Posted on 03/28/2021 7:16:26 AM PDT by ReaganGeneration2
Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.
One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.
When Beautiful Theories crash into hard, cold reality and shatter, faith is the glue used by the elites to put their precious ideas back together. They need MILITANT faith to get the job done: true believers eager to crush doubt and compel obedience by making war on the infidels.
Some are swept into the faith because they desperately crave a sense of control over the crisis. They need to believe Something Can Be Done, and they'd rather invest their faith in debunked Beautiful Theories than have no faith at all. Faith is a coin that demands to be spent.
Some crave social approval, and the purveyors of Beautiful Theories have immense political, economic, and cultural power to make their faith seem fashionable. Virtue signaling is such a plague in modern society because the signals are pre-packaged and made very easy to send.
Some aren't even hoping they can assert control over a crisis by converting to its religion. They'll settle for just having some MEANING, some simplicity, a sense that the righteous will fare better than the unbelievers, that virtue will be rewarded while sin is punished.
That's a very common impulse with the Church of Covid, since the Beautiful Theories were so very obviously wrong. There isn't much left of the faith except the visceral communal satisfaction of hoping unbelievers will be punished for their blasphemies with sickness and death.
That sort of thing happens with all of the crisis religions, although not usually as quickly and obviously as with the Church of Covid. Look at the endless stream of movies about how the world became an apocalyptic hellscape because people didn't believe in global warming.
The last resort of every crisis religion, the last thing that puts asses in the pews, is that addiction to misery porn, the collective hope that unbelievers will suffer someday, and everyone will admit the True Faith was right all along as Judgment Day crashes down upon them.
The elite will never have the humility to admit they were wrong, and they'll never give up on politically or financially profitable "solutions" even when they obviously don't solve the problem. Founding a crisis religion means they never have to say they're sorry.
That applies to some very longstanding crises, like the War on Poverty, whose nostrums long ago transformed into fantastically expensive articles of religious faith even as mountains of data accumulated that proved they were utter failures, and often made the problems WORSE.
You can look for some telltale signs of a crisis transforming into a religion. The most obvious one is when the high priests tell you the "war" you've been drafted into will never end. They become very angry when asked to define success or failure, or lay out exit strategies.
Watch for the moment when you're told "science" means not asking questions, defying dogma, or challenging "consensus." That is the literal definition of faith, not science.
Always keep an eye out for Moving Goalposts, which are the signature miracle of crisis religions, their version of parting the waters or loaves and fishes. Crisis religions work very hard to make their faith unfalsifiable by constantly changing the standards of evidence.
Check to see if certain people are accumulating huge amounts of money and power from a crisis. That's a pretty good sign it's turning into a religion. A crisis should be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don't let it fester long enough to become a special interest.
Above all, look for the whiff of ARROGANCE to develop around a crisis. Wise religions and effective crisis managers have something in common: a sense of humility. Crisis religions are militant faiths that quickly become arrogant, smug, and totalitarian.
Dedicated people who truly want to solve a problem will look for evidence their analysis is wrong, or their policies aren't working, and make adjustments as quickly as possible, no matter the cost or embarrassment to themselves. This is humility.
Crisis religions are arrogant. They reject criticism, insist their Beautiful Theories MUST be right because they're ideologically pure - they fit snugly into a worldview that must not be challenged. Their plans only fail because their commands were disobeyed or sabotaged.
The high priests of a crisis religion see devils everywhere, leering at them from the rubble of every failure. Only sin can explain why their Beautiful Theories are tarnished. Failure never THEIR fault, so it must be YOURS. They find your lack of faith disturbing.
And you know what? A LOT of people want to see the world that way, including a great many self-described atheists. They hunger for the comfort of faith and the vibrant energy of militancy. They want to be right, and they want the wrong to suffer for their folly.
Conservatives think religious faith in the State is terrifying and wonder why so many embrace it. It's because uncertainty is much more frightening. A simple false story is better than a complex true one, and with enough faith, maybe we can force the simple story to be true. /end
As they should. We restarted our club meetings (mostly old people) back in June. We had two months where we skipped the meeting due to COVID. There were some people who chose not to attend, but not a large percentage. We have masks and distancing per regulations, but not everyone uses their mask properly.
And then go ahead with your life.
Do you think the number might possibly have gone up?
Just maybe a little bit?
I start taking it off after leaving the cash register heading to the door.
What are they going to do about it?
Don’t even wear one, to begin with.
What are they going to do about it?
Make you leave?
Fine. Shop elsewhere, or online.
But your argument reduces to the claim that an erroneous number is better than no number.
I’m not sure what you’re point is. What’s your point?
“Don’t get the vaccine then. Nobody is saying you have to.”
>>Yet you wrote you were ok with tyrannical lockdowns. So I’m betting you won’t defend people, such as the 20-40% of HCWs at your own hospital, when they’re threatened with firing when they refuse the vaccine?
“just don’t try to tell the rest of us that Covid is a hoax”
>>Some do say that the disease isn’t a novel virus that has attacked humanity or hasn’t been yet isolated. But here, the discussion is mostly the scale, tyranny, and faith-like religiosity of the covidian reactions.
“when there are 479,000 excess deaths that say otherwise.”
>>Exactly: CRISIS, needing an unending war of tyrannical and crony-based financially advantageous countermeasures. You make the case for this post.
You mean the heart disease and diabetes that they had proved deadly...
I'm literally laughing my RC (right cheek) off at the fear porn.
So because they weren’t in perfect health when they contracted Covid, Covid wasn’t ultimately responsible for their death? I’d call that stupid but stupid doesn’t do it justice. The appropriate word would be too offensive to use.
No, the fact that they were dying of heart disease and diabetes was ultimately responsible for their deaths. Life isn't fair. If you have heart disease and or diabetes, then, well, maybe stay home and quarantine yourself, but don't expect everybody else to.
Yes. you are.
What's your point?
If we had treated people with any sort of respiratory illness in 2019 as we did people in 2020, which is no treatment until they are hospital worthy, would the numbers for 2019 be higher, lower or about the same?
Before you answer please be informed that I am a respiratory patient and I KNOW the differences in treatment that I got in those two different years.
But don't be shy.
Lie to me baby.
yawn. Your strawman is arguing something over and over that I nor anyone else here is arguing. Yes, I think the death count is inflated but even if its not it wouldn’t change my opinion. There is no evidence shutdowns, masks, etc have done anything to help.
They weren't dying from their comorbidity until they contracted Covid, they were living with a comorbidity. and sure, some of them were probably pretty far past their best before date, but it was still Covid that ultimately came along and killed them and many of them still had plenty of years left in them. It wasn't the comorbidty that killed them, their comorbidity just caused them to have a worse outcome when they contracted the virus. Their deaths were real and they count and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
“We have heard both sides,” Dr. Birx said. “We have made it clear about the comorbidities. Most of the people -- and we talked about the Italy data -- the majority of Italians who succumbed to this had three or more comorbidities. This has been known from the beginning. Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when related to a COVID infection. In fact, it is the opposite. Having an underlying condition and getting this virus is particularly damaging to those individuals.”
Life isn't fair. If you have heart disease and or diabetes, then, well, maybe stay home and quarantine yourself, but don't expect everybody else to.
What does that have to do with how we count Covid deaths? Nothing.
I have merely shown how the complete opposite is true. It is the people who insist that Covid is some kind of Hoax, that it's nothing but the flu, that the death count was exaggerated, that there's no proof it even exists, etc., etc., etc. are the cult like fanatics. I provided proof that Covid killed more people than the official count and these people, you included (Yes, I think the death count is inflated but even if its not it wouldn’t change my opinion)), dogmatically refuse to accept it. You're the zealots in this dialectic.
And then you accuse me of throwing out a strawman while you try to change the topic to "there is no evidence shutdowns, masks, etc have done anything to help". You're not only the cultish fanatic, you're the one throwing out strawman arguments (more like a red herring actually but still).
The efficacy of shutdowns and masks and etc was never brought up until you brought it up.
First of all "baby", I am an ER nurse and I have probably taken care of at least a hundred Covid patients. My county led the state in Covid deaths in the first wave and my hospital has discharged almost a thousand patients home after they were admitted for Covid. So I think I can speak to this.
Most people didn't need to be hospitalized. Only about 10%-20% of them. We tested them. It took 2-3 days to get the results back. we sent them home with home pulse oximeters and called them up to check on them which is not something we ever did in 2019. When the results came back, I personally called them up and gave them their test results and I asked them all how they were doing. If they were getting worse, we discussed returning for further evaluation and possible admission. OVER 90% of the people I called up were fine and were well on the path to recovery. A few came back and were admitted. To my knowledge, none of them died. It was just a 2-3 day stay. None of the people we discharged home died.
The people who died were not the people we sent home. It was the people that were admitted immediately because their symptoms were that bad. Many times, they ended up intubated within 15 minutes of their arrival to the ER because they were that sick. they went to the ICU.
The ones who were sick but not that sick went to the med surg floor and the hospital was so full that we had Covid patients bedded in the ER for up to 24 hours and longer while they waited for a bed on the Covid unit to open.
I don't know what your story is but that's my story and I don't lie.
How nice for them that they managed to survive your brutal indifference.
If they were getting worse, we discussed returning for further evaluation and possible admission.
You lost two to three days during the time when treatment was most possible and most effective.
If you had started treatment immediately you might have had far more people recover. Maybe even all. But you did not treat them.
You tested them.
And sent them home with no treatment to get worse.
Please name one other virus you treat that way.
I didn’t read one word past “your brutal indifference” btw. Nut.
So do the lives and livelihoods of perfectly healthy people who lost their jobs and committed suicide or drank themselves to death as a result of disgusting fearporn driven lockdowns that were only a danger to old dying people.
What does that have to do with how we count Covid deaths?
Has everything to do with my capacity to give a sh*t (which I don't) about the dead vs the 99% who should have never have been locked down. America is in ruins, a commie cabal is in control, and today The WHO is expected to whitewash the whole origin of the chinee frankenvirus/bioweapon. All because of fearporn. The weak chins surrendered to the strong Chins.
You keep saying I called it a hoax and the flu and then trying to give evidence that I’m wrong. That is by definition a straw-man argument since I never made that argument. You can continue the mental masturbation on this all you want.
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