Coronavirus

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 minutes ago, anthony said:

The drooling beast is just a sacrificial beast.

Tony,

Who accepts the sacrifice?

From the image alone, sacrifice has nothing to to with the drooling beast. Hell, it doesn't even want a sacrifice for itself, much less offer itself as a sacrifice for others. It just wants to eat.

The drooling beast is a monster, not a sacrificial animal.

Haven't you ever heard of the lion laying down with the lamb?

The power of that image is that those are not two sacrificial animals, but one (and for human sacrifice at that). Essentially, one is a predator and the other is prey.

Besides, Rand was talking about humans with that drooling beast metaphor. She was talking about people who were beyond reason so there was no reasoning with them. That is what terrified Mallory. Not that someone could choose a rotten value like self-sacrifice. His terror was of people who could not choose anything at all with their minds, but still held power over him.

Michael

[Dglgmut]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

Trump is digging himself in deep.  Candice Owens interviewed him 21 December 2021 at Mar-a-Lago resort.  The full interview is behind a paywall but here are two snippets:

Trump:  The [covid] vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind.  We would have had a 1917— remember the Spanish Flu killed perhaps a hundred million people. Actually it ended the first world war because the soldiers were so—.  A lot of people don’t know that.  The soldiers got so sick, it was a terrible thing, there were vaccines, there were no anything.

I came up with a vaccine, with three vaccines.  All are very very good.  Came up with three of them in less than nine months.  It was supposed to take five to 12 years.
...
Interviewer:  More people have died under Covid this year ... under Joe Biden than under you, and more people took the vaccine this year, so people are questioning how—

Trump:  Oh no, the vaccines work but some people aren’t taking them.  The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take their vaccine. 

I actually love this, because it would confuse the hell out of the left. I don't care if Trump is being truthful or not, whether he's smart or not... but this would make those pushing mandates to question what they believe.

[Peter]

Interesting. An excerpt from what Robert Tracinski wrote or quoted today: . . .  But nothing the Trump Administration did in terms of actual government policy was as damaging as the way he and his supporters turned the pandemic into just another skirmish in the culture war, which I called The Stupidest Culture War. There will still be many deaths from this virus, and many unnecessary deaths, but from now on, that will not be a condition caused by the virus itself. It will primarily be a choice made by those who, for various reasons, are resisting getting the vaccine. The partisan gap here is wide. The COVID pandemic may be winding down, but the COVID Culture War is forever.... We'll know the pandemic is really over when people stop feeling the need to have angry, useless arguments over it.

By this measure, the pandemic is definitely not over. I wrote that passage, by the way, in a moment of optimism in May as cases were trending rapidly down toward a trough in June that made it look like a return to normal was already here and all that would be left was the obsolete culture-war wrangling. In early June, I got so carried away as to predict that "my commentary on the pandemic will be winding down, except for a few retrospectives." Then came the delta variant and a massive new wave of infections and deaths in the late Summer.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peter,

I'm no fan of Robert Tracinski. I don't like Neocons.

He does Neoconness with an Objectivish accent. And when I read him, I perceive an entitled elitist attitude where he likes to nip at the edges of substance for show, but he's oh-so-glad to be part of the insider club. (He caught a ride to the inside with Charlie Sykes, never looked back, and now he's Bill Kristol's bitch.  )

Notice that he feels superior to others--just because--and this constantly oozes through his subtext.

There is never any feeling of we have to find a way to change the minds of people we disagree with, etc. It's just pointing the finger and tut-tut-tutting. You often hear ka-ching in the distance, too, from dubious forms of income.

Within O-Land, I wonder who has a worse case of TDS, him or Yaron Brook.

 

In that quote you gave, he is blaming Trump supporters for virus deaths because they are stupid and not authoritarians like him. Gasp. They actually dislike big government running their lives.

I can introduce him to a hell of a lot of people who are not Trump supporters who dislike big government, who are not in agreement with the constant contradictions of scientists when big money is involved, and who can't stand silly mandates politicians dream up.

 

On the good side, sometimes Tracinski has something interesting to say. I mean that, too. But, then again, so does Peggy Noonan. When these kinds of folks nip around the edges, they can get quite clever.

But they essentially live among the elitsts and, even though they often carve out unique talking-point positions, they never upset the war-for-profit globalist machine. 

These are people who called it "free trade" back when China was fleecing the US through more forms of corruption than anyone can uncover anymore. Guess what cookie jar their fingers had to have been in? Notice that they stopped calling it "free trade." Heh...

I consider Tracinski O-Land's Peggy Noonan.

I think secretly these people love The Lincoln Project despite the recent busts of pedophilia and embezzlement over there. They certainly love all forms of conservative old boys clubs at the top. 

Except they fall within a certain wing of that culture whose members stay under the radar at scandal-time and do not personally get involved in such scandals. I call it the "Play Violin While Rome Burns" wing.

Just to keep this post aligned with the topic of this thread, I would never take health advice from Tracisnki. Or Noonan for that matter...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Peter,

I'm no fan of Robert Tracinski. I don't like Neocons.

He does Neoconness with an Objectivish accent. And when I read him, I perceive an entitled elitist attitude where he likes to nip at the edges of substance for show, but he's oh-so-glad to be part of the insider club. (He caught a ride to the inside with Charlie Sykes, never looked back, and now he's Bill Kristol's bitch.  )

Notice that he feels superior to others--just because--and this constantly oozes through his subtext.

There is never any feeling of we have to find a way to change the minds of people we disagree with, etc. It's just pointing the finger and tut-tut-tutting. You often hear ka-ching in the distance, too, from dubious forms of income.

Within O-Land, I wonder who has a worse case of TDS, him or Yaron Brook.

 

In that quote you gave, he is blaming Trump supporters for virus deaths because they are stupid and not authoritarians like him. Gasp. They actually dislike big government running their lives.

I can introduce him to a hell of a lot of people who are not Trump supporters who dislike big government, who are not in agreement with the constant contradictions of scientists when big money is involved, and who can't stand silly mandates politicians dream up.

 

On the good side, sometimes Tracinski has something interesting to say. I mean that, too. But, then again, so does Peggy Noonan. When these kinds of folks nip around the edges, they can get quite clever.

But they essentially live among the elitsts and, even though they often carve out unique talking-point positions, they never upset the war-for-profit globalist machine. 

These are people who called it "free trade" back when China was fleecing the US through more forms of corruption than anyone can uncover anymore. Guess what cookie jar their fingers had to have been in? Notice that they stopped calling it "free trade." Heh...

I consider Tracinski O-Land's Peggy Noonan.

I think secretly these people love The Lincoln Project despite the recent busts of pedophilia and embezzlement over there. They certainly love all forms of conservative old boys clubs at the top. 

Except they fall within a certain wing of that culture whose members stay under the radar at scandal-time and do not personally get involved in such scandals. I call it the "Play Violin While Rome Burns" wing.

Just to keep this post aligned with the topic of this thread, I would never take health advice from Tracisnki. Or Noonan for that matter...

Michael

I read most of his article and wasn't impressed by the general mediocrity.

--Brant

[anthony]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

Who accepts the sacrifice?

From the image alone, sacrifice has nothing to to with the drooling beast. Hell, it doesn't even want a sacrifice for itself, much less offer itself as a sacrifice for others. It just wants to eat.

The drooling beast is a monster, not a sacrificial animal.

Haven't you ever heard of the lion laying down with the lamb?

The power of that image is that those are not two sacrificial animals, but one (and for human sacrifice at that). Essentially, one is a predator and the other is prey.

Besides, Rand was talking about humans with that drooling beast metaphor. She was talking about people who were beyond reason so there was no reasoning with them. That is what terrified Mallory. Not that someone could choose a rotten value like self-sacrifice. His terror was of people who could not choose anything at all with their minds, but still held power over him.

Michael

The sacrificial beast: I want meat! The sacrificial victim says, us here, we have some for you: help yourself. The beast eats his fill, develops a voracious appetite for human flesh.

Not nearly enough, I want more!

Sacrificial animal: those other animals over there, they believe they are too 'moral', selfish and superior to be eaten or to eat others!

But ¬you¬ have the strength to make them provide you with fresh meat. And we will help you find and catch them.

Drooling beast: Great idea! Let's go.

Drool...

---

Michael anything familiar? Drooling beast is the metaphor for the concept of altruism, I think.

The predator-prey have only the brutal exercise of power differentiating them. The self-sacrificer is as guilty as the predator in making for a sacrificial society. Only being too timid and squeamish to do it himself, he assists in the slaughter. The predatory brutes couldn't pull it off without a substantial number of them.

And the results when altruism and politics combine:

"The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality—with the code of self-sacrifice—is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state. Soviet Russia is the ultimate result, the final product, the full, consistent embodiment of the altruist morality in practice; it represents the only way that that morality can ever be practiced". AR - CtUI

 

[ThatGuy]

8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Peter,

I'm no fan of Robert Tracinski. I don't like Neocons.

He does Neoconness with an Objectivish accent. And when I read him, I perceive an entitled elitist attitude where he likes to nip at the edges of substance for show, but he's oh-so-glad to be part of the insider club. (He caught a ride to the inside with Charlie Sykes, never looked back, and now he's Bill Kristol's bitch.  )

Notice that he feels superior to others--just because--and this constantly oozes through his subtext.

There is never any feeling of we have to find a way to change the minds of people we disagree with, etc. It's just pointing the finger and tut-tut-tutting. You often hear ka-ching in the distance, too, from dubious forms of income.

Within O-Land, I wonder who has a worse case of TDS, him or Yaron Brook.

 

In that quote you gave, he is blaming Trump supporters for virus deaths because they are stupid and not authoritarians like him. Gasp. They actually dislike big government running their lives.

I can introduce him to a hell of a lot of people who are not Trump supporters who dislike big government, who are not in agreement with the constant contradictions of scientists when big money is involved, and who can't stand silly mandates politicians dream up.

 

On the good side, sometimes Tracinski has something interesting to say. I mean that, too. But, then again, so does Peggy Noonan. When these kinds of folks nip around the edges, they can get quite clever.

But they essentially live among the elitsts and, even though they often carve out unique talking-point positions, they never upset the war-for-profit globalist machine. 

These are people who called it "free trade" back when China was fleecing the US through more forms of corruption than anyone can uncover anymore. Guess what cookie jar their fingers had to have been in? Notice that they stopped calling it "free trade." Heh...

I consider Tracinski O-Land's Peggy Noonan.

I think secretly these people love The Lincoln Project despite the recent busts of pedophilia and embezzlement over there. They certainly love all forms of conservative old boys clubs at the top. 

Except they fall within a certain wing of that culture whose members stay under the radar at scandal-time and do not personally get involved in such scandals. I call it the "Play Violin While Rome Burns" wing.

Just to keep this post aligned with the topic of this thread, I would never take health advice from Tracisnki. Or Noonan for that matter...

Michael

Tracinski doubling-down on Twitter with straw-man arguments...

 

 

[Peter]

Anthony wrote, “Peter, maybe two-thirds to three-quarters of a population did not HAVE to be vaccinated. (Nor locked -down...) For argument let's say one-half, to be on the safe side.”

I am curious about the thinking of many of us who are fans of Rand. Are you against vaccines or as tmj called them, “experimental jabs,” or masks, social distancing, quarantines, or testing, if it is done voluntarily? Or are those examples only bad if done involuntarily? I have seen a lot of fault found with doctors, the CDC, government in general even if it is constitutional, Trump’s extolling his vaccine roll-out, scientists who take government money, big or little “Pharma”. . . did I miss anything? What are you against as concerns the Coronavirus?   

On the local news today it talked about the State of Maryland hospitals getting crowded even though we have a 90 percent vaccination rate. That ain’t good. And with Christmas coming up there is one of my family members who is vaccinated but not feeling good, with cold symptoms.

I saw Sarah Palin will get a shot over her dead body. Did you know she was born in Idaho and not Alaska? I remember buying a bosomy poster of her and giving it to someone who was a big fan of hers. Darn she looked fine in that picture. I should have kept it. I just typed in Sarah Palin posters and a site called Zazzle had one of her nearly nude with a guitar hiding her body. I can’t tell if it is real or photo-shopped. Peter

[tmj]

tmj don’t say, EUA do

[ThatGuy]

Um, what?
"All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossch..."
"Trust the science"?

WHO Says COVID Vaccine Boosters Will Likely Prolong the Pandemic

"What happens when Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization (WHO) disagree about vaccines? Maybe it’s a sign we can get back to legitimate scientific debate.

"During a news briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, 'Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate.' He appeared to agree with dissident doctors and censored scientists when he said, 'No country can boost its way out of the pandemic.'

"All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting you can’t vaccinate your way out of a pandemic for months. The WHO statements also echo the advice of authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. They believe we should concentrate on giving vaccines to the elderly and at-risk around the globe to reduce severe illness and death before vaccinating and boosting children and healthy younger adults."

 

read more here:
 

WHO Says COVID Vaccine Boosters Will Likely Prolong the Pandemic

PJMEDIA.COM

---

The WHO starts to sound more like dissident doctors and researchers who have said covid vaccine boosters will not end the pandemic.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, anthony said:

Drooling beast is the metaphor for the concept of altruism, I think.

Tony,

I have to stop.

I'm spending too much time discussing why a monster is not the victim and not getting my other work done.

Let's just leave it at this. When you say altruism and I say altruism, we are talking about fundamentally different concepts.

I don't expect this to change.

Michael

[Mark]

National Geographic  
“The Future of Medicine”  
“display until 3/18/22”  (seems to be a one shot, that is, a magazine that is not a periodical though in this case it is associated with a periodical)

“Introduction:  Finding Strength in Numbers” by Becky Lang begins:

“It took a global pandemic – and our collective effort – to rocket medicine into the future.  We showed we could come together to produce wildly effective vaccines against COVID-19 at breakneck speed and begin to slow the spread of the coronavirus.”

A cog in the amazing propaganda machine.

 

 

[william.scherk]

On 12/22/2021 at 12:18 PM, william.scherk said:

On 11/5/2021 at 11:48 AM, william.scherk said:

now Pfizer claims its drug Paxlovid has been found effective -- more effective than Molnupiravir:

Six weeks later:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes First Oral Antiviral for Treatment of COVID-19

And now an emergency use authorization for the less-effective Molnupiravir.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Additional Oral Antiviral for Treatment of COVID-19 in Certain Adults

Most of my questions have to do with manufacturing schedules and supply of these two emergency treatments.

Although the Omicron variant of concern is much in the news and very much raging in the sphere of speculation, I also have questions about what happens when the new variant meets differing vessels; will the varied 3-dose regimes of COVID-19 vaccines continue to do what they seem to be have been doing: reducing severe cases, hospitalizations, disabilities and death?  Will the variant 'escape' the regimes at some percentage? Will unvaccinated cases turn into hospitalization cases in large enough numbers to fuck up the medical systems here and there? Will previously-infected ('naturally-immune) people catch the variant?

 

 

[anthony]

4 hours ago, Peter said:

 What are you against as concerns the Coronavirus?   

 

6 hours ago, anthony said:

 "All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state". [Rand]

 

 I am FOR individual choice.

The rest follows.

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

I have to stop.

I'm spending too much time discussing why a monster is not the victim and not getting my other work done.

Let's just leave it at this. When you say altruism and I say altruism, we are talking about fundamentally different concepts.

I don't expect this to change.

Michael

The monstrous sacrificer/self-sacrificer are subsumed under the concept "altruism".

Can't ever be one without the other.

[anthony]

2 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Um, what?
"All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossch..."
"Trust the science"?



"All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting you can’t vaccinate your way out

 

Ha, TG, not surprising though gratifying. "Pivoting" - the latest buzzword.

Politicians and media "pivot" constantly without shame.

Science and scientists don't have the long-term luxury, else, some/many have some integrity left.

[Brant Gaede]

15 minutes ago, anthony said:

The monstrous sacrificer/self-sacrificer are subsumed under the concept "altruism".

Can't ever be one without the other.

Like he said.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Like he said.

--Brant

Brant,

You too?

Altruism in the Randian sense is a code of values, not a metaphysical description.

The monster does not choose self-sacrifice. His victims do if they are suckers enough.

Evil exists.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Rand's animadversion upon altruism comes from its hijacking by religious and political authoritarian hacks and was essentially reactive as was the formulation of her philosophy.

Generally speaking altruism is more positively correlated with human biology and is not giving up a higher value for a lower one. That is a mother "sacrificing" for her children or a father for his family. 

She took individualism into Aspie-land because she was a brainiac. She seemed to think thoughts begat emotions and corrected thinking meant being freed from erroneous suppositions. Thus Henry Rearden was finally able to be separated from Lilian through philosophy with no emotional carryover.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

You too?

Altruism in the Randian sense is a code of values, not a metaphysical description.

The monster does not choose self-sacrifice. His victims do if they are suckers enough.

Evil exists.

Michael

I was agreeing with you.

--Brant

I thought I was--I have the time problem of reading all that's been said

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

I was agreeing with you.

Brant,

Oops.

I'm always delighted to be wrong about your meaning if I was thinking one thing and you were actually agreeing with me.

I mean, I can be wrong all day like that and still want more.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Generally speaking altruism is more positively correlated with human biology and is not giving up a higher value for a lower one.

Brant,

This is where I have more or less adopted Howard Bloom's notion of the superorganism as a part of biology and ethics, in the human case, the superorganism is the human species.

In the simplest terms possible, if some individuals survive the superorganism survives. Ditto for reproduction. And Bloom adds the process of apoptosis (cells dying off when they lose their usefulness to the larger organism).

Whenever an individual self-sacrifices and it has been considered as positive throughout history, this is because the recipient was the superorganism. Whenever a person self-sacrifices to evil or an evil superorganism, that is generally condemned in history. American Revolutionaries who died in battle for the creation of the USA are seen has heroes. Nazi soldiers who died in battle trying to establish the 4th Reich are considered evil, or misguided at best. Maybe brainwashed.

You are right. Altruism in this case is not giving up a higher value for a lower one for the individual. It is more in the sense of contributing to the well-being of the superorganism, even if that entails individual sacrifice.

It's easy to see this in a mind-experiment. Suppose a person knew if he gave up his life, the human race would survive, but if he did not, only he would survive. Generally (and especially outside of O-Land  ), people would consider his sacrifice heroic, but his remaining alive a sacrifice of the species to him, thus killing off the species. And that would be evil.

Also, if only he and some fertile women were the only human survivors of a disaster and he committed suicide before he could get any of them pregnant, people in general would consider that evil.

In short, as humans have seen it throughout history, and as metaphysical fact, we are both individuals and members of the human species. It's not either-or.

And self-sacrifice of the individual to the human superorganism is not a requirement, but when it happens, it is good. When some individuals try to sacrifice the human species to themselves, that is considered evil

Transhumanism is making this mistake. Some transhumanists want to eliminate the human species while creating a brand new species (one that lives forever) out of individuals who exist today.

 

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

She took individualism into Aspie-land...

And said it was good...

I have a feeling this was what gave me such a blinding rush when I first came across her work. In fact, with me, that still is a bond that does not break.

Oddly enough, in her quest to subjugate emotion, she provided me with one of the strongest emotions I have ever experienced.

 

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote, “Also, if only he and some fertile women were the only human survivors of a disaster and he committed suicide before he could get any of them pregnant, people in general would consider that evil.”

I looked up “Octomom.” Her kids seemed to be growing up OK. Would it be any fun if you were an Octodad and you were selected and asked nicely to, you know . . . so that we do not become extinct . . . to be “intimate” with at least eight women? I suppose it would be like being a sultan with a harem. That reminds me of a Glen Campbell song, “By the time you get to Phoenix would you still be rising?” Now in my twenties and maybe even a bit beyond that it would a thrill but after that?   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

... animadversion...

Brant,

btw - Every time you write this damn word, I have to look it up.

Something in my brain gives me an image of Walt Disney when I see it and all thinking goes out the window. I think my subconscious sees "animated version."

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Don't watch this if you don't want to get depressed.

Like Kurt Metzger in the video said when talking about listening to the mainstream press and the medical/Big Pharma authorities in government, you are not supposed to listen to any of them except for what they are saying TODAY. You are not allowed to have memory of what they said yesterday or any other day. And you are not allowed to have normal discernment.

What Jimmy presented is both fully documented and really, really ugly.

Like I said, be careful with depression with this video.

Michael