Balderdash: 2/4/23

Saturday, April 08, 2023

Meme - "Beautiful face doesn't matter all that matters is big heart *busty woman*"

Meme - kelly @kelllicopter: "Hate when guys say "omg you're so funny i love your jokes you're so interesting blah blah blah" like ugh you only like me for my personality what about my giant tits"

Meme - "Woman: I came in 2 minutes! *women celebrating*
Man: I came in 2 minutes! *men comforting him*"

Meme - Male Horse to Female Horse in bed: "WELL, AT THE TRACK I GET CHEERED FoR FINISHING FIRST.""

Some People Flip Real Estate. I Flip Men. - The New York Times - "I am a man flipper. I meet a man, fix him up and flip him to someone else. Unlike people who flip real estate — buying houses, renovating them and selling them for a tidy profit — I see no gain from this arrangement, only loss. I don’t want to be doing this, but something attracts me to men who are emotionally withdrawn, and I have a talent for drawing them out. For their future wives and girlfriends, apparently."

Mohanad - Union Hall NY 3/12 on Twitter - "Dane Cook: I'm dating a 23 year old
Leonardo DiCaprio: hold my beer
Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend: I can't"

Meme - "Leonardo DiCaprio, 48, was spotted with 19-year-old Israeli Model Eden Polani in LosAngeles"
"Madonna, 64, 'Casually Dating' Andrew Darnell, 23: She Doesn't 'Let Age Affect Her Decisions'"
"Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture."
"They're the same picture."

Facebook - "The same women complaining about Leonard DiCaprio's 19 year old girlfriend were pretty quiet when that 80 year old woman and her 19 year old boyfriend went viral last week."
Teen, 19, with pensioner girlfriend, 76, proposes as trolls criticise age gap - "A teen with a pensioner girlfriend has proposed to his older woman, as trolls criticise the age gap between the pair. Giuseppe D'Anna, 19, has taken the internet by storm after posting a video to TikTok showing his proposal to his girlfriend, who is 76."
So are those who criticise Leonardo diCaprio trolls?

Peter Lloyd on Twitter - "Leonardo DiCaprio getting slut-shamed by Ulrika Jonsson - the woman nicknamed 4x4 because she has four kids by four different men - is absolutely incredible! 😂"

Ulrika Jonsson says she enjoys having sex with toyboys - "Ulrika Jonsson has explained she likes dating and sleeping with younger men as her sex drive is higher than ever. The TV personality, 55, insisted that she wasn't 'ageist' but confessed she had been 'dating younger'... The Swedish TV star began by explaining that while her three ex-husbands were her age, her recent dates have been up to 28 years her junior, the youngest admirer only 26."

Meme - "Bloated
'Bloated' Leo DiCaprio is slammed for 'ageing worse than Madonna'
Stunning
*Lizzo*"
Body positivity is only for women. Men deserve to be body shamed

Meme - "If DiCaprio, 50, dating a super model, 19, is gross then so is grooming 18-19yo into SW
Until we meet again"
5 year olds can declare that they are the other sex, but 19 year olds cannot date older men (but they can go on OnlyFans at 18 and if you disagree you're a SWERF)

Meme - Leonardo: "I CONSENT."
Smoking 19 year old model: "I CONSENT."
32 YEAR SINGLE WOMAN ON TWITTER: "I don't"

Meme - "48 year old Leonardo DiCaprio having a good time with his hot 19 year old legal adult girlfriend"
"35 year old single women on twitter who will never find a partner"

The People Who Criticize Leonardo DiCaprio For Dating A 19-Year-Old Are Totally Fine With Women Selling Their Bodies Online To Strangers - "His latest girlfriend is reportedly a 19-year-old Israeli model Eden Polani. They apparently were seen getting cozy at an LA release party for Ebony Riley's new EP. Eden is a drop-dead gorgeous young woman with long auburn hair, green eyes, and freckles. People have called Leo a predator, a creep, and an egomaniac because of his dating choices. The outrage continues to grow online and it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. But what are people really upset about? Isn't a younger woman dating an older, richer, and more powerful man just a tale as old as time? Plus, the very people who claim that they're grossed out by Leo dating a 19-year-old model are the same ones who are completely fine with that same 19-year-old selling her body to total strangers online—because "empowerment."... At face value it's easy to write it off as a horny man completing a sexual conquest with a woman who is in her physical prime. Even if that is part of the equation, what's so wrong with a rich, successful man wanting a young, beautiful woman on his arm? One of the greatest general differences between men and women is that men provide steadiness and protection to the world and women provide beauty and nurturing. Of course a man wants to be with a beautiful woman just like a woman wants to be with a powerful, successful man. These are simple biological differences that can't be denied, no matter how much progressives attempt to tear down the relationship between masculinity and femininity. From everything we know as bystanders, Leonardo DiCaprio is clear about his intentions with women. He has never been married and it doesn't look like he has any interest in marrying in the future. He may not be the best role model for young men as he's not interested in becoming a father and husband in order to create a strong family unit that will create a better society eventually, but just because he isn't the most virtuous man when it comes to relationships doesn't automatically make him a predatory creep. Besides, why isn't anyone considering the woman's role in the relationship?... Everyone is acting like Leo is forcing these young women to date him, but let's be real for a second: just about any 20-year-old woman would take their shot at dating a successful, wealthy guy like Leo (his net worth is reportedly $300 million) if they had the chance. Especially when you consider the fact that he seems to take care of these women pretty well. He takes on them on expensive trips, probably gives them beautiful gifts, and spoils them beyond anything they've probably experienced before... They're acting like she's being forced into this relationship, without ever considering the fact that she has just as much to gain from dating Leo—if not more. She is propelled into the next level of stardom, she gets to be spoiled and taken on extravagant trips around the world, and she gets connected with some of the most powerful people in the world of fashion and Hollywood. She knows exactly what she's doing and she is probably fully aware of the fact that Leo isn't interested in marrying her... One thing that particularly stands out is, the very same people who heavily criticize Leo and Eden for their alleged relationship are the ones who support sex work, prostitution, and OnlyFans. They're totally okay with women selling their bodies online to total strangers who objectify them and pay exorbitant amounts of money to see them perform sex acts. They say as long as it's consenting between both parties, it's completely fine. And yet they turn around and say that a consenting 20-something model shouldn't date Leo because he's a creep. @plzbepatient tweeted, "50 year old guy paying to bang a 19 year old escort by the hour: cool and good. 50 year old guy paying all the expenses of a 19 year old girl for a few years in exchange for sex and companionship: evil and bad." Not to mention the rampant pedophilia and sex abuse that happens in Hollywood—all the people who chastise Leo for dating younger women remain pretty silent about the countless stories of sex abuse that come from the celebrity world on a regular basis. There's no problem with young girls being used as props in a Balenciaga photo shoot featuring teddy bears in bondage and court documents about child pornography, but heaven forbid Leo dates a young model"
Of course, these are the same people who proclaim "love is love" and insist that what consenting adults do (nowadays not even in private, ergo Pride) is no one's business

Fit gran, 64, who 'only dates younger guys' hints she's off singles market - "Personal trainer Lesley Maxwell, 64, has hinted she may be in a relationship. The gran is known for dating younger guys, with lads as young as 18-years-old hitting on her"

Older Men Dating Younger Women: What Real Data Reveals - "According to a 2014 Current Population Survey, the average age difference in heterosexual couples is 2.3 years, with the man being older than the woman. But recent data has shown that as our ideas about men, women, and relationships evolve daters’ views on age are changing as well. The online dating site and app Zoosk found that in 2017, online daters were 9% more likely to like, message, or have a conversation with someone who was ten years older or younger than them than they were in 2016... 60% of men are attracted to younger women. And of that 60%, the vast majority (51%) like women who are 1 to 4 years younger than them, 27% like women who are 5 to 9 years younger than them, and 22% like women who are more than 10 years younger than them. That means 13% of all men dating online are looking for women who are more than 10 years younger than they are... the numbers of women who like older men almost mirrored that of men who like younger women. 56% of younger women prefer dating older men. And of that 56%, the majority (56%) like men who are 1 to 4 years older than them. 30% like men who are 5 to 9 years older than them, and 14% like men who are more than 10 years older than them. Typically, men match with women between 1 to 3 years younger... The older men get, the younger the women they match with are... When it comes to messaging, men who like older woman have a slight advantage... men who message women 10+ years younger have a slight disadvantage."

Dr. Taylor Burrowes 🎯 VETTING SPECIALIST on Twitter - "Preferring a younger, prettier, less complicated woman doesn’t make a man a predator, though it may make him shallow. The same way a woman wanting a tall, rich, attractive man with high status doesn’t make her a prostitute, though it may make her shallow."

Meme - "***, 33
50 miles away
Looking for Long-term partner
About Me: Legit looking for a husband & male role model for my 3 kids. They all have different dads, t'm twice divorced, temporarily have an OF, no, I don't want to make content w/you. I'm blunt, forthcoming & only available every other weekend for now. I regularly workout & get tattoos, Medicated for my alphabet of mental health shit, thank God. 5'7" must be 6ft min to get on this ride. I'm here for a long time, not a good time. If all of that's cool, swipe. If not, for the love of GOD swipe left"

Woman who married a rag doll claims he 'cheated' - "Meirivone Rocha Moraes, 37, from Brazil, hit headlines earlier this year after revealing she had met the 'love of her life' - a rag doll named Marcelo. She has since admitted their relationship is 'hanging on by a thread' after claiming he has 'cheated' on her... she's claimed he 'went to a motel with another woman', and even says she 'found texts on his phone'. After a whirlwind romance, she claimed to have fallen 'pregnant' and as she didn't want to have the baby out of wedlock, the duo decided to get hitched in a ceremony attended by 250 people. Soon, she 'gave birth' in only 35 minutes while at home, with a doctor and nurse on site, and live-streamed the ordeal to an audience of 200 people... After a whirlwind romance, she claimed to have fallen 'pregnant' and as she didn't want to have the baby out of wedlock, the duo decided to get hitched in a ceremony attended by 250 people. Soon, she 'gave birth' in only 35 minutes while at home, with a doctor and nurse on site, and live-streamed the ordeal to an audience of 200 people."

Meme - coatisabrownishcolor: "Yep, same. I'm overweight and have a super thin really hot friend. We would go out and she would always get guys coming around trying to get her attention. I felt so invisible. Sometimes one of the wingmen would talk to me out of pity but I never once got hit on or even complemented. It stung so badly. She hated it because she felt uncomfortable and just wanted to hang out without having to constantly be telling guys to leave her alone. I hated it because I felt so ugly in comparison. Sucked. So I dyed my hair blue and got some bitchin tattoos. I get complements on both all the time. I'm 300lbs but I have cool glasses, blue curly hair, tattoos, and a big smile. So what if conventional dudes aren't into it. I get comments on what I'm proud of and it makes me happy."

Meme - Guy 1: "HEY, LOOK AT THIS GIRL'S ONLYFANS. IT'S SUCH A NICE BUTT... I ENDED UP LOSING NO NUT NOVEMBER BECAUSE OF IT.." *purple thong with mole*
Guy 2: "HA HA! YOU'RE SUCH A MORON"
Guy 2: "OH SHOOT.. I DROPPED MY POPCORN!" *bends down*
Guy 2: *purple thong with mole*

Meme - Georgia @_georgiawilcock: "I still scream at the fact I did a full body shave at the age of 13 to go see one direction as if I was gonna get railed backstage"

Meme - "When you get together with the girls and summon the dark pumpkin spice lord *pentagram formed from bodies of 3 white women*"

Woman calls out expat man for only dating Southeast Asian women, says they 'could do so much better' - "When she asked him what it was like dating as an expat man in Singapore, the man allegedly told her that he "exclusively dates Singaporeans or other Southeast Asian nationalities". Candilicious went on to add, with an incredulous snicker, that the man also told her: "Back home he rates himself a 7.5, and in Singapore he rates himself a nine." "I don't know what you Singaporean ladies are doing, but you could do so much better," she remarked before ending the video... Candilicious posted another video sharing a pet peeve she has when it comes to dating expat men — finding out that many of them are attached... Some Japanese women have said that local men make good husbands because they're kind, gentle and treat women equally. In 2019, AsiaOne spoke to Destini IS, an agency that specialised in pairing Singapore men with Japanese women. One of the interviewees, Aya Oshima, an entrepreneur in her late 30s, told AsiaOne then that she prefers local men as they don't mind their wives having a career of their own. Aya also shared that on the flip side, Japanese men tend to have more traditional mindsets — expecting their wives to be homemakers."
Men are not allowed to have preferences, especially white men

Meme - RORI @rorirainn: "I don't think I'm going to meet my future husband until I quit onlyfans honestly. Cause it's so hard to find guys that are okay with it. And the ones that are I am not interested in.. lol it sucks. I just wanna be in love."

Meme - Gabriella Flores: "Calling someone ugly while hiding yourself behind makeup is just crazy."
Elizabeth Xochitl: "You have the nerve to make posts about women hiding behind makeup, but you hide behind a computer screen and keyboard. Talk about being a coward. At least when women hide behind makeup, they are trying to make themselves more appealing. What about you?"
Jeff Slater: "Well, you blocked me immediately after typing that so I cannot directly respond to this and you probably won't see it. But I never said anything about women."

Meme - "Laurine, 19
I'm the one with tits. Don't worry."

Meme - "Why is it hard for men to forgive their cheating partner?"
"Because a man can't get no pussy unless the woman agrees to it. If she cheated, it was her idea not his."

Meme - "He didn't even try to look at the camera *toddler staring at waitress's breasts*"

Meme - "Let's think about this,.we meet up and have a great time,.we date for a year then get married,.have 2 kids then 5 years down the road we start fighting.Both turn to alcohol,.get a divorce and the kids are unhappy.Or we meet up and have a good time,.hook up,.you pull out and I do the walk of shame and never see you again. Just think of the kids. Oh and I need a date to my sister's wedding.."

Meme - "FATHERS DAY NOT SINGLE MOTHERS DAY
WE DON'T TAKE AWAY FROM MOTHER'S DAY BY GIVING ALL SINGLE FATHERS CREDIT FOR DOING IT ON THEIR OWN. WE DON'T USE THIS DAY TO CALL OUT OUR DEAD BEAT BABY MAMAS. WE LET THE REAL MOTHERS HAVE WHAT WAS MEANT TO BE THEIR DAY. WITH RESPECT, PLEASE DO THE SAME FOR US.
Sincerely, Fathers Everywhere"

'Peeping at my wife in the shower – this is what my sex life has become' - "I’m a 67-year-old man and my sex life with my wife is non-existent and has been for several years. I do find my wife attractive, but we have come to the point where we can’t even discuss such topics. I sometimes spy on her showering and she caught me once, but didn’t say anything and pretended she hadn’t seen me. I sometimes pleasure myself when my wife’s asleep next to me – is that normal? Or sometimes I use porn when I’m alone. I’m at my wits’ end. Is there anything we can do to get the spark back in our 25-year marriage? My wife is 72."

Meme - "It's like I always say; real women have curves!"
"Hi there! Patriarchy Patrick here, with another episode of... Excuse-Busters!"
"Less Woman *fat woman with 3 curves*
MORE WOMAN!! *thin woman with 7 curves*
The Math Shows It, Folks! More Curves = More Woman!"

OnlyFans 'goddess' flees to Switzerland to avoid paying tax on her raunchy adult content - "A top OnlyFans star has revealed she has moved to Switzerland – to avoid paying taxes on money earned with her racy adult content. Mady Gio, 27, had previously lived in Italy, which is where she filmed her adult content. The Italian-Romanian, whose real name is Madalina Ioana Filip, had previously showed off her huge cards, including a Lamborghini, on social media – an indication of how much she earns. It was thought that in August 2022, she earned a whopping £140k. And the influx of cash has seen her flee Italy and head for a less tax-heavy lifestyle in Switzerland, as Italy charges an eye-watering 27.9%. In Switzerland, however, charges start as low as 0.77%. Savings that the star says have helped her buy a new villa and high-end sports car."
The people who hate both taxes and sex work were conflicted over this

Meme - Tori Stover: "What you crave in your relationships is what you lacked in your childhood"
Kayla J Mills: "I don't remember craving anal in my childhood but ok"

Meme - "Why Are Guitars Shaped... this way, not this way
That's Why *breasts*"

LSU Gymnast Olivia Dunne Shuts Down Critics Who Say Content Encourages Creepy Fans: “You’re Not Responsible For How A Man Looks At You”
Comment: "If I take my D out in public in front of a group of women. It’s their fault if they are offended. They are the creeps if they look. Basically it’s the same logic. Cleary the actions of an individual have consequences. If you dress for attention don’t be upset if you get it, both good and bad."

Paige Spiranac is 'so sick' of criticism of LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, slams 'belittling' of women - "Former golf professional Paige Spiranac stuck up for 'badass' LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne after she was slammed by a prominent women's basketball coach for upholding sexism in sports. Dunne, 20, is among several female athletes joining the rank of millionaires through name, image and likeness (NIL) deals. After college athletes were allowed to enter such deals last years, there has been an upward trend of female athletes showing off candid and flirty posts to secure millions of social media followers that boosts endorsement deals. Dunne has earned almost $2million-a-year from sponsors and photos on social media. However, Stanford University's Tara VanDerveer, the most successful coach in women's college basketball, told the New York Times that the athlete's earnings are upholding sexism. Spiranac, 29, who was voted World's Sexiest Woman by Maxim magazine this year, hit back at the criticism, slamming others for 'belittling' women's accomplishments."
Women can never be criticised

Meme - "Friday: Sigh! I'll always be single. I'll never find a decent guy!
Nice Guy: Hey there, you seem nice. Can I...
Girl: Sorry, I'm... taken!
Bad Boy: Yo sexy! Alone tonight? Want some action?
Girl: Yeah!
Saturday: Sigh! I'll always be single. I'll never find a decent guy!"

Female carpenter works in bikini with no safety gear to 'p*ss off old men' - "she hit back by dressing up in minuscule swimsuit and sawing building materials in full confidence. "Sawing brass in a bikini to p*ss off the old male carpenters on here," she captioned. In the video, she is seen holding a small piece of brass without wearing any cut resistant gloves."
When she gets hurt, it'll be the fault of the patriarchy

Meme - FairyGbemie @Reddishwine3: "I went on a date with this guy and he paid for himself alone because brought two of my friends. Omoh some men are heartless
All of u blaming me it is unfair na , a gentle man would have paid the bills and tell me politely after the date. That's the best thing to do nd not to just act so immature. Some men love dates with friends and some don't. So next time i will always ask before taking my friends
Men do u like date with friends?
YES 6%
NO 94%"

Meme - "POV: You better find the clit *knife and Islamic flag*"

𝑫. on Twitter - "You're weak af if you leave your girl just because she stabbed you ONE time."

Meme - "She came looking for love. Instead, Accountability came looking for her.
"THE ACCOUNTABILITY WAS TRULY CHILLING. I'M LITERALLY SHAKING RIGHT NOW. WHOEVER MADE THIS ARE INCELS." - JEZEBEL
ACCOUNTABILITY.
A woman just wants to be held. Unless it's accountable.
INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS
PARAMOUNT PICTURES and COPE & SEETHE FILMS"

Meme - "Tell me the truth. I'm ready to hear it."
"We all know where the clit is, we just don't care if you cum."

No men are coming to help: Gym harassment accusations lead to dangerous situations - "Gym-going women -who previously made a trend out of shaming men for looking at them while they work out- are now hoping that men will pay attention to them when they have gym mishaps- be they staged or real. In what has become another chapter in The Saga of the social media clout-chasing women dubbed “gym thots,” yet another woman has filmed herself biting off more than she can chew when it comes to the weight bench... The woman experiences great difficulty and finds she is unable to lift the weighted bar. Despite her struggling, no one comes to help her. Another viral video has shown a woman attempting to squat a much heavier load, screaming out for help but being ignored for quite sometime before somebody came to her aid. According to some netizens, the act of faking muscle failure and asking for help is the new way for gym-going e-girls to chase attention. “Trying not to end up on TikTok for ‘hitting on her’ in a gym,” wrote Sonny Mullins. “We’ve been taught to mind our business.” In early 2023, a trend of making men look bad by filming them watching women work out began to take off, only to backfire spectacularly after Twitch streamer Jessica Fernandez was forced to apologize to a man she publicly shamed on the internet. The man reportedly came to her aid after she appeared to be struggling, sparking a rash of backlash towards “gym thots” and the act of filming one’s self in the gym for social media... Evita Duffy-Alfonso published the Federalist article, “Stop Recording Yourself In The Gym.” “Self-absorbed gym girls pretending to be harassed in the gym is an entire genre on TikTok. Women will record their workouts and point out a man benignly glancing in their direction, and then proceed to post a video shaming that man for being a ‘creep,'” she wrote. “There are also women whose gym attire can be described as nothing other than underwear, and yet they record and vilify men who stare at them.” “There’s a disturbing level of narcissism and entitlement that comes from gym influencers,” she added. “There are dozens of videos showing influencers actually getting angry at people for accidentally walking through their shots or using equipment that they want.” Now, it appears that being starved of attention has led to the possibility of some “gym thots” feigning dangerous situations for personal gain and notoriety- so much so, that parody videos on the topic have been posted by men."

Blind Man Explains to Woman at Gym He Wasn’t Staring at Her, She Calls Manager Anyway - "a woman who was working out that the gym accused him of staring at her. This is impossible, again, because Pete is blind and physically incapable of seeing. Something that he says he expressed to the woman in his viral video, however, it didn't seem to help... He says he told the woman, "'Ohh I'm sorry I'm blind!' I say to her. Her response? 'I don't care! Stop staring at me!' She storms off and comes back with the manager a couple minutes later. I reach into my wallet and pull out an ID card from the Massachussetts Commission for the Blind. At this point in the video Pete shows his ID, with certain identifiers redacted, stating that he, "Explained to this guy as well, 'I'm blind. I wasn't staring at anybody.' He says, 'OK but you still can't make other gym members uncomfortable by looking at them." Pet just laughs at the absurdity of the gym manager's statement"
Weird. Feminists keep claiming that only creeps have anything to fear, and that if you didn't do anything wrong you're safe

It's not just the gym now: Braless woman says only women can look at her when she's out - "A woman with a TikTok account is complaining on the internet again, this time because men can’t help but stare at her chest when she decides to leave the house with a tight shirt and no bra. Mariane Lairwin, who has 40,400 followers on the platform, posted a video of herself in her living room, wearing a skin-tight shirt made of a spandex-like material... Lairwin, who reportedly refuses to wear a bra, abhors attention from males due to her choice of attire- despite having an entire social media platform dedicated to getting attention."

Ridiculous Zuccs: Messenger Pigeon

Telling someone you are replying via messenger pigeon gets you zucced:

"replying to your comment via messenger pigeon."

Links - 8th April 2023 (1 - SNP etc)

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Defence versus Foreign Aid - "‘I think that the first duty of a nation is to its people and to defend its people. Overseas aid, which is fine in theory, and some of it in practice, but much of it fails to achieve its objectives. And so it's largely, in my view, hypocritical chest beating for Western virtue.’...
‘I've seen you argue elsewhere that there's a moral case for defense spending, because the first duty of government is to protect its citizens. But in my lifetime, with the notable exception of Kosovo, the wars that we fought have destabilized countries abroad, and made terrorist attacks more likely over here. So isn't there a problem perhaps with too closely associating safety with militarization, and not for instance, redressing global inequalities in wealth and in power?’
‘Well, there are good and bad cases. I mean, you rightly say I mean, the military can be misused can be used for purposes, which are strategically incorrect or strategically foolish, and that has been the case in the past. But in 1982, the military was used to reverse a naked aggression. In 1991. In the Middle East, the military was used to reverse a naked aggression when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I mean, complete aggression. The military was used again to prevent a war getting worse in the Balkans in 1995, quite muscular military action, it was a bit ambiguous, but it did the job. It was used very successfully in Sierra Leone in the year 2000, to prevent a bunch of cutthroat gangs getting control of the government. So the military can be used either well or badly.’...
‘I think [aid is] a sort of neo colonial mindset, intended really for the donor to feel good about themselves, and look at where the aid goes. And it's dictated by local domestic needs, not the needs on the ground, and look at the impact of it. And it has a disastrous record. Ask yourself why it is that the poverty gap, which is the amount needed to get everyone over the poverty line globally, was calculated a couple of years ago at $66 billion. And yet, aid has more than doubled that each year, something is going wrong.’...
'Why shouldn't I feel good about these things?... Why is it wrong to be proud of helping poor people who need help?'
'Because you're not helping, you're making it worse... you chose Pakistan. Well, my interest in Pakistan was when I was there, and I went to a conference. And I heard economists from the very libertarian right through to the Marxist left all unite around only one issue. And that was how disastrous it was, these arrogant aid flows come in to their country and making the corruption worse and flowing into the arms of the military.'...
‘There are lots of things we can do. Let's tackle the tax dodging, which stems the flows of dirty money. Let's legalize drugs to weaken crime gangs around the world. Let's loosen borders for trade and people. Let's end the sale of weapons to despotic regimes. There's lots of things we can do. But what we shouldn't do is naively think that by throwing lots of money around the world and giving it to rich people in poor places and fueling conflict and fueling corruption, we're actually doing good. We might feel better at home, but it's doing a lot of harm on the ground'...
'In the 18th century, there was this English commercial expert called Malakai Postlethwaite [sp?], and he was enthusiastic about the fact that British trade is a magnificent superstructure on an African foundation. So he's celebrating that Britain was made rich by the impoverishment, the enslavement and the degradation of others. So regardless of whether you think that the aid industry is the right means to do so, do you agree that there is a specific historical obligation for Britain to redistribute the wealth that has garnered over the centuries from the under development of Africa?'...
'Part of my problem is the fact that we're actually perpetuating the same sort of arrogant attitude seen in colonial times. We're saying, essentially, we're infantilizing people abroad, and we're saying we have all the answers, we have the right to tell you how to run your education system, how to run your public services, what you should be doing, we're telling you to do that. And here's the checkbook that buys us that influence, buys us that power... We're pumping money into some of the world's worst regimes from Rwanda to China to Uganda. And look at the claims being made. I want to try to delve down. People talk about the transparency of DIFFIT [sp?]. Actually, it's very hard to try and really find out what's happening. I tried to burrow down into their statistics and once they claimed that they were giving money to 13 countries which were advancing democracy. When I delved down that included Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, a vote in Pakistan where there was sectarian violence, an election in Yemen, where there was just one candidate, another in Uganda, which is notoriously corrupt and badly governed country, and you're perpetuating the misery and the autocracy being imposed on the local people’...
‘That oft quoted statement that aid is a way for poor people in rich countries to subsidize rich people in poor countries.’"
With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, trashing of defence spending in favor of foreign aid sounds even more naive, but even in 2020 when this was published, it was ludicrous to imagine that foreign aid could save the problems of the world, especially given its record (not to mention how big the world is vs the comparatively small footprint defence has to cover)
This might be one of the best examples of counterproductive, harmful virtue signalling
It's interesting and telling that trade is seen as a zero sum game - because the UK benefited from trade with Africa, it means Africa must have suffered

Difference Between Scallions and Green Onions and Spring Onions - "Green onions and scallions are actually the same thing! They are either harvested very young from the regular bulb-forming onions we are familiar with, or they can come from other varieties that actually never form bulbs... Spring onions, on the other hand, look similar to scallions, but you’ll notice that they have small onion bulbs at the base. These onions come from the varietals that produce bulbs and are basically more mature versions of scallions. They are planted as seedlings in the late fall and then harvested the next spring, thus the word “spring” in the name"

Primary school children filming and uploading sexualised content in worrying new trend - "An increasing number of primary school-aged children are creating and uploading their own sexually explicit material to the internet, prompting fears from child abuse investigators that they are putting themselves at risk of serious harm. Investigators say they have discovered Australian children as young as 6 making their own content, with growing concerns that popular influencer-promoted websites such as OnlyFans are normalising making pornography for cash. Detective Acting Inspector Carla McIntyre, the officer in charge of the Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team, said police were now having tough conversations with parents after knocking on doors thinking they’re preventing children from harm, only to find the child was authoring their own exploitation material... One girl was aged 6, McIntyre said, and others were 7 and 8. Her team, which is made up of both Victorian and federal police, had found no one had coerced or forced the children into making the content. Instead, the children believed it was normal behaviour... police were forced to shut down a meet and greet with 23-year-old TikTok and OnlyFans star Anna Paul because so many people turned up. Paul has 5.2 million TikTok followers but is also Australia’s number one creator on OnlyFans, a subscription-based service which allows users to post their own sexually explicit content. Paul was promoting her new activewear line when thousands of young people flooded into the city. “We were told the last time police saw a huge crowd like this was for a Justin Bieber concert”"

Judge tosses claims over King’s Hawaiian rolls packaging - "A logo depicting a crown slightly evocative of a pineapple alongside " Hilo, Hawaii" did not persuade a federal judge to accept claims that King's Hawaiian misleads customers into believing its rolls are actually made in Hawaii... The label prominently features a three-point crown suggestive of the crown of a pineapple — the reputed “King of Fruits,” according to their class action. It also includes “Est. 1950,” and “Hilo, Hawaii,” in reference to the company’s founding. A close examination of the fine print reveals that the rolls are actually made in Torrance, California, where the company has been headquartered since 1977. The women also accuse King’s Hawaiian of promoting its Hawaiian connection through a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float dubbed “The Aloha Spirit.”... unlike in Peacock v. Pabst Brewing Co., where a consumer prevailed on deception claims because statements on a can of Olympia beer depicted waterfalls at the company’s original brewing site to mislead buyers into thinking the beer was still made using water from Olympia, Washington, King’s Hawaiian never claimed its rolls were made using traditional ingredients and methods. "All references to pineapple, honey, production by 19th century Portuguese immigrants, forno and 'local kiawe wood' come from plaintiffs’ complaint, not from any public representations that plaintiffs have attributed to defendant,” Hamilton wrote. “It is inappropriate and unreasonable to infer that defendant’s sweet rolls include such allegedly traditional ingredients based solely on selective review of the product’s packaging.” The packaging, she added, does not contain any actual images of honey or pineapples, even if the crown logo looks somewhat like a pineapple... Spencer Sheehan, one of the attorneys representing the women, declined to comment Tuesday, saying he had not yet read Hamilton's decision. Sheehan also represented Yonkers resident Robert Galinsky in a similar case against King's Hawaiian in the Southern District of New York, which was later voluntarily dismissed. He has also represented clients suing Kraft Heinz over Bagel Bites that contain no real mozzarella cheese and Kellogg over the paucity of real strawberries in its Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts."

The Enduring Mystery of the Oreo Cookie Design - "When the National Biscuit Company introduced the Oreo cookie in March of 1912, there was no mistaking its origins. It was a blatant knock-off of Sunshine Biscuits's Hydrox, a double-wafer chocolate and cream sandwich snack that capitalized on the popularity of a similar home-baked treat that had been circulating since the mid-1800s. The Hydrox was introduced in 1908. But Sunshine had relatively little of the advertising or production power of Nabisco, which was formed in 1898 as a conglomerate of baking companies: The fact that it beat Oreo to shelves by four years was irrelevant."

Sturgeon ‘misled Scottish parliament’ in Salmond investigation - "A Holyrood committee has concluded Nicola Sturgeon misled an investigation into the handling of sexual misconduct claims against her predecessor, according to reports. MSPs on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints Committee voted 5 to 4 that the first minister gave an “inaccurate” account of a meeting with her predecessor during the live investigation, a source told the PA news agency. The decision is likely to increase pressure on Ms Sturgeon to stand down before May’s election, although it is unclear whether the committee concluded she had intentionally mislead parliament, which would typically be deemed a resignation-worthy offence."
Hamilton report into Nicola Sturgeon's conduct around Alex Salmond harassment cases to stay secret
Those who see the SNP as moral paragons just hate the Tories

Nicola Sturgeon dodges question on ‘missing’ £600,000 campaign funds - "Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first female first minister, announced that she would be stepping down as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) on Wednesday after eight years in power... She denied that she had felt compelled to step aside by a series of recent political setbacks, notably the failure to secure a second independence referendum and a move by Westminster to block new Holyrood gender recognition legislation, and said steering Scotland through the Covid-19 pandemic had been the greatest challenge of her career. One question Ms Sturgeon declined to be drawn on, however, was whether or not she had been interviewed by police as part of an investigation into the SNP’s campaign finances... The question related to a probe into the fate of more than £600,000 raised by Scottish independence campaigners in 2017, which was supposed to have been ring-fenced for spending on that issue only but was seemingly “missing” from party coffers when documents filed with Companies House in 2020 revealed that the SNP had just £96,854 in its account in 2019. The SNP subsequently admitted to spending only £57,000 of the money raised in donations on independence campaigning directly, leading to accusations that the remainder had been spent elsewhere, contrary to what was promised. The matter was the subject of a police complaint by former party activist and independence campaigner Sean Clerkin in March 2021, who alleged that the money had “disappeared to be spent on other things without the permission of the donors”... SNP MP Douglas Chapman had resigned as party treasurer, claiming he had not been given complete access to the information he needed to carry out his responsibilities... It emerged separately in August 2022 that Mr Murrell had loaned the SNP £107,620 in June 2021 to “assist with cash flow”, a point Ms Sturgeon was questioned on earlier this month and said she could not recall details about, inspiring ridicule."

Nicola Sturgeon's husband Peter Murrell arrested in SNP finance probe - "Mr Murrell resigned as the party's chief executive last month, a post he had held since 1999."

The SNP paradox - "The rise of the Scottish National Party has been remarkable... In part, the SNP’s rise can be explained by the collapse of the once distinct political outlooks of left and right. The Labour Party no longer represents labouring people and there is no labour movement, as such, for Labour to represent. In many respects, the Labour Party is past its sell-by date (as are the Tories) and this has provided the space for an alternative to emerge. In Scotland, unfortunately, this alternative came in the form of the SNP. At a time when there are few big ideas in politics, the SNP has one defining idea – that Scotland could genuinely be different by going for independence from the UK. The SNP now presents itself in a more social-democratic, leftist way than it once did. It has also harnessed the anti-Tory sentiment that is common up north through the relentless condemnation of all things ‘Westminster’. The political chasm between the voters and the almost alien world occupied by politicians is reframed as a purely geographical problem, as something stemming from the toffs down south... To a great extent, the SNP presents itself as being on the side of popular democracy, the nation and the community. But in reality, it is far more representative of the global, cosmopolitan, technocratic new elite... the SNP is wedded to the European Union, a supranational bureaucracy that undermines national sovereignty. Indeed, leading SNP figures, such as MEP Alyn Smith, portray the EU in the most remarkable, Disneyfied way imaginable, in which the EU is responsible for everything from world peace to workers’ rights. The SNP is among the most pro-EU political parties in the UK. This is strange considering the party is meant to be about nationhood and taking back national control for the Scottish people. With its craven love of all things Brussels, the SNP is the least convincing national independence movement in the history of national independence movements... The SNP paradox Share Topics Brexit Politics UK The rise of the Scottish National Party has been remarkable. In the recent UK General Election, it won 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland (albeit with only 45 per cent of the vote). Back in 2010, the SNP won just six seats, compared to the Labour Party’s 41. In 2019, Labour won only one seat. In this respect, we can see that the SNP has replaced Labour as the dominant party in Scotland – no mean feat for a group of politicians who not so long ago were known as the Tartan Tories. In part, the SNP’s rise can be explained by the collapse of the once distinct political outlooks of left and right. The Labour Party no longer represents labouring people and there is no labour movement, as such, for Labour to represent. In many respects, the Labour Party is past its sell-by date (as are the Tories) and this has provided the space for an alternative to emerge. In Scotland, unfortunately, this alternative came in the form of the SNP. At a time when there are few big ideas in politics, the SNP has one defining idea – that Scotland could genuinely be different by going for independence from the UK. The SNP now presents itself in a more social-democratic, leftist way than it once did. It has also harnessed the anti-Tory sentiment that is common up north through the relentless condemnation of all things ‘Westminster’. The political chasm between the voters and the almost alien world occupied by politicians is reframed as a purely geographical problem, as something stemming from the toffs down south. As a Brexiteer and a democrat who lives in Scotland, I found the success of the SNP in the last election frustrating. Boris Johnson’s Tories won in England and Wales under a pro-Brexit, pro-democracy banner. But in Scotland, the SNP won with an overtly anti-democratic ‘Stop Brexit’ campaign. Why the Resistance is (still) so much worse than Trump Recommended Why the Resistance is (still) so much worse than Trump Tom Slater But despite their recent successes, the Scot Nats should be wary of resting on their laurels. There are many contradictions within the SNP project, which, if they were to properly come to the surface, could be the party’s undoing. Writers examining the rise of populism and the new divisions in contemporary politics have identified three new areas of conflict. First, the rise of technocratic governance, which clashes with demands for popular democracy. Secondly, the rise of the supranational, as opposed to the nation. And lastly, the clash between cosmopolitanism and community. To a great extent, the SNP presents itself as being on the side of popular democracy, the nation and the community. But in reality, it is far more representative of the global, cosmopolitan, technocratic new elite. The SNP represents the new technocratic elite as much as – if not more than – any other UK political party. You see this in the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, where the SNP has been in government since 2007. The SNP MSP’s comfort zone is the committee room, sitting with like-minded lawyers, heads of charities, academics and experts, formulating policies in an echo chamber, at a distance from the electorate. But at the same time as being part of this aloof class of technocrats, the SNP claims to be the voice of the people, defending popular democracy against those in ‘Westminster’ who suffocate the voice of Scotland. The SNP tries to promote the idea of nationhood, and to engage with a national desire for more control over the country. It pretends to represent democracy and freedom, promising a vision of a new nation built upon the sovereignty of the Scottish people, breaking from the shackles of Tory England. In defence of the sexual revolution Podcast In defence of the sexual revolution spiked This is all totally unconvincing – not least because the SNP is wedded to the European Union, a supranational bureaucracy that undermines national sovereignty. Indeed, leading SNP figures, such as MEP Alyn Smith, portray the EU in the most remarkable, Disneyfied way imaginable, in which the EU is responsible for everything from world peace to workers’ rights. The SNP is among the most pro-EU political parties in the UK. This is strange considering the party is meant to be about nationhood and taking back national control for the Scottish people. With its craven love of all things Brussels, the SNP is the least convincing national independence movement in the history of national independence movements. Similarly, the SNP is able to tap into a sense of community, of tradition and commonality, between people. David Goodhart’s idea of the ‘Somewheres’ captures this sentiment well. Many SNP supporters want a sense of belonging, of groundedness to a certain place, and of Scottishness. But at the same time, SNP MPs, MEPs and MSPs seem deeply uncomfortable and suspicious of the people of Scotland – a fear and loathing of ordinary people that is shared across the global cosmopolitan elite. SNP politicians are chronically politically correct, prone to looking down their noses at ordinary people, and always on the lookout for new laws and regulations to control people’s speech and personal lives and relationships (see the now-defunct Named Person legislation or the recent smacking ban). These contradictions are yet to play out properly, but there is a growing sense of confusion about what the party is for. For example, many SNP supporters and voters hate the politically correct, nanny-state dimension of the SNP. The party has a tendency to patronise the public and to interfere in their daily lives (their drinking, eating and parenting habits and use of language), and this aggravates many people. There is also a sense of frustration among Scotland’s voters about the poor state of many public services that the SNP is responsible for, from education to health and policing. At the moment, the SNP has managed to avoid confronting these contradictions. SNP politicians stand for election as populists shouting ‘power to the people’, while running Scotland through committees and experts. The party campaigns for an ‘independent’ Scotland, but one that will be subsumed into the European Union. And it stands as a defender of democracy, while pushing the anti-democratic policy of stopping Brexit. The SNP has benefited from the collapse of both the Tories and Labour in Scotland. It acts as a kind of anti-matter, feeding off the end of class politics and masquerading as the people’s party"

Good riddance to the Named Person scheme - "The Named Person scheme in Scotland was one of those government initiatives which, even in this era of authoritarianism, made your jaw drop. The plan was to give every child, from birth, a state-appointed guardian to oversee their wellbeing. It faced some opposition from Conservative MSPs, but it nonetheless passed in the Scottish Parliament as part of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014... In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled against the Scottish government, insisting that the Named Person scheme breached the rights to privacy and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights... This is a major humiliation for the Scottish government – indeed for much of the political and professional class, huge numbers of whom supported the Named Person scheme and branded those who opposed it as ‘extremists’."
From 2019

The SNP’s European nightmare - "Here, we outline four things Scotland would likely be forced to do as a new EU member-state. Adopt the Euro... Not only could Scotland be more closely entangled to the Eurozone during its next inevitable crisis, but, more generally, Holyrood would also be forced to hand over to Brussels one of the key weapons in any government’s economic arsenal: monetary policy. An ‘independent’ Scotland could not set interest rates or print money according to its own needs. Ultimately, the Eurozone’s monetary policy follows the economic cycles of the larger member states, which can push smaller states into unsustainable, inflationary booms when monetary policy is too loose, and lengthy slumps when it is too tight.
Observe the Stability and Growth Pact... Public deficits cannot be more than three per cent of GDP, and debts cannot be more than 60 per cent of GDP. In 2019-20, Scotland’s deficit hit 8.6 per cent of GDP... We have already seen what happens when the EU sets its sights on small, debt-laden member state... Greece lost a quarter of its entire economic output thanks to both the Eurozone crisis and the bitter medicine of austerity it was forced to take by the EU. The experience of Greece is a stark warning.
Forego trade opportunities Scotland would have to join the Customs Union, meaning it would be unable to negotiate bilateral trade deals with other countries... In joining the EU, Scotland would be entering the most bureaucratic trade bloc in the world. And new trade deals can only be signed as the slowest member state can manage
Join the Schengen Zone... This would mean less control over Scottish borders than the current Brexit deal offers. It would even mean less control than Scotland had while the UK was a member of the EU (the UK was not a member of the Schengen Zone).
Scottish nationalists often complain that they are ruled over by distant London politicians. However, rejoining the EU would mean many of the powers recently repatriated to Westminster would be farmed back out to Brussels – and even giving up powers which the UK had opted out of as a former member state. Unlike in Westminster, where the Scottish nationalists have (disproportionately large) representation, Scotland would have little democratic representation in the EU, other than through the largely powerless European Parliament. Ditching the UK to join with Brussels would represent the worst possible outcome for Scotland. It would become a vassal state, not an independent nation."

Optician suspended after mistaking patient’s ‘wiggling’ yoga postures for flirting - "John Snelgrove was treating a patient who tilted her head down and bent forward when trying on her new glasses to make sure they stayed on while she was in yogic postures. But Mr Snelgrove said he interpreted the ancient exercises as a form of flirting, claiming his patient was carrying out a move he thought was called “dirty dog”, and was wiggling her bottom in a “provocative” way to “get my interest”. The 64-year-old added that he thought she was “simulating oral sex” as she bent over with an open mouth, and that her skirt rode up and “left little to the imagination”. That evening, Mr Snelgrove, based in St Albans, Hertfordshire, texted the unnamed healthcare professional to ask her if she was “interested in taking it further” and the “shocked” woman told him “no”."

Workers want training, development, but few say their employers provide it - "Workers rank professional development and training opportunities highly among their list of criteria for evaluating prospective employers, but comparatively few say their employers are helping to improve their skills"

Valentine's Day pranksters book odd-numbered cinema seats in China - "Romantics in Shanghai will have to forget dinner and a movie for Valentine's Day. Chinese pranksters have reserved all of the odd-numbered seats at a cinema's primetime screening, forcing couples to sit apart. A group of embittered singles worked together to buy up the tickets to a 7.30pm screening of Beijing Love Story, a sappy big-budget romance, at the Shanghai Xintiandi cinema"

Toronto doctor legitimately prescribes patient a real-life puppy - "Family physician Dr. Iris Gorfinkel shared the puppy dog prescription to Twitter... The white gap on the photo of the prescription covers the patient's name. Due to patient-doctor confidentiality, Dr. Gorfinkel couldn't provide the exact reasoning for this prescription but said that having a pet can help with many ailments and conditions. She lists loneliness, mental or physical health and dementia as areas where having a puppy can improve a patient's life, all of which have been backed up by concrete evidence."

Meme - "Leonkumquat: when my dad was in college he had a friend who told a girl he'd take her on a date unlike any other she'd ever been on and so he took her to the supermarket to watch the lobsters fighting in the lobster tank they're married now"

The lure of Singapore: Chinese flock to ‘Asia’s Switzerland’ | Financial Times - "Chinese individuals, their families, their companies and their advisers, according to a wide range of bankers, lawyers, accountants and investors interviewed by the Financial Times, now see Singapore as the vessel that can navigate them through a series of expected storms. At the same time, they add, it is becoming an increasingly vital place for outposts of Wall Street and the global financial industry to interact with them. For many years, Singapore has liked to sell itself as the Switzerland of Asia. The new cold war, says one former top official, is finally turning that pitch into a reality. The big question, though, is how far Singapore will tolerate being Switzerland with Chinese characteristics... The change on the ground in Singapore is palpable. Property deals by mainland buyers are the dominant transaction and the international schools are bursting at the seams, with hundreds of Chinese applicants for a vanishingly small number of places. Chinese Michelin-starred restaurants might — just — be able to find diners an available dinner booking next April... “I think many mainland China clients still see Singapore as a safer long-term bet than Hong Kong for a few reasons. First is political stability, second is economic stability and finally, its rising status as Asia’s financial hub,” says Kia Meng Loh, co-head of private wealth and family office practices at Dentons Rodyk, a law firm. But for all the signals that Singapore has found itself in a prime position to thrive amid geopolitical uncertainty, the story has distinct vulnerabilities. China’s tolerance of what has been happening — the exodus of capital and individuals — will eventually have a breaking point that may come with consequences. Singaporean society could also push back, warn senior figures close to its government. The cost of living has soared in Singapore, angering locals who see danger and division in the rising rents, the bursting schools and the growing number of Rolls-Royces. Meanwhile, the inflow of so much capital so quickly also exposes Singapore to the potential for bad actors using it as a spot to hide money... Investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners has had a significant spike in migration inquiries from Chinese nationals in 2022, which are up 83 per cent by end of November compared to the full year 2021. In the top two positions were Greece and Portugal, which offer “golden visas” that grant residence without having to spend time there. Singapore was in third place. “Generally in pure investment migration programmes, such as Portugal, the vast majority of people don’t move. Singapore and China are different. A lot do want to move physically,” says Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners... “Often we do not even deal with the parents. We deal with the manager and what they call the ‘communicator’ — basically a translator,” the vice-principal says, speaking anonymously because of sensitivities involved. “Often one or both parents are travelling in and out of China. They pay a fortune to buy or rent a luxury unit nearby and then the kids live with the maid, the manager and the communicator.”... Private residential property rents hit a record high in 2022, surpassing the previous peak in 2013, according to Urban Redevelopment Authority data — the last time Chinese mainlanders were heavily buying Singaporean residential property... At a time of intense geopolitical rivalry between the west and China, Singapore remains open and welcoming of both... Singapore has also stolen important conferences from under Hong Kong’s nose. SuperReturn Asia, Asia’s leading private capital conference, last year was held in Singapore for the first time and attracted large companies and investors from all over the world, including China. “When Singapore wants something, the whole machine gets behind it. Singapore Venture Capital Association co-hosted [the event], Singapore Tourism Board provided sponsorship, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and other agencies provided content, the sovereign [investors] were supportive and spread the word,” says Shane Chesson, a founding partner of Singapore’s Openspace Ventures who was involved in moving the conference location... If rich Chinese feel that the current level of repression is lessening, that could reduce the number of people seeking an exit. But even more worrying, say experts, is the potential for Beijing to look at Singapore’s welcome to China’s wealthy and their accompanying flows of capital and seeing it as an opportunity to extend its influence. “You run the risk of China being covetous of Singapore as a Chinese outpost. The more Sinicised and mainland it becomes, the more it could be seen as a part of greater China,” says Thompson. “It is an existential risk.”... “The government was quite happy for people to blame Hong Kong expats. But it has become pretty clear that while that was a contributing factor, the real reason for the eye-popping prices has been the Chinese buyers, many of whom are willing to pay double the asking rent, or pay millions in cash for properties that sit empty,” says one real estate agent."

Eric Turkheimer on Twitter - "A challenge: is one person from the Editorial Board of @JConIdeas willing to state publicly that they agree with the content of this article? If not, why exactly did they publish it?"
Sean Last on Twitter - "Social scientists have become so conformist and status quo pushing they they literally can’t understand the very idea of publishing controversial work if you don’t openly agree with it. Attitudes like this would be funny if they weren’t doing so much damage to science."
Trust The Science!

Friday, April 07, 2023

Links - 7th April 2023 (2 - Covid-19)

Lord Sumption: the monstering of a lockdown sceptic - "There is something really frightening about the unhinged mobbing of retired Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption... Sumption appeared on BBC One’sThe Big Questions to explore whether lockdown was ‘punishing too many for the greater good’. In the course of the debate, he entered into an exchange with Deborah James, who has stage-four metastatic bowel cancer. Sumption said that the life of his grandchildren was worth far more than his own because they had ‘much more of it ahead’. James, who hosts the BBC’s You, Me and the Big C podcast, said Sumption was wrong to say that therefore her life was ‘not valuable’ as she had less life ahead than many others. Sumption responded by saying, ‘I didn’t say it was not valuable. I said it was less valuable.’... ‘every policymaker has to make difficult choices. Sometimes that involves putting a value on human life. It’s a standard concept in health economics.’ He was making the point that healthcare necessarily involves deciding on what, or rather who, to prioritise. Doctors make such difficult judgment calls every day. This is not controversial... To pretend that this is a non-issue is to fail to engage with one of the central moral questions raised by the pandemic... Yet an interesting thing has happened since he made these remarks. Instead of interpreting what Sumption said in good faith, instead of engaging with the moral complexity of the debate, there has been a concerted effort to read the worst possible motivations into his remarks. His views have been distorted and called ‘abhorrent’. He has even been compared to a eugenicist. Piers Morgan, who interviewed Sumption on Good Morning Britain, went so far as to claim that Sumption had argued that ‘old people have no value’. It was crazy to watch. All Sumption could do was calmly explain that he had never said any such thing. There is, naturally, a nuanced scientific debate going on about the risks and benefits of lockdown which will no doubt continue for years. But there is also a concerted, bad-faith effort among certain members of the commentariat to monster persuasive advocates against lockdowns. It is an intellectually dishonest attempt to present them as morally repugnant and beyond the pale. This is why Sumption is a key target. He is one of the great legal minds of his generation, and he has spoken consistently about the dangers lockdowns pose to our freedoms... Sumption has been a robust and compelling opponent of government policy over the past year. Maybe you disagree with him, maybe you agree. But it cannot be right that public intellectuals are thrown to the wolves for disagreeing with government policy. We have to curb this McCarthyite hectoring of lockdown sceptics and embrace open and frank debate about the way forward."
From 2021

The witch-hunting of lockdown sceptics - "We have entered a new era of demonology. The hunt is on for heretics and witches who might be held responsible for our current predicament, for the plague of Covid. As in pre-modern times, sinful speakers and thinkers, those who dare to bristle against the political or scientific consensus, are being demonised and publicly shamed as assistants of the plague, as Covid’s willing helpers. They have ‘blood on their hands’, the lockdown fanatics cry, blissfully unaware of how similar they sound to those who in earlier times of disease would drag eccentrics to the stocks in the warped belief that those eccentrics either brought the plague or at least aided its spread. It is hard to think of any other political constituency in recent times who have been as thoroughly demonised as lockdown sceptics. Climate-change sceptics are up there, of course. Deniers of the cult of genderfluidity have had a severe hammering, too. But that all pales, if not into insignificance then at least into the background, in comparison with the war of barbs and defamation against anyone who questions whether lockdown is the right response to Covid-19. These people are branded ‘Covid deniers’. They are ‘dangerous’. Their words kill. They have blood on their hands. They have a ‘hell of a lot to answer for’, says chief demonologist Neil O’Brien, Tory MP for Harborough, inflaming the idea that these people and their sinful speech benefit the plague and directly help to cause injury and death... The demonisation of lockdown sceptics intensifies daily. They are branded ‘agents of disinformation’ (the Observer) who are ‘dangerous’ (the New Statesman). They are killing people, we are told. The reason Covid-19 is spreading again, and killing large numbers, is ‘because this metropolitan clique of elites put forth falsehoods and misinterpretations’, says one columnist (my italics). This is, to be frank, unhinged. It is unreasonable in the extreme to blame the spread of Covid on sceptics who have very little influence in public discussion... we are now in the realm of fantasy, or at least of pre-modern fear and panic, not the realm of reason. The shaming of lockdown sceptics as friends of the plague eerily echoes past outbursts of hysteria during times of transmissible illness. Witchcraft panics exploded during times of plague. As one historical study of witch-hunts in the 1500s and 1600s says, it was often ‘the profound dislocation and mortality produced by the plague’ which created the social conditions for witch-hunting. Plague provided ‘the essential background for the growth [of witch-hunts]’... Indeed, witch-hunts often ran side by side with ‘plague-spreader panics’. These panics, especially prevalent in urban areas, were fuelled by a conviction that certain people, usually those possessed of incorrect, non-Christian beliefs, were assisting the plague... Heresy itself came to be viewed as a kind of plague. The 1645 pamphlet Heresiography branded heresy an ‘infectious and contagious malady’. Heresy was seen as a worse problem than disease itself. ‘The plague of Heresie is greater’, Heresiography declared, ‘and you are now in more danger than when you buried five thousand a week’... The impulse back then was to try to offset the terror of the plague with ritualistic denunciations and in some cases executions of plague-assisters. A similar impulse has gripped the UK today. The seemingly out-of-control nature of Covid-19, the patent failure of three lockdowns to ‘flatten the curve’, has generated instability and even flashes of hysteria in the mainstream. They need someone or something to blame. They need demons. They need engraisseurs. The witch-hunt, once again, becomes a displacing function of the fearful, morally disarrayed governors of society. One commentator – Paul Mason at the New Statesman – has taken the heresy hysteria to its logical conclusion. He has fantasised about which circles of hell lockdown sceptics will be placed in. ‘[T]he final circle has to be reserved for prominent lockdown sceptics… celebrity right-wing opinion-formers with no scientific credentials… It is thanks to them, and their media backers, that the Tory handling of the pandemic has lurched from incompetence and hubris to catastrophic mismanagement.’ In short, their heresy kills, and they must be silenced. Pure medievalism. Stalinism meets Dante."
From 2021. Given that we've known for a while that lockdowns don't reduce covid deaths...

The World Health Organisation is putting us all in danger - "The World Health Organisation (WHO), the body charged with finding how a virus from central China killed many millions of people and upended the world economy, has dropped the ball. An article appeared in Nature magazine this week, headlined, “WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of Covid-origins investigation”. It quoted one of the WHO’s scientists, Maria Van Kerkhove, as saying that “there is no phase two… that plan has changed”. A day later, the WHO insisted it had been misunderstood and would continue investigating. Such confusion is what we have come to expect from this unaccountable, premium-travel-addicted, Geneva-based bureaucracy. In 2020, the WHO took a year to even begin investigating, only then sending a team on a brief trip to Wuhan in early 2021. That ended with a farcical press conference in which, to general incredulity, the WHO seemed to endorse the Chinese regime’s view that a lab leak was extremely unlikely and would not be investigated further, while treating the ridiculous possibility that the virus arrived in Wuhan on frozen foods from abroad as entirely reasonable. The WHO then backtracked and promised a further investigation. Two years on, and we are still waiting for any news from their work. To call this progress sluggish would be an insult to molluscs. If millions of people had died from an industrial or nuclear accident, we would not spend three years shrugging our shoulders and saying that we may never find out how it happened. The excuse is that Beijing refuses to provide full details of what happened in Wuhan’s hospitals or its virology laboratories. Not that the WHO, which often kow-tows to China, will put it that way. “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins,” is as close as Dr van Kerkhove gets. Of course, we know why this is happening. The Chinese authorities, having failed to find infected animals in the local seafood market, having failed to fool the world with a red herring about pangolins (whose virus was different), and having seen their frozen foods theory ridiculed, are running out of alibis to exculpate the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For years, that laboratory experimented with coronaviruses – an area of much controversy within the scientific community – and has since been reluctant to share its virus database. This is not the first time, moreover, that the WHO has proved unfit for its mission. In 2014, it initially turned away warnings that Ebola was getting out of control in west Africa, for fear of upsetting national governments. In 2015, it told the world that climate change is the greatest threat to human health in the current century, suggesting that it might be neglecting the day job of preventing pandemics. To this day, it demands bans on vaping, despite evidence that vaping can save lives by reducing smoking... The failure to investigate Covid’s origins leaves the world vulnerable to the next pandemic"

The left finally wakes to authoritarian nature of COVID lockdowns - "Cooper and Navarro-Genie cover the science, politics and economics of the lockdowns, but they also spend many pages tying the lockdowns to authoritarian impulses to use fear to trigger interventions, an argument supported in part by references to a long line of philosophers, including Hanna Arendt, the 20th century political writer whose most famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, deals with the use of “fear” to drive expanded government roles in society... Canada’s COVID sets the lockdowns into a grand sweep of ideological history from Karl Marx to Immanuel Kant to Alexis de Tocqueville. Cooper and Navarro-Genie argue their case against the COVID lockdowns from what would be considered the right-wing conservative view of the world. But a new critical thread leading to the same conclusions is emerging on the left. Three Canadian academics have just published a paper calling for major new research from “the academic left” to probe what the authors consider to be political abuse of pandemic fear and the use of “catastrophizing” to justify the imposition of authoritarian policies. “We need a sustained collaborate research effort that investigates why the Academic Left lost sight of established anti-authoritiarian thinking,” say the authors. Published January 23 in a scholarly Swedish journal, the paper is titled “The academic left, human geography, and the rise of authoritarianism during the COVID-19 pandemic.” It was written by geographers Dragos Simandan of Brock University and Claus Rinner and Valentina Capurri at Toronto Metropolitan University. The hope of the three Canadian geographers, as “habitually critical, progressive academics,” is to “spur the growth of a new wave of anti-authoritarian Leftist geographical thinking that reaffirms the centrality of human rights and civil liberties to make the world a better place.” They too site Arendt: “That the deliberate spreading of fear was often a key governmental manoeuvre for increasing population compliance should have been an early red flag for geographers and social scientists familiar with the nefarious politics of this emotion, as exposed by luminaries such as … Hannah Arendt.” But the academic left fell mostly silent through the lockdown fear mongering. In scathing language and supported by detailed references to the academic world’s response to the emerging COVID repression, the paper thoroughly documents its case. Their objective is to “call attention to the emerging literature critiquing the authoritarian excesses of the COVID-19 pandemic response.” What, they ask, might have led to a failure of the academic world to challenge the rising authoritarian bent of pandemic policies? “A distinctly worrying possibility, we argue, is that the anaemic critique of the authoritarian dimension of the pandemic response might reflect or harbinger the rise of authoritarian attitudes and practices within the Academic Left and human geography themselves.” A strong accusation, but one that comes with hundreds of bits of evidence piled up through the pages of the paper, dense with references, citations and quotations, including this one from a pair of Radical Marxist scholars in a 2020 paper that describes the bizarre corner in which the Left painted itself. “The left’s newly discovered love for state authority and organs enforcing these measures, a love in the name of the ‘vulnerable,’ precisely reflects a radical indifference towards the precariat and ‘underclass.'” In a January 25 public Substack post on the paper — Calling on the Left to do What’s Right — co-author Claus Rinner summarizes the challenge he and his colleagues faced to get their paper published, fully peer-reviewed, in the Swedish journal. Challenges with other journals included delays, fiddling, calls for rewrites, length reductions, all leading to nothing. How did the world end up with the pandemic lockdown crisis? Rinner summarizes the paper’s conclusions. “For answers, we refer to disproportionate and sensationalist media reporting, social media feedback loops, ‘groupthink’ among decision-makers, manufactured consent, and other social and psychological mechanisms leading to calls for more, rather than less, authoritarian measures. We deplore the abandonment of freedom and individual autonomy as shared values by the Left. The politicization of many aspects of the COVID response resulted in further defensiveness within camps and a ‘fear of guilt by association’ with the ‘wrong side.'” In specific terms, the paper often reflects the same issues raised by critics on the conservative/libertarian side of the lockdown crisis. One of their shots is taken at the lack of “cost-benefit” research prior to the imposition of health regulations — issues raised at length by Douglas Allen, a Simon Fraser University economist whose two papers for the Fraser Institute summarize the failure to study risks created by the lockdowns. In one paper, Lockdowns: A Final Assessment, “All of the lockdown efforts amounted to almost nothing”... anti-lockdown commentary on the left is global and reaches back to the early days of the pandemic but has been suppressed, often by others on the left. A good example is Giorgio Agamben, a famed 80-year-old Italian philosopher described not long ago in the International Socialism journal as a complex but valued philosopher who “offers an analysis from which Marxists and indeed all revolutionaries can learn.” But that was in 2013. In early 2020, Agamben denounced the application of emergency lockdown measures that stifled democracies and freedom. He blogged about “The Invention of an Epidemic” and in a paper Agamben said the issue “is nothing less than the creation of a sort of ‘health terror’ as an instrument for governing what are called ‘worst case scenarios.'” For this and other writings, Agamben was heavily criticized by leftists writing in Slate and The New York Times. Last October, a student lecture at Stanford University by Agamben on lockdowns was cancelled and his views subsequently condemned by the organizers."

Meme - Kat Rosenfield @katrosenfield: "This is where the calls for amnesty fall short for me; some of these policies were absolutely inhuman, utterly unnecessary, and it would be nice to have assurances that they will not happen again"
PoliMath @politicalmath: "people died alone, without their families, without their spouses. my neighbor was torn from her husband's side during his heart attack and not allowed into the hospital until he had already died. it's good to know there are doctors laughing about it"
AndyAF @CactusAndy: "They're still raging mad they couldn't get haircuts or go out to brunch for 3 months in 2020.."
Noha Aboelata, MD @NohaAboelataMD: "*laughing and crying* Yes, and they had to miss pilates to babysit their own children."

Johns Hopkins professor: US gov't was the 'greatest perpetrator of COVID misinformation' - "Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Dr. Marty Makary called out the U.S. government on Tuesday at a House Select Subcommittee hearing on the Coronavirus pandemic for misleading the public. Speaking to the committee, Makary noted, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government. Misinformation that COVID was spread through surface transmission, that vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity, that masks were effective. Now, we have the definitive Cochran review. What do you do with that review? Cochran is the most authoritative evidence body in medicine. It has been for decades. Do you just ignore it? Not talk about it?” “That myocarditis was more common after the infection than the vaccine,” Makary continued. “Not true. It’s 4-28 times more common after the vaccine. That young people benefit from a booster, misinformation. Our two top experts on vaccines quit the FDA in protest over this particular issue — using boosters in young, healthy people. The data was never there. That’s why the CDC never disclosed hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under age 50.” “Over and over again, we’ve seen something that goes far beyond using your best judgment with the information at hand. We’ve seen something which is unforgivable and that is the weaponization of medical research itself. The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] putting out its own shoddy studies, like their own study looking at natural immunity, looking at one state for two months when they had data for years on all 50 states. Why did they only report that one sliver of data? Why did they salami-slice the database? Cause it gave them the result they wanted.” Makary also remarked that the lab leak theory for COVID-19 was a “no brainer.”... “The reason [lab-leak hypothesis for Covid origin] is even an issue is that it is embarrassing is we funded the lab.""
To mask fetishists, the most authoritative evidence body in medicine for decades is worthless when it contradicts their religion "Disinformation" is anything that contradicts the narrative

I thought the Charter would protect our rights during the pandemic. I was wrong - The Hub - "A constitution is meant to demarcate acceptable from unacceptable state conduct, not act as a sort of grab bag of contingent interests. If a right is little more than one norm or interest to be weighed against others, and the government’s reasoning for its actions is deferred to across the board, the Charter is nothing but a lame duck showpiece."

Three Years Late, the Lancet Recognizes Natural Immunity - WSJ - "The Lancet medical journal this month published a review of 65 studies that concluded prior infection with Covid—i.e., natural immunity—is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines. The most surprising news was that the study made the mainstream press. “Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” NBC reported on Feb. 16. The study found that prior infection offered 78.6% protection against reinfection from the original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants at 40 weeks, which slipped to 36.1% against Omicron. Protection against severe illness remained around 90% across all variants after 40 weeks. These results exceed what other studies have found for two and even three mRNA doses. This comes after nearly three years of public-health officials’ dismissing the same hypothesis. But now that experts at the University of Washington have confirmed it in a leading—and left-leaning—journal, it’s fit to print. The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern: The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right. The supposition that prior Covid infection could protect against future illness was deeply rooted in immunology before studies bore it out... The concept of natural immunity isn’t scientifically controversial, yet it was disparaged by public-health officials who associated it with opposition to lockdowns and the Great Barrington Declaration in autumn 2020... The public-health clerisy worried that acknowledging natural immunity would encourage people to get infected or discourage them from getting vaccines. The first concern was unsupported, and the second was no reason to deny scientific reality. Public-health officials in the U.S. nonetheless dug in and refused to provide exemptions from vaccine mandates for those with natural immunity, as many European countries did. Meantime, tech companies suppressed discussions of natural immunity... The false denial of natural immunity caused vaccine skeptics to dig in and fueled suspicions that public-health officials were in the pocket of vaccine makers and dishonest about other things as well. The Lancet study could serve a useful political purpose by giving public-health officials cover to relax vaccine mandates, which in turn could reduce resistance to vaccines. But this would require the clerisy to concede its opponents were right."
I still see vaxholes insisting on mandatory vaccination and punishing those who refuse to accept it. So much for trusting the science - it's just an excuse to punish political opponents

Meme - Martian Magazine: "VIRAL AH-HEM. THANK YOU FOR HEARING ME TODAY. I'VE COMPILED MY RESEARCH ON THIS PANDEMIC AND THE RESULTS ARE VERY CLEAR. IT'S YOUR FAULT THIS VIRUS IS SPREADING! YOU DID THIS! YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE, YOU DIDN'T PROTECT YOURSELVES. YOUR DISGUSTING, SELFISH BEHAVIOR HAS ONLY MADE THINGS WORSE!!"
"AIDS Walk. Fight 4 a cure!"

The White House Covid Censorship Machine - WSJ - "Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily. The emails emerged Jan. 6 in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private plaintiffs represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance... President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy later publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Mr. Biden his “message to platforms like Facebook.” He replied, “They’re killing people.” Mr. Biden later claimed he meant users, not platforms, were killing people. But the record shows Facebook itself was the target of the White House’s pressure campaign... These emails establish a clear pattern: Mr. Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the companies’ failure to censor Covid-related content to his satisfaction. The companies change their policies to address his demands. As a result, thousands of Americans were silenced for questioning government-approved Covid narratives. Two of the Missouri plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, are epidemiologists whom multiple social-media platforms censored at the government’s behest for expressing views that were scientifically well-founded but diverged from the government line—for instance, that children and adults with natural immunity from prior infection don’t need Covid vaccines."
So much for private companies doing it not being government censorship

Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics - "The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors and research scientists from different countries who have been targets of suppression and/or censorship following their publications and statements in relation to COVID-19 that challenge official views. Our findings point to the central role played by media organizations, and especially by information technology companies, in attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures. In the effort to silence alternative voices, widespread use was made not only of censorship, but of tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position. In place of open and fair discussion, censorship and suppression of scientific dissent has deleterious and far-reaching implications for medicine, science, and public health."

NIH director Francis Collins wanted a 'take-down' to stifle Covid-19 debate - "emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Institute for Economic Research revealed what I see as worrisome communication between Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and others within the National Institutes of Health in the fall of 2020. At issue was the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter written in October 2020 and eventually signed by thousands of scientists. It argues that Covid-19 policy should focus on protecting the elderly and vulnerable, and largely re-open society and school for others. At the time, Americans would have benefited from a broad debate among scientists about the available policy options for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, and perhaps a bit of compromise. The emails tell us why that isn’t what we got... We needed “a Covid policy response that engages with people who hold views and perspectives different than our own,” I wrote then. What concerns me about the NIH director’s email and his interview on television is that he appeared unwilling to have this dialogue. Collins’s day job does not make him arbiter of scientific truth, the Pope for all scientists. On questions of unprecedented pandemic policy, he is surely entitled to his opinion — as we all are — but his is just one opinion of many. When it comes to lockdowns or school closures, the answer to the question of whether the benefits exceed the harms and, if so, under what conditions, is far from certain, and scientists will continue to study this for decades. As a good scientist, Collins should have recognized the massive uncertainty around these policies. Collins’s response to a memo signed by thousands of scientists should not have been to call for an immediate and devastating take down, but to use his pulpit as NIH director to hold a series of public discussions and dialogues. In a world where scientists were trapped in their own homes for months, a series of dialogues — even virtual ones — made available for the broader scientific community, policy makers, and the public would have benefited us all... One tenet of the Great Barrington Declaration was that schools should reopen immediately and broadly. In hindsight, it is now clear that reopening schools could have been done safely, as was done in many European nations in 2020 and in the U.S. in the fall of 2021, even before vaccines became available for children... A dialogue might also have led to better strategies for nursing home residents, the group most decimated by Covid-19... Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, and I called for dialogue and debate among scientists without demonization in April 2020. I’m disappointed to see a few months later that the NIH director, a man uniquely positioned to foster such a debate, had actively sought to thwart and discredit scientists with alternative ideas to the pandemic response. His ad-hominem comment that the authors were “fringe” was unnecessary and unhelpful. In the weeks that followed, more and more mud would be slung against the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, as well as against scientists who held alternative policy views, and favored more and stronger restrictions. The vitriol ensured that the country would not have the dialogue it so desperately needed... Had Collins, a man who has contributed greatly to science, chosen dialogue instead of contributing to animosity and combativeness, we might have been in a better place today."

Emails show Dr. Fauci commissioned a February 2020 paper to disprove COVID leaked from a Wuhan lab - "Newly-released emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic show the former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases both commissioned and had final approval on a scientific paper which claimed it was 'improbable' that the virus leaked out of a lab in Wuhan, China. Just a few weeks later, he stood next to then-President Donald Trump at a press conference and cited that very paper as evidence that the idea of a lab leak was implausible - without admitting he commissioned it. Many media outlets then started to dismiss the idea, only to later suggest the lab leak theory is possible as new evidence arose supporting the claim... Fauci commissioned and edited a paper entitled The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 before he cited it as evidence that COVID did not originate from a lab in Wuhan. It was written just four days after Fauci, and his NIH boss Francis Collins, held a call with the authors to discuss reports that COVID may have been leaked from a genetic testing lab in Wuhan and 'may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.' And in the emails, Dr. Kristian Andersen admits that Fauci 'prompted' him to write the paper with the goal of 'disproving' the lab leak theory."

America' COVID Response Was Based on Lies - "Almost all of America's leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as "learned" or "new evidence." Little acknowledgement of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology. The historical record is critical. We have seen a macabre Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns' critics, alongside absurd denials of officials' own incessant demands for them... Numerous experts—including John Ioannidis, David Katz, and myself—called for targeted protection, a safer alternative to widespread lockdowns, in national media beginning in March of 2020. That proposal was rejected. History's biggest public health policy failure came at the hands of those who recommended the lockdowns and those who implemented them, not those who advised otherwise. The tragic failure of reckless, unprecedented lockdowns that were contrary to established pandemic science, and the added massive harms of those policies on children, the elderly, and lower-income families, are indisputable and well-documented in numerous studies. This was the biggest, the most tragic, and the most unethical breakdown of public health leadership in modern history. In a democracy, indeed in any ethical and free society, the truth is essential...
Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America's public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:
1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.
2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.
3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.
4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.
5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.
6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.
7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.
8. Teachers are at especially high risk.
9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.
10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.
None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable"

Canada Nixes Plan to Bring Extra Michigan Vaccines to Border Tunnel - The New York Times - "The Canadian government has blocked an Ontario mayor’s plan to vaccinate residents in a tunnel on the U.S. border, using some of Michigan’s surplus, soon-to-expire Covid-19 vaccine doses... It was an ambitious idea: Since Canadian officials wouldn’t allow U.S. vaccines into the country, American pharmacists would come to the edge of the U.S. border inside the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which connects Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and jab the vaccine into the arms of Canadians on the other side."
From 2021. This underscores how political covid policies were

Singapore Should Have Closed Borders More Aggressively at The Beginning of Covid - Bloomberg - "Singapore should have closed its borders more aggressively once it appeared Covid-19 was spreading globally, a government report found, hinting that it will act faster in future pandemics."
The disastrous circus is going to repeat itself

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