(Last) Weekly Roundup: Delta Farce Edition
Admit it, if only to yourself: When Joe Biden, ah, obviously and ethically won the safest and most secure election in human history, you might not have liked the outcome --- but weren't you at least tempted to breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of an end to America's full-court-press Kulturkampf? I know I was. Too many of the people in my social circles had spent the past four years suffering from an unstoppable compulsion to display their hatred for President Trump in each and every aspect of their life, a political Tourette's if you will. When they weren't actively complaining about Trump, they complained about Trump's supporters, those rural Morlocks who clung to guns, religion, and the Cummins 5.9-liter diesel.
I'd hoped that we would return to some civility in the American discourse --- but that was remarkably naive of me. Instead, we are hearing demands for "truth and reconciliation" commissions, watching the current legislature fiddle an insane vendetta against both Trump and his supporters while the economy burns, and observing as the violent rhetoric of last summer's "protests" is used to dehumanize everyone to the right of Snowball/Trotsky/Goldstein.
The truth is that you cannot easily re-bottle the lightning of political violence, at least not when it is so deeply satisfying and thoroughly consequence-free to wield it indiscriminately. The latest target of said viciousness, of course, is that group of people known collectively as "the unvaccinated". They're already being set up as the scapegoat for everything from rampant stagflation to the proliferation of COVID variants. Every op-ed page in the country is mulling over the various manners in which the un-vaxed might be compelled to accept a "jab". There's plenty of soft selling going on, some of it disturbing: Reddit is running ads in which a blonde woman tells viewers that "it is your right to vaccinate your twelve-year-old children". There's some carrot/sticking happening, particularly in New York City. And then there is the chorus that is openly demanding forcible vaccination of the entire population.
How fair and reasonable is any of this, particularly in light of the increasing body of COVID knowledge?
(Disclaimer: Here at Riverside Green, we all immediately submit to any vaccination, injection, inhalation, or penetration demanded of us by the corporate-governmental complex. We have all received mixed Pfizer/Moderna programs with extra boosters in an attempt to fill out the entire front of our vaccine cards. Sometimes, when we are bored, we stop by a CVS just to get an extra "jab" for safety's sake. Not only are we pro-vax, we support the forcible vaccination of children, animals, lobsters, and inaminate objects. Chances are that, as you read this, Bark and I are both receiving an additional booster shot, just to be safe --- jb)
It increasingly appears that it is the vaccinated, not the unwashed and unvaxed demon people, who are contributing to the spread of COVID-19 variants. The vaccinations do not appear to work in the traditional sense of rendering their recipients immune to infection. Rather, they simply mitigate the severity of the infection, allowing the person a higher chance of becoming asymptomatic. As noted in the study shown at the top of this page, 74% of the COVID-positive people in a recent study had been "jabbed" --- this, in a country where only seventy percent of the population has even started a vax program. There is increasing evidence that none of the "jabs" offer much protection against the "Delta" variant and, in fact, might even be aiding in the transmission of Delta. The Pfizer shot loses 80% of its effectiveness after six months.
This does not necessarily mean that the not-quite-vaccines are failures. At least not in the scientific sense. What did Edison say? “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” The only thing separating the mRNA vax program from any other normal clinical trial was the scope of the first dosages --- and, of course, the ways by which the "control group" has become thoroughly dehumanized and alienated. The next round of mRNA vaccines might, in fact, work better. Alternately, another method might be found. That's the scientific process for you.
The problem is that much of America has effectively zero acquaintance with actual science of any kind, thanks to a national scholastic philosophy that has long prioritized indoctrination over education. Instead, you read a lot about "trusting the science". What a ridiculous concept! By definition, science does not require trust, except in the rare case of test pilots and whatnot. Religion requires trust, and we call that trust "faith". But if you find yourself thinking about "science" the way the Greeks thought about the Oracle of Delphi, then you're very far away from anything that resembles science. You may choose to "trust" the mRNA COVID-19 therapy, but your trust in no way affects the outcome. Your "trust" is not required for: orbital calculations, large-scale chemical production, mathematical proofs. No actual scientist possesses any quality remotely akin to "trusting".
(For the record, I blame television advertising, which has long used actors-portraying-scientists for the purposes of attaching instant credibility to various consumer products. Thus effectively teaching normies that "scientists" are, in fact, oracular characters who can dispense wisdom from on high and who therefore require a public demonstration of "trust" via the consumption of the advertised product.)
True science is also perfectly comfortable with ambiguity --- but our profoundly unscientific chattering class is not, so the media has been force-feeding Americans endless tales of "vaccine regret" over the past few weeks. It is difficult to know how many of these articles are true; in many cases the "vaccine regret" is reported as being told to an anonymous care worker immediately before death. Stories like this were once used to "prove" the existence of God, Satan, or angels; now they are used to reinforce the modern catechism of COVID. Mashable just ran an utterly insane article about how the failure of a capeshit movie should be laid at the feet of "anti-vaxxers". Well, that settles it, right? If a vaccine mandate is all that stands between us and the guaranteed success of superhero films, then let's get Lon Horiuchi out there with a vax gun!
I have heard it theorized that part of this omnipresent manufactured support for vaccine mandates comes from a uniquely human emotion: some of the people who willingly got vaccinated now have concerns about the long-term effects of said vaccination, so they want to make sure everyone is in the same boat. Is that true? Who knows. History will almost certainly see COVID-19 as a relatively insignificant disease that killed something like one in every 1,800 people --- but they will also probably see it as one of the final prybars that managed to wedge American society into the completely incompatible sections that will likely be doing battle of some sort in the decades to come.
About thirty times less deadly than the Spanish Flu --- in modern terms, that means it was thirty times more "safe and secure" than the Spanish Flu --- this coronavirus has managed to break America in a way that the 1918 pandemic couldn't come close to doing. Because we were already broken beforehand. National unity is like physical health. It's easier to harm than it is to heal. Every war you win, every moon landing, every Interstate highway system you complete? Think of those as vaccines of a sort, against division and hatred. We've gone a long time without one of those booster shots, but we've sure been busy making reckless changes to the country while also eagerly consuming every bit of violent political rhetoric we can find. The best single example I can find? Instead of 1980's "Miracle On Ice" US hockey team, we have the 2021 US Women's National Team for soccer, a group of people who either openly despise the best of America or are openly despised by the worst America, depending on whom you ask. We may yet "beat" COVID-19, whether through "science" or through simple human immune defense --- but our country is sick, and there's no chance of healing on the horizon.
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Last week I wrote about taxing and spending.