Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[Belligerent Savant]

Though perhaps in this respect you're right: we shouldn't expect better quality. This is, indeed -- demonstrably -- not the RI of old.[/b]

You were easily in the top 3 complaining about "the RI of old," which was dominated to the exclusion of all other content by daily flooding from certain posters whom you constantly yanged about; as did I.

"Not the RI of old" is of course the perennial complaint, dating back through the whole history of this site. Now that you're literally the leading poster, are you saying that you're the problem? (Note: You don't flood, and this comment is merely me as a poster calling out bullshit, not a mod message.)

It is just as naive to presume that every statement from the 'authoritarian' dominant narrative is simply the 180-degree opposite of the truth, and that everyone claiming this can be trusted in their full package of claims.

- this is strawman-esque, as no one here has indicated or suggested this...

Several users here do exactly this, but I wasn't thinking of or talking to you. Why do you feel addressed?

but frankly, right now l'd say MOST of the dominant narrative is straight up disinfo/conditioning/fear-mongering. Far too much noise, very little signal.

I say the same. That still doesn't mean that truth is the 180-degree opposite of the dominant disinfo (which is what I actually said), which of course often relies on true facts in its construction.

.

I'll keep it brief to (attempt to) avoid excessive to and fro:

I anticipated my reference to the 'RI of old' would garner a response along the lines of yours. I was operating under the premise that you'd appreciate, by instinct, that I mean NOT the -- largely isolated to a few posters -- period of egregious 'copypasta' by the select few former members, but rather, the spirit of RI during those early ~5-10 years, which acknowledges and understands that much, if not most (depending on zeitgeist), of the dominant narrative is, in a word, bullshit.

Re: your 2nd point --
I didn't feel addressed personally -- I was speaking on behalf of the collective. With rare exception, I believe this thread has raised very pertinent and germane lines of inquiry, and for the most part, has necessarily questioned much of the establishment narratives of the last year.

As already indicated, there are times when the bullshit and lies are particularly egregious, above and beyond the standard. This is one of those times. And I acknowledge that you're essentially in agreement with this (within margin of error, that is).

Bottom line, tho: raising Qanon here is bullshit. It's either a demonstration of falling prey to clear intel op propaganda, or otherwise an attempt to blatantly derail earnest inquiry.

[Grizzly]

Ohio House Bill 248, Erika Smith, PhD Proponent Testimony

This woman's presentation to the Ohio State Legislature about Covid Vaxx is Wonderful. Spread this far and wide.

[dada]

It's kind of like watching superfans discuss their favorite shows. The "resist technocratic elite control!" narrative, I mean. It's a mass produced narrative, like a lifestyle brand. Marketed as against the mainstream.

A certain pitch, that appeals to a certain type of mass consumer. Buy into the brand, there's a whole social media-connected network to wrap yourself in, all under the official resist technocratic elite control umbrella.

[drstrangelove]

Well, your rhetoric is sort of Q-Anonish. It denies the chaotic nature of pathogens in our world, and attributes COVID-19 severity to some kind of conspiratorially planned messaging that exaggerates the danger. To what end? The whole idea is ridiculous. Just listen to science. Listen to knowledgeable researches and epidemiologists. Let them do their jobs, they are smart and good people.

The fundamental technology advancement in the 21st century are the deep learning algorithms behind the automation of different societies. These algorithms are only as good as the data they're fed, so data has become the primary resource for achieving greater efficiencies in modern society. The other side of that is adoption of the technologies these efficiencies derive from.

On both fronts, data and adoption, Western societies are lagging behind eastern societies. Sure, in the West we create moderately better algorithms than they do in China. But China copies them quickly and effectively. And China not only gathers from its population higher quantities of better quality data, their society adopts the technology begot from this much quicker and gains much greater efficiencies.

The reason for this is largely cultural. Western values such as individualized liberty and privacy are hindrances to both data collection, effecting the quantity and quality of data, and new technology adoption. This is well known by government think tanks, and there are a bunch of reports available through FOI which explicitly call this a national security threat.

I'm not offering anything but an observation here. But the policy of virus minimization during the pandemic has been a policy of data maximization and new technology normalization.
Covid Testing – Tests collect data which populate dna databases for genome sequencing.
Lockdowns – Restricting the freedom of movement reduces kinetic activity that cannot be monitored and increases digital activity which is monitored.
Contact Tracing – Normalises the collection of kinetic activity through digitally signing into the real world environment through QR codes and installing applications on phones for the express purpose of tracking movements.
Deterrent against Cash – Less cash means more digitally recorded transactions.
Vaccines – Vaccine passports, which are coming, though the form they will take is speculative.
Masks – teaches facial recognition algorithms to identify faces with obfuscations.

Almost every single pandemic measure which has been designed to minimize virus, also maximizes data.

Now think about this.

If maximizing data has become an imperative of national security, and the policy for collecting this data is literally the same policy used for minimizing virus, then it becomes a national security imperative for there to be virus to minimize for the collection of data.

[dada]

I'm looking at it as the Internet, as digital commercial vehicle, is the technology of industrialization of the production of information, as the assembly line industrializes the mass production of goods.

As the assembly line industrializes the workforce, the technology of industrialized information production industrializes the mass consumer. And as the assembly line needs an industrialized workforce, tuned to the needs of mass production of goods, the information production needs industrialized mass consumers tuned to the needs of the mass production of information, to generate the mass data necessary for the adequate functioning of the entire information mass production industry.

So I'm looking at this industrialization of the mass consumer as a process that has been going on in tandem with the development of digital technology from the start. It kicks into high gear with hi speed Internet and social media, but the arc of industrialization in this view is not so much top down as organic, as mass consumer culture naturally interacts and is transformed by the industrial technology. Analysis of virus culture as a kind of data collection apparatus for tuning technology advance, then, in this view, is a slice of a much longer evolution, that is as much organic as it is crafted by the needs of the continued growth of mass production.

[drstrangelove]

I'm looking at it as the Internet, as digital commercial vehicle, is the technology of industrialization of the production of information, as the assembly line industrializes the mass production of goods.

As the assembly line industrializes the workforce, the technology of industrialized information production industrializes the mass consumer. And as the assembly line needs an industrialized workforce, tuned to the needs of mass production of goods, the information production needs industrialized mass consumers tuned to the needs of the mass production of information, to generate the mass data necessary for the adequate functioning of the entire information mass production industry.

So I'm looking at this industrialization of the mass consumer as a process that has been going on in tandem with the development of digital technology from the start. It kicks into high gear with hi speed Internet and social media, but the arc of industrialization in this view is not so much top down as organic, as mass consumer culture naturally interacts and is transformed by the industrial technology. Analysis of virus culture as a kind of data collection apparatus for tuning technology advance, then, in this view, is a slice of a much longer evolution, that is as much organic as it is crafted by the needs of the continued growth of mass production.

Yeah, it's just gone from nerve and muscle to providing data in relation to production. People provide data to feed the AI automated supply chains, which produce the new 'smart' versions of the same old commodities, which people consume to provide more data.

The problem is that culture becomes tailored around conforming behavior to best meet data needs. Things get too speculative beyond this point, but it would appear authoritarian societies produce more quantities of better quality data. Also unsure how long the producer class would need to be around for, or rather in its current portion, which is becoming superfluous as labor needs decline. There is such as thing as redundant data.

[Grizzly]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484390/

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/anthony-fauci-backed-virus-experiments-despite-pandemic-risk/news-story/3c604681cfcbfeda88bac25e372a1b8a

More drama here (as well as interesting comments)
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/nn3egs/breaking_fauci_in_2012_wrote_that_gain_of/

So we've established how the information produced in mass culture for and by the "resist technocratic elite control!" demographic is similar to the Qanon game. Both are products of mass culture, and not at all "outside the norm."

https://twitter.com/Harvard2H/status/1398335216687648775

So I'm looking at this industrialization of the mass consumer as a process that has been going on in tandem with the development of digital technology from the start. It kicks into high gear with hi speed Internet and social media, but the arc of industrialization in this view is not so much top down as organic, as mass consumer culture naturally interacts and is transformed by the industrial technology. Analysis of virus culture as a kind of data collection apparatus for tuning technology advance, then, in this view, is a slice of a much longer evolution, that is as much organic as it is crafted by the needs of the continued growth of mass production.

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php

[Belligerent Savant]

Ohio House Bill 248, Erika Smith, PhD Proponent Testimony

This woman's presentation to the Ohio State Legislature about Covid Vaxx is Wonderful. Spread this far and wide.

Transcript (with a few minor edits). A fair amount of her testimony echoes commentary made in this thread by a number of us:

Ohio House Bill 248, Erika Smith, PhD
Proponent Testimony


History Repeats Itself: Parallels Between the Civil Rights Movement and the Forced Vaccination Movement

I am the descendant of slaves and indigenous people, and because of that, I am here to urge our representatives to support HB 248 (Ohio) because I remember history and I do not want to repeat it. My paternal great-grandmother was born on a plantation in Bullock, Alabama and she lived there until she was six. Eventually she and her family moved north and settled in Ohio. .. My maternal grandfather had to leave Birmingham, Alabama with his brother because they were so outspoken about discrimination and equality for blacks that they were repeatedly threatened with lynching.
...

My parents did what they could to stand for justice and equality during the civil rights movement so that when I was born, I was free and had the same privileges under the law as everyone else, but a vaccine mandate will change that. Any student of history clearly sees the distinct parallels between segregation due to race, and segregation due to vaccine status. Inherent in this discriminatory practice is the understanding that what is happening with COVID, or whatever the next fear-driven narrative connected to illness is, will become the next battle for civil rights.

Government-sanctioned discrimination based on skin color is no different than government-sanctioned discrimination based on vaccine status. The unvaccinated will become second-class citizens, just like blacks once were. During the civil rights movement blacks fought against unjust laws; today citizens are fighting against the tyranny of government officials and the bullying from people in their daily lives who expect them to relinquish their god-given freedoms, upheld in the constitution, to the State and to obey mandates -- mere words of men -- which are not laws.

In slavery, blacks were masked for several reasons: to dehumanize, to shame, to silence, to isolate, to punish, to emphasize otherness, and to incite fear. Blacks also had to show their papers to prove that they had freedom of movement off and on the plantations owned by their masters. How are the COVID masks, social distancing, tracking and tracing, and vaccine passports of today any different than the tools used by the oppressors of yesteryear? They aren't.
Fear and intimidation were used on blacks then, and it is being used in the exact same way on citizens now. Fear is psychological warfare. When the mind is controlled by fear, one's body and movements can also be controlled. Let me add, what did Roosevelt say? "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".

Lockdowns, masks, tracking and tracing, and vaccine mandates are abusive because they are systematically stripping away the freedoms of citizens to choose for themselves the best course of action for their health.

The idea of mandatory vaccinations for people to keep their jobs smacks of the same abuse that legislators have historically used against whatever people or group they perceive to be inferior. Forced vaccinations, medical passports, tracking and tracing are all forms of medical apartheid; I would encourage you to read Harriet Washington's book called Medical Apartheid. I have several physicians in my family; a couple of them have taken the the vaccine and have had adverse reactions -- tremors -- and their parents who are also physicians have decided that they're not taking it for that reason. One of my cousins went into anaphylactic shock shortly after taking the vaccine.

These processes are obviously discriminatory, and it's horrific to think that what people are enduring today is a repeat performance of the past. Will COVID, or future illnesses and all that they entail, spark a new movement for equal justice under the law? Currently, disparate treatment runs right across this nation, spreading like wildfire. Demanding -- in exchange for job security and participation in society -- the injection of medical treatments that are devoid of both FDA approval and legal recourse (when damaging side effects occur) is draconian at best and criminal at worst.

What happened to 'my body my choice', 'don't ask don't tell', the basic right to privacy? Those who love freedom must act before it's too late. Please support HB 248.

Respectfully
Erika Smith, PhD

[Belligerent Savant]

Bottom line, tho: raising Qanon here is bullshit. It's either a demonstration of falling prey to clear intel op propaganda, or otherwise an attempt to blatantly derail earnest inquiry.

Briefly revisiting my point above.

In the prior page, JR typed:

It's naive to pretend this [ascribing COVID-related scrutiny to "Qanon"] can be ignored or treated as a mere nuisance.

[I added the bit in brackets for context]

My point was specific to this mindset IN RI. You performed a sleight of hand trick there by applying this phenomenon to 'the world at large', or at least social media banter at large.

Whenever a forum member here references Qanon at face-value -- meaning, they are presenting Qanon exactly as presented in the mainstream, rather than acknowledging its likely intel origins, or usage as a device to poison wells or distract from topics worth raising, etc -- it should absolutely be called out.

Your commentary on Qanon usage in the wild as a means to derail worthwhile COVID-related scrutiny, while certainly valid, was not germane to my point. I will presume you misinterpreted this, hence my clarification here.

[stickdog99]

I'm fully vaccinated and I couldn't be happier. Symptoms? Mild fatigue for a week or two as my immune system got revved up. I'm looking forward to a booster later, because COVID-19 is nothing to poke sticks at. Mark my words, it will be around for a very long time, and when summer ends, the curve will turn upwards again. Many more will die, and many, many more will suffer debilitating health problems.

I actually had a deranged sister-in-law "test" my vax site by holding up a refrigerator magnet to my shoulder to see if it would stick. She refuses vaccination, you see, partially because she believes that they deliver implants (designed by Bill Gates) into our systems. She didn't detect any magnetic material, though.

Mostly, I'm just trolling you Q'ers that have tons of time to expound at great length why everything is coordinated, preplanned, secretive, and designed. Just like every other conspiracy theory! Such theories help us as we struggle with the facts of universal chaos.

OK. So why are you happy that you are vaccinated? Does it even matter to you what vaccine you were vaccinated with or are they all the same to you? Can you share with us any evidence that shows that the population that was vaccinated with the vaccine you had injected into you have lower overall hospitalization and death rates than do unvaccinated people of equal age and socioeconomic status?

See, I would to have the blind quasi-religious certainty that you appear to have that experimental vaccines that have never before been used on humans have no deleterious short, mid, or long range side effects that could potentially outweigh the small benefit in fighting off COVID-19 that they confer. So please humor me and tell me, what makes you so sure that injecting billions of people with mRNA instructions to manufacture spike proteins that make viruses more contagious to humans is an awesome idea? What makes you so sure that the manufacturing practices followed by the vaccine manufacturer you enriched definitely resulted in a high quality vaccine with no harmful contaminant getting delivered into your arm? Could you please explain your certitude on this issue?

[stickdog99]

.

Congratulate yourself for being a willing stooge.

My turn:
I'm un-'vaccinated'. Will avoid it at all costs. Barely ever wore a mask, certainly not outdoors. I've traveled a number of times over the past year, including by plane (and while on the plane, I held my drink near my face for extended periods to avoid wearing the mask). I haven't gotten ill. My family members don't wear masks either. They haven't gotten ill. I've gone outside almost daily since the onset of this propaganda campaign -- walking, jogging, bike riding -- enjoying the sun and fresh air. Only change to my habits over the past year is that I've taken vitamin D more regularly (when not absorbing it naturally while outdoors) along with Vitamin C (mostly from citrus) and Zinc for periods of time.

Are there outlandish theories out there? Sure. Misdirections, limited hangouts, mis/disinformation, poisoned wells and red herrings abound. But that doesn't mean lies aren't being told by govts or bureaucrats, or that crimes against humanity aren't being perpetrated. Or that these 'vaccines' aren't part of a sinister campaign.

Carry on, dutiful soldier.

P.S. - of course this virus will be back later this year. It's endemic now, like all other viruses. But it's FAR less harmful than advertised, and in any event, most have either naturally-acquired immunity/antibodies, or will reportedly have lessened symptoms due to the supposed benefit of these experimental shots (that is, if your immunity isn't markedly compromised as part of the numerous adverse effects -- it will be interesting to see what happens later this year. Any serious adverse side effects resulting from these shots will simply be attributed back to covid, of course -- par for the course.)

By the way, neither you or dada answered Jack's earlier question:

dada, freemason9, can you point to examples of current and recent posts that you consider Q-talk?

Point to examples or STFU.

Well, your rhetoric is sort of Q-Anonish. It denies the chaotic nature of pathogens in our world, and attributes COVID-19 severity to some kind of conspiratorially planned messaging that exaggerates the danger. To what end? The whole idea is ridiculous. Just listen to science. Listen to knowledgeable researches and epidemiologists. Let them do their jobs, they are smart and good people.

I desperately want to "listen to the science." So can you produce the actual scientific data that underlie your total certainty that experimental mRNA vaccines (and lockdowns and masks for that matter) definitely confer more benefit than harm?

Establishment scientists themselves are humans who are, at least in this case, subject to extreme pressure to conform to medical establishment consensus, and as far as medical establishment is concerned, any new revenue source developed by a drug company, especially if it is marketed as a vaccine, is always inherently awesome until proven otherwise.

I, on the other hand, just want see the actual scientific data. Can you share them with me?

[Harvey]

Whenever a forum member here references Qanon at face-value -- meaning, they are presenting Qanon exactly as presented in the mainstream, rather than acknowledging its likely intel origins, or usage as a device to poison wells or distract from topics worth raising, etc -- it should absolutely be called out.

Your commentary on Qanon usage in the wild as a means to derail worthwhile COVID-related scrutiny, while certainly valid, was not germane to my point. I will presume you misinterpreted this, hence my clarification here.

Here in the UK, if I ask a few reasonable questions, the most common response used to be along the lines: "You read Q'anon?"

More seldom (not by much) but increasingly, someone quietly asks "So, what do you think of this whole Covid thing?"

The sheer relief when I venture an opinion is sometimes overwhelming, "Thank God, I'm not alone!"

[stickdog99]

I left this thread six pages ago and hadn't looked back in until now. I got the distinct feeling that my opinions on the thread topic were not welcome, so I stopped posting them.

The question, "can I point to specific q like posts or behavior," isn't it really more of a narrative flow, storyframe about elite controllers manipulating society and controlling minds with technocratic wizardry.

That's how I'm judging it, on a post by post basis, content and context. But the post being referenced, I think was a pretty good riff. Inspirational, if I must say so myself.

"Soon the message board will be totally abandoned to the Q crowd. It will be all reshared social media posted with no comment, just half-baked utterances of no import. It is just the natural state of mass consumer culture, I think. Everything turns to shit in it, and then the shit spills out all over everything.

And as goes Rigorous Intuition, so will the entire Internet. So we should all try to enjoy what little is left that has not become totally irredemable and stupid while it lasts."

Not only do you never produce any relevant data, you have now been reduced to substance-free meta-vilification of any questioning of the mainstream medical establishment narrative of COVID-19 in the abstract.

How about deigning to back your opinions with some evidence, data, reason, or logic? I mean, there's a first time for everything. Right?

[stickdog99]

But this is exactly what I'm talking about, griz. Your response to my post through sharing a tweet. All you are doing is shutting down discussion with me. Getting up on the mass culture bully pulpit, and trying to knock me on the head with reshared tweets is not an argument for or against anything, it's just twitch response to trigger words you didn't "like."

And even stupiderly, the content of the reshared tweet doesn't have anything to do with the basic thrust of my argument. The analysis I'm presenting makes the question of "dark motives" irrelevant. It has nothing to do with whether or not behaviors are above board. Not that people aren't capable of doing bad things for worse reasons, but the thread topic could be much more fruitful if we left that kind of gossipy billionaire fanboy speculation out of it.

The topic can be approached without all the mass culture, social media noise surrounding it. I'd say it actually can't be approached other than as a game, otherwise. Not really looking for answers, but plugging and playing, the endless search, dig up bone, copy paste share. Maybe it gives you some kind of social satisfaction to participate in the daily ritual, I don't know. But I just see it as a complete waste of time.

Here's my take. You never say anything other than "anybody who suggests that people with every advantage in wealth, power, and prestige would actually use those advantages to try to sustain and enlarge their wealth, power, and prestige at the expense of other humans is totally deranged." To be fair, you also continuously opine that making any such suggestion somehow serves to help those who have every advantage in wealth, power, and prestige.

And you make this exact same "argument" in a hundred different ways on an infinite loop. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[stickdog99]

Ascribing this discussion to Qanon is part of the way this narrative is managed.

Like it or not, not the apparently defunct Qanon operation (which I'd bet money was an adjunct to the Trump campaign) but the subculture that adopted Qanon has now occupied dissent from the dominant Covid/Lockdown/vaccination narrative and thus hindering its growth. In the same way, Alex Jones and no-plane/no-victim claims occupied 9/11 skepticism and guaranteed it would be discredited (though of course that was overdetermined). It's naive to pretend this can be ignored or treated as a mere nuisance. It is just as naive to presume that every statement from the 'authoritarian' dominant narrative is simply the 180-degree opposite of the truth, and that everyone claiming this can be trusted in their full package of claims.

While downtown yesterday, a small band on Sixth Avenue conducted the first anti-lockdown protest -- a yell-out, I guess it could be called -- that I've witnessed personally in New York. They were walking along screaming at people at random (for a while through a bullhorn) and calling them sheep and such for... eating in the outdoor structures granted to restaurants instead of inside, on a summery evening. I'm pretty sure most who saw this did not understand what their issues were supposed to be. If their mission had been to alienate everyone seeing them with incoherence and aggressive insults and condescension, they couldn't have done a better job. This is the opposite of movement building.

I agree 100%. But somebody has to start somewhere when it comes to breaking the BlueAnon Covidian spell.