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.

R.I.P. Net Neutrality, Again

Well, it's official.  Net Neutrality has been struck down by the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals on January 2, 2025.  While Big Tech, and Big Business in general, are celebrating this as a victory and salivating like a Pavlov's Dog, make no mistake, this is a major loss for We the People.  Now internet service providers can rig the internet in favor some people or entities over others via blocking access or varying speeds as "fast and slow lanes".  Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

(Meanwhile, at the same time, various vain and illiberal attempts to "childproof" the internet with mandatory age verification have met with varying degrees of legal success.)

2025 seems to be starting out on the wrong foot already, and of course the new dark age will begin in earnest on January 20, 2025 when Trump is re-inaugurated as President of the United States.  All with his puppet master Muskrat, the richest person in the world (and in literally all of recorded history) pulling his strings.  Grifters gonna graft, believe me.

We will admit, while we at the TSAP have always loathed Trump, a few years ago, we thought that Muskrat was a real-life Tony Stark.  Now it is obvious that he is more like Doctor Octopus on ketamine, only worse.  And Trump?  Well, he is more like Ganondorf, the villain from the Legend of Zelda series.  And the current moment in history is reminiscent of the part of Ocarina of Time when Ganondorf snuck in and took over, casting Hyrule into a new and horrible dark age.  Like Ganondorf, King Of Evil, Trump is the epitome of toxic masculinity, while Link the hero is the epitome of TONIC masculinity.  Unfortunately at this juncture in the real world, Link seems to be nowhere to be found these days, and Kamala Harris, the closest equivalent to Princess Zelda, will be out of power completely as VP on January 20.  

Buckle up, as we are in for a VERY wild ride!

Social Media Platforms Are Defective By Design. Recall And Quarantine Them.

While the social-mediaphobes are largely wrong about their latest moral panic in regards to young people specifically, there is still a very vexing kernel of truth to what they say, albeit for all ages.  That is, to say the quiet part out loud, social media platforms are defective by design.  If they were only designed to be deliberately addictive with features that are engineered to keep users "engaged" (or in Vegas lingo, increase "time on machine"), which they of course are doing as well, that alone would be bad enough.  But it gets worse than that.  These platforms are designed to amplify the very worst of humanity, as far and wide as possible, so the companies that run them can literally profit off of the world's misery.  And these soulless corporations could literally care less about who gets hurt in the process, so long as their bottom lines increase.  And it's only getting worse, not better.

(And so-called "dating apps" are basically "social media on crack", by the way.  So everything in this article that we say about social media shall apply a fortiori to these algorithmically driven apps as well.)

Thus, the TSAP currently believes that emergency executive action needs to be taken by the President of the United States, yesterday.  (Of course, we know that no President actually will.)  That is, declare these products to be defective by design, recall, and "quarantine" them (for all ages) for two weeks or until they can be made safer, whichever is longer.  That is, freeze the platforms completely and sign everyone out automatically.  Exceptions should of course be made for standalone direct messaging apps like FB Messenger or WhatsApp (which are used frequently for international business with the Global South as well as as the Global North), provided that group chats are limited to no more than 10 people (chats larger than that would get frozen too).

This is of course temporary, so while it will provide a much needed "digital detox" for millions of people, it will not actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But after that, here are some things that actually will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising, and ban data brokers too.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs and similar tools to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).  That is, a "Kids Code" would be fine as long as it is properly written and doesn't result in censorship or mandatory age verification. 

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin) That would of course be tantamount to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Other good ideas we would endorse are a voluntary smartphone buyback program (similar to gun buybacks), and perhaps even paying people to voluntarily delete or deactivate their social media accounts for a time. That would accomplish far more than any realistic mandatory measures would.

Another possible idea is simply to slow down by design the pace of these social media platforms.  Much like #OneClickSafer mentioned above, adding a little bit of friction to an otherwise frictionless system can help tame the very real dark side of that system.  I mean, would you willingly drive on a frictionless surface (such as ice)?  Of course you wouldn't.

Note that internet connection speeds are more than ten times faster (!) today on average than in 2010.  That leaves a LOT of room for adding back friction!

And finally, the idea of banning certain questionable design features (infinite scroll, autoplay, etc.) may be controversial in terms of whether such features are protected by the First Amendment, but we believe that those features per se are not automatically protected, unless the ban is deliberately abused to censor specific content.  If such bans are truly content-neutal, we are fine with that. 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures that we endorse will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  And if nothing else, it will certainly help Americans of all ages finally snap out of the collective trance we have (more or less) all been under since the "Like Button Apocalypse" launched in 2009, and social media went fully mainstream shortly thereafter. 

So what are we waiting for?

How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Withiout Violating Anyone's Rights (Updated Re-Post)

"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days.  And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda.  Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general.  Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later.  Kafka, meet trap.  Pandora, meet box.  Albatross, meet neck.  And of course, baby, meet bathwater. 

And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising, and ban data brokers too.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs and similar tools to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).  That is, a "Kids Code" would be fine as long as it is properly written and doesn't result in censorship or mandatory age verification. 

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin) That would of course be tantamount to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools?  Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well?  In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time.  And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example).  Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits?  But that would make too much sense.

Other good ideas we would endorse are a voluntary smartphone buyback program (similar to gun buybacks), and perhaps even paying people to voluntarily delete or deactivate their social media accounts for a time. That would accomplish far more than any realistic mandatory measures would.

Another possible idea is simply to slow down by design the pace of these social media platforms.  Much like #OneClickSafer mentioned above, adding a little bit of friction to an otherwise frictionless system can help tame the very real dark side of that system.  I mean, would you willingly drive on a frictionless surface (such as ice)?  Of course you wouldn't.

Note that internet connection speeds are more than ten times faster (!) today on average than in 2010.  That leaves a LOT of room for adding back friction!

And finally, the idea of banning certain questionable design features (infinite scroll, autoplay, etc.) may be controversial in terms of whether such features are protected by the First Amendment, but we believe that those features per se are not automatically protected, unless the ban is deliberately abused to censor specific content.  If such bans are truly content-neutal, we are fine with that. 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures that we endorse will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  But truly that's a feature, not a bug.

Big Tech can go EFF off!

UPDATE:  We have opposed KOSA until recently due to censorship concerns, and while those concerns have been somewhat alleviated with recent edits to the bill, we still cannot say we support it 100%.  But for now, we have dropped our opposition to the bill, if for no other reason than to forestall more restrictive bills (like Australia's new law) in the future, and thus the TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked is currently neutral on KOSA despite it still not being ideal.

Was The Election Hacked? Maybe

DISCLAIMER:  (*holds nose while typing this*) All people named in the following article and comments shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty.  

(H/T to Rachel Donald, whose Substack article on the same topic I am citing for this article below.)

There is a theory making the rounds lately online, namely, that the 2024 presidential election was allegedly hacked in favor of Trump, presumably by his buddy Elon Musk.  In fact, some cybersecurity experts agree, and have sounded the alarm in that regard.  And there are indeed some notable irregularities that have been observed.

First of all, the very fact that Trump won ALL SEVEN swing states in itself strains credulity, seeing as how historically unusual that is.  Such a massive sweep should ring alarm bells as too good to be true.

But the most crucial issue this time is the unusually high percentage of "bullet ballots", that is, ballots in which the president section was filled out but the rest of the ballot was left blank.  Typically, including in the last two presidential elections, that percentage hovers around 1% or less.  And in the non-swing states, that same pattern remained true.  But in the seven swing states, the "bullet ballot" percentage greatly exceeded that (often off the charts) for Trump ballots, with the highest being 11% in North Carolina.  And the biggest tell of all:  it wasn't evenly distributed either, but rather heavily concentrated in only some localities.

(Voting only for president and nothing else, especially in a year where hot-button issues were on the ballot as initiatives and referenda in several states, is anomalous to say the least.  And that it would occur so unevenly skewed and off the charts is suspicious.)

In other words, it sure seems like something is rotten in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. 

I smell a (Musk) rat.  There are a number of ways in which such an alleged hack could have happened, and all were indeed possible.  Either way, it looks likely that a non-trivial number of Trump ballots may very well never have even existed at all.

No wonder Trump, Musk, and the rest of the insiders in their orbit were so smug in the days and weeks leading up to the election, let alone afterwards:  they must have known on some level that the fix was in. 

All of this can be very easily debunked, of course, if a hand recount was done in all seven swing states.  But of course, neither Musk nor Trump nor anyone in their orbit will allow that.  Since the totals were just above the margin where such a recount would be required by law, no one will do it unless the Democrats (or others) fight for it. And unfortunately, we all know that most people are too lazy and chickenshit to do it, especially against the richest person in the world and his orange menace buddy, both of whom are known to be very spiteful. 

Indeed, Musk himself threatened to use the "Hammer of Justice" against those who spread such a theory in a post on his very own social media platform, X (formerly Twitter).  Natch.  Is that a promise, Elon?

True, there is no actual proof, not yet.  And we shouldn't pretend there is.  But the evidence thus far is highly suggestive that something isn't quite right with the numbers, and thus all the more reason to investigate, even if only to put this all to rest.

FINAL THOUGHT:  I will concede that this outcome, cheating or not, would not have even been possible at all in anything even approaching a healthy society.  Granted.  And yes, the mainstream Dems leave a LOT to be desired, to put it nicely.  But the Substack article, and the cybersecurity experts that the author cites, still make excellent points.  I still smell a Musk rat.

JUNE 2025 UPDATE:  Looks like there is even more evidence that this election was tampered with, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Make no mistake, this was a coup, plain and simple.  Palantir, anyone?  One can just visualize the Eye of Sauron watching us.  And to the TSAP, Kamala Harris will always be our President.  Because she was the true winner, fair and square.

The Generation Who Failed

Recently, I realized what my greatest disappointment of all really is right now, and that is at my own generation, the Elder Millennials, or whatever we call ourselves this week.  We were supposed to be the generation who saved the world.  And we had every chance to do so, and we blew it big time.  No wonder we look like we haven't aged very much if at all:  just like vampires, we sold our souls long ago.  

We failed to stop the Bush/Cheney warmongering.  We let the once-promising Occupy movement fall by the wayside.  We failed to stop Trump the first time.  We fell for the Covid lockdown, mask, and jab nonsense and leaned heavily into it, instead of either adopting the "flu strategy" or perhaps grounding only our parents and grandparents for a brief time as we built herd immunity, which would have saved far more lives in the long run.  We couldn't wait to throw younger Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha under the bus, because "I got mine, screw everyone else".  And now, the majority of us either voted for Trump or third party or not at all, in part because we didn't have the intestinal fortitude to demand years ago that the mainstream Democrats do better.

Oh, and the world is on fire too, both literally and metaphorically.  And also metaphysically.

And then we have the GALL to blame it all on our Boomer parents?  Well, the apple sure didn't fall far from the tree!

So to any younger generations reading this, or who will read this in the future, I sincerely apologize for what my generation did and failed to do.  What a "wonderful" world you will be inheriting.

Will future generations ever forgive us?  Because that would be a pretty tall order!

If There Was A Single Thing That Cost The Dems The Election, It Was This

This election has truly been a rout for the Democrats.  Now the Republicans basically hold all of the cards, as they now fully dominate all three branches of government for the first time in literally decades.  And on November 5th, it looked like the Dems had it in the bag.  So what the hell went wrong?

It was a number of things, to be sure.  But the increasingly neoliberal, out-of-touch, and yes, elitist mainstream wing of the Democratic party came to utterly dominate the party in recent years while sidelining the genuine progressives like Bernie Sanders et al.  And if there was ONE decision they made that truly cost them the election, it was the conscious choice to allow the expanded child tax credits (a sort of "mini-UBI" in place during the pandemic) to expire, without extending or replacing them with something similar or better (like UBI for all).  This program, which cut child poverty rates in HALF while they were in place, was truly a resounding success by any rational measure, but child poverty and hunger then predictably rebounded after they were allowed to expire.  Yes, you read that right.

The Dems were apparently too hung up on identity politics and other wedge issues to embrace true economic progressivism.  They were basically blinded by their own class privilege, in other words.  So "woke" they were, that they sleepwalked into defeat.

Not that this actually justifies anyone voting for Trump or Republicans, of course.  Everyone should have known by now that he is a grifter, grafter, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, convicted felon, misogynist, serial liar, hothead, and madman.  But when people are hungry, and grocery and other prices are high on the heels of the worst inflation in four decades (even as it is finally abating), and a conman is promising everyone "a chicken in every pot", while the opposing party seemed to be out to lunch in that regard, or at least not nearly progressive enough on economic issues, such people may not vote rationally.  Most who voted for Trump would have voted for him regardless, but there were enough fence-sitters at the margins that genuinely voted with their wallets.

In other words, "it's the economy, stupid".  At least for the non-trivial fence-sitters who swung this election, it was.  Hindsight is truly 2024.  The Dems absolutely must remember this next time.  That is, IF there even IS a next time at all, of course.  Which, with the way things are going, is by no means guaranteed.