Seen at Insty a while back:
Well, my initial reaction was:
“And I hope you fall overboard and get devoured by sharks.”
But I’ve had some time to think about it, and I’ve adopted a gentler, more measured response.
Now I just hope he falls overboard and drowns.
Did I ever mention before just how much I hate the recording industry?
Following on from Peter Hitchens’s take (as referenced here) on mass quarantining of the population comes this clear-headed analysis from Hector Drummond:
Communicable disease epidemics almost always rise and fall in a bell-shaped curve. That’s what you rarely hear from the media. They’re always talking about the exponential growth. What they usually fail to mention is that soon after the period of exponential growth, there’s a plateau, and then an exponential drop-off. With these sorts of diseases the curve usually follows the seasons, at least to some degree. Coronaviruses, as far as I can gather, typically die back by mid-spring.
…
When we look at all the daily graphs from the various countries there’s not much sign that the skyrocket is just around the corner. I don’t trust China’s figures at all, so I’m not going to mention them, but with most other countries we’re seeing either a plateau, a mild recent increase, or a dying back. If you’re an epidemiologist you may want to take issue with my analysis (and please do so if you want), but this doesn’t look like a disease that is threatening disaster upon us all. It looks like a disease that is thinking of putting its feet up for the Easter hols. Perhaps there will be a few weeks increase in some places, some of which may look alarming at the time, but then, most likely, a dying off. Then maybe a new wave in the northern hemisphere in November-December. That’s the time to prepare for. Get some more intensive care beds ready, and some ventilators built for then. Now is not the time for a shutdown and economic self-harm. Now is the time to make hay while the sun shines, and be prepared for when winter comes.
In other words, the horror stories are all in the modelling, not in real life. Sound familiar? This is what the climate change scam was based on. Scary computer models that somehow never got confirmed by real-life data, yet justified government and other institutions in grabbing more power for themselves. This is just another example, only a more effective one than climate change. Here’s a scary-looking computer model, we have to be given wartime powers right now before it happens, if you wait we’ll all be dead. It’s the oldest trick in the book for the ruling class.
And there it is, in a nutshell. As for proof of government’s intentions and its baleful oppression, you need look no further than (of course) California:
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti threatened “non-essential” businesses Tuesday that if they do not obey the city’s “stay at home” order to close during the pandemic crises, he will cut off their water and their electricity.
Here ya go:
Or, as they say in Chinese:
By the way, while I urge you to read the whole of Drummond’s post above, I think you should go to his Home page and read everything he’s written on the topic.
I see that despite his support for MOAR Gun Control, Doddering Joe Biden has decided to surround himself with armed Secret Service agents, exactly like his erstwhile boss did:
Now that’s all very well, but unless there are a few disgruntled Bernie Bros around, I cannot see any danger whatsoever coming in Biden’s direction — certainly not from the Usual Suspects (e.g. the Beer ‘n Treason Crowd, which meets informally in country bars and gun shops all over the U.S.), and certainly not from any other conservatives in this election season.
I know that there’s considerable irony — not to mention hypocrisy — in arming your bodyguards with all the guns you want to ban from private ownership, but having no social conscience to speak of, socialists are largely immune from guilt or indeed irony.
What I think should happen is that Biden should limit his security detail to carrying only the type of guns the old fart once suggested are okay — double-barreled shotguns — just as a token gesture on his part.
Don’t hold your breath.
I often disagree with columnist Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher), but I have to say that his latest column does resonate with me, because he points out what I often say: that Gummint often uses apocalyptic messages to clamp down on our freedoms. And he does it using facts and history (always the most difficult argument to refute). Here’s an example:
The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK.
The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’.
There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’.
And Hitchens’ devastating take:
In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent.
…
About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon.
Fortunately, our government in the US is not as quite as panic-stricken as the BritGov, and while we’re being warned to be careful and take healthy precautions, we’re nowhere close to facing the governmental excesses that the Brits are.
This latest Wuhan-virus pandemic may be as terrible as we’re being told; but I agree with the above conclusions that it probably won’t be — and all our well-meaning precautions may end up costing us more than necessary: a lot more than necessary.
This means that we should continue to be vigilant — not just against disease, but against the loss of our freedoms — and Hitchens’ article serves as a very timely warning why we should always be on our guard against the doomsayers because very often, their motives are not altruistic.
For a much, much longer examination of the thing, go here. While the article is long, it’s definitely not too long to read — and its conclusion is even better than that of Hitchens (with my emphasis in red):
The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society. Data is data. Facts are facts. We should be focused on resolving COVID-19 with continued testing, measuring, and be vigilant about protecting those with underlying conditions and the elderly from exposure. We are blessed in one way, there is an election in November. Never forget what happened and vote.
You may ask yourself. Who is this guy? Who is this author? I’m a nobody. That is also the point. The average American feels utterly powerless right now. I’m an individual American who sees his community and loved ones being decimated without given a choice, without empathy, and while the media cheers on with high ratings.
When this is all over, look for massive confirmation bias and pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.”
The health of the State will be even stronger with more Americans dependent on welfare, another trillion stimulus filled with pork for powerful friends, and a bailout for companies that charged us $200 change fees for nearly a decade. Washington DC will be fine. New York will still have all of the money in the world. Our communities will be left with nothing but a shadow of the longest bull market in the history of our country.
From some Commie mayor in California [redundancy alert] comes this opinion:
[A]fter customers lined up around gun stores in several counties Tuesday — including outside the Bullseye Bishop in San Jose — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo declared that “gun stores are non-essential.”
“We are having panic buying right now for food,” Liccardo said Wednesday. “The one thing we cannot have is panic buying of guns.”
Why not? Actually, if there’s a risk of society breaking down (e.g. L.A.’s Rodney King riots), that’s precisely the time when law-abiding people have an absolute need for guns.
However, as this little Stalinist is in charge of San Jose (home to the largest per-capita population of socialists outside San Francisco or Seattle), I say: fuck ’em. They voted him into office, let them deal with the consequences thereof.
And when the Unwashed Horde comes a-callin’ for some impromptu undocumented property redistribution, most of the good citizens of San Jose won’t be able to defend themselves — although Hizzoner, protected by the mayor’s Praetorian Guard, won’t ever have that problem now, will he?
The same kind of thing is happening in D.C. and Philadelphia as well, but I’ve long since ceased to care about those shitholes.
However, there is one unexpected light in the looming darkness:
When Illinois Gov. J.B. [“Fatboi”] Pritzker (D) issued an executive order Friday to put a statewide shutdown in place, he exempted gun and ammunition stores by labeling them “essential.”
Illinois? Illinois?? ILLINOIS??? Talk about unexpected. Had you asked me earlier, I would have put Fatboi near the top of the list of socialist governors standing in line to use the Wuhan virus excuse to hack away at gun dealers’ businesses.
He’s still a total asshole, but hey… I’ll take ’em where I get ’em.