just wondering how anyone feels about the articles, links below

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/wayne-root-christmas-message-dr-fauci/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/rules-thee-not-dr-birx-caught-breaking-covid-guidelines/

What point are you trying to make? That Fauci "cancelled Christmas, that Birx is a hypocrite?

Or are you trying to say that 320,000 (and counting) lives are a small price to pay for your freedom not to wear a mask for a few months?

faithless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> just wondering how anyone feels about the
> articles, links below

A comparison can be made with regard to European Jews during WWII.

In Judaism, there is a principle which says: "If life is in danger, above all else the most important thing is to save life." If "saving life" requires that you break Jewish law, you break Jewish law--INSTANTLY--regardless of what that law may be.

There is a story Henry Abramson (university-level history teacher on YouTube) tells to illustrate this principle: In Europe, some centuries ago (medieval times, as I remember), plague was devastating the entire countryside--and included both Jews and Christians.

For the Jews, this occurred during the period of the Jewish High Holy Days (say: September or so).

On Yom Kippur (the most solemn day during the High Holy Days period), full fasting is required for that "day" (Jewish days are counted from sundown to sundown).

On that particular Yom Kippur day in plague-infested Europe, and during the community religious service, the rabbi took food he had brought from home to the podium and, without initially saying anything, placed the food on the podium and began eating the bread and whatever else he had brought....eating slowly, methodically, making certain that everyone in the congregation could clearly see him eating a full meal on the very most stringent of Jewish fast days.

When he had finished eating he said: "The most important thing is to save life. You MUST eat on this day, and you must eat as much as you need to eat in order to to keep you fully nourished, because to NOT eat on Yom Kippur of this [Jewish] year is to court death....so I say to each of you and to all of of you, as we conclude this service now, go home, eat--and eat fully, so that you are physically strong and are fulfilling YOUR obligation to save life--the lives of yourself, the lives of your family, and the lives of your community."

So the members of his congregation went home and everyone ate full meals, in conformance with the overriding Jewish law that, above all else, life must be preserved as the top priority in any situation.

Centuries later, during the Holocaust, Jews commonly broke Jewish laws of all kinds when it was necessary to save life. They ate non-kosher food, they worked on Shabbat, whatever....the priority was saving as many lives as was possible.

The moral of the story is: The highest priority, the highest human obligation, is to save life.

Wearing a mask saves not just YOUR life, but the lives of those who are physically around you.

Wear a mask.

> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/wayne-roo
> t-christmas-message-dr-fauci/


> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/rules-the
> e-not-dr-birx-caught-breaking-covid-guidelines/

It is certainly not rare that people in positions of community leadership often do not themselves "do" as they say/proclaim people OUGHT to do.

In my opinion, Dr. Birx is an aware hypocrite. If she causes harm, I don't think she has much to offer in her own defense.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2020 09:42PM by Tevai.

thank you Tevai

Even in the face of the horrible excruciating gasping for air deaths of hundreds of thousands with much more expected, sacrificing one holiday in a lifetime is too much to bear?

Here in SoCal with every ICU full and announcements made that if you have a heart attack or stroke or whatever there may not be a bed for you or help, and yet what is on people's minds is being in groups maskless no matter what?

The governor has ordered 5,000 body bags and refrigeration for the excess corpses that the mortuaries and morgues won't be able to handle, and yet what matters is Christmas. Clearly there really is no Christ in Christmas for "Christians."

Can't wait to see what January and February bring after all these same people convene on New Years for drunken fests and kissing at midnight and singing Aulde Lange Syne at the top of their lungs streaming spittle everywhere. Because in this moment, the closing of the hell of 2020--- for most, that is what these people find essential! The New Year must be celebrated. Oddly it would come even if we didn't, but hey . . .

Can you say "Shallow", boys and girls?

Yeah, but freedom.

So much for conjuring up enemies in the Middle East and Asia. I have seen the enemy and he is us.

Where I live, our county executive shut down inside dining for restaurants due to the rising Covid numbers. And many community members are predictably outraged. My bet is that these are the very same people who are getting on airplane flights, having ten cars in their driveways and along the road for holiday gatherings, etc. The government official is not the one spreading the virus, THEY are. You want the restaurants open again? Then do your part to get the numbers back down.

Being human is a terrible mistake which will haunt you your entire life.

I feel that anyone who takes The Gateway Pundit seriously, or as a reputable source of information, is a bumblefuck.

you all say want you want but i find it very confusing that the people that are trying to scare the living daylights out of us are not one bit afraid themselves. looks like they would also be afraid of the deadly virus. don't know that any of them have died or even lost their big government paychecks. just sayin

faithless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> you all say want you want but i find it very
> confusing that the people that are trying to scare
> the living daylights out of us are not one bit
> afraid themselves. looks like they would also be
> afraid of the deadly virus. don't know that any
> of them have died or even lost their big
> government paychecks. just sayin

I think a big part of some of what you are observing is the result of having access to the best medical care available, with not a single thought required regarding how that medical care will be paid for since they are extremely well insured, in addition to the often substantial financial security they have available to them to draw on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2020 11:02PM by Tevai.

are you saying they feel like they can take chances because even if they get the virus they will be ok because they have great med benefits and plenty of money. that's no guarantee of not dying.

faithless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> are you saying they feel like they can take
> chances because even if they get the virus they
> will be ok because they have great med benefits
> and plenty of money. that's no guarantee of not
> dying.

Yes, I am saying "they feel like they can take chances because even if they get the virus they will be ok because they have great med benefits and plenty of money."

I agree that this is no guarantee of not dying, but in my life I have known many people in this socio-economic sector, and many of them do think exactly this: that enough money can buy most anything--even escape from a [potentially] lethal illness.

When faced with circumstances where this does not work, they can become quite frustrated. ;)

chortle :-)

Is that the site Michelle Malkin started?

> Is that the site Michelle Malkin started?

Nope. It was inaugurated by Jim Hoft, who wanted to expose the "wickedness" of liberals. He won the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2016.* So I'm not sure what you are whining about.


Hoft is a buddy of Alex Jones and a fan of Info.wars, and he thinks COVID is the Deep State's attempt to "take out" Trump. Hoft's personal articles are fascinating and I invite all to partake.**



**https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/author/jim-hoft/

*https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/jim-hoft-tells-alex-jones-coronavirus-us-deep-state-trying-take-out-trump



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2020 12:15AM by Lot's Wife.

This is dangerous, childish nonsense. Sometimes in life, you are forced to do things you don't want to do. It's not a question of freedom. The sort of freedom which he is appealing to is the freedom of the small child to throw a tantrum. The writer needs to grow up and then shut up. Neither outcome appears likely.

A small child to throw a tantrum while armed with an Uzzi.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A small child to throw a tantrum while armed with
> an Uzzi.


Sort of like Fauci, wear a mask don't wear a mask. Don't use supplements as prophylactic measures use supplements as prophylactic strategies. Stay in a basement don't stay in the basement.

I can wash my hands. I can use spray sanitizer. I can limit social contact.

Masks are not always a bad idea. Just stop stupidly touching the thing, ha ha ha..

Ratt, tatt tatt tatt tatt.. shots fired, shots fired..

Do go on.

Hey. it's most easily spread by droplets IN THE FUCKING AIR! Yeah, you might touch a surface SOMEONE COUGHED ON, but the really easy way to catch it and to spread it is by being too damn close to someone who isn't WEARING A MASK.

Aerosols, man.

wanna see something gross? here: https://youtu.be/DNeYfUTA11s

Please don't be a dick.

We're still leaning about this virus -- and correcting and expanding our knowledge as we learn more. It's an ongoing process that will never stop unless we all die. For real. This is a smart virus - it adapts and seems to be mutating in an effort to replicate. It needs a vector for its virus babies, and the vectors are us.

Early on, we didn't know how easily it's transmitted through droplets in the air, so to prevent a run on N-95 masks that were already in short supply, scientists -- who were unaware of how long and how easily this thing lingers in the damn air -- they didn't want people hoarding N-95s like we were hoarding fucking toilet paper because the first responders and frontline workers didn't have enough PPE to treat the tens of thousands of people who were in ICUs and nursing homes and meat packing plants and prisons and going to ground like BOOM! Dropping like flies. The frontline workers were dropping like flies, too. And if they kept dropping like flies, we would be truly, truly fucked.

Remember when people were sewing cloth masks to send to hospitals? We were in bad shape w/r/t supplies. We're still not great, but we're a lot better. But we are low on ICU beds and we're still losing our frontline workers to the disease, to burn out, to suicide...can you imagine what it's like to be them? And to have to deal with people who are IN THE PROCESS OF DYING telling them that it's a hoax? Here is someone putting themselves in harm's was to treat someone with this dreaded disease, and the person with the dreaded disease refuses to acknowledge that the person who is trying to safe their life is doing so at their own peril. Every person who does not wear a mask and social distance as prescribed is putting hundreds if not thousands of people at risk -- people who are not going to be able to be treated at a hospital that is at full capacity.

And what about the people who are having strokes and heart attacks and severe respiratory distress for other reasons than Covid who can't be seen because the hospitals can't handle them? And what about people who are not having surgical cancer treatment because some hospitals are considering those elective surgeries that can be postponed? Elective surgery means not emergency surgery. We're not talking about people putting off plastic surgery - we're talking about people who need surgery that will hopefully lengthen and improve the quality of their lives -- we're asking them to postpone that surgery for a month or three.

We are rationing.

And think about this: Why do you think people in the OR wear masks? It's to protect the patient. Even clearing your throat without a mask can send itty bitty droplet of whatever is chilling in your throat into the room, onto the instruments, onto the sterile field, and possibly into the patient.

I seriously have a headache

every time I think of Gavin Fucking Newsom partying it up at FRENCH LAUDRY, I want to punch him on his stupid face 321,631 times.

Yes to everything you’ve said on this thread, Beth. I realized months ago that we have to look out for ourselves, and have been doing just that. I am the caretaker for my adult daughter who has Down Syndrome, and is mildly immunocompromised. We’ve been wearing masks since March, added face shields in July, we shop early morning when stores first open, stay about 10’ away while talking with people outside, get takeout rather than dine in, etc.

TG, trying hard to keep up both healthy.

Hang in there, Sweet Pea. <3

I am with you Tom. I read the first article and it is the dumbest thing I have read in years. I will not waste the time on the second. Sad that people can read that crap.

The kinds of sacrifices that my parents made for the common good during WWII seem beyond many people now. Rampant selfishness, masquerading as "freedom," took over at some point.

What, a title? Hmmm

How does it make you feel when seeing a lone driver inside their car maybe wearing a double stacked mask?
After undergoing about 25 minutes of sanitation and getting into a complete hazmat suit.

What if at some point a person that either gets a vaccine or takes minimal but reasonable and strategically exercised risks to get out of their basement?

How does it maybe make me feel?

It might make me feel like I wish them all the best, I don't know.

The same people who refuse to wear masks because they "Wont Be Told What to DO, dammit!" still drive on the right side of the road, wear seat belts, stop at red lights, and pay their car registration.

The refusal to wear masks is not about being told what to do. Not about rights. It is about selfishness. Period.


A few officials being hypocritical is not a reason to assume Covid is a Hoax. I listen to the people on the front lines. I read their stories. I see their exhaustion and their diligence. I don't make a decision based on some ass in public office and I don't respect you if you do.

The vehemence on both sides regarding covid and the general political climate post-election underscores the observation that people who have moved away from the realm of religious belief have gravitated to politics as their touchstone to a unified system embraced by a community of like-minded people to fill the void that exists post-religion.

The rancor between groups who used to argue religious beliefs now argue political topics with equal or greater fervor.

Humanity rages on.

That is absurd. There are no "two sides" to COVID. It exists, it spreads, it kills. It has killed three times as many Americans as World War One, six times as many as the Vietnam War; it kills daily the number who perished on 9/11.

When there are facts and people divide into those who recognize those facts and those who deny them, it is the latter who are engaged in religious thinking: not the former. Your equivocation is motivated by the desire to resurrect the credibility of the lotus eaters, not by any rational evaluation of the COVID phenomenon.

Faith-based self-delusion rages on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2020 03:40PM by Lot's Wife.

Covid is. It exists. The choices of how to react to it are quite diverse.

Just sayin’.


Woof.

ETA: To bring more statistics to the table, here's one:

US Deaths (mortality) from all causes in 2018--- 2,839,205 per the CDC website.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2020 04:24PM by csuprovograd.

There are fine people on both sides of the debate over whether reality is real.

C’mon, man!

Okay, okay.

The choices of how to react aren't diverse.

They are:

Care about others or Not care about others.

Binary choices such as your example eliminates a myriad of possibilities in that nebulous grey area between the extremes.

I suspect most solutions are there, in the grey spectrum...

The point, csupg, is that the present approach *is* in the gray area.

The one extreme is no constraints, which has failed where it has been tried. The other extreme is not masks and social distancing and some business interruptions but what China did: absolute, police-enforced shutdowns of entire cities and provinces. The Chinese approach works very well but is not compatible with constitutional freedoms. The US approach is closer to the former extreme than what China and other dictatorships have done; it is the definition of a middle way.

What is tragic is that many Americans act as if masks and social distancing are extreme and on those grounds refuse to cooperate, thereby undermining the potential success of the moderate approach. If law-abiding citizens live by the rules and the brain dead refuse, the upshot is going to be a longer and less effective interruption of national life: more economic harm, more lives lost or harmed, and a great deal of public anger.

What is the difference between Japan and the United States, both of which have adopted similar "gray" policies? Japanese obey the rules and Americans don't. That is what differentiates an effective strategy from a feckless one.

A cooperative population has one characteristic that brings positive results. Namely, trust that their leaders genuinely have their best interest at the forefront.

The US has not had trust in their leaders for a very long time. Long before ‘orange man bad’ ever came along. We have had a polarized population for way too long and we have a government that is indifferent to the dissension caused by endless opposition and infighting. As long as they continue to accumulate personal wealth, they will not alter their gravy train.

We pay for this lack of trust in our elected representatives in suffering and bickering.

That may be correct but the fact remains: you can tell a person's judgment by their ability to see through the smoke and act in accordance with the underlying reality.

There’s a lot of people seeking confirmation of their preconceptions, indeed.

Add peer support, and those two factors together can lead people to follow a false narrative.

That course of cognition and affirmation, however does not cause truth.

Unless one was an eyewitness, one must take someone else’s word as a factual representation. This is risky. Many sources of information have motivations to spin or outright provide misinformation.

In this group, it’s kinda like taking the witnesses to the golden plates’ word that they saw them.

> Unless one was an eyewitness, one must take
> someone else’s word as a factual representation.
> This is risky. Many sources of information have
> motivations to spin or outright provide
> misinformation.

It's not that hard. The fact is that almost everything we "know" is second- or third-hand. Have you ever seen gravity warp time? Have you ever seen a subatomic particle abandon its superposition and assume one of a finite number of actual positions? No, neither have I. Yet here we are, using technologies that depend on the aforementioned propositions, confident that our interlocutors exist and that electrons flying through the sky accurately convey our thoughts.

The same is true of medicine. Fauci and Brix have never seen with their own eyes an alteration in an amino acid producing an immune response that kills infectious viruses, but they trust a system that has produced reliable quantifiable results over long periods of time. Contrast Scot Atlas, who has never been trained in virology or epidemiology and whose predictions have accordingly proved mistaken time and again.


-----------------------
> In this group, it’s kinda like taking the
> witnesses to the golden plates’ word that they
> saw them.

You aptly refer to the rejection of Mormonism. But the implication is the opposite of what you indicate. Neither you nor I have seen with our own eyes anything that disproves the existence of the Golden Plates and yet we are comfortable concluding that they did not exist. Why? Because of the track record of those who claim to have seen them or to have had divine intermediaries testify to the truth of JS's pretensions.

We don't have to rely on our eyes to discern truth. We routinely and rightly rely upon others whose demonstrated expertise and record of accurate predictions render their judgment dependable. In the present instance the history of COVID and its behavior in various empirical scenarios is quite clear.

Spin? Yes, there's spin. But there was with Mormonism too, and that didn't prevent our reaching better conclusions. We can additionally judge the wisdom of people on the street by their relative reliance on good evidence versus their susceptibility to manipulation. It really comes down to the South Park principle:

Martin Harris: dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Lucy Harris: smart, smart, smart, smart, smart.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2020 03:42AM by Lot's Wife.

https://www.ksl.com/article/50071913/us-deaths-in-2020-top-3-million-by-far-most-ever-counted

"This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time — due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic.

Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.

U.S. deaths increase most years, so some annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15%, and could go higher once all the deaths from this month are counted."

"COVID-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it came along, there was reason to be hopeful about U.S. death trends"


"The CDC counted 2,854,838 U.S. deaths last year, or nearly 16,000 more than 2018. That's fairly good news: Deaths usually rise by about 20,000 to 50,000 each year, mainly due to the nation's aging, and growing, population."

sim·plis·tic
/simˈplistik/


adjective: simplistic
treating complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are.
"simplistic solutions"

It's not said yet that in case you had denied or delayed treatment because of the shutdown and died, indicating another excessive death somewhat unrelated to covid19, otherwise.

Had one guy (neighbor's dad) who just gave up and stopped eating because he could not go "out" anymore. Did covid19 kill him? Nope!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201117133908.htm

You could take NY numbers (what a mishandled disaster) out of the whole US picture and maybe get a 4% to 8% rise in total deaths but when the shutdown is tacked on top of that somewhat expected increase, more questions naturally arise.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201117133908.htm

And you thought cancer would get ya!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2020 04:21AM by josephssmmyth.

If anyone out there has any doubts about mask wearing and wonders if it's just a ploy to take away their "freedom", I strongly suggest you talk to my daughter about it.

She, and anyone else who may be a frontline worker, has seen the proof that taking all the recommended precautions help.

She has also seen the suffering in the ICU's. I asked how is she handling it, and she said that while it's difficult to try to ease someone into dying, it's even more heart-wrenching to see the patient's families watching their loved one, not able to be in the same room.

Every time I see someone wearing a "chin diaper", I want to yell at them, but I'd probably get kicked out of the store.

There are wealthy people who act like they are at some ghoulish auction, thinking the vaccines go to the highest bidder. I don't know whether they have been diligent wearing masks or not, but that is also the pinnacle of selfishness. But then again, Satan advised us in the endowment sessions that "you can buy anything in this world with money."

Plus a million.

There are no gray areas on the lonely death bed, family separated by plastic if there at all, Medical staff feeling all of it to the core. Tired and hurting and afraid themselves. I have read so many stories now of the front line workers that rip me apart. I don't know how they do it.

Pretending there is some gray area, or that this is something about rights or control or hoax is a giant SLAP IN THE FACE to those brave and caring front line medical workers.

I'm ok with it. Experts doling out advice in their fields that they may not follow isn't bad. Smoking doctors for example.


Then there is a POTUS who downplays it. And there are "global faith leaders" who do little to nothing about it.

I haven't shaken anyone's hand. I'm big on handshaking and chatting with strangers. I haven't had any of that.

I haven't given anyone a hug. I haven't been hugged.

No one has brushed away my tears.

I have been alone. No one comes over. I don't visit with anyone. It is so hard, and I'm tired of it. I'm sure these restrictions are messing us up in ways that won't be understood for years.

But I want to live. And I want *you* to live. Because if we're alive, maybe we'll meet one day. Maybe we'll meet again. Maybe we'll do something fun. Maybe we'll just chill on a big ass rock thinking private thoughts together. None of that's possible if one of us dies.

I can't wait to get rid of my fucking masks! But I have to vigilantly defer gratification in the hopes of a big payoff when this is over. And it's hard. It's hard. But I cling to the hope that if we're careful and smart and kind, we'll all be okay.

Oh, Beth. That sounds so difficult. I have my daughter to hug, though we didn’t hug my son and his wife when we saw them this summer. That was really hard.

Someday I want to give you a big hug.

TG, hoping to someday hug and sit on a rock with Beth.

Yes! We can go to that scary-ass place near Emerald Bay...Eagle Point, and you can hold my hand until I calm down.

It’s a date.

TG

Oh gosh yes it's been terribly rough. And, it's also been a tender period to try and trudge through.

This virus is novel, sounds like such a mundane and almost harmless term and it's everything but novel as in any other non scientific, ordinary definition.

Nasty Novel, might be better.

Stay careful Beth, stay sanity frendly too!