 1, 2020.
And as The Who (not to be confused with the WHO, the World Health Organization!) famously sang:
"We won't get fooled again!"
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Three Nutrients. Three Tablets. Three Lost Years That Could Have Been Averted
We have noted this before, but we will again.
From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article, in a nutshell:
"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.
"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."
That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"
Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in. Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc. Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.
And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again. And again and again.
Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.
It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic. And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections. And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons. A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.
Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.
And don't forget to read the eye-opening Spartacus Letter if you haven't already.
In other words, all of the lockdowns, closures, masks, jabs, and NPIs were basically in vain. Not that these things would have ever really had any hope or redeeming quality in the first place, of course.
Three nutrients. Three tablets. Three lost years that we will never get back, that could have all been averted, to say nothing of all of the gargantuan excess deaths that resulted. How will they ever live this down? And will future generations ever forgive us?
Thursday, February 16, 2023
The Verdict Is In: Freedom Wins
We had already noted that Sweden was thoroughly vindicated for eschewing lockdowns, masks, and overall stringency during the pandemic. Just like Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and even Brazil did similar to or better than their stricter neighbors in terms of cumulative all cause deaths as well.
"But America is different!" the lockdown zealots speciously claim. We are somehow too affluent, too spoiled, too poor, too unequal, too racist, too diverse, too multicultural, too fractured, too lazy, too workaholic, too unhealthy, too coddled, too independent, too dependent, too immature, too precocious, too low-trust, too credulous, too individualistic, too herd mentality, too smart for our own good, too stupid, too educated, too uneducated, too fragile, too many problems already, too (insert favorite adjective here, the more contradictory the better) to be able to even compare ourselves to other countries, let alone copy even in part what the world's few remaining free countries did without disastrous consequences resulting. Or something.
Of course, in this country, twelve US states (nearly a quarter of all states) basically eschewed lockdowns as well, most famously South Dakota, and several additional states were either much less stringent than the national average and/or only locked down briefly before opening up and lifting restrictions fairly quickly, most famously Florida, Georgia, and Texas.
And yet, now a new 50-state study finds that among US states and DC, less stringent states were not significantly different from more stringent ones in terms of health outcomes, but they did do significantly better on economic outcomes and education outcomes as well as overall outcomes. For example, when adjusted for age and pre-existing conditions, Florida and California (with polar opposite policies) ended up being within error bounds of each other and the national average in terms of death rates. And as we have noted earlier, this was not the only American study that arrived at similar (if not even more damning) conclusions either, namely that lockdowns and related restrictions were essentially all pain and no gain. Thus it looks like freedom wins hands down, both in the USA as well as abroad.
Let America be America again!
UPDATE: Yet another international study found that not only were lockdowns, overall stringency, and jabs associated with higher death rates, but also HCQ and IVM were associated with lower death rates, just as the late Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko famously predicted back in 2020. In a world of Lysenkos, be a Zelenko.
Thursday, November 10, 2022
The Verdict Is In: Sweden Wins!
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Over 400 Studies On Our Side
BREAKING NEWS: According to Dr. Paul Alexander, here are now over 400 studies that expose the utter failure of all of the COVID-related mandates and compulsory restrictions in the real world, and ZERO studies of even halfway-decent quality that show the opposite with any real confidence. Once you exclude all of the fatally-flawed and poorest quality studies, and look at enough real-world data points, one can firmly conclude that all of these measures have done far more harm than good on balance. And they should NEVER, EVER, EVER be repeated. Like, ever.
Dr. Alexander's article discusses compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns, shelter-in-place, school closures, masks and mask mandates, etc. and essentially debunks them all. Scratch that, he debones, fillets, slices, dices, and juliennes each and every one of these sacred cows, and pretty much lays waste to their remains. However, his article does not touch on the most recent addition to the mix: the now ubiquitous "vaccines" and the disgustingly tyrannical mandates and passports of same. That is where the ever-insightful Steve Kirsch comes in, noting that these jabs literally kill more people than they save, and a fortiori for children to the tune of 117 to 1. And that data was largely before the boosters became widely used, so that is most likely a lower bound for the adverse effects going forward if we continue on the path we are on. They are also known to be very "leaky" (i.e. they don't stop transmission), and are thus NOT fit for the purpose of mass vaccination even if they were somehow perfectly safe (which they're not).
Thus, to put it in medical terminology, "the therapeutic window is closed" for all of these mandates and restrictions, period. We must scrap the whole lot of them, cold turkey, never to repeat them again. And the same is clearly true for these "vaccines" themselves, with maybe the exception of some extremely vulnerable and high risk individuals who still have yet to receive them for whatever reason. Plenty of early treatments and prophylactics exist that completely obviate any need for these jabs, we just need to stop denying and censoring them, and start using them. And yesterday is NOT soon enough!
FINAL THOUGHT: If anyone still thinks that vaccine mandates or passports are somehow necessary OR sufficient to prevent another lockdown, well, we've got a nice bridge over the Danube River we'd like to sell you. As they are now learning the hard way in Europe, you cannot bargain with the devil and hope to come out in one piece! Cold turkey is the only way out of this mess for good, period. When you try to meet insanity and tyranny in the middle, you will always lose, each and every single time.
UPDATE: Looks like Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates, has ultimately been vindicated after all. Their cumulative all-cause excess mortality per capita (by far the best indicator of all) was well below the European average, and believe it or not, not very different from their neighbors when you include all of their neighbors. And Brazil, who had a reputation for being lax, and even Belarus, Nicaragua, and Tanzania, who largely ignored the pandemic, also fared quite similarly to their much stricter neighbors as well in terms of excess deaths. And here in the USA, we see that Florida's excess death rate was roughly equivalent to California's despite the latter being much, much stricter overall than the former, AND despite the former also having a much older and fatter population as well. Game. Set. Match.
Another study finds that babies born during the pandemic have stunted development compared to babies born before the pandemic. Interestingly, no significant difference was seen between babies born to mothers who contracted the virus during pregnancy and those who did not. Rather, it was the mothers' stress from all of the panic and lockdowns that had a toxic effect on the babies across regardless of the virus itself. Let that sink in for a moment. Now add in all the ubiquitous antisocial distancing and masks they experienced during early childhood as well, and it gets even worse still.
As for the Nu Xi Omicron variant, it is looking more and more like an intellectual checkmate for the purveyors of the official narrative. Both "Team Vaccine" and "Team Zero Covid" are about to eat some serious crow, while the inevitable transition from pandemic to endemic has been greatly accelerated.
And now, the CDC has finally decided to pull the plug on the fraudulent PCR test, effectively December 31, 2021. Because they know that the gig is up, the narrative has been completely laid waste, and effectively ending PCR testing is literally the only way they can declare "victory" over Covid at this point.
Don't forget to check out this deep dive by the ever-insightful Julius Ruechel too.
Friday, November 26, 2021
WTF Happened To The Left ?
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Cold Turkey Is The Only Way Out
We at the TSAP have said it before, and we will say it again, shouting it from the rooftops. The ONLY way out of this madness is to go cold turkey from all of these restrictions and mandates. Period. And yesterday is not soon enough!
That means, effective immediately:
- No more lockdowns, hard or soft
- No more curfews
- No more business closures or capacity restrictions (unless voluntarily)
- No more closures of anything
- No more mask mandates, anywhere
- No bans or restrictions on gatherings or events, public or private
- No restrictions on places of worship
- No more travel restrictions, whether international or domestic
- All schools fully open, in-person, no antisocial distancing, masks optional
- All colleges fully open, in-person, no antisocial distancing, masks optional
- No more mass testing of anyone without symptoms. Otherwise, use rapid testing first. For the PCR test, reduce the cycle threshold to 25
- No more quarantines of anyone without symptoms
- No vaccine mandates, coercion, discrimination, or Covid "passports" of any kind, anywhere, period
And as long as there is no major outbreak locally, hospitals and nursing homes should also return to normal as well 100%. It is LONG past time to stop denying visitors, and stop artificially and arbitrarily delaying and cancelling so-called "elective" procedures and treatments. And with the proper early treatment and prophylaxis, hospitals will NOT be overwhelmed anymore than during a typical flu season. As for the staff, aggressive rapid testing should be done regularly regardless of vaccination status (as vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus), and preference should be given to staff who are naturally immune because they have already had the virus and recovered (and are thus the very least likely to catch and spread the virus). That's it.
Heresy, I know. But it has been nearly two years now, and for better or worse, the virus is here to stay. It cannot be eradicated at this point, as that train has left the station long ago. We really only have two choices now and forever: 1) learn to live with the virus, and be honest about it, or 2) learn to live with the virus, and pretend otherwise.
It has been observed that it is historically extremely rare for any respiratory viral pandemic to last longer than 18 months. And they seldom have more than two major waves, three tops. Yet here we are. So all of our trying in vain to outsmart the virus, and/or hide from it, only served to drag it out that much longer, more painfully, and with out-of-season waves as well. And plenty of collateral damage on top of all that as well.
This only ends when We the People finally stop complying with these mandates, cold turkey. Or at least when a critical mass of people do so.
So what are we waiting for?
Sunday, October 3, 2021
The Two Faces Of The Branch Covidians
The Branch Covidian cult is really two cults in one: Team Zero COVID, and their sometimes-rival, sometimes-ally, Team Vaccine. They can easily be confused for one another by the uninitiated. Both vehemently deny natural immunity, deny and dislike the use of early treatment and prophylaxis, grossly exaggerate the risks of the virus particularly to children and young people, and believe that only their own technocratic solutions possibly can save us. Both reek of authoritarianism no matter how much they deny it. Both luuurrrve to move the goalposts, cherry-pick data, shift the burden of proof, and indulge in other ridiculous logical fallacies routinely and often disingenuously. Both have plenty of true believers along with the consummate liars and phonies in charge. And like doctors and thieves, they both wear masks as part of their uniform (at least when the cameras are rolling). So far, they seem like they would be natural allies.
But the similarity of the two cults ends with the differences in their eschatology, soteriology, and sometimes even cosmology at times. Here they go from allies to rivals. In a nutshell, Team Zero COVID believes that complete global eradication of the virus is not only still possible, but it is the only morally acceptable outcome no matter the cost (as long as someone else pays it), while Team Vaccine believes that while eradication is unlikely, the only way we can learn to live with the virus and go back to something approaching normal is if everyone in the world gets vaccinated as the ultimate endgame.
And while neither team opposes lockdowns, mask mandates, or vaccine mandates, Team Zero COVID supports the first two the most while Team Vaccine supports the latter the most, even though many prefer a "layered" approach. Both support achieving their own goals by any means necessary, while individual civil and human rights, economic well-being, overall community well-being, child development, or any other consideration are essentially worth zilch to them. Even public health itself is to be ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of the Branch Covidians, insofar is it not directly related to the virus that they slavishly fear so much to the point of idolatry.
It is now becoming very clear that vaccines alone will not eradicate the virus even if 100% of the world gets vaccinated over and over again, as these vaccines are far too "leaky" to do the job. And there are animal reservoirs as well. So what about the Zero COVID strategy? Well, the therapeutic window has closed on that one long ago, as the horse has bolted and the genie is out of the bottle. The virus SARS-CoV-2 is quickly becoming endemic (if it isn't already) and will be with us forever, no matter how many lockdowns, closures, masks, or vaccines we throw at it. It will still be here in 2030, 2040, 2050, and beyond. So we literally have two choices, basically: 1) learn to live with the virus, and be honest about it, or 2) learn to live with the virus, and pretend otherwise. Yes, those are literally the only choices now, regardless of any wishful thinking to the contrary. And to still pretend otherwise now, after 18 months of clear evidence, is to bear false witness and to worship false idols.
And the best way to defeat both of the two cults is to do what they are doing to the rest of us: divide-and-conquer. Play the two faces of them against each other, and refuse to comply with their increasingly insane, draconian, and totalitarian edicts.
Zero COVID is a pipe dream, vaccines are nowhere near as good as advertised, and lockdowns and NPIs are basically useless. The only thing that actually works, aside from natural herd immunity, is early treatment and prophylaxis. It's long past time to be honest about that, live our lives, and move on.
Team Reality for the win!
UPDATE: Now that more and more of the chattering classes and MSM are finally, if grudgingly, coming around to accepting the inevitable endemicity of the virus and learning to live with it, and the mRNA vaccines are clearly crashing through the basement in terms of efficacy, Team Vaccine is basically washed up and is now quickly being absorbed by their very last refuge, Team Zero COVID. The latter of which seems to be more hysterical than ever lately--and that REALLY says something!--since they know they are on the wrong (and losing) side of history. They have been trotting out the same old fuzzy math combined with exaggerations, half-truths, and omissions about the supposed unacceptable dystopia that endemic COVID would entail, while in reality the real dystopia would be if TZC actually gets their way. Look no further than Australia and New Zealand, not to mention China, to see what sort of totalitarian police state would inevitably--and permanently--result sooner or later, and it would still be an exercise in futility in the long run. Because short of putting all 8 billion people of the world each in solitary confinement indefinitely, which would obviously be unacceptable on humanitarian grounds, it is mathematically impossible for TZC to actually achieve their pipe dream of complete virus eradication.
And now even New Zealand, the crown jewel of the Zero COVID movement, has finally thrown in the towel and abandoned the impossible and Sisyphean goal of eliminating the virus completely. Delta managed to chin-check them just hard enough to sober them up somewhat. Unfortunately, lest you think they finally joined Team Reality for good, despite recent easing the Prime Minister noted that they will still have some flavor of lockdown restrictions until they can get a whopping 90% of the eligible population vaccinated, meaning they are squarely part of Team Vaccine for the time being. They are at 48% of the eligible population already fully vaccinated as of October 5, so that is still a pretty tall order for New Zealand. In contrast, Team Reality (that is, people like us at the TSAP) would much rather just go cold turkey and simply end all restrictions yesterday and go back to true normal regardless of anything, period, and NOT cajole anyone to get vaccinated. What better time than now?
Monday, July 19, 2021
Britannia Waives The Rules (Well, Kinda)
Well, it's official now. The UK finally went ahead with Freedom Day today, after a month of delay. Gone are the promises of irreversibility though (i.e. they will not rule out new lockdowns at some point in the future), and some restrictions will still remain though far less than before. But generally speaking, virtually all mandated restrictions have now become downgraded to mere non-binding recommendations for the most part. Better late than never, I guess.
One upside of delaying the final lifting of restrictions to July 19 is that it is being done at or very close to the peak of the current virus surge, so when we most likely see case numbers go down rather than up two weeks or so from now, that will thus thoroughly discredit any belief that these restrictions ever did any good. Had Freedom Day occurred on schedule a month ago on June 23, the case numbers would have been about the same either way regardless of restrictions as we have seen, but people would have no doubt blamed the surge on the lifting of restrictions, then the government would have reimposed restrictions at or close to the peak, after which cases would drop again, and then take credit for the drop, as we have seen many times before. But this time, restrictions are instead being lifted counter-cyclically (i.e. with opposite timing), which will be the real test of their effectiveness and relevance (or lack thereof). Egg meet face, lockdown zealots!
UPDATE: It was announced on literally the same day that, starting in late September, there will be vaccine passports required to enter nightclubs and possibly even sporting events. And it should go without saying that we do NOT support such a thing at all. It is a slippery slope to totalitarianism, plus there is no statistical evidence to back it up.
UPDATE 2: As of July 27th, it is now clear that cases have begun falling rapidly in the UK. And "scientists" are apparently "baffled" by this. They must not remember the famous Farr's Law, or even Hope-Simpson, right? To the lockdown zealots, good luck getting all that egg off of your faces!
UPDATE 3: Looks like Belarus, who practically had NO restrictions all along, really didn't do worse than their neighbors overall in terms of excess all-cause mortality. In case the lockdown zealots didn't have enough egg on their faces already!
AUGUST UPDATE: There has been some head-scratching about why cases started ticking up again in the UK after over two weeks of sharp declines. But this is still no "exit wave" related to lifting restrictions, as it took too long to even begin, is not even a distinct new wave, and has still not topped the previous July high. The best explanation is that the background epidemic has still been rising at the same rate regardless, while in July there was the rapid rise and rapid fall of a sharp and short-term outbreak related to the month-long Euro finals soccer gatherings, mainly in young to middle-aged men. So the lockdown zealots still have egg on their faces to this day. How will they live this one down?
Saturday, July 10, 2021
COVID Is Endemic. "Zero COVID" Is A Pipe Dream. Lockdowns And NPIs Are Useless.
The following Tweet really wins the internet:
Pretty much sums it up. The virus can be defanged and reduced to a nuisance, and indeed it largely has already thanks to herd immunity and attenuation, but it will never be eliminated. It will continue to ebb and flow to one degree or another indefinitely. Even smallpox took over 200 years to eradicate after the vaccine. And it's time we accept that fact and deal with endemic COVID like we do seasonal flu and the common cold. That is, learn to live with the virus just like all other endemic viruses. We know now that lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and stuff like that really make no difference to the course of the virus in the long run, and they come with their own set of problems, ultimately doing more harm than good. And that applies a fortiori to endemic COVID.
That's right, these restrictions are all pain and no gain. And there is a name for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
We know how to treat this disease now. We know what to use for prophylaxis as well. We know that the virus, while bad, was never the apocalyptic Big One that some had predicted. We know who the risk groups are, and we have already vaccinated them (plus a good chunk of the general population as well) to a greater extent and faster than we have for any other disease in history. So anyone who says we still somehow can't go 100% back to normal yesterday because reasons is a LIAR with a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda. And we thus must completely disregard their bluster. Yesterday is not soon enough!
UPDATE: Another Tweet, even more to the point: