COVID Humbug! (2022 edition)

[yyy]

@finley

@yyy

You don’t need to explain to me that the planet is getting more and more crappified all the time. I know it is. I just don’t equate increasing crappification with imminent collapse of ~everything. Humans are very capable of adaptation.

That’s the guy-falling-off-a-building “everything looks fine so far” argument.

I disagree. The guy is inside the building and having bad experiences with the elevators, a bit moreso than usual. It doesn’t look fine, but it never did. The guy is far more concerned about all the time to be wasted while stuck in an elevator between floors than about the possibility of all elevators suddenly snapping their cables and plunging down to the Netherworld.

@finley

that’s effectively the end of oil.

The physical end of oil would be the physical end of oil. In practical terms, you were talking about a “shutdown” currently underway. On the basis of what, a rise in prices? I repeat, that’s not a shutdown.

The actual physical end of oil is something people have been planning for for decades, and the closer it gets, the more serious the planning will get.

@finley

I don’t understand what you’re saying about travel.

I think you need to go and actually look at the travel rules.

Exactly.

https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/covid-19-international-travel

• For unvaccinated travellers, the obligation to present a negative test to travel to France remains, but the measures on arrival (test, isolation) are lifted when they come from countries on the “green” list, characterized by a moderate circulation of the virus.
• When unvaccinated travelers come from a country on the “orange” list, they must continue to present a compelling reason justifying the need for them to come to mainland France and may still be subject to a random test on arrival. Travelers who test positive will have to isolate themselves, in accordance with the recommendations of the Health Insurance.

Your beloved Elbonia is currently on the green list. Dépêche-toi, camarade!

I could give other examples, but why bother? It’s the new trend, and humans love to be trendy. Which countries have not dropped or seriously relaxed entry restrictions recently?

@finley

I’m aware of fuel price increases for your “gas guzzler” Earth tech vehicles, but that’s not a shutdown.

TPTB aren’t going to do anything that affects them personally, are they? Of course they’re not going to create a famine; apart from buggering up the champagne harvest, that sort of thing tends to get the peasants out on the streets with pitchforks. The aim here - as with COVID, I suspect - is to cause enough fear and pain to trigger the compliance response.

What happened to your faith in the free market, Comrade? Every time the price of oil goes up or down, it’s controlled by the Welfluminati?

@finley

Well now I need to ask: what part of HACCP is dangerous?

As it was implemented at the time, it involved repeatedly sticking temperature probes into people’s food. This had to be done because, in order to “simplify” the business of feeding patients, hospitals had come up with an immensely complicated system of pre-prepared “inputs” that are brought together to make meals over an extended period of time. That method was inherently unsafe. Having a spotty teenager walk around with a grungy temperature probe just made things worse, not better. I bailed on that project because it struck me as so completely stupid I wouldn’t have been able to work on it without going postal on someone.

Last time I checked, thermometers were fine as long as you cleaned them between uses. So whatever potential danger there was was in the implementation of the idea, not in the idea itself, correct?

@finley

I posted a year or two ago a thread on the destruction of Western culture. Frankly, I think I’ve been proved more right than I wanted to be.

Round and round we go…

@finley

Culture can be turned on a dime. People can be told to believe all sorts of stuff they would have laughed at six months previously. They can be told to do things (like submit their children to abuse by other adults) that we associate with long-defunct societies or the darkest days of history.

Yes and no. People have always been believing nonsense. The trendiness of this or that kind of nonsense changes, but the inclination to irrationality doesn’t change that fast.

If the inclination itself is what’s surprising to you (and I think it shouldn’t be, based on how cynical you are overall), then I would suggest the problem might be you just weren’t cynical enough before covid, or your cynicism was focused too much in certain areas.

But there’s a difference between cynicism and pessimism, and I refuse to be outright pessimistic.