Politics

yah no, that’s not helping, not helping at all

If I can read the damn letters from the FDA and spot that they’re requiring additional testing to be done, some of which won’t be done until 2027!

If I can read the damn letters and spot the fine print:

The licensed vaccine has the same formulation as the EUA-authorized vaccine and the products can be used interchangeably to provide the vaccination series without presenting any safety or effectiveness concerns. The products are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness.

So basically they approved A VERSION of the Pfizer shot, but not the one that everyone got, and they’re extending the EUA on the version that everyone got…..

….and wonder why the hell it’s been “FDA APPROVED!!!” but they’re still looking at needing more data to be sure its safe, and why are they extending the EUA if its approved……

…..and there’s legal distinctions and why does that matter….

…..except that the EUA version means that the company isn’t liable and while the approved one means the company is liable, and BY LAW the EUA vaccines can’t be mandated and FDA approved ones can, and gosh, I wonder how long it’s going to take them to get actual approved one across the USA while everyone who’s now going for a shot is thinking they’re getting an FDA approved shot and legally they aren’t, and just what are the changes/differences, and if it’s been so thoroughly tested why do those tests that aren’t going to be done till 2027 even matter, except clearly they do, so clearly they don’t know that it’s THAT safe and…..

…..and I feel like a goddammed conspiracy theorist, but this whole mess has me wanting to turn into a hermit and say fuck it to the world….

And if I’m having this set of thoughts there’s going to be an awful lot of other people reading these letters thinking the same things I’ve been and thinking that there’s no way in hell.

And “variants” were going to happen no matter what we did.

Look, first of all, we knew from the beginning that this was a virus type known for rapid mutation. I distinctly remember discussion on that way back at the beginning of 2020. As soon as the virus started spreading we were going to get variants. It was the nature of the things.

Second: even if everyone in the whole wide world WANTED the vaccine and was ready and willing and able to go line up for it the instant it became available, it was going to be physically impossible to vaccinate the entire world fast enough to stop variations and mutations. Normal production bottlenecks, manpower bottlenecks, never mind the realities of a post shutdown world, all meant that it was going to be physically impossible to vaccinate EVERYONE in a short enough span of time to stop mutations from happening.

C: none of the vaccines are sterilizing vaccines, and normal immune system variations means that some people take it better than others, which means that even if it had been physically possible to vaccinate everyone within the first few months after vaccine approval, AND everyone was willing to take it, we’d STILL be dealing with mutations and variations and more covid infections.

4th: We can’t convince everyone to get the vaccines that have been around for decades that we know everything there is to know about them! Plus we’ve spent years indoctrinating people that it takes a LONG TIME and MUCH TESTING in order to make sure new drugs and vaccines are safe, that it takes MUCH MUCH MUCH time, YEARS, to be sure that the new drugs aren’t going to have bad side effects, and that sometimes even that goes wrong and years later have to recall previously safe drugs. Hell, mid-2019 we had a massive recall of ALL brands of a major anti-acid reflux med that had been on the market for years and years and years because we suddenly discovered that it might contain a carcinogen! What possibly possessed you to think that we were going to manage to convince everyone that it was ok to take a vaccine that was being rushed through the process?? Whether or not enough testing was being done to be reasonably confident of its safety didn’t matter at that point.

Fifth: human nature means that the more you push, the more the people you’re pushing against are going to push back. Screaming about variants and scare mongering only makes that worse. And an awful lot of the people refusing these vaccines are well educated and knowledgeable people. Who know how to read data, charts, and graphs, and see results for themselves.

Did you know that the USA, CDC, and various other official groups had pandemic plans ready to go in case of a SARS/Influenza/respiratory virus pandemic? And that those plans accurately predicted the how various waves of COVID19 rise and fall and how people would react to various attempts to mitigate it. And pointed out that all the mitigation efforts in the world won’t work if people won’t cooperate so you need to keep that in mind and so DON’T DO THIS LIST OF THINGS. And that our various .GOV peoples panicked and threw them out the window and ignored them completely when it came to COVID.

According to the CDCs data, children aged 0 to 4 years: 150 deaths from Covid. Total.*

According to the CDCs data, In the 2018-2019 flu season children aged 0 to 4 years: 266 died of the flu.

According to the CDCs data, in 2019 children aged 0 to 4 years: 434 died of drowning.

According to the CDCs data, RSV kills between 100 and 500 children under the age of 5 years every year.

But yes, by all means, lets lock down further, insist on masking 2yr olds with masks that don’t work anyway (seriously, multiple studies have shown that you’ll get better results by increasing ventilation than by masking, I’m done with the link thing today, do some research for yourself for once). Let’s continue to push people into corners where their recourse is to lash out. Australia just shot rescue dogs because they couldn’t handle the idea that people were going to have to drive across the country to pick them up. That’s TOTALLY a reasonable thing, I mean, TOTALLY…..NOT. And there’s no way in hell that’ll backfire on them. I mean, they’ve already got riots, what’s a few dead dogs in the mix? And hey, if you get vaccinated they’ll let you have an WHOLE EXTRA HOUR OUTSIDE OF YOUR HOUSE. Woohoo!

Really?

There’s a meme: People went from “I’d punch a Nazi” to “papers please” really damn quick.

But it’s for the greater good!!!! Sure, you console yourself with that. And while you’re doing that I’ll start listing all the various atrocities that started out with that sentence.

You feel safer with a mask? Fine, wear one. Feel safer that your kid wears a mask? Well, unless your kid is otherwise sick you’re being stupid, but that’s fine, you do you. But while you’re at it make sure that the ventilation in their school and your home is up to par, cause at least that’ll actually DO SOMETHING to reduce their risk. You want the vaccine, and various boosters that haven’t been updated for the new mutant strains and therefor aren’t actually going to help that much, and that even the WHO says the boosters might not be worthwhile? That’s fine, you do you. But this mandate thing is backfiring hard, and its only going to continue to get worse. And we got WAY bigger problems than whether the guy in the car next to you is vaccinated for not. Like, food on the table, electricity to keep the fridge running, and that sorta thing…..

Mind, I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this. Most of you reading this agree with me, and the ones who don’t aren’t going to change their minds reading my blog posts. But if I don’t vent somewhere reasonably safe I’ll start to do it on FB and horrify half of my friends and all my family, so yah.

It doesn’t help that I’m sitting here wondering if they planned this absolutely horrid evac from Afghanistan in an attempt to distract us all from the Covid mandates only to have that backfire even worse.

*as of the date this was posted

There’s several articles, and Twitter feeds, and blog posts, out there attempting to explain why people are so hesitant to accept the .GOV’s word for why this or that has to be done to stop Covid. And, aside from the ones trying to blame one particular party or group of people, most of them are generally pretty correct about some portion of the problem. But none of them manage to sum it up all together.

Its not JUST about current day politics (though holy god, if the .GOV was TRYING to destroy people’s trust in the health system they couldn’t have done more damage than what they did).

It’s about the past, and recent, history too.

Tuskegee

Crack Epidemic

Plutonium

Operation Sea Spray

MK Ultra

Forced Sterilization Poor And Disabled (multiple links)

Note that I was lazy and mostly just pulled the Wikipedia links. There are LOT more links available, that go into A LOT more depth.

Someone’s going to say the Crack Epidemic doesn’t belong in the list. But it’s a PERFECT example of the use of the media to drive hysteria in a specific direction. Deliberate or not I don’t really care.

And if you look at the dates on some of those “experiments” they continued until the same decade I was born in (or past it), and since I’m only in my early 40’s that means that there’s EASILY still people alive today who were unwitting participants in these experiments. This isn’t something that happened to great great great grandma and is now whispered about in family stories. This is dad and mom’s life for people.

Nor is this a comprehensive list. There are LOT more such in history, and not so far back, as in, during my lifetime, that could be added to this list.

So no, the .GOV frequently doesn’t have the “best interests” of the people as a goal.

And before you believe those screaming headlines, and OMG talking points, or hell, that twitter post telling you how the “local hospital is FULL!!!!! of covid patients!!!!!”, remember that the CDC’s data is publicly available on their website. As is the Covid data from most states. And there are MULTIPLE sites that are tracking that data and collating it into graphs so it can be easily viewed and compared to not only each other but to history.

It doesn’t have to be a grand conspiracy (cause yah, SOMEONE will always end up giving away the secret). Its human nature folks.

that your immune system is like much else in the human body.

If you don’t use it you lose it.

NZ children and immunity debt

RSV running worse than usual through kids returning to normal

Plus multiple reports across FB and Twitter from people returning to work and promptly getting sick.

This isn’t new. Exposure to a new environment results in exposure to new bugs. This is a good thing that keeps your immune system nimble and working, and mild exposure in the normal course of things is easier for your immune system to cope with than when you suddenly dump everything on it at once. Studies have known for a while that kids who’re allowed to be exposed to a wider variety of bacteria and the like tend to have sturdier immune systems than those who’re kept away from everything.

Except that we, as a country and a world, just spent the last year hiding away from the rest of humanity, dousing ourselves and our worlds with sanitizers and bleach, and generally trying to avoid anything that might make us sniffle.

We did this to our children, are STILL doing this to our children in many states, at a point in their development where they need that exposure the most to help their immune systems develop properly. And at a point in their lives where they need exposure to faces and learning emotions the most, we instead forced them and the adults around them to wear masks. Forced them to avoid many of the adult encounters that normally enrich their lives. Forced them to avoid Grandma, and Auntie, who normally are huge parts of their lives and how they learn to talk and interact. Forced them to avoid their friends. At a time when they most need those interactions to learn how to do and act and emote correctly. Never mind all the special needs kids who lost out on all sorts of assistances and services that they need just to LIVE rather than SURVIVE. Never mind the toll on Grandma, and Auntie, when they lost all in person contact with family, something that no zoom call can make up for.

And on top of that, and on top of the “discovery” that healthy, fit people who exercised regularly were far less likely to suffer from severe covid (at a time when many states and cities were forcing people to avoid going out to parks and beaches and even casual walking). It turns out that previous exposure to similar viruses (like, you know, the common cold), actually made it more likely you’d end up with mild to no covid symptoms. But nope, god forbid you get the sniffles.

Of course, there’s folks who are now so freaked out by the idea of getting sick, with ANYTHING, that they want the world to keep masking and huddling away from the rest of humanity.

Never mind that doing so is almost the ultimate expression of bias against the blue collar middle and lower class workers of all races and backgrounds.

The plain and simple fact is that the economy doesn’t run itself.

You need food to survive. Someone has to run the grocery store. Someone has to drive the trucks to get it to the store. Run the processor to processes the food from raw to ready to buy form. Run the farm to grow the food. None of these people have a choice in going out to work because THEY want to food to survive. And to top it off, if you’re going to huddle at home, terrified to go to the grocery store, an additional someone has to go to the store for you, pick out your groceries and deliver them to you.

Someone has to keep the water plants running. The gas stations. The mail (never mind the mess if the water stopped running, can you picture the uproar if the USPS stopped delivering mail because they were scared of the virus?). The doctors offices need not only doctors, but nurses, janitors, receptionists.

Your fridge stopped working? Guess what, the guy who comes out to repair it is suddenly pretty essential huh? What if he can’t fix it and you have to buy a new one, gosh, all those people involved in the manufacture of new appliances, the delivery of the various parts and of the finished appliance, the guys who bring it into your house and install it for you. All pretty essential after all.

Even if the .GOV could afford to pay everyone to stay home and hibernate away from those evil viruses (which, as I just discussed, turns out to be not actually a good idea), it’s just not actually possible for everyone to do so and keep society running. Infact there’s a fairly large percentage of workers who NEED to go to work if society is going to keep running. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not actually understand how things actually work.

The mental, emotional, and physical health toll from this shut down is going to reverberate in the world for a long time. Possibly for generations, as the kids whose ability to learn how to interact with people was stunted by this then go on to raise equally stunted children of their own.

We screwed over our immune systems at a time when we needed them working at their best.

We just set back all sorts of medical treatments for major things, like oh, tuberculosis (they’re predicting an ADDITIONAL MILLION PLUS cases just because of the 3 month lockdown). Or African Malaria.

We forced people to do without “non-essential” medical tests and treatments without regard to what those treatments were actually for, and terrified many many more people into avoiding doctors offices and hospitals until it was to late for them, and even if they could and did try to see a doctor wait times to see your regular doctor went through the roof thanks to covid.

Think I’m exaggerating based on a few news reports?

A couple months ago I ended up sitting in the local ER, listening to a guy a few seats over gripe about how his doctor was only doing video appts for 90% of his appts and how this guy has neither computer nor smartphone and therefor hadn’t been able to get in to see his doctor for damn near a year and how now his blood pressure was through the roof. I happened to be sitting in the back waiting on bloodwork when they did his triage, and the nurse came running out of the door to the triage room to get a dose of meds because she had a guy who’s BP was 294/something I forget. Sure I don’t know his situation personally, so maybe he was lying. But from the discussion the nurses and techs had, he wasn’t their first such case of the day.

Oh, and that ER? So backed up that the ambulances bringing in car accident patients were having to drop them in the waiting room unless they were in cardiac arrest right now.

When I called MY doctors office the next morning, to arrange an appt for the ER followup, the next available in person appt was over a month out. (I’m fine, and if they hadn’t closed half the urgent cares in town, cause COVID!!!! I’d have just gone to one of those instead of the ER. Did I mention how covid fucked over everyone’s ability to get health care?)

To top it off we fucked over the supply chain but good. Don’t let those full shelves at the stores deceive you. The stores are all having trouble getting in products. Home Depot has been paying extra to have products air-freighted into the country, and even just contracted their own container ship, in an attempt to get around some of the problems. But that only gets around the final item shipping problems. Just about every manufacturer out there is having problems getting the components and raw materials they need. Shipping, trucking, mining, manufacturing, building, assembly, around the world is fucked. Another lockdown for just about any reason is only going to break things further.

Did you know that the forced remote learning has resulted in many many school systems “losing” 10,000’s of kids? Kids who just aren’t logging into classes, either because they can’t (due to lack of computer, or internet, or the like) or because they just disappeared off the map. Kids who are logging into classes are still falling behind. Multiple states are reporting significant increases in mental health problems in teens and younger. Significant increases in hospitalizations for attempts at self harm, discussions of self harm, and other similar behaviors. (oh, but don’t worry, FB’s fact checkers will point out that the actual suicide rates are down! You know why? They only count successful suicides, and about the only good point of the shut downs is that with people home more suicide attempts were stopped.)

Crushing toll of lockdowns on children

Teen Mental Health Emergency in Colorado

Pandemic’s Cost To Teenagers

Schools that did have in person lessons this past school year frequently reported noticeable lacking and falling behind of children’s social behaviors. Like, potty training, vocabulary, ability to feed themselves.

I’m not saying that some extra cleaning of public places isn’t a good thing, the general public is a dirty nasty mass and some extra cleaning is by far worth it.

I’m not saying that the sudden proliferation of delivery services, and curbside services isn’t a good thing. The way it opens up both additional jobs, AND additional services and options to those who are sick, or frail, or otherwise home-bound is a good thing.

And the widening of work from home options opens up so many doors for so many people. That is also a good thing.

And I’d LOVE if people came out of this with a better recognition that maybe going into work sick (because I’m not THAT sick) isn’t a good thing.

But the insane panic, that I might get SICK!!!!! that has come out of this has got to stop. We have done SO MUCH harm.

Additional links for consideration:

Consequences of the shutdown on the human microbiome

Type 2 Diabetes doubles in children in the last year

Youth Mental Health Crisis from Covid

Household covid risk with in person schooling

Covid Death Toll 25% lower than reported in Alameda

Covid Hospitalizations of Children Over Reported by 40% in some CA hospitals

CO reduced Covid death numbers by 24%

I could go on, and on. But I think this makes my case well enough.

Edited to add one more link, cause I can’t resist.

The kids were safe the whole time.

Over the last year I have slowly come to the realization that the phrase “if it saves just one life” might just be one of the most selfish sayings ever.

We’ll likely never know if the forced shutdowns and closures actually saved people’s lives (from dying of covid19) or not. They may well have.

The problem is that at the same time that the closures may have prevented deaths from covid19, they caused deaths from other things.

Suicide rates are up across the country, especially in the child populations. And the mental health of the remainder has taken a hell of a hit.

The elderly and people living in community housing are suddenly dying of loneliness and depression as their contact with family and the outside world was cut off.

Reports of drug overdoses and deaths have also continued to rise, reports of domestic abuse and rape as well.

And we’ll likely never know what the long term medical side effects of the forced lack of “non-essential” medical care for an extended period did to the world-wide population.

Unemployment continues to climb, small businesses continue to fail at astronomical rates. The tolls of high unemployment on a population are well known, all by itself it means an increase in suicide rates, drug overdose, and domestic abuse. How many small businesses that had been around for generations have to close due to the shut downs for it to count? What do you think that has done to the mental health of those people, to watch their businesses fail?

Every business that fails, every now unemployed person, is that many fewer to pay taxes. And all those stimulus checks and payments have to come from somewhere. What happens when there’s fewer people paying taxes? I can guarantee that the various politicians won’t be taking pay cuts to make up the difference.

The food supply chain still isn’t back to normal. We’re damn close to a year out from the original forced shutdown here in the USA, but the grocery store shelves STILL aren’t back to where they were prior. Never mind the supply chains for so many other things.

And that’s all without getting into the political climate. Something close to half the country now believes that the corrupt run the country and nothing they can say or do (legally) is going to make a difference. Something close to the other half of the country is happily calling for the blood, forced unemployment and re-education, and even death, of the first half. Oh sure, it’s more involved than that, but as someone who’s had a front row seat to how both sides think, I think that pretty well sums it up.

All those people who suicided due to the shutdown. All those people who died from lack of medical care, or who will die due to lack of medical care, during the shutdown. All those people who’s lives are now in a downward spiral because of the shutdown. They all had as much a right to live as the folks the shutdown was supposed to protect. “If it saves one life” is fucking useless if it kills 2. Its selfish as hell is what it is.

All of this has been running through my brain for a while. It’s part of why I’ve stuck to memes so much. I’m not prone to depression, but god it’s depressing to look at the bigger picture.

Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I firmly believe that human stupidity and greed is capable of making up for any such, and that the average human couldn’t keep a secret that long anyway.

But when they do stupid shit like this:

Its enough to make even me wonder.

I’d love to see the various politicians get their asses handed to them, but I’m starting to think that the ones we really need to go after is the media…..