Sometimes silence is best. To can it. Totally zip it. Just shut up. Look and listen. Let it all sink in slowly.
Know that you don’t know.
Otherwise you may talk shit; say things that make little sense a few weeks later. Especially when the information flow is so relentless, but with twists and turns that curve back on themselves.
Being quiet, amid endless clamour, means you can pick out nuggets.
Three images – real and undeniable – sum up the mental damage wrought by COVID-19.
I pulled the car into Oxford services 12 days ago, returning from Gloucestershire. Needing a leak, the nearby public toilets were found to be sparklingly clean, with all facilities spaced out by at least two metres. A haven of sanitisation. No charge. Then back to the car, shutting the eyes for a 20-minute meditation. I opened them to witness a fit-looking young lad, maybe aged 25, looking around furtively before pissing against the side of his vehicle. There were three police cars parked in a huddle about 120 yards away.
I can only imagine that he was desperate to avoid the public loos, and a possible interface with the virus. Or might he have an elderly relative who requires shielding? Why else risk being arrested and fined for public indecency?
There is freely available information clearly specifying that the number of people in their mid-20s impacted by the coronavirus is smaller than negligible, especially if their health is robust. But that information is generally buried beneath the never-ending fear memes.
Much more amusing has been a new trend at Premiership soccer grounds. As the football has returned, to spectator-free grounds, TV screens show players slipping back easily into intimate habits of grabbing and hanging onto each other like wrestlers; and celebrating goals with big group hugs. All very natural for team animals, engaging in contact sport. Shouting and breathing over one another.
The novelty comes several times during the game, when masked men spray the corner flags with sanitiser. When first seeing this lunacy I fell about laughing, helplessly.
Am I alone in perceiving massive absurdity, if not complete cognitive dissonance? Coaches and managers wearing masks mix freely with their unmasked players during the breaks.
The third image was a picture of two neighbouring houses in Leicester, encountered today when browsing online. A new lockdown has been declared in the city, without any evidence of new hospitalisations or a rise in critical care. One of the two households was under medical martial law, while the residents in the other, but a yard away, are free to go about their business.
It made me think of another anomaly. How the UK government insisted that we must stay at home, to ‘save lives’, because the virus was so, so dangerous. So terribly infectious and deadly. But then suddenly it wasn’t, if you wanted to protest on the streets against racial injustice. How very odd.
Worry is in the air. I have seen solo cyclists out in the countryside, miles from anything or anyone, wearing face masks. Several younger people in my extended family have run into mental health problems. Reliable anchors have gone. I have felt deep agitations that are difficult to pinpoint. Like we inhabit a bad sci-fi film or a dream with no exits. As if the map of agreed reality is changing, old carpets pulled from under feet.
But my inner journalist takes notes. Speaking on CNN on 25 June, multi-billionaire Bill Gates was unequivocal. Paraphrased, he said that if 80% of the world does not take the wonder vaccine, when it finally appears, then there can be no return to holidays, sport and travel.
Well thanks for the heads up. It’s good of you Bill. By the way, what are your qualifications in medicine or politics? Ah yes, zero. Not a single credential.
And yet the words of this unqualified man indicated that he either wields huge political and medical influence, or is privy to discussions at a top table, such that he can somehow place his finger on the future pulse of humanity. Do any of us get a say in this? Do I get a choice, or has an unelected CEO of Planet Health Inc. already decided for me?
Others are less polite about Gates. In mid-May, Sara Cunial, the MP for Rome, denounced Gates as a “vaccine criminal” and urged the Italian President to hand him over to the International Criminal Court. Both she and Robert F. Kennedy Junior have referred to a Gates-led polio immunisation campaign in India, which local doctors have reportedly blamed for a paralysis epidemic that impacted around 490,000 Indian children beyond expected rates, between 2000 and 2017. Nearly half a million kids. Maybe it is worth doing some research on that story of benign intervention. Proper research, not steered by Google algorithms.
What is beyond doubt is that Gates has leveraged his mega-fortune from Microsoft into a structure of powerful global connections, often through the ‘philanthropic’ use of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to shape policy. This has funnelled money into the World Health Organization (WHO), in which it is now the largest shareholder. Significant money has also been extended, among many other British institutions, to Imperial College London. What an amazing coincidence that the advice in March that the UK should ‘lock down’ emanated from Imperial College.
Inevitably, there are various speculative theories concerning the coming COVID-19 vaccines. One knocking around says that your RNA will be modified, changing you at a genomic level. Being no scientist, I can offer no insights. Another says the vaccines may contain micro tracking mechanisms, that could help control humanity as a collective. Again, pass.
But I do possess what one young man in a white lab coat termed in a recent documentary as “vaccine hesitancy”. For one thing, it is standard medical practice that vaccines need to be thoroughly tested, over a period of years. Good luck to anyone who wants into that first muddle of guinea pigs, participating in clearly rushed vaccine trials.
But there is something else. In his past, Gates spent time in the company of a certain Jeffrey Epstein. The same Epstein who trafficked humans for money and sex. That JE who was inserted deeply into a predatory class of humans up to their rotten necks in a mire of crime, technocracy and eugenics.
I wonder how our history will read 100 years from now. Perhaps it will say: “There was this horrible pandemic until Saint Bill arrived with his vaccines.” History tends to be written by the victors.
For me, it is galling to think that, if you live in Sweden, everyday life has proceeded apace. Yes, the level of COVID-linked deaths in Sweden has been significant, albeit less than the UK, but economic lifelines were left in place to mitigate the fatalities. No ‘lockdown’. No house arrest.
In Belarus, President Alexander Grigoryevich was loudly derided by bleating Western journalists and ‘progressives’ for eschewing a lockdown and claiming that vodka would keep the virus at bay. They even carried on playing football, lawd love ’em.
Disaster? Hardly. So far, just 400 or so COVID-associated deaths are officially recorded in Belarus. That works out at 43 fatalities per million inhabitants, compared to the current 647 per million in the UK. (And 399 in the US, 607 in Spain, 576 in Italy)
I’ll down a big shot of vodka to that, because saving lives is the most important criterion. Looks like the “strongman president” may have more common sense in his drinking arm than the combined brains of Gates, Fauci and Dominic Cummings.
Here in Britain, one of the most disturbing aspects of the lockdown has been the tens of thousands of old people slung out of hospitals into care homes. Essentially left to die through neglect. Some observers have bluntly called this as manslaughter.
Then there is the unimaginable collateral damage. Cancer patients and those with other morbidities have been denied essential treatments. Seaside town trade has been essentially destroyed, pubs and restaurants destroyed, retail therapy destroyed. Small businesses are gasping for financial oxygen. Large businesses have begun to lay off staff as the ‘furlough’ period ends. Job prospects are receding. Student schedules are still gutted.
A lot of people that I know say that this carnage is OK, a price ‘worth paying’ to ‘protect Britain’s NHS’. Really? Most of those who have told me this are financially secure, with decent pensions in place.
Because there are so many more questions than answers, I’ve tried to stick to facts.
Here is one worth considering. In the second half of March, several days before the British lockdown was announced, Public Health England downgraded COVID-19 from its former status as a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID). Yep, downgraded it. You can check it for yourself.
Another is that marriages can again take place in Britain, as from tomorrow, 4 July. Under new government rules for weddings, fathers cannot walk their daughter arm-in-arm down the aisle. Brides and grooms will have to wash hands before and after exchanging rings. And spoken responses during the service should ‘not be in a raised voice’. Perish the thought. And any singing and playing of instruments that are blown into should be avoided, among other rules.
While pubs open, and everyone stumbles into each other, pissed as parrots.
Is this not utter barking lobotomised March hare madness? Or is it just me? It could be.
Your answers are acceptable only on a ‘deep cleaned’ postcard.
P.S. Joining the dots isn’t easy, given the spew of media information. But there are clues out there.
The US death total from COVID-19 is officially around 132,000, the highest in the world.
Perhaps a little light was cast on that number on April 8 by Senator Scott Jensen, who told Fox News that “if it’s a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they’re Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000.”
Jensen continued: “But if it’s COVID-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.
Jensen said he doesn’t think physicians are “gaming the system” so much as other “players”, such as hospital administrators, who he said may pressure physicians to cite all diagnoses, including “probable” COVID-19, on discharge papers or death certificates to get the higher Medicare allocation allowed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act
The Biscuit Factory 
Hi, Kevin. There’s really a giant question mark, isn’t there? I appreciate your research and your facts and this apparent hovering darkness behind Bill Gates and possibly some money scam operating at hospital level to punch numbers up. I do appreciate all that and understand how it makes a creepy kind of sense and what consequences could be.
But the thing that I’m seeing with my own eyes every day (and hope to continue to see, of course, KNOCK ON WOOD) is that….nobody in my extended family (that i have heard of) has gotten sick, no one I know personally has gotten sick, no friends have gotten sick, no one in my husband’s family are sick, no one he knows has gotten sick. I visit the grocery store every other week or so and ask them every time, “How are you guys doing? Everybody okay? Everyone well?” and unless they’re just bald-faced lying, they’re all well, no one who works in the grocery store and has to face hundreds–thousands–of strangers every day has gotten sick.
One way to back this up, of course, is looking for all the regular workers. And they’re always there. And seem to be fine.
So we’re either just really, REALLY lucky….which could be/is probably true…..or the numbers really aren’t as high as we’re being told.
But to what end?
What could possibly come of people out of work, businesses destroyed, etc., etc?
THAT’S what I don’t even want to think about!
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Hi Stace
I chatted to my cousin today who lives in another part of Essex. Like you – and me – he knows nobody who has died or fallen seriously ill with COVID-19. I’m sure the numbers have been over-tallied.
He plucked up his courage and told me that he thinks we have been tested to see how compliant everybody is under a lockdown. Why? I asked. He said he reckons that a war will be launched against China at some stage,. and that we have all been put through a drill.
Me? I don’t think anything is very clear. There is perhaps some kind of economic reset occuring, with less jobs for everybody. But it’s all a guessing game. I don’t find it to be a very happy time – have to keep doing my own thing to stay buoyant.
Appreciate your feedback, as always.
Kanye for potus? I would find him infinitely preferable to the two old men. 😄😄😄
Hope all’s well!
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Ah, thanks, Kevin. Right now it just makes no sense–the catalyst and final desired outcome.
But I’m with you in that times are far from happy and it’s taking a lot to keep stress at bay. But of course that’s
small potatoes compared to those with no jobs and/or low on food. I feel like donations aren’t enough but at least it’s something.
As for Kanye….hahahaha. I don’t know! We’d just be exchanging old and crazy (at least for one) with young and REALLY crazy. And let’s not forget the fact that he got $3 in government cheese money that he didn’t even need but took without complaint, the son of a bitch !!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I wondered today if we are witnessing a new revolution in the US. On the lines and the scale of the 1789 French Revolution.
Kanye, in that respect, might be an ideal ‘crazy’ leader. A black Robespierre.
When I knuckle down to work these days, it seems increasingly irrelevant. There must be more to come from Ghislaine Maxwell, unless she is bumped off like Epstein. Britain’s government is ramming up Covid fear, screaming about Chinese threats and quietly managing an economic collapse.
As WB Yeats said: “The blood-dimmed rtide is loosed, and everywhere”.
Weird, unprecedented times Stace. I can’t see any going back to how it was.
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I had not heard before about the Gates immunisation disaster in India. Sounds like Union Carbide and Bhopal all over again.
I had the polio vaccine as a kid, along with all the others that were common in the 1970s, so I’m essentially pro-vaccination. This sounds like a bad batch – a very bad batch. I’d venture to suggest it was manufactured in China. Except in stretched over a decade and a half.
Here in The Great South Land we almost have Covid-19 under control. But then the governments that had said No to funerals and weddings said Yes to BLM street protests. Now the state of Victoria is back on high restrictions with parts of Melbourne locked right down. And the idiot Premier is blaming – wait for it – family gatherings.
As I keep asking: has the warranty expired on 2020 yet? Can we return it to the manufacturer?
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Truthfully Greg, I reckon that ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’, as Bachman Turner Overdrive once warbled. The moorings have gone. By the time the US election arrives you might feel the need to post 20 times a day.
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I had planned on staying home for election day ’cause I didn’t think I’d be able to focus well at work with all the shenanigans and possibly nebulous outcome happening. But now I probably don’t have to worry about that ’cause I don’t see COVID “clearing up” before the new year.
The only good thing about this year so far is the possible rise in consciousness about what, exactly, constitutes oppression, and how far-reaching it is. There’s at least one blogger I’ve gotten to know over the past year (name to be withheld) who thinks we “overreacted” to Floyd’s death (I told her/him it’s not about Floyd alone; Floyd was just the last straw) and the left-leaning propagandist media is blowing cops’ behavior up into something it’s not because the “numbers” show otherwise that they don’t terrorize/disrespect/and murder the populace and blacks commit 50% of violent crime. Wanted me to listen to two black professors who were very obviously extremely conservative saying black men needed to be responsible, get jobs, they got put in jail because they “got caught”, and stop playing the victim card. The blogger also thought “life was good” and didn’t understand or accept when I would say it’s not good; even for people I know with advanced degrees who are working for $20 an hour or two or three jobs to pay off student loans. And these aren’t even the people who are REALLY struggling. Who, exactly, is it good for:? Again, he/she pulled out their “numbers” and “studies” and “graphs” about improvements.
After months of back and forth, the blogger decided I was so indoctrinated by radical left propaganda that we couldn’t “discuss” this and “God help the US” if everyone was like me.
My response is God help the world if many of this kind of blogger are left in it and believe what they say. This person doesn’t even realize the world’s in an uproar over something and THEY’RE part of the problem.
And the scary part: they seem so logical, reasonable, even academic and cultured with their choices of movies and books and philosophical discussions. But what does all that mean if you have absolutely no understanding or empathy for anybody else? Basically you’re just jerking yourself off with big words and ideas that mean nothing. A lot like how our lofty Constitution was a great idea ON PAPER but actually did not apply to anybody else but white men. And specifically white men who owned property.
Sorry for ranting.
But thanks for listening.
😦
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You can always rant and I’ll always listen/read with fascination Stacey.
One of the things I have tried to do for the last half-decade is not to get into online arguments. Even when I KNOW I’m correct and factual.
I try my best to find areas of consensus. Even when I chat with people on the same wavelength, we disagree about lots of different minutae. Agreeing to disagree is my way through it.
The BLM movement is powerful, pent-up and justified. But there will be opponents, even (it seems) among black people. It’s just how it is.
Don’t have any advice except to maintain your equilibrium and stick to your guns.
The only philosophy that really works in real life, so that everyone lifts each other up, is ‘do as you would be done by’. Treat others how you want tobe treated. Not sure if that’s of any use in this particular situation, but it’s my go-to bedrock. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Yeah, I make an effort not to get into the serious stuff with folks if I sense there’s a fight brewing. I really just don’t have the energy. I tried backing out of that conversation many times and, like the Godfather, kept getting pulled back in, lol. But it’s my fault. I thought he/she wanted to see things from an American’s perspective, but evidently he/she just wanted to make sure I understood that I was delusional.
I do appreciate your ear and do feel guilty for talking it off sometimes.
But you are so right–treat others how you want to be treated. So simple. And, of course, there’s always karma.
Here’s to the potatoes! Hope they’re coming along fine!
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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If somebody call you delusional, it’s definitely time to break away!
Potatoes doing well, thanks…..as are courgettes/zuccini, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, peppers, onions, garlic and cabbages. On the fruit front, we’ve had a good crop of rasperries, rhubarb and strawberries, with blackberries and apples to come. Also trying to grow blueberries, cherries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and loganberries, but they won’t be prolific for a couple of years.
It’s enjoyable, a great learning curve and you get to eat fresh stuff. Win-win. 😇😇😇😇😇😇😇
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Nice blog
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Cheers Saania!
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No idea zucchini were also called courgettes. Ha.
Whenever I see the word “gooseberries” I think of Charles Dickens and Christmas dinners with the family huddled around in the cold, low on resources but overflowing with love. Or, of course, a rich family spaced politely around a large table, complaining about the weather while they dig into the banquet.
Loganberries! Is that the berries they grow in the back garden in Logan’s Run? Ha, just kidding. I love these words! Loganberries is much more romantic-sounding than raspberries. Also not familiar with blackcurrants either. When I looked them up, I couldn’t recall ever seeing them in the produce departments here. It IS a win-win. It sounds great. I guess when the world finally ends, hubby and I will be stowing away on a ship and heading straight for your place. “Come on,” I’ll tell him, “I know someone who has lots of replenishable food!” I think I just made that word up. In any case, we’re good with chores, so don’t worry, we’ll earn our keep, lol
🙂
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You’re obviously welcome, but don’t tell anybody else. I forgot to mention the runner beans/French beans and cucumbers. But it’s not all replenishable news – carrots, parsnips and peas have been neglected by me this year, and have pretty much failed. Maybe we will have to eat the cats, at a pinch. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Okay, well, if there’s not gonna be any parsnips, I think we’ll have to cross your place off our list, Kev.
Wow! Jeez.
lol
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And…..the bean crop looks as if it may be sparse. I know…it’s thoughtless and probably very selfish. Shame on me!
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Wow. We definitely know when we’re not wanted…..and evidently this is one of those times !!
Look out, instead, old friend from NYC that we haven’t seen in 20 years….!
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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You have said pretty much all of what have said. I feel a blog coming on, and this one has been shared. Well said Kev. ❤️
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❤️
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