This is the first I’m hearing about rapid tests being less sensitive, post-omicron. Can you explain? I understand that the rapid tests respond to the presence of nucleocapsid, which changes very little with each sublineage. Do you mean that the tests tend to become positive only after symptoms start to occur?
In any case, I agree that yet more testing and more vaccines-for-all are bad expenditures. I’m starting to think that the Biden Administration simply thinks that this will please its base, which is mainly still frightened and confused. Any simplification from the CDC/FDA/White House seems to please them, as they’ve really not tried to understand anything beyond platitudes.
I don't understand why Dr. Buckhaults said the DNA contamination finding was inappropriate for a journal paper. Seems like a solid result that is of wide interest.
Tracy, great work. What scares me the most is how much I want to send this to people dear to me, yet how many of them simply cannot comprehend that these are the non-spun, straight facts about the reality we live in.
I constantly feel the walls closing in and when I read things like this, it always reminds me that there are a ton more people out there than I realize who actually care about something like a meaningful sense of freedom.
The fact that these discussions were so profoundly shut down speaks to culture shifts that I am not even quite sure how to account for. Organizations that praise and valorize freedom were often even dead silent INTERNALLY, let alone speaking out against the shutting down of simply, real concerns that citizens had about the pandemic and its response. That response of the U.S. government was a profound anti-democratic attack on citizens. Yet that was not enough -- the pandemic was a subject that simply was not touched for fear of retribution inside many organizations that are supposed to be promoting the highest levels of freedom known to mankind.
There is the legal level of totalitarianism, a line that has been continually crossed since 9/11, our reaction to which seeded so much of what is now unfolding. The second level is even more of a puzzle: the culture that enables totalitarianism.
And that's what I'm not quite sure what to do about, but the more we can write and cause others to think, the better.
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth."
"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud."
"The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves."
"His awakening will come later, when the totalitarian state is firmly established."
"From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments.
...
Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops.
...
But what is sinister, as I said at the beginning of this essay, is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves.
...
When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness. Many scientists, for example, are the uncritical admirers of the U.S.S.R. They appear to think that the destruction of liberty is of no importance so long as their own line of work is for the moment unaffected. The U.S.S.R. is a large, rapidly developing country which has an acute need of scientific workers and, consequently, treats them generously. Provided that they steer clear of dangerous subjects such as psychology, scientists are privileged persons.
...
For the moment the totalitarian state tolerates the scientist because it needs him. Even in Nazi Germany, scientists, other than Jews, were relatively well treated and the German scientific community, as a whole, offered no resistance to Hitler. At this stage of history, even the most autocratic ruler is forced to take account of physical reality, partly because of the lingering-on of liberal habits of thought, partly because of the need to prepare for war. So long as physical reality cannot altogether be ignored, so long as two and two have to make four when you are, for example, drawing the blueprint of an aeroplane, the scientist has his function, and can even be allowed a measure of liberty. His awakening will come later, when the totalitarian state is firmly established. Meanwhile, if he wants to safeguard the integrity of science, it is his job to develop some kind of solidarity with his literary colleagues and not disregard it as a matter of indifference when writers are silenced or driven to suicide, and newspapers systematically falsified.
...
But however it may be with the physical sciences, or with music, painting and architecture, it is — as I have tried to show — certain that literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes. Not only is it doomed in any country which retains a totalitarian structure; but any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer. There is no way out of this. No tirades against ‘individualism’ and the ‘ivory tower’, no pious platitudes to the effect that ‘true individuality is only attained through identification with the community’, can get over the fact that a bought mind is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes ossified. At some time in the future, if the human mind becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact — and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial — is, in effect, demanding his own destruction."
1) I compiled this list of booster recommendations by country after Katelyn "Your Local Epidemiologist" Jetelina argued that the poor state of US Healthcare is why we *need* all ages to get boosted [1]. May be helpful to see exactly how much of an outlier the US (and Canada) relative to the rest of the countries touted as "doing it right" the last 3 years (notably, Germany, Israel, South Korea):
2) I'm baffled how the "mass test" solution is still promulgated. I thought it was obviously falsified when Michael Mina made the bold claim in Time [2] that mass testing "ended Covid in Slovakia and the UK", and could do the same for every other country "by Christmas" - yet cases exploded in Slovakia and the UK immediately after his claim was published. (never mind Michael Mina quit his faculty position to join a testing company). I was further puzzled when Michael Mina saw first-hand how his daily testing regimen failed to alert him to his own Covid diagnosis, despite being vaccinated, until *after* he was symptomatic. Luckly he detailed all of this "Bob Wachter Style" on twitter:
3) A story that seemed to fly under the radar, is how the side effects of the initial vaccination campaign resulted in multiple school closures from staff too sick to come to work. (as an aside, this was what ultimately lead me to skip the vaccine - anecdotally my wife, a surgeon, was so sick from the first dose of Moderna that she cancelled her surgeries for 2 days, but when I saw this was not a "1 off", I decided to not intentionally get sick to avoid the potential of getting sick). I compiled a list of news reports of schools closing mass vaccination here:
Wow, wow, wow. I’m so glad I found your Substack. Plaintiff in the AB 2098 case, hanging out with Christine Stabell Bell, Dr Ladapo, Aaron Kerhiaty, advising the WHO and so savvy to everything. How have I not known about you sooner(???). I followed AB 2098 through Richard Jaffe’s blog. I really look forward to the wealth of wisdom you have to share. I’ve been dying with curiosity for a credible person to comment on what Dr Buckhault shared because, holy crazy cow. It leaves a calling card 😳!? What?!
Uuhhh...if that’s a for real thing.... the implications!
No wonder they cremate everyone now. We’d be digging everyone up. Looking forward to your Stack on that.
To the psychos Covid is not a lie. They actually believe they are saving the world. They are religious fanatics in which their science is a religion. They are not rational. We have regressed to an earlier era.
This is the first I’m hearing about rapid tests being less sensitive, post-omicron. Can you explain? I understand that the rapid tests respond to the presence of nucleocapsid, which changes very little with each sublineage. Do you mean that the tests tend to become positive only after symptoms start to occur?
In any case, I agree that yet more testing and more vaccines-for-all are bad expenditures. I’m starting to think that the Biden Administration simply thinks that this will please its base, which is mainly still frightened and confused. Any simplification from the CDC/FDA/White House seems to please them, as they’ve really not tried to understand anything beyond platitudes.
I don't understand why Dr. Buckhaults said the DNA contamination finding was inappropriate for a journal paper. Seems like a solid result that is of wide interest.
Tracy, great work. What scares me the most is how much I want to send this to people dear to me, yet how many of them simply cannot comprehend that these are the non-spun, straight facts about the reality we live in.
I constantly feel the walls closing in and when I read things like this, it always reminds me that there are a ton more people out there than I realize who actually care about something like a meaningful sense of freedom.
The fact that these discussions were so profoundly shut down speaks to culture shifts that I am not even quite sure how to account for. Organizations that praise and valorize freedom were often even dead silent INTERNALLY, let alone speaking out against the shutting down of simply, real concerns that citizens had about the pandemic and its response. That response of the U.S. government was a profound anti-democratic attack on citizens. Yet that was not enough -- the pandemic was a subject that simply was not touched for fear of retribution inside many organizations that are supposed to be promoting the highest levels of freedom known to mankind.
There is the legal level of totalitarianism, a line that has been continually crossed since 9/11, our reaction to which seeded so much of what is now unfolding. The second level is even more of a puzzle: the culture that enables totalitarianism.
And that's what I'm not quite sure what to do about, but the more we can write and cause others to think, the better.
George Orwell wrote of this:
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth."
"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud."
"The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves."
"His awakening will come later, when the totalitarian state is firmly established."
"a bought mind is a spoiled mind"
The Prevention of Literature
Polemic, January, 1946
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-prevention-of-literature/
(selected excerpts)
"From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments.
...
Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops.
...
But what is sinister, as I said at the beginning of this essay, is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves.
...
When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness. Many scientists, for example, are the uncritical admirers of the U.S.S.R. They appear to think that the destruction of liberty is of no importance so long as their own line of work is for the moment unaffected. The U.S.S.R. is a large, rapidly developing country which has an acute need of scientific workers and, consequently, treats them generously. Provided that they steer clear of dangerous subjects such as psychology, scientists are privileged persons.
...
For the moment the totalitarian state tolerates the scientist because it needs him. Even in Nazi Germany, scientists, other than Jews, were relatively well treated and the German scientific community, as a whole, offered no resistance to Hitler. At this stage of history, even the most autocratic ruler is forced to take account of physical reality, partly because of the lingering-on of liberal habits of thought, partly because of the need to prepare for war. So long as physical reality cannot altogether be ignored, so long as two and two have to make four when you are, for example, drawing the blueprint of an aeroplane, the scientist has his function, and can even be allowed a measure of liberty. His awakening will come later, when the totalitarian state is firmly established. Meanwhile, if he wants to safeguard the integrity of science, it is his job to develop some kind of solidarity with his literary colleagues and not disregard it as a matter of indifference when writers are silenced or driven to suicide, and newspapers systematically falsified.
...
But however it may be with the physical sciences, or with music, painting and architecture, it is — as I have tried to show — certain that literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes. Not only is it doomed in any country which retains a totalitarian structure; but any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer. There is no way out of this. No tirades against ‘individualism’ and the ‘ivory tower’, no pious platitudes to the effect that ‘true individuality is only attained through identification with the community’, can get over the fact that a bought mind is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes ossified. At some time in the future, if the human mind becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact — and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial — is, in effect, demanding his own destruction."
A few comments and sharing of data:
1) I compiled this list of booster recommendations by country after Katelyn "Your Local Epidemiologist" Jetelina argued that the poor state of US Healthcare is why we *need* all ages to get boosted [1]. May be helpful to see exactly how much of an outlier the US (and Canada) relative to the rest of the countries touted as "doing it right" the last 3 years (notably, Germany, Israel, South Korea):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oJusZ0yAve1cCCSS5MGjp1XYjNc7qJffqJsz7ARlnLg/edit#gid=0
2) I'm baffled how the "mass test" solution is still promulgated. I thought it was obviously falsified when Michael Mina made the bold claim in Time [2] that mass testing "ended Covid in Slovakia and the UK", and could do the same for every other country "by Christmas" - yet cases exploded in Slovakia and the UK immediately after his claim was published. (never mind Michael Mina quit his faculty position to join a testing company). I was further puzzled when Michael Mina saw first-hand how his daily testing regimen failed to alert him to his own Covid diagnosis, despite being vaccinated, until *after* he was symptomatic. Luckly he detailed all of this "Bob Wachter Style" on twitter:
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1483116982048329734
3) A story that seemed to fly under the radar, is how the side effects of the initial vaccination campaign resulted in multiple school closures from staff too sick to come to work. (as an aside, this was what ultimately lead me to skip the vaccine - anecdotally my wife, a surgeon, was so sick from the first dose of Moderna that she cancelled her surgeries for 2 days, but when I saw this was not a "1 off", I decided to not intentionally get sick to avoid the potential of getting sick). I compiled a list of news reports of schools closing mass vaccination here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14SWha9BF9kbFLqGFEuM9BLb9fl_Nt0JCtvvUweVkZQk/edit?usp=sharing
______________
[1] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/be-careful-comparing-the-us-to-other
[2] https://time.com/5912705/covid-19-stop-spread-christmas/
Wow, wow, wow. I’m so glad I found your Substack. Plaintiff in the AB 2098 case, hanging out with Christine Stabell Bell, Dr Ladapo, Aaron Kerhiaty, advising the WHO and so savvy to everything. How have I not known about you sooner(???). I followed AB 2098 through Richard Jaffe’s blog. I really look forward to the wealth of wisdom you have to share. I’ve been dying with curiosity for a credible person to comment on what Dr Buckhault shared because, holy crazy cow. It leaves a calling card 😳!? What?!
Uuhhh...if that’s a for real thing.... the implications!
No wonder they cremate everyone now. We’d be digging everyone up. Looking forward to your Stack on that.
To the psychos Covid is not a lie. They actually believe they are saving the world. They are religious fanatics in which their science is a religion. They are not rational. We have regressed to an earlier era.
The Plandemic Is compared to the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Watch 1692 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR. https://turfseer.substack.com/p/1692-was-a-very-good-year-new-version