CNBC would appear to wish to have us believe that the drop in jobs was caused by “the variant” as though this was some act of nature instead of an act of government.
it is not. this is a deeply misleading framing intended to obscure causality rather than reveal it.
it’s way past they point where even these people could possibly be this ignorant of baseline reality.
this is, instead, a clear bet that you are.
this drop in jobs was not “unexpected” at least not by anyone paying attention. this is the direct, proximate effect of imposing vaccine mandates as a precondition to work. the OSHA mandate fell, but the federal mandate for contractors did not. thousands of mandates for health care workers imposed by states and hospital systems did not. requirements for many truckers and teachers and hospitality workers did not. many employers went ahead and imposed these anyway. they waited until after the holidays, but here we are.
we also cut off the flow of travel and of patronage. we closed businesses (again). we limited capacity. we mandated vaccination as a pre-requisite for going out to eat or staying in hotels. and like clockwork, it choked off the flow of tourists and local patrons alike because people HATE this and hate playing officious games and pretending that the made up “covid physics” of “wear your mask to the table then take it off when you sit” make any sense at all. they hate having some hostess demand “their papers.” maybe not everyone does, but enough people do that it has savaged businesses.
we’re living though needless damage to no useful effect at.
this is NOT the virus.
it’s the predictable and unavoidable output of deeply stupid public health policy.
the damage since this began has been acute and severe. “2 weeks to flatten the curve” was, as many of us were screaming right from the beginning, the commencement of the nastiest economic hit to jobs and small business per unit time in US history and probably in global history.
in the US, we dropped 20 million jobs in 2 months. that is so far outside any precedent it’s staggering.
the entire 2008 recession and financial crisis led to a job reduction of 8 million over 24 months…
and we have NOT recovered to previous levels. current job levels are about the same as jan 2018.
they are 4 million jobs below the level from early 2020.
they are 9 million below where we would be had job growth continued as before. (added in red)
might job growth have slowed anyway? yes, perhaps, but this gives us a set of fairly reasonable bookends to assess the scope of what this has cost in terms of private nonfarm employment.
we’re 4-9 million jobs short of where we would likely have been without this public health response and claims that the US jobs market looks strong are pretty iffy.
(keep in mind that the unemployment rate drops when people drop out of the labor force/stop looking for work. it does not mean they found jobs.)
“but it was the virus! most of this would have happened anyway!”
this is a predictable claim, but seems out of step with reality. fortunately, we have a control group.
compare this damage to a place like sweden who did not lock down and freak out.
sweden’s payrolls figure is much more seasonally variable than the US, but looking through this seeming cardiac rhythm the overall difference in outcome is unavoidably obvious.
the dip was extremely minor in comparison. it was extremely short in comparison. and, despite the effects of many neighbors locking down, tourism and travel dropping, and global supply chain issues, their jobs figures currently look indistinguishable from 2019 and pre pandemic 2020.
employment today is higher than dec 2019 or jan 2020.
the US is nowhere close.
it’s really very simple: places that locked down harder got no better outcomes on covid. but they got much, much worse outcomes on economic and societal damage.
this was all known and knowable.
the base prior for pandemics was to never, never do this.
it’s what the guidelines said.
i did a ton of work on this back in the twitter days. it was obvious right from the start that drops in google mobility data (measuring actual human behavior from cell phone tracking) had zero effect on bending any epidemiological curve. it was clearly doing nothing at all. this was already glaring. and so was the harm.
i pulled this data from BLS way back in 2020:
it was more than a little apparent that it was predominantly politics and policy, not covid putting people out of work.
the no lockdown states were back at baseline by the fall.
the relationship was not subtle:
at this stage of the game and with this much clear data at one’s disposal, it’s pretty absurd to still be trying to blame upon a virus that which’s fault lies with public health response.
to do so is neither economically or epidemiologically accurate.
these are choices, not happenstance.
and it’s long past time to be making different ones.
"they hate having some hostess demand “their papers.” maybe not everyone does, but enough people do that it has savaged businesses."
Yup. I live in Washington. A few months back, three friends took me out to a fancy steak house in Seattle for my birthday. It was the first time I'd sat down in a restaurant for about 6 months. I was not aware that restaurants were requiring everyone to present their vax cards.
Now, mind you, I'm vaccinated. I had a scan copy of my vax card on my phone. I thought about saying 'screw it, then I don't want to eat here,' but my three friends already had made the trek into Seattle for dinner. So, I showed it.
But, that was the last time. I haven't been out to dinner since and won't go until the 'show us your papers' nonsense is gone.
I won't go to any business that requires this, and I don't really care if it is legally required so businesses have no choice. We all have choices. I run a business with 100 employees spread across three floors in our office building in Seattle. The state requires everyone to wear a mask; we don't. So, if employees want to wear a mask, they can. Most don't. We've been fined by the local health nazis three times. Every few months, they send someone to park in a van outside our building to observe someone exiting without a mask, then they issue fines. So be it. It may not be as loud as the awesome Canadian truckers, but it's my form of protest.
I went out to eat very seldom before the circus came to town. Now I don't go at all. I quit going to the store I used to shop at because of mask mandates and then a sticker on the window that only double vaxxed could come in unmasked. No one asked me anything but if they had, I would have left my shopping cart right there and walked out the store. I am now shopping at the store one town over, where they never had any mandates but politely mentioned on a board, to please keep some distance. No masks ever. I gladly drive the 20 miles.
Shows protect and serve priorities. When "Public Servants" have nothing better to do, on taxpayers dime, than set up no-mask sting operations like they're hunting Prohibition moonshiners. It's so outrageously insipid on top of being wrong about 74 other ways. There's a popular tee here in NYC w giant QR code & huge hand w middle finger above text, "Scan This" *smirk*
wow. Haven't seen that one yet LOL. I got some of the Sharyl Atkisson Tshirts, think for yourself, some animals are more equal than others, and I want my news uncensored. Planning on buying some more as spring approaches !
It's a creative bunch in the Big Apple, countless tee variations at events, maybe as many as signs. Usually some clever costumes & performance artists too.
Street pics w events that speak to my heart & folks in the street who make it happen, a very favorite activity for me.. lots of albums of Medical Freedom events & some familiar faces who made it to DC sprinkled in... lotsa fun slogans :~)
I, too, live in Seattle, and I haven't been to a restaurant since the vaccine pass regime. I'm sure my favorite restaurant would like my money since I used to be a once-a-week regular, but maybe they should take it up with the city and county.
In France - where eating out is part of its social, cultural fabric - restaurants and bars and hotels were closed from March 2020 to Summer 2021, when they could open with restrictions, but evening curfews meant no dinner service. Then health passes (vaccination or recent negative test) took over restricting trade. Now health pass is replaced by vaccine passes, must have three doses, negative tests no longer accepted. Masks have been mandatory everywhere (even in the streets in some places) since March 2020.
I lived in France for 20 years, but life was no longer life, so I moved back to UK a few months ago. Here, happily, all restrictions have gone, no vax passes. Mandate for health workers to be vaccinated cancelled due to mass resistance - about 100 000. Not a ringing endorsement for vaccines when doctors and nurses refuse to have them on safety grounds.
That's nuts. I live in Spokane and a few of our regular spots don't even have employees wearing masks. Zero restaurants anywhere in town (that I know of) make you wear a mask to enter anymore. Fewer and fewer people wearing masks to stores everyday
I walk 4 blocks from my office on Queen Anne to the local Trader Joe's to get a sandwich for lunch. Masks are required in the store, of course. But, the thing is: I rarely pass anyone on the street who isn't wearing a mask these days. It's gotten worse as time wears on: Vaccines/boosters are shown to be completely ineffective; CNN and the CDC acknowledge that paper and cloth masks don't work; Omicron is proving to be little more than a mild cold; yet the denizens of this deep blue city are more frightened than ever. I don't get it.
Worse still, on this walk I pass at least 8-10 restaurants and small businesses that have been shuttered in the past year including, most recently, the local 7-11 -- all boarded up a few weeks back. Seattle's got nothing on Spokane any more.
I don't think they're really more frightened of the virus, they're more frightened of (a) having been wrong and wasted all that effort, and (b) having to admit that those red-state hicks were right.
I had the pleasure of visiting Spokane for a track meet at The Podium where my son was competing. My husband and I dined at a lovely restaurant by the river and it was absolutely relaxing. No one cared. Perfect! We live in neighboring Oregon where Kate Brown dreams of becoming another Jacinda.
I lived in Seattle once in the early 80s, it was a beautiful city then, like Montreal was. Better times, before the Branch Covidians took over. I admire your resistance, sir.
I lived in Seattle for a year in 1969-70, and my daughter was born there. It was a lovely, wonderful city back then. Hard to believe what it has turned into.
What's beginning to happen now is firms are preparing for the looming recession and using COVID mandates to cut staff that they otherwise would have done anyway and paid severance to those they laid off because that's the politically correct thing to do. Firing for refusal to get vaxxed instead is cheaper and much more politically expedient because the same media that would normally come after them for throwing workers out into the streets for financial reasons won't blink an eye if they've done it to the unwashed anti-vaxxers.
frankly, I’m surprised that any business would volunteer to be the test case on this. it may appear acceptable now, but how it ultimately plays out in the courts under challenge is another matter.
I think the case of firing for refusal to get vaccinated is already well settled. Hospitals and health providers plus several large companies have done it already. They don't appear to be at any legal risk of doing so and have the backing of the federal government and government health and labor agencies.
That's the beauty of this....from their perspective. They have the cover they need to do it this way both legally and politically.
I think it's a little early to make that determination. SCOTUS already said the feds can't force businesses to fire people.
But now let's say someone gets the vax because their employer will fire them without it and they suffer a vax injury. The business now has to show a court that the vax mandate was reasonable. We can prove that the vax doesn't prevent an employee from catching or spreading Covid. So what is their excuse for exposing said employee to vax injuries?
Especially after the public announcement of that lack of efficacy - the employer either knew or should have known that vaccinated employees posed the same risk to others as the unvaccinated, and thus that the termination was retaliatory on political or religious grounds. In fact, from what is known about virus loads in the vaccinated population - that it is several orders of magnitude *higher* than in the unvaccinated - and that the vaccinated can *and do* spread infection, then it is the *vaccinated* employees who are the "clear and present" danger, and the employer has created a "hostile workplace environment" for all employees, vaccinated or not, and should be liable for damages, actual and punitive, for those employees who became ill because of that environment, just as if the employer had scattered "asbestos snow" around the workplace. They had either actual or constructive knowledge and are therefore liable.
None of that would be relevant legally. A company that produces widgets is not the authority on public health and disease control. They are deferring to the official government authorities on that because that is what they are expected to do under the law to insulate themselves from liability. The justice system is not going to expect a widget company to have known better or more about disease control than the CDC. That's what makes the politicization and corruption of the CDC so insidious.
Not sure where you come from or what your background in employment law is, but those facts state a cause of action which should survive a motion for summary judgment.
That's not what SCOTUS said. They said OSHA can't force private companies to impose vaxx mandates. But they also upheld the ability for the federal government to impose vaxx mandates on government workers and health care workers that operate in the Medicare system. It seems abundantly clear that private companies can require vaccines as a condition of employment both through existing legal precedent and recent court opinions.
The business is already covered because they are following CDC guidelines and recommendations when it comes to the vaccines. The business cannot be held liable for requiring a vaccine that the CDC has deemed safe and effective and a necessary for public health. The CDC, the federal government, has provided them the cover they need. What's worse, in the case of vaccine injury, assuming it can be proved and good luck with that or getting any doctor's help with that, it would normally be the vaccine manufacturer that a victim could sue. But they can't do that either due to the EUA that shields them all from liability.
It sucks, but that's the way it is. The companies cannot be touched for requiring a "health intervention" as a condition for employment that is recommended by the CDC to protect their workforce and you can't sue the pharma companies. The vaxxed are all out of luck if their health has been harmed as a result and the unvaxxed are out of luck if they've been fired for not getting vaxxed. The only thing that could or would ever change that is if there is some kind of revolt that results in something along the lines of the Nuremberg trials where government officials, like Fauci and at the CDC, are found guilty of crimes against humanity and the victims would then be allowed to sue the U.S. government,
SCOTUS ruled that health systems that accept medicare and medicaid money can require the vax because they are using federal money to pay their employees, but that isn't translatable to other businesses.
You can say that businesses can't be held liable for requiring medical intervention if the CDC says it's safe and effective, but the CDC also admits that death is a possible side effect. At that point, it's up to a jury to decide if it's a reasonable demand or not.
Apparently these businesses believe that juries will never go against The Narrative, but they haven't accounted for the fact that The Narrative shifts. They can take their chances with future juries if they like, but the manufacturers of asbestos would warn them that life has it's little ups and downs.
The principle absolutely is transferable. The federal government as the employer can impose those mandates. Private companies as employers can impose those mandates. There has not been a single successful challenge to this principle.
Private companies can legally do it as a condition of employment, which isn't an argument that they should do it. Any complainant will have zero chance even getting such a case to a jury because, again, the company will not be and cannot be held liable for following CDC guidance in the midst of a pandemic. The CDC shields companies and institutions from such liability. The best a complainant might be able to do is sue the CDC/federal government and good luck with that.
Yeah, that's not a bad thing either. Hopefully this does result in smart, critical and independent thinking people leaving the hamster wheel companies and starting better ones of their own.
My wife was fired from her job after her company denied her religious accommodation request. Whether they “could” do it is one issue. The larger issue is the almost criminally incompetent way that her company went about it. The affected employees’ lawyers are going to have fun this.
Some of it is also one that I figured out early in the work from home era. Companies paid attention to how many people they actually needed. But yeah recession is definitely up there.
“…places that locked down harder got no better outcomes on covid. but they got much, much worse outcomes on economic and societal damage.”
That’s the key point. And it’s indisputable. Restrictive NPIs did little or nothing to prevent Covid mortality, but did cause tremendous damage—economically, psychologically, educationally and in terms of general public health.
Yes an elderly neighbor (late 80’s) down the street from me, got the booster and within a few days keeled over and died in her recliner. She was not ill to speak of, was still driving her old VW bug, with her curlers in her hair, that she has always done for the past 19 years that I have lived on this street, going to the supermarket etc. Her husband who is a few years older and whom she had been taking care of, out lived her. And the neighbor who told me the story, who lives across from the departed woman, made no connection with her getting the Booster and her sudden death! (The first thing I asked her when she told me the story was if Mary Lou had just got the Booster. She didn’t know, but she told me that she and her husband did get the B, so they could go on a cruise from Long Beach down to Cabo San Lucas and back! And said they would get a 4th shot if they needed it for the next time they wanted to go on a cruise!) In Friggin Insane!
I own a restaurant In Mississippi. Since June of 2020, I have not required my employees or customers to wear a mask. It never made any sense to my wife and I. We received some flack for it, but now people appreciate us keeping the normalcy of 2019. You have to push back, or they will push you right over a cliff
This. Thank-you. I push back here in CA. I know exactly 2 other people doing same. I feel great when I do, too. We cannot comply our way out of tyranny.
Tucker Carlson responded to another reporter like that. He was asked about his vax status and he asked the offending reporter when he had last had sex with his wife and what position they used.
When the world locked down the only thing anyone knew for sure was that it would harm the economy. The other predictions were just wishful thinking without a shred of evidence.
Yet our leaders went ahead. Idiocracy is the only apt description of the world's governments.
And people say stupid shit like "You're putting money over people" -- but a shitty economy kills people too. But, just like lockdowns, these deaths can't be put into a neat little box because a bad economy affects people in different ways. Some of them OD, some commit suicide, some live for years while drinking themselves to death.
Soon the US will have children not only dropping dead from vaccines, but also from hunger, like we saw years ago in poorest places in Africa. It is hard to believe, that about 1 in 10 children in this country live in poverty.
Everyone gets tested before applying for a job except politicians. I guess some don't even know the very beginning of the Constitution. Heck some people on the highest court don't know it !
Just like the headlines, "SUV plows into Wisconsin Christmas parade" or "Gun violence is killing kids." Inanimate objects are apparently threatening human lives.
we might be in for that shortly ! Mechanical dog attacked his owner? Unmanned vehicle drove over his owner? Computer laser killed its owner? Vaccinated inhuman kills its owner... oh wait.
The Democrats never wanted to avoid destroying the economy. No way, it was a part of their game plan, you know the "Build Back Better" bullshit where we become full time members of their new serf economy and the elite feel realized and safe (unlike Justin Trudeau at the moment as he grows more obese and nervous in his Berlin, I mean Ottawa bunker). LOL
Inept Washington Gov Inslee created the Washington hospital staffing shortages by vaccine mandate. Directly. The solution? A pair of bills regulating staffing guidelines at hospitals. House Bill 1868 and Senate Bill 575 would set new standards to regulate hospital staffing. Government is the solution to the government created problem.
Just as the idiots at the Fed want to start tightening the interest rates. This should have occurred at least 8 months ago. We’re in for a hell of a stagflation recession. These MF’s have no idea what they are doing.
We must never lose sight of the fact that this entire catastrophe was, in fact, a financial/money crisis, covered over by a convenient fictitious virus. The goal of the elites, who enriched themselves during the plandemic by TRILLIONS, was, in reality, to choke off small businesses and force the rubes to shop at only big box, big tech (e.g. Amazon) venues. It worked, spectacularly. Think about this: if you were a pure-blood psychopath who had absolutely zero empathy for others, and you were already ultra-wealthy, and you had the chance to devastate your small business competition and thereby further enrich yourself at others's expense, and you couldn't care less about the damage you did to other people's lives, why would you not want useless and damaging covid measures that utterly decimated small businesses to continue in perpetuity? The same people who gave us the 2008 financial crisis caused this current financial crisis; not one single cause of the 2008 crisis has ever been fixed; the collapse of the world's financial system was inevitable, and it would have been far worse if TPTB had not engineered financial bailouts in the TRILLIONS to paper over the damage they had done. The plandemic, planned over several years, was unleashed at the most convenient possible time, reducing demand for money that, basically, did not exist. Absent the plandemic, the banksters who are driving this hoax would have been revealed for the negligence they engineered, just like the engineered financial negligence they were guilty of in the run-up to 2008. Elites couldn't care less about us; it's all about the money, as always.
Great synopsis. As others have pointed out, this was all by design. It’s the First World War all over again with Big Tech and Big Pharma added to the mix.
Interesting reply, in my experience, the young - except for working class people - have entirely been taken in by all of this, they've been thoroughly conned and they have no realization of it, and it's proportionally worse, in direct proportion to the amount of university education they have. You look like an outlier...
All part of the grand plan to decimate the middle class and mom and pop businesses transferring wealth from these people to the big box guys n'gals (Walmart, Costco etc). What appears irrational to us is business as usual to the bottomfeeders that make up the so called left.
The final paragraph: "The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
The original pandemic preparedness handbook that was published years ago already said all of this yet it was purposely ignored by the same bodies that produced it, the WHO if I'm not mistaken.
About our unemployment figures. Several hundred thousand unemployed are hidden in the statistics, due to how [Unemployed] is defined here in Sweden. That's a lot considering the population is aprox. 11 000 000.
For instance, if you are living on welfare and partake in a communal project where you get to work at least 1 hour/week, you no longer count as unemployed. Also, only those unemployed registred with the national unemployment office are counted so people such as a neighbour of mine who is on sick pay due to a stroke seven years back is not counted as unemployed even if he no longer has a job.
Always remember concerning stats about Sweden, that we have an incompetent socialist 'democrat' governement and a corporativist political system, so stats and data will always be skewed to look as good as possible - even for internal use, which of course makes problems impossible to correct.
However, as that has nothing to do with Covid, your comparison still works.
Hey Bad Cat - Now that Substack has an audio option, I'm always wishing I could have access to audio versions of your longer pieces for when I can't afford the eyeball attention. You've been providing colossal value. I bet a lot of your friends here would record them for free for you if you don't have time/patience to do them yourselves. For fun, I did a one-take narration of "Memes of Production" if you want to hear what it could sound like. You can DM me on Twitter @PlumRemson if you want the audiofile. Ever grateful for your work and hilariousness.
Part of the cruel playbook of Davos, with henchmen like federal and state politicos who are complicit in relief by exemption and prophylactics availability.
"it’s way past they point where even these people could possibly be this ignorant of baseline reality. this is, instead, a clear bet that you are."
And they're right.
They know that millions of Americans are LIVs. They know that millions of Americans are too lazy to be informed citizens by doing their own research and legwork. They know that millions of Americans get their "news" SOLELY from the alphabet legacy media. They know that millions of Americans' critical thinking skills and reading comprehension skills are rudimentary at best.
They know what it takes to advance their preferred narrative, and so they do it, every day, nonstop.
I wish you would just stop with this making sense bull. I have told people for years the issue in this country is discernment. When over 40% of the country can’t even graduate from high school, we have becomes a nation of lemmings.
I am an NP at a large, tertiary-care VA affiliated with a major university medical center. By April 2020, I had started documenting in patients’ electronic health record that things had happened secondary to the COVID 19 pandemic RESPONSE, rather than to the pandemic. It was/is my small way to continue to say that it was our response that has resulted in various health declines, patients being lost to follow up, etc. Not due to the pandemic.
The point derives from, “This was all known and knowable”.
The wrecking crews in Washington DC’s and the world’s real power centers did not make mistakes. This isn’t an honestly ham-handed pandemic response. Every stage of it has been rehearsed and implemented to get the outcomes observed here—and other outcomes that we will soon be discussing. Things like food shortages and general mayhem in wide swaths of the civilized world. If depopulation is your intended omelette, you’re gonna have to break a crap load of eggs.
Our feline friend commented recently that he and presumably many others here are not all that interested in growing their own food. I get that.
Perhaps wisdom would indicate that cultivating relationships with those who do grow food is not an unreasonable hedge for whatever the hopeful bet may be.
We’re off the edge of the chart here, mates. There be dragons here.
Western Europe GDP drop also well correlated w lockdown stringency in 2020. If only ANYONE could have predicted this. Face it folks: the clowns in charge are corrupt globalists and/or out of touch w reality academicians/scientists - they wanted this (most of them). As far as CNBC goes, stopped watching it mid 2020, and I'm in finance. Couldn't take the fear mongering BS, hourly Gottlieb appearances, Fauci worship, frowny Megan and Sue, and Dbag Ross-Sorkin, all wrapped in wokey elitist postering, anymore.
I have an old school degree in economics. You can’t just keep dumping roughly $10 trillion into the economy without a consequence. The closest analogy is adding water to bleach. The more water you add to bleach the weaker the solution. That’s inflation. If the economy grows .1% in the 1st quarter as predicted then we’re in a recession. Inflation is closer to 15% so the net is negative growth of -14%.
This was not stupid public health policy. This was an intentional gamble. There was the strong possibility of trillions of aid coming from the government, and for some states more than others, the aid was worth the risk of economic loss. Oregon is a great example, doubling down with permanent masking these days, and waiting for the billions of COVID aid to come in. The retirement accounts for public workers is depending on it.
We've reached the perfect nirvana of significant inflation combined with significantly stagnant employment.
We ran this type of thing in the 70's and early 80's and it was mean time. We tried price controls and other statist nonsense. I can't possibly imagine what perversion these geniuses are dreaming up right now. It's going to be breathtaking.
Locally the price of housing whether it be fee purchase or leasehold has appreciated to the point where a purchaser could end up in deep trouble if interest rates rise to the rate of inflation. I don't think that's a risk however as the biggest debtor in America happens to run the printing press and for good measure also has a large cache of nuclear weapons.
That's where we are. A banana republic on a global scale. The Biggest TONY SOPRANO that ever lived with a gang of goons with impenetrable armament. When this show comes to it's conclusion the fade to black of the last episode of the sopranos will seem poorly written.
Humans are fun as they keep slamming their appendages in the door and cursing at it the same way, over and over and over again.
"we’re living though needless damage to no useful effect at all."
Hardly a fair characterization of the net effects of the lockdown and real sleight to a minority who so seldom have their successes triumphed by legacy media. We saw the largest, fastest upward transfer of wealth in human history, an incredibly useful effect for NASDAQ Mafia!
“ ..we’re living though needless damage to no useful effect ... “ Depends upon your goals however right? If, say, you are in the globalist totalitarian club which is promoting : You will Own Nothing and Be Happy” then perhaps eviscerating the economy and creating a populace dependant upon and/or “demanding” UBI is exactly why these pathetic polices are enacted to create so much( seemingly nonsensica)l damage. Its all in your POV.
"The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
"A Literature Review and Meta Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID 19 Mortality". Read at least the conclusion starting on page 41.
Also you couldn’t let people go if you had a PPP loan until you received forgiveness. Once you received forgiveness then you likely let them go because that would have been right around when Omicron came around with the new round of draconian measures. So between their stupid PPP giveaways and the vax mandates they’ve really screwed up a lot of lives, messed with small business, and created a massive mess. Not to mention the debt. For no reason.
This was actually quite predictable. All the problems we've seen (supply chain, kids out of school, even I'll risk saying hospital craziness and people's mental health) is the unhealthy reaction to COVID and not COVID itself. I've watched enough people grow old, or grow sick, and know they weren't going to live long. Some hide away, but some go on living to the end, building memories and enjoying themselves right up until they can't. I think about that as I watch all this. We have grown so very mentally weak.
A famous person said "the cure must not be worse than the disease". In today's amerika, half the population are either oblivious, or too stupid to realize what happened. We are living the the movie IDIOCRACY.
You mean you can't grow crops with a Gatorade-like sport drink?
Companies are taking the pandemic, and the vaccination issue in particular, as an opportunity to conduct significant layoffs with impunity. That's a major contributor to the labor numbers.
It's rare in today's labor law environment that you can fire anyone over 40 (or from a wide range of other protected categories) without a pretty thick file, and even then you'll face at least the threat of lawsuit to dislodge a larger severance. To let go a WHOLESALE number of employees, particularly from protected classes, and to do it FOR CAUSE (i.e., pay you no severance or benefits), has been unheard of in the modern era. Until "Unvaccinated". Just like PPP or CARES Act money, no corporation was going to pass up this freebie lightly.
The labor data is from before the Supreme Court decision when the "mandate" provided perfect cover. Even after the SCOTUS mandate slap-down, corporations are still playing the card under the halo of fear and confusion. Witness T-Mobile, for example, which announced just this week.
Corporate decisions are made for many reasons, but I can assure you that "public health" is never one of them. This is a massive windfall for shareholders.
Three pay periods. I said this when the "two weeks" started. Close business - most if not all - for more than three pay periods and they will NOT stay open. Then we got the PPP loans to try to stave that off. But really, that just masked the damage.
I have friends in the manufacturing sector who were so overheated in their hiring to keep up with the Trump economy that they were pulling in unqualified people off the street "to train" at the end of 2019. Some may be old enough to recall. By March of 2020, they had sussed out the losers, and many were "not to standard," but in their haste to hire, they reeled in some with "special protections" that were part of the package which made them basically impossible to fire under normal circumstances. The managers welcomed the lockdowns as a safe way to furlough the deadwood they had heaped on themselves. They also took the opportunity, under cover of COVID, to toss the longtime disgruntled, the ingrates, the agitators, everybody they had been itching to lose. They saw it as a great once-per-decade opportunity to cull the hardscale buildup that happens in organizations. Their reasoning told to me: "No judge or jury would convict under COVID rules, we were free to sever ties." Their only miscalculation: That the economy would return after 2 weeks became 8 weeks became 104 weeks, and counting.
"they hate having some hostess demand “their papers.” maybe not everyone does, but enough people do that it has savaged businesses."
Yup. I live in Washington. A few months back, three friends took me out to a fancy steak house in Seattle for my birthday. It was the first time I'd sat down in a restaurant for about 6 months. I was not aware that restaurants were requiring everyone to present their vax cards.
Now, mind you, I'm vaccinated. I had a scan copy of my vax card on my phone. I thought about saying 'screw it, then I don't want to eat here,' but my three friends already had made the trek into Seattle for dinner. So, I showed it.
But, that was the last time. I haven't been out to dinner since and won't go until the 'show us your papers' nonsense is gone.
I won't go to any business that requires this, and I don't really care if it is legally required so businesses have no choice. We all have choices. I run a business with 100 employees spread across three floors in our office building in Seattle. The state requires everyone to wear a mask; we don't. So, if employees want to wear a mask, they can. Most don't. We've been fined by the local health nazis three times. Every few months, they send someone to park in a van outside our building to observe someone exiting without a mask, then they issue fines. So be it. It may not be as loud as the awesome Canadian truckers, but it's my form of protest.
I went out to eat very seldom before the circus came to town. Now I don't go at all. I quit going to the store I used to shop at because of mask mandates and then a sticker on the window that only double vaxxed could come in unmasked. No one asked me anything but if they had, I would have left my shopping cart right there and walked out the store. I am now shopping at the store one town over, where they never had any mandates but politely mentioned on a board, to please keep some distance. No masks ever. I gladly drive the 20 miles.
Shows protect and serve priorities. When "Public Servants" have nothing better to do, on taxpayers dime, than set up no-mask sting operations like they're hunting Prohibition moonshiners. It's so outrageously insipid on top of being wrong about 74 other ways. There's a popular tee here in NYC w giant QR code & huge hand w middle finger above text, "Scan This" *smirk*
wow. Haven't seen that one yet LOL. I got some of the Sharyl Atkisson Tshirts, think for yourself, some animals are more equal than others, and I want my news uncensored. Planning on buying some more as spring approaches !
It's a creative bunch in the Big Apple, countless tee variations at events, maybe as many as signs. Usually some clever costumes & performance artists too.
Street pics w events that speak to my heart & folks in the street who make it happen, a very favorite activity for me.. lots of albums of Medical Freedom events & some familiar faces who made it to DC sprinkled in... lotsa fun slogans :~)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pameladrew/albums/with/72157642150732764
I, too, live in Seattle, and I haven't been to a restaurant since the vaccine pass regime. I'm sure my favorite restaurant would like my money since I used to be a once-a-week regular, but maybe they should take it up with the city and county.
In France - where eating out is part of its social, cultural fabric - restaurants and bars and hotels were closed from March 2020 to Summer 2021, when they could open with restrictions, but evening curfews meant no dinner service. Then health passes (vaccination or recent negative test) took over restricting trade. Now health pass is replaced by vaccine passes, must have three doses, negative tests no longer accepted. Masks have been mandatory everywhere (even in the streets in some places) since March 2020.
I lived in France for 20 years, but life was no longer life, so I moved back to UK a few months ago. Here, happily, all restrictions have gone, no vax passes. Mandate for health workers to be vaccinated cancelled due to mass resistance - about 100 000. Not a ringing endorsement for vaccines when doctors and nurses refuse to have them on safety grounds.
That's nuts. I live in Spokane and a few of our regular spots don't even have employees wearing masks. Zero restaurants anywhere in town (that I know of) make you wear a mask to enter anymore. Fewer and fewer people wearing masks to stores everyday
I walk 4 blocks from my office on Queen Anne to the local Trader Joe's to get a sandwich for lunch. Masks are required in the store, of course. But, the thing is: I rarely pass anyone on the street who isn't wearing a mask these days. It's gotten worse as time wears on: Vaccines/boosters are shown to be completely ineffective; CNN and the CDC acknowledge that paper and cloth masks don't work; Omicron is proving to be little more than a mild cold; yet the denizens of this deep blue city are more frightened than ever. I don't get it.
Worse still, on this walk I pass at least 8-10 restaurants and small businesses that have been shuttered in the past year including, most recently, the local 7-11 -- all boarded up a few weeks back. Seattle's got nothing on Spokane any more.
I don't think they're really more frightened of the virus, they're more frightened of (a) having been wrong and wasted all that effort, and (b) having to admit that those red-state hicks were right.
Great news. And good for the good people of Spokane
I had the pleasure of visiting Spokane for a track meet at The Podium where my son was competing. My husband and I dined at a lovely restaurant by the river and it was absolutely relaxing. No one cared. Perfect! We live in neighboring Oregon where Kate Brown dreams of becoming another Jacinda.
I lived in Seattle once in the early 80s, it was a beautiful city then, like Montreal was. Better times, before the Branch Covidians took over. I admire your resistance, sir.
I lived in Seattle for a year in 1969-70, and my daughter was born there. It was a lovely, wonderful city back then. Hard to believe what it has turned into.
Lies stacked on lies for 22+ months.
https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/watching-the-detectives-and-seeing
What's beginning to happen now is firms are preparing for the looming recession and using COVID mandates to cut staff that they otherwise would have done anyway and paid severance to those they laid off because that's the politically correct thing to do. Firing for refusal to get vaxxed instead is cheaper and much more politically expedient because the same media that would normally come after them for throwing workers out into the streets for financial reasons won't blink an eye if they've done it to the unwashed anti-vaxxers.
frankly, I’m surprised that any business would volunteer to be the test case on this. it may appear acceptable now, but how it ultimately plays out in the courts under challenge is another matter.
I think the case of firing for refusal to get vaccinated is already well settled. Hospitals and health providers plus several large companies have done it already. They don't appear to be at any legal risk of doing so and have the backing of the federal government and government health and labor agencies.
That's the beauty of this....from their perspective. They have the cover they need to do it this way both legally and politically.
I think it's a little early to make that determination. SCOTUS already said the feds can't force businesses to fire people.
But now let's say someone gets the vax because their employer will fire them without it and they suffer a vax injury. The business now has to show a court that the vax mandate was reasonable. We can prove that the vax doesn't prevent an employee from catching or spreading Covid. So what is their excuse for exposing said employee to vax injuries?
Especially after the public announcement of that lack of efficacy - the employer either knew or should have known that vaccinated employees posed the same risk to others as the unvaccinated, and thus that the termination was retaliatory on political or religious grounds. In fact, from what is known about virus loads in the vaccinated population - that it is several orders of magnitude *higher* than in the unvaccinated - and that the vaccinated can *and do* spread infection, then it is the *vaccinated* employees who are the "clear and present" danger, and the employer has created a "hostile workplace environment" for all employees, vaccinated or not, and should be liable for damages, actual and punitive, for those employees who became ill because of that environment, just as if the employer had scattered "asbestos snow" around the workplace. They had either actual or constructive knowledge and are therefore liable.
None of that would be relevant legally. A company that produces widgets is not the authority on public health and disease control. They are deferring to the official government authorities on that because that is what they are expected to do under the law to insulate themselves from liability. The justice system is not going to expect a widget company to have known better or more about disease control than the CDC. That's what makes the politicization and corruption of the CDC so insidious.
Not sure where you come from or what your background in employment law is, but those facts state a cause of action which should survive a motion for summary judgment.
That's not what SCOTUS said. They said OSHA can't force private companies to impose vaxx mandates. But they also upheld the ability for the federal government to impose vaxx mandates on government workers and health care workers that operate in the Medicare system. It seems abundantly clear that private companies can require vaccines as a condition of employment both through existing legal precedent and recent court opinions.
The business is already covered because they are following CDC guidelines and recommendations when it comes to the vaccines. The business cannot be held liable for requiring a vaccine that the CDC has deemed safe and effective and a necessary for public health. The CDC, the federal government, has provided them the cover they need. What's worse, in the case of vaccine injury, assuming it can be proved and good luck with that or getting any doctor's help with that, it would normally be the vaccine manufacturer that a victim could sue. But they can't do that either due to the EUA that shields them all from liability.
It sucks, but that's the way it is. The companies cannot be touched for requiring a "health intervention" as a condition for employment that is recommended by the CDC to protect their workforce and you can't sue the pharma companies. The vaxxed are all out of luck if their health has been harmed as a result and the unvaxxed are out of luck if they've been fired for not getting vaxxed. The only thing that could or would ever change that is if there is some kind of revolt that results in something along the lines of the Nuremberg trials where government officials, like Fauci and at the CDC, are found guilty of crimes against humanity and the victims would then be allowed to sue the U.S. government,
SCOTUS ruled that health systems that accept medicare and medicaid money can require the vax because they are using federal money to pay their employees, but that isn't translatable to other businesses.
You can say that businesses can't be held liable for requiring medical intervention if the CDC says it's safe and effective, but the CDC also admits that death is a possible side effect. At that point, it's up to a jury to decide if it's a reasonable demand or not.
Apparently these businesses believe that juries will never go against The Narrative, but they haven't accounted for the fact that The Narrative shifts. They can take their chances with future juries if they like, but the manufacturers of asbestos would warn them that life has it's little ups and downs.
The principle absolutely is transferable. The federal government as the employer can impose those mandates. Private companies as employers can impose those mandates. There has not been a single successful challenge to this principle.
Private companies can legally do it as a condition of employment, which isn't an argument that they should do it. Any complainant will have zero chance even getting such a case to a jury because, again, the company will not be and cannot be held liable for following CDC guidance in the midst of a pandemic. The CDC shields companies and institutions from such liability. The best a complainant might be able to do is sue the CDC/federal government and good luck with that.
Time for people to get scrappy and entrepreneurial. Self employment is the answer to countering work mandates.
Yeah, that's not a bad thing either. Hopefully this does result in smart, critical and independent thinking people leaving the hamster wheel companies and starting better ones of their own.
My wife was fired from her job after her company denied her religious accommodation request. Whether they “could” do it is one issue. The larger issue is the almost criminally incompetent way that her company went about it. The affected employees’ lawyers are going to have fun this.
Hope they win.
Some of it is also one that I figured out early in the work from home era. Companies paid attention to how many people they actually needed. But yeah recession is definitely up there.
^^ This. It started immediately after Biden gave them cover with the "mandate".
Evergreen post: "Covid didn't cause _________, government did."
“…places that locked down harder got no better outcomes on covid. but they got much, much worse outcomes on economic and societal damage.”
That’s the key point. And it’s indisputable. Restrictive NPIs did little or nothing to prevent Covid mortality, but did cause tremendous damage—economically, psychologically, educationally and in terms of general public health.
This is like all those people suddenly unexpectedly dying. Such a mystery 🕵️♀️
Yes an elderly neighbor (late 80’s) down the street from me, got the booster and within a few days keeled over and died in her recliner. She was not ill to speak of, was still driving her old VW bug, with her curlers in her hair, that she has always done for the past 19 years that I have lived on this street, going to the supermarket etc. Her husband who is a few years older and whom she had been taking care of, out lived her. And the neighbor who told me the story, who lives across from the departed woman, made no connection with her getting the Booster and her sudden death! (The first thing I asked her when she told me the story was if Mary Lou had just got the Booster. She didn’t know, but she told me that she and her husband did get the B, so they could go on a cruise from Long Beach down to Cabo San Lucas and back! And said they would get a 4th shot if they needed it for the next time they wanted to go on a cruise!) In Friggin Insane!
😿💔🤦♀️
I own a restaurant In Mississippi. Since June of 2020, I have not required my employees or customers to wear a mask. It never made any sense to my wife and I. We received some flack for it, but now people appreciate us keeping the normalcy of 2019. You have to push back, or they will push you right over a cliff
This. Thank-you. I push back here in CA. I know exactly 2 other people doing same. I feel great when I do, too. We cannot comply our way out of tyranny.
If the masks worked, there would be no justification for lockdowns, tests, vaxxes,,,,
Very Proud of you
please ask me about my jab status, i cant wait to find out about your personal medical info
have you got syphilis or gonorrhoea?
Tucker Carlson responded to another reporter like that. He was asked about his vax status and he asked the offending reporter when he had last had sex with his wife and what position they used.
It stopped the entire conversation. :-0
I have been thinking of asking about appendicitis and the likes !
STDs are better.
Or "are you taking contraceptives?"
On the face of it, this comment from WA Premiere Mark McGowan doesn't really make sense:
"It will find the unvaccinated. You might live in the desert but it can still find you."
However, if you substitute the ambiguous word 'it' with 'government' the statement is clear:
"[Government] will find the unvaccinated. You might live in the desert but [government] can still find you."
Nearly all government statements about how 'COVID' has destroyed the economy, and closed businesses can be substituted in the same manner.
When the world locked down the only thing anyone knew for sure was that it would harm the economy. The other predictions were just wishful thinking without a shred of evidence.
Yet our leaders went ahead. Idiocracy is the only apt description of the world's governments.
And people say stupid shit like "You're putting money over people" -- but a shitty economy kills people too. But, just like lockdowns, these deaths can't be put into a neat little box because a bad economy affects people in different ways. Some of them OD, some commit suicide, some live for years while drinking themselves to death.
Soon the US will have children not only dropping dead from vaccines, but also from hunger, like we saw years ago in poorest places in Africa. It is hard to believe, that about 1 in 10 children in this country live in poverty.
Yup and the main people issuing that midwit response were the same people who constantly pointed out that poverty kills.
Everyone gets tested before applying for a job except politicians. I guess some don't even know the very beginning of the Constitution. Heck some people on the highest court don't know it !
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in SARS-CoV-2/ But in imbeciles, of whom we are underlings.”
Just like the headlines, "SUV plows into Wisconsin Christmas parade" or "Gun violence is killing kids." Inanimate objects are apparently threatening human lives.
we might be in for that shortly ! Mechanical dog attacked his owner? Unmanned vehicle drove over his owner? Computer laser killed its owner? Vaccinated inhuman kills its owner... oh wait.
The Democrats never wanted to avoid destroying the economy. No way, it was a part of their game plan, you know the "Build Back Better" bullshit where we become full time members of their new serf economy and the elite feel realized and safe (unlike Justin Trudeau at the moment as he grows more obese and nervous in his Berlin, I mean Ottawa bunker). LOL
Inept Washington Gov Inslee created the Washington hospital staffing shortages by vaccine mandate. Directly. The solution? A pair of bills regulating staffing guidelines at hospitals. House Bill 1868 and Senate Bill 575 would set new standards to regulate hospital staffing. Government is the solution to the government created problem.
Inslee is the worst. He's all in on the BBB agenda. We've been lying with numbers this entire time.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/lying-with-statistics
Now he wants government to take over via regulation, with predictable results.
Hell is coming, and Democrats will be blaming everyone else...
Just as the idiots at the Fed want to start tightening the interest rates. This should have occurred at least 8 months ago. We’re in for a hell of a stagflation recession. These MF’s have no idea what they are doing.
I'm not an expert, but I think they should have started unwinding the QE program and started increasing interest rates at least 5 years ago.
We must never lose sight of the fact that this entire catastrophe was, in fact, a financial/money crisis, covered over by a convenient fictitious virus. The goal of the elites, who enriched themselves during the plandemic by TRILLIONS, was, in reality, to choke off small businesses and force the rubes to shop at only big box, big tech (e.g. Amazon) venues. It worked, spectacularly. Think about this: if you were a pure-blood psychopath who had absolutely zero empathy for others, and you were already ultra-wealthy, and you had the chance to devastate your small business competition and thereby further enrich yourself at others's expense, and you couldn't care less about the damage you did to other people's lives, why would you not want useless and damaging covid measures that utterly decimated small businesses to continue in perpetuity? The same people who gave us the 2008 financial crisis caused this current financial crisis; not one single cause of the 2008 crisis has ever been fixed; the collapse of the world's financial system was inevitable, and it would have been far worse if TPTB had not engineered financial bailouts in the TRILLIONS to paper over the damage they had done. The plandemic, planned over several years, was unleashed at the most convenient possible time, reducing demand for money that, basically, did not exist. Absent the plandemic, the banksters who are driving this hoax would have been revealed for the negligence they engineered, just like the engineered financial negligence they were guilty of in the run-up to 2008. Elites couldn't care less about us; it's all about the money, as always.
Great synopsis. As others have pointed out, this was all by design. It’s the First World War all over again with Big Tech and Big Pharma added to the mix.
Interesting reply, in my experience, the young - except for working class people - have entirely been taken in by all of this, they've been thoroughly conned and they have no realization of it, and it's proportionally worse, in direct proportion to the amount of university education they have. You look like an outlier...
I've listed my contact info in my bio, I'd be interested in further conversation. This may show up as a double post...
THIS!
All part of the grand plan to decimate the middle class and mom and pop businesses transferring wealth from these people to the big box guys n'gals (Walmart, Costco etc). What appears irrational to us is business as usual to the bottomfeeders that make up the so called left.
I hope the 62 page doc from Johns Hopkins gets blasted everywhere. https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
The final paragraph: "The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
The original pandemic preparedness handbook that was published years ago already said all of this yet it was purposely ignored by the same bodies that produced it, the WHO if I'm not mistaken.
exactly!! :)
About our unemployment figures. Several hundred thousand unemployed are hidden in the statistics, due to how [Unemployed] is defined here in Sweden. That's a lot considering the population is aprox. 11 000 000.
For instance, if you are living on welfare and partake in a communal project where you get to work at least 1 hour/week, you no longer count as unemployed. Also, only those unemployed registred with the national unemployment office are counted so people such as a neighbour of mine who is on sick pay due to a stroke seven years back is not counted as unemployed even if he no longer has a job.
Always remember concerning stats about Sweden, that we have an incompetent socialist 'democrat' governement and a corporativist political system, so stats and data will always be skewed to look as good as possible - even for internal use, which of course makes problems impossible to correct.
However, as that has nothing to do with Covid, your comparison still works.
Hey Bad Cat - Now that Substack has an audio option, I'm always wishing I could have access to audio versions of your longer pieces for when I can't afford the eyeball attention. You've been providing colossal value. I bet a lot of your friends here would record them for free for you if you don't have time/patience to do them yourselves. For fun, I did a one-take narration of "Memes of Production" if you want to hear what it could sound like. You can DM me on Twitter @PlumRemson if you want the audiofile. Ever grateful for your work and hilariousness.
Part of the cruel playbook of Davos, with henchmen like federal and state politicos who are complicit in relief by exemption and prophylactics availability.
I call them the “capos” and they all got their payoffs; reliefs money, our money!
"it’s way past they point where even these people could possibly be this ignorant of baseline reality. this is, instead, a clear bet that you are."
And they're right.
They know that millions of Americans are LIVs. They know that millions of Americans are too lazy to be informed citizens by doing their own research and legwork. They know that millions of Americans get their "news" SOLELY from the alphabet legacy media. They know that millions of Americans' critical thinking skills and reading comprehension skills are rudimentary at best.
They know what it takes to advance their preferred narrative, and so they do it, every day, nonstop.
LIVs? That's a new acronym to me, what does it stand for?
Low-Information Voters (so maybe, technically, it should be written L-IVs...?!)
Ahhh okay. I like that!
JFTR, I didn't invent it. I read it whoknowswhere, probably on FB back when I was on FB. But I liked it, and I've used it ever since.
I wish you would just stop with this making sense bull. I have told people for years the issue in this country is discernment. When over 40% of the country can’t even graduate from high school, we have becomes a nation of lemmings.
The deeper they sink us in the quagmire of their bad policies. the more laughable Goebbels product becomes!
Any day now I expect to read Biden shoots a 38 with 11 holes in one the first time he played golf!
complete dumbf***ery dies hard
I am an NP at a large, tertiary-care VA affiliated with a major university medical center. By April 2020, I had started documenting in patients’ electronic health record that things had happened secondary to the COVID 19 pandemic RESPONSE, rather than to the pandemic. It was/is my small way to continue to say that it was our response that has resulted in various health declines, patients being lost to follow up, etc. Not due to the pandemic.
The point derives from, “This was all known and knowable”.
The wrecking crews in Washington DC’s and the world’s real power centers did not make mistakes. This isn’t an honestly ham-handed pandemic response. Every stage of it has been rehearsed and implemented to get the outcomes observed here—and other outcomes that we will soon be discussing. Things like food shortages and general mayhem in wide swaths of the civilized world. If depopulation is your intended omelette, you’re gonna have to break a crap load of eggs.
Our feline friend commented recently that he and presumably many others here are not all that interested in growing their own food. I get that.
Perhaps wisdom would indicate that cultivating relationships with those who do grow food is not an unreasonable hedge for whatever the hopeful bet may be.
We’re off the edge of the chart here, mates. There be dragons here.
Post a keen watch.
Great characterization you made referring to them as "the wrecking crews".
Either the people putting this crap out have had a pre-frontal lobotomy, or they think we have.
That's the only possible explanation for how they could believe their own drivel, or think that the rest of us are going to buy into it.
MSM flacks there, masked people in my local stores here--I'd say the lobotomies are pretty evenly distributed.
Western Europe GDP drop also well correlated w lockdown stringency in 2020. If only ANYONE could have predicted this. Face it folks: the clowns in charge are corrupt globalists and/or out of touch w reality academicians/scientists - they wanted this (most of them). As far as CNBC goes, stopped watching it mid 2020, and I'm in finance. Couldn't take the fear mongering BS, hourly Gottlieb appearances, Fauci worship, frowny Megan and Sue, and Dbag Ross-Sorkin, all wrapped in wokey elitist postering, anymore.
I have an old school degree in economics. You can’t just keep dumping roughly $10 trillion into the economy without a consequence. The closest analogy is adding water to bleach. The more water you add to bleach the weaker the solution. That’s inflation. If the economy grows .1% in the 1st quarter as predicted then we’re in a recession. Inflation is closer to 15% so the net is negative growth of -14%.
This was not stupid public health policy. This was an intentional gamble. There was the strong possibility of trillions of aid coming from the government, and for some states more than others, the aid was worth the risk of economic loss. Oregon is a great example, doubling down with permanent masking these days, and waiting for the billions of COVID aid to come in. The retirement accounts for public workers is depending on it.
We've reached the perfect nirvana of significant inflation combined with significantly stagnant employment.
We ran this type of thing in the 70's and early 80's and it was mean time. We tried price controls and other statist nonsense. I can't possibly imagine what perversion these geniuses are dreaming up right now. It's going to be breathtaking.
Locally the price of housing whether it be fee purchase or leasehold has appreciated to the point where a purchaser could end up in deep trouble if interest rates rise to the rate of inflation. I don't think that's a risk however as the biggest debtor in America happens to run the printing press and for good measure also has a large cache of nuclear weapons.
That's where we are. A banana republic on a global scale. The Biggest TONY SOPRANO that ever lived with a gang of goons with impenetrable armament. When this show comes to it's conclusion the fade to black of the last episode of the sopranos will seem poorly written.
Humans are fun as they keep slamming their appendages in the door and cursing at it the same way, over and over and over again.
?? "the OSHA mandate fell, but the federal mandate for contractors did not." ??
are you referencing some timeline of the various stay orders issued then overturned, etc?
Otherwise SCOTUS struck down the fed "contractors" mandate - and allowed only the CMS mandate
Last I heard , a Fed District judge had issued a stay against the Fed Employee mandate - (then I lost track) - I don't think that has been reversed.
Health Care Autonomy 3 / Biden Admin 1
In addition to the needless damage there's also the needles damage, from none other than Neil Young ("Needle and the Damage Done")
"I've seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's like a settin' sun"
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/01/31/high-excess-deaths-worldwide-linked-to-covid-vaccine/
They continue to practice their Pendejo policies
"we’re living though needless damage to no useful effect at all."
Hardly a fair characterization of the net effects of the lockdown and real sleight to a minority who so seldom have their successes triumphed by legacy media. We saw the largest, fastest upward transfer of wealth in human history, an incredibly useful effect for NASDAQ Mafia!
Credit where credit is due, eh? Max is awesome!
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/12/03/flattening-curve-global-poor-covid-lockdowns-human-rights-vulnerable/
“ ..we’re living though needless damage to no useful effect ... “ Depends upon your goals however right? If, say, you are in the globalist totalitarian club which is promoting : You will Own Nothing and Be Happy” then perhaps eviscerating the economy and creating a populace dependant upon and/or “demanding” UBI is exactly why these pathetic polices are enacted to create so much( seemingly nonsensica)l damage. Its all in your POV.
Obviously the best way to support the health of the public is to abolish "public health" agencies...
From a Johns Hopkins meta-analysis
"The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
"A Literature Review and Meta Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID 19 Mortality". Read at least the conclusion starting on page 41.
https://www.scribd.com/document/556148192/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality
Also you couldn’t let people go if you had a PPP loan until you received forgiveness. Once you received forgiveness then you likely let them go because that would have been right around when Omicron came around with the new round of draconian measures. So between their stupid PPP giveaways and the vax mandates they’ve really screwed up a lot of lives, messed with small business, and created a massive mess. Not to mention the debt. For no reason.
Meanwhile worldwide corruption and theft of taxpayers $$$ continues
Canadian Immunization Research Network, Which Evaluates Vaccines, Is Funded By Big Pharma
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/canadian-immunization-research-network
the children will save us but it's time for adults to stop being pussies ok?
This was actually quite predictable. All the problems we've seen (supply chain, kids out of school, even I'll risk saying hospital craziness and people's mental health) is the unhealthy reaction to COVID and not COVID itself. I've watched enough people grow old, or grow sick, and know they weren't going to live long. Some hide away, but some go on living to the end, building memories and enjoying themselves right up until they can't. I think about that as I watch all this. We have grown so very mentally weak.
A famous person said "the cure must not be worse than the disease". In today's amerika, half the population are either oblivious, or too stupid to realize what happened. We are living the the movie IDIOCRACY.
You mean you can't grow crops with a Gatorade-like sport drink?
Imagine the same headline but 'omicron' replaced with 'a cold'. Now time travel back 2 years with that headline and ask people how ridiculous it is.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/
#Brandonomics slamed everything. @SCOTUS how 'bout those election fraud cases now?
Companies are taking the pandemic, and the vaccination issue in particular, as an opportunity to conduct significant layoffs with impunity. That's a major contributor to the labor numbers.
It's rare in today's labor law environment that you can fire anyone over 40 (or from a wide range of other protected categories) without a pretty thick file, and even then you'll face at least the threat of lawsuit to dislodge a larger severance. To let go a WHOLESALE number of employees, particularly from protected classes, and to do it FOR CAUSE (i.e., pay you no severance or benefits), has been unheard of in the modern era. Until "Unvaccinated". Just like PPP or CARES Act money, no corporation was going to pass up this freebie lightly.
The labor data is from before the Supreme Court decision when the "mandate" provided perfect cover. Even after the SCOTUS mandate slap-down, corporations are still playing the card under the halo of fear and confusion. Witness T-Mobile, for example, which announced just this week.
Corporate decisions are made for many reasons, but I can assure you that "public health" is never one of them. This is a massive windfall for shareholders.
But of course they can't admit that then they would be WRONG!
Three pay periods. I said this when the "two weeks" started. Close business - most if not all - for more than three pay periods and they will NOT stay open. Then we got the PPP loans to try to stave that off. But really, that just masked the damage.
I have friends in the manufacturing sector who were so overheated in their hiring to keep up with the Trump economy that they were pulling in unqualified people off the street "to train" at the end of 2019. Some may be old enough to recall. By March of 2020, they had sussed out the losers, and many were "not to standard," but in their haste to hire, they reeled in some with "special protections" that were part of the package which made them basically impossible to fire under normal circumstances. The managers welcomed the lockdowns as a safe way to furlough the deadwood they had heaped on themselves. They also took the opportunity, under cover of COVID, to toss the longtime disgruntled, the ingrates, the agitators, everybody they had been itching to lose. They saw it as a great once-per-decade opportunity to cull the hardscale buildup that happens in organizations. Their reasoning told to me: "No judge or jury would convict under COVID rules, we were free to sever ties." Their only miscalculation: That the economy would return after 2 weeks became 8 weeks became 104 weeks, and counting.