by Brett Stevens
Never let a good crisis go to waste: this sound political logic applies to all who wish to seize power. When people panic, they focus only on the threat as it appears in their daily lives, and are willing to trade off everything else in order to make that pain and fear go away.
Human logic tends to fail from this tendency towards universalism anyway. Something upsets us, so we pretend that everyone is impacted by it the same way and demand that the herd remove it, in theory for its own good, but in reality for our convenience. Universalism is projection is selfishness.
This tendency of humans to see only one point out of many, and to make it into a category by which they address a whole situation as a “problem,” creates a first mover advantage to whatever breaks. People drop everything and address that, making more problems as they go.
So it will be the case with the coronavirus disease (CoViD-19). Neither harmless nor the end of the world, it is being treated as the apocalypse because this enables the Left to push for their only escape from the failure of their own policies.
When we look back at history, we see a series of plateaus by which the Left (roughly: herd individualism, or group selfishness) took over. First the peasant revolts, then the plague, the French Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and WW2. Each time no crisis went to waste.
In other words, our society has been shifting Leftward for a long time, meaning that it is in the grip of a prolonged panic causing it to avoid the Right because it fears judgment and ranking for the consequences of its actions. The individualist fears order and hierarchy because then “me first” no longer passes for reasonable thinking.
The Left has seen this latest crisis and want to exploit it. Just like they wanted to use RussiaGate, impeachment, emoluments, Stormy Daniels, and accusations of insanity to derail the Trump presidency, they now want to incite mass panic and crash the economy.
They want to end Trump, since he got in the way of their plan to demographically transform America so that no one but the far Left would ever win elections again. They want to use this pandemic to call for socialized medicine and a Democrat taking over office in the 2020 election.
If they can do that, they will resume inviting in the Third World until they have enough voters to ensure that a Republican — or anyone other than a Democrat with the “correct” opinions — will never win office again. They want to seize control forever.
At that point, the voters will see how democracy always ends, which is tyranny. The tyrants import foreigners who, out of fear of the power of the majority, always vote against it and in doing so, vote for the tyrants.
Your risk there is not so much loss of “muh freedom” as living under an ideological regime which acts to perpetuate itself while everyone else suffers. Only those in the inner party get bread; everyone else must OBEY or starve.
We have been following the Soviet Union model, which is to declare symbolic ideology more important than reality and to force everyone to obey it, since the civil rights laws of the 1860s and 1960s. We even adopted market socialism, or socialist entitlement programs funded by taxes on free markets, in the 1930s.
Like the EU, the USA will perish if it follows this path. Symbolic ideological government takes money out of the economy, making it ill, and eventually it runs out of value that it can use to stimulate the economy. Soon it is nothing but people going in to do half-ass work at their make-work jobs.
If given the chance, the Left will seize control and the USA will follow the Soviets into the dustbin of history.
Should they not do so, they realize that they are now in trouble because: (1) they are the Establishment now and (2) all of their policies are failing. Diversity means constant ethnic conflict; entitlements created consumerism; unions made our labor too expensive; feminism has wrecked the family; sexual liberation has alienated men from women; equality means perpetual infighting over power, with the most vicious winning out; democracy means an inability to ever fix problems, so we fight the same battles over and over again, ending up at the same compromises, while our problems get worse and our best people drop out of society and go live in shacks at the edge of the woods (and do not have children).
The Left fears what the coronavirus will do, which is transformation of another form.
Globalism is dead because we now see how “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” applies not just to markets but the movement of people. Viruses arrive from afar quickly and foreign governments act against us in our time of need. Outsourcing means that we cannot get the vital supplies we need.
Equality has failed because clearly, we need some kind of caste structure and aristocratic leaders to enforce a sense of direction, aesthetics, standards, and behavior.
Consumerism — the mix of entitlements and social equality — has failed because it has created a socialist-style economy based on appearances, not productivity. This fragile system of market socialism has collapsed easily with just a few weeks of downtime.
Most people remain oblivious to the fact that this pandemic is less serious than thought, and functional treatments are emerging:
We are going to get our “Berlin 1945 moment” for the modern system. The coronavirus is just one of the steps there. So, take heart! And wash your hands.
Also published at Amerika.org
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Never let a good crisis go to waste: this sound political logic applies to all who wish to seize power. When people panic, they focus only on the threat as it appears in their daily lives, and are willing to trade off everything else in order to make that pain and fear go away.
Human logic tends to fail from this tendency towards universalism anyway. Something upsets us, so we pretend that everyone is impacted by it the same way and demand that the herd remove it, in theory for its own good, but in reality for our convenience. Universalism is projection is selfishness.
This tendency of humans to see only one point out of many, and to make it into a category by which they address a whole situation as a “problem,” creates a first mover advantage to whatever breaks. People drop everything and address that, making more problems as they go.
So it will be the case with the coronavirus disease (CoViD-19). Neither harmless nor the end of the world, it is being treated as the apocalypse because this enables the Left to push for their only escape from the failure of their own policies.
When we look back at history, we see a series of plateaus by which the Left (roughly: herd individualism, or group selfishness) took over. First the peasant revolts, then the plague, the French Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and WW2. Each time no crisis went to waste.
In other words, our society has been shifting Leftward for a long time, meaning that it is in the grip of a prolonged panic causing it to avoid the Right because it fears judgment and ranking for the consequences of its actions. The individualist fears order and hierarchy because then “me first” no longer passes for reasonable thinking.
The Left has seen this latest crisis and want to exploit it. Just like they wanted to use RussiaGate, impeachment, emoluments, Stormy Daniels, and accusations of insanity to derail the Trump presidency, they now want to incite mass panic and crash the economy.
They want to end Trump, since he got in the way of their plan to demographically transform America so that no one but the far Left would ever win elections again. They want to use this pandemic to call for socialized medicine and a Democrat taking over office in the 2020 election.
If they can do that, they will resume inviting in the Third World until they have enough voters to ensure that a Republican — or anyone other than a Democrat with the “correct” opinions — will never win office again. They want to seize control forever.
At that point, the voters will see how democracy always ends, which is tyranny. The tyrants import foreigners who, out of fear of the power of the majority, always vote against it and in doing so, vote for the tyrants.
Your risk there is not so much loss of “muh freedom” as living under an ideological regime which acts to perpetuate itself while everyone else suffers. Only those in the inner party get bread; everyone else must OBEY or starve.
We have been following the Soviet Union model, which is to declare symbolic ideology more important than reality and to force everyone to obey it, since the civil rights laws of the 1860s and 1960s. We even adopted market socialism, or socialist entitlement programs funded by taxes on free markets, in the 1930s.
Like the EU, the USA will perish if it follows this path. Symbolic ideological government takes money out of the economy, making it ill, and eventually it runs out of value that it can use to stimulate the economy. Soon it is nothing but people going in to do half-ass work at their make-work jobs.
If given the chance, the Left will seize control and the USA will follow the Soviets into the dustbin of history.
Should they not do so, they realize that they are now in trouble because: (1) they are the Establishment now and (2) all of their policies are failing. Diversity means constant ethnic conflict; entitlements created consumerism; unions made our labor too expensive; feminism has wrecked the family; sexual liberation has alienated men from women; equality means perpetual infighting over power, with the most vicious winning out; democracy means an inability to ever fix problems, so we fight the same battles over and over again, ending up at the same compromises, while our problems get worse and our best people drop out of society and go live in shacks at the edge of the woods (and do not have children).
The Left fears what the coronavirus will do, which is transformation of another form.
Globalism is dead because we now see how “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” applies not just to markets but the movement of people. Viruses arrive from afar quickly and foreign governments act against us in our time of need. Outsourcing means that we cannot get the vital supplies we need.
World closes borders, restricts travel to contain coronavirus spread
Countries around the world on Saturday continued to close borders, impose strict entry and quarantine requirements and restrict large gatherings in efforts to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Doors slam shut across borderless Europe as coronavirus spreads
Europe’s cherished Schengen network of open internal borders is on the brink of collapse as more and more countries shut their doors in a frantic effort to stave off the coronavirus pandemic, even as experts warn such tactics will delay its spread – but not halt it.
China hints at denying Americans life-saving coronavirus drugs
Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.”Liberal democracy is dead because it cannot address the problems it has created, having tied its hands with precedents including civil rights, affirmative action, legal defense of unions, and handouts to keep a permanent underclass.
Police given powers to arrest coronavirus victims in emergency plans to fight deadly bug
The new rules will allow “medical professionals, public health professionals and the police to … detain and direct individuals in quarantined areas at risk or suspected of having the virus.”
Chillingly, there are also measures to speed up cremations and burials, according to a draft seen by The Times.
Israel to use anti-terror tech to counter coronavirus ‘invisible enemy’
Cyber tech monitoring would be deployed to locate people who have been in contact with those carrying the virus, subject to cabinet approval, Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Avner Pinchuk, a privacy expert with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said such capabilities could include real-time tracking of infected persons’ mobile phones to spot quarantine breaches and backtracking through meta-data to figure out where they had been and who they had contacted.
Canada shutting the border to most non-citizens due to COVID-19: PM Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is urging Canadians abroad to come home while they still can, as Canada is shutting the border to non-Canadian citizens, with limited exceptions, to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Orban uses coronavirus as excuse to suspend asylum rights in Hungary
In fact, as Gyorgy Bakondi, national security adviser to the prime minister, announced on March 1: “Hungary has indefinitely suspended access to border transit areas for asylum seekers” because of the risks related to the spread of the COVID-19.Diversity (“in-house globalism”) has failed because we no longer have unity in our nations, and instead are cultureless shopping malls where people care only about their own interests, and are perfectly willing to ignore quarantine orders.
Equality has failed because clearly, we need some kind of caste structure and aristocratic leaders to enforce a sense of direction, aesthetics, standards, and behavior.
A Generational War Is Brewing Over Coronavirus
Epidemiologists are growing concerned that the millennial pushback against social-distancing measures—and an emerging generational divide about how the disease is perceived—could undo all efforts to slow the spread of the virus and put vulnerable people (i.e. older people) at high risk.“OK Boomer” gets vicious.
Substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2)
We estimate 86% of all infections were undocumented (95% CI: [82%–90%]) prior to 23 January 2020 travel restrictions. Per person, the transmission rate of undocumented infections was 55% of documented infections ([46%–62%]), yet, due to their greater numbers, undocumented infections were the infection source for 79% of documented cases. These findings explain the rapid geographic spread of SARS-CoV2 and indicate containment of this virus will be particularly challenging.We have seen this pattern before, where “super-spreaders” who are unaware that they have the disease pass it on to others. In this case, the fear is that young people will acquire it and give it to older family members, coworkers, and neighbors, and those will then develop full-blown cases and die.
Consumerism — the mix of entitlements and social equality — has failed because it has created a socialist-style economy based on appearances, not productivity. This fragile system of market socialism has collapsed easily with just a few weeks of downtime.
France could nationalize big companies if necessary: finance minister
“That can be done by recapitalization, that can be done by taking a stake, I can even use the term nationalization if necessary,” Le Maire added, without saying which companies could be treated as a priority.This means that the state seizes the means of production so that it can use it to fund taxes for entitlements. If you want the last step before formal socialism, this is it.
Coronavirus financial package: Government’s $12b support plan for businesses, beneficiaries
The Government has unveiled a $12.1 billion support package for the New Zealand economy, with almost half of the cash to be spent on a wage subsidy package for all coronavirus-impacted businesses.Just like the New Deal, socialism slips through the backdoor in a time of crisis. All government has to do is extend these benefits and make them permanent and it has a fully socialist economy.
Those full-time workers eligible for the package will receive $585 per week from the Government, paid in a lump sum package of just over $7000 covering a 12-week period.
Severely-ill coronavirus patients might not get treated as NHS goes on war-footing
The NHS has among the lowest number of intensive care beds in Europe, per head of population. Four in five of the 4,123 adult critical care beds in England were occupied before the coronavirus outbreak started. Italy has 12.5 critical beds per 100,000 people while the UK has just 6.6.Socialized medicine leads to restrictions in order to reduce costs which naturally expand as people make use of a free service instead of finding alternatives, including preserving their own health through salubrious lifestyles.
‘Mask, gown, gloves – none of that exists’: Venezuela’s coronavirus crisis
But the outbreak could hardly come at a worse time for Venezuela, which despite boasting the planet’s largest proven oil reserves remains mired in years-long economic and social turmoil. Hyperinflation is rampant – Venezuela’s central bank said inflation reached nearly 10,000% last year – while shortages in basic foodstuffs and medical supplies are routine.We can see how well socialism works, and what our future will be when all of the money is redirected into benefits/entitlements for citizens and little remains for functional medical care.
Hospitals regularly face power outages, while basic supplies – from latex gloves to basic antibiotics – are often hard to come by. Four and a half million people have fled Venezuela, with healthcare workers and disease specialists among them. Treatable diseases such as diphtheria, measles and malaria continue to spread in fertile conditions.
Most people remain oblivious to the fact that this pandemic is less serious than thought, and functional treatments are emerging:
Favipiravir shows good clinical efficacy in treating COVID-19: official
More than 80 patients have participated in the clinical trial in The Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, including 35 patients taking Favipiravir and 45 patients on a control group. Results showed that patients receiving Favipiravir treatment turned negative for the virus in a shorter time compared with patients in the control group.
Coronavirus Australia: Queensland researchers find ‘cure’, want drug trial
One of the two medications is a HIV drug, which has been superseded by “newer generation” HIV drugs, and the other is an anti-malaria drug called chloroquine which is rarely used and “kept on the shelf now” due to resistance to malaria.
Super-rich jet off to disaster bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak
Ali said his clinic was also offering the worried wealthy an intravenous infusion of vitamins and minerals to boost their immune systems. “We know that 90% of adults have a deficiency in vitamins – what better to improve that than an IV immune boost? An intravenous infusion ensures instant and optimal delivery of these nutrients to the body’s cells and the nutrients should include vitamins such as vitamin C, vitamin B12 complex, glutathione, zinc and essential amino acids such as arginine, taurine, lysine and citrulline.” The treatment costs £350.
SARS-CoV-2 Cell Entry Depends on ACE2 andTMPRSS2 and Is Blocked by a Clinically ProvenProtease Inhibitor
Importance of activity of CatB/L or TMPRSS2 for host cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 was evaluated by adding inhibitors to target cells prior to transduction. E-64dand camostat mesylate block the activity of CatB/L and TMPRSS2, respectively.
Camopan/Camostat seems to inhibit infections.
Increasing number of biopharma drugs target COVID-19 as virus spreads
While most potential therapies are in the preclinical and discovery stage, a few, such as Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and Hangzhou China-based Ascletis Pharma Inc.’s ASC-09 and ritonavir, are in phase III. Data collected from Cortellis and BioWorld show a total of 30 potential COVID-19 candidates in development, most of which were reported in February.We are also starting to see that not all patients are equal:
Coronavirus: Those infected in polluted cities ‘more likely to die’, says NGO
The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) says that air pollution causes diabetes, hypertension and respiratory diseases, underlying health conditions that make coronavirus more deadly.
The EPHA cites a 2003 report that found that victims of SARS were 84% more likely to die if they lived in an area of moderate air pollution, compared to those who lived an area where it was low.
SARS killed 774 people between 2002 and 2003 with over 8,000 reported cases, the majority of them in China. Like COVID-19, it was a coronavirus, but was transmitted from cats to humans.
Blood type ‘A’ more vulnerable to coronavirus: Study
In contrast, “blood group O had a significantly lower risk for the infectious disease compared with non-O blood groups”, according to a paper published by the researcher team on Medrxiv.org on March 11.Although the coronavirus may not be as severe as people thought, the panic over it has revealed that modern society is fragile underneath the chrome, wealth, polish, slick media, and highly organized governments.
Of 206 patients who had died from COVID-19 in Wuhan, 85 had type A blood, which was 63 per cent more than the 52 with type O. The pattern existed across different age and gender groups.
We are going to get our “Berlin 1945 moment” for the modern system. The coronavirus is just one of the steps there. So, take heart! And wash your hands.
Also published at Amerika.org
Become a Patron!