Folks like the one above, I wouldn’t label as “hardliners.” The term anti-scientist seems far more appropriate.
Acknowledging their repetitive ignorance is the least I can do to honor their combined lack of basic scientific understanding.
It’s going to have to be an evolutionary process. I don’t think humanity has ever faced a situation quite like this, where literally half the population were inducted into a cult by professional mind-manipulators. My observation is that the COVIDians have split into three main factions:
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Those who have quietly realised it was all bullshit and that they made fools of themselves, and would just prefer nobody ever mentions it again, and who might be a little more circumspect next time around (but no guarantees).
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People who have simply lost the plot. These are the folk who go on and on about Russian Man Bad or trans genocide or whatever nonsense is currently streaming from the shit pipe. If the authorities pull a similar stunt next time, they’ll probably just put their underpants on their heads and pencils up their nose and shout “wibble”, on command.
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Those who firmly believe that (a) there was a deadly pandemic (b) that the only solution to deadly pandemics is tyranny, and (c) that tyranny was successfully deployed in 2020 to contain Armageddon. These are the people who think Dan Andrews was a jolly good chap and the clotshot architects deserved their Nobel prizes and promotions.
The first two groups are just a nuisance and perhaps ignoring them will work. The latter are very dangerous people. Given the right incentives, I have no doubt whatsoever that they would herd the noncompliant into gas chambers and pull the lever. Ignoring them will not work, because they’ll have the full might of the State backing them up.
EDIT: there’s a fourth group of people, those who simply follow orders without questioning the morality or validity of those orders. They’re going to be similarly problematic.
I’m intrigued by your legal approach, but TPTB were careful to make sure they dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s in this regard. A lot of laws were put in place to make every one of their crimes “legal”. So yes, there might be little loopholes that they forgot about, or that can be repurposed by “our” side against them, but ultimately I don’t think it’s going to change the course of history.
I don’t have any simple answers. As I mentioned before, I think we - society-at-large, the people who are still sane - are going to have to rebuild everything that was torn down and this will be a multi-generational project, and an uphill struggle against those who still want to poop in the sandpit. Destroying things is a lot of fun, and there are far too many people who have been given permission to do exactly that.
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In my view, the business community did it right, when they gave Guangdong the drubbing of a lifetime. This was not an active move, but a passive, non-confrontational pull-away. It will take 15 to 50 years for trust to be rebuilt. A shame, because I actually like Cantonese people. Vietnam has benefitted immensely from the COVID aftermath, and subsequent mass relocation.
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So I support a pub amnesty… never bringing the subject up in casual conversation. If we want to make all three groups listen up, we have to show them that there are severe, hopefully passive, consequences to their actions. Supporting technocracy will mean they lose their businesses, friends and even children.
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I don’t think they have the laws sewn up as well as they think. Besides, I am taking out individual lawsuits against individual companies… these are all fair game. If I get no remedy, I will escalate. The UK watchdogs have been helpful so far. If I still get no legal remedy, I will terminate association with the UK. And that includes with family members who will not compensate, stand down, or apologize. Now… who cares about one guy, right? But if we make the brain drain painful enough, they will regret it.
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By withdrawing, we hopefully force a more benevolent competition, where SE Asian countries, and beyond, compete to show they are trustworthy, tolerant, and unlikely to go along with another COVID scam. While there are very dangerous hardliners in every society, the majority of people will not go along with the next scam, if it means losing jobs, business, friends and family. So I don’t overestimate my approach, but I don’t underestimate it either.
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Governments are unable to create jobs right now. They are trying to attract as many creative / affluent / competent people as they can. While we must be eternally circumspect, you may have realized that We are holding all the cards now. Failure to create jobs means anything from mild discontent to outright revolution…
Hope you’re all enjoying the Comedy Cold War.
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A member of staff outside my local Carrefour was spraying alcohol onto customer hands. I hope it’s a one-off and the insanity isn’t kicking off again.
Monkey pox?
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Ask them what is in the bottle. I did that at costco during covid and the guy was like i dont know. See ya!
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It will only get looney tunes again if we meekly go along with it.
Show them that there are severe, permanent, passive, active, or even legal penalties, for getting on the virus crazy train, and they may think again. One of my supervisors in Taipei is a UK citizen. I could easily take him to UK small claims over this… it might mean forfeiting a reference from my old employer, but I don’t even really care about that, as I could go to another stuporviser.
tl;dr, there are significant social and market forces restraining another attempt.
Countries who go full on stupid with any type of lockdown whatsoever might lose 10 years of tourism, and every single factory. If that happens, the electorate might get beyond furious with the bureaucrats.
I am convinced the more pain we cause them in the courtroom, marketplace and living room, the less this will have to spill over onto the streets again. It’s like a bizarre dystopian equation.
The entire COVID strategy rests on them convincing us to be non retaliatory.
In game theory, if we start using tit for tat, or grim trigger… they r done for.
So lets everyone play nice, aight?
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I was in the supermarket the other day and the checkout girl mumbles “womflewomflefloof?” through her mask. I couldn’t even be bothered asking her to repeat herself and just gave her the money and left. I’m sure she thought “what a grumpy old foreigner/why can’t foreigners learn to speak the language?”, but I’m done caring. I’m know it’s not entirely her fault she’s brainwashed (I’m pretty sure bosses aren’t forcing mask-wearing) but I can’t be bothered making the slightest accommodation for these people anymore. Maybe it’s petty and mean, but I’m definitely finding myself withdrawing from clownworld, and it’s not exactly a conscious choice.
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Me too, I usually don’t respond to people who try to talk to me while hiding their faces.
If they talk to me in English, I usually respond with “why are you covering your mouth when speaking to me?” or " please don’t cover your mouth if you want to talk to me, thank you". Or if someone I know greets me, say a student or coworker, I’ll jokingly look puzzled and say “sorry, who are you? I don’t recognize your face” which causes them to embarrassingly acknowlwdge the idiocy of the situation and take the damn thing off.
Still, it’s tiring at times living in the only country in the world that refuses to move on from the covid-19 pandemic.
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I’ve travelled fairly widely since The Pandemic™ and it literally is just Taiwan. The CECC really did people’s heads in. IMO there were three factors at play: 1) the length of the mandate - I believe it was the longest in the world 2) the sheer stupidity of the rules and 3) the widely-propagated myth that Taiwan remained “COVID-free” during 2020 because Taiwanese people had religiously worn masks (remember the “Taiwan can help” campaign?).
It was an absolute masterclass in brainwashing. The clearly-nonsensical nature of the mask rules were key to the staying power of the belief, I think. Most cults are obviously irrational to outsiders looking in, but I’m now convinced that it’s the irrationality itself that keeps people bound to them. Convince someone of something that seems superficially plausible but is actually wrong, and they can discard that belief without too much harm to their Self - without saying to themselves, “damn, what a complete idiot I was to give that idea any credence”. But once you get people trapped in something that is objectively mad/dangerous/stupid/harmful, they can’t exit the belief system without admitting to themselves that what they did was mad/dangerous/stupid/harmful. Their own ego imprisons them.
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Yeah, it seems few people are questioning what happened in Taiwan during the pandemic and what kind of weird society it has turned into.
In contrast, almost everyday I read western news stories about vaccine side effects, the economic consequences of lockdowns, and lawsuits against governments for restrictions that went too far. Heck, even Vance and Walz during their debate had to address some of these issues.
Whereas here in Taiwan the citizenry went along with it all and today just shrug and say it was no big deal, we’re used to this new (and never ending) covid environment now…
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RFK Jr: “Autism has [increased] from one in 10,000 in my generation, to one in 34 in my kid’s generation.”
“If you were born prior to 1989, which is the year they changed the vaccine schedule, your chance of having a chronic disease is 12%. If you were born after 1989, it’s 54%.”
“And all of the diseases that have become epidemic… every one of them are listed as side effects on the manufacturer’s inserts for the 72 vaccines that are now mandated for our children.”
“The four companies that make all 72 of those vaccines… in the last 10 years, collectively, have paid $35 billion in penalties, damages [and] fines for falsifying science, for defrauding regulators, for lying to doctors, and for killing hundreds of thousands of people.”
“It requires kind of a cognitive dissonance to believe that these companies, that are lying and cheating on every other pharmaceutical product… somehow found Jesus with vaccines and aren’t lying to us.”
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Vaccine injury awareness month.
Will any pro jab people promote it like they promote every place that offers the jabs to the public?
Thought not.
https://x.com/ukcvfamily/status/1841372545876148627
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