The Mainstream Narrative is Putting Lives at Risk

Now that the US FDA has fully approved the Pfizer vaccine, and vaccine mandates and passports are accelerating down the pike, I want to provide some friendly push-back, if I may.

To be clear, I respect each and every one’s right to make medical decisions for themselves. These are confusing times with a lot of confusing information out there. On top of that, each individual has their own unique medical conditions.  So individual cost/ benefit analyses are very personal matters. I offer no push-back on anyone’s decision of whether or not to take a Covid vaccine. Your decision is completely your business.

However, the more our society mandates these vaccines that use a novel technology with no long-term testing, and the more our society requires Covid vaccination passports for people to simply meet daily needs, the more and more I will push-back. Promise.

So here’s my friendly version of push-back:

Hold on. Doesn’t the mainstream narrative say that all of the vaccine-hesitant are “putting lives at risk”

But is it not the mainstream narrative which has:

* suppressed information about early treatment protocols for Covid*, and told people to stay home without treatment until they struggle to breathe (by when the majority of damage from Covid has set in);

* suppressed information about how strong the signal around BMI is for the potential of Covid harm, the only stronger signal being that of age (which nobody can do anything about);

* considered firing doctors and nurses who have been working tirelessly for one and half years on the front lines of treating people with Covid, working this whole time without a vaccine, but now firing those same doctors and nurses for not getting a vaccine;

- is the mainstream narrative not the one “putting lives at risk”?

Hold on. Doesn’t the mainstream narrative say that all of the vaccine-hesitant are ignorant?

But now it’s telling us that there are a significant number of doctors and nurses who have been on the front lines of treating Covid patients for a year and half, and that many of them are refusing to get vaccinated? Does that mean those doctors and nurses are ignorant? Ignorant of what? Does that even make any sense?

And the administrators who want to fire those doctors and nurses, and leave themselves short-staffed to handle a continuing pandemic, those are the smart ones in the room?

Is this not disrespectful to the point of defying common decency? Does the mainstream narrative not have it backwards about who is being ignorant here? Is the mainstream narrative not the one “putting lives at risk”?

Why do I remain Vaccine-Hesitant?

You may ask, why do I personally continue to be so vaccine-hesitant despite all of the abundant evidence for how successful the Covid vaccines are at reducing symptoms in the short-term?

If you did ask that, thanks.

My reasons for being Covid vaccine-hesitant are all about Time Time and yes, also about Time.

I believe that Time is the board for this evolutionary game we are caught in. The Covid vaccines may indeed reduce symptoms in the short-term, but it is the medium and long-term which captures my interest.

Within my last blog post, “Homo Narritivus”, I laid out some surprising information about what happened in India just a few months after our narrative managers were so clamorous about the rise of the Delta variant there. Feel free to check that post out and then look into what is happening in India yourself.

Since that post, I will simply add a stress here that it would serve anyone to look into how different states within India have put into place different Covid protocols, and how those different states within India have fared with those different protocols. So have at it.

I admit, however, that the data from India can seem a wee bit murky. So in this post, I won’t talk about India any more. 

Instead, I will talk about England, because it is the best example to explain my vaccine-hesitancy in relation to the Medium-term outlook within Time. So here goes:

My Main Medium-Term Reason for Vaccine-Hesitancy at this point:

I’ve been looking at the numbers for England – a highly developed nation with over 68 million people with a national health-care system with excellent record-keeping that regularly updates their data. Their numbers should matter. And I should add – England is a country that was a little ahead of us here in the US in their push to vaccinate against Covid-19. So their numbers can be downright instructive regarding what’s to come for us.

England’s total hospitalizations and deaths of the fully vaccinated are substantially increasing Over Time. By “fully vaccinated”, I specifically mean those who have had two doses of Covid vaccine for over 14 days.

I am using data from Public Health England's (PHE) regular "SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern and Variants under Investigation in England" Technical Briefings, all of which are publicly available online.

Hospitalizations*:

PHE data through June 21, 2021 shows 11% of Covid- Delta hospitalizations were fully vaccinated.

PHE data through July 19, 2021 shows 21% of Covid- Delta hospitalizations were fully vaccinated.

PHE data between July 19 and August 15, shows 40% of Covid-Delta hospitalizations were fully vaccinated.

PHE data between August 15 and August 29, shows 49% of Covid-Delta hospitalizations were fully vaccinated.

This is the crux of the problem: too much data these days fails to segregate the most recent data from past data (There’s Time again). So it fails to provide an accurate picture of change. This failure has been, and will continue to be, deadly. We are dealing, in my opinion, with a fast moving situation. So data that does not reflect the changing conditions can kill us.

So therefore, to recap, the percentage of Covid- Delta hospitalizations in England who were fully vaccinated is rapidly increasing over Time, and is already almost equal to the percentage of English who are fully vaccinated.

Deaths:

Through July 19, 49% of all Covid-Delta deaths were fully vaccinated.

Between July 19 and August 15, 62% of all Covid-Delta deaths were fully vaccinated.

Between August 16 and August 29, 68% of all Covid-Delta deaths were fully vaccinated.

So therefore, the percentage of Covid- Delta deaths in England who are fully vaccinated is and has been very high - higher than the percentage of English fully vaccinated, and yet it too is increasing over Time.

Base-Rate Fallacy?

We don’t want to fall into the base-rate fallacy, so we need to compare these percentages to the overall percentage of England’s population that was fully vaccinated over 14 days. 

One needs to note here that a lot of reporting in the media about “% vaccination numbers” excludes those under 18. But the PHE Hospital data doesn’t exclude those under 18, so we won’t either.

NHS Data says 34.0 million people in England had two doses by August 15, 2021.

Worldometer says the Population of England as of July 10th 2021 was 68.25 million.

Summary about England:

Therefore 50% of England was fully vaccinated for over 14 days by August 29, 2021.

The fully vaccinated were responsible for 49% of the hospitalizations and 68% of the deaths due to Covid-Delta for the two weeks ending Aug 29. 

What is going on here?! Check out the above graph. Do you see what is happening Over Time?

Am I getting something wrong with this data? Investigate it yourself. This is impeccable data from a country of over 68 million people! We will likely never get better data than this. Please use it.

Do governments not collect this kind of data in order to inform official policy? Because this is alarming.

To me, this data begs us to question the use of Covid vaccines for anyone but those facing the most severe risk from Covid. But as I said at the beginning, each person’s risk/ benefit analysis is personal.

But without any doubt, this data screams for us to stop vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and vaccine shaming immediately!

Some of My Long-Term Reasons for Vaccine Hesitancy:

There is so much to say here. But after the above, nothing should need to be said. But I will give a few reasons anyways.

First, a new study shows that not only does the evolving virus look poised to acquire complete resistance to all existing “wild-type” spike vaccines, but that the virus could easily mutate Over Time in such a way so that the existing vaccines could potentially enhance the disease (this is known as ADE - Antibody Dependent Enhancement).* (FYI: this paper is a pre-print, so not peer-reviewed. So who knows? We’ll see.)

If this did happen, it would make any disasters our ERs are presently experiencing seem like a cake-walk. Let’s pray that it does not happen.

Second, there are incredibly important reasons to test vaccines Over Time for multiple years – as we always used to do. It can take years for unexpected side effects to show up. I know many billions of our public tax dollars were spent on mRNA technology R&D. And even more billions of dollars in private profits are now being made from the Covid vaccines.

But there are simply too few previous long-term case studies of mRNA technology being actually used medically on humans at all. Let alone for a vaccine. The primary previous use of medical mRNA on humans was with late-stage cancer patients, who would understandably be more willing to take a risk with a novel therapy. The scientific community used to have respect for the “precautionary principle”. Remember that? I don't see it much anymore.

Third, there are incredibly important reasons that we followed in the past, where we would never roll out a vaccine into an active outbreak when that vaccine only reduced symptoms, but did not provide sterilizing immunity.

If all you do is reduce symptoms, but allow infection and transmission to continue, then you are providing an evolutionary playground Over Time for the pathogen to adapt around the vaccine in every vaccinated individual. That’s a very bad idea. However, that is exactly what we are doing with these novel vaccines. And “adapt around” is what the viruses have done and will continue to do. We would never have attempted it in the past, but I guess it’s OK now just so long as society can continue to blame the variants on the un-vaccinated.

If there was even the slightest bit of laboratory evidence that the existing vaccines could potentially but realistically enhance this disease over time, we should stop even thinking about mandatory vaccinations right now and completely rule out that possibility.

But alas, there is a bit of evidence. See the scientific paper linked to at the very bottom. (Once again, I admit it is not yet peer-reviewed.)

However, if there was even the slightest bit of evidence from the real world – from a developed country with impeccable data for millions of people that shows that, Over Time, fully vaccinated people have rapidly increasing hospitalization rates, and that overall already have significantly higher death rates than the un-vaccinated, then we should stop even thinking about mandatory vaccinations right NOW!

But alas, there is plenty of evidence. Admittedly, I’m not clear on what better evidence you might need than England’s. Please check out all of the data for yourself in the links and spreadsheet below. Don’t trust my numbers? Fine. Dig through the publicly available source data yourself. It jumps out at you.

If, after investigating this evidence, you feel like you still want to take the vaccine to reduce your short-term symptoms, then go ahead. I still respect your right to make your own medical decision for vaccines utilizing novel technology for which there is no long term testing. Your analysis of the risk/ benefit ratio for you is just that – your analysis for you. We will all have to live with the consequences of our decisions on this.

Wrap Up

In my opinion, we cannot vaccinate our way out of this. I will, however, openly admit that the new mRNA technology is very clever. It is very clever indeed.

However, it seems crazy to me that we think we are going to win this evolutionary race by utilizing this clever new technology of ours. We can’t provide enough existing vaccines to a significant portion of the globe right now, try as we might. But we are to somehow believe that we are going to be able to race to manufacture global levels of updated booster shots invented on-the-fly playing whack-a-mole with the continuing rapid mutations from an evolutionary sprinter like Covid? Uh-huh. Right.

In my opinion, a bunch of people are racing to reduce their symptoms in the short-term by taking vaccines utilizing a novel technology. That might work out for them. It might not. My guess, informed by the very best data we have at hand, is that time is not on their side. The virus bats last.

I could be wrong. Of course I could be wrong! This is the future we are talking about here. The future is notoriously hard to predict. We all could be wrong about everything we’ve ever said (the most likely option really).

But after reading all of this (and thank you so so much if you actually made it all the way through – really, really thank you), if you still want to shame others who make a different analysis as you as being ignorant or selfish, and if you want to force them to go along with you by threatening their job or their right to shop for food – well then I truly hope that you can clearly see why an intelligent person might just want to tell you to go shove it.

Are you OK with vaccine mandates being rolled out everywhere? Are you OK with Vaccine Passports being rolled out more and more?

Please do your part to Stop the mandates and passports.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Health and happiness to you all. I mean that. Take care,       

                                 

P.S. None of the above is to say that I as an un-vaccinated person might not get sick from Covid and be permanently harmed. Or even die. I might. I know that’s true. This certainly isn’t the Black Plague, and it’s certainly not the common cold either.

Hey, you made it totally to the end! Amazing. Just amazing. Thanks again.

Here’s a very short story and a “poem” just for those special few. It too is about Time. Consider it a “bonus track”, if you will:

When I was 21, I was working on a compost pile on my campus’ organic vegetable farm. One minute I was feeling fine. The next minute, I was deathly ill. With excruciating effort I walked the trail through the woods to the main campus, got on a bus, walked a block home, and completely passed out in bed. I was totally out. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sick in my life.

After a few hours, I woke up, still feeling horrible. I reached out from my bed and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. While laying on my belly with my head over the edge of the futon that was on the floor, I wrote down the following. Immediately after writing, I passed back out again until the next morning, when I woke up feeling fine, like nothing had ever happened:

Killing Time

We kill Time

but Time is where the sun is

how far away you are from camp

how prepared you are to spend the night huddled and alone

Time is having not much longer to sleep, for day comes

close on the heels of a slivered moon rising in the night

Eternity dreams

Eternity dreams too within the smallest of moments

not only at the edges of this great expanse of time

Time is our greatest gift, because it is from time

from the smallest of moments bubbling forth

which we draw our own powers to give

Our use of the world is a giving

make no mistake

a giving of our attention, our respect, our care

Convenience kills

Convenience kills what eternity dreams

Behind all of the plastic trash on all of the plastic shelves

packed full within a hollowed out place-less-ness

lies only our fear that we have nothing left to give

Get the science straight

barely behind that final fear

our black hole awaits

All right, so there are voices, inner and outer,

telling us we have nothing left to give

that our care will never be able to flesh itself out

that we feel alone because we deserve it

that the holes in our guts are too horrible to look at

let alone cross

and since we deserve loneliness

we would have to cross totally alone

All right, so now we know how the disease spreads

so now we recognize the voice of a forked tongue

so now we can remind one another

* “hospitalizations” in this post always means someone previously tested for Covid who entered an ER and was admitted overnight. FYI: I’m using as the “Hospitalization” data the rows entitled “Cases where presentation to emergency care resulted in overnight inpatient admission (exclusion)”. This row excludes data from patients who were first diagnosed with Covid after entering the hospital. Someone could also run the numbers on the adjoining row that includes that data. I haven’t yet.  

*“The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is poised to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines”; https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.22.457114v1.full.pdf (This is admittedly a pre-print, and not yet peer-reviewed. And admittedly, the paper is pointing to in-vitro work, and not in-vivo. This is the paper that points to the fact that in a lab they have seen a mutation that could realistically cause ADE in humans, but they don’t use that acronym. Once again, the virus bats last).

*Early Treatment Protocols per the FLCCC Alliance, (Front Line Covid Critical Care Alliance), for just one example.

DATA:

My spreadsheet I used to compute percentages, with links to original source data:

PHE Data

Ooops. I thought that link would work for everyone. I just found out that it doesn't. Sorry about that.

Try this link. Hopefully it works for everyone:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AQgsHB6PBaw8-5g-eAKdhsurj9nEeIKp9YRhBrF18_Q/edit?usp=sharing

If you want me to send this to you as an Excel spreadsheet, just let me know. I've tried to copy and paste it at the bottom as best as I know how right now. 

COMMENTS NOTE: So I've received multiple comments and emails that attempt to cite "Fact Checks" that "dispute" my conclusions. Before sending me a comment with such a linked "Fact Check", please read the following:

All such “Fact Checks” cited were written over two months ago. The latest data-set they refer to is from June 21^st, 2021. This was the data summarized in PHE Technical Bulletin #17 “SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern and Variants Under Consideration”.

This is the data represented by the First set of bars on my graph. I used that data-set as the reference point by which we can spot the subsequent trend.

The rest of my graph represents the data as published by PHE over the last two months for which we have data, as documented in the last 5 PHE Technical Bulletins - #18, #19, #20, #21, & #22.

If you read my post, you will notice that “My reasons for being Covid vaccine-hesitant are all about Time Time and yes, also about Time.”

After that sentence, I capitalize and underline the word Time in my post over 10 times. I attempt to stress how important Time is to understand what is going on in this fast moving situation.

It seems rather common for folks to spend a couple of minutes “googling” a fact check, but then to not take one minute to see if that “fact check” truly disputes any actual fact they were trying to check.

Considering what’s at stake here, I recommend that we try to not do that.

I spent a lot of time creating this spreadsheet that I shared at the end of my blog: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AQgsHB6PBaw8-5g-eAKdhsurj9nEeIKp9YRhBrF18_Q/edit?usp=sharing

I created it for two reasons. 1) was to be able to segregate out the most recent data from the previous data. As I stated in my blog - “This is the crux of the problem: too much data these days fails to segregate the most recent data from past data (There’s Time again). So it fails to provide an accurate picture of change.”

And 2) was to be able to calculate percentages.

All of the data entered into the spreadsheet came straight out of the PHE Technical Bulletins #17, #19, #21, & #22. The spreadsheet gives the actual page numbers for each of the bulletins I used data from.

Will the US follow the trend from England - where every week the pandemic becomes less and less a “pandemic of the un-vaccinated” and more and more a “pandemic of the vaccinated”? Who knows?

Israel is also good to look at regarding what the future has in store. Israel was even ahead of England in their roll-out of the jabs. They are already talking about the Fourth jabs.

What is the cumulative effect of jab after jab? Again, who knows? That also has no long-term testing. Think about that.

Whether or not you want to take that risk is up to you.

I personally choose not to hand over the future of my immune system to the pharmaceutical industry.

And this is my main point: Nobody making a choice as I am should be discriminated against, fired, or culturally shamed for making a different informed choice than another.

And yet that seems to now be the rule of the day.

“Othering” people like that is a slippery slope. History tells us that it doesn’t always work out so well.

I have no intention of letting this new cultural “Othering” continue without providing push-back with heart and with facts.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Addendum on 10/31/2021: Corrections and updates to both the spreadsheet and chart included in this blogpost are included in the next blogpost - "Shall We Make a Deal?"   https://cluelesshonky.blogspot.com/2021/09/lets-make-deal.html

Further information regarding the corrections can be seen in the Comments for that post.

Homo Narrativus

“Homo Narrativus”

Our species’ present name, “Homo sapiens” (“Wise Hominid”), is more than a little misleading. “Homo narrativus” (“Hominid of Narrative”) is dramatically more appropriate.

We are the hominid that perceives and engages the world through narrative. Please let me explain.

I once saw a presentation where 10 playing cards were flashed on a screen for a fraction of a second, one at a time. The presenter told the audience to raise their hands if they could identify the cards. During the first round, no one could ID any of the cards.

The cards were then each flashed again for a slightly longer fraction of a second. Now, a couple of people raised their hands for 8 of the cards. But nobody could ID the other 2.

The cards were then each flashed again for an even slightly longer fraction of a second. Now, most people raised their hands for 8 of the cards. Still, nobody could ID the other 2.

Once again, the cards were each flashed for an even slightly longer fraction of a second. Now, everyone raised their hands for 8 of the cards. But still, nobody could ID the remaining 2 cards.

So the presenter flashed each of those two remaining cards over again, for slightly longer times. After a couple of extra rounds, still nobody could ID those 2 cards.

The presenter stopped here. And he asked, can anybody tell me absolutely anything about either of these 2 cards? Nobody could. Everyone in the room was looking around at each other wondering “what is going on?”

Finally, on the next round for those two cards, slightly longer, a few people laughed. They got it.

The two cards that were so hard to see were cards that “don’t exist”. A 3 of Red Spades. A Jack of Black Hearts.

The craziest thing in this situation was that absolutely nobody in the room could say anything about either card. For the 3 of Red Spades, nobody knew it was a 3. Nobody knew it was Red. Nobody knew it was a Spade. We literally could not see it at all. The same was true for the Jack.

This was after a couple of rounds of longer exposures after everyone had easily identified the other 8 cards.

We all had a narrative in our minds. There are 52 cards. In four suits. Two suits, Hearts and Diamonds, are red. The other two suits, Spades and Clubs, are black. Each suit has an Ace thru 10 and three face cards….

The reality of those 2 cards we experienced that day, however, did not fit our narrative. So we literally were blind to them. We had to experience them for much longer than we did the normal cards for us to begin to see them at all.

This is why it is so crucial for us rename ourselves Homo narrativus. For two huge reasons:

1) Renaming ourselves will help us admit to ourselves we perceive and engage reality through narrative - that narratives frame our perceptual field. That's mostly good, and is why it evolved. Narratives allow us to make sense of what otherwise would be overwhelming amounts of chaotic information. 

2) The "shadow" side of this, unfortunately, is that we are blind at first to anything that doesn't fit our narrative. Anything that doesn't fit our narrative is literally Non-Sense. We usually won't sense it until we run into it.

Renaming ourselves "Homo narrativus" will therefore help remind us to regularly question our narratives so that we can catch our inevitable blind spots before we run headlong into disaster and tragedy.

The famous scientist Richard Feynman captured this so well when he said in regards to science:

“Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says that science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it. Experience teaches it. If they say to you that science has shown such and such, you might ask ‘How does science show it – how did the scientists find out – how, what, where?’

Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at.”

"Experts" frame their perceptual field through narrative too. They also have blind spots that can only be overcome through actual experience. Like everyone else, they too can fall into the trap of only engaging what their narrative already "knows". Thus they won't get to run into their own blind spots.

We modern human's lives are different than our ancestors in so many ways, but one of the biggest is the extent to which we affect, and are affected by, so much that is beyond the horizon of our lived experience. If nothing else, simply because of trade - by the incredible reach of what we produce and consume. 

Therefore, we are unable to experience so many of the affects that come from our own blind spots. Those affects are literally happening beyond our horizon. We don't get to "run into them".

Theoretically, that's one of the main reasons why we have "News". So that someone else can go over there beyond the horizon of our lived experience and bring back perceptions of what we are affecting, and what is affecting us - what we otherwise wouldn't get to experience personally.

But the modern media, the "News", are in the same predicament as the rest of us. They frame their perceptual fields through narrative - to make sense of the infinite amount of chaotic information out there beyond the horizon. Otherwise it too would be Non-Sense.

So the modern media are, in effect, our culture’s narrative managers. And just like us, they too have blind spots.

Unfortunately, trade has all kinds of repercussions other than just creating the need for News. Trade also creates all kinds of concentrations of influence. (I am consciously using the word "influence", and not "power" here).

With any concentration of influence, however, come conflicts of interest. 

Let's put all of this together. Human perception is framed through narrative, with its forthcoming blind spots. Trade creates a need for News, which is also framed through narrative, also with its forthcoming blind spots. But trade also creates massive conflicts of interest.

If we are going to be modern humans with Trade - with all of our affects on, and affects from, the world beyond our lived experience, then we will always have News. The News will always have blind spots. And the News will always have conflicts of interest. That is simply part and parcel of the trade.

So it is especially and precisely when those who are, as we say, "presently in power" (our governmental authorities) and the News both increase their consensus so intensely, so vociferously, that we must stop, give pause, and deeply question their narrative.


Please remember that our narrative managers sold us a narrative that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not. Yet, enough Americans believed that manufactured narrative to blindly allow our country to invade a sovereign nation. I do pray that we as a country can sit with that more deeply some day. 

Now, our narrative managers are selling us a narrative that the Delta variant is going to get us all, and that our only option is to force everyone to get a vaccine utilizing novel technology that has had no long-term testing. They are recommending employers to force Covid vaccinations. They are recommending that businesses require proof of vaccination for entry. Our government is on the cusp of forcing vaccinations among all of our military personnel, those who have volunteered to risk their lives to defend our country – those, ironically, who are not free to refuse an order by simply getting another job.

Do you remember months ago (I write this on August 5th, 2021) when our narrative managers were all screaming about the Delta variant starting to spike in India? It was one of the first countries to have a surge of Covid cases of the Delta variant.

Our narrative managers sold us a narrative that India would descend into a medical hell, and that this was a window into our own future if everybody here in the US didn’t hurry up and get vaccinated.

Now, our narrative managers don’t seem to talk as much about India any more. I was curious as to why. I did a little research:

India had a total of 25,388 deaths from Covid during July 2021.

This was down dramatically from 120,770 deaths from Covid during May 2021.

Covid-related deaths in India in July would be equivalent to 6,347 deaths in one month in the US (because the US Population is ¼ of India’s).
Multiply that by 12 months to get the equivalent annual US deaths if an equivalent level of ongoing medical harm was happening here in America – and that would total 76,164 deaths.

Of course, no one can minimize the tragedy of that many deaths. But I urge us to take this number into context. This is roughly the number of Americans that die each and every year from drug overdoses.

You might say, “but Covid creates all kind of medical harm besides just death”. 

But, of course, the same is also true for drug addiction. Not all of the medical harm from drug addiction comes solely from fatal drug overdoses.

You might say, "well that must prove that India did an incredible job of rolling out the Covid vaccines."

However, as I quoted the famous scientist Richard Feynman earlier, and I’m paraphrasing just a little bit here - 'Don’t listen to what the "Science" has shown, listen to what the experiment, the effect, the experience has shown.'

By the very END of July 2021, the month for which I just gave data, India was just then reaching 25% of it’s population having at least one dose of vaccine. 

India rapidly and dramatically reduced their mortality rate BEFORE they significantly raised their vaccination rate!

So, experience in India shows that vaccinating every individual in a country is clearly not the one and only way to handle Covid. This fact alone is more than enough to have us stop, take a pause, and question the narrative that our government agencies and mainstream media are selling us. Thank you very much India.

So how did India so rapidly and so dramatically reduce Covid mortality?

Why are our narrative managers not even asking this question?
Why have we not been asking this question?

Perhaps most importantly, if the News you trust - the ones who warned so loudly months ago that India proved that we all had to hurry up and get vaccinated; the ones who demonized anyone daring to think twice about taking a vaccine using novel technology that has had no long-term testing - if the News you trust is not attempting to explain now how their narrative doesn't fit the actual experience on the ground in India at all, well then maybe it's time to question their narrative. 

Maybe it's time to look elsewhere for News on Covid-19.

I’m going to tell another short personal story about the centrality of narratives to our humanity, and then I’m going to wrap this up. Thanks for hanging in there. I know this is a long post. Please take your time with it. Breathe. It’s going to be OK. Or it won’t.


A couple of years ago, I was driving home late at night on the freeway after being with my mom in the hospital. It was dark, rainy and foggy. I was driving my recently purchased Chevy Volt, so I was fortunately high-mileage-ing it – I had taken my foot off the gas to coast over a mountain pass on my way home.

I say fortunately, because all of a sudden, at the very top of the pass, all of those huge concrete barricades that usually separate the opposing lanes of traffic were all directly in front of me! In a neat line perpendicular to the road! There were no flashing lights. There were no brightly colored “Detour” signs. There were no brake lights from cars ahead to warn me.

I slammed on my brakes and was able to stop just in time to keep from slamming into the concrete wall crossing the freeway.

I had absolutely no narrative to make any sense of this. I started looking around as best as I could, which wasn’t very well due to the darkness, rain and fog. I could just barely make out the top of the canopy of a huge oak tree that was laying on its side just on the other side of the concrete barricade.

I thought for a split second “maybe that’s why they put up this barricade, to keep us from running into this tree that fell over” - before I realized that this made no sense.

There were no warning signs. But this is a freeway for goodness sake! The whole point of a freeway is unimpeded flow. The only times you’re on a freeway where there isn’t unimpeded flow, there are bright and colorful signs and/ or lights.

I began to think, did I somehow zone out while driving home and take an unintended exit, and I’m no longer on the main freeway? But that didn’t make sense, because there are only a few freeway exits from the hospital and all of them immediately “T” into a stop sign. That’s clearly not where I was.

Admittedly, I began to wonder if I had somehow mysteriously popped into a parallel universe. I’m not sure whether I had ever believed or cared about parallel universes before. But in that moment, it felt more credible than anything else.

And that’s when it happened. Everything began to fall away for me. I mean everything. In the dark, rain and fog, without any narrative, I had no idea where I was. I no longer trusted my senses. I had no idea who I was.

Thank goodness, at that point, something deep inside me welled up, and said very clearly “GET OUT!!!”

Enough wits came back to me to then realize that yes, I needed to move. So I backed up a bit, steered right, and drove slowly parallel to the barricades. I got to a small concrete curb directly in front of me. I worried that my low-riding car might get hung up on the curb. Should I back up and drive out the way I had come? In order to get around the curb?

But thankfully, I heard within another “GET OUT!!!”, so I quickly drove over the curb – just barely in time to hear a very loud screeching noise and look up in my rear-view mirror to see a car which had already slammed on its brakes, slide sideways at high speed into the concrete barrier right behind me.

At exactly that moment, my entire rear windshield was covered in mud. I could no longer see anything behind me.

I was still extremely disoriented and confused. I thought for a second that I should get out and try to help. But then I heard another “GET OUT!!!”

I drove forward. Finally the barricade to my left ended and I was able to drive around it and the oak tree and down the shoulder back onto the freeway. Almost immediately a large fleet of emergency vehicles with their sirens and lights blaring came up the other side of the freeway from the town below.

I learned later that a huge landslide had happened at the pass. That a large mass of mountain had slid over the freeway and knocked all of those concrete barricades perpendicular into my lane. The concrete curb I had encountered separated the three lanes of traffic on my side of the freeway from the two truck lanes where truckers pull off to the right to stop and read the warning signs about the steep grade below.

I had simply been the first driver going my direction to come across the landslide.

It turns out there was a car full of people that had been travelling the other direction that were actually caught in the landslide and that had fortunately been able to call 911.

That night, I lacked a narrative to make sense of what was happening to me. I had no idea where I was. I had no idea what anything was. And it almost killed me.

Maybe something about that also saved my life. I don’t know. Maybe both are true.


I want to share a very worthwhile distillation of the two primary narratives about Covid-19 that I came across recently. These aren't the only narratives about Covid out there, but they do predominate.

I saw this post July 27th on the internet news aggregator site “The Automatic Earth”. It was a post called “A Tale of Two Narratives”, actually a re-print from a comment from one of the site's regular readers.

It is certainly worth re-printing here in this post about “Homo narrativus”, the hominid of narrative:

The Mainstream Narrative
– It is not known where Covid 19 originated but the most likely origin is the transmission from an animal to humans
– Covid 19 has killed 600K people in the US
– Trump botched the Covid 19 response costing many lives
– Many deaths were preventable if we’d tested, masked, tracked and locked down better
– Vaccines are good and have eradicated polio, measles, whooping cough and other diseases
– Vaccines against Covid 19 are safe and effective and have saved many lives with only minor, acceptable adverse reactions
– There are no effective treatments for Covid 19 besides the vaccines
– Covid is spread by droplets and aerosols from infected people, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, and can be spread through momentary casual contact both indoors and outdoors
– Children and young adults are at risk from Covid 19 and can spread the disease and should take the same precautions and measures as adults
– We need to do whatever it takes to defeat Covid 19 including frequent testing, mass vaccination, continued lockdowns and wearing masks
– The best information comes from the CDC, FDA and NIH
– The mainstream media warns us of the dangers of Covid 19 but unfortunately many do not take these warnings seriously
– As usual, conspiracy theorists and nut-jobs abound
– Anti-vaxxers are against all vaccines and now also against the Covid 19 vaccines
– Anti-vaxxers have believed phony information disseminated by scurrilous, right wing charlatans
– These people cost many lives and are the reason Covid still spreads and mutates
– They are responsible for continued lockdowns and the further decimation of the economy
– They are selfish, evil and anti-science
– The Covid 19 response is all about trying to get us back to normal as quickly as possible

The Counter Narrative
– Covid 19 was most likely created in a lab in China or the US
– Covid 19 kills people but far fewer than the official count
– Almost all officials in government have botched the Covid 19 response, costing many lives
– Most deaths were preventable if we had investigated and deployed early treatments including vitamin D, zinc, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin
– Vaccines are good and have eradicated polio, measles, whooping cough and other diseases
– The Covid 19 vaccines however are not actually vaccines but gene therapy and have not been adequately tested
– The Covid 19 vaccines have serious side effects including death and other as yet unknown consequences which are not being investigated and are suppressed by the media
– We need to defeat Covid 19 and the best way to do this is through early outpatient treatment with known, effective drugs and known drug protocols for hospitalized patients
– Covid 19 is primarily spread by aerosols from symptomatic and pre-symptomatic people, mostly in indoor situations with poor ventilation where peoples spend a long time together
– Children and young adults are at low risk from Covid 19 and need take fewer precautions and measures but should be treated with drug protocols if infected
– Masks, distancing and lockdowns are mostly ineffective
– The best information comes from front line doctors who actually treat patients and experienced researchers who have no financial interest in big pharma
– The CDC, FDA and NIH are largely compromised because of their association with and funding by drug companies
– The mainstream media is also compromised by their association with big pharma and the government
– The truth about Covid 19 is suppressed and labeled conspiracy theory in order to support the mainstream narrative
– People who insist that the vaccines are the only way to fight Covid 19 have believed lies told to them by the MSM from big pharma and a corrupt medical establishment
– The vaccine narrative has cost many lives and ineffective vaccines are responsible for the continued spread and mutation of Covid 19
– The fallacious mainstream narrative is responsible for all lock downs and the decimation of the economy
– The people who push the mainstream narrative are evil and anti-science; The people who believe this narrative are naive, dogmatic and anti-science
– The Covid 19 response is all about money, power and control

Unfortunately, in the US, the two narratives noted above have mostly (but not perfectly) been drawn down the lines of the two primary political parties. The “Blue Tribe” has mostly been sold the “Mainstream” narrative. Some parts of the “Red Tribe” have evolved the “Counter” narrative.

In a nation as politically divided as we are, this is most unfortunate. For the sake of clarity here, I will say that I mostly see the two tribes as caught up in a bizarre 5th dimensional game of “Good Cop, Bad Cop” (each assuming that their party is the "good cop" and the opposing political party is the "bad cop") that is destroying the fabric of our culture - at a crucial time when our civilization is already beginning to come apart at the seams because we are, in essence, caught dazed and confused in the dark, rainy fog while up against a concrete barrier perpendicular to our long-standing path of travel. 

In other words, I overall refuse to take sides. I know plenty of amazing, beautiful people on both sides of the political divide, and I mostly want everyone to get over the distracting game of “Good Cop, Bad Cop” as soon as possible. I believe that there are very important matters at hand that need addressing that are getting lost in the feud. In particular, the concrete barriers perpendicular to our path of travel. But I'll leave that for other posts.

That said, I’m not pretending our species as a whole can deepen into the space-time of nothingness and as a whole receive some deeper message to help us “GET OUT!!!” of our present and unfolding predicaments. I’m not even pretending that our species can or should live without narrative. Quite the contrary.

What I do believe is that we can, at the very least, re-name ourselves Homo narrativus – the hominid of narrative.
We can admit that we perceive and engage the world through narrative.
We can regularly choose to look for our blind spots and question our narratives.

We can remember that, in the past, when our most powerful narrative managers were the most vociferous, this was a sign for us to pay extra close attention – a sign that we needed to stop, take a pause, and question the narrative.
We can remember that disasters often happen when we miss those signs, and stumble blindly ahead.

Why are our “Mainstream” narrative managers not exploring how India so successfully reduced their fatality rate before the effects of the vaccines could possibly have played a significant role? While they simultaneously push the vaccines so aggressively, demonizing anyone who dares to think twice about them?!!!

How did India so rapidly and so dramatically reduce their Covid mortality before they had any significant vaccination rates?
Can we do the same here in the US?

I don’t personally know for sure the answer to those questions about India. But I do have some clues.


My guess is that a higher percentage of folks who believe the “Counter” narrative have a better idea how to answer those questions than those who believe the “Mainstream” narrative. That’s my guess. Maybe neither narrative helps us see the experience for what it is.

My final question is this:

Do we really want to force all of the folks that have signed their lives over to our military to take a vaccination utilizing novel technology to which NOBODY knows the long-term effects? To force the very folks who literally can’t refuse to take an order?

That is a betrayal of trust with our own soldiers that our country may not survive.

And since that position is being so strongly advocated by the “Blue Tribe” right now, by those who so believe the “Mainstream” narrative noted above, I will make this request right here very specifically to all of you who ascribe to that narrative:

Stop.
Take a pause.
Question the narrative.
See if you can answer the question about India.
See if those that hold the Counter Narrative, or other narratives, might have some clues about India.

If it turns out that the News you trust is actually untrustworthy, then look elsewhere. 

Remember, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

In this post, there is a clue as to one alternative place you could look for Covid News that is intelligent and big picture.


P.S. It’s probably also a good idea to keep a close eye on Israel too. Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate the majority of its population. How is that working out? Is there any evidence of ADE beginning to happen? What is ADE?

Thanks for your time and attention.

Here's where I got the India statistics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_India_(January%E2%80%93May_2020)

I got total death # from April 30th, 2021 and May 31st, 2021 and calculated the difference to get total death # for May.

I got total death # from June 30th, 2021 and July 31st, 2021 and calculated the difference to get total death # for July.

India's vaccination rate I got from August 5th, 2021 on https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/IndiaVaccine
I didn't know how to get the information from just July 31st, 2021, so I used the real-time data on August 5th. 

American Political Shit Storm - Category II

                                   American Political Shit Storm - Category II

If you think America is politically divided now, just you wait. With so many Americans talking past each other as though the other was a despised enemy, our country's political shit sandwich will most likely upgrade to at least a Category II Shit Storm. Perhaps worse.

So I want to speak to folks on my side of the political continuum. I want to stress that I wish they had read the following article by David Wong about the Trump phenomenon before the election of 2016, listened to the two linked podcasts of interviews with Wong (one right before and one right after the election), and taken to heart the seriousness of the issues involved.

Unfortunately, my side of the political continuum has instead been wasting huge amounts of time and energy:

1) Fantasizing that Trump will be impeached (to leave us with President Pence! Yeah!),

2) Doubling down on proclaiming that large swaths of our fellow citizens are simply ignorant and racist and have absolutely nothing valuable to say. It is certainly true that ignorance and racism has been part and parcel of our country from day one. And it is certainly true that President Trump presents himself as both. That, however, in no way excuses demonizing masses of people that we don't actually know. Heck. Demonizing masses of people that we don't actually know is part of what we don't like about racism. Right? So let's just stop it. OK? And,

3) Going on and on about how horribly aggressive Russia was - Facebook posts, leaked (true) emails, fake political rallies - OH MY!!!  I have two simple things to say about all of this:
A) If only we Americans could say that this was the worst we had ever done in interfering with other countries' self-determination. But alas. We cannot. We have done far, FAR worse.
B) America has, thru NATO, placed tanks on Russia's borders - a country that was invaded by (and stopped) both Napoleon and Hitler. Let's remove our tanks from their borders before continuing to whine about Russia attacking us with Internet Trolls. OK?

So instead of continuing to double down on these 3 political dead-ends, let's attempt to actually understand how we got to this political moment. These are the links to the David Wong article and interviews:

Article:    http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

1st Podcast Interview (before election):  http://www.cracked.com/podcast/trump-country-what-media-doesnt-want-you-to-know/

2nd Podcast Interview (after election): http://www.cracked.com/podcast/what-f2A2Ak-just-happened-election-autopsy/

The interview/ podcasts are overly long, but well worth it in the end.
Remember, we're looking at what will likely be at least a Category II Shit Storm. We've got to get a grip on what's going on here. These links will definitely help with that understanding.

Here is the County Election Map of the 2016 Election (Holy cow!):   https://brilliantmaps.com/2016-county-election-map/


Now that you've read the article above and listened to the podcasts (you've done that, right?), please continue....     

The Electoral College creates an over-representation of rural voters. This is how Trump won the 2016 election, by winning the rural vote hands down despite losing the popular vote by millions.  The Electoral College is an outrageously undemocratic institution that was born from our aristocratic founders.  Now that we have cleared that up, I've got something crazy to say:

I am in full support of the Electoral College continuing to exist for quite some time.

If America has had affirmative action for generations to attempt to level the playing field tilted by our racist past, then we can certainly continue the Electoral College for a couple more generations to attempt to level the playing field tilted by our long-standing prejudice against rural people.

If rural folks are going to supply the great majority of our food, our wood products, and our energy, then it seems only fair that they should have a larger say than the folks who have no earthly idea where our food, wood, and energy come from and who somehow look down upon the folks that do.

If we don't like the political ramifications of that, well then I pray we can find constructive approaches to reckon with our long-standing prejudices against rural people.

Doing a deep dive into where our food, wood, and energy come from is certainly one constructive place to start. Let's get to it.

Thanks.
Take care.

Post 10: Invisible Flying Monkeys & $70 Trillion of Debt

Invisible Flying Monkeys & $70 Trillion of Debt

Let’s say I’m President of the United States.

Let’s say I send a letter to four countries with the greatest levels of proven oil reserves*: Venezuela – 301 billion barrels, Saudi Arabia – 266, Iran – 158, and Iraq – 142. (These four countries have just over half of the world’s proven reserves). My letter says:

“All of your oil is now our oil. We now own every last drop of it. Don’t resist. If you even try to resist, you’ll be attacked by an army of invisible flying monkeys who work for us for free. So don’t even think about it.”

Let’s assume that every drop of that oil can be drilled and transported to market at absolutely no cost. We’ll assume that our army of invisible flying monkeys will take care of all of that.

Let’s say that we sell every one of those barrels at market for $80/ barrel. (Which is above what it is selling for now, and is above average for the last 20 years).

Well, we’ll have just made $69.5 Trillion – almost enough to pay off the total US Debt (the sum total for all government, personal, and business debts).

Total US Debt is on track to top $70 Trillion on April 22^nd 2018 – Earth Day.

Let’s review: we’ll pretend that we own half of the world’s oil; we’ll pretend we can get it to market for free; and we’ll pretend that we can sell it all in one instant for an above average price. With all of that, we’ll be just shy of covering our nation’s debts.

So what I’m saying is this: in 2020, vote Clueless Honky for President!

At least I have a plan!

*Excluding Canada and her tar sands, which would be in 3^rd place with 170 billion barrels.

Real-Time Debt Counter: www.usdebtclock.org/

Proven Oil Reserves: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves