the financial press is starting to declare covid restrictions pointless

little by little, then all at once collapseth the big lie

i know i’m going on a bit beating this particular drum, but so many have been so resistant to believing what’s coming and seem so mired in the black-pill pessimism of “this is never going to end” that it feels warranted.

it’s ending.

regiments and divisions are surrendering and changing sides. the truth we said would be too big to hide has swamped them because, wait for it, it was too big to hide and is getting more an more impossible to ignore by the day.

the regime is folding and muttering excuses and imprecations as they try to claim that the last helicopter out of saigon was a scheduled vacation and that their endlessly enumerated narrative is not in flaming tatters upon the ground.

but it is.

they have lost the center. they have lost all the right thinking people. the strength of the big lie strategy is that it’s all pervasive. but its weakness is that it must remain so for once it starts to unravel, the curve of failure is exponential.

the financial press is now turning on them and this is a biggie because it speaks to the zeitgeist of the business world. the fin-press does not lead, it follows. they know the mood of the market and that mood is stark:

it is now OK to say out loud and in public that which was verboten just a few months ago:

“Mandates have curbed almost everything except COVID-19 cases”

the overton window just shifted so far that it’s practically in a different house. and this is the part where it all starts to happen FAST.

now that this is OK to say, everyone wakes up and finds consonance and community again. it’s permission to once more start believing the evidence of your own eyes and ears.

the derangement of the dionysia ends and you look around sheepishly, pull your pants down out of a tree, and go back to work.

it just takes the right words to break the spell.

“Someone has to say it, and I derive no pleasure from doing so. But here goes:

The Omicron wave is exposing the limits of COVID-19 restrictions, which are clearly failing. These include ferociously debated vaccine passports and masking policies that have done little, if anything, to tame skyrocketing numbers throttling the Northeast. 

Hard-hit travel, leisure and small businesses — especially restaurants — are bearing the brunt of questionable protocols that clearly need rethinking, if not scrapping outright. And for the record, it’s not just America. China's aggressive zero-COVID policies that have exacerbated global supply chain problems aren’t doing much to curb the spread there, either.

“At this point, vaccine mandates are more disempowering to business than empowering,” Denise Graziano, CEO of Graziano Associates, a marketing communications firm, told the Morning Brief in an email.”

everyone has had it.

the people are done.

business is done.

all the people who went along to get along and adopted “comply to get by” as their mantra got the rug pulled out. they listened, they obeyed, they swallowed the big lie, repeated it, and wove it into the fabric of their lives. and then a funny thing happened:

And we haven’t even scratched the surface of the shifting definition behind what constitutes “fully vaccinated” as the campaign for a third (or fourth?) jab gets underway. Some eateries have openly embraced boosters as “the only way to go,” as Yahoo Finance’s Brooke DiPalma reported last week.

But others are pushing back, such as Brooklyn Dumpling Shop owner Stratis Morfogen — famed for using a contraption called “The Monster” to make his popular bites. It goes without saying that year three of the pandemic is shaping up to be as complicated as ever.

Meanwhile, dining rooms, largely empty, are reaping the whirlwind of soft lockdowns.

“We're seeing [reservations] trending roughly towards around 30% to 45% per night in cancellations, either the day before or day of, which is incredibly detrimental to restaurants,” David Nayfeld, a San Francisco chef and restaurateur, told Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero last week.

it’s clear that none of this is working. not vaccines, not mandates, not masking, not distancing, closures, or tracing. it’s all just baroque and baffling pandemic pantomime as pointless as it is pernicious.

even the connecticut karentopia is waking up and smelling the coffee. (probably dunkies)

Daniela Altimari @capitolwatch

Q: Gov. Lamont, will you reinstate the mask mandate in Connecticut to curb the current spike? A: Well, it's not curbing the spike in New York City.

“We have now arrived at a place where even those ostensibly supportive of mandates are slowly coming around to the realization that there’s only so much that can be done in the face of an airborne virus that’s become more communicable.”

i mean, yeah, sure, blame the variant, but nobody sensible really believes that. it’s just a flag of convenience to justify changing minds without admitting error.

omi did not mitigate masks and lockdowns, it just revealed what jokes they were (and what killing jokes at that). but if this is what they need to tell themselves to climb down and not feel like villains, so be it.

but they all know one thing: double vaxxed, triple vaxxed, everyone gets covid.

this is just another marketing program like flu vaccines that has no effect on spread and if it has no effect on spread, then it’s a personal choice.

even if the right to force this existed, it would not matter because if it doesn’t stop spread, the whole notion is moot.

undoing the big lie takes big evidence, and big evidence is currently everywhere for everyone to see. everyone knows 10 vaxxed and boosted friends who got covid. it’s just not hideable or gaslightable anymore.

tell yourself it lowered your risk if that’s what you need to believe, but the case for telling others they must be coerced to take it to protect you has been demolished.

and, at least in the US, the political will to die on this clearly losing hill has evaporated.

the worst of the biofascists are now WAY out on a limb for having pushed their new strictures and are about to realize just how alone and isolated they are.

the smart rats jumped ship weeks and months ago.

the savvy ones are getting off as fast as they can right now and rummaging around for the raiments of reasonableness in which to cloak themselves and pretend were always their first choice of fashion.

so drop the black pills and get in for the win.

the instant it seems safe to call all this bunkum and demand life back, the entire middle will rise because no one wants this anymore apart from the 20% that love fascism and authoritarian neuroses cures.

the same impulse to “go along to get along” will pivot like a weathervane and start blowing due “freedom” any minute now.

i don’t break this meme out often and obviously, hubris always carries the risk of awakening nemesis, but, amma risk it:

after a game this savage, we could all use a little touchdown dance.