Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

Fear Of COVID Is The Opiate Of The People

https://brownstone.org/articles/fear-of-covid-is-the-opiate-of-the-people/
https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/getting-covid-or-something-like-that

After all of the criticism I’ve directed toward Coronamaniacs and the
Vaxxmongers over the past three years - in-person and online - I know
that many of them have wished that I’d get very sick and die “from
Covid.” If I had, they would have gleefully jeered me, as many did
when lockdown critic Herman Cain died. Bear in mind that Mr. Cain was
74 and had Stage IV cancer.

But I haven’t died “from Covid.” Like the super-vast majority of
people, I was never at any risk of doing so.

While I’d prefer to never get sick, I always knew it was possible that
I might “get Covid,” just as I had gotten some other, prior, unnamed
coronavirus-driven colds or flus. It’s how life is, has been and will
always be. Many people seem to be sick lately. It doesn’t help immune
function to be in the low light/low Vitamin D state of winter. And
during the past three years of disrupted social life, our immune
systems haven’t been properly tested.

Many have said that, by Spring, 2022, everyone had been exposed to
Covid-causing coronaviruses. Maybe it’s true, though it sounds like
hyperbole; I’m not sure how this could be known. Regardless, except
for one February, 2020 day of malaise, and then a week-long dry cough
with no apparent cause—perhaps a quick, nearly asymptomatic,
pre-Lockdown brush with Covid, or perhaps nothing at all—I’ve felt
fine for the past three years.

Last week, on the day after Christmas, that changed.

My muscles started to ache. These aches spread and lasted for three
days, accompanied by a tight chest and a banging headache. On Day 2, I
also got a high fever. I let the fever crest until I took some Tylenol
to moderate my temperature. Serial doses over the next two days
quelled the headaches. My wife got sick the day after I did and
exhibited the same symptoms.

By our respective Day 4s, we each felt much better.

Aside from the fever, we didn’t have the publicized, original Covid
symptoms: shortness of breath, dry cough and fatigue. Plus, for what
it’s worth, we each tested negative on home antigen tests that my wife
had gotten in the mail. Thus, we mutually guessed that we probably had
some form of flu. I didn’t care whether or not I had “had Covid.” That
diagnosis never scared me. I only cared that we felt sick for three
days.

A day later, by coincidence—or perhaps because my computer was, in our
surveillance society, eavesdropping on my wife and my conversations
about how we were feeling, physically—this clickbait headline appeared
on my screen: “The New Symptoms of Covid.”

I took the bait. The article set forth a revised list of symptoms
closely resembling those that my wife and I had just endured.

Hmm. Maybe we did “have Covid.” The new kind. Because heaven forbid
that anyone might think that they just got some unspecified sort of
cold or flu, as they might have thought three-plus years ago.

To the extent I might believe the article, it said that the virus had
mutated into yet another variant, this one with the parodic name,
“XBB-1.5.” I’ve known for decades that viruses mutate. This
adaptability was another reason that I declined to begin to take an
endless series of shots said to protect against viruses that would
continually go out of fashion, only to be replaced by others.

Throughout, my understanding has been that viruses typically
weaken—not strengthen—following such mutations. Thus, I might expect
that a coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which was unscary to begin with, would
cause the same symptoms—only weaker—as it evolved into some different
variant under the “Covid” umbrella.

But as a virus weakens, I didn’t assume—as the clickbait article
suggested—that the types of symptoms would change. I’ve wondered why
an illness caused by an ever-evolving virus, that is supposedly
genetically distinct from its viral predecessors and said to cause
different symptoms than other viruses or variants have caused, is
still widely presented to the public as “Covid.”

Like other marketing campaigns—only more so—countless money and
boundless effort went into building the “Covid” brand. In order to
incite fear, Government/Media/Pharma had to set “Covid” apart from
centuries of respiratory illnesses experienced by those infected by
other coronaviruses. Given the name recognition that Government/Media
have developed for “Covid” since March, 2020, they’re motivated to
stick with this well-known brand name to describe a viral disease that
wasn’t much different from centuries of pre-March, 2020 Coronavirus
infections; which, in turn, won’t be much different from infections
that follow it, ad infinitum.

Christian Scientists say that to name a disease is to empower it. But
while the Chistian Scientists think it’s bad to empower an illness,
Government/Media/Pharma have taken the opposite approach: for three
years, they’ve relentlessly strived to empower, and thus, exploit
“Covid.”

Politically and economically, it’s been extremely useful to perpetuate
the Covid franchise. Keeping some people scared of Covid helps to
sustain the perpetual State of Emergency—oxymoron intended—and all of
the Covid-linked government oppression and subsidy schemes that depend
upon the myth of crisis. If, instead of referring to “Covid,”
Government/Media used all of the various variant names, the public
might eventually figure out what they should have known in March,
2020: we’ve always lived among evolving respiratory viruses that
briefly sicken many people but don’t seriously threaten anyone who’s
healthy.

Though to those with the attention span to accommodate all of the
shifting variant names, these names might have a certain spooky sci-fi
cachet of their own: so many viruses keep emerging that some people
feel they’re under siege.

But overall, from a fear-marketing standpoint, it’s best to stick with
the simpler, original brand name:

“Covid.”

“Covid.”

“Covid.”

Did I mention “Covid?”

Government/Media/Pharma have seared “Covid” into the American
consciousness and terrorized people by grossly exaggerating Covid’s
lethality. They aggressively suppressed criticisms of the attendant
scam. By repeatedly saying “Covid” and “Pandemic,” they weaponized
these words in order to pacify and control the masses, to effect the
biggest wealth transfer in history to the already rich—including but
not limited to, Pharma—to further impoverish the working class that
they now disdain, and to strategically change election laws.

Aside from sustaining the perception of a public health Crisis, and to
justify imposing a wide array of deprivation restrictions on basic
liberties, sustaining Covid brand loyalty also provides at least three
other important, continuing benefits.

Firstly, by keeping at least some segment of the population afraid of
the Covid bogeyman, politicians can use it as an excuse to print ever
more “Covid Emergency” relief and research money, ostensibly, but not
actually, to control what Biden strategically labeled “this God-awful
disease;” even though everyone I know who has had it experienced it as
a cold or flu. This massive, annually supplemented slush fund will be
used for a vast array of chicanery, including widespread political
patronage, with tentacles reaching through politically-aligned state
and municipal governments, political donors, the Medical Industrial
Complex and the Defense/Biosecurity apparatus. Covid is worth far more
alive than it is dead.

Secondly, sustaining Covidism protects politicians and public health
bureaucrats. By continuing to invoke “Covid” to spook a gullible
public, the scaremongers can use this word to defuse public anger
regarding the overreaction of the past three years and all of the
lasting damage which people are belatedly seeing. People who are
constantly reminded of the Covid Scare of the past three years or who
remain naively scared of the Covid Monster will continue to think that
all measures to crush it were worth the suffering that the
Government/Media/Pharma opportunistically caused with their
orchestrated overreaction. Thus, most people won’t demand
accountability for the scam of the past three years. They’ll allow the
Government/Media/Pharma to continue to hide behind the foundational
lie that “We did all of that to save you from death!”

Fear of Covid is the opiate of the people.

Lest we forget how essential it was—not—to wreck American society and
economy over a virus that threatened almost no one under 75,
politicians will order and fund the construction of public monuments
where people can go and wring their hands over, and speak in hushed
tones about, the deaths of unhealthy septugenarians, octogenarians and
nonagenarians “from Covid.”

Thirdly, preserving the Covid Scare also enables
Government/Media/Pharma to unilaterally, arbitrarily declare victory
over Covid whenever it wants. If Covid ever becomes a political
liability, it can be decreed to have been conquered. The
self-proclaimed Covid-slaying politicians can portray themselves, and
the public health bureaucrats, as saviors of humanity. The Media can
hail, and gullible people will venerate, those who may claim to have
liberated our nation from the long-lasting grip of, as Trump so
inaptly called it, “The Plague.”

Fundamentally, whether my wife or I had some weird, sore-throat-free
cold, some nausea-less flu or just the latest style of “Covid,”
neither of us enjoyed our three-day viral experience. Like any old
school respiratory virus, this one made us feel lousy, albeit with a
different constellation of symptoms. We handled it the same way as
other viral illnesses: we drank extra water, took some home remedies,
and tried to get some extra sleep. A few years ago, no one made a big
deal about, or needed to categorize, being sick like this. People rode
it out. No one cared what you had. Or didn’t have.

During the three days that my wife and I felt the effects of some sort
of virus, I never regretfully thought that I would’ve been fine if I
had only worn a mask. Nor, while reclining on the sofa sipping hot
tea, did I think to blame anyone for passing a virus to me; I
understood that an occasional respiratory infection is an unavoidable
cost of social life.

And I definitely didn’t think that any coronavirus justified shutting
down a society or mass-injecting some experimental substance.

These measures have failed miserably and caused tremendous, lasting
and expanding harm.