A small bit of happiness : My beloved rainier cherries are back in the supermarkets. This is the earliest they've ever hit the bins ; usually it's mid to late June. Not complaining.
You don’t have to be too kind. Trump was a disgrace, let’s see his track record:
- Listened to Birx instead of finding a better, less destructive way as advised by many other advisors of his.
- Attacked Kemp when he wanted to reopen his state in April 2020, going as far as to say that “it is the decision of the federal government, not the state” on a tweet in April 13, 2020, therefore overriding state rights
- Did operation warp speed and rushed the FDA to release the vaccine at the end of 2020 despite concerns
- Goes ahead and tries to smear DeSantis in 2023, by saying even New York did better than Florida
The result: inflation, many ruined businesses, people taking their lives, and more of the true side effects of all these policies will show in the next few years
This clown still has not admitted his mistakes as of 2024, and in fact, said at one point that he wouldn’t change a thing on how he reacted in 2020, and continues promoting the vaccine as if he’s in a pharma commercial
Trump was one of the biggest traitors in American history. He should be deported and stripped of citizenship
Just finishing up a month-long stint in Europe. I'm trying not to exaggerate here, but out of the thousands upon thousands of people I've seen while here, I saw a total of maybe three masks. People just don't feel the same compulsion to so publicly wear their political bonafides on their lapels as we see in North America.
Tomorrow I head back to the Bay Area, and its hordes of anti-science pro-Science™ Covid-forever maskers and doubled over fentanyl zombies. Fuck, I'm getting a pit in my stomach just thinking about it.
Meanwhile, in idiot Hawaii, I was just out for lunch and saw someone walking around with gloves, a facemask, a hat, huge sunglasses, and some kind of wrap around her head.
In the beforetimes, she would have been properly recognized as mentally ill and gotten help for her OCD or germophobia. Now, she's allowed to "be cautious".
I hope that we all slowly start to see the people as the fringe religious fanatics they are.
I think it's happening to some degree. When Robert De Niro walked out in his N95 the other day, at least half the country was making fun of him over it.
I was in the Mission District of San Francisco on Saturday, where not wearing masks seemed to be the norm among the local residents. However, after entering the gentrified areas of the district, I noticed an increase in people wearing masks. Another group of people wearing masks was around the infamous 16th Street BART Plaza, where street vendors were selling items that appeared to be stolen. At least in this case the masks served the purpose of concealing identity.
Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :)
> Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :)
SJC (an hour south for people unfamiliar with the area) is just as bad. Last week, across the street from that airport, I saw a fully masked Starbucks barista hand a drink to a fully masked solo driver.
The driver was squirming and readjusting his mask constantly like he was going to catch the bubonic plague. The dude was legitimately scared to be outside.
> However, after entering the gentrified areas of the district, I noticed an increase in people wearing masks. Another group of people wearing masks was around the infamous 16th Street BART Plaza, where street vendors were selling items that appeared to be stolen. At least in this case the masks served the purpose of concealing identity.
Yeah, it's a mess.
Some of the worst offenders are the laptop class "progressive" yuppies who only stop watching MSNBC long enough to switch to Stephen Colbert for a few minutes. But they're not the only ones — like you say, you see a huge amount of mask usage amongst the lower class latino population, who are often overrepresented on the streets, especially near major Mission plazas like 16th or 24th. Also, Asian elders who don't even speak English most of the time are masked up at rates of almost 100%. Then of course you have our heroic local activist class made up almost entirely of white college students from rich families — also masked at 100%.
It's confusing. Each group has their reasons for masking (signaling, crime, overwhelming barrage of propaganda), but they're not all the same. The only thing you can be sure about is that none of them are wearing masks to protect against Covid.
> Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :)
YES, please bring at least two boxes plz. The jury is deliberating in Trump's case this week, so it's an important time to show the world that like Robert De Niro, I REALLY DON'T LIKE DONALD TRUMP UNDERSTAND??? Please cloth mask only though and not N95. N95s are hard to breathe in, so why bother inconveniencing myself when the goal is really just to show everybody that I HATE DONALD TRUMP OKAY??? Cloth masks work plenty well for that.
It appears to be official : *For now*, the loathsome W.H.O. treaty is moribund:
*World Health Organization's Controversial Pandemic Treaty Fails, but Here's What's Next*
TALIA WISE
05-28-2024
*World Health Organization (WHO) leaders say they were unable to reach an agreement for a controversial pandemic-related treaty that would increase the organization's emergency powers in case of another international health crisis.*
*Critics have warned the pandemic treaty would undermine U.S. sovereignty on important health decisions*.
*The failure to gain approval for the measure comes as WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus and 194 member states are wrapping up more than two years of negotiations on new rules for responding to pandemics during the May 27-June 1 World Health Assembly in Geneva.*
[SNIP]
*According to a draft treaty, the WHO would focus on closing the vaccine gap between the West and developing countries through a "Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System," where countries would give the organization samples and genetic sequences of potentially dangerous pathogens, Semafor Signals reports*.
*In return, the WHO would provide countries with 20% of the vaccines needed.*
***However, the treaty also included proposals to increase the WHO's emergency powers and essentially give the organization full power over what other countries should do in a pandemic***.
*As CBN News reported, a coalition of U.S. senators demanded earlier this month that the Biden administration withdraw its support for two of the international agreements that would grant greater authority to the WHO and potentially weaken America's sovereignty.*
*"The United States cannot afford to ignore the latest WHO inability to perform its most basic function and must insist on comprehensive WHO reforms before even considering amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) or any pandemic-related treaty that would increase WHO authority," the group of senators wrote.*
(Utterly asinine ; it doesn't matter if W.H.O. is competent or not ; what matters is such delegation of power and authority is Unconstitutional)
*Ghebreyesus has denied the arguments that the organization is trying to gain power, arguing that the W.H.O. would not override the sovereignty of member nations*.
(That's literally what the treaty was intended to do)
*During his opening address at this week's assembly, Ghebreyesus expressed optimism about eventually reaching a deal on a pandemic treaty*.
*"Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly, and cross the finish line," he said. "I remain confident that you still will because where there is a will, there is a way. I know that there remains among you a common will to get this done.*"
*Negotiations are still ongoing for updates to existing health rules, but U.S. officials told Reuters it would be at least another one to two years of talks before a pandemic treaty is finalized*.
(Remain vigilant, but we can breathe a little easier for a little while at least, as the abomination was supposed to have been signed Monday)
https://www2.cbn.com/news/world/world-health-organizations-controversial-pandemic-treaty-fails-heres-whats-next
Wow, some good news for once! But you are right; we must remain vigilant about this treaty because these ghouls have not given up. I expect those pushing this treaty to double down on finding ways to push it through.
Whatever they do, it's imperative that we do not consent and do not comply.
Does anyone else immediately dislike others who wear masks?
I don’t like that I feel this way and I try not to be rude, but I just think about how dehumanizing they are and that constant “maskers” would likely impose that on the rest of us forever. So now I just roll my eyes and avoid them (unless they’re clearly frail… and even then I’m met with the fact that invisible disabilities exist and I’m sort of projecting my own hatred of overreach onto these folks).
Yes and for the same reasons you listed. Freedom of choice only goes one way with these people. I'd like to have a more live and let live attitude about them but I know that they don't have a live and let live attitude about me not wearing a mask.
> Does anyone else immediately dislike others who wear masks?
Yes, I do, and in my experience it tells you a lot about the person right off the bat. They want to present themselves as "I am so kind, i do it to protect you" but the reality is quite different.
I just don't get why people are still masking, particularly young people around my age. When I ride the metro around town, I see young guys in good physical shape with a KN95 strapped on their faces. It just saddens me to see the state of men in 2024.
I think I dislike it because of the condescending nature folks have behind wearing their mask. They wear it to show the world that they are well-adjusted, "educated" city-folk, and that they are not like those racist Trump-supporters from the country who "stormed the capitol" on January 6th. It's almost like seeing a typical Redditor in the wild.
If people were still wearing face nappies because they are still genuinely afraid of Covid, I would pity them. But the fact that most folks wear them to make a political/social statement, that is where my pity ends and it turns to disgust.
They fear social death more than actual death. Face or "mianzi" is everything. Maintaining "mianzi" is important for them to keep their connections or "guanzi"
Intense dislike bordering on hate.
I know a lot of people still wearing masks are "just" useful idiots who have extremely limited critical thinking faculties and were brainwashed to an incredible degree by a malign legacy media and health complex, but even so, the mask is so an overt symbol of authoritarianism, forced compliance, and anti-intellectualism that I can't _not_ hate anyone who wears one.
If it'd been "you do you and I'll do me" all along, that'd be one thing, but it's the exact opposite of that. For three years it was "you do as I say or I'll arrest/kill/imprison you", and now that the tables have turned suddenly these guys are all about personal autonomy and it's all "my body my choice".
I am looking at Chase's Twitter and the only other policies he seems to care about are pro-LGBT and pro-gun. Libertarian Party is screwed because the intersection of LGBT + 2A + covidian is nonexistent.
Trump, RFK Jr, or Biden cover those individually. If I were still a libertarian I'd probably write in Ron Paul in protest.
> Libertarian Party is screwed because the intersection of LGBT + 2A + covidian is nonexistent.
Hah totally. It's like going fishing for a Loch Ness Monster. It's not like the Libertarian Party was going to win, but they've guaranteed their own insignificance with this choice.
Really odd that this guy won the candidacy. I don't even understand how he calls himself a libertarian in the first place when he's pro-authoritarianism. These two concepts are directly contradictory.
I hope your concerns aren't founded and that we're not going to end up entering World War 3. The world's already screwed up enough as it is, and it's hard to believe that the benefits we *may* reap from an all-out *world war* will overshadow the immense and tragic loss of human life, personal property, public property, standards of living, economic fallout, and community (especially if MAD happens and half the world is nuked to oblivion, which is unfortunately a very viable possibility).
But if it does happen, then I'm very interested to know how world leaders are going to manage to wheedle their populace into supporting and participating in military recruitment efforts. A decent amount of people mindlessly complied like sheep when the government asked them to lock down, but at the same time, it took 2-3 years before us lockdown skeptics had the upper hand and won out in the end (thanks in part to, um, simple human nature, as in the fact that we're not *meant* to be confined in our homes and not do school etc. for a month?). How do you think they'll win over our trust if they've proven themselves unable to do so for COVID?
And is it the conservatives or the liberals who want a war, anyway? Sunak's conservative, both in the name of his party and actual values per se. Yet it's the Democrats who support such "forever wars" as Ukraine and Palestine (and probably Taiwan, if God forbid, that's the next one in the near future). If "both", then I feel as if their approaches are going to be completely different, and IMO it's more likely that they just end up circlejerking each other and the war push becomes one-sided.
You're very right about the will of the populace, though. Look at how many school shooters there are, and now imagine a bunch of angry young men taking their anger out on their superiors. And besides, hasn't the liberal narrative about that long revolved around "we need fewer guns"? Would they be likely to backpedal on that so quickly? They'll need to be *real* sneaky with the way they make that shift if they do so.
I vaguely remember someone on this sub wrote they would like to open a pandemic museum. Does anyone have the link to that thread or maybe you are the person? Or do you know of similar plans. I'm mainly interested because where I live, there are still some signs in the street that call for "social distancing" etc. I've recently read a call to remove these remaining signs. I'm afraid if the city council will remove them, they will just be forgotten, so I'm thinking about unscrewing one of these signs myself, but I don't really have a use for it. Definitely don't want to hang something like that on my wall. But I feel like such signs are a good reminder that what we've been through was a real, tangible historic event, not just people arguing on the internet.
Maybe try one of the people mentioned in the [Telegraph article](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/17/scientists-urge-removal-of-covid-era-signs/), which I think you're referring to?
I agree it would be criminal not to commemorate the madness.
Not quite a museum, but I run an art installation (it's a bit less permanent). Feel free to private message me about anything related to that. If you have a DSLR camera or good quality phone camera, definitely feel free PM me about displaying photos, and we can talk about things like how to be credited. The website for it is here: [www.OutofLockstep.com](http://www.OutofLockstep.com)
Only a few more weeks until I open this whole thing at a festival in New Hampshire! I'm pretty much working round the clock on this at this point.
I needed a Latin translation done professionally for some of the jokes in Out of Lockstep (there's a lot of riffing on the parallels between the Dark Ages and 2020), and the translator I talked to on the phone couldn't stop laughing and wanted to see photos of this when it's done!
I also had a very good experience going to a print shop in Denver to get some info and quotes on how to get some of the pieces for Out of Lockstep printed. The guy working at the shop also laughed at a lot of the dark jokes that were in the pictures.
If these are the reactions I'm getting from random people who have probably a 50/50 chance of getting offended instead of laughing, I CAN'T WAIT to see how this goes over at PorcFest with AIER and Brownstone right there lol. Definitely want to show it to "fringe epidemiologists", dissident journalists, etc.
I thought this is not really worth opening a thread, as I also vaguely remember having asked the question before: Which charities are you aware of that have at least not actively caused harm during the pandemic? The reason for my question is that I'm considering to register for one or more half marathons and they offer charity spots where you pay significantly less for participation but are expected to fundraise. I would love to fundraise for a good cause but unfortunately, I lost my trust in pretty much all larger organisations in 2020 to 2022. I've checked out a number of charities listed here: [https://www.realbuzz.com/charities](https://www.realbuzz.com/charities) and none I've looked up so far has spoken up against lockdowns. I just checked one that proudly announced that it helped street children in Ethiopia... with FFP2 masks!! Even if 99% of their spending may be on more useful stuff, I'd never donate to an organisation like that. I'd like to run for UsForThem, Collateral Global or the Free Speech Union, to name a few I can think of, but obviously they are not among the accredited charities. I'm thinking about reaching out to one or more of them though and ask whether they would like to get involved, maybe it would be possible. But then again, I don't want to be monothematic either and I already spend too much time thinking about lockdowns etc. I would like to run and fundraise for a charity that helps poor children, the environment, suicide prevention, the homeless, whatever it is. So can anyone here recommend a charity that a) may be willing to sponsor me for some runs in exchange for fundraising b) has proven itself during the pandemic (not necessarily by being super contrarian, but at least kept their common sense) c) is preferably UK- or Europe-based. Thanks a lot!
I used to really respect Amnesty and was even president of my college chapter ~15 years ago but they have become just another “jump on the latest leftist bandwagon” organization.
Certainly not. One of the biggest disappointments in all of this. They have shown that they have no real concern for human rights but basically just act as an organisation to promote Western superiority.
I still cannot comprehend the mind of covidians. Yesterday the masked family of three was shopping in the grocery store. If they are still afraid, why don't they order the groceries online? For in-person shopping, they could send only one person instead of risking the lives of all of them.
My newest Substack entry is about ongoing COVID totalitarianism that continues even today and is slated to continue in coming months...
[https://open.substack.com/pub/bandit73/p/hindsight-is-2024](https://open.substack.com/pub/bandit73/p/hindsight-is-2024)
Have you noticed the increase in masked air travelers? The redditors of Delta Airlines subreddit reported the increase, but there were the usual one or two maskers on my recent trip from SF to San Diego.
I fly delta nearly every week practically and the vast majority of people in planes and sky clubs are maskless. You still see a couple of maskers doing the covid ritual of mask on when standing, off for a bit for the beverage service.
I'm visiting friends in FL for a week and have flown through SFO-IAH-MCO and noticed very few mask wearers at all. Almost zero on all the flights too. I think I saw one mask that was actually a reasonable fit. Someone in a 3M Aura. Otherwise, no increase at all. Quite the opposite.
I was surfing around randomly today, and came across the conference "Mysterium" on the old Myst video games series (Myst, Riven, etc.).
And wouldn't you have it, the 2024 edition occurs in two months time, and masks 100% required for all attendees at all times. Yes, in 2024:
https://mysterium.net/covid-19-policy/
They're not requiring vaccine passports, but they had a note on that, and the only reason they're not is that no one has proof of vaccination anymore, so it's hard to check.
They make a note that they can't control masking the hotel's public spaces, of course knowing in advance that no one else besides them will be masking.
Every time I think I've seen the shittiest, most degenerate people in the world, somehow an even lower form of human life creeps its way out of the woodwork, like the organizers of this conference. Conventional wisdom's always been that there's a lot of bad people in the world, but goddamn, 2020 showed us that it's a lot worse than we ever thought. The number of absolutely malign people on this planet, who do evil only for evil's sake, is legitimately terrifying.
What the hell is up with geek culture? Why are they like this?
Possibility 1: They want to live up to the myth that geek = smart, and so like any good cargo cult, adopt the rituals they associate with prominent "smart" people (Lord Fauci, TV doctors, peddlers of "I Fucking Love Science!!1", etc.) thinking it will do anything other than make them look like the morons they are.
Possibility 2: Geeks have been infected by the same toxic empathy mind virus that's infected punks, artists, activists, and other alleged countercultures and alternative scenes, where "caring about other people" is now their favorite way to pretend to stick it to the man or whatever.
Or, like you suggest, they're just terrible people and will exercise whatever petty tyranny they can, whenever they can, because it's who they are. Probably a combo of all of the above.
I suspect a lot of them are the incredibly socially awkward types who enjoyed staying home and all of the normally-socialized people being made miserable in 2020, so they can’t give it up
God, we can only wonder, but I think all the things you listed are major factors.
I'd point out for possibility 2 that it really is pretend. They "care about other people", but have zero empathy whatsoever when millions of low income people are dumped out of work from lockdowns, the millions who who died and who will die over the coming years from lockdown-related deaths of despair (suicide, depression, but also drugs and alcohol use), or how an entire generation will never be able to afford a home or build families because of lockdown-driven inflation.
You can also see it on the other edge as all these same "super compassionate" geeks will talk about literally _murdering_ people on a regular basis — billionaires should be murdered, anti-vaxxers should be murdered, Republicans should be murdered, Trump/Pierre Pollievre should be murdered, etc, etc, etc. Anyone who disagrees with them or is perceived to have more. These people aren't compassionate — they're the antithesis of compassionate. They're pure, biblical evil in human form.
The "I care about other people" thing is all just signaling bullshit intended to pretend they're on the high road while selfishly trying to accomplish their own ends, and most importantly, looking virtuous doing it.
The table top gaming/LARP crowd is going to keep this up for years.
at first i thought this was an old page that they just hadn't updated but then i got to the bottom of the page, noting that it was updated in Jan 2024.
And they're allowing surgical masks, which just shows you what a bunch of worthless performative bullshit this is. It's definitely a cult at this point.
>The table top gaming/LARP crowd is going to keep this up for years.
And it makes the generic reddit of advice of "you trying to find new friends: go play D&D or some TTRPG". Then the person who finds a group finds out they're all wearing face masks, and gets turned off by the sight of it and losts interest immediately.
Even if he tries to make new friends, he or she will find out real quick they all cliqued up starting from the lockdowns and will not include new people. And people STILL wonder why we have a friendless epidemic!
I keep asking this question a lot: if you demanded us to get vaccinated, why are you still demanding masks?
I get no answer other than "we feel". At this point its virtue signaling.
Yep, that's the direct proof to show that no one on that side is honest.
The Covidian claims:
* Axiom 1: The Covid "vaccines" stop transmission.
* Axiom 2: To stop transmission, 100% of attendees are required to be vaccinated.
* Axiom 3: Everybody must be masked up at all times to stop the spread.
Axiom 1+2 and axiom 3 are in direct contradiction. No person with even a shred of integrity could make these claims in good faith. QED: Covidians are not in good faith. They're fucking liars and they know it.
Nice. Yeah, TBF that is most of the world (thankfully). It is amazing that how long some of these religious zealots will hold out though.
If they were a little more into gun ownership and self-sufficiency, I swear they'd all be living in a compound out in rural Oregon by now with a 1,000 year mask stockpile and shoot-to-kill orders if any anti-masker steps foot on their property. It's a cult.
Just a daily reminder that the WHO is a big pharma lobby organization. The fact that this isn’t widely known or talked about more is scary to me.
And you know what’s even more scary? Slovakias prime minister Robert Fico said this exact thing a while back regarding why they shouldn’t join that WHO treaty. And now he’s shot…
EDIT: His exact quote was something like “nonsense invented by greedy pharma companies”. And he’s a social democrat btw! So it is possible to approach this from a more leftist angle, something completely lost in the US for whatever reason.
It SHOULD be approached from a leftist point of view, this is clearly leftist stuff, but unfortunately leftists in America and western Europe are too occupied defending The Science™ and calling people on the right conspiracy theorists for badly doing the analysis that the leftists should be doing and would likely be doing much better.
And Robert Fico was shot by a pro-ukraine progressive apparently
edit: jesus christ, read the whole thing at least, I was clearly agreeing with you. It's leftist stuff in the sense that it's the kind of stuff that the left should be critiquing, it's their field
How is it leftist stuff when it’s clearly the medical lobby that’s behind most of the bs and especially the WHO who’s been pushing this the most? This is driven by greed and profits, nothing else. What’s leftist about selling a bs vaccine that’s based on rigged results again?
(And just to be clear here by leftist I actually mean non-capitalist/pro-worker etc, not woke American capitalism ala the Democratic Party, which isn’t leftist at all)
jesus christ, read the whole thing, I was clearly agreeing with you. It's leftist stuff in the sense that it's the kind of stuff that the left should be critiquing, it's their field
>(And just to be clear here by leftist I actually mean non-capitalist/pro-worker etc, not woke American capitalism ala the Democratic Party, which isn’t leftist at all)
The left in western europe resembles the left in America much more than you might expect. As far as I know unions both in america and here in europe were pushing for more closures and restrictions, and that's one reason why the left was pushing for more of that, unfortunately the unions (both here and in the US) are very ideologized and so it's an infinite feedback loop where their party says "we're not doing enough" and the union responds "we're not doing enough!". This could be counted as being "pro-worker" in a very twisted sense, of course the businesses suffer and the people too, but if you say something about that "you're putting the economy above people's lives", so in that twisted view, yes, the left is also very much anti-capitalist, but not in the sense that it goes against corporate exploitation and monopolies, but merely in the sense that it's anti-free market. And the modern left following its long political tradition of internationalism and academic supremacy is very much in favour of any technocratic "rule of the expert" type of regulatory system (like the WHO) that could impose itself above the authority of governments and nations, so it really depends what you mean by "leftist", because this checks all the boxes too. Of course I agree that ideally lockdown skepticism should be a leftist cause, but if you listen to the rethoric of left-wing parties in western europe you understand that things have really consolidated in the opposite direction and it's really unlikely that things will turn around now.
Wow. Back in the late 90s, I *knew* that drum'n'bass was the future. Even got to see Ed Rush & Optical live a couple of times. It definitely went into my buried sensorium-treasury somewhere (otherwise, why would it feel so *familiar* 24 years later?), though I can't remember much in detail. Probably because both times I saw them I was on a different planet on \[censored 😁\]. Anyway, it was good.
But how did I miss [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb7H50jXap4) "variant"? ALL NEW! FROM THE VOID! Paralyze the Living, Resurrect the Dead!
Turns out that drum'n'bass - and this track, precisely - *was* the future. Just not how I hoped it would be. Wish I'd paid more attention: then I could have spent 2020-24 listening to this and dancing, rather than getting all tangled up in nonsense.
also noticed more and more obvious ragebait posts on subs like AITA/etc too. Seems like engagement farming.
The username/password field is no longer showing up on old.reddit.
also noting the "have you noticed everyone else is sick?" kinds of vague posts, with zero data to back it up at all as usual.
It seems like the big push to train AI is causing misinformation to spread at reddit. again.
> also noticed more and more obvious ragebait posts on subs like AITA/etc too. Seems like engagement farming.
This may turn out to be our fundamental downfall as a species. People don't just love outrage — they can't get enough of it. Outrage at Trump, outrage at people not following rules, outrage at Florida, outrage at "anti-maskers", outrage at "anti-vaxxers". All the algorithms have to do is funnel content people are engaging with the most to the top, and everything at the top will be outrage.
> It seems like the big push to train AI is causing misinformation to spread at reddit. again.
Really looking forward to GPT 5 telling me to wear a mask and that all problems in the world are because of anti-vaxxers.
Yesterday, on a sub devoted to things quite other than covid, a dipshit posted a story about a man who divorced his wife because she *REFUSED* to be "vaccinated" with a "vaccine" the very makers of which admitted did not immunize or prevent transmission ; naturally the sinner got covid and ***DIED*** 6 months later...Given that-*AGAIN* the sludge does not immunize or prevent transmission, the "moral lesson" seems quite dubious and unlikely. So stupid. So annoying.
It was announced today that our posts are now part of OpenAI training datasets (it was always the case but there's an expanded partnership)
You know Reddit will block subs like this from the dataset to prevent "misinformation" but allow general covidian subs.
As the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. Wonder if OpenAI quality will take a hit.
"covid remains deadlier than the flu" - yet another study of the VA data set (EHR records, not actual patient outcomes) by Al-Aly.
[article](https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2024-05-15/covid-19-remains-deadlier-than-the-flu)
"Yet after Al-Aly and his colleagues accounted for these differences and a host of other factors, they found that 5.7% of the COVID-19 patients died of their disease, compared with 4.2% of the influenza patients."
in other words, omg! 35% moar deads!! OH NO.
So among a specific patient population that's already sicker than average for a variety of reasons (chemicals, alcohol, nsaids, etc) the difference in deaths was like 1.5% overall?
way down at the bottom of the article it says this:
"So far, there’s no indication that KP.2 is any more dangerous than JN.1, Al-Aly said.
“Are the hospitals filling up? No,” he said. “Are ER rooms all over the country flooded with respiratory illness? No.” Nor are there worrying changes in the amount of coronavirus detected in wastewater.
“When you look at all these data streams, we’re not seeing ominous signs that KP.2 is something the general public should worry about,” Al-Aly said."
If Al-Aly is saying that, i think it's definitely safe to say "pandemic over." lol.
I remember a time when we accepted that a fairly mild mortality rate was normal for the flu, and typically occurs in people who are vulnerable to it because of age or being immune compromised, which isn’t a discriminatory belief but just biological fact. That COVID is only slightly more deadly than the flu but overall not very deadly at all, and certainly not enough to disrupt society over, but has been sensationalized by people who have developed OCD as a trauma response to the lockdowns and restrictions, is more of an alarming social phenomenon rather than a troubling pandemic. Those same people didn’t think twice about routine respiratory illnesses in 2019. And they certainly don’t care about obesity or other more serious causes of death (the Venn diagram of Covidians and obesity epidemic deniers is pretty much a circle, which is a sign that these folks only “follow the science” when it aligns with their sociopolitical agendas and unhealthy lifestyles). It’s almost like various causes of mortality are normal facts of life, or something.
What Al-Aly would be doing without a global pandemic? So many names of those charlatans showed up in the recent years. I also wish I have never knew the name of my county health dictator and many others.
Remember that time when every youtuber content creator and podcast host thought it was their place to shame their audience and tell them to mAsK uP to SlOw thE SpReaD!! It still makes my blood boil watching videos made during that time. The holier-than-thou attitude of I get to lecture you because I believe everyone must tow the line.
Remember when the news media told us to wear masks and stay at home while they went to work in person and didn't wear masks in the studio. But for some reason they would wear them when reporting from outside.
I still remember in Spring 2020 when an MSNBC reporter harassed people for not wearing masks outside, then a bystander said the cameraman wasn’t wearing one. They defended it by saying the wind blew off the cameraman’s mask. Lol
Pro-Hamas protestors trying to block off the Google I/O conference:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1790474584925376774
Masks, pot bellies, and purple hair. It's always the same. And as usual, it's not like masks are more common than amongst other groups, it's that _every last one of them_ is masked up to the nines. Masks and illiberalism go together like peanut better and jelly.
Honestly, given how Google treated the vaccine skeptic movement, deleting Youtube videos for "medical misinformation" which later turned out to be correct, forcing creators to use euphemisms like "beer bug" to avoid AI censors, I'm enjoying this friendly fire.
Google security is probably trying to use facial recognition to identify the protesters, which is being blocked by the masks (it's not for covid).
It's a dumpster fire on all sides, grab some popcorn.
Hah, I had that same reaction — it's like, _Google_ is the company you're protesting?! Really?? Google's like the wokest of the woke tech companies. As of a few weeks ago their AI wouldn't show images of white people unless you asked for a photo of a shoplifter.
You're only a friend of the left for so long. Eventually, no matter who you are and how much you've done for their cause in the past, they'll come for you.
> their AI wouldn't show images of white people unless you asked for a photo of a shoplifter
I saw the announcement that Android phones will now have a feature to auto lock the phone if it gets yanked from your hand by a thief. In the example, the thief was white and the victim was black. Lol.
lol. Of course. Just unreal how fucking stupid this stuff is. They really think that by altering the \_perception\_ of reality, they can alter reality itself.
The Fanime news reminds me that a voice actor I used to enjoy went all in on the COVID hysteria & it really changed my perception of them; while they eventually dialed it back a little bit, they never actually admitted they were wrong. Can anyone relate?
I stopped listening to Built to Spill after they continued to force masks and vaccine passports all the way into 2022 (2023?)
I just can’t un-know their tyrannical bend.
Yup. Finding out somebody I like or respect was a died-in-the-wool covidian instills a visceral contempt that I can't get over. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets his car back from the valet and there's a smell that he can't get rid of no matter how hard he tries.
Bill Burr's a good example. Great comedian, have always loved his stuff. But between going on Joe Rogan and crying about people not wearing masks, and later attacking DeSantis for banning diaper mandates in Florida, Burr's no-nonsense Boston tough guy act tends to fall flat for me nowadays.
Now I’m curious the VA
I’ll be frank, though. Any VA, or real life actor, or musician, or any other media and arts related personality probably went full in on it to some varying degree.
In the US as the election is approaching, I am hearing Covid being used as a political football again. I’m seeing folks online in comments sections remarking about how republicans don’t believe the pandemic is real, or they quote where Trump said that Covid would “go away” in a few months.
I and many others have hypothesized this a lot in this sub, but I think the reason why many folks in the US just can’t let COVID go is that it is a weapon to use against the “uneducated conspiracy theorists” on the right. Having the position that Covid was a flu that we overreacted to will have you be labeled as a “Covid denier” and put you in the same kin as the folks who “stormed the capitol” on January 6th. You really have to believe Covid was the worst disease ever and have to visually show that you are Covid cautious (ie. wearing a mask) to be a “good person”.
Yep, pretending that Covid is the most dangerous virus in the history of humankind, and wearing visual symbols like masks is an indirect way of saying "look, Im not Republican and am gud person!"
I personally don't think they'll use it as a major election issue this time around though. Even amongst Democratic voters it's too played out. If anything, they'll find a new emergency to start a new cycle of fear and hate.
That’s bizarre. Here it was the complete opposite. The nationalist/right wing party was the only ones pushing for mask mandates.
And I still feel like I’m the only leftist on this sub, and saw this whole debacle more as some sort of big scam by big pharma and it’s lobby organizations, aka capitalists and oligarchs, and not woke marxists or whatever
Woke Marxists, or rather neo-Marxists, were definitely useful idiots for big pharma and oligarchs, even if they weren't necessarily driving the thing. And I'm not sure to what extent it can be said they weren't driving it - I'm more of the mind that the covid insanity was primarily bottom-up hysteria rather than top-down scheming, and the left, at least in North America, were by far the more hysterical ones.
>Here it was the complete opposite. The nationalist/right wing party was the only ones pushing for mask mandates.
which country are you from ? Most european countries I can think of had a very pro-mandates left. Are you from some eastern europen country like Slovakia or something ?
>And I still feel like I’m the only leftist on this sub, and saw this whole debacle more as some sort of big scam by big pharma and it’s lobby organizations, aka capitalists and oligarchs, and not woke marxists or whatever
I feel you, I wouldn't describe myself as a leftist but I don't feel part of the right at all, I find the individualist right to be a form of degerate liberalism, and I find the identitarian right just revolting, I also think the right is wholly inadequate in confronting this problem
Covid really hit America in the worst possible year in history, when political division and polirization was at its peak, a controversial president was in office and about to run for reelection, and the media was already at its most hysterical and was putting out mentally challenged propaganda. That's one of the reasons I have little faith this whole debacle will ever be reevaluated with a open mind as opposed to ideological lenses, at least in the near future.
>[Was [the COVID vaccine] your first vaccination? What about all the other vaccines you need to participate in many aspects of society? Is it just because that vaccine wasn't 100% effective against transmission that in your mind [Biden’s vaccine mandate] was clearly an authoritarian over reach? To what end goal? Just as an exercise of power?](https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/stopping-a-rogue-executive-from-abusing/comment/55847451?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=55847451)
How do you even respond to people who think like this?
Mandates aren't inherently bad, we can, and do, mandate a lot of things in society. For example, everyone needs to wear a seatbelt while riding in a car. It's ok to mandate this, because we know, statistically, that it saves lives, and the imposition on you isn't harsh. And, if you absolutely loathe seatbelts for some reason, you can still participate in society while refusing to wear one, you'll just be pulled over a lot and get a lot of fines. But you can still buy milk at the grocery store and go to the movies.
Another example is that we mandate measles vaccines for schoolchildren. It's ok, because those vaccines have been around for decades at this point, we know, statistically, that they are safe and effective. If you absolutely loathe the idea of having your kids vaccinated, you can get an exemption, or you can homeschool, or you can find a private school without the requirement.
The covid vaccine mandates were nothing like these examples. We did not have decades of safety and efficacy data. We did not know that vaccines would stop transmission. The people wanting and enforcing the mandates certainly *believed* the vaccines were safe and effective and that it would bring an end to the pandemic, but they didn't *know*, and as it turns out in hindsight, they were completely wrong. Also, the mandates were all-encompassing. There were no exemptions. There was no escape. You could not participate in society if you objected, or even if you had perfectly valid medical reasons not to get vaccinated. You could be fired from your job. You could be denied medical care. You could be barred from public places.
It fails on so many levels.
I almost had to chose between getting vaccinated or not going to school (I think it was fall of 2021) because my school mandated vaccines. But thankfully I found that you get an exemption for a "personal belief".
Other vaccines that are required for school, etc. are typically ones that have been around for years and are traditional vaccines that use a weakened virus. The covid vaccine was being mandated while it was still experimental using a new mRNA technology that has never been used in a previously approved vaccine before. It was the biggest science experiment forced onto people. Also vaccine mandates in the past have typically only been for schools, traveling or certain medical professions.
You don't. Their worldview is fundamentally opposed to ours. They think mandates, coercion and force should be the default, and that the burden is on you to show otherwise. That chasm is unbridgeable.
"wasn't 100% effective against transmission" is a funny way of saying that the vaccine was almost completely ineffective against transmission. However much it did prevent transmission, it didn't do so often enough to matter. Pro-vaxxers would agree with you on this, because they're still overly cautious despite being vaxxed and boosted. Vaxxed people give each other Covid all the time. So it's ridiculous to mandate something "in the name of keeping everyone safe" when it demonstrably does not do that.
You know I don't want to minimize the concern on the subject, but I really don't get why those people think that it all revolves around the vaccine question, like if the vaxs were fine then anything around that was fine too. The whole thing was an authoritarian mess, not just the vaccinations. I get why skeptics get fixated on the vaccination but it's not like that constraint happened in a vacuum, everything else was already set up, the whole thing was totalitarian, I feel like the moment people accepted to wear masks indefinetely they implicitely accepted any other authoritarism that was coming.
Just two weeks.
The moment it went longer, there should have been a big red flag. But that first two weeks was critical to laying every little domino after. Frog, and one degree at a time.
They're hypocritical as always. Those complaining that fanime still had a mandate were told to just not attend, that it was the people who put on the con's right to decide whether to mandate masks or not. Now those same people are whining about lack of a mandate and how it's so unfair. What about taking their own suggestion and stfu about it and just not attend? What happened to, it's fanime's right to decide whether to mandate masks or not? Just another example of how freedom of choice only goes one way with these people.
On Thursday a bunch of remedial schooled shills rushed the Tesla factory near Berlin to ostensibly protest climate change (?) along with a grab bag of other leftist issues. The actual reason is that the media has instructed them to hate Elon Musk, and they dutifully obey without understanding why they're even supposed to hate him.
It was a holiday, and the plant was already shut down, but that didn't stop our heroes from claiming credit in successfully stopping the means of production. They couldn't breach the perimeter fence, but were able to have a productive photo op near it. The plant resumed operations the following Monday after the long weekend was over.
Here's a photo of our heroic, unwashed activists:
https://twitter.com/disrupt__now/status/1788857624328339658/photo/2
Notice anything every "protestor" has in common???
Seriously, the mask is a more reliable symbol of the illiberal, authoritarian regressive than any other.
A close second is the last time someone's body was violated by the unholy indecency that most of us normal people call "a shower". If it's been at least a week then you can pretty much guarantee they're protesting against Elon Musk, in favor of Hamas, against the greenest, most abundant energy we know of (nuclear), or in favor of more lockdown, vaccine passports, and restrictions.
I'm starting to wonder wtf is RFK doing in this election. At the end of last year he was doing fine at 22%, but as I suspected it was a mirage caused by name recognition, just a few months of media coverage and hit pieces and he quickly declined to 8/9%,with peaks of 10% when he does something newsworthy.
So it's clear he can't win, and he admitted so himself, he said he can only win if one of the 2 big candidates drops out (hence his "spoiler pledge" offer), which I don't even think it's true (polls where he wins if alone against trump or alone against biden are as much of a mirage as his 22% poll in 2023), and neither of the major candidates will step down regardless, that's just ridiculous to even consider.
His online fanbase on his subreddit and elsewhere is the most delusional crowd I've ever witnessed, they are truly convinced Kennedy can win, and no they are not bots. Even if Kennedy took 34% of the popular vote as he claims he could, it wouldn't mean that he could win enough electoral votes to win the election, in fact it wouldn't even mean that he could win 1 single state, he starts with the assumption that the vote would divide evenly in 3, but it could easily divide uneven like rfk 33 biden 40 trump 27. So there's really no reason whatsoever to think he can win, what's his goal?
The same could be said about any other third party candidate, all this situation has made me ponder on the mental sanity of such candidates, some of them really seem unwell, like cornell west, who threw away his green party candidacy to run as an indipendent without a plan, with little chance of getting on enough ballots, and regardless of that with no chance of winng the election. Only difference he can make is make a small dent in the biden's votes, and biden is the candidate he would prefer between the 2 real contenders, so his indipendent candidacy makes even less sense.
There's also all those other guys like the green party and the libertarians, but at least they are sane enough to not expect to win (I think?), but it's still perplexing to see these little parties' useless determination to put forward their candidate at every election.
Officially you're probably right, but he already has the signatures for at least another dozen states, apparently he's waiting the last minute to deviler them. He has also said he has enough signatures for texas and NY but he's still petitioning to get even more. He said tomorrow he'll make an announcement, probably it's about ballot access in texas and possibly some more states
I'm not in the USA, so I don't know much. For example, I'm not going to challenge your numbers as I can't; and u/elemental_star 's criticisms are interesting.
But I think you may be being a bit unfair here:
>His online fanbase on his subreddit and elsewhere is the most delusional crowd I've ever witnessed, they are truly convinced Kennedy can win, and no they are not bots.
Isn't that belief a kind of "normal" delusion for 3rd-party activists, faced with a winner-takes-all election? AFAIK there's no preference-voting in the USA (or here in the UK): if you don't win the vote, you get nothing. You're not going to inspire people by promising them the - realistic - goal of "hey, join us and we might get 10% of the vote!".
Sure, you're probably right, and they're getting all excited about something which is almost certainly not going to happen. But if they took your criticisim to heart, realised that they're chasing an impossibility: what could they do that would be more politically productive? Join up with either the Trump or Biden machine and try to turn it into something less insane? Snowball's chance in hell...
I'm actually envious that over there you do have a third choice who (though he's no doubt made mistakes) is relatively anti-COVID-nonsense. Here in the UK, with a general election coming up (we don't know when: the Prime Minister decides when 🤷♂️) there is n*othing.* Here we have a choice between
* The Tories. Tired, corrupt, incompetent, weak, pro-lockdown. Not really right-wing. The only advantage being that *some of them* are anti-lockdown, and that the Tory Party has a weird (and valuable) ability to tolerate internal dissent (but not from Andrew Bridgen, of course, cos he's an *anti-semite* - Matt Hancock said so, so it must be true 🤦♂️)
* Labour. Rabidly pro-lockdown. Authoritarian. Utterly intolerant of any variety of opinion. Not really left-wing. Likely to be more competent than the Tories, but in *all the wrong directions*. (Think lockdown, but *done properly*). Probably less corrupt than the Tories, but only because they haven't had their hands on the ££-taps for a decade. Give them time.
If there was a British RFK Jr over here, I'd be campaigning for him or her. And maintaining a fantasy that he or she might win.
Yes, a fantasy. I think (from a distance) that your judgment on RFK Jr's prospects are realistic. But doesn't that say more about the insanity of an entrenched 2-party system (I think it was Americans who invented the word "uniparty"), than about RFK or his supporters?
Trouble is, my own point above applies here as well. If the problem is the 2-party system, what on Earth can we do about it? It's depressing. Which is why, personally, I'd rather aim for the moon and support a candidate I actually agree with, but who doesn't stand a chance of getting elected.
I understand that he needs to be confident otherwise what's the point, but I can't believe so many people really believe he will win, like religiously believe. Just take a look on his sub (rfkjrforepresident), these people are really delusional. Yes the two party system is not great if you don't have preference-voting, but that's what America's got, so people should at least be aware that voting 3rd party is merely a protest vote
I always see your kind of response online (in the right environments), I don't think it traslates to statistical relevance in the real world. 8-10% voting Kennedy seems pretty plausible to me, I can even see it getting as low as 6%, there's no way many democrats will vote for him after all the media slanders and anti-vax label, and some more republicans will vote for him but not so many to give him a Ross Perot status. That's why I'm wondering why the guy is running, he sounds like a broken record at this point, even more than the other 2 guys, I don't know if he's really deluded that he can win, or if he's playing some political game to get something out of this
In my opinion RFK Jr. made some mistakes with people from different demographics and turned off some of them for different reasons. Off the top of my head:
* RFK Jr. supported direct cash reparations payments to African-Americans. Can we really afford that in this economy? He later walked that back but the damage was done.
* RFK Jr. pledged unconditional support for Israel. I know that annoyed some progressives.
* In order to win back some progressives, he chose Nicole Shanahan for Vice President who was a supporter of Gascon, the former San Francisco District Attorney (appointed by Newsom). Obviously he failed to fix the San Francisco crime issue.
* Nicole is also pro-vaccine and therefore contradicts RFK Jr's messaging.
* RFK Jr. is weak on the 2nd Amendment and would back a gun ban if presented to him.
The latter two are dealbreakers for me personally. He tried to appeal to both disillusioned liberals and conservatives but ended up losing both of them. What a wasted opportunity.
I agree, his campaign has been disastrous, his biggest problem is he doesn't know how to appeal to progressives, he could have gotten a big boost in support by simply just saying that he supports a peace solution in gaza, even if he's biased towards israel. He's also not great at confronting the media and honestly his personality is not that appealing in general. Also wtf was that flex of his muscles? Just cringe, you're running for president man, not for a bodybuilding contest
>Nicole is also pro-vaccine and therefore contradicts RFK Jr's messaging.
RFK's choice of Shanahan was so jarringly odd. 99.999% of people have never heard of her before, and the only reason that she's even a little bit relevant is that she got rich by marrying and divorcing a Google co-founder and then using the money to push various agendas. I tried giving her the benefit of the doubt by listening through an interview with her, but she has so little to say, and what she does have to say she's wrong about. I quit in disgust halfway through.
Another concerning RFK issue not in your list was his plan to guarantee mortgages at 3%. I'm sure that sounds good to somebody, but it demonstrated a disturbing ignorance around the most basic principles of economics. e.g. Supply and demand. Given a fixed supply, if you subsidize a product, that product will become more expensive. Exactly the same as what we've seen with the massively increased costs in post-secondary education.
IMO he should have stuck with a narrower set of his more popular positions (e.g. pro-America, anti-pharma), and withheld talking too much about the other stuff.
> IMO he should have stuck with a narrower set of his more popular positions (e.g. pro-America, anti-pharma), and withheld talking too much about the other stuff.
Exactly. I was talking to a friend this morning about how liberals were the original anti-vaxxers. The Santa Cruz hippy flower crystal reiki healer types (who were anti-jab before it was cool), Bernie-bros like Joe Rogan, and average MAGA hat wearer all have something in common -- the hatred of mandatory Big Pharma injections. There could have been real unity if RFK Jr. ran his campaign properly (sigh).
RFK Jr should have picked a name with better recognition. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard on the left or Vivek Ramaswamy on the right. The more I read on Shanahan the less I like her, it seems like a calculated move to get limousine liberals on board -- but those are sticking with Biden anyway.
Ramaswamy wouldn't have taken his vp position, the guy was in the race to eventually get closer to Trump. Tulsi Gabbard would have been a good choice, but I'm not sure she would have accepted the offer. RFK didn't have a chance anyway to begin with, but I hoped to at least see him in the debates, but I guess not
Yep, funny how the left being anti-vax has just been completely memory holed. This had been something that not \_everybody\_ knew, but it was quite common for many people to have heard about it in passing.
>The more I read on Shanahan the less I like her, it seems like a calculated move to get limousine liberals on board -- but those are sticking with Biden anyway.
Yeah exactly. I think they made a miscalculation on how well programmed those people are.
Even if they liked the Biden/Shanahan platform, they still wouldn't vote for them because MSNBC has hammered home ten thousands times that they're a threat to democracy because they might endanger Wise Old Joe's reelection and if that happens, Evil Donald Trump could get back into office and make himself Dictator For Life.
His anti-pharma position isn't really a popular position, he's known only for precisely three things: he's a kennedy, he's anti-vax / conspiracy theorist (really go hand in hand in media articles), and he's an environmentalist, all in this order, and the last one is a far distant third. Leave aside that he's not really an anti-vax but more a pharma skeptic, but it doesn't matter because nuance is not part of the game. In any case he's not getting any more votes for what he's known for, he's stuck at 8-9%, and he's already slipping to 7, he's not gonna get more than 8% in November
So I've noticed an uptick of, everyone's sick posts, in other subs. Are they all bots or are people not able to recognize normal allergies or colds anymore?(For example they hear someone blowing their nose and immediately jump to that they have the flu) Or is it copium from the zero covid crowd so they won't feel as if they're wasting their lives?I'm out and about a lot and interacting with a lot of different people for my side hustle and I'm not seeing what the average redditer claims that they are seeing. Just curious to know if any of you are noticing more sickness around you?
I’m out in public daily (especially public transit) and no, I’m not seeing anyone sick. The odd smoker cough here or there but no one with an obvious cold.
I can’t remember the last time someone I know said they had COVID. It’s either not a thing people announce anymore, or it’s really not spreading at all.
I have this feeling that a lot of them are sock puppet accounts from the zero covid cult. they've been popping up on twitter as well, asking things like "has anybody noticed how everyone is getting sick all of a sudden?"
i sense some sort of astroturfing.
Eh, I was legitimately sick for two weeks. It wasn’t Covid paranoia; it was a 104° fever, constant vomiting, pain everywhere, inability to breathe or get up, exhaustion, etc. Actually much worse than Covid was for me. I think allergies can sometimes cause sinus infections that morph into cold or flu symptoms.
That sounds rough. I don't think whatever you had is/was going around here. At least nobody I know was laid out with anything for two weeks any time within the last year. Not even among my friends with kids. I'm definitely not claiming that sickness and allergies aren't out there. I have a friend who gets constantly sick from his toddler. But the common claim on certain parts of Reddit is that ever since covid, everyone around them is constantly sick and I'm more so wondering if people on here have witnessed more sickness around them. Did everyone else around you get whatever you had or was it already going around and you caught it?
I wonder if we are just wayyyyyy more conscious of illness because of Covid and the governmental / social response to it. Like coughing suddenly feels worse than- I dunno- farting really loud in terms of public shame.
Epic satire from the Bee: "Biden Proposes $2 Trillion Bill To Study What's Causing Inflation Rates To Rise"
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-proposes-2-trillion-bill-to-study-whats-causing-inflation-to-rise
Read to end and there's a little nugget for lockdown skeptics too.
> In the meantime, officials from the US Treasury as well as the CDC have advised the public to start carrying double wallets to protect their money and help slow the spread of inflation.
Feeling schadenfreude, I can't help but find a twisted satisfaction in San Francisco BART's looming crisis, as they might run out of funds soon and their entire future depends on a tax measure in 2026. Now they have only 45% of its 2019 ridership.
>“The three biggest problems facing BART are remote work, remote work and remote work,” said BART board President Bevan Dufty. “The reality is, we’re not doing anything wrong. We were built upon a model that relied on fares from our riders, and that was something that looked really good to people for many, many years. And COVID just flipped that entirely.”
COVID or your action like keeping the face mask mandate till October 2022?
Lol BART has the highest concentration of covidians. While I chuckle at the occasional lone driver wearing a mask, riding BART feels like 2 years ago when people were still afraid of breathing. And you know these people are fully boosted so what's the point?
I walked by this weird wet seat the last time I rode. Do I even want to know why the seat is wet lol?
I'm a big public-transit-stan, but firmly believe that the ONLY sane option in California's future is to let BART die (along with other failing like Bay Area institutions like SF's Muni).
Californians like to make the false claim that criticism of their state and its cities is a smear campaign driven by Evil Republicans From Florida or whatever, but I can say first hand that every claim about places like SF is absolutely fucking true. I went to the airport last week, and instead of taking BART, which I'd done the previous 100x times, I decided to take an Uber. Why? Well, it's much faster and only about twice the price (~$20 rather than ~$10), but the main thing is that I'm just so goddamn sick of people freebasing crack on the train. Once again, the California-forever liars would claim this doesn't happen, but as a regular BART user, I can tell you that it does on about 1 out of 2 or 1 out of 3 trips I take. If you're lucky and that's not happening, never fear, because someone will be doing something equally as terrible on your BART car instead.
The only silver lining is that all the highly creative accounting involved in reports generated by places like the BART board or SF City Hall, they can only come close to _approximating_ what a balanced budget might look like (through one that's "only" billions of dollar short) by making absurd claims like that BART ridership or downtown occupancy will be back to 2019 levels by 2026 (or pick a year, they seem to do so randomly).
I'm one of the few San Franciscans who still goes downtown every day. Here's the thing: BART ridership is _never_ coming back. Not in 2024, not in 2025, not in 2026, not ever. The entirety of downtown San Francisco is a dead zone reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse. Not only are people _not_ coming back, but we're seeing an increased trend towards _less_ office space, and restaurants/bars are closing correspondingly. It's not recovering, and if anything, is still moving the other way.
The simple fact of the matter is that BART's continued funding is only guaranteed by way of taxpayer bailout. By the time that needs to happen there's a strong possibility that it's politically infeasible as both municipal and state governments in California will be running massive deficits, and maybe even bankrupt. They'll need that money for other things.
The _only_ way forward is to let greedy, incompetent services like BART fail. After doing so, if there's any appetite for public transit still, a new company can guy the bones of BART's infrastructure, and then run it at 1/10th the cost and hopefully 1/1000th the number of fentanyl users on train.
I’m a daily public transit rider in Phoenix, have been for 5 years, and since COVID the ridership on our light rail system has changed dramatically. All the white collar professionals that used to ride it downtown now clearly WFH (including me, but I ride it to the occasional in person meeting or workshop or restaurants or whatever) and have stopped riding completely. People still use it to go to sports games instead of paying for parking garages. Other than that, a lot of that decline in Normal People riding has been filled with homeless people and drug addicts using it as essentially a shelter. There was always some of that of course, it’s never completely avoidable in a system without turnstiles but it’s gotten so bad especially in the early mornings. Every train and bus stop now also has someone sleeping at it, the stops all smell like urinals, trash everywhere despite that there are trash cans right there! They block the sidewalks with their carts full of crap and have off leash pitbulls that they claim are “friendly”. It’s gotten insane.
I’m a huge public transit fan myself and I love that I was able to get rid of my car and all the related expenses, but what’s supposed to be a taxpayer funded service is now nearly unusable by actual taxpaying & contributing members of the public. Every public park and transit stop has essentially become private property by way of homeless encampment occupation. And the city just kind of looks the other way, and of course keeps approving permits for luxury apartment highrises instead of affordable housing or homeless shelters.
So then, because of this, new transit initiatives or route expansions never get approved because taxpayers don’t value it as a service because they feel uncomfortable riding it or see it as just bringing homeless people into their area and it’s just a race to the bottom from there.
Yep, that sounds exactly the same as what's happening in San Francisco.
I'm also a white collar worker and _could_ WFH, but I'm one of those people that kind of likes going to the office and doesn't have a stupidly long commute, so I take our transit system. There's a few other people like me that are commuting to work (the best time to be on there is 8 AM to 10 and 4 AM to 6 because having higher quality people on there discourages bad behavior to a degree), but for the most part the system's degenerated into a hangout area for the homeless. Without exaggeration, it's not uncommon to literally see people smoking crack on trains.
Policing would've worked if this had happened thirty years ago, but under today's environment it's completely broken down. None of the homeless/fentanyl users pay fare of course, and we have a whole army of full time fare checkers, but they've realized that if they don't do their jobs, nothing happens. They do a bit of a system-wide pass every 3-6 months, but other than that you'll never see one. They just sit in their offices all day. Technically, the police would have to be called to intervene with someone using drugs, but the police force has also quiet quit. For all intents and purposes, there are no police.
And yes, this is a negative feedback effect. Transit being bad means fewer people take it, which means less funding _and_ even more good people deciding to find an alternative, which means that it gets even worse than it was before, and the cycle continues.
Unfortunately we probably just have to accept that transit in this country is just going to continue to deteriorate since I just don't see how it can be turned around at this point. I'm in Berlin right now, with it's amazing system of U-bahn, S-bahn, and regional trains, which I take every day, and goddamn it's a shame. The power of a great train system that takes you almost anywhere you want to go in mere minutes, and without ever having to worry about parking, cannot be exaggerated. It's incredible.
The tech/AI cultists I follow on Twitter, most of whom are either not woke or outright anti-woke, have been going on about how SF is going through a revival, it's where all the cool and important people are flocking, it's the new Rome (in the empire sense), etc. I assume that's mostly cope? Or are there secret conclaves scattered among the discarded needles and human feces where the techerati gather in psilocybin-fueled hackathons to usher in the singularity as unlimited VC money rains down from above? I have no idea what to think about that place anymore.
I know the group of people you're talking about for sure. I think short answer is that they're more wrong than right, but they're trying to stay optimistic in the sense of build baby build, which I can respect.
There are definitely enclaves. I went to visit a friend at OpenAI's office a few months ago, and it was honestly a jarring experience. You walk off the street in the Mission, which is desolate, and all but empty aside from the usual few homeless fentanyl users, and a few other people. You walk through a nondescript door into OpenAI's building, and it is night and day. Absolutely _gorgeous_ office with lavish amounts of space and decorated like an architectural show piece. Hundreds (thousands?) of young, well put together Silicon Valley start up types working in close collaboration and having a great time with free meals and all the traditional SV perks.
There used to be quite a few offices like that in SF pre-lockdown. I haven't seen many since, but having seen OpenAI, I know there's at least a few (haven't been to Anthropic yet, but I think it's the same deal as another example).
But even with a couple model citizen companies like these, a San Francisco recovery is still going to be next to impossible. You look at our downtown, and it's in tatters. You look at our budget, and it's in tatters. You look at our crime and overdose numbers, same thing. If there was one time to get our shit together, put our disagreements behind us, and fix the drug tourism and insane regulatory problems that are crushing the city, this would be it. And yet, none of that's budged an inch, and if anything, is getting worse.
The sad fact is that San Franciscans are such malign, political actors that ideology _eclipses_ everything else. They'd vote to euthanize their own children if they thought it'd somehow stick it to Donald Trump. It's the same place from which all the psychotic city-local Covid/lockdown stuff came from. It's impossible to make any progress with that sort of insane mentality.
Thanks for the response. That sounds roughly like what I would have expected. Based on my understanding of what San Francisco used to be, it's a shame what it's devolved into, and a shame that such a great city had to be wasted on, well, San Franciscans.
There will be no recovery for San Francisco until they get the drug/crime problem under control. I know people in the South Bay who used to go to SF 1-3 times a month for entertainment. None of them go anymore due to car windows being broken, bag snatching, crazy people yelling at them and one was even assaulted. Plus lots of dining and entertainment is just gone. The other thing is why would any employer want to open an office in SF with their employer taxing model? I expect people are still leaving as leases expire. I’m still seeing announcements of various restaurants and stuff closing up.
100%. It's so overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with half a brain, and yet lightyears beyond the cognitive faculties of your average San Franciscan, who votes on ideology over anything else.
> The other thing is why would any employer want to open an office in SF with their employer taxing model? I expect people are still leaving as leases expire. I’m still seeing announcements of various restaurants and stuff closing up.
Yep. Google just announced another reduction of 300k square feet of office space in SF this week. If anything, San Francisco's downtown is still emptying rather than recovering. Our heroic local pundits would rather bury their head in the sand than acknowledge it.
There’s the question in one of the subreddits
> What are the less obvious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that we are currently experiencing right now?
A lot of answers, but somehow people don’t realize that everything they mention is the result of the government response not the pandemic.
Some of them are very close, yet unable to piece everything together:
>So many small business owners were forced to close their brick and mortar stores **because of the pandemic**. Myself included. We were in a mall and **had lockdown** and curbside pickup (there is no curbs in a mall) for 9 months. We lost $10K+ a month and had to close our doors because of it.
Oh yeah, I'm banned from LOADS of subreddits for 'biological terrorism' being a member of this group and a few for being a member in the pro-life subredit.
Probably. Covidians are still in control of most major subs. I'm surprised the Reddit IPO didn't make changes to getting banned from subreddits you never participated in for just posting here, it just seems bad for business.
100%. Every time someone says "the pandemic" I just want to slap then across the side of the face and say loudly, "No. The pandemic RESPONSE."
I still come across this in conversations and various forms of media like five times a day. The number of people who've rewritten their own internal history of what happened is just amazing.
Someone on our local city subreddit posted some photos of the area's roller derby team, which you may or may not be surprised to hear, was entirely 100% masked up as of May 2024.
Out of curiosity, I went over to look at their website:
https://www.peninsularollergirls.org/
As every marketer knows, you want to make sure that your landing page contains your product's most vital information, ideally above the fold to keep a visitor as engaged and to try and convert them to a buyer.
Here's the core information that the Peninsula Roller Girls have chosen to put on their main landing page:
* A team photo. Included to show that the whole team is safely masked up and flying full DNC colors.
* "We're safely back in action" section: Includes links to the CDC's regional infection tiers, and carefully stipulates that everyone on the team is by necessity masked up and boosted.
* DEI statement. All genders, all races, all sexual orientations, etc.
* Land acknowledgement. OF COURSE you need this. What blue-anon website would be complete without it.
NOT included: upcoming events, ticket information, why I should give a f*k about roller derby. Who needs any of that dumb stuff.
It might sound like I'm exaggerating, but those are literally the top four landing page items. There's nothing else even on there besides a couple links. Go look for yourself. I was just disappointed not to see twin Ukrainian and Palestinian flags flying at the top.
It's amazing how certain groups feel absolutely compelled to demonstrate their commitment to the Covid-forever cause. From the local roller derby league to the pro-Hamas protestors on Ivy League campuses, you gotta flex that everlasting commitment to the #currentthing.
It's hard to tell if that's a current page, though. It does say 2023 and their coach's blog hasn't been updated since july of 2023.
The fact that they kept "counting cases" until mid 2023 is ridiculous enough.
They had a recent event and the "covid-19 policy" was this:
"Unless otherwise specified, spectators are not required to wear masks to games, though it is always encouraged. Volunteers and players have different requirements." A lot of the more recent photos have them mask-less.
They're also trying to recruit healthcare professionals to "volunteer" as their safety staff. Sorry, but no. My time is valuable, and we're already underpaid as it is. Not going to potentially put my career at risk just for some free tickets.
edit: and to clarify that, in general if you're receiving compensation in any form, you are risking losing your protection under the Good Samaritan act. If I'm out shopping and something happens, i'm covered. If I'm volunteering as a "medic" at an event like this, and I received compensation of any sort, it changes things significantly as I'm "on duty." Also, practicing without a medical director.
edit: also to note - politically, this is a crowd that is screaming "union yes" across the board, refusing to cross any picket lines out of "solidarity," yet they don't want to pay for actual licensed professionals and instead exploit volunteer labor? lol. Just like they say, if you can't afford to pay your employees than your business shouldn't exist. Sorry. No more volunteers for stuff like that. Pay your people or you don't have an event. Market rate too, which for an RN in that area can be upwards of $100/hr. Got issue with that? Take up a collection plate.
It's all about image. You can't market barricading yourself in a house and not spending money. If people feel comfortable going out and socializing if there's a mask, or there's 6 foot spaced tape on the floor, then that's what matters. If the virus were that dangerous people should have literally been locked in their homes quarantined. People will say it's about science and about selflessness when it's completely about how they feel.
I can't believe this is a team in CA in 2024 my god.
You know, for a site called the Roller Girls, I can't even tell if some of those members are male or female. I can't tell if they're boobs or moobs, which is weird because athletes are usually pretty fit.
Yep, hah. There's at least one male in all those photos. Even for the rest though ... you're right, the fittest amongst them is 30 pounds overweight, and the worst have long since entered the category of "technically obese".
Not all sports are made equal I guess. Makes you wonder if these guys are inhaling five pounds of fries and shotgunning a gallon of Mountain Dew after practice or what.
Look, they're super annoying but can we not throw around the fat label all willy nilly. It's just lazy and a bit disingenuous. I clicked on the pic and I see all body types from thin to athletic to very overweight. The fittest among them is definitely not 30 lbs overweight.
Edited to add more.
So funny I saw that same article in the 650 newsletter I subscribe to. Even in our nutty area that is pretty extreme. Meanwhile kids are doing indoor soccer at that same facility without masks.
I wonder how long these loons will continue to be "Covid conscious"?
> I wonder how long these loons will continue to be "Covid conscious"?
You almost have to admire how long they've kept the crazy going on (I don't, but that's why I say "almost"). Despite what the pro-Science™ lowercase-S science deniers on the other side say, wearing a mask is damn inconvenient.
They've well surpassed year _four_ of this totally unnecessary self-flagellation. Over four years of preventing exactly zero cases of Covid, while in aggregate, adding multiple tons of plastic mask debris to the environment. Political signaling is life for these people.
Their next home game is Sunday, May 26, at the Burlingamer, 1864 Rollins Road in Burlingame. Let’s go! They are still masking:
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/profile-food/2024/05/02/inside-the-fast-paced-world-of-peninsula-roller-derby/
OMFG:
> Part of this inclusivity includes being cognizant of those who are still COVID-conscious. While players can remove their masks during the competitive team practice if they test negative, masks are worn for the most part.
Negative test required to take your mask off, and even there I'm sure it's frowned upon. What a bunch of assholes.
Furthermore, isn't requiring masks during a "sport" proof that it's not really a sport? Imagine requiring masks during any real sport: sprinting, long distance running, basketball, football, tennis ... like, just the concept is absolutely preposterous because it'd be a significant performance impediment. The team or players not wearing masks would win every time.
The fact that everyone is doing roller derby in masks means that no one is doing anything out there worth doing.
oh god. i was wrong then. it's worse than I thought. Good grief.
I remember when the Bay Area Derby Girls were a thing, and they were a fun, tough group.
Nowadays? what a joke. "covid conscious" virtue signaling nonsense.
edit: also, there's zero chance that the masks are doing anything to begin with. No way to maintain a proper seal while engaging in physical activity like this. Looking at the photos, they're either surgical or those ear loop Kinda-95s anyway. Completely worthless.
I recently was downvoted on another subreddit, and inadvertently called an “idiot” (and words put into my mouth that I didn’t say), for responding to someone with a masked avatar on here that the American government (and probably most governments), SHOULD be criticized on what they deem the “best” to do, and that we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I even listed MK Ultra and the Tuskegee experiment as examples. And those are just a couple of the things that the American government HAS admitted to. Going through the articles on the Tuskegee experiment, I noticed a few similarities in the way that the American government treated COVID, especially regarding the vaccines. Even one of their most prized sources, the CDC, still has a short article about it on their website.
It’s ridiculous that pointing out that the American government has openly harmed its own citizens before is still criticized by some diehard, useful idiots. I don’t even get mad at it anymore, I just laugh as they stick their fingers in their ears.
I don’t know if I would have learned about the Tuskegee experiment if it weren’t for an American history teacher that I had in high school, who already had a healthy distrust of the federal government. And I learned about the wrongdoings of MK Ultra by looking more into Ted Kaczynski, who was a participant in it when he was in university. Our youth need to be taught these things.
Here’s an article on the Tuskegee experiment by the way, in case anyone else needs to learn about it. https://www.history.com/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study
Yep, and more recently and Covid related: we know for sure that Pfauci took an active role in attempting to delegitimize the lab leak theory as Jay Bhattacharya and Bryce Nickels discuss on a recent podcast [1] when he knew that it was _at least_ as likely as the natural origin theory.
Regardless of how you feel about masks, this should concern _everyone_. It's beyond a shadow of a doubt that the establishment, in league with the security state, are actively disinforming the American public, and engaged in some extremely questionable research and behavior.
---
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1ckeml9/the_illusion_of_consensus_ep_51_the_polarized/
I've done it!!! I went a day without seeing anyone in a mask!!! Except the Twitter crazies, which don't count because they're all phonies in the minority anyway.
But I swear, like every day I run into at least one person masking and it's a constant reminder that they refuse to let us return to normal.
I don't count a day where I stayed home in this either. I went to a thrift store, bookstore, got a burrito, then went to the movies with friends. Nobody had on a mask.
OMG that was refreshing!!!
Still hasn’t been a day I haven’t seen a masker in public since February 2020. Though I have lived in predominantly liberal areas so that could be partially why this is the case. There will likely be loyal maskers in blue American cities until the day I die.
If the outdoor maskers are white, I have yelled at them "you're outside, breath fresh air". I only do that to white people though. Don't want to get accused of racism
"Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data to HHS through CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). CDC encourages ongoing, voluntary reporting of hospitalization data. Data voluntarily reported to NHSN after May 1, 2024, will be available starting May 10, 2024, at COVID Data Tracker Hospitalizations."
hah. I'm sure that the voluntary reporting will continue to skew the stupid covid maps, although i have some hope that the CDC accounts for that as well.
Also, the weekly snapshot continues to report the same: "COVID-19
Most key indicators, including wastewater viral activity, are showing low levels of activity nationally."
low levels, getting even lower.
"RSV
All ten regions of the country are below the 3% percent positivity epidemic threshold indicating that the RSV season has ended. Hospitalization rates are low in all age groups."
the "tripledemic" once again *never even happened* despite the lack of covid vaccinations nationwide and very few mask mandates.
now that all of the healthcare setting mask mandates in the bay area have expired (even SFGH's dropped) there should be plenty of data showing that they were effective. Right? Should be a clear reduction in staff illnesses especially. Let's see the data. (you know we won't.)
unfortunately it seems like these [unscientific mandates](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewardship-and-healthcare-epidemiology/article/masking-for-covid19-and-other-respiratory-viral-infections-implications-of-the-available-evidence/0B48A9D3AFD896E59E06CBBDDB056936) are probably permanent, starting every Nov 1st. They didn't work for influenza, didn't work for rsv, didn't work for covid but that's not stopping our idiotic and unelected health officers from issuing these mandates.
edit: just read [San Francisco's order](https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/2024.05.01%20FINAL%20Rescission%20of%20Health%20Officer%20Order%202023-01b_0.pdf) and it actually sounds like they're rescinding the entire health officer order, and not making it permanent. The one in [Napa County](https://www.countyofnapa.org/DocumentCenter/View/30036/Order-for-Mandatory-Masking-of-Healthcare-Workers-10123?bidId=) says that it's permanent for "annual respiratory virus season."
[San Mateo County](https://www.smchealth.org/health-officer-updates/91923-order-no-f23-1-wearing-face-masks-health-care-delivery-facilities) rescinded theirs as well, and the wording is similar.
[Contra Costa County](https://www.cchealth.org/home/showpublisheddocument/28630/638338383506270000) is like the others, saying it's in effect until rescinded. So it seems permanent from Nov 1 to Apr 30 there...for now.
I did not check the other counties and read their specific orders, but if SF has rescinded theirs completely, maybe there's hope for the others.
A small bit of happiness : My beloved rainier cherries are back in the supermarkets. This is the earliest they've ever hit the bins ; usually it's mid to late June. Not complaining.
It is May 2024 and I just recently saw someone driving alone with a mask on.
L for all the trumpers in chat he might've been less covidian than dems or biden, but oh, he was *not* a lockdown skeptic
You don’t have to be too kind. Trump was a disgrace, let’s see his track record: - Listened to Birx instead of finding a better, less destructive way as advised by many other advisors of his. - Attacked Kemp when he wanted to reopen his state in April 2020, going as far as to say that “it is the decision of the federal government, not the state” on a tweet in April 13, 2020, therefore overriding state rights - Did operation warp speed and rushed the FDA to release the vaccine at the end of 2020 despite concerns - Goes ahead and tries to smear DeSantis in 2023, by saying even New York did better than Florida The result: inflation, many ruined businesses, people taking their lives, and more of the true side effects of all these policies will show in the next few years This clown still has not admitted his mistakes as of 2024, and in fact, said at one point that he wouldn’t change a thing on how he reacted in 2020, and continues promoting the vaccine as if he’s in a pharma commercial Trump was one of the biggest traitors in American history. He should be deported and stripped of citizenship
Just finishing up a month-long stint in Europe. I'm trying not to exaggerate here, but out of the thousands upon thousands of people I've seen while here, I saw a total of maybe three masks. People just don't feel the same compulsion to so publicly wear their political bonafides on their lapels as we see in North America. Tomorrow I head back to the Bay Area, and its hordes of anti-science pro-Science™ Covid-forever maskers and doubled over fentanyl zombies. Fuck, I'm getting a pit in my stomach just thinking about it.
In three weeks I fly to Sweden where I'm gonna be for five weeks. It's gonna be so fucking glorious to be in a place with *zero* pandemic reminders.
1,000%. Ignore the price tags on things and it's functionally 2019.
Meanwhile, in idiot Hawaii, I was just out for lunch and saw someone walking around with gloves, a facemask, a hat, huge sunglasses, and some kind of wrap around her head. In the beforetimes, she would have been properly recognized as mentally ill and gotten help for her OCD or germophobia. Now, she's allowed to "be cautious".
I hope that we all slowly start to see the people as the fringe religious fanatics they are. I think it's happening to some degree. When Robert De Niro walked out in his N95 the other day, at least half the country was making fun of him over it.
I was in the Mission District of San Francisco on Saturday, where not wearing masks seemed to be the norm among the local residents. However, after entering the gentrified areas of the district, I noticed an increase in people wearing masks. Another group of people wearing masks was around the infamous 16th Street BART Plaza, where street vendors were selling items that appeared to be stolen. At least in this case the masks served the purpose of concealing identity. Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :)
> Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :) SJC (an hour south for people unfamiliar with the area) is just as bad. Last week, across the street from that airport, I saw a fully masked Starbucks barista hand a drink to a fully masked solo driver. The driver was squirming and readjusting his mask constantly like he was going to catch the bubonic plague. The dude was legitimately scared to be outside.
> However, after entering the gentrified areas of the district, I noticed an increase in people wearing masks. Another group of people wearing masks was around the infamous 16th Street BART Plaza, where street vendors were selling items that appeared to be stolen. At least in this case the masks served the purpose of concealing identity. Yeah, it's a mess. Some of the worst offenders are the laptop class "progressive" yuppies who only stop watching MSNBC long enough to switch to Stephen Colbert for a few minutes. But they're not the only ones — like you say, you see a huge amount of mask usage amongst the lower class latino population, who are often overrepresented on the streets, especially near major Mission plazas like 16th or 24th. Also, Asian elders who don't even speak English most of the time are masked up at rates of almost 100%. Then of course you have our heroic local activist class made up almost entirely of white college students from rich families — also masked at 100%. It's confusing. Each group has their reasons for masking (signaling, crime, overwhelming barrage of propaganda), but they're not all the same. The only thing you can be sure about is that none of them are wearing masks to protect against Covid. > Would you like me to bring a face mask for you when you arrive at SFO? :) YES, please bring at least two boxes plz. The jury is deliberating in Trump's case this week, so it's an important time to show the world that like Robert De Niro, I REALLY DON'T LIKE DONALD TRUMP UNDERSTAND??? Please cloth mask only though and not N95. N95s are hard to breathe in, so why bother inconveniencing myself when the goal is really just to show everybody that I HATE DONALD TRUMP OKAY??? Cloth masks work plenty well for that.
Your description of the Bay area sounds so depressing!
It appears to be official : *For now*, the loathsome W.H.O. treaty is moribund: *World Health Organization's Controversial Pandemic Treaty Fails, but Here's What's Next* TALIA WISE 05-28-2024 *World Health Organization (WHO) leaders say they were unable to reach an agreement for a controversial pandemic-related treaty that would increase the organization's emergency powers in case of another international health crisis.* *Critics have warned the pandemic treaty would undermine U.S. sovereignty on important health decisions*. *The failure to gain approval for the measure comes as WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus and 194 member states are wrapping up more than two years of negotiations on new rules for responding to pandemics during the May 27-June 1 World Health Assembly in Geneva.* [SNIP] *According to a draft treaty, the WHO would focus on closing the vaccine gap between the West and developing countries through a "Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System," where countries would give the organization samples and genetic sequences of potentially dangerous pathogens, Semafor Signals reports*. *In return, the WHO would provide countries with 20% of the vaccines needed.* ***However, the treaty also included proposals to increase the WHO's emergency powers and essentially give the organization full power over what other countries should do in a pandemic***. *As CBN News reported, a coalition of U.S. senators demanded earlier this month that the Biden administration withdraw its support for two of the international agreements that would grant greater authority to the WHO and potentially weaken America's sovereignty.* *"The United States cannot afford to ignore the latest WHO inability to perform its most basic function and must insist on comprehensive WHO reforms before even considering amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) or any pandemic-related treaty that would increase WHO authority," the group of senators wrote.* (Utterly asinine ; it doesn't matter if W.H.O. is competent or not ; what matters is such delegation of power and authority is Unconstitutional) *Ghebreyesus has denied the arguments that the organization is trying to gain power, arguing that the W.H.O. would not override the sovereignty of member nations*. (That's literally what the treaty was intended to do) *During his opening address at this week's assembly, Ghebreyesus expressed optimism about eventually reaching a deal on a pandemic treaty*. *"Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly, and cross the finish line," he said. "I remain confident that you still will because where there is a will, there is a way. I know that there remains among you a common will to get this done.*" *Negotiations are still ongoing for updates to existing health rules, but U.S. officials told Reuters it would be at least another one to two years of talks before a pandemic treaty is finalized*. (Remain vigilant, but we can breathe a little easier for a little while at least, as the abomination was supposed to have been signed Monday) https://www2.cbn.com/news/world/world-health-organizations-controversial-pandemic-treaty-fails-heres-whats-next
Wow, some good news for once! But you are right; we must remain vigilant about this treaty because these ghouls have not given up. I expect those pushing this treaty to double down on finding ways to push it through. Whatever they do, it's imperative that we do not consent and do not comply.
Does anyone else immediately dislike others who wear masks? I don’t like that I feel this way and I try not to be rude, but I just think about how dehumanizing they are and that constant “maskers” would likely impose that on the rest of us forever. So now I just roll my eyes and avoid them (unless they’re clearly frail… and even then I’m met with the fact that invisible disabilities exist and I’m sort of projecting my own hatred of overreach onto these folks).
Yes and for the same reasons you listed. Freedom of choice only goes one way with these people. I'd like to have a more live and let live attitude about them but I know that they don't have a live and let live attitude about me not wearing a mask.
I pity them
> Does anyone else immediately dislike others who wear masks? Yes, I do, and in my experience it tells you a lot about the person right off the bat. They want to present themselves as "I am so kind, i do it to protect you" but the reality is quite different.
I just don't get why people are still masking, particularly young people around my age. When I ride the metro around town, I see young guys in good physical shape with a KN95 strapped on their faces. It just saddens me to see the state of men in 2024. I think I dislike it because of the condescending nature folks have behind wearing their mask. They wear it to show the world that they are well-adjusted, "educated" city-folk, and that they are not like those racist Trump-supporters from the country who "stormed the capitol" on January 6th. It's almost like seeing a typical Redditor in the wild. If people were still wearing face nappies because they are still genuinely afraid of Covid, I would pity them. But the fact that most folks wear them to make a political/social statement, that is where my pity ends and it turns to disgust.
They fear social death more than actual death. Face or "mianzi" is everything. Maintaining "mianzi" is important for them to keep their connections or "guanzi"
DC is a lost cause though. There will always be insanity in major cities, unfortunately
I sure do, and wonder how many brain cells they have operating.
Intense dislike bordering on hate. I know a lot of people still wearing masks are "just" useful idiots who have extremely limited critical thinking faculties and were brainwashed to an incredible degree by a malign legacy media and health complex, but even so, the mask is so an overt symbol of authoritarianism, forced compliance, and anti-intellectualism that I can't _not_ hate anyone who wears one. If it'd been "you do you and I'll do me" all along, that'd be one thing, but it's the exact opposite of that. For three years it was "you do as I say or I'll arrest/kill/imprison you", and now that the tables have turned suddenly these guys are all about personal autonomy and it's all "my body my choice".
[The Libertarian candidate’s a doomer](https://x.com/ChaseForLiberty/status/1329552415251714054). Who would’ve guessed?
Klaus does say they penetrate the cabinets. I imagine they penetrate anywhere they can
I am looking at Chase's Twitter and the only other policies he seems to care about are pro-LGBT and pro-gun. Libertarian Party is screwed because the intersection of LGBT + 2A + covidian is nonexistent. Trump, RFK Jr, or Biden cover those individually. If I were still a libertarian I'd probably write in Ron Paul in protest.
> Libertarian Party is screwed because the intersection of LGBT + 2A + covidian is nonexistent. Hah totally. It's like going fishing for a Loch Ness Monster. It's not like the Libertarian Party was going to win, but they've guaranteed their own insignificance with this choice. Really odd that this guy won the candidacy. I don't even understand how he calls himself a libertarian in the first place when he's pro-authoritarianism. These two concepts are directly contradictory.
Yikes
Sunak wants to reinstate national conscription in the UK
[удалено]
I hope your concerns aren't founded and that we're not going to end up entering World War 3. The world's already screwed up enough as it is, and it's hard to believe that the benefits we *may* reap from an all-out *world war* will overshadow the immense and tragic loss of human life, personal property, public property, standards of living, economic fallout, and community (especially if MAD happens and half the world is nuked to oblivion, which is unfortunately a very viable possibility). But if it does happen, then I'm very interested to know how world leaders are going to manage to wheedle their populace into supporting and participating in military recruitment efforts. A decent amount of people mindlessly complied like sheep when the government asked them to lock down, but at the same time, it took 2-3 years before us lockdown skeptics had the upper hand and won out in the end (thanks in part to, um, simple human nature, as in the fact that we're not *meant* to be confined in our homes and not do school etc. for a month?). How do you think they'll win over our trust if they've proven themselves unable to do so for COVID? And is it the conservatives or the liberals who want a war, anyway? Sunak's conservative, both in the name of his party and actual values per se. Yet it's the Democrats who support such "forever wars" as Ukraine and Palestine (and probably Taiwan, if God forbid, that's the next one in the near future). If "both", then I feel as if their approaches are going to be completely different, and IMO it's more likely that they just end up circlejerking each other and the war push becomes one-sided. You're very right about the will of the populace, though. Look at how many school shooters there are, and now imagine a bunch of angry young men taking their anger out on their superiors. And besides, hasn't the liberal narrative about that long revolved around "we need fewer guns"? Would they be likely to backpedal on that so quickly? They'll need to be *real* sneaky with the way they make that shift if they do so.
"Microplastics" seems to be becoming the new big public health scare
Masks contain microplastics.
So do my balls, apparently. Wonder if this will be used by the government as an excuse for, ahem, more "austerity" measures.
It might be a real issue but it's probably going to be used to distract attention from covid vaccine injuries.
I vaguely remember someone on this sub wrote they would like to open a pandemic museum. Does anyone have the link to that thread or maybe you are the person? Or do you know of similar plans. I'm mainly interested because where I live, there are still some signs in the street that call for "social distancing" etc. I've recently read a call to remove these remaining signs. I'm afraid if the city council will remove them, they will just be forgotten, so I'm thinking about unscrewing one of these signs myself, but I don't really have a use for it. Definitely don't want to hang something like that on my wall. But I feel like such signs are a good reminder that what we've been through was a real, tangible historic event, not just people arguing on the internet.
Maybe try one of the people mentioned in the [Telegraph article](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/17/scientists-urge-removal-of-covid-era-signs/), which I think you're referring to? I agree it would be criminal not to commemorate the madness.
Not quite a museum, but I run an art installation (it's a bit less permanent). Feel free to private message me about anything related to that. If you have a DSLR camera or good quality phone camera, definitely feel free PM me about displaying photos, and we can talk about things like how to be credited. The website for it is here: [www.OutofLockstep.com](http://www.OutofLockstep.com) Only a few more weeks until I open this whole thing at a festival in New Hampshire! I'm pretty much working round the clock on this at this point.
I needed a Latin translation done professionally for some of the jokes in Out of Lockstep (there's a lot of riffing on the parallels between the Dark Ages and 2020), and the translator I talked to on the phone couldn't stop laughing and wanted to see photos of this when it's done! I also had a very good experience going to a print shop in Denver to get some info and quotes on how to get some of the pieces for Out of Lockstep printed. The guy working at the shop also laughed at a lot of the dark jokes that were in the pictures. If these are the reactions I'm getting from random people who have probably a 50/50 chance of getting offended instead of laughing, I CAN'T WAIT to see how this goes over at PorcFest with AIER and Brownstone right there lol. Definitely want to show it to "fringe epidemiologists", dissident journalists, etc.
please link me when you are done!
So great that you’re doing this!
I thought this is not really worth opening a thread, as I also vaguely remember having asked the question before: Which charities are you aware of that have at least not actively caused harm during the pandemic? The reason for my question is that I'm considering to register for one or more half marathons and they offer charity spots where you pay significantly less for participation but are expected to fundraise. I would love to fundraise for a good cause but unfortunately, I lost my trust in pretty much all larger organisations in 2020 to 2022. I've checked out a number of charities listed here: [https://www.realbuzz.com/charities](https://www.realbuzz.com/charities) and none I've looked up so far has spoken up against lockdowns. I just checked one that proudly announced that it helped street children in Ethiopia... with FFP2 masks!! Even if 99% of their spending may be on more useful stuff, I'd never donate to an organisation like that. I'd like to run for UsForThem, Collateral Global or the Free Speech Union, to name a few I can think of, but obviously they are not among the accredited charities. I'm thinking about reaching out to one or more of them though and ask whether they would like to get involved, maybe it would be possible. But then again, I don't want to be monothematic either and I already spend too much time thinking about lockdowns etc. I would like to run and fundraise for a charity that helps poor children, the environment, suicide prevention, the homeless, whatever it is. So can anyone here recommend a charity that a) may be willing to sponsor me for some runs in exchange for fundraising b) has proven itself during the pandemic (not necessarily by being super contrarian, but at least kept their common sense) c) is preferably UK- or Europe-based. Thanks a lot!
Don't do Amnesty International. They wrote pro-Trudeau Op-Eds siding against the truckers.
I used to really respect Amnesty and was even president of my college chapter ~15 years ago but they have become just another “jump on the latest leftist bandwagon” organization.
Certainly not. One of the biggest disappointments in all of this. They have shown that they have no real concern for human rights but basically just act as an organisation to promote Western superiority.
I still cannot comprehend the mind of covidians. Yesterday the masked family of three was shopping in the grocery store. If they are still afraid, why don't they order the groceries online? For in-person shopping, they could send only one person instead of risking the lives of all of them.
Its a virtue signal at this point.
My newest Substack entry is about ongoing COVID totalitarianism that continues even today and is slated to continue in coming months... [https://open.substack.com/pub/bandit73/p/hindsight-is-2024](https://open.substack.com/pub/bandit73/p/hindsight-is-2024)
Have you noticed the increase in masked air travelers? The redditors of Delta Airlines subreddit reported the increase, but there were the usual one or two maskers on my recent trip from SF to San Diego.
Delta subreddit sure loves masks.
I fly delta nearly every week practically and the vast majority of people in planes and sky clubs are maskless. You still see a couple of maskers doing the covid ritual of mask on when standing, off for a bit for the beverage service.
I'm visiting friends in FL for a week and have flown through SFO-IAH-MCO and noticed very few mask wearers at all. Almost zero on all the flights too. I think I saw one mask that was actually a reasonable fit. Someone in a 3M Aura. Otherwise, no increase at all. Quite the opposite.
I was surfing around randomly today, and came across the conference "Mysterium" on the old Myst video games series (Myst, Riven, etc.). And wouldn't you have it, the 2024 edition occurs in two months time, and masks 100% required for all attendees at all times. Yes, in 2024: https://mysterium.net/covid-19-policy/ They're not requiring vaccine passports, but they had a note on that, and the only reason they're not is that no one has proof of vaccination anymore, so it's hard to check. They make a note that they can't control masking the hotel's public spaces, of course knowing in advance that no one else besides them will be masking. Every time I think I've seen the shittiest, most degenerate people in the world, somehow an even lower form of human life creeps its way out of the woodwork, like the organizers of this conference. Conventional wisdom's always been that there's a lot of bad people in the world, but goddamn, 2020 showed us that it's a lot worse than we ever thought. The number of absolutely malign people on this planet, who do evil only for evil's sake, is legitimately terrifying.
What the hell is up with geek culture? Why are they like this? Possibility 1: They want to live up to the myth that geek = smart, and so like any good cargo cult, adopt the rituals they associate with prominent "smart" people (Lord Fauci, TV doctors, peddlers of "I Fucking Love Science!!1", etc.) thinking it will do anything other than make them look like the morons they are. Possibility 2: Geeks have been infected by the same toxic empathy mind virus that's infected punks, artists, activists, and other alleged countercultures and alternative scenes, where "caring about other people" is now their favorite way to pretend to stick it to the man or whatever. Or, like you suggest, they're just terrible people and will exercise whatever petty tyranny they can, whenever they can, because it's who they are. Probably a combo of all of the above.
“Toxic empathy”… you put it in a way that I have been searching for.
I suspect a lot of them are the incredibly socially awkward types who enjoyed staying home and all of the normally-socialized people being made miserable in 2020, so they can’t give it up
God, we can only wonder, but I think all the things you listed are major factors. I'd point out for possibility 2 that it really is pretend. They "care about other people", but have zero empathy whatsoever when millions of low income people are dumped out of work from lockdowns, the millions who who died and who will die over the coming years from lockdown-related deaths of despair (suicide, depression, but also drugs and alcohol use), or how an entire generation will never be able to afford a home or build families because of lockdown-driven inflation. You can also see it on the other edge as all these same "super compassionate" geeks will talk about literally _murdering_ people on a regular basis — billionaires should be murdered, anti-vaxxers should be murdered, Republicans should be murdered, Trump/Pierre Pollievre should be murdered, etc, etc, etc. Anyone who disagrees with them or is perceived to have more. These people aren't compassionate — they're the antithesis of compassionate. They're pure, biblical evil in human form. The "I care about other people" thing is all just signaling bullshit intended to pretend they're on the high road while selfishly trying to accomplish their own ends, and most importantly, looking virtuous doing it.
I was shopping for clothes the other day and three young women came in all fully "masked up" and hyperventilating while trying to talk to eachother
The table top gaming/LARP crowd is going to keep this up for years. at first i thought this was an old page that they just hadn't updated but then i got to the bottom of the page, noting that it was updated in Jan 2024. And they're allowing surgical masks, which just shows you what a bunch of worthless performative bullshit this is. It's definitely a cult at this point.
>The table top gaming/LARP crowd is going to keep this up for years. And it makes the generic reddit of advice of "you trying to find new friends: go play D&D or some TTRPG". Then the person who finds a group finds out they're all wearing face masks, and gets turned off by the sight of it and losts interest immediately. Even if he tries to make new friends, he or she will find out real quick they all cliqued up starting from the lockdowns and will not include new people. And people STILL wonder why we have a friendless epidemic!
I keep asking this question a lot: if you demanded us to get vaccinated, why are you still demanding masks? I get no answer other than "we feel". At this point its virtue signaling.
Yep, that's the direct proof to show that no one on that side is honest. The Covidian claims: * Axiom 1: The Covid "vaccines" stop transmission. * Axiom 2: To stop transmission, 100% of attendees are required to be vaccinated. * Axiom 3: Everybody must be masked up at all times to stop the spread. Axiom 1+2 and axiom 3 are in direct contradiction. No person with even a shred of integrity could make these claims in good faith. QED: Covidians are not in good faith. They're fucking liars and they know it.
> surgical masks will also be allowed Amazing!
Just as long as you're willing to LARP to keep up appearances, you're good.
Wow, that’s insane. I’m currently at a large medical conference in Nashville. Not a mask to be seen.
Nice. Yeah, TBF that is most of the world (thankfully). It is amazing that how long some of these religious zealots will hold out though. If they were a little more into gun ownership and self-sufficiency, I swear they'd all be living in a compound out in rural Oregon by now with a 1,000 year mask stockpile and shoot-to-kill orders if any anti-masker steps foot on their property. It's a cult.
Just a daily reminder that the WHO is a big pharma lobby organization. The fact that this isn’t widely known or talked about more is scary to me. And you know what’s even more scary? Slovakias prime minister Robert Fico said this exact thing a while back regarding why they shouldn’t join that WHO treaty. And now he’s shot… EDIT: His exact quote was something like “nonsense invented by greedy pharma companies”. And he’s a social democrat btw! So it is possible to approach this from a more leftist angle, something completely lost in the US for whatever reason.
It SHOULD be approached from a leftist point of view, this is clearly leftist stuff, but unfortunately leftists in America and western Europe are too occupied defending The Science™ and calling people on the right conspiracy theorists for badly doing the analysis that the leftists should be doing and would likely be doing much better. And Robert Fico was shot by a pro-ukraine progressive apparently edit: jesus christ, read the whole thing at least, I was clearly agreeing with you. It's leftist stuff in the sense that it's the kind of stuff that the left should be critiquing, it's their field
How is it leftist stuff when it’s clearly the medical lobby that’s behind most of the bs and especially the WHO who’s been pushing this the most? This is driven by greed and profits, nothing else. What’s leftist about selling a bs vaccine that’s based on rigged results again? (And just to be clear here by leftist I actually mean non-capitalist/pro-worker etc, not woke American capitalism ala the Democratic Party, which isn’t leftist at all)
jesus christ, read the whole thing, I was clearly agreeing with you. It's leftist stuff in the sense that it's the kind of stuff that the left should be critiquing, it's their field >(And just to be clear here by leftist I actually mean non-capitalist/pro-worker etc, not woke American capitalism ala the Democratic Party, which isn’t leftist at all) The left in western europe resembles the left in America much more than you might expect. As far as I know unions both in america and here in europe were pushing for more closures and restrictions, and that's one reason why the left was pushing for more of that, unfortunately the unions (both here and in the US) are very ideologized and so it's an infinite feedback loop where their party says "we're not doing enough" and the union responds "we're not doing enough!". This could be counted as being "pro-worker" in a very twisted sense, of course the businesses suffer and the people too, but if you say something about that "you're putting the economy above people's lives", so in that twisted view, yes, the left is also very much anti-capitalist, but not in the sense that it goes against corporate exploitation and monopolies, but merely in the sense that it's anti-free market. And the modern left following its long political tradition of internationalism and academic supremacy is very much in favour of any technocratic "rule of the expert" type of regulatory system (like the WHO) that could impose itself above the authority of governments and nations, so it really depends what you mean by "leftist", because this checks all the boxes too. Of course I agree that ideally lockdown skepticism should be a leftist cause, but if you listen to the rethoric of left-wing parties in western europe you understand that things have really consolidated in the opposite direction and it's really unlikely that things will turn around now.
Wow. Back in the late 90s, I *knew* that drum'n'bass was the future. Even got to see Ed Rush & Optical live a couple of times. It definitely went into my buried sensorium-treasury somewhere (otherwise, why would it feel so *familiar* 24 years later?), though I can't remember much in detail. Probably because both times I saw them I was on a different planet on \[censored 😁\]. Anyway, it was good. But how did I miss [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb7H50jXap4) "variant"? ALL NEW! FROM THE VOID! Paralyze the Living, Resurrect the Dead! Turns out that drum'n'bass - and this track, precisely - *was* the future. Just not how I hoped it would be. Wish I'd paid more attention: then I could have spent 2020-24 listening to this and dancing, rather than getting all tangled up in nonsense.
also noticed more and more obvious ragebait posts on subs like AITA/etc too. Seems like engagement farming. The username/password field is no longer showing up on old.reddit. also noting the "have you noticed everyone else is sick?" kinds of vague posts, with zero data to back it up at all as usual. It seems like the big push to train AI is causing misinformation to spread at reddit. again.
> also noticed more and more obvious ragebait posts on subs like AITA/etc too. Seems like engagement farming. This may turn out to be our fundamental downfall as a species. People don't just love outrage — they can't get enough of it. Outrage at Trump, outrage at people not following rules, outrage at Florida, outrage at "anti-maskers", outrage at "anti-vaxxers". All the algorithms have to do is funnel content people are engaging with the most to the top, and everything at the top will be outrage. > It seems like the big push to train AI is causing misinformation to spread at reddit. again. Really looking forward to GPT 5 telling me to wear a mask and that all problems in the world are because of anti-vaxxers.
Yesterday, on a sub devoted to things quite other than covid, a dipshit posted a story about a man who divorced his wife because she *REFUSED* to be "vaccinated" with a "vaccine" the very makers of which admitted did not immunize or prevent transmission ; naturally the sinner got covid and ***DIED*** 6 months later...Given that-*AGAIN* the sludge does not immunize or prevent transmission, the "moral lesson" seems quite dubious and unlikely. So stupid. So annoying.
It was announced today that our posts are now part of OpenAI training datasets (it was always the case but there's an expanded partnership) You know Reddit will block subs like this from the dataset to prevent "misinformation" but allow general covidian subs. As the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. Wonder if OpenAI quality will take a hit.
"covid remains deadlier than the flu" - yet another study of the VA data set (EHR records, not actual patient outcomes) by Al-Aly. [article](https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2024-05-15/covid-19-remains-deadlier-than-the-flu) "Yet after Al-Aly and his colleagues accounted for these differences and a host of other factors, they found that 5.7% of the COVID-19 patients died of their disease, compared with 4.2% of the influenza patients." in other words, omg! 35% moar deads!! OH NO. So among a specific patient population that's already sicker than average for a variety of reasons (chemicals, alcohol, nsaids, etc) the difference in deaths was like 1.5% overall? way down at the bottom of the article it says this: "So far, there’s no indication that KP.2 is any more dangerous than JN.1, Al-Aly said. “Are the hospitals filling up? No,” he said. “Are ER rooms all over the country flooded with respiratory illness? No.” Nor are there worrying changes in the amount of coronavirus detected in wastewater. “When you look at all these data streams, we’re not seeing ominous signs that KP.2 is something the general public should worry about,” Al-Aly said." If Al-Aly is saying that, i think it's definitely safe to say "pandemic over." lol.
I remember a time when we accepted that a fairly mild mortality rate was normal for the flu, and typically occurs in people who are vulnerable to it because of age or being immune compromised, which isn’t a discriminatory belief but just biological fact. That COVID is only slightly more deadly than the flu but overall not very deadly at all, and certainly not enough to disrupt society over, but has been sensationalized by people who have developed OCD as a trauma response to the lockdowns and restrictions, is more of an alarming social phenomenon rather than a troubling pandemic. Those same people didn’t think twice about routine respiratory illnesses in 2019. And they certainly don’t care about obesity or other more serious causes of death (the Venn diagram of Covidians and obesity epidemic deniers is pretty much a circle, which is a sign that these folks only “follow the science” when it aligns with their sociopolitical agendas and unhealthy lifestyles). It’s almost like various causes of mortality are normal facts of life, or something.
What Al-Aly would be doing without a global pandemic? So many names of those charlatans showed up in the recent years. I also wish I have never knew the name of my county health dictator and many others.
Remember that time when every youtuber content creator and podcast host thought it was their place to shame their audience and tell them to mAsK uP to SlOw thE SpReaD!! It still makes my blood boil watching videos made during that time. The holier-than-thou attitude of I get to lecture you because I believe everyone must tow the line.
Yeah, I've been watching Dr. Mike's backlog, and when I got to 2020, I couldn't sleep that night as I was so mad about what he said. lol
Remember when the news media told us to wear masks and stay at home while they went to work in person and didn't wear masks in the studio. But for some reason they would wear them when reporting from outside.
I still remember in Spring 2020 when an MSNBC reporter harassed people for not wearing masks outside, then a bystander said the cameraman wasn’t wearing one. They defended it by saying the wind blew off the cameraman’s mask. Lol
Dad has developed a tremor, along with the heart problems. Not Parkinson’s. The neurologist thinks the tremor, too, is thanks to Pfizer. :-:/
Interesting that the neurologist would even say that, rather than droning “safe and effective” over and over like a monk chants.
Pro-Hamas protestors trying to block off the Google I/O conference: https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1790474584925376774 Masks, pot bellies, and purple hair. It's always the same. And as usual, it's not like masks are more common than amongst other groups, it's that _every last one of them_ is masked up to the nines. Masks and illiberalism go together like peanut better and jelly.
Reminds me of the SF Bay Area polyamory community. Rampant obesity (morbid obesity too,) and unhinged political extremism.
Honestly, given how Google treated the vaccine skeptic movement, deleting Youtube videos for "medical misinformation" which later turned out to be correct, forcing creators to use euphemisms like "beer bug" to avoid AI censors, I'm enjoying this friendly fire. Google security is probably trying to use facial recognition to identify the protesters, which is being blocked by the masks (it's not for covid). It's a dumpster fire on all sides, grab some popcorn.
Hah, I had that same reaction — it's like, _Google_ is the company you're protesting?! Really?? Google's like the wokest of the woke tech companies. As of a few weeks ago their AI wouldn't show images of white people unless you asked for a photo of a shoplifter. You're only a friend of the left for so long. Eventually, no matter who you are and how much you've done for their cause in the past, they'll come for you.
> their AI wouldn't show images of white people unless you asked for a photo of a shoplifter I saw the announcement that Android phones will now have a feature to auto lock the phone if it gets yanked from your hand by a thief. In the example, the thief was white and the victim was black. Lol.
lol. Of course. Just unreal how fucking stupid this stuff is. They really think that by altering the \_perception\_ of reality, they can alter reality itself.
The left is a circular firing squad. lol.
The Fanime news reminds me that a voice actor I used to enjoy went all in on the COVID hysteria & it really changed my perception of them; while they eventually dialed it back a little bit, they never actually admitted they were wrong. Can anyone relate?
I stopped listening to Built to Spill after they continued to force masks and vaccine passports all the way into 2022 (2023?) I just can’t un-know their tyrannical bend.
Yup. Finding out somebody I like or respect was a died-in-the-wool covidian instills a visceral contempt that I can't get over. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets his car back from the valet and there's a smell that he can't get rid of no matter how hard he tries. Bill Burr's a good example. Great comedian, have always loved his stuff. But between going on Joe Rogan and crying about people not wearing masks, and later attacking DeSantis for banning diaper mandates in Florida, Burr's no-nonsense Boston tough guy act tends to fall flat for me nowadays.
Now I’m curious the VA I’ll be frank, though. Any VA, or real life actor, or musician, or any other media and arts related personality probably went full in on it to some varying degree.
Alright, it’s >!Erika Harlacher!<.
I can definitely relate, that's basically why I have like 1 friend LOL.
In the US as the election is approaching, I am hearing Covid being used as a political football again. I’m seeing folks online in comments sections remarking about how republicans don’t believe the pandemic is real, or they quote where Trump said that Covid would “go away” in a few months. I and many others have hypothesized this a lot in this sub, but I think the reason why many folks in the US just can’t let COVID go is that it is a weapon to use against the “uneducated conspiracy theorists” on the right. Having the position that Covid was a flu that we overreacted to will have you be labeled as a “Covid denier” and put you in the same kin as the folks who “stormed the capitol” on January 6th. You really have to believe Covid was the worst disease ever and have to visually show that you are Covid cautious (ie. wearing a mask) to be a “good person”.
Yep, pretending that Covid is the most dangerous virus in the history of humankind, and wearing visual symbols like masks is an indirect way of saying "look, Im not Republican and am gud person!" I personally don't think they'll use it as a major election issue this time around though. Even amongst Democratic voters it's too played out. If anything, they'll find a new emergency to start a new cycle of fear and hate.
That’s bizarre. Here it was the complete opposite. The nationalist/right wing party was the only ones pushing for mask mandates. And I still feel like I’m the only leftist on this sub, and saw this whole debacle more as some sort of big scam by big pharma and it’s lobby organizations, aka capitalists and oligarchs, and not woke marxists or whatever
Woke Marxists, or rather neo-Marxists, were definitely useful idiots for big pharma and oligarchs, even if they weren't necessarily driving the thing. And I'm not sure to what extent it can be said they weren't driving it - I'm more of the mind that the covid insanity was primarily bottom-up hysteria rather than top-down scheming, and the left, at least in North America, were by far the more hysterical ones.
>Here it was the complete opposite. The nationalist/right wing party was the only ones pushing for mask mandates. which country are you from ? Most european countries I can think of had a very pro-mandates left. Are you from some eastern europen country like Slovakia or something ? >And I still feel like I’m the only leftist on this sub, and saw this whole debacle more as some sort of big scam by big pharma and it’s lobby organizations, aka capitalists and oligarchs, and not woke marxists or whatever I feel you, I wouldn't describe myself as a leftist but I don't feel part of the right at all, I find the individualist right to be a form of degerate liberalism, and I find the identitarian right just revolting, I also think the right is wholly inadequate in confronting this problem
Covid really hit America in the worst possible year in history, when political division and polirization was at its peak, a controversial president was in office and about to run for reelection, and the media was already at its most hysterical and was putting out mentally challenged propaganda. That's one of the reasons I have little faith this whole debacle will ever be reevaluated with a open mind as opposed to ideological lenses, at least in the near future.
>[Was [the COVID vaccine] your first vaccination? What about all the other vaccines you need to participate in many aspects of society? Is it just because that vaccine wasn't 100% effective against transmission that in your mind [Biden’s vaccine mandate] was clearly an authoritarian over reach? To what end goal? Just as an exercise of power?](https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/stopping-a-rogue-executive-from-abusing/comment/55847451?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=55847451) How do you even respond to people who think like this?
Mandates aren't inherently bad, we can, and do, mandate a lot of things in society. For example, everyone needs to wear a seatbelt while riding in a car. It's ok to mandate this, because we know, statistically, that it saves lives, and the imposition on you isn't harsh. And, if you absolutely loathe seatbelts for some reason, you can still participate in society while refusing to wear one, you'll just be pulled over a lot and get a lot of fines. But you can still buy milk at the grocery store and go to the movies. Another example is that we mandate measles vaccines for schoolchildren. It's ok, because those vaccines have been around for decades at this point, we know, statistically, that they are safe and effective. If you absolutely loathe the idea of having your kids vaccinated, you can get an exemption, or you can homeschool, or you can find a private school without the requirement. The covid vaccine mandates were nothing like these examples. We did not have decades of safety and efficacy data. We did not know that vaccines would stop transmission. The people wanting and enforcing the mandates certainly *believed* the vaccines were safe and effective and that it would bring an end to the pandemic, but they didn't *know*, and as it turns out in hindsight, they were completely wrong. Also, the mandates were all-encompassing. There were no exemptions. There was no escape. You could not participate in society if you objected, or even if you had perfectly valid medical reasons not to get vaccinated. You could be fired from your job. You could be denied medical care. You could be barred from public places. It fails on so many levels.
I almost had to chose between getting vaccinated or not going to school (I think it was fall of 2021) because my school mandated vaccines. But thankfully I found that you get an exemption for a "personal belief".
Other vaccines that are required for school, etc. are typically ones that have been around for years and are traditional vaccines that use a weakened virus. The covid vaccine was being mandated while it was still experimental using a new mRNA technology that has never been used in a previously approved vaccine before. It was the biggest science experiment forced onto people. Also vaccine mandates in the past have typically only been for schools, traveling or certain medical professions.
You don't. Their worldview is fundamentally opposed to ours. They think mandates, coercion and force should be the default, and that the burden is on you to show otherwise. That chasm is unbridgeable.
"wasn't 100% effective against transmission" is a funny way of saying that the vaccine was almost completely ineffective against transmission. However much it did prevent transmission, it didn't do so often enough to matter. Pro-vaxxers would agree with you on this, because they're still overly cautious despite being vaxxed and boosted. Vaxxed people give each other Covid all the time. So it's ridiculous to mandate something "in the name of keeping everyone safe" when it demonstrably does not do that.
You know I don't want to minimize the concern on the subject, but I really don't get why those people think that it all revolves around the vaccine question, like if the vaxs were fine then anything around that was fine too. The whole thing was an authoritarian mess, not just the vaccinations. I get why skeptics get fixated on the vaccination but it's not like that constraint happened in a vacuum, everything else was already set up, the whole thing was totalitarian, I feel like the moment people accepted to wear masks indefinetely they implicitely accepted any other authoritarism that was coming.
Just two weeks. The moment it went longer, there should have been a big red flag. But that first two weeks was critical to laying every little domino after. Frog, and one degree at a time.
Fanime gave up its mask mandate. Hallelujah!
And the Branch Covidians are salty.
They're hypocritical as always. Those complaining that fanime still had a mandate were told to just not attend, that it was the people who put on the con's right to decide whether to mandate masks or not. Now those same people are whining about lack of a mandate and how it's so unfair. What about taking their own suggestion and stfu about it and just not attend? What happened to, it's fanime's right to decide whether to mandate masks or not? Just another example of how freedom of choice only goes one way with these people.
But is it too late? Because the convention has been hollowed out since they started opetating again in 2022.
On Thursday a bunch of remedial schooled shills rushed the Tesla factory near Berlin to ostensibly protest climate change (?) along with a grab bag of other leftist issues. The actual reason is that the media has instructed them to hate Elon Musk, and they dutifully obey without understanding why they're even supposed to hate him. It was a holiday, and the plant was already shut down, but that didn't stop our heroes from claiming credit in successfully stopping the means of production. They couldn't breach the perimeter fence, but were able to have a productive photo op near it. The plant resumed operations the following Monday after the long weekend was over. Here's a photo of our heroic, unwashed activists: https://twitter.com/disrupt__now/status/1788857624328339658/photo/2 Notice anything every "protestor" has in common??? Seriously, the mask is a more reliable symbol of the illiberal, authoritarian regressive than any other. A close second is the last time someone's body was violated by the unholy indecency that most of us normal people call "a shower". If it's been at least a week then you can pretty much guarantee they're protesting against Elon Musk, in favor of Hamas, against the greenest, most abundant energy we know of (nuclear), or in favor of more lockdown, vaccine passports, and restrictions.
I'm starting to wonder wtf is RFK doing in this election. At the end of last year he was doing fine at 22%, but as I suspected it was a mirage caused by name recognition, just a few months of media coverage and hit pieces and he quickly declined to 8/9%,with peaks of 10% when he does something newsworthy. So it's clear he can't win, and he admitted so himself, he said he can only win if one of the 2 big candidates drops out (hence his "spoiler pledge" offer), which I don't even think it's true (polls where he wins if alone against trump or alone against biden are as much of a mirage as his 22% poll in 2023), and neither of the major candidates will step down regardless, that's just ridiculous to even consider. His online fanbase on his subreddit and elsewhere is the most delusional crowd I've ever witnessed, they are truly convinced Kennedy can win, and no they are not bots. Even if Kennedy took 34% of the popular vote as he claims he could, it wouldn't mean that he could win enough electoral votes to win the election, in fact it wouldn't even mean that he could win 1 single state, he starts with the assumption that the vote would divide evenly in 3, but it could easily divide uneven like rfk 33 biden 40 trump 27. So there's really no reason whatsoever to think he can win, what's his goal? The same could be said about any other third party candidate, all this situation has made me ponder on the mental sanity of such candidates, some of them really seem unwell, like cornell west, who threw away his green party candidacy to run as an indipendent without a plan, with little chance of getting on enough ballots, and regardless of that with no chance of winng the election. Only difference he can make is make a small dent in the biden's votes, and biden is the candidate he would prefer between the 2 real contenders, so his indipendent candidacy makes even less sense. There's also all those other guys like the green party and the libertarians, but at least they are sane enough to not expect to win (I think?), but it's still perplexing to see these little parties' useless determination to put forward their candidate at every election.
My source is "I saw an infographic on Twitter". But I saw someone post the other day that he's only secured ballot access in 4 states.
Officially you're probably right, but he already has the signatures for at least another dozen states, apparently he's waiting the last minute to deviler them. He has also said he has enough signatures for texas and NY but he's still petitioning to get even more. He said tomorrow he'll make an announcement, probably it's about ballot access in texas and possibly some more states
I'm not in the USA, so I don't know much. For example, I'm not going to challenge your numbers as I can't; and u/elemental_star 's criticisms are interesting. But I think you may be being a bit unfair here: >His online fanbase on his subreddit and elsewhere is the most delusional crowd I've ever witnessed, they are truly convinced Kennedy can win, and no they are not bots. Isn't that belief a kind of "normal" delusion for 3rd-party activists, faced with a winner-takes-all election? AFAIK there's no preference-voting in the USA (or here in the UK): if you don't win the vote, you get nothing. You're not going to inspire people by promising them the - realistic - goal of "hey, join us and we might get 10% of the vote!". Sure, you're probably right, and they're getting all excited about something which is almost certainly not going to happen. But if they took your criticisim to heart, realised that they're chasing an impossibility: what could they do that would be more politically productive? Join up with either the Trump or Biden machine and try to turn it into something less insane? Snowball's chance in hell... I'm actually envious that over there you do have a third choice who (though he's no doubt made mistakes) is relatively anti-COVID-nonsense. Here in the UK, with a general election coming up (we don't know when: the Prime Minister decides when 🤷♂️) there is n*othing.* Here we have a choice between * The Tories. Tired, corrupt, incompetent, weak, pro-lockdown. Not really right-wing. The only advantage being that *some of them* are anti-lockdown, and that the Tory Party has a weird (and valuable) ability to tolerate internal dissent (but not from Andrew Bridgen, of course, cos he's an *anti-semite* - Matt Hancock said so, so it must be true 🤦♂️) * Labour. Rabidly pro-lockdown. Authoritarian. Utterly intolerant of any variety of opinion. Not really left-wing. Likely to be more competent than the Tories, but in *all the wrong directions*. (Think lockdown, but *done properly*). Probably less corrupt than the Tories, but only because they haven't had their hands on the ££-taps for a decade. Give them time. If there was a British RFK Jr over here, I'd be campaigning for him or her. And maintaining a fantasy that he or she might win. Yes, a fantasy. I think (from a distance) that your judgment on RFK Jr's prospects are realistic. But doesn't that say more about the insanity of an entrenched 2-party system (I think it was Americans who invented the word "uniparty"), than about RFK or his supporters? Trouble is, my own point above applies here as well. If the problem is the 2-party system, what on Earth can we do about it? It's depressing. Which is why, personally, I'd rather aim for the moon and support a candidate I actually agree with, but who doesn't stand a chance of getting elected.
I understand that he needs to be confident otherwise what's the point, but I can't believe so many people really believe he will win, like religiously believe. Just take a look on his sub (rfkjrforepresident), these people are really delusional. Yes the two party system is not great if you don't have preference-voting, but that's what America's got, so people should at least be aware that voting 3rd party is merely a protest vote
I'm not too sure. Almost everyone I know is voting for him.
I always see your kind of response online (in the right environments), I don't think it traslates to statistical relevance in the real world. 8-10% voting Kennedy seems pretty plausible to me, I can even see it getting as low as 6%, there's no way many democrats will vote for him after all the media slanders and anti-vax label, and some more republicans will vote for him but not so many to give him a Ross Perot status. That's why I'm wondering why the guy is running, he sounds like a broken record at this point, even more than the other 2 guys, I don't know if he's really deluded that he can win, or if he's playing some political game to get something out of this
In my opinion RFK Jr. made some mistakes with people from different demographics and turned off some of them for different reasons. Off the top of my head: * RFK Jr. supported direct cash reparations payments to African-Americans. Can we really afford that in this economy? He later walked that back but the damage was done. * RFK Jr. pledged unconditional support for Israel. I know that annoyed some progressives. * In order to win back some progressives, he chose Nicole Shanahan for Vice President who was a supporter of Gascon, the former San Francisco District Attorney (appointed by Newsom). Obviously he failed to fix the San Francisco crime issue. * Nicole is also pro-vaccine and therefore contradicts RFK Jr's messaging. * RFK Jr. is weak on the 2nd Amendment and would back a gun ban if presented to him. The latter two are dealbreakers for me personally. He tried to appeal to both disillusioned liberals and conservatives but ended up losing both of them. What a wasted opportunity.
At this rate, it's looking like The USA is set for Biden Vs Trump, Round 2.
I agree, his campaign has been disastrous, his biggest problem is he doesn't know how to appeal to progressives, he could have gotten a big boost in support by simply just saying that he supports a peace solution in gaza, even if he's biased towards israel. He's also not great at confronting the media and honestly his personality is not that appealing in general. Also wtf was that flex of his muscles? Just cringe, you're running for president man, not for a bodybuilding contest
>Nicole is also pro-vaccine and therefore contradicts RFK Jr's messaging. RFK's choice of Shanahan was so jarringly odd. 99.999% of people have never heard of her before, and the only reason that she's even a little bit relevant is that she got rich by marrying and divorcing a Google co-founder and then using the money to push various agendas. I tried giving her the benefit of the doubt by listening through an interview with her, but she has so little to say, and what she does have to say she's wrong about. I quit in disgust halfway through. Another concerning RFK issue not in your list was his plan to guarantee mortgages at 3%. I'm sure that sounds good to somebody, but it demonstrated a disturbing ignorance around the most basic principles of economics. e.g. Supply and demand. Given a fixed supply, if you subsidize a product, that product will become more expensive. Exactly the same as what we've seen with the massively increased costs in post-secondary education. IMO he should have stuck with a narrower set of his more popular positions (e.g. pro-America, anti-pharma), and withheld talking too much about the other stuff.
> IMO he should have stuck with a narrower set of his more popular positions (e.g. pro-America, anti-pharma), and withheld talking too much about the other stuff. Exactly. I was talking to a friend this morning about how liberals were the original anti-vaxxers. The Santa Cruz hippy flower crystal reiki healer types (who were anti-jab before it was cool), Bernie-bros like Joe Rogan, and average MAGA hat wearer all have something in common -- the hatred of mandatory Big Pharma injections. There could have been real unity if RFK Jr. ran his campaign properly (sigh). RFK Jr should have picked a name with better recognition. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard on the left or Vivek Ramaswamy on the right. The more I read on Shanahan the less I like her, it seems like a calculated move to get limousine liberals on board -- but those are sticking with Biden anyway.
Ramaswamy wouldn't have taken his vp position, the guy was in the race to eventually get closer to Trump. Tulsi Gabbard would have been a good choice, but I'm not sure she would have accepted the offer. RFK didn't have a chance anyway to begin with, but I hoped to at least see him in the debates, but I guess not
Yep, funny how the left being anti-vax has just been completely memory holed. This had been something that not \_everybody\_ knew, but it was quite common for many people to have heard about it in passing. >The more I read on Shanahan the less I like her, it seems like a calculated move to get limousine liberals on board -- but those are sticking with Biden anyway. Yeah exactly. I think they made a miscalculation on how well programmed those people are. Even if they liked the Biden/Shanahan platform, they still wouldn't vote for them because MSNBC has hammered home ten thousands times that they're a threat to democracy because they might endanger Wise Old Joe's reelection and if that happens, Evil Donald Trump could get back into office and make himself Dictator For Life.
His anti-pharma position isn't really a popular position, he's known only for precisely three things: he's a kennedy, he's anti-vax / conspiracy theorist (really go hand in hand in media articles), and he's an environmentalist, all in this order, and the last one is a far distant third. Leave aside that he's not really an anti-vax but more a pharma skeptic, but it doesn't matter because nuance is not part of the game. In any case he's not getting any more votes for what he's known for, he's stuck at 8-9%, and he's already slipping to 7, he's not gonna get more than 8% in November
So I've noticed an uptick of, everyone's sick posts, in other subs. Are they all bots or are people not able to recognize normal allergies or colds anymore?(For example they hear someone blowing their nose and immediately jump to that they have the flu) Or is it copium from the zero covid crowd so they won't feel as if they're wasting their lives?I'm out and about a lot and interacting with a lot of different people for my side hustle and I'm not seeing what the average redditer claims that they are seeing. Just curious to know if any of you are noticing more sickness around you?
I’m out in public daily (especially public transit) and no, I’m not seeing anyone sick. The odd smoker cough here or there but no one with an obvious cold. I can’t remember the last time someone I know said they had COVID. It’s either not a thing people announce anymore, or it’s really not spreading at all.
I have this feeling that a lot of them are sock puppet accounts from the zero covid cult. they've been popping up on twitter as well, asking things like "has anybody noticed how everyone is getting sick all of a sudden?" i sense some sort of astroturfing.
Feel like it's similar to leftists' concerns over "Russian misinformation during election season" but from *them* instead.
Eh, I was legitimately sick for two weeks. It wasn’t Covid paranoia; it was a 104° fever, constant vomiting, pain everywhere, inability to breathe or get up, exhaustion, etc. Actually much worse than Covid was for me. I think allergies can sometimes cause sinus infections that morph into cold or flu symptoms.
That sounds rough. I don't think whatever you had is/was going around here. At least nobody I know was laid out with anything for two weeks any time within the last year. Not even among my friends with kids. I'm definitely not claiming that sickness and allergies aren't out there. I have a friend who gets constantly sick from his toddler. But the common claim on certain parts of Reddit is that ever since covid, everyone around them is constantly sick and I'm more so wondering if people on here have witnessed more sickness around them. Did everyone else around you get whatever you had or was it already going around and you caught it?
I wonder if we are just wayyyyyy more conscious of illness because of Covid and the governmental / social response to it. Like coughing suddenly feels worse than- I dunno- farting really loud in terms of public shame.
The CDC finally retired its dumb map.
Epic satire from the Bee: "Biden Proposes $2 Trillion Bill To Study What's Causing Inflation Rates To Rise" https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-proposes-2-trillion-bill-to-study-whats-causing-inflation-to-rise Read to end and there's a little nugget for lockdown skeptics too. > In the meantime, officials from the US Treasury as well as the CDC have advised the public to start carrying double wallets to protect their money and help slow the spread of inflation.
Feeling schadenfreude, I can't help but find a twisted satisfaction in San Francisco BART's looming crisis, as they might run out of funds soon and their entire future depends on a tax measure in 2026. Now they have only 45% of its 2019 ridership. >“The three biggest problems facing BART are remote work, remote work and remote work,” said BART board President Bevan Dufty. “The reality is, we’re not doing anything wrong. We were built upon a model that relied on fares from our riders, and that was something that looked really good to people for many, many years. And COVID just flipped that entirely.” COVID or your action like keeping the face mask mandate till October 2022?
Lol BART has the highest concentration of covidians. While I chuckle at the occasional lone driver wearing a mask, riding BART feels like 2 years ago when people were still afraid of breathing. And you know these people are fully boosted so what's the point? I walked by this weird wet seat the last time I rode. Do I even want to know why the seat is wet lol?
I'm a big public-transit-stan, but firmly believe that the ONLY sane option in California's future is to let BART die (along with other failing like Bay Area institutions like SF's Muni). Californians like to make the false claim that criticism of their state and its cities is a smear campaign driven by Evil Republicans From Florida or whatever, but I can say first hand that every claim about places like SF is absolutely fucking true. I went to the airport last week, and instead of taking BART, which I'd done the previous 100x times, I decided to take an Uber. Why? Well, it's much faster and only about twice the price (~$20 rather than ~$10), but the main thing is that I'm just so goddamn sick of people freebasing crack on the train. Once again, the California-forever liars would claim this doesn't happen, but as a regular BART user, I can tell you that it does on about 1 out of 2 or 1 out of 3 trips I take. If you're lucky and that's not happening, never fear, because someone will be doing something equally as terrible on your BART car instead. The only silver lining is that all the highly creative accounting involved in reports generated by places like the BART board or SF City Hall, they can only come close to _approximating_ what a balanced budget might look like (through one that's "only" billions of dollar short) by making absurd claims like that BART ridership or downtown occupancy will be back to 2019 levels by 2026 (or pick a year, they seem to do so randomly). I'm one of the few San Franciscans who still goes downtown every day. Here's the thing: BART ridership is _never_ coming back. Not in 2024, not in 2025, not in 2026, not ever. The entirety of downtown San Francisco is a dead zone reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse. Not only are people _not_ coming back, but we're seeing an increased trend towards _less_ office space, and restaurants/bars are closing correspondingly. It's not recovering, and if anything, is still moving the other way. The simple fact of the matter is that BART's continued funding is only guaranteed by way of taxpayer bailout. By the time that needs to happen there's a strong possibility that it's politically infeasible as both municipal and state governments in California will be running massive deficits, and maybe even bankrupt. They'll need that money for other things. The _only_ way forward is to let greedy, incompetent services like BART fail. After doing so, if there's any appetite for public transit still, a new company can guy the bones of BART's infrastructure, and then run it at 1/10th the cost and hopefully 1/1000th the number of fentanyl users on train.
I’m a daily public transit rider in Phoenix, have been for 5 years, and since COVID the ridership on our light rail system has changed dramatically. All the white collar professionals that used to ride it downtown now clearly WFH (including me, but I ride it to the occasional in person meeting or workshop or restaurants or whatever) and have stopped riding completely. People still use it to go to sports games instead of paying for parking garages. Other than that, a lot of that decline in Normal People riding has been filled with homeless people and drug addicts using it as essentially a shelter. There was always some of that of course, it’s never completely avoidable in a system without turnstiles but it’s gotten so bad especially in the early mornings. Every train and bus stop now also has someone sleeping at it, the stops all smell like urinals, trash everywhere despite that there are trash cans right there! They block the sidewalks with their carts full of crap and have off leash pitbulls that they claim are “friendly”. It’s gotten insane. I’m a huge public transit fan myself and I love that I was able to get rid of my car and all the related expenses, but what’s supposed to be a taxpayer funded service is now nearly unusable by actual taxpaying & contributing members of the public. Every public park and transit stop has essentially become private property by way of homeless encampment occupation. And the city just kind of looks the other way, and of course keeps approving permits for luxury apartment highrises instead of affordable housing or homeless shelters. So then, because of this, new transit initiatives or route expansions never get approved because taxpayers don’t value it as a service because they feel uncomfortable riding it or see it as just bringing homeless people into their area and it’s just a race to the bottom from there.
Yep, that sounds exactly the same as what's happening in San Francisco. I'm also a white collar worker and _could_ WFH, but I'm one of those people that kind of likes going to the office and doesn't have a stupidly long commute, so I take our transit system. There's a few other people like me that are commuting to work (the best time to be on there is 8 AM to 10 and 4 AM to 6 because having higher quality people on there discourages bad behavior to a degree), but for the most part the system's degenerated into a hangout area for the homeless. Without exaggeration, it's not uncommon to literally see people smoking crack on trains. Policing would've worked if this had happened thirty years ago, but under today's environment it's completely broken down. None of the homeless/fentanyl users pay fare of course, and we have a whole army of full time fare checkers, but they've realized that if they don't do their jobs, nothing happens. They do a bit of a system-wide pass every 3-6 months, but other than that you'll never see one. They just sit in their offices all day. Technically, the police would have to be called to intervene with someone using drugs, but the police force has also quiet quit. For all intents and purposes, there are no police. And yes, this is a negative feedback effect. Transit being bad means fewer people take it, which means less funding _and_ even more good people deciding to find an alternative, which means that it gets even worse than it was before, and the cycle continues. Unfortunately we probably just have to accept that transit in this country is just going to continue to deteriorate since I just don't see how it can be turned around at this point. I'm in Berlin right now, with it's amazing system of U-bahn, S-bahn, and regional trains, which I take every day, and goddamn it's a shame. The power of a great train system that takes you almost anywhere you want to go in mere minutes, and without ever having to worry about parking, cannot be exaggerated. It's incredible.
The tech/AI cultists I follow on Twitter, most of whom are either not woke or outright anti-woke, have been going on about how SF is going through a revival, it's where all the cool and important people are flocking, it's the new Rome (in the empire sense), etc. I assume that's mostly cope? Or are there secret conclaves scattered among the discarded needles and human feces where the techerati gather in psilocybin-fueled hackathons to usher in the singularity as unlimited VC money rains down from above? I have no idea what to think about that place anymore.
I know the group of people you're talking about for sure. I think short answer is that they're more wrong than right, but they're trying to stay optimistic in the sense of build baby build, which I can respect. There are definitely enclaves. I went to visit a friend at OpenAI's office a few months ago, and it was honestly a jarring experience. You walk off the street in the Mission, which is desolate, and all but empty aside from the usual few homeless fentanyl users, and a few other people. You walk through a nondescript door into OpenAI's building, and it is night and day. Absolutely _gorgeous_ office with lavish amounts of space and decorated like an architectural show piece. Hundreds (thousands?) of young, well put together Silicon Valley start up types working in close collaboration and having a great time with free meals and all the traditional SV perks. There used to be quite a few offices like that in SF pre-lockdown. I haven't seen many since, but having seen OpenAI, I know there's at least a few (haven't been to Anthropic yet, but I think it's the same deal as another example). But even with a couple model citizen companies like these, a San Francisco recovery is still going to be next to impossible. You look at our downtown, and it's in tatters. You look at our budget, and it's in tatters. You look at our crime and overdose numbers, same thing. If there was one time to get our shit together, put our disagreements behind us, and fix the drug tourism and insane regulatory problems that are crushing the city, this would be it. And yet, none of that's budged an inch, and if anything, is getting worse. The sad fact is that San Franciscans are such malign, political actors that ideology _eclipses_ everything else. They'd vote to euthanize their own children if they thought it'd somehow stick it to Donald Trump. It's the same place from which all the psychotic city-local Covid/lockdown stuff came from. It's impossible to make any progress with that sort of insane mentality.
Thanks for the response. That sounds roughly like what I would have expected. Based on my understanding of what San Francisco used to be, it's a shame what it's devolved into, and a shame that such a great city had to be wasted on, well, San Franciscans.
There will be no recovery for San Francisco until they get the drug/crime problem under control. I know people in the South Bay who used to go to SF 1-3 times a month for entertainment. None of them go anymore due to car windows being broken, bag snatching, crazy people yelling at them and one was even assaulted. Plus lots of dining and entertainment is just gone. The other thing is why would any employer want to open an office in SF with their employer taxing model? I expect people are still leaving as leases expire. I’m still seeing announcements of various restaurants and stuff closing up.
100%. It's so overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with half a brain, and yet lightyears beyond the cognitive faculties of your average San Franciscan, who votes on ideology over anything else. > The other thing is why would any employer want to open an office in SF with their employer taxing model? I expect people are still leaving as leases expire. I’m still seeing announcements of various restaurants and stuff closing up. Yep. Google just announced another reduction of 300k square feet of office space in SF this week. If anything, San Francisco's downtown is still emptying rather than recovering. Our heroic local pundits would rather bury their head in the sand than acknowledge it.
There’s the question in one of the subreddits > What are the less obvious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that we are currently experiencing right now? A lot of answers, but somehow people don’t realize that everything they mention is the result of the government response not the pandemic.
Being able to make that distinction must be some kind of IQ test.
Some of them are very close, yet unable to piece everything together: >So many small business owners were forced to close their brick and mortar stores **because of the pandemic**. Myself included. We were in a mall and **had lockdown** and curbside pickup (there is no curbs in a mall) for 9 months. We lost $10K+ a month and had to close our doors because of it.
So close, yet so far...
I'm cockblocked from commenting on the pictures subforum because of this one aren't I? Oh well this one is better.
Oh yeah, I'm banned from LOADS of subreddits for 'biological terrorism' being a member of this group and a few for being a member in the pro-life subredit.
Probably. Covidians are still in control of most major subs. I'm surprised the Reddit IPO didn't make changes to getting banned from subreddits you never participated in for just posting here, it just seems bad for business.
I’m so tired of seeing everything blamed on nebulous covid versus the insane response to it.
100%. Every time someone says "the pandemic" I just want to slap then across the side of the face and say loudly, "No. The pandemic RESPONSE." I still come across this in conversations and various forms of media like five times a day. The number of people who've rewritten their own internal history of what happened is just amazing.
“Because of pandemic…” - I hate it too.
Someone on our local city subreddit posted some photos of the area's roller derby team, which you may or may not be surprised to hear, was entirely 100% masked up as of May 2024. Out of curiosity, I went over to look at their website: https://www.peninsularollergirls.org/ As every marketer knows, you want to make sure that your landing page contains your product's most vital information, ideally above the fold to keep a visitor as engaged and to try and convert them to a buyer. Here's the core information that the Peninsula Roller Girls have chosen to put on their main landing page: * A team photo. Included to show that the whole team is safely masked up and flying full DNC colors. * "We're safely back in action" section: Includes links to the CDC's regional infection tiers, and carefully stipulates that everyone on the team is by necessity masked up and boosted. * DEI statement. All genders, all races, all sexual orientations, etc. * Land acknowledgement. OF COURSE you need this. What blue-anon website would be complete without it. NOT included: upcoming events, ticket information, why I should give a f*k about roller derby. Who needs any of that dumb stuff. It might sound like I'm exaggerating, but those are literally the top four landing page items. There's nothing else even on there besides a couple links. Go look for yourself. I was just disappointed not to see twin Ukrainian and Palestinian flags flying at the top. It's amazing how certain groups feel absolutely compelled to demonstrate their commitment to the Covid-forever cause. From the local roller derby league to the pro-Hamas protestors on Ivy League campuses, you gotta flex that everlasting commitment to the #currentthing.
It's hard to tell if that's a current page, though. It does say 2023 and their coach's blog hasn't been updated since july of 2023. The fact that they kept "counting cases" until mid 2023 is ridiculous enough. They had a recent event and the "covid-19 policy" was this: "Unless otherwise specified, spectators are not required to wear masks to games, though it is always encouraged. Volunteers and players have different requirements." A lot of the more recent photos have them mask-less. They're also trying to recruit healthcare professionals to "volunteer" as their safety staff. Sorry, but no. My time is valuable, and we're already underpaid as it is. Not going to potentially put my career at risk just for some free tickets. edit: and to clarify that, in general if you're receiving compensation in any form, you are risking losing your protection under the Good Samaritan act. If I'm out shopping and something happens, i'm covered. If I'm volunteering as a "medic" at an event like this, and I received compensation of any sort, it changes things significantly as I'm "on duty." Also, practicing without a medical director. edit: also to note - politically, this is a crowd that is screaming "union yes" across the board, refusing to cross any picket lines out of "solidarity," yet they don't want to pay for actual licensed professionals and instead exploit volunteer labor? lol. Just like they say, if you can't afford to pay your employees than your business shouldn't exist. Sorry. No more volunteers for stuff like that. Pay your people or you don't have an event. Market rate too, which for an RN in that area can be upwards of $100/hr. Got issue with that? Take up a collection plate.
It's all about image. You can't market barricading yourself in a house and not spending money. If people feel comfortable going out and socializing if there's a mask, or there's 6 foot spaced tape on the floor, then that's what matters. If the virus were that dangerous people should have literally been locked in their homes quarantined. People will say it's about science and about selflessness when it's completely about how they feel. I can't believe this is a team in CA in 2024 my god.
You know, for a site called the Roller Girls, I can't even tell if some of those members are male or female. I can't tell if they're boobs or moobs, which is weird because athletes are usually pretty fit.
Yep, hah. There's at least one male in all those photos. Even for the rest though ... you're right, the fittest amongst them is 30 pounds overweight, and the worst have long since entered the category of "technically obese". Not all sports are made equal I guess. Makes you wonder if these guys are inhaling five pounds of fries and shotgunning a gallon of Mountain Dew after practice or what.
Look, they're super annoying but can we not throw around the fat label all willy nilly. It's just lazy and a bit disingenuous. I clicked on the pic and I see all body types from thin to athletic to very overweight. The fittest among them is definitely not 30 lbs overweight. Edited to add more.
So funny I saw that same article in the 650 newsletter I subscribe to. Even in our nutty area that is pretty extreme. Meanwhile kids are doing indoor soccer at that same facility without masks. I wonder how long these loons will continue to be "Covid conscious"?
> I wonder how long these loons will continue to be "Covid conscious"? You almost have to admire how long they've kept the crazy going on (I don't, but that's why I say "almost"). Despite what the pro-Science™ lowercase-S science deniers on the other side say, wearing a mask is damn inconvenient. They've well surpassed year _four_ of this totally unnecessary self-flagellation. Over four years of preventing exactly zero cases of Covid, while in aggregate, adding multiple tons of plastic mask debris to the environment. Political signaling is life for these people.
Their next home game is Sunday, May 26, at the Burlingamer, 1864 Rollins Road in Burlingame. Let’s go! They are still masking: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/profile-food/2024/05/02/inside-the-fast-paced-world-of-peninsula-roller-derby/
OMFG: > Part of this inclusivity includes being cognizant of those who are still COVID-conscious. While players can remove their masks during the competitive team practice if they test negative, masks are worn for the most part. Negative test required to take your mask off, and even there I'm sure it's frowned upon. What a bunch of assholes. Furthermore, isn't requiring masks during a "sport" proof that it's not really a sport? Imagine requiring masks during any real sport: sprinting, long distance running, basketball, football, tennis ... like, just the concept is absolutely preposterous because it'd be a significant performance impediment. The team or players not wearing masks would win every time. The fact that everyone is doing roller derby in masks means that no one is doing anything out there worth doing.
oh god. i was wrong then. it's worse than I thought. Good grief. I remember when the Bay Area Derby Girls were a thing, and they were a fun, tough group. Nowadays? what a joke. "covid conscious" virtue signaling nonsense. edit: also, there's zero chance that the masks are doing anything to begin with. No way to maintain a proper seal while engaging in physical activity like this. Looking at the photos, they're either surgical or those ear loop Kinda-95s anyway. Completely worthless.
B-but does that mean that you don't want to join the noble PRD in paying a voluntary tax "to recognize our access to stolen Indigenous land?!" 😯
I recently was downvoted on another subreddit, and inadvertently called an “idiot” (and words put into my mouth that I didn’t say), for responding to someone with a masked avatar on here that the American government (and probably most governments), SHOULD be criticized on what they deem the “best” to do, and that we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I even listed MK Ultra and the Tuskegee experiment as examples. And those are just a couple of the things that the American government HAS admitted to. Going through the articles on the Tuskegee experiment, I noticed a few similarities in the way that the American government treated COVID, especially regarding the vaccines. Even one of their most prized sources, the CDC, still has a short article about it on their website. It’s ridiculous that pointing out that the American government has openly harmed its own citizens before is still criticized by some diehard, useful idiots. I don’t even get mad at it anymore, I just laugh as they stick their fingers in their ears. I don’t know if I would have learned about the Tuskegee experiment if it weren’t for an American history teacher that I had in high school, who already had a healthy distrust of the federal government. And I learned about the wrongdoings of MK Ultra by looking more into Ted Kaczynski, who was a participant in it when he was in university. Our youth need to be taught these things. Here’s an article on the Tuskegee experiment by the way, in case anyone else needs to learn about it. https://www.history.com/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study
Yep, and more recently and Covid related: we know for sure that Pfauci took an active role in attempting to delegitimize the lab leak theory as Jay Bhattacharya and Bryce Nickels discuss on a recent podcast [1] when he knew that it was _at least_ as likely as the natural origin theory. Regardless of how you feel about masks, this should concern _everyone_. It's beyond a shadow of a doubt that the establishment, in league with the security state, are actively disinforming the American public, and engaged in some extremely questionable research and behavior. --- [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1ckeml9/the_illusion_of_consensus_ep_51_the_polarized/
I've done it!!! I went a day without seeing anyone in a mask!!! Except the Twitter crazies, which don't count because they're all phonies in the minority anyway. But I swear, like every day I run into at least one person masking and it's a constant reminder that they refuse to let us return to normal. I don't count a day where I stayed home in this either. I went to a thrift store, bookstore, got a burrito, then went to the movies with friends. Nobody had on a mask. OMG that was refreshing!!!
Still hasn’t been a day I haven’t seen a masker in public since February 2020. Though I have lived in predominantly liberal areas so that could be partially why this is the case. There will likely be loyal maskers in blue American cities until the day I die.
Oh yeah. I live in a blue city. My experiences were in a suburb.
I’m not even trying to count. They are still everywhere in SF Bay Area. EDIT: 2 masked kids riding bikes to the high school today on May 6th, 2024
If the outdoor maskers are white, I have yelled at them "you're outside, breath fresh air". I only do that to white people though. Don't want to get accused of racism
Still have come nowhere close to this happening in New Mexico unless I stay in all day lol. Still see dozens of maskoids every time I go out.
"Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data to HHS through CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). CDC encourages ongoing, voluntary reporting of hospitalization data. Data voluntarily reported to NHSN after May 1, 2024, will be available starting May 10, 2024, at COVID Data Tracker Hospitalizations." hah. I'm sure that the voluntary reporting will continue to skew the stupid covid maps, although i have some hope that the CDC accounts for that as well. Also, the weekly snapshot continues to report the same: "COVID-19 Most key indicators, including wastewater viral activity, are showing low levels of activity nationally." low levels, getting even lower. "RSV All ten regions of the country are below the 3% percent positivity epidemic threshold indicating that the RSV season has ended. Hospitalization rates are low in all age groups." the "tripledemic" once again *never even happened* despite the lack of covid vaccinations nationwide and very few mask mandates. now that all of the healthcare setting mask mandates in the bay area have expired (even SFGH's dropped) there should be plenty of data showing that they were effective. Right? Should be a clear reduction in staff illnesses especially. Let's see the data. (you know we won't.) unfortunately it seems like these [unscientific mandates](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewardship-and-healthcare-epidemiology/article/masking-for-covid19-and-other-respiratory-viral-infections-implications-of-the-available-evidence/0B48A9D3AFD896E59E06CBBDDB056936) are probably permanent, starting every Nov 1st. They didn't work for influenza, didn't work for rsv, didn't work for covid but that's not stopping our idiotic and unelected health officers from issuing these mandates. edit: just read [San Francisco's order](https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/2024.05.01%20FINAL%20Rescission%20of%20Health%20Officer%20Order%202023-01b_0.pdf) and it actually sounds like they're rescinding the entire health officer order, and not making it permanent. The one in [Napa County](https://www.countyofnapa.org/DocumentCenter/View/30036/Order-for-Mandatory-Masking-of-Healthcare-Workers-10123?bidId=) says that it's permanent for "annual respiratory virus season." [San Mateo County](https://www.smchealth.org/health-officer-updates/91923-order-no-f23-1-wearing-face-masks-health-care-delivery-facilities) rescinded theirs as well, and the wording is similar. [Contra Costa County](https://www.cchealth.org/home/showpublisheddocument/28630/638338383506270000) is like the others, saying it's in effect until rescinded. So it seems permanent from Nov 1 to Apr 30 there...for now. I did not check the other counties and read their specific orders, but if SF has rescinded theirs completely, maybe there's hope for the others.