China and the revenge of COVID
I never trusted China’s COVID statistics to begin with. Could it be that a nation where COVID began, with the largest population in the world, had almost no COVID deaths and little COVID after an initial surge and then a draconian lockdown? That seemed improbable to the point of being nearly impossible.
But whatever was happening, it seems that the rigid reaction of China’s government did keep COVID at least somewhat in check for a while, until they couldn’t keep their fingers in the dike anymore. Now China appears to be experiencing a surge:
Empty streets, deserted shopping centers, and residents staying away from one another are the new normal in Beijing – but not because the city, like many Chinese ones before it, is under a “zero-Covid” lockdown.
This time, it’s because Beijing has been hit with a significant, and spreading, outbreak – a first for the Chinese capital since the beginning of the pandemic, a week after leaders eased the country’s restrictive Covid policy…
Similar scenes are playing out across Beijing, as offices, shops and residential communities report being understaffed or shifting working arrangements as employees fall ill with the virus. Meanwhile, others stay home to avoid being infected.
Pay now or pay later.
China isn’t even keeping a full range of statistics anymore – not that their statistics were ever reliable, as I said earlier. But it does seem clear that the number of cases are exploding there:
“The current strains will spread faster in China than they have spread in other parts of the world because those other parts of the world have some immunity against infection from previous waves of earlier Omicron strains,” said University of Hong Kong chair professor of epidemiology Ben Cowling.
At least the Omicron strains are milder in terms of very serious cases and deaths than the earlier strains were. That may keep the hospitals from being utterly overwhelmed. I read somewhere (can’t find it now) that the number of ICU beds per capita in China is a lot lower than in most Western countries.
China’s government propaganda organ says that the situation is under control and everyone should trust Xi. Sure thing.
The statistics from China were never believable, nor have the authorities ever been transparent about the evidence surrounding the origins of the virus (perhaps the courageous Yan Limeng, now in exile, will be proven right after all in her beliefs), but it is still remarkable that the CCP recently bent, ever so slightly, to public pressure, following all the recent discontent over the draconian policies of lockdowns and endless testing.
And please- let us keep the US borders closed, and only allow LEGAL immigration into The US.
That way we can keep people-from-China, who have covid-19, out of the US, with their covid-19 infection.
Payback.
…it is still remarkable that the CCP recently bent, ever so slightly, to public pressure, following all the recent discontent over the draconian policies of lockdowns and endless testing.
–j e
Another way to look at it is that the Chinese protests were super-spreader events — i.e. the Covid horse has bolted, so there is no use in keeping the barn door closed any longer.
Like it or not, the Zero Covid policy of contact tracing and lockdowns is now defunct. China must brace for the full fury of Covid ripping through its population with very little protection from vaccinations or herd immunity.
Peter Zeihan covered this yesterday:
–Peter Zeihan, “COVID: China’s Problem Child”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0BNUF9ItmQ
Zeihan notes that over a period of three years one million Americans out of 300+ mil died of Covid. If a similar fatality rate applies in China, given its population is roughly 4x the US, that means four million Chinese will die, but compressed into a few months rather than a few years.
Likely more than that because the Chinese population is older and more infirm than ours plus their health care is worse. It’s already looking bad:
–“Covid cases explode in Beijing leaving city streets empty and daily life disrupted”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/china/beijing-zero-covid-easing-streets-impact-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
Zeihan’s political analysis is that Xi realizes the gravity of the problem so has ceded control to local authorities to avoid blame. But that’s not the same as solving the problem and could well cause further problems.
Zeihan’s bottom line is that this drives China’s manufacturing effectively offline for the next three months. Which is another effect with more large repercussions.
Watch the skies!
–from “The Thing From Another World” (1951)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKBCvo-qGnk
_________________
These days I say:
Watch China!
A million dead from Covid. Like to know what proportion of that was…dead of Covid. Dead with incidental Covid. Dead because, with other comorbidities, Covid was the last straw.
Honest death certs. Reports of practically no deaths from flu. Fewer deaths from heart issues…. Rigged death certs?
Was that the same as “excess deaths”?. Haven’t been able to find anything serious on that.
Occasional reports that sufficient working-age adults are dying as to, so it’s said, worry insurance company actuaries. Far more than their mortality tables allowed for. But not of Covid.
Where does the opioid OD rate fit in here?
A million dead from Covid. Like to know what proportion of that was…dead of Covid. Dead with incidental Covid.
Richard Aubrey:
Sure, but Chinese people will die of Covid or with Covid in the millions and in a sudden short amount period of time.
The dead will be noticed by the living. It will matter to them personally. And it will matter to Xi politically. The CCP’s propaganda for the Covid years has trumpeted the CCP’s superior response to Covid over the West.
Plus it will be a large monkeywrench thrown into the gears of Chinese manufacturing.
Looks it will be a serious disruption to China, which is already in trouble on several other fronts.
It could conceivably bring Xi down.
I find this interesting. Others may not.
Huxley: “It could conceivably bring Xi down.
I find this interesting. Others may not.”
Karma! They developed it (Wuhan lab) and let it loose on the world. Now it appears it’s going to bite them hard.
I agree that it might be Xi’s downfall. Only time will tell.
I feel sorry for the average Chinese. Screwed by their own authoritarian government. Maybe some bright Chinese physicians will develop treatments – Ivermectin, HQC, ZN, Vitamin D3, etc. 🙂
Or maybe Pfizer will sell them a whole lot of vaccines and anti-virals. Do the ChiComs have the cash?
Will they have enough food to get through this?
What about our pharmaceuticals? I understand that most of them, are manufactured there. I can’t think of a better argument for bringing manufacturing home.
I’ve been to Beijing. Describing it as almost a ghost town is something I can’t visualize. When I visited, it was a constant beehive of activity. So many people and all in motion.
Lots of things to think about. I’m with you.
Huxley. I was referring to the US’ record, or whatever passes for numbers in this case.
Considering the number of opposing factions and their approach to numbers in this country, China’s will be impenetrable.
We might hear that City A in China lost…five percent of its citizens. And then later…that its municipal water supply operation is grossly overstaffed.
We’;ll be interpreting knock-on results, not numbers.
Can do!
All that high speed rail!
Megadeath for China from the CCP and Xi.
I feel sorry for the average Chinese….
Will they have enough food to get through this?
JJ:
Me too. My best to the average Chinese. I would be quite worried if I lived in China.
Food is a question, though not immediately, but within the next few years. China is one of the world’s biggest food importers.
So many things are going wrong for China right now.
“Like it or not, the Zero Covid policy of contact tracing and lockdowns is now defunct. China must brace for the full fury of Covid ripping through its population with very little protection from vaccinations or herd immunity.”
As probably most know here by now, the artificial mRNA vaccinations never really did much good. They couldn’t, because after the first injection, subsequent injections were merely triggering long running cytokine storms reacting to the spike proteins generated (for a month or so) by the spike proteins generated by the artificial mRNA, exhausting people’s immune system. At least up through Delta, the antibodies released in response to these spike proteins also worked on the SARS-2 virus. But respiratory viruses mutate easily, and the Omicron variants had mutated around the vaccines by changing their spike proteins.
Beyond Ivermectin, etc, mentioned above, the Indians appear to have developed a real, whole deactivated virus vaccine that seemed to work well. Oh, wait, aren’t the two countries still fighting along their mutual border, and it appears that China is more often the aggressor? Maybe they should have thought about that first, instead of trying to seize some of the more inhospitable land on the planet from their neighbor.
My view is that the China zero-covid lockdown strategy has worked for 2 years. I would modify Neo’s phrase to “pay back then, or pay now”. As the newer variants have evolved to be less virulent and more contagious China now has to pay the piper for its zero-covid policy. The rest of the world dealt with the omicron just a little over a year ago and produced 4x as many cases as the alpha, and our minor secondary wave of post omicron variants this past summer. We are at least 18 months ahead of China in herd immunity. What will China look like in 18 months when it finally catches up?
Yes, it does look like karma for their development of the virus and its release; accidental or deliberate.
Chinese have already paid a huge price due to the lockdowns. Access to medical care, livelihoods lost – all the things we went through but on a much, much larger scale. Now the virus will have its way.
I regularly look at the Johns Hopkins covid charts, which allow for comparisons of covid numbers (cases, deaths per 100,000) in different countries (taking into account that they are probably rough estimates due to different surveillance methods). One similarity is that virtually all developed countries have at least one major surge.
I recall hearing from folks way back in 2020 about how inadequate or inept the responses to the epidemic were – Sweden didn’t lock down, Trump incoherent, etc. – and what models places such as Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, S Korea were. All, without exception, have experienced (or are still experiencing) major surges.
Bottom line, as folks here have pointed out, if a country is in any way part of the first world, the virus is going to eventually work its way through the population.
Mr Hayden-
“As probably most know here by now, the artificial mRNA vaccinations never really did much good.”
There was a brief period of time in the US that a case can be made statistically that the mRNA vaccines provided significant benefit- probably for six months or so in mid 2021. During that time, a lot of people died, and it was primarily unvaccinated people.
As the virus mutated into its multiple forms which were more contagious but less deadly, the vaccines became less useful and by now are probably on balance harmful.
I had a moderately bad case of covid in July 2020- not hospitalized, but close. Recovered, returned to working in a big hospital full of covid patients, many of which died after being on ventilators, having been given treatments that we now know were not effective (remdesivir, plasma). I took the 2 Pfizer shots in early 2021, none since. For me, this was the smart choice. YMMV, but I still remember late 2021, and who was dying from covid.
I have to go on my experience, because I agree that any attempt to tease out the died from covid group from the died with covid population is futile, likely due to purposeful efforts to muck up the data.
Bruce Hayden, et al:
There is still significant evidence that for everyone but children and young men, the vaccines do good. Originally, they did reduce the likelihood of getting the pre-Omicron varieties and they reduced the seriousness of the infection when contracted. Later, they did not prevent transmission but they continued to reduce the seriousness of the infection when contracted.
Many people have posted links here that say otherwise, but I have spent a lot of time looking at the actual data in the research linked and the writers who say otherwise at those links are either not understanding the data itself or lying about it.
neo. If the evidence is significant as regards children and young men, why are the authorities still pushing it?
I know. I crack myself up.
Richard Aubrey:
However, the evidence against vaccines is not particularly significant even in children and young men. The difference is that the danger of COVID itself is not at all great in children, so why take any risk? And with young men, the danger of COVID itself – although more than in children – is not all that great either, and the danger of the vaccine in young men is greater than in other populations. That makes the argument for the vaccine in those populations much weaker, because there’s a kind of break-even point. But even in young men, myocarditis from the vaccine is not common in terms of percentages, is usually mild and self-limiting, and (and this is important) is less likely to be serious than myocarditis caused by getting COVID itself.
There are never any statistics from China you can trust to any degree.
The lockdowns were justified to the population by fake stats showing that China has had virtually no COVID compared to anyone else. The propaganda my relatives in China were getting depicted the outside world as a COVID-ridden hellscape, because other countries have not been as wise as China. (The World Cup footage lifted the scales from the eyes of many people.)
Now that China has eased the lockdown due to massive social unrest, OF COURSE they are saying COVID cases are exploding. The message to the population is “When we did it Xi’s way, it was working, and now we’re doing it your way and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.”
And the Western legacy media, who would love to get the Western population back to lockdowns, OF COURSE is agreeing and amplifying the fake stats out of China. Both the pre-relaxation “zero” story and the post-relaxation “explosion” story fit their preferred narrative!
China’s goal is top-down micromanagement of the entire Chinese population, but they’ve learned you have to have some level of buy-in, it can’t be all coercion. And of course the legacy media would like Western governments to have top-down micromanagement of our population…
Neo. I have, in a disorganized fashion, gotten something like your conclusions.
However, two factors remain: It’s a pretty lame sales pitch, compared to, say, aspirin. “Even if it hurts you, we think someone else didn’t get the sniffles.”
And the anecdotes like the Air Force flight surgeon who said she grounded every pilot who got the vaccine due to obvious issues.
Is it true heart muscle does not repair itself?
https://www.independentsentinel.com/the-sad-story-of-baby-alex-blood-clots-and-vaccinated-blood/
There’s an old saying in journalism I just made up:
lf it happened and it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen.
If it didn’t happen and it’s reported, it happened.
If it’s been going on and not reported until just now, it just now started.
Which is why I take various reports of top-end athletes just dropping dead, coroners being inconvenienced by unfamiliar, long, stringy clots, and similar issues with a grain of salt.
Presumably, if this is looked into, we’d find they’ve been happening all along and just began to be reported. Which, it would seem, would be backwards for the purposes of selling the vaccine. What you want is…it ‘s been happening all along and we didn’t tell you about it all these years because reasons but now that it’s a really big deal not to have you know about it, we’re telling you.
Of course, the “we” is not amorphous.
If these and related issues could be looked into, the last ten years or so perhaps–pretty please and looks cautiously over shoulder–and we find it’s been happening all along, then we have alarmism. But if these are new….
The baby Alex story is particularly egregious because Authority didn’t do what it was supposed to do, arbitrarily and in contravention of an undertaking with the parents to do something which could not conceivably have been harmful. This loaded up a tragedy with terrible overtones, given the current issues.
I could find no source reporting the hospital’s reaction. Too soon, I suppose, and no source other than small conservative sites.
So, so far, it hasn’t been “reported” and thus it didn’t happen.
Richard Aubrey:
Anecdotes are often garbage, either lies, exaggerations, or truths that are statistically meaningless. For example, every year, unfortunately, quite a few young and seemingly healthy people drop dead while participating in athletic events (or even not participating in such events). They are not widely reported because they are ordinarily of local interest only, although tragic. The statistic that would be important would be to compare what’s happening post-COVID to pre-COVID, and whether it is happening more, and to whom, and under what circumstances.
Just to take one example of what I’m talking about, see this article: “Sudden cardiac deaths rise by 10% in young Americans.” Look at the date: 2001:
Written in 2001.
As far as the heart repairing itself – I assume you mean after myocarditis and not a heart attack – yes, recovery after myocarditis is usually complete unless it’s a very severe case. But most cases, fortunately, are mild. You can look it up. Myocarditis also can occur in connection with any infection or virus, or autoimmune disease.
Neo.
I figured there would be ups and downs. Can’t hardly be close to level. But…what happens if we have twenty percent in the last couple of years?
If it’s a matter of chance, there should be a reduction here or there.
Then there are the coroners’ reports. Not likely there’s a data base on those.
Richard Aubrey:
For the ups and downs to mean anything, they have to be out of the ordinary. Just compare post-COVID and especially post-vaccine statistics to the ups and downs of earlier decades and see if there’s a statistically significant difference. Even then, you don’t know exactly what it would be due to – COVID itself, COVID vaccines, or something else (changes in drug use, for example)? But I’ve seen nothing that even attempts to compile statistics like that.
Neo. I suppose one might ask about the cause of the heart failure in the young., Every so often, a high school kid falls over during a basketball game or something. He lives or dies, usually because they have an AED handy and staff trained to use it.
What usually isn’t the case is a clot.
The only reliable raw stats is excess deaths in the target group. After that, it becomes hard in current circumstances due to the presumed unreliability of Covid-related death certs.
I suppose one might subtract, say, drug OD numbers which presumably are reliable. Then, how many are left? Accidental deaths. Cancer. Other categories which can be concerning for themselves, or not. What’s left? That would be the answer, sort of.
There is, also, the cumulative effect. Duke is refusing a kidney transplant on a child because the kid is not vaxxed. There may be a solid medical reason for that, but it looks, on the outside, like some kind of bureaucratic power thing. Bad enough. Then comes Baby Alex, on the other side of the country. If true, whatever the medical reasons involved, it piles atrocity on tragedy.
Sort of like confirmation bias; Once is…bad luck. Two in a couple of weeks is….
In re Chinese stats, I noticed something in this article that was relevant.
Most of the info in the post, an interview of Dr Bhattacharya on his meeting with Elon Musk at Twitter HQ, is “old news” but I hadn’t seen this observation before:
https://unherd.com/2022/12/what-i-discovered-at-twitter-hq/
The implication is that Musk asked someone to supply the numbers on dead Chinese workers. I’m willing to believe he did, based on his apparent habit of looking into things that most CEOs don’t deign to bother with.
@AesopFan:The implication is that Musk asked someone to supply the numbers on dead Chinese workers.
He may have, but would he have got the right answer? He’s not personally putting paychecks into employees hands and seeing which ones aren’t showing up anymore. If the people running his factories in China are honest with him, and not inflating the payroll so they can steal the wages for fictitious employees, then he may have got the right answer.
Usually what is done is that you contract with a Chinese factory and they are supposed to produce to your specifications; eternal vigilance is required to keep them from cheating you. I don’t know how Musk works in China.
“There is still significant evidence that for everyone but children and young men, the vaccines do good. Originally, they did reduce the likelihood of getting the pre-Omicron varieties and they reduced the seriousness of the infection when contracted. Later, they did not prevent transmission but they continued to reduce the seriousness of the infection when contracted.”
“Many people have posted links here that say otherwise, but I have spent a lot of time looking at the actual data in the research linked and the writers who say otherwise at those links are either not understanding the data itself or lying about it.”
We have two different issues: Do the vaccines work? And, Do they cause a lot of side effects (I added “a lot, because there is just too much evidence that they cause some)? And maybe a third – Are the side effects worse than the benefits (but you need to address the previous questions first for that)? I think from your post that you believe the first question to be true. I frankly don’t see the mechanism, beyond the first jab being effective, and my concern is for the 3rd, 4th, etc jabs. And don’t see you having addressed the 2nd and 3rd questions. Maybe because I tire you here…
Your comment about experts criticizing the mythology of the nay sayers can be turned around – expert nay sayers have had their methodology questioned by experts on the other hand, maybe even more so. The problem is that the pro vaccine side has been effective at deplatforming and deexperting their opponents.
One big problem is that a lot of the CDC’s figures are suspect, on both sides, for one reason or another. For the first year or so, inaccurate tests were being used, that possibly greatly overestimated the spread of the virus, and hospitals were being incentivized to find virus infected patients. Meanwhile the vaccines were being rolled out. Most of those problems have seemingly been cleaned up, nearing 3 years later.
I would appreciate any links that you come across that purported show that the vaccines are really that effective any more. Not covering the 1st two jabs, but the boosters. I just haven’t seen them. But you and I obviously haven’t been looking in same places.
The thing that I have searched for in vain, is how the subsequent vaccine inoculations are supposed to work. We got into a debate a couple weeks ago about how vaccines are supposed to work, and that some require multiple doses. Won’t replay that. I just have never seen a credible explanation of the mechanics of how the subsequent jabs are supposed to help, except through the massive triggering of a general immune response, which could just as easily be accomplished by the injection of any pathogen known to a body into it. Not saying that there isn’t one – just that I have never seen one. Any help here would be appreciated.
As for vaccine injuries, I don’t think that there is any question that they exist. Just too many side effects too close to injections. Know one PhD at Las Alimos who was forced by his employer (contractor to DOE) who only got vaccinated to keep his job. He was fine after the 1st jab, had heart issues immediately after the 2nd. His request to skip the 3rd was denied, and his heart blew up in size within days. Likely permanent damage. They want a 4th, but that is on hold due to litigation. Too many examples like that to dismiss the theory. I knew 3 very vigorous male friends my age (~70) who fell over dead this year, from heart attacks, with no past record of heart issues. Remember the old saw that once in random, twice is coincidence, and the 3rd is enemy action? Excess all cause mortality is showing this. Most all life insurance companies are showing it. Morticians, heart surgeons, etc are all seeing a lot of very weird stuff, since the vaccinations started. Most damming is that the excess all cause (and esp heart related) deaths seem to have followed vaccinations, as they were opened up to younger and younger cohorts.
Thank you for your patience here.
Bruce Hayden:
I don’t know exactly what you mean by the fact that you “don’t see the mechanism” for the vaccine’s effectiveness. Do you mean that you want to understand exactly how it’s done? Or do you mean you don’t see the evidence of effectiveness itself? And how do YOU define effectiveness?
Plus, I’ve written 276 posts so far on COVID. I’ve also written hundreds and hundreds of comments. I’ve gone through the evidence over and over and over, and it is impossible to summarize it and incredibly time-consuming to try. I doubt you’ve read everything I’ve written – nor would I expect anyone to have done so – but it’s all there.
If you haven’t seen the evidence that the vaccine is effective – not in preventing COVID, but in making cases milder – and by what mechanism it could do this, then I suggest you look assiduously because it is there. But to help you out, I suggest reading this study.
What I have often found, however, is that those people who don’t believe that vaccines help have a tendency to reject all the evidence that they do help by saying that they don’t trust whoever has done the research. So if a person distrusts all research, I guess that person is free to believe whatever suits his or her fancy.
You write: “Your comment about experts criticizing the mythology of the nay sayers can be turned around – expert nay sayers have had their methodology questioned by experts on the other hand, maybe even more so.” Of course, and I’ve written about that many times. You don’t specify what comment of mine you’re talking about – I was the one doing the criticizing of the naysayers here.
As far as death statistics go, I’ve addressed that many times as well, even a bit on this thread such as in my comments to Richard Aubrey.
And if I sometimes sound testy on the subject, it’s just because I feel like I’ve been playing whack-a-mole on it for years. It’s complex and tiring, and that’s just the nature of the beast.
One of the issues of public views of vaxxing has to do with side effects. The vaxxes have none. Just ask…CDC, FHA, Fauci. Others. The endless ads on television for one or another pharmaceutical always include a list of horrifying side effects including death which “may have occurred”. But the vaxxes, now. They don’t have the warnings we see on a bottle of baby aspirin. Which leads anyone with a survival-level of skepticism to murmur… “pull the other one”.
One need not be an epidemiologist to note the infighting going on. Pull somebody’s license for speaking up about masking. Cancel somebody for asking about….. Mentioning Sweden will get you hammered pretty good. Ivermectin is so good they have to lie about it…see Rolling Stone’s pathetic put-up job. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be lying about it.
A Detroit dem pol got the kung flu early on and Trump got her HCQ, which she said publicly saved her life. The dem organization gave her a stern lecture. WTF? This is supposed to be about health, not political advantage….right? I mean, it is, right?
Birx says we call “with” “of” for reasons.
Health science, even a little bit, isn’t necessary to view all of this with suspicion. Who, among all of these actors, can I trust to tell me the medical truth?
The PCR tests give HOW MANY false positive? Which means….what?
I’ve taken friends and relatives to ER a number of times over the years. I have a kind of skeptical view of what it means when the ER is “overflowing”.
As I say, looking at this Chinese fire drill from the outside, you don’t need a medical degree to be concerned about who knows what about this whole thing.
And, I submit, this is an important component of the national discussion on the subject. People who don’t know “infect” from “Infarct” can legitimately be concerned about what they see going on.
Richard Aubrey:
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Each time I got a vaccine I got a sheet of paper with a long list of side effects. Had to sign some sort of consent form, too. The first two times for the initial vaccinations (I don’t think it happened with the booster) I also had to wait there 15 minutes after receiving the shot to make sure I didn’t go into a dangerous anaphylactic shock reaction. This was all explained.
So plenty of side effects have been discussed right from the start. Also, the problem with myocarditis in young men has also been discussed by the CDC once it was discovered. You may indeed disagree with their recommendation that young men should get the shot anyway, but it’s certainly not being kept a secret that myocarditis sometimes occurs.
The CDC has certainly done plenty of things with which I disagree, and been misleading about some things. I’ve written at great length about much of this. But not mentioning side effects of the vaccines was most definitely not among the omissions.
neo
You got the mention of side effects when you went to get a shot. In public discussions, official ones, it never came up. Not on the news. Not on what was an analog for commercial advertising, the PSA.
But info widely available to the general public did not mention side effects, most especially not in the ominous, concentrated, sped-up language at the end of EVERY ad for any pharmaceutical you can think of.
I’d done some research on the effects and considered myself healthy enough to deal with the side effects, if any, and at my age not particularly territorial about such time as I may or may not have left. So, for me, mox nix and it made my wife feel better.
The point is, I had to go looking; it was not shoved in my face six times in the space of a half-hour news show.
And, no, it’s not a secret that you might get myocarditis on the way to avoiding a case of the sniffles. But the point is not that the info is kept under wraps or not. The point is…nobody’s telling you officially until you get to the shot shop.
And that’s my larger point: Looking at this enormous set of arguments and what looks like a government–see Twitter–effort to keep certain information which transgresses the Narrative from public view, one need not be a medical person to be skeptical.
The Great Barrington Declaration–which suffered, imo, from being issued in the town of Great Barrington and looking thus as if it were supposed to be GREAT or something–was attacked by Fauci and company on personal grounds. Why? Maybe because he’s a jerk. But, as any reasonable person might think, that’s the best he had. Which means attacking it medically wouldn’t fly. So….
When the Narrative includes governors threatening to pull the medical licenses of doctors recommending HCQ, we aren’t looking at a medical argument. It’s something else and the layman is justified in being skeptical.
When Ivermectin scares…somebody…so badly they have to get Rolling Stone to run up an even dumber hoax than the UVa rape hoax, one with even less credibility, something is going on which isn’t limited to medicine. Now, it may be limited to medicine, but the way it’s being fought out in public leads to skepticism.
When the mask story can’t be kept straight and we’ve all seen people cough a lung into a mask and then adjust it with their fingers after which they open a door in a public building…is being skeptical some kind of moral outrage?
And that’s my point.