Links - 28th January 2023 (2 - Climate Change)

How to Create Impoverishment and Energy Insecurity - "Canada, with the world’s third-largest oil reserves and the potential to produce far more than its current approximately 4 million barrels per day, is sacrificing hundreds of billions of dollars per year in revenues and new capital investment, along with tens of thousands of well-paying jobs, on the Net Zero altar with policies that discourage new production and all-but rule out building new oil export pipelines. Even a proposed cross-country pipeline that would have delivered Canadian oil to eastern refineries was deliberately stymied by the Trudeau government, leaving tankers carrying Saudi Arabian and African oil up the fragile Gulf of St. Lawrence, while emitting immensely more greenhouse gases than domestic oil. It doesn’t have to be this way. Speaking in London in July 2006, before departing for a Vladimir Putin-hosted G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Canada “an emerging energy superpower.” Oil and natural gas industry capital investment rose sharply in the following years, doubling from $30 billion to $60 billion per year before the Harper government’s defeat in 2015. By 2019, Trudeau’s anti-oil and natural gas policies had contributed greatly to collapsing capital spending to less than half of 2006 levels – a decline of 75 percent from their Harper-era peak. While a dip in commodity prices early in the Trudeau years played a role, oil and natural gas industries around the world were soon booming once more. But not Canada’s. The situation we find ourselves in today is largely the result of deliberate policy choices. Most Canadians are unmindful of these issues. But if there’s one thing that gets their attention, it’s the price of gasoline (and diesel) at the pump. The current escalation of fuel prices must be sending anti-fossil-fuel ideologues worshipping at the Net Zero altar into celestial orgasm. But not real-world working Canadians... federal and provincial taxes make up about one-third of the price of fuel. As these prices continue to escalate, food and other necessities have also risen to record levels across the country. A recent Angus Reid survey found that 53 percent of Canadians already consider themselves unable to keep up with the rising cost of living. The 11 cents per litre in federal carbon tax don’t seem like much compared with current total pump prices. But that’s just the beginning. The Trudeau government plans to progressively increase the carbon tax to 38 cents per litre by 2030. Adding the 9-cent-per-litre B.C. carbon tax (just one of seven taxes levied on motor fuels in that province) means that drivers in that province will pay carbon taxes of 47 cents per litre. The theory behind carbon taxes is that higher prices will reduce consumption of the thing being taxed and its associated activities – in this case, driving, which emits carbon dioxide, the ostensible target of Net Zero ideology.  But this theory only applies in practice if there’s a viable alternative. For millions of already cost-stressed real-world Canadians to whom their vehicle is a must-have for their small business, getting to work or maintaining their family lives in a busy world, imposing carbon taxes on fuel simply impoverishes them. They still need to drive. As they spend more on fuel, they are forced to spend less on everything else... (It is also generally inflationary as operating businesses, commercial buildings and public facilities becomes more expensive. So this is another source of impoverishment, one that hits people who don’t even own a vehicle.) At this time, when Russian President Putin threatens to cut oil exports, the importance of unleashing Canada’s enormous crude oil (as well as natural gas) resources has never been clearer. While visiting Latvia on March 8, a reporter asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada could help make up the oil supply shortage. His answer illustrated the fanatical depth of his worship at the Net Zero altar: “We will be there to support, as the world moves beyond Russian oil and indeed, beyond fossil fuels, to have more renewables in our mix.” This incredible answer – an ungrammatical melange of ideology, non-sequitur and attempted misdirection from the moment’s acute urgency – comes at a time when innocent Ukrainians and their beautiful country are being ravaged by a megalomaniac who threatens the world with nuclear Armageddon. President Putin should be grateful to Trudeau for helping him control world oil markets by hamstringing Canada’s “energy superpower” potential. Let’s be crystal-clear: the Liberal government’s policies are driving us towards a horrific combination of impoverishment and energy insecurity. All of it entirely avoidable. Never before have I been ashamed of being a Canadian. I pray for new political leadership that will make me, and millions of other dispirited Canadians, proud of our country again."

Hypocrisy: Elites Enjoy Gourmet Meals At Climate Summit - "George Carlin said it years ago: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.”... “officials who land a spot at the conference’s exclusive VIP restaurant will be able to dine out on an array of pricey meat and fish dishes served up during the 12-day climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Those with a taste for the luxurious can snap up an angus beef medallion with sautéed potatoes for a pricey $100 (£90) or a creamy salmon for $40 (£35), after scoffing back a $50 (£43) seafood platter for starter.” Hypocrisy? Off the charts.  These are the same people, mind you, who want us to eat bugs. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declares: “Edible insects contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for humans. Insects have a high food conversion rate, e.g. crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein.”... despite all these alleged benefits and the supposed harm to the planet caused by human beings eating beef and chicken, there were no bugs on the menu at Sharm el-Sheikh. In this, the climate elites were simply being true to their socialist ideals. In the old Soviet Union, as well as in other hardline Communist states such as East Germany and Poland and the rest, the elites didn’t suffer the effects of their own socialist policies. Their people were crowded into filthy, stinking apartment buildings and made to eat swill and garbage while they reclined at oceanfront villas and dined on lobster and Kobe beef. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, the “workers” who sacrificially keep the machinery of government going are exempt from the deprivation and misery that they enforce upon the populace...   One Leftist group, the UK’s obnoxious and stupid Animal Rebellion, which pours out milk cartons onto supermarket floors to save the cows, has already noticed"
Environmentalism: modern sumptuary laws

Jason Hickel on Twitter - "Environmentalism without class struggle is using paper straws while the rich take 9 minute flights in their private jets."

Biden contradicts his own top hurricane expert to push climate agenda - "President Joe Biden used part of his remarks in Florida on Wednesday to blame Hurricane Ian, a recent Category 4 storm, on human-caused climate change despite recent pushback from experts... A recent NOAA study similarly concluded that it was "premature to conclude with high confidence" that human-caused increasing greenhouse gases have had any impact on hurricane activity in the Atlantic.  And on Sunday, Michael Shellenberger, an energy policy expert and founder of the group Environmental Progress, tweeted a series of NOAA analyses showing there is no definitive long-term trend in hurricane frequency, there may be a negative trend in land-falling hurricanes since 1900, and there is no long-term trend on increasing hurricane intensity."

NZ radio star Heather du Plessis-Allan laughs at 16yo climate activist Izzy Cook over Fiji trip - "The mother of a 16-year-old New Zealand climate activist has lashed out at a radio host who mercilessly mocked the teen after she admitted to flying to Fiji for a holiday.  Rose Cook, the mother of Wellington school climate strike organiser Izzy Cook,  penned a furious reaction after hearing her daughter give the phone interview at the family home... Under the heading of 'Heather du Plessis-Allan should be ashamed of how she bullied my daughter',  Ms Cook said the popular radio star who interviewed Izzy did not give 'a sh*t about climate change'. Ms Cook accused Du Plessis-Allan of staging a 'gotcha' moment 'to discredit her (Izzy) personally and derail the conversation about climate action'.  During the interview, Izzy tells Du Plessis-Allan she thinks it would be a good idea if flights were only allowed for 'approved events'.  'Am I allowed to go to Fiji, is that necessary?'  Du Plessis-Allan asks.  'In the current climate crisis I don't think that's necessary,' Izzy replies. 'When was the last time you were on a plane?' Du Plessis-Allan asks, seemingly innocently.   Izzy gives a hesitant reply.   'Hmmm... I'm not sure... a few months ago to be honest,' she says.  "Where'd you go?'  Du Plessis-Allan presses.  'Fiji,' is the resigned reply... 'Are you embarrassed your parents did that to the planet and then forced you to do it as well?' Du Plessis-Allan asks.  'Of course I am not embarrassed,' an adamant Izzy replies."
Holding leftists to account is "bullying". Hypocrisy is only bad when the "right" is doing it

Suresh Syed 🇹🇿🇰🇪🇮🇳🇳🇿 on Twitter - "Precious. The girl was put forward to front an agenda, and now there is outrage because she failed and got mocked. Treating kids as the fount of all knowledge like Greta may not be correct. At 16 I am sure that we didnt know much about anything"
MJ on Twitter - "Nope. Buy the ticket, take the ride. If you want to take society to task you can expect some robust questioning. The author and her daughter are hypocrites."

Meme - Paul Litterick @fundypost: "She wasn't bullied. She was mocked for her hypocrisy."
NICK STONE @NICK_OFF_NOW: "It is a bit of a fine line when you're talking about kids, to be fair..."
Dept of Common Sense: "To be fair... kids shouldn't be used as props in propaganda campaigns."
NICK STONE @NICK_OFF_NOW: "I completely agree. Although I do wonder to what degree a politically aware (but naive) 16 year old can claim to be manipulated by a parent. In this case I agree the mother has done this, but not without some degree of responsibility from the child. We're on the same page."

Great Big Story - Posts | Facebook - "At 16 years old, Greta Thunberg has sparked a global climate movement, making world leaders answer for their actions, and inspiring a new generation to rise up on behalf of the planet. We stand with her, and we'll see you on the streets this Friday for #GlobalClimateStrike."
Comment: Igor Bronz: "I'm an engineer working on green infrastructure designs and build-outs. This child is a mascot for some dangerous and powerful groups who, I assure you, have ulterior motives besides "saving the planet"."

Meme - Igor Bronz: "I generally don't engage in protracted debates in the comments section but I need to clear a few things up, and I'll try to keep it brief.
1) Emissions reductions are nonsense. Because of climate lag, even if every nation on Earth stopped producing carbon tomorrow, you would still experience effects of climate change for the next 50 years.
2) Emissions reductions on a personal level, will have a minuscule effect on carbon due to an increasing world population, previously underdeveloped nations rapidly industrializing, and most of the world not attempting carbon emissions reduction. Greta's time would be better spent in China, India or Africa where carbon emissions are highest and quickly increasing.
3) Carbon sequestration technology utilized by every nation is really the only serious way to prevent this. If you aren't talking about it, you're either clueless about the subject or have ulterior motives, such as weakening a country's economy through insane regulations. Regulating emissions is like turning the faucet down slightly in an attempt to drain the tub.
4) Localized and supply chain related pollution is going to cause a lot more ecological problems than even unregulated carbon emissions ever will, yet it receives relatively little attention because certain powerful people have a vested interest in pushing a climate change agenda over one of dealing with issues like rampant pollution, such as the insane amount of plastic entering and degrading in the oceans.
There's actually a lot more to this. This is just the tip of the iceberg (pardon the pun). Just dont feel like writing an entire thesis in the comments section."

Switzerland, Facing an Unprecedented Power Shortage, Contemplates a Partial Ban on the Use of Electric Vehicles - "The Swiss Confederation usually imports electricity from France and Germany to keep the lights on over the winter, but this year neither country has any power to spare. Many French nuclear power plants are down after years of postponed maintenance, while in Germany we suffer from a superfluity of idle wind turbines and a (self-imposed) shortage of natural gas.  The Federal Council of Switzerland has therefore published draft legislation, which outlines four tiers of escalating measures to conserve electricity and avert potential blackouts. The first prescribes a lot of temperature restrictions for things like refrigerators and washing machines. The second includes more unusual rules, such as the demand that heating in clubs and discotheques “be set to the lowest level or switched off completely,” and that “streaming services … limit resolution of their content to standard definition.” The third foresees cutting business hours, banning the use of Blue Ray players and gaming computers, and also limiting the use of electric cars, which should be driven only when absolutely necessary. A fourth and final tier mandates closure of ski facilities, casinos, cinemas, theatre and the opera.  A lot of these rules look unenforceable, but they said the same thing about contact restrictions during the pandemic. It turns out that the state really can prevent you from socialising with people in your own home if it wants to, especially when there’s no shortage of prying neighbours eager to snitch. Feasibility isn’t the point, though. It’s the optics here that are most astounding. Electric vehicles, which politicians have heavily subsidised as one of their primary policy responses to climate change, are just now crashing against that other great arm of the green agenda, namely renewable energy. You can’t drive everyone into ever greater dependence upon the electrical grid, while also orchestrating an energy transition to wind (which hardly blows in Germany, except in the north) and solar (which generates no meaningful power in the depths of the Central European winter). Gas from Russia was the magic ingredient that kept the whole renewables charade going, and we’re out of that now. There’s no way to cover up the failure; not even the green-friendly German media has any excuse or messaging angle here."

Alberta issues second grid alert in three days as wind power generation collapses, again - "And as much-touted “cheap” wind and solar fell off the grid, pool electricity prices were forecast to max-out at the highest available level, $1,000 per megawatt hour. This same thing occurred on Nov. 29, at supper time. By 4:05 it had already hit $861 per megawatt hour. As coal has largely been eliminated from the system, with only two coal-fired units and one dual-fuel left, natural gas was making up 82 per cent of power production.  Also at supper time on Nov. 29, the AESO issued a “grid alert,” calling for lower consumption.  All of this is occurring before widespread adoption of electric vehicles."

Huge EVs with massive batteries a 'severe injury and death' hazard - "Electric vehicle batteries are heavy and expensive, and automakers can charge more for larger cars. Homendy called out General Motors Co.’s GMC Hummer EV as a particularly egregious example of the trend toward bigger, heavier vehicles, noting it tips the scales at more than 4,082 kilograms.  “The battery pack alone weighs over 2,900 pounds — about the weight of a Honda Civic,” she said. “That has a significant impact on safety for all road users.” The transport safety regulator also mentioned Ford Motor Co.’s F-150 Lightning pickup is as much as 1,360 kg heavier than a non-electric version of the same truck and said Ford’s Mustang Mach-E and Volvo’s XC40 EV weigh about 33 per cent more than gas-powered equivalents...   Homendy commended government efforts to reduce carbon emissions, but cautioned that could have some unintended consequences, such as higher numbers of road fatalities."
Clearly, the liberal solution is to ban them

They are killing off cars and gas so you can't get to them - ">forced to buy an electric vehicle
>find out your mother is in the hospital
>wait 5 hours to charge car just so it can go 100 miles
>wait 10 hours just for it to go 200 miles
>finish charging
>has to update, it will take 40 mins depending on connection
>update failed, restarting update and car wont even start
>finally done, unplug EV and get ready to drive
>voice comes on "there is a special covid alert today, you can only drive to your local store and back"
>if you drive longer or over so many miles then your EV will shut off and a tow truck will be called at your own expense
>press the agree button or the EV wont start
>start to pull out of driveway
>EV stops before you even hit the street
>EV voice asks if you would like to turn on auto pilot to the store
>you push yes
>voice asks you sit sit and watch these new ads until the autopilot is finished loading and updating the route
>finally are able to drive a bit but autopilot wants you to still hold the wheel
>get to the store and get a phone call, mother is dying from the vax... i mean climate change
>try to drive to hospital but car notices you are not following the assigned route home
>EV shuts down
>tow truck called
>you are on the EV's phone watching your mother die
>your mother is about to tell you her dying last words when an ad interrupts the call
>it's a 'get a booster' ad by pfizer"

The latest travesty in ‘consensus enforcement’ - "The latest travesty in consensus ‘enforcement’, published by Nature.  There is a new paper published in Nature, entitled Discrepancies in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians... This ranks as the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal...   From the press release: “Most of the contrarians are not scientists, and the ones who are have very thin credentials. They are not in the same league with top scientists. They aren’t even in the league of the average career climate scientist.” “giving them legitimacy they haven’t earned.”... Note that this list of climate science ‘contrarians’ is heavily populated by experts in climate dynamics, i.e. how the climate system actually works.  The most comical categorization on this list is arguably Scott Denning, who strongly supports the IPCC Consensus, and gave a talk to this effect at an early Heartland Conference.  Ironically, Scott Denning tweeted this article, apparently before he realized he was on the list of contrarians.  The list also includes others (academic or not) with expertise on at at least one aspect of climate science (broadly defined), from whom I have learned something from either their publications or blog posts or other public presentations...   Apart from the rank stupidity of this article and the irresponsibility of Nature in publishing this, this paper does substantial harm to climate science.  Climate science is a very broad and diffuse science, encompassing many subfields.  Each of these subfields is associated with substantial uncertainties, and when you integrate all these fields and attempt to project into the future, there are massive uncertainties and unknowns. There are a spectrum of perspectives, especially at the knowledge frontiers.  Trying to silence or delegitimize any of these voices is very bad for science.   Scientists who are effective in the public communication of climate change can speak about topics beyond their own personal expertise.  This requires a different set of skills from basic research: ability to synthesize and assess a broad body of research and communicate effectively.  Scientists on the ‘contrarian’ list bring something further to the table: fact checking alarming statements; concerns about research integrity; thinking outside the box and pushing the knowledge frontier of climate science beyond AGW – issues that are important to the MSM and public communication of climate science.  The harm that this paper does to climate science is an attempt to de-legitimize climate scientists (both academic and non academic), with the ancillary effects of making it more difficult to get their papers published in journals... and the censorship of Nir Shaviv by Forbes"

Here's the Latest Climate Change Projection That Was Totally Wrong - "The latest doomsday scenario to be proven incorrect is related to this past summer’s temperature, which was 1.5 degrees warmer than the 50-year average. Yet, it was way off the 5.4-degree projection cast by Professor James Hansen, one of the godfathers of the global warming hysteria. Hansen is known for his series of congressional testimonies in the 1980s that created public awareness. Steve Milloy used The Washington Post’s tool regarding temperature changes this past summer to expose the shoddy projection. It's a pattern that cannot be ignored. The climate change prognosticators said in 2007 that the Artic Ice Cap would melt by 2013. In 2013, the ice cap was intact and had grown by 538,000 square miles. That same year, it was the calmest hurricane season in almost 20 years. It was also the quietest tornado season that year in nearly 60 years. To flashforward to the present, the 2022 hurricane season is now the most undisturbed in almost three decades."

Facebook - "There's a counterargument that pointing out Greta Thunberg's mental conditions / disorders is akin to poisoning the well / ad hominem instead of considering the merits of her arguments... The argument against Greta Thunberg flows from 3 points:
1) By her own admission Greta has Asperger's Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Selective Mutism. These are *undisputed* diagnoses by all sides, and her advocates have in fact championed and confirmed their existence.
2) All 3 conditions present issues that may inhibit rational evaluation of matters to the standard of a reasonable person, and which, critically, extend into cognitive (i.e. thinking) ability (rather than just motor abilities).
Aspergers's Syndrome - potential for narrow, inflexible interests that reject proper consideration of alternative explanations / reasoning / solutions.
OCD - rooted in unreasonable levels of anxiety that prevent rational evaluation of whether a symbolic action is actually effective in solving an issue
Selective mutism - strongly associated with unreasonable levels of anxiety that is disportionate to actual threat
3) Therefore it is very unlikely that her views on climate change have not been affected by her mental conditions, and it follows that she would not have made a fair and rational consideration of the matter, or at least has refused any rational counterpoints, before presenting it to the world."

Self-Harm Versus the Greater Good: Greta Thunberg and Child Activism - "“Is Greta the new Che Guevara?” asked the German TV-anchor Maybrit Ilner recently during a TV debate about the striking school children.  In defense of the excellent Ms. Ilner, she probably meant to refer to Che Guevara as a global political symbol. But the question is telling: Greta is turning into a revolutionary icon.  Given what we know about Greta’s problems and challenges, is this an appropriate adult response to Greta’s school strike?... adults have a moral obligation to remain adults in relation to children and not be carried away by emotions, icons, selfies, images of mass protests, or messianic or revolutionary dreams."

Greta Thunberg Is Nothing But A Pawn For The Left - "Thunberg, the 18-year-old climate activist who’d become a darling of the far-Left for her radical positions on climate change, was now facing an angry backlash, with thousands of users tweeting the “GretaThunbergExposed” hashtag.  Perhaps more surprising than what was being said about Thunberg was who was saying it. It wasn’t right-wing voices perpetuating the digital barrage, but left-leaning publications and activists.  After researching the origins of the hashtag, I quickly learned that Thunberg was being taken to task by citizens of India for a rather amusing blunder. She had accidentally tweeted out a “tool kit,” that was intended for her eyes only. The contents included a step-by-step guide instructing her to draw attention to farmer protests in India through various social media measures. This “tool kit,” which was not intended for public view and was quickly scrubbed from her feed, revealed specific dates that Greta was instructed to tweet and post to Instagram in an effort to inspire outrage in a country in which she does not live, regarding a cause she presumably knows little about.  Soon, #IndiaAgainstPropaganda began trending, backed by prominent Indians who were sickened by what they perceived to be a globalist effort to destabilize their country."

Activism for hire? By ditching climate change for Sikh separatism, Greta Thunberg shows her naivety and erodes her credibility - "Straying wildly off-piste, teen activist Greta Thunberg has caused fury in India with her backing of a farmers’ protest with links to an independence campaign for Punjab. It’s clear she’s in serious need of some proper guidance.  It was inevitable that as soon as Greta Thunberg grew up, her role as the global teenage icon of climate change would lose some of its allure. The international circuit for her spiel is only so big, and once she’d done a few laps the interest starts to wane with no one left to berate.  For many who have spent time in the glare of international adulation, when that spotlight starts shifting away it’s then time to ask ‘what’s next?’."

Why Sky News’ climate show flopped - "The Daily Climate Show, Sky News’ much-hyped ‘first daily prime-time news show dedicated to climate change’, is to be axed from its prime-time slot and will be cut down from 30 minutes to just 10. Despite the insistence from the Great and Good that climate change is the single most pressing issue of our time, the show prompted tens of thousands of viewers to switch off at the sight of the opening titles. The demise of The Daily Climate Show should surprise no one. The public do not think climate is the most important issue. An exclusive poll commissioned by Sky News revealed as much last month. As The Daily Climate Show reported through gritted teeth, around a quarter of Brits are unwilling to change ‘a single key climate habit’. Two-thirds (quite correctly) don’t think that climate change affects them. ‘Not everyone is yet on board with the UK’s journey to Net Zero’, bemoaned correspondent Lisa Holland.   This is a big problem for a TV show whose clear aim has been not just to report on climate change, but also to propagandise in favour of climate action – which is usually a demand for ordinary people to change their supposedly polluting behaviour... This is activism, not news. And it shows in the output. The need to find daily news stories about the so-called climate crisis has led to some truly bizarre editorial judgements. The first episode featured a segment on the General Election in Greenland and the victorious party’s pledge for a moratorium on the mining of rare-earth minerals. In other episodes, we learned of the fate of gas projects in Mozambique. However serious these issues might be for the countries affected, they are not exactly subjects worthy of prime-time treatment by a UK broadcaster. No wonder people switched off in droves.   When there was not enough climate news to cover (ie, on most days), The Daily Climate Show simply framed a news issue around the climate. So the German elections became ‘the climate elections’, and NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the impending takeover by the Taliban became a prompt to ask: ‘Is Afghanistan vulnerable to climate change?’  On other occasions, as you might expect, the show strayed into outright alarmism and scaremongering to capture the viewers’ attention. To highlight the issue of rising sea levels, The Daily Climate Show produced a graphic showing Buckingham Palace underwater. No matter that many countries and cities are already below sea level and are doing just fine (Amsterdam is 6ft below sea level). Such doom-mongering is now so commonplace and so transparently nonsensical that most people have become inured to it.   Initiatives like The Daily Climate Show are what happen when broadcasters and media institutions lose sight of their core mission – to inform or entertain the viewing public. Instead, broadcasters now see it as their role to agitate for climate action, seemingly at the expense of all other considerations – from journalistic integrity to that plain old-fashioned sense of what’s newsworthy... The demise of The Daily Climate Show is yet more evidence that climate change remains an elite concern. While green ideology has the support of many loud and shrill activists, and of major institutions across the public and private sectors, what it cannot count on is the support of the public"

Facebook - "It seems truth often matters little when pushing climate crisis Claims in media around world, e.g. CNN, claims that a new article shows that the ‘climate crisis’ makes more heat deaths But that's because the article shows that we're seeing both more heat and more cold deaths. This, it turns out, is because the population is growing and especially because we're becoming older.  If you correct for population growth and aging (really by age standardizing, but the simple way is thinking of keeping the population constant at 1990-levels) — both heat deaths and especially cold deaths have been declining. We have to stop the constant everything-bad-is-because-of-climate-change."

Thread by @philippilk on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "FT report today that gas demand has fallen. But in reality this is just the beginning of Europe’s coming deindustrialisation... The paper notes that most of the decline in use is due to industry paring back. With prices so high, gas usage is disincentivised. This is reflected in the PMI which started to go negative (>50) in the summer months, at the same time as the FT chart shows gas usage falling below normal levels. With high gas prices, producing goods in Europe stopped making economic sense. And the paper notes what many of us have been saying for some time: this isn’t a single year crisis. If something doesn’t change, this will be ongoing for years and European industry will cease to exist. The continent will be impoverished. Recently Russia has confirmed it will not sell oil to countries engaged in the price cap. Russian oil makes up 20-30% of European supply. Unless something changes layer oil shortages on top of deindustrialisation. This will mean major supply chain breakdowns and shortages. British business groups are already warning of a ‘lost decade’. Unless something changes on the energy front what that really means is a sharp fall in living standards and possibly a depression. For those who think that Europe can rearm with its industry shut down, inflation and shortages, runaway inflation and falling living standards: please take an intro level economics course and figure out how armies etc are paid for."
Destroying their economy is the best way to fight climate change

CBS pushes study blaming climate change for rising childhood obesity rates - "Several Twitter users, however, attacked the segment for emphasizing "climate change" as a factor in childhood obesity without also recognizing coronavirus lockdowns... "[T]his seemed too insane even for left-wing climate scientists so I read the study summary. the authors don't blame climate change for children getting fatter, but that fat children may have a harder time dealing with climate change because fat people don't do as well in the heat""

Ed Miliband says UK has 'historical responsibility' to countries hit by extreme weather events - "Ed Miliband sparked outrage yesterday by calling on the UK to acknowledge its ‘historical responsibility’ and send cash to countries hit by climate change.  The former Labour leader said it was ‘morally right’ to help places such as the Maldives and Pakistan cope with flood damage and rising sea levels. His comments were condemned last night by Tory MPs. ‘Labour have let the cat out of the bag here as to their plans to give untold billions to countries on the premise that there is climate damage being done,’ said Craig Mackinlay, founder of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. ‘How on earth we could be held responsible for our past, which actually gave more technological advances to the world than any other country, I find somewhat laughable.’... Developing countries and China asked for a financial package at last year’s Cop26 event in Glasgow but were rebuffed. Any repeat would be resisted by the Government which has said it will stop giving China aid, having handed over £64million in 2020.  Britain gave £200million in official development assistance to Pakistan in 2020 and provided £26million in humanitarian support following deadly floods this year.  Some MPs have questioned why the UK gives so much money to a country that has a space programme and nuclear weapons... Former Downing Street chief of staff Nick Timothy said: ‘You can always trust Labour to put the interests of others before our own.  ‘We’re facing a painful fiscal squeeze and these guys want to talk about giving away billions to other countries as compensation for our early industrial development.’"
A naked admission that it's not about stopping climate change (even assuming a link to climate change), but public self-flagellation and virtue signalling

History According to Bob - Prostitution / Private Life

Demi Monde Paris Prostitutes:

"Now then there's a whole series of other classifications of these independent women. There's the femmes galantes. Now those are kept women. These are women who would be like mistresses of someone. They're not technically considered prostitutes. And the police do not have any control or jurisdiction over them. So if you just have, married guy, and he has a mistress on the side, she's not considered a prostitute. She's considered a kept woman. So they actually have a classification here.

Then you have a grisette. Now, a grisette is a woman that's between a prostitute and a kept woman, and only the French would have this okay. In 1835, the definition of a grisette is a flirtatious young female worker of loose morals. And what these people usually are is a working girl, they worked in dress shops and hat shops and other things and they would supplement their income by taking on a paying lover while they're looking for the right husband. Or to move up okay in society, and they're, the little extra money they made on the side, they bought clothes with and went for entertainments, but that's it, that's a grisette. And some of them then continue on up the ladder.

Then you have the lorettes. The lorettes is a little higher up than a grisette. They lived, this name comes from the fact that most of them were found in an area where new homes were being built in Paris, around the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette. Now, these were frequently women who had been divorced from high, from husbands that were of a higher class. On other words, these ladies had married someone of a higher station. Then had gotten divorced and had slipped from that higher social classification down to a lower one. Also a lot of lorettes want to be actresses.

Then we have the femmes à parties. These are women who gave dinners and parties and then hired themselves out as the main attraction. Then we have cocodettes. Now cocodettes are women who were arranged for in advance. These are like adornments. In other words, you have a wealthy personal politician or somebody and they want somebody who's beautiful looking to go to the, to the opera, or to go to this event and you'll even find married women who will be cocodettes. That allows them to keep their highe society status. While they pretend to be playing in that half world, that demi monde world, so they can get get a little thrill out of life. We're continuing to move up.

The next, the next level are the demi-mondaines. Now this is the highest rank of prostitutes or courtesans if you want to. We're getting, we're getting elite here because they're just not taking on all customers here. But there are categories within this upper echelon. One of them is la haute galanterie, the high gallery. Now these are the top kept women. They're also called la haute bicherie. You know, the high bitches if you will.

Then there is the greatest of the great, which is La Garde. And these are the top 12 or so courtesans. These include people like Cora Pearl, La Paiva, Marie Colombier, Hortense Schneider, Blanche d’Antigny, Leonide Leblanc, Anna Deslion and Marguerite Bellanger, who was one of the many lady friends of Napoleon III. And these people, also these ladies also have a, another name, they're also called lionesses, the Queens of Beasts. So even though these people are at the highest level, they still have that little beast designation through there. So when when you're reading about people of the demi monde, of this era, these courtesans… They look like they're just really promiscuous, wealthy people, but some of them have worked their way up from the very lower levels… If you really want to get, I mean, I got a lot of information from a book called the Grandes Horizontales by Rounding"

Courtesans of Venice:

"This quite officially appears in, as an institution, the courtesans as an institution in Renaissance Italy. And just as art and learning spread to the rest of Europe, so did the courtesans spread to the rest of Europe, although it's going to take a while for them to really be wildly popular, from the standpoint that they're not going to get tremendous amount of criticism, obviously, kings and whatever, going to have these mistresses. And I'm going to name some of them famous ones later on. But it's not as not as accepted as when you get into the 1800s and the 1840s, and you have that demi mode [Ed: demi monde] situation that exists in Europe.

And of course, the role of the courtesan is, first of all, obviously, skilled sexual gratification. Actual in many cases, these people, there are a few examples where, the where the women actually helped to teach the wives some little extra things to make them a little more interesting in bed, so perhaps their husbands would enjoy them a little bit more. That's always part of it. But there were, frequently they took the role of a wife at famous social or various social functions. They were supposed to be witty, and they were supposed to be entertaining. And they provided lots of intellectual discussion. So you have to have education.

I think if any of you have seen the movie Dangerous Beauty, that is a very good portrayal of the, the courtesan life... they're frequently very well bred, they frequently come from high class social status. The family may have fallen on hard times, but they're expected to have a higher class social skills and higher class conversational skills. You're just not going to take some woman off the street and bring her to a party in the Doge’s palace and is going to make any sense. So you have to have this sort of a situation. They are also supposed to be intelligent, generally have upper class common sense and know how to be a companion with people. Of course, they have superb physical appearance, there are no such thing as ugly courtesans.

The funny thing is this class of quarters on was more in demand because of their personality, and their wit than anything else. Beauty was considered to be in much more abundance than a good mind or a good wit… There are some courtesans who are actually married. And what happens here is you have a woman of relatively high status, but she married a lower status husband. And what she does is she is using her activities or courtesan activities to try and get advancement for her husband. And he usually knows what's going on. And frequently, once the husband has been advanced socially through the right level, then she stops being a courtesan.

Now, the second type is called the lower class courtesan, cortigiana di lume. This is much lower. It's much lower than an honest courtesan. But it certainly is above the common prostitute. These courtesans were just like the higher group, they're expected to provide, quote, charming companionship with anyone who could pay for as long or as short a time as her customers wanted. The lower group, however, is more dependent on their lovers. And frequently they are passed from one customer to the other. Once out of favor, out of the favor of the main circle, she would have to take, lower her standards, and began taking lesser people and eventually ended up down at that lower level, the common, the common prostitute...

Now, the upper class courtesans were treated almost as equals, especially if they were doing it strictly to advance either themselves socially, or their husband socially, or their husbands politically. And in some area courtesans would also get jealous of one another because obviously, there's a competition. The more you're, the more in demand you are, the more money you make. And if you've been at the top and the new lady comes on the scene, and now suddenly, you know, ooh, it's a new girl, let's go see what she's like, that's going to cost you money. So sometimes, you know, if you're trying to climb socially and politically that leaves you open to rumors and gossip. And so some of these people might try to to ruin you, you know, particularly if you try to move in on a king"

Brief History of Names and Naming:

"Earlier Jewish surnames arose during the Middle Ages when German Kings and Dukes forced Jews to adopt Germanic names and pay highly for them. Silverberg, mountain of silver. Morgenstern, star of the morning, were among the most costly names. Fisher, fishermen, Kaufman, merchant, and Schneider, Tailor were moderately priced. Since the practice was a system of taxation to fatten royal purses, authorities penalized Jewish peasants who could not afford a fancy name. They were forced to purchase inexpensive names that were blatant insults such as schmutz, dirt, Eselkopf, ass head, names that have been dropped from use but still appear in old German records."

Birthday History and Traditions:

"With the rise of Christianity, the tradition of celebrating birthdays ceased altogether. To the early followers of Jesus, who were oppressed, persecuted and martyred by the Jews and the pagans, and who believed their infants entered the world with the original sin of Adam condemning their soul, the world was a harsh and cruel place. There was no reason to celebrate one's birth, but since death was the true deliverance, the passage to eternal paradise, every person's death day merited prayerful observance. Contrary to popular belief, it was the death days and not the birthdays of saints that were celebrated and became their feast days. Church historians interpret many early Christian references to birthdays as passages or birth into the afterlife. The birthday of a saint clarified the early church apologist Peter Chrysologus, is not that in which they are born in the flesh, but that they are born from Earth in the heaven from labor to rest.

There was a further reason why early church fathers preached against celebrating birthdays. They considered festivities borrowed from the Egyptians and the Greeks as relics of pagan practice. In 245 AD when a group of early Christian historians attempted to pinpoint the exact date of Christ's birth, the Catholic Church ruled the undertaking sacriligeous and proclaimed it would be sinful to observe the birthday of Christ as though he were a king or Pharaoh. In the fourth century, the church began to alter its attitude towards birthday celebrations and also commenced serious discussions to settle the date of Christ's birth. The result of course, marked the beginning of the tradition of celebrating Christmas"

History of Marriage Customs Part 2:

"We’ve got to go back to ancient Rome for our wedding cake. The wedding cake is not always eaten by the bride. It was originally thrown at her. It developed is one of the many fertility symbols integral in the marriage ceremony"

History of Marriage Customs Part 3:

"In England and France, the practice of wearing white at weddings was first commented on by writers in the 16th century. White was a visual statement of the bride's virginity so obvious in a public statement that did not please everyone. Clergyman, for instance, felt that virginity, a marriage prerequisite, should not be blatantly advertised. For the next 150 years, British newspapers and magazines carried the running controversy fired by white wedding ensembles. By the late 18th century, white had become the standard wedding color. Fashion historians claim this was due mainly to the fact that most of the gowns at the time were white, that white was the color of formal fashion."

History of Table Manner Etiquette Part 1:

"For at least 100 years the fork remained a shocking novelty. An Italian historian recorded a dinner at which a Venetian noblewoman ate with a fork of her own design, and incurred the rebuke of several clerics present for her excessive sign of refinement. The woman died days after the meal supposedly from the plague, but the clergyman preached that her death was divine punishment, warning to others contemplating the use of a fork... Even in Italy, the country of the forks origin to implement could still be a source of ridicule as late as the 17th century, especially for a man who was labeled finicky and effeminate if he used a fork. Now women fared only slightly better. A Venetian publication in 1626 recounts that the wife of the Doge, instead of eating properly with knife and fingers, ordered a servant to cut her food into little pieces, which she ate by means of a two pronged fork, an affection the author writes, beyond belief"

History of Nursery Stories Part 3:

"Snow White, Princess and the Pea and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves comes from our good friends Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They were staying in the German town of Castle in order to collect oral tradition fairy tales, resulting in more than one marriage. Whereas Wilhelm married the girl who told him Hansel and Gretel, his sister Lada married into the Hasenpflug family who had told the Grimms Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now the Brother Grimm were the first to artfully combine the elements of blossoming youth, fading beauty and female rivalry into an enduring fairy tale. But theirs was not the first published version of such a story... In Eleanor Mure’s version. The unwelcome intruder to the bears home is also an angry old woman, but the bowls and the parlor contain not Southey’s porridge but milk turned sour. In Southey’s version, when the homeless old woman is discovered in the bed by the bears she jumps out the window never to be seen again. But in Mure’s tale the incensed bears resort to several cruel tactics to rid themselves of the old hag. Quote, on the fire they throw her but burn her they couldn't. In the water they put her butt drowned there she wouldn't end of quote. Worse arrives. In desperation the bears impale the old woman on the steeple of St. Paul's Church"

History of Nursery Rhymes Part 1:

"In America in the next [19th] century, Mother Goose rhymes would win out as a generic name for all children's verse, regardless of authorship. There have been many attempts to censure the sadistic phrases found in several popular rhymes For example, she cut off their tails with a carving knife, and many groups have claimed that certain rhymes replete with with adult shenanigans are entirely unfit for children. The fact is, most nursery rhymes were never intended for children. That is why the adjective nursery was not used for centuries. It first appeared in the year 1824 in an article for a British magazine titled On nursery rhymes in general. If the rhymes originally were not for the nursery, then what was their function? Some functions were stanzas taken from bawdy folk ballads. Others began verses based on popular street games, proverbs or prayers, and many originated as tavern limericks, spoofs of religious practices, social satire and the lyrics of romantic songs. They don't read precisely that way today, because in the early 1800s, many Nursery Rhymes were sanitized to satisfy the newly emerging Victorian morality. In their definitive work, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie, write quote, we can say almost without hesitation, that of those pieces which date before 1800, the only true rhymes composed especially for the nursery, are the rhyming alphabets, the infant amusements and lullabies.

The overwhelming majority of nursery rhymes were not in the first place composed for children end of quote. However, rhymes in their bawdy versions were often recited to children because children were treated as miniature adults. Then in the early 1800s, many rhymes were cleaned up, subsumed under the rubric nursery and ascribed to a pseudo-anonymous Mother Goose. Well, who was this woman? Or for that matter, man. According to an early New England legend, the original Mother Goose was a Boston widow, Elizabeth Goose born in 1665. On marrying Issac Goose at the age of 27, she immediately became the stepmother of 10 children, and then had six of her own. The Association of Mistress Goose with the name Mother Goose stems from an alleged volume of rhymes published in 1719 by one of her sons in law and titled Mother Goose’s melodies for children. Widespread as this legend was, the people involved were real. No copy of the book has ever been found. More cogent evidence suggests that the original Mother Goose was actually a man and that's our friend from the last series on, on nurseries. That's Charles Perrault. Perrault’s seminal book 1697 contained eight popular stories and bore the title, Tales of my Mother Goose. That is the first time the term appeared in print. Whether Perrault concocted the name or adapted it from Frau Goosen, a woman in German folklore is unknown, but most folklorists believe is the same man who immortalize the fairy tale such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, also popularized a fictitious mother of rhymes became known to children throughout the world."

Nursery Rhymes Part 3:

"Little Miss Muffet. 16th century England. Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Then came the spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away. Of all nursery rhymes this appears more frequently in children's books. Was written in the 16th century by appropriately an entomologist with a special interest in spiders, Dr. Thomas Muffet, the author of the scholarly work, the Silkworms and their Flies. As Longfellow had composed, there was a little girl for his daughter Edith, Doctor Muffet wrote Little Miss Muffet for his young daughter Patience. At that time, a tuffet was a three legged stool and curds and whey was milk custard [Ed: Wikipedia says "It is sometimes claimed – without evidence – that the original Miss Muffet was Patience, daughter of Dr Thomas Muffet (d.1604), an English physician and entomologist, but the Opies are sceptical given the two-hundred year gap between his death and the rhyme's appearance"]"

Links - 28th January 2023 (1 - Demi Lovato)

Newz.com - Posts | Facebook - "She gave a concert in front of ghosts 👻  The singer who now identifies herself as "non-binary", and who has become the role model for progressives, Demi Lovato, claims that she gave a concert in front of an audience full of "ghosts" and that at the end they gave her a standing ovation.  That's right, the "singer" who in recent weeks was trending on social networks for having accused a small ice cream shop of being "fat-phobic" for selling sugar-free products, and for having said that she would like to have a relationship with an alien, has now become the talk of the town again, as she claims that she gave a concert before a group of ghosts and that they gave her a standing ovation at the end of the concert."

Demi Lovato attacked for tweeting she is part African - "Demi Lovato tweeted a DNA ancestry test on Friday, in which she announced that she is one per cent African, much to the chagrin of her followers."
When you take too many drugs

Sorry, Demi Lovato: You Can't Fight Sexism by Opting Out of Womanhood - "Lovato is the latest celebrity to jump on the non-binary trend... Non-binary identities have been on the rise for at least a decade, and have become especially popular among young LGB women. A 2019 study of “LGBTQ” teens done in collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign found that girls were over seven times more likely than boys to identify as non-binary; and that, of these girls, over 70 percent were lesbian or bisexual.  When young women adopt a non-binary label, it often comes with public expressions of relief that they no longer feel pressured to conform to gender norms. From what I have observed personally, these women also are disproportionately likely to be survivors of male violence, sexual trauma, and serious mental health issues... Lovato ticks off many of these patterns... Although Vaid-Menon goes to great lengths to claim that one’s gender identity is unrelated to appearances, or to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, this claim contradicts everything else the pair relate about their own experiences... For Lovato and many other young people who crave external validation, living “authentically”—which includes not being held back by gender roles—apparently becomes possible only once they take on an identity that justifies this transgression. Being a woman with short hair, or opting to not perform every aspect of femininity on any given day, apparently was impossible for Lovato until she became part man... The most logical way of fighting back is to point out that these stereotypes and expectations are misguided and unhealthy. To instead simply flee the category of woman through a trick of language, on the other hand, isn’t really brave or progressive. Lovato and all the other non-binary-identified women are simply throwing the rest of us under the bus... Giving lip service to someone’s self-conceived identity would appear to be the polite thing to do, so long as no one gets hurt. But while many women who identify as non-binary change little besides their hair cut and pronouns, there’s some evidence that a growing portion of this cohort are opting for gender “nullification” surgeries and hormones in an attempt to appear more androgynous... Being a woman is perceived to be the problem itself, rather than the cultural stereotypes and pressures applied to women.  This is internalized misogyny... This is why “non-binary” women will ultimately end up disappointed. While changing your pronouns and hair may feel like a solution, it’s just a superficial fix that forestalls the hard work of coming to terms with the reality of being female. There, Demi, is where true healing and authenticity lies"

‘You Call Me They, But I’m Still Daddy’s Girl’: Demi Lovato Confuses Twitter With Pronouns, Again - "Lovato has embarked on a journey of self-discovery which included a giant spider tattoo and encouraging followers to “be a slut and make porn.”... “I would say, without question, the most annoying celebrity … is Demi Lovato,” The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens said during an All Access Live. “I’ve never seen someone who needs more attention in my life.”  The “Blackout” author said Lovato is the perfect example of “women that overshare because they want attention and they pretend that it’s helping them.” She went on to say the former Disney star is the “queen of this.” “I don’t understand why people come to social media to overshare,” Owens said. “I think the answer to it is because all they are looking for is someone in the comments to be like, ‘You’re so great, that’s amazing, you’re so amazing, oh my God, so brave for speaking out on your multiple personality disorder, me too, oh my God, you’re amazing’ … it’s like, actually the disorder that they’re suffering from is a need for attention on social media. And Demi very much has this disorder.”  “She just needs to have social media taken away from her”"

Meme - "Demi Lovato. Then and now. Remember kids, wokeness is ugliness. And that ugliness eventually takes over the host body and manifests externally."

Demi Lovato Had a Heart Attack and Three Strokes After Her Overdose

Meme - "Demi Lovato has looked like both Selena and Selena's killer within 4 years"

Meme - "DEMI LOVATO 'UPDATES PRONOUNS ON INSTAGRAM'"
"Are they now Has/Been"

Demi Lovato says there might be a time when they identify as trans - "Demi Lovato feels there may be a time in the future where they identify as trans as they are ‘fluid and open’ about their gender identity.  The singer came out as non-binary in May this year, changing their pronouns to they/them...   ‘There might be a time where I identify as trans, I don’t know what this looks like for me.  ‘There might be a time where I identify as nonbinary and gender non-conforming my entire life, or maybe there’s a period of time when I get older that I identify as a woman."

‘Make Up Her/Their Bloody Mind’: Demi Lovato Sparks Confusion With New Pronoun News - "Podcast host Katie Herzog said Daily Mail online got it wrong in their headline that read, “Demi Lovato admits she is no longer using ‘they/them’ as reverts back to ‘she/her.’”  “This text isn’t quite right—she’s now she/her/they/them—but I’ve seen a few cases like this recently and I suspect we’ll see more soon”... They weren’t the only ones who seemed unsure exactly what the former Disney star meant when she said on the podcast, “Yeah, so, they/them is, um, I’ve actually adopted the pronouns of she/her again with me.”  “So for me, I’m such a fluid person that I don’t really … I don’t find that I am … I felt like, especially last year, my energy was balanced and my masculine and feminine energy, so that when I was faced with the choice of walking into a bathroom and it said ‘women’ and ‘men,’ I didn’t feel like there was a bathroom for me because I didn’t feel necessarily like a woman,” Lovato shared. “I didn’t feel like a man.”... Headlines from various news outlets and entertainment sites were all over the place with the language used to try and decode what the star meant... As of this publication, Demi’s Instagram page still shows “they/them/she/her” as pronouns in her bio, despite her comments on the show, so it’s unclear if she’s completely abandoning the “they/them” pronouns, or now going by those in addition to “she/her.”"

BLAIRE WHITE on Twitter - "Demi Lovato is now "detransitioning", which for her means switching pronouns (again). Many kids she helped to misinform about transgenderism are not as lucky, and won't make it out without missing body parts."

Demi Lovato Changes Pronouns To She Her - ""I’ve actually adopted the pronouns of she/her again with me," Demi said before referring to herself as a "fluid person.""

Demi Lovato updated their pronouns to include she/her again. Experts say that's more than OK. - "Experts say Lovato updating her pronouns is typical – and should remind us that gender identity is fluid and can change over time."
"Experts"
So since gender identity is fluid and can change over time, why should trans people transition when they may need to transition back? Much less "trans" kids?

Links - 27th January 2023 (2 - Covid-19)

U.S. FDA, CDC see early signal of possible Pfizer bivalent COVID shot link to stroke - "A safety monitoring system flagged that U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and German partner BioNTech's updated COVID-19 shot could be linked to a type of brain stroke in older adults"
This article needs to be removed for "misinformation"

China’s zero-Covid policy, botched reopening will puzzle historians for years to come | South China Morning Post - "It has become apparent that mainland China has botched its Covid-19 reopening. After three years of maintaining a strict zero-Covid policy, the surprise at its about-face has been surpassed only by questions as to why such a costly, unsustainable policy was pursued for so long. Economists and historians will spend years trying to find the answers to three mysteries in relation to China’s (mis)handling of the pandemic. First is the question of what the true costs of the zero-Covid policy were, and in particular, whether they were worth paying...  An analysis of zero-Covid’s consequences ought to also include direct health costs, especially the excess deaths caused by other conditions not treated as a result zero-Covid restrictions, lost output from economic shutdowns, and the harm caused to people’s lives and mental health as a result of extended lockdowns and the sometimes arbitrary quarantining of millions of people. The second mystery historians will try to solve is why a policy as obviously short-sighted and unsustainable as zero-Covid was maintained for so long and with such ideological fervour. What happened to the much-vaunted pragmatism, scientific approach and long-term thinking that were the hallmarks of the Chinese state in the first 40 years of reform and opening-up? When highly effective Covid-19 vaccines arrived in early 2021, zero-Covid came to represent the antithesis of these virtues in governance... it was likely that zero-Covid had been ideologised and pursued so dogmatically that no major part of China’s sprawling administrative system had the means, or were even allowed, to get ready to transition to living with Covid. The failure in preparing for a transition was not just a failure of cognition or imagination; it was also a failure of policy communication. When zero-Covid was in force, the Chinese propaganda machinery went into hubristic overdrive to play up the dangers of Covid, to denigrate other (especially Western) governments for choosing to live with the virus, and to boast that China’s success with Covid-19 showed that its system of government was morally superior to liberal democracy. This hubris has backfired, and the Chinese state’s communications machinery now confronts an increasingly sceptical, distrustful public. Not only did such policy communication breed overconfidence in zero-Covid, it may also have deterred many older Chinese citizens from getting vaccinated... while the Chinese state is “strong in mobilising public sentiment, in ensuring compliance, and in constructing new infrastructure … it is considerably less capable in optimising between containment and mitigation measures, in sustaining a high level of investment in public healthcare, and in persuading its people to accept that Covid is here to stay.” “These things require capabilities that authoritarian governments usually lack: a respect for diversity and debate in policy choices, and an active citizenry that has the means to check and question the state"... The third mystery that economists may ponder in the future is why a widely anticipated economic rebound, and the resumption of the China growth story after the abandonment of zero-Covid, did not materialise in 2023."

Meme - "CNN World Europe's loud, rule-breaking unvaccinated minority are falling out of society
At the heart of China's protests against zero-Covid, young people cry for freedom"

Remember When the Left Cheered China's COVID Response? - "The never-ending COVID lockdowns in China have been heavily criticized by the media, public health officials, and western leaders for months. Some of the lockdown measures are truly draconian, like welding the doors shut to apartment buildings and throwing those who test positive in dirty, crowded quarantine centers... All through 2020 and 2021, international organizations like the WHO and the UN as well as the American government and media outlets saw the Chinese COVID response as enlightened and necessary.  Yet only a few months before the pandemic was declared, a WHO report on “Non-Pharmaceutical Public-Health Measures for Mitigating the Risk and Impact of Epidemic and Pandemic Influenza” stated that the quarantine of exposed individuals — let alone of the entire population — “is not recommended, because there is no obvious rationale for this measure.”... Zero COVID was all the rage in the salons of western thinkers despite previous studies showing them to be worse than useless. That fact was confirmed in studies published in late 2021 and 2022 that showed countries like Sweden that didn’t follow the lockdown model had lower-than-average excess deaths as well as the collateral damage from lockdowns like the massive increase in global poverty, the worrying rise of teenage mental health problems, and the bullying of free people when authoritarian measures were used to stifle dissent. And then, when people took to the streets to protest the lockdowns, the mandates, and the “vaccine passports,” they were smeared as “right-wing nuts,” “covidiots,” and “threats to public health.” It wasn’t until the videos of the Shanghai lockdown in early 2022 began to circulate that the attitude toward China’s lockdowns began to change. Citizens screaming for help from their apartment windows, people begging for food in the streets, and the filthy conditions in the quarantine camps did much to alter the thinking of many in the west about the efficacy of China’s COVID response."

Zero-Covid leaves China’s hospitals ill-prepared for exit wave | Financial Times - "Hospitals said China’s zero-Covid regime, which has severely restricted movement in the country and depressed consumption, had undermined their financial health and willingness to take on new loans.  “We have suffered a slump in revenue in recent years as the zero-Covid policy prevented patients of other diseases from seeing doctors,” said the head of equipment at a hospital based in Changzhou, near Shanghai. “We don’t have an incentive to buy new devices.”... Zhu Weizhen, founder of a Shanghai-based manufacturer of ultrasound equipment who regularly deals with hospitals across the country, estimated that the Chinese healthcare system’s annual income had fallen one-third since zero-Covid began in 2020."

COVID-19 situation in China ‘not transparent,’ officials say as global concerns grow - "China rolled back many of its tough pandemic restrictions earlier this month, allowing the virus to spread rapidly in a country that had seen relatively few infections since an initial devastating outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Spiraling infections have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients. Cremations have risen several-fold, with a request from overburdened funeral homes in one city for families to postpone funeral services until next month. Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up the situation... China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the country before. An AP investigation found that the government sat on the release of genetic information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating WHO officials.  The government also tightly controlled the dissemination of Chinese research on the virus, impeding cooperation with international scientists. Research into the origins of the virus has also been stymied. A WHO expert group said in a report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on the how the pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation"

Covid-19 is tearing through China | The Economist - "Most of China’s population has never been exposed to covid and many old people are undervaccinated. So while the Omicron variant of the virus will cause relatively mild symptoms in most people, a large number of Chinese are still vulnerable to severe illness. The country’s weak health-care system is already under huge pressure. At a hospital in Beijing your correspondent saw elderly patients breathing from oxygen tanks on gurneys that spilled out into packed corridors and waiting rooms. Videos circulating online show similar scenes across China. There have been reports of patients being turned away from hospitals in smaller cities owing to a lack of beds. Officials say there are around 10 intensive-care unit (ICU) beds per 100,000 people in the country, well below what is needed. Medical staff are in short supply, too. A health official has warned that some regions are approaching the “critical point” in ICU-bed supply.  Drugs used to treat covid are in high demand. Many pharmacies have run out of fever medicine and painkillers. Paxlovid, an antiviral that helps prevent severe sickness, is especially sought after. Prices of the drug have surged; many hospitals are reportedly short of it. Some have sought unauthorised versions of Paxlovid sent in from abroad. Meanwhile, WeChat, a ubiquitous messaging app, has launched a function that tries to connect individuals in need of fever drugs and other supplies with those who have them. According to the government, only 13 people have died from covid so far in December. The real toll is undoubtedly much higher... China’s crematoriums are busy. Police have been stationed outside one in Beijing that has attracted reporters... Three shots of a Chinese vaccine provide reasonable protection against severe illness and death. But, as of late November, only 40% of those aged over 80 had received three shots... China could have done more to prepare for this moment, by stockpiling drugs, administering vaccines with more urgency and producing treatment guidelines. Now officials are trying to spin the situation. They have renamed the disease caused by the virus from the “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to the milder sounding “novel coronavirus infection”... But a hint of how poorly things are going can be detected in the actions of China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping. When the virus was under control, Mr Xi was hailed as the “commander-in-chief” of the “people’s war” on covid. He spoke often about the need to persevere with zero-covid. Since cases began to surge, though, he has remained largely quiet, making only oblique references to the outbreak"
Damn lying Western media!

India Makes COVID Test Mandatory For Passengers Flying From China - "Passengers flying into India from China and a few other countries from Asia and Southeast Asia will now have to undergo a mandatory COVID test before being allowed in. Not too long ago, India relaxed its COVID-related travel rules as cases around the world declined
Weird how so many countries don't believe the vaccines work. It's almost as if covid restrictions are political
Is it still racist if a non-white nation does it?

Biden didn't "fall short" of July 4 vaccination goal — he was sabotaged by Republican trolls - "Of course there's nothing inherently "conservative" about refusing to protect yourself and other people by getting vaccinated. This is only a problem because Donald Trump somehow convinced his supporters that refusing to take the pandemic seriously was central to their identity"
From 2021. So much for the buck stopping at the top. Weird that Trump accelerating the vaccines and encouraging others to get vaccinated but is at fault for low numbers - but then everything is his fault

The Only Covid-19 Book Worth Reading - Freakonomics - "LEVITT: Everybody’s mantra was, “Well, the C.D.C. says this, so we’re going to do this.” Even though the C.D.C. was not making sense. The C.D.C. would say, “Do not wear a mask because masks don’t work, and we need all the masks to be kept for the people who are working on the frontline in hospitals.” Well, it can’t both be true that masks don’t work and that we need them all for the people on the front lines of hospitals. But that was the kind of nonsense that was coming out of there. And everybody was going along with it...
LEWIS: Every other country, when they repatriated their citizens, tested them for Covid when they came back into the country... there was a doctor, who’s in the book, his name is James Lawler who was in Omaha near the 80-something Americans who were quarantining for two weeks in an Air Force base. He got in touch with the C.D.C., said, “We need to test these people.” And the C.D.C. responded quite violently with him. They said, “You’re absolutely under no circumstances to test those people.” And he was just perplexed. Like, why wouldn’t you test them? Some of those people almost surely have Covid, and we’re going to let them off the Air Force base, and we don’t know how long they might be infectious for. And he got back from the C.D.C. word that if he tested those people, he would be charged with performing medical experiments on prisoners...
LEVITT: I think medical ethics has completely lost its way because it’s clear in a pandemic where a million people will die, that you might be willing to sacrifice a few people along the way. Is it so obviously unethical to, say, pay volunteers a lot of money to be part of trials to speed up vaccines that will save hundreds of thousands of lives? And it’s incredibly frustrating to me that medical ethicists have carved out such a crazy polarized position that there’s no room for weighing costs and benefits anymore.
LEWIS: I’m with you on this. There’s another medical ethical question that I’m surprised does not get more attention. It amazes me that, for example, a teacher in Marin County can come into class unvaccinated and decline to wear his or her mask, infect students, and remain anonymous. These privacy issues around disease, I think need to be rethought in a pandemic that you need to know who has the virus. I assume that the legal system will test this at some point — someone’s going to sue someone for infecting them. But the whole attitude in the disease space is that if you have the disease, you have the right to privacy about that. And I don’t get that.
LEVITT: Yeah. This is a war. We’re involved in a war with Covid, and it seems like we should take some of the tactics you would use in a war."
Good luck with "stigma" (see: HIV and how in California it's no longer a felony to intentionally infect someone with it), or proving that someone infected you (and what damages might be)
We saw what happened with the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. Good luck with a military mindset against a bad, but very infectious flu

Meme - TekJansen69: "Now that it's safe to go to the supermarket again, (Thank you, Pfizer and Biden!) I'm no longer needing to tip an Instacart driver 20% for my groceries. So, I'm actually SAVING money, now."

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Partying - "‘It's, it's a profoundly moral occasion. It's not about fun. There is something deeply theological about a party, it is celebrating the gift of life, it's returning the gift of life back to the Creator with joy. I'm a Cavalier, not a roundhead, I'm a Dionysian, not an Apollonian, unapologetically’...
‘What's the moral difference between allowing clubs to reopen right now and waiting a month, maybe two, when more people are vaccinated?’
‘Well, I think to that point, we need to consider what has actually been going on during the pandemic when the clubs have been closed. You know, we know that the reality is that young people in particular aren't going to stop partying, we have seen so many illegal raves happening throughout lockdown. And the unfortunate truth is when you put all of those people in these unregulated situations, there can be serious consequences. You know, we saw acts of sexual violence is happening at these raves or drug overdoses. And had those people been in a more secure environment like a nightclub or a festival, where there are drug checks in place, where there are security guards, you know, those things might not have happened. So I think it's more about finding ways to ensure that we can regulate these nightlife activities, because we know they're going to happen whether they're allowed to or not.’
‘But, you just mentioned something really key which is the difference between an illegal rave and a nightclub is that a nightclub is a professionalized space. So I did bar work for years, and I really liked it. But it's not a job where, if you need time off, employers are always gonna be understanding. It's a really precarious job. There's really high staff turnover. So it's one thing for us to say that individuals got a choice to make about their own comfort as partygoers but isn't it the case that freedom of choice doesn't exist in the same way if you're working there, and you are being made to decide perhaps between your own safety and your own comfort and being able to pay your rent.’...
‘If a third party were to go to a nightclub, or a rave or a party, and they didn't know anyone there, and they were sober, and they weren't into it, and they just observed it, it would be of no moral benefit to them, would it? Whereas if you went to a concert, or a play, or any other kind of cultural thing, even if you didn't, even if you weren't part of the action, you'd benefit from it. And that, to me, is a basic sort of test of why the party is not moral, in a way all those other things are?’
‘Well, I don't think that follows at all. I mean, you can easily go to a concert and get nothing out of it, you can easily go through a play and not understand what anybody's talking about, I think any cultural form, which you know, a participant has kind of no sense of what's actually going on is going to be confusing and disorienting. I mean, to be honest, I think you're just you're projecting the experience to what might be the experience of a stereotypical radio four listener who would be expected to understand the social codes and the cultural conventions governing a concert or a play, maybe not those of a nightclub. So I just don't think it follows at all. All of those different contexts, all of those different cultural forms, have their own, their codes, their mean, their ways of participating’"
Given the tiny risk of covid to the young, apparently it made sense to not give people working in nightlife venues to return to work. Government money is unlimited, after all. And if you can wait another month, why not another year?

GUNTER: The need to hold chief medical officers accountable | Toronto Sun - "it is not just daily bad announcements that has ground down chief medical officers popularity.  Exasperation with the length of the pandemic, itself, has a bearing, as does frustration with lockdowns. If you’ve been trapped in your nursing home for the 10th consecutive month or are on the verge of permanently closing your small business because pandemic restrictions forbid you to open the doors, then it’s understandable you might have lost faith in the unelected bureaucrats in charge of your province’s public health response.  And therein lies the main reason why it’s a bad idea to make provincial officers of health officers of their respective provinces’ legislatures: They’re not accountable to voters...   That’s not such a big deal with a privacy commissioner or chief electoral officer. Those functionaries can’t shut down whole society or economies. The auditor general can’t force your restaurant to convert to takeout, only.  Officers of the legislature or Parliament are typically independent so they can hold the government to account, not so they can issue decrees over the whole of the public without cabinet approval... Also, look at how public health officials occasionally cry wolf.  Federal public health doctor, Theresa Tam, recently released a chart showing 20,000 or more new cases per day by the end of March if lockdowns were lifted with new COVID variants. Then her officials were unable to explain how they had arrived at those numbers.  There are also the moving goalposts on when life can return to normal. At first, public health officials said when 70% of adults had been vaccinated, then 85%. Now it’s 90%.   They’re experts, but they’re not infallible. Think about how their advice has changed on mask wearing and travel bans, for instance."
From 2021

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Katie Prescott - "‘What do you think of this idea of a circuit breaker, a sort of short period of complete lockdown?’
'I think your heart sinks when you hear the words like, like circuit breaker because you know, it's sort of based on PR, but it won't, I don't think it'll work. Professor Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University summed it up when he said: lockdowns - and that's a circuit breaker - defer a problem, they don't solve it. So at the end of the fortnight, where are we going to be? In the same position. So there's a lot of good things that can be done. And we've got a serious issue. But I think the Swedish model in the future will be seen to be the best.'"
From 2020. Prescient.
It's interesting how covid hystericists love lockdowns for their own sake and don't acknowledge that they just kick the can down the road. Another example of the 'myth' of the slippery slope - when '2 weeks to flatten the curve' turned (via some intermediate steps) into 'lockdown until everyone is vaccinated'

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'It's taking hours and hours of our time to individually track and trace to ensure that we are keeping school safe' - "It's been really difficult to get good data on this. But there is some encouragement, we're quite confident now that primary school children are probably a quarter to half as likely to become infected, and are also much less likely to pass the infection on. So there's growing evidence that primary school children are not amplifying this disease. And in secondary school children, again, it's less than adults. But it's a gradient of effects such that six formers are probably in about the same risk as adults. But that data is slightly less stable… It's a boat balancing harm. And we absolutely know about the harm of teenage suicide, and the lack of educational opportunity. The real question is, what effect is these groups of children having on amplifying the disease within the community? And if it's showing that it's less than the adults, and if the children themselves are at lower risk of harm, the question has to be should we be making greater efforts to keep children in education, either through improved testing, or protect, potentially, with the primary school children taking them out of testing altogether?"
From 2020

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'We were told we were going into Tier 3, no ifs, no buts. We can either expend energy on that or try and get a better deal' - "‘You have publicly argued against pubs and restaurants closing. Steve Rotherham there [sp?] compared people like you to those who shout at the wind.’
‘Look, first of all, the demography of Liverpool is very different to that of Greater Manchester. I've had regular discussions with Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, and we’ve recognized that there there are those differences. We've had one meeting with government on Friday, they've not been able to show us any data that connects bars and pubs in Greater Manchester with transmission of covid 19 virus, they've not been able to provide any evidence that closing them down will work. Our own data, and we have far more finely grained data collected by our own Directors of Public Health, seems to demonstrate that there isn't a connection between, oh, not a particular connection between bars and restaurants and the transmission of covid’"
From 2020

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'He's a warrior and a fighter' - "[On Trump] ‘I do not feel the President has downplayed it because during, at the beginning of this pandemic, he was able to have one of the largest mobilizations since World War Two, bringing in equipment, whether it was ventilators or personal protection equipment, etc. The President always has had rhetoric about many different things. But I always say with this president, look at his actions. Look at what he's done’
‘Well, his rhetoric last night, just last night, he was saying that the end of the pandemic is in sight.’
‘He is trying to exhibit optimism in this country, which is what people need. They've got pandemic fatigue in our country, indeed your country, indeed worldwide’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, ‘It was announced in the House of Commons and we were not told beforehand that announcement was going to be made’ - "‘If, just a few months ago, you'd read a novel about a time or a place in which it was illegal to go to the shops, or have a cup or a pint or a sandwich with a friend or a relative, you might have regarded it as completely implausible, or at least seen it as an Orwellian warning of a future that would never actually materialize. That though will be the law, not a rule or a recommendation, in large parts of the northeast of England from tomorrow. People from two households will be banned from meeting up in any indoor setting, private or public’"
From 2020

Vaughan condo killer Francesco Villi had many car crashes, injuries - "A bizarre frequency of car crashes and workplace accidents over decades left Francesco Villi, the 73-year-old gunman in a mass shooting at his condominium north of Toronto, depressed, unable to work as a contractor, and suicidal years before his acrid dispute with his condo board over his apartment’s construction. The frequency of Villi’s strange accidents and a lack of medical proof to back some of them up, left doubts over his credibility, a diagnosis of mental illness, and suspicions he was a malingerer long before be was named as a mass murderer after Sunday’s targeted shootings"
I saw a covid hystericist speculating it was covid brain damage. When your narrative crumbles...

8 teen girls charged with murder in Toronto man's swarming death - "Eight teenage girls have been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of a 59-year-old man in Toronto"
Hilariously, someone blamed this on covid. Well, maybe it was the lockdowns and covid hysteria that made them aggressive

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Mass Migration and the Families Left Behind - "The country as a whole feels different than it did when we lived here eight years ago… More fractured, more remote, more inward looking. For much of the pandemic COVID restrictions have turned the lines on the map that divide the states and territories into rigid borders that could only be crossed with a grant of a permit, paperwork that was routinely denied. Not since the founding of modern Australia more than 100 years ago, has the country been more geographically fragmented. Western Australia, whose borders are still shut, feels like it's declared independence. Queensland has also acted at times, like a self governing fiefdom. The premiers of states have often governed more like Prime Ministers. Absent throughout has been a sense of Australian nationhood. As well as witnessing the fragility of Australia's Federation, we have seen the enduring solidity of its fortress Australia mentality. Early on in COVID, the decision was taken to pull up the drawbridge and shutter the portcullis. The country's international borders only opened up to non citizens in the middle of December. Not only were foreigners kept out, Australians were locked in. The lucky country took on the tagline of the Hermit Kingdom. A country used to what's called the tyranny of distance, suffered the frustration of confinement. 10s of 1000s of expatriate Australians also struggled to make it home, because of caps on the number of incoming flights, and the prohibitive cost of two weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine. Made to feel even more estranged from their distant country, the unofficial expat anthem, the Peter Allen ballad, I still call Australia home, no longer rang so true. Both externally and internally, there's also been a hard heartedness about how Australian officialdom has regulated the movements of its people. When the Delta variant hit, the government threatened to jail its own citizens for trying to return from India. That's quite something, the criminalization of the journey home. Even family members wishing to cross state lines to bid a final farewell to terminally ill relatives have had applications for compassionate travel waivers not back. In at least one state, South Australia, those who were granted access had to make their visits to hospitals and hospices accompanied by the police. They were treated like suspects or potential escapees. For many the long arm of the Australian law became ridiculously intrusive. The Novak Djokovic controversy ahead of the Australian Open, demonstrated the broad power at the government's disposal to grant or cancel visas, which has been likened to a godlike level of authority. But the tough approach that Australia has adopted towards immigrants, especially since the prime ministership of John Howard, and especially since the turn of the century, has also been used against its own citizenry. The Australian Government would cite the country's comparatively low COVID death rate, as proof that its strict policies have been effective, a persuasive claim. But at the federal and state level, officials have faced accusations of bureaucratic overkill and a cruel authoritarianism, with echoes of the penal past. COVID has surely finally buried the myth that this country is anti authoritarian. Arguably one of its most defining characteristics is compliance. Its early success with the coronavirus in 2020, when it was regarded as something of a global exemplar, partly stem from having a bureaucracy used to enforcing a panoply of rules and a population used to obeying them. There have been protests, but they've often looked more American than Australian. Melbourne has witnessed anti lockdown demonstrations where Trump flags were brandished… Australia then seems to have become more vulnerable to another contagion: the American variant of democracy."
Of course, the "American protests have nothing to do with how Zero Covid wrecked Australia. And given the later response to the China Zero Covid protests, this is amusing

Race-Based Rationing of COVID Treatment Is Real—And Dangerous - The Atlantic - "the influence of the cultural left’s worldview goes beyond mere terminology. During the coronavirus pandemic, the instinct to bring crude generalizations about race to the center of every discussion is seeping into public policies about quite consequential matters. What happens, for instance, when in the name of racial equity, membership in a particular ethnic group can make the difference between getting and not getting potentially lifesaving medical care? This might sound like a far-fetched hypothetical. Except that it’s not.  In a series of articles this month, The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reported that hospitals in Minnesota, Utah, New York, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin have been using race as a factor in which COVID-19 patients receive scarce monoclonal-antibody treatments first. Last year, SSM Health, a network of 23 hospitals, began using a points system to ration access to Regeneron. The drug would be given to patients only if they netted 20 points or higher. Being “non-White or Hispanic” counted for seven points, while obesity got you only one point—even though, according to the CDC, “obesity may triple the risk of hospitalization due to a COVID-19 infection.” Based on this scoring system, a 40-year-old Hispanic male in perfect health would receive priority over an obese, diabetic 40-year-old white woman with asthma and hypertension. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Department of Health used a scoring calculator that counted “BIPOC status” as equivalent to being 65 years and older in its risk assessment. (BIPOC is shorthand for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.) New York did away with a points system entirely; people of color are automatically deemed to be at elevated risk of harm from COVID—and therefore are given higher priority for therapeutics—irrespective of their underlying health conditions... Under threat of legal action, SSM Health announced on January 14 that it “no longer” uses race criteria. On January 11, Minnesota’s public-health authorities edited out the BIPOC reference, leaving no trace of the previous wording. New York State, however, has not yet altered its guidelines. The racial disparities in COVID outcomes are a matter of record, but to suggest that race causes these negative outcomes is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. This is how facts, despite being true, are misused and weaponized... The rationing rules in New York and elsewhere are not the product of anything resembling conventional political persuasion. No party would support—certainly not openly—the essentialization and instrumentalization of race in medicine. Few are willing to defend policies such as these on the merits, because what exactly would they say? Tellingly, these controversies have received limited coverage from mainstream outlets. Recently, the Associated Press published an article portraying claims of race triage as right-wing propaganda. “Medical experts say the opposition is misleading,” the story declared. (I requested comment from the AP about its coverage. A spokesperson responded, “AP does not do editorial commentary, nor does it have an opinion agenda. It is an independent, nonpartisan, fact-based news organization.”) Asserting that reality is not real simply because it is a Republican talking point is gaslighting. Ideas, even good ones, become destructive when they demand that people prioritize advocacy over truth... Democrats and liberals now find themselves under considerable pressure to acquiesce to this way of looking at the world. Going against the norm is simply too costly if you want to remain a member of the tribe in good standing. There is no end to this way of thinking, unfortunately, and we are all susceptible to it. In a zero-sum political struggle, anything that could conceivably undermine morale on your side is perceived as helping the other side. And the other side, the argument goes, is an existential threat. In theory, woke ideology shouldn’t matter that much, but it will matter in practice, including in ways unanticipated just a few years ago. What public-health officials and hospital administrators have done with race criteria, likely with the best intentions, is only the most striking example of how seemingly symbolic positions become all too tangible. As I write this, standardized testing and entrance exams are being rolled back because of the intriguing notion that doing well on tests is a form of white privilege. Crime rates are rising across the country, yet prominent Democrats either dismiss the problem as “hysteria” or avoid talking about it altogether. Addressing crime and protecting those at risk require police, which in turn require funding and resources that progressive elites—but not actual Democratic voters—propose to divert away from law enforcement. Somehow, progressives have fallen under the sway of a set of ideas so off-putting that they threaten progressivism itself. Those of us who are not white are not just “nonwhite.” We are not interchangeable. We are not always and forever victims. We are individuals, first and foremost, not merely members of a group to be patronized by other people’s good intentions."
The left only object that correlation is not causation when they don't like the suggested causation mechanism