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US coronavirus: it might take 'many, many' more vaccine mandates to conclusion the Covid-19 pandemic, Fauci says

© Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty photos an indication backyard of Langer's Deli in l. a. on August 7 mentioning proof of a Covid-19 vaccination is required for entry. tens of millions of americans nonetheless should get vaccinated to sluggish or cease the unfold of Covid-19 and getting the pandemic below manage could take "many, many" more vaccine mandates, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Fauci, the director of the national Institute of allergy and Infectious ailments, said if greater individuals aren't persuaded to get vaccinated with the aid of messaging from health officers and "trusted political messengers," extra mandates from colleges and companies can be vital. "I agree with it truly is going to turn this round because I don't suppose individuals are going to wish to no longer go to work or no longer go to college ... they will do it," Fauci told CNN's Jen Christensen right through an interview at the NLGJA, the affiliation of LGBTQ Journalists, conference Sunday. "you'd like to have them do it on a totally voluntary groundwork, but if that would not work, you've gotten acquired to move to the alternatives." The mixture of the tremendously contagious Delta variant and the vaccine holdouts has put the U.S. in a "very intricate period" of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fauci spoke of. Of the eligible population within the US, which is presently confined to americans 12 and older, 63% are completely vaccinated, in line with statistics from the facilities for sickness control and Prevention. health experts and officials are aiming for the colossal majority of the inhabitants to be inoculated to control the unfold. ultimate week, President Joe Biden introduced vaccine requirements that include a mandate for companies with greater than a hundred employees to require vaccination or general checking out for employees. businesses that desire employees to come to work and live at work will advantage from vaccine necessities, US Surgeon accepted Dr. Vivek Murthy said. The mandate will advantage personnel as neatly, he introduced. "I consider so that you can now not most effective enhance public fitness, nonetheless it will give individuals some extra peace of intellect," Murthy instructed CNN Sunday. because the debate over mandates continues, some hospitals are feeling the impact of lagging vaccination charges. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis sounded the alarm Friday, saying, "We actually have the bottom ICU purchasable price that we've got had due to the fact that the start of this disaster, in part as a result of the unvaccinated with Covid and just different kinds of trauma that goes up seasonally this time of yr." Polis spoke of some hospitals in his state "reaching very near their means limits. And that wouldn't be going on if americans were vaccinated." To booster, or no longer to booster? an international neighborhood of vaccine scientists, together with some from the USA meals and Drug Administration and the world health corporation, say the latest evidence on Covid-19 vaccines doesn't appear to help a need for booster photographs within the typical public. The scientists, who authored a paper about this, include two senior FDA vaccine leaders, Dr. Philip Krause and Marion Gruber, who can be stepping down in October and November, the FDA introduced late final month. No additional details had been launched about their retirements, although they sparked questions on even if the departures would affect the agency's work. The paper's authors write that vaccine efficacy is still high against extreme sickness, including for the enormously transmissible Delta variant, despite the fact much less so for symptomatic disease. "existing evidence doesn't, for this reason, seem to reveal a need for boosting in the established inhabitants, wherein efficacy in opposition t extreme disorder is still excessive," the scientists write within the new paper, published Monday in the clinical journal The Lancet. The FDA and other public fitness companies all over proceed to verify evidence on Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and the role booster doses of the vaccine might play in improving immunity towards the disorder. different facts on the area will quickly be coming. the brand new England Journal of medicine will post Israeli information displaying that a booster shot of Pfizer's vaccine dramatically lowered severe Covid-19, in line with Dr. Nachman Ash, director prevalent of the Israeli Ministry of health. Israel begun its booster software on August 1; booster photographs were given to 2.eight million people there up to now. thus far, a good deal of the country's statistics on the efficacy of booster photographs has no longer been reviewed through outdoor specialists and published in a medical journal. US federal fitness officers have introduced plans to offer booster doses this autumn, starting September 20, discipline to authorization from the FDA and consent from the CDC. The FDA's Vaccines and related biological products Advisory Committee is assembly on Friday to talk about the utility with the aid of vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech to manage their Covid-19 vaccine as a 3rd dose, or "booster" shot, to individuals a while sixteen and older. children could get access to vaccines by means of Halloween parents concerned about keeping their young toddlers from the virus could have access to vaccinations for them by using for Halloween, talked about the former commissioner of the FDA. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who's a board member at Pfizer, informed CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday the company is expected to have statistics on vaccinations for children a long time 5-eleven ready for the FDA through the conclusion of September. "The FDA says it can be a matter of weeks, not months, to make a choice if they're going to authorize vaccines for youngsters between 5 to 11. I interpret that to be in all probability four weeks, might be six weeks," said Gottlieb. however, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky turned into greater guarded about when kids can also be vaccinated. She spoke of Monday that the CDC is working urgently on a Covid-19 vaccine for more youthful infants, with the hope that they might be vaccinated via the conclusion of the 12 months. "We're looking ahead to the businesses to put up the information to the FDA. We're looking forward to to be able to take place within the fall," she advised NBC's "nowadays" exhibit. "we will look at that records from the FDA, from the CDC, with the urgency that we all consider for getting our children vaccinated and we're hoping by means of the conclusion of the 12 months." meanwhile, the FDA cautioned parents not to race to vaccinate their infants before approval from the agency. "babies don't seem to be small adults -- and issues that may well be addressed in pediatric vaccine trials can include whether there's a need for diverse doses or distinctive energy formulations of vaccines already used for adults," the FDA pointed out in a statement Friday. until it's protected to vaccinate that age neighborhood, Dr. James Versalovic, pathologist-in-chief at Texas toddlers's sanatorium, informed CBS that prevention is critical. "moreover prevention ... we need to continue to stress to all folks and families the importance of timely diagnosing through testing," Versalovic spoke of. "after which triage the care as it should be. decide no matter if that baby needs clinic-based care. We understand a way to treat babies at this point in the pandemic." NYC welcomes lower back college students ny city public college device reopened Monday morning with a hundred% of its students lower back in lecture rooms. "we have been working for 18 months to get equipped for this present day," big apple schooling Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter advised CNN in an interview Friday. All college students and teachers returning to school on Monday could be required to wear masks, and the city previously introduced a vaccine mandate for all public college personnel and not using a checking out opt-out. On Friday, the United Federation of teachers mentioned in an announcement that an unbiased arbitrator determined lecturers who have documented or non secular exemptions ought to be provided a non-classroom assignment. department of schooling officers spoke of Monday that 74% of lecturers and 66% of scholars 12-17 years historical have been vaccinated in long island metropolis. US training Secretary Miguel Cardona seemed virtually from a Bronx school and praised NYC officials for the reopening plan. "To all the families which are observing -- they've worked so tough, they've organized, they are doing everything to make sure your little ones and body of workers are secure," Cardona referred to. also on Monday, NYC all started enforcing its vaccination passport guidelines, which makes vaccinations required for indoor eating, gyms, and different venues. "here is the day we now have been watching for," de Blasio referred to Monday. heritage will bear in mind it, he stated, as "a day that was a online game changer, a change maker, a flip round day. this is the day NYC's coming returned in full force." 먹튀검증

Story at-a-glance

There are 10 steps that every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10. Once the 10th step locks into place, there will be no going back

The 10 steps toward tyranny start with the invocation of a terrifying internal and/or external threat. From 2001 onward, that threat was terrorism, which was used as the justification for stripping us of our liberties

With the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, we entered step 10, where emergency powers and laws are used to strip remaining freedoms from the people, censorship is enacted and certain kinds of speech is criminalized

We must get involved and fight to enact state legislation that protects against continued erosion of freedom and reestablishes rights and liberties

The Daily Clout platform was created for this purpose. It allows citizens to lobby already drafted, turnkey bills to their legislators

This is the article in full:

Naomi Wolf, a former adviser to  the Clinton administration, is a prolific author and Yale University graduate.  She also received a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship that allowed her to complete  her Ph.D. in English and literature at Oxford University in 2015. Eight years  before that, she wrote a book called “The End  of America,” which is the topic of this interview. “The End of America” was published  in 2007. At the end of this article, you will find a playlist of three videos  in which she reads select chapters of the book. You can also download  the first and last chapters for free on the publisher’s website,  chelseagreen.com.1A Prescient Warning Already in 2007, Wolf warned us of  where we were headed. In her book, she points out that would-be tyrants are  found on both sides of the political spectrum. We must not get locked into  generalizations about political affiliations, because they simply do not give  us a truthful picture of who the enemy is. While Wolf and I could be said to  be on opposite sides of the political spectrum, Wolf being a long-time  progressive while many would view me as a conservative, our views are in  perfect alignment when it comes to the issues of protecting American freedom  and liberty.We are [now] at Step 10. I've been trying to warn people,  tirelessly, as much as I can, that we are at Step 10 and that once Step 10  locks in, there is no going back. ~ Naomi WolfIn “The End of America,” Wolf lays  out the 10 steps toward tyranny. These steps have been followed by virtually  all would-be tyrants, be they on the political left or right. They were  followed in Italy in the '20s, Germany in '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Chile  in the '70s and China in the '80s. “They all took the same 10 steps, and they always work,” Wolf says. “I warned people  that when you start to see these 10 steps, you have to take action, because  there is no way to recover once things go too far without a bloody revolution  or a civil war. We are [now] at Step 10. People have said, since I wrote that book   in 2007, ‘Tell us when we're at Step 10.’ I've always said, ‘Things are bad,  they're getting worse, but there's still hope.’ We're literally at Step 10 now.  I've been trying to warn people, tirelessly, as much as I can, that we are at Step  10 and that once Step 10 locks in, there is no going back.”We’re in the Final Step of  the Implementation of Tyranny.The 10 steps toward tyranny start  with the invocation of a terrifying internal and/or external threat. It may be  a real threat or an imagined one, but in all cases, it’s a hyped-up threat.  From 2001 onward, that threat was terrorism, which was used as the  justification for stripping us of our liberties. Ultimately, that wasn’t effective   enough.“There was still freedom in the world. People were not saying, ‘ISIS  exists; therefore, I'm going to give up my First Amendment liberties, my Fourth  Amendment liberties, my Second Amendment liberties and so on.’ Sadly, this  medical crisis — which is now not a pandemic in many states and countries, it's  an endemic; it doesn't meet the formal definition of a pandemic — was the  perfect excuse for leaders to usher in Step 10,” Wolf says. The last and final step in the  implementation of tyranny, Step 10, involves the creation of a surveillance  state where citizens are spied upon, and critique of the government is  reclassified as dissent and subversive activity. Step 10 The surveillance state is now  being rolled out in the form of vaccine passports, while certain kinds of  speech are said to be dangerous and freedom of speech is being criminalized. Needless  to say, the mainstream press is an important part of this scheme. “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have essentially bought up  the western press and coerce them, bribe them, into following the party line,  brought up by the CDC and so on,” Wolf says.“Toward the end of the steps, which is Step 10, is emergency law,  [which is a] subversion of the rule of law, also called martial law. We're  here. I'm [in] New York State. We're under emergency law. Every 30 days, I get  an email saying that tyrannical Governor Cuomo has extended emergency powers,  even though in Columbia County where I live, there are only eight deaths a  month with COVID, average age 85, which is older than the average American life  span. It's not a pandemic where I live, but I'm living under emergency   law, which means the legislature has no power. The governor can do whatever he  wants. It’s the same in Massachusetts, same in California — 49 states, all  states except Alaska, are technically under emergency law. This is terrifying. You get what you're seeing, which is governors   deciding, or the federal government deciding, that you can't assemble, you  can't worship, you have no medical choice, the coercion of vaccine passports,  your child can't go to school, your young adult can't get a college education  if they don't agree to an experimental vaccination. You get suspension of the right to property. You can't run your   business — 110,000 restaurants have closed. You get a suspension of freedoms of  speech. People are being deplatformed left and right and there are movements in  Congress to criminalize what had been First Amendment protected speech. You get the invocation of martial powers and there's no end to it.   Literally, with Massachusetts emergency law, I have no rights. I have no  ability to lobby the governor. With New York’s emergency law, I have no  representative with the power to end emergency measures. The governor has to  end emergency measures, [and] he's the one who benefits from them. It's  catastrophic. We're seeing a complete takeover of American rights, freedoms and   bodies by Big Tech, which is up double digits to triple-digit billions since  the pandemic began. China has moved in to … establish its role as the global  superpower under the guise of this pandemic, buying up community groups,  elected officials and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which are flooding  K through 12 education … community groups [and] universities with money to  engage in COVID education — which means a strict party line [narrative] that is  aimed at destroying what's human about us and what's free. That's it in a  nutshell. It's unbelievably terrifying.”What the COVID-19 Passports  Are Really AboutWolf was recently interviewed by Fox News’ Steve Hilton  (above), in which she warned that mandatory COVID-19 passports will spell  the “end of human  liberty in the West”:2,3 In essence, they’re a  precursor to the social credit system that has already been implemented in  China. The vaccine passes have already been  rolled out in New York, where Wolf lives. Surveillance is nothing new, of  course. We’ve been digitally surveilled for years, through social media  platforms, Google and all manner of “smart” technology. Since the early 2000s, Google and  Facebook in particular have been data mining online users. These data, then,  have been applied to deep learning computers, giving them unprecedented ability  to predict the type of messaging triggers that will create the maximum amount  of fear — and thus compliance. There’s also every reason to  assume that this information has also been shared with people like Bill Gates,  who largely controls the World Health Organization. If it wasn’t for the WHO,  we would not be in this situation, because it was the central organization with  the authority to declare a global pandemic, and keep it in place long past its   natural expiration date. They actually changed the  definition of “pandemic,” removing the requirement of mass casualties, and if  it wasn’t for that, COVID-19 simply would not qualify as a pandemic. The Pandemic Is Hypothetical  at BestWolf points out that COVID-19  dashboards, such as Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 tracking project that mainstream  media keep citing, cannot tell us anything about who’s actually getting  infected, or who’s dying. We don’t even know if they are showing real or made  up data.Wolf, being the CEO of a tech  company, builds digital dashboards based on government data, so she knows what  she’s talking about. You have to have the raw datasets. Since none of the  dashboards provide the raw data, nothing can be verified. “Basically, they can  dial up cases, which are positive PCR tests, or dial them down,” she says. So,  the entire pandemic narrative is unverified.We do know, however, that the CDC  has shifted influenza and pneumonia deaths to COVID-19 deaths, and tens of  thousands of Americans die from these conditions every year. When lawmakers in  Minnesota audited death records, for example, they found a 40% over-attribution   of deaths to COVID-19. Then there’s the PCR test scandal.  Not only have laboratories everywhere been using excessively high amplification  cycles resulting in staggeringly high false positive rates, but they also do  not account for duplicate tests. If you get a positive test, and test once a  week until you test negative, each positive test result you obtain is counted  as a separate “case.”“We literally can't know if there's been a pandemic, there's so  much faulty attribution, inflation of numbers, and so on,” Wolf says. “Those numbers, I  can't stress enough, have never been audited ... We have to do a freedom of information request in Britain to take  a look at the raw data sets that are being fed into the Office for National  Statistics, COVID dashboard. We looked at where the data were flowing from for  the Johns Hopkins dashboard, which again, was used by every major university,  every major news outlet. One of the data providers was a hedge fund! … I know something else about APIs. It is virtually impossible to,  in real time, get hundreds of thousands of reports from hundreds of thousands  of doctors, hospitals, CVS and Rite Aid, feeding into a live digital dashboard.  I keep asking the developers to show me, ‘How did you do this? It's virtually  impossible.’ There's no answer, there's crickets. Literally, we don't know if the dashboards are just dialing up and   dialing down infection rates. Everyone's taking for granted that these must be  real numbers, but there's no evidence that they are real numbers. I'm willing  to stand corrected if there's a FOIA and we see the raw data sets. But right  now, it is a hypothetical pandemic.”Collusion by Tech CompaniesTech companies have also engaged  in what Wolf likens to criminal collusion. She explains:“In March of last year, for the COVID-19 response project, Zoom, NASDAQ, Nintendo, Microsoft, Amazon — all the people who benefited from the lockdown  — coordinated so that wherever you go on the internet, across platform to  platform, you see these alerts about COVID-19, warnings about COVID,  instructions about COVID, and of course, censorship … if you run afoul of the  narrative about COVID. I run a tech company. The question, when you run a tech company, is how do you get people to not do things in the real world, and do things on your  platform? That's the business model. If people are gathering in churches, gathering in real school   rooms, if they're going for walks together, go on picnics, having dinner  parties, going to clubs, that's an opportunity lost to Microsoft and Google and  so on. But if they can drive you indoors, terrify you from being around other  people, or make it unlawful to be around other people through these emergency  powers that restrict assembly [then they can profit] … Digital learning curriculum were turnkey, ready to go. Suddenly,  it was like, ‘Oh, kids have to be at home and do distance learning.’ That's a  $300 million industry for just one company that creates digital curriculums.  They're not going to let go of that. I think we are in a small loop of six tech companies [and] the  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, having bought legislators in China, who's  up 32% while the economies of the West have crashed, and that's the fight that  we have to fight.”The Legalization of Tyranny. Few people realize that dictators  such as Mussolini and Hitler came to power in legal working democracies. They  became subverted and rules of law were rewritten in such a way as to allow  these leaders to legally take over. That's one of the primary dangers we now face  in the U.S., because at the end of step 10, the leader obtains the legal   authority to become a tyrant.“This is especially true of the National Socialists,” Wolf says. “They kept  passing a set of laws called the Enabling Acts that are very much like the laws  that are being passed now. They criminalized certain speech, created a  surveillance apparatus for citizens … and they did this lawfully. They were  elected, and they passed restrictive law after restrictive law. Then, once democracy was fragile enough, it really only took six   months for thugs to beat up opposition leaders, union leaders, the outspoken  and clergy. After that, everyone was too scared to speak. We're seeing the same  thing happen now, but faster. It's very scary that China has created a white paper — the World   Economic Forum has it on its website — that maps how biofascism, as I call it —  vaccinations, the managing of people's bodies, biometrics and health — is being  launched as a way to control civic engagement, governance, private life,  assembly and every other aspect of human life, to bring about super-fast  totalitarianism. That's why focusing on legislation is something I've been doing   with my company DailyClout, very seriously, because if we don't pass laws  immediately to make unlawful some of the things we're seeing, there will be no  more hope for us.”Using the Legal System to  Save the Law. One strategy of totalitarianism  that must be fought through legislation is the requirement of vaccine  passports. “Once these are launched … people like you and I, Dr. Mercola,  will be switched off of society. ‘Oops, my vaccine passport is positive. I   guess I can't go food shopping for my family.’ ‘I said something critical of  biofascism on Dr. Mercola's show, so now my child can't get into school.’ Just  as in Israel, people who are critics are being surveilled [and] marginalized  from society. It has turned into a two-tier society. If you choose not to get   vaccinated, then you're really in a marginalized minority in an apartheid  state. The more we know about these vaccines, the scarier it is to have  coercion that is social. It's also illegal. In America, we have the Americans  with Disabilities Act. It means it's illegal to even ask me anything about my  medical status. You can't ask me if I'm pregnant. You can't ask me if I'm  disabled. You can't ask me if I have diabetes or HIV. You cannot ask me   anything. By definition, these intrusive measures are unlawful. We have to use  the law to save the law, basically. In Michigan, there's an edict from the  governor that 2- to 4-year-old children have to be masked. This is child abuse.  Science doesn't support it. Unlawful, tyrannical laws are being passed across the country  under the guise of emergency measures, and stupid people going along with it,  like in Congress, I'm embarrassed to say, because I voted for Biden. We have to  fight before we are living in fascist regime where every move is tracked and  we're marginalized from society.”The Courts Are Our Last Hope,  And They’re Now Under AttackOne area in which “The End of  America” excels is helping you understand is that the United States was founded  by people who had repressive societies. Their goal was to prevent such a  repressive society from emerging again. The founders had to personally reckon  with criminalized speech, arbitrary arrest, state sanctioned torture and even  murder.So, at great personal sacrifice,  they signed the Constitution. Had they lost the Revolutionary War, they would  all have been executed, so the stakes could not have been higher. As a result,  our founding fathers constructed a carefully balanced system to make sure no  tyrant could ever come to power. We’re now facing a scenario that  could obliterate that delicate balance, namely the Biden administration’s call  to “pack the court,” i.e., add, in this case four, additional Justices to the  Supreme Court. We’re now facing a shift in our  legal structure that will allow for the legalization of tyrannical reign and  “legally” override the carefully constructed governmental balance between the  legislative, executive and judicial branched that has previously served to  prevent tyranny in the U.S.This three-tier branch, constructed to safeguard  our freedoms, is under direct attack, and this is NOT a partisan issue. Not by  a longshot, and everyone needs to wake up to this fact. It’s an issue of  freedom versus tyranny.“Absolutely,” Wolf says. “Sadly, this is clear. That's why I'm saying progressives have to  wake up … I worry very much about the role of China in this, because I think  we've seen that some people connected to the Democratic Party have close ties  with members of the Chinese Communist Party. That is just established fact. I'm not saying that the tyrants are on the left. In Britain, it's   Tories cracking down on liberty, holding the country under house arrest. In  Australia it's conservatives, in Canada it's Trudeau, a liberal. This isn't  partisan. But in America, we do have to face the fact that this administration  is drunk on power and has some bad actors aligned with it, including Silicon  Valley. They are crushing conservative voices, kicking them off of public   platforms in addition to voices critical of the COVID narrative. They're also  moving at warp speed to use their own phrasing about something else to lock in  power in a way that is against everything our founders set in place — the most  beautiful, delicate system of checks and balances any human beings have ever  created; an ideal of people all over the world who want freedom and balanced  accountable government. Yeah, packing the Supreme Court is a horrific tampering with some   of the last checks and balances that we have … I can't believe I keep saying  thank God for the conservatives on the bench. But these days, I have to say it,  and I'm ashamed. But thank God, because they were the ones who in California  said ‘No, you cannot keep people from assembling to worship. That is a  violation of the Constitution.’ They're our last hope. The courts are our last hope. It is   catastrophic, and I see other scary movements against accountable democracy  that are being put forward by this administration. Among them, President Biden is not saying to the blue states: ‘You   have to give up your emergency powers. You have to open up. You can't control  people in their homes, you can't force people to have vaccinations and you  can't keep people from assembling and worshipping.’ These are all violations of their constitutional liberties. He's   not saying that. That's a complete failure of leadership, if not worse. My  people have to rise up and face it. Conservatives have to face cleaning up  their own houses … What's at stake is everything, and we all have to unite  across party lines and save our Constitution and make these people accountable,  whatever their party [affiliation].”Urgent Call to Action The good news is, the would-be tyrants have not won yet. That said, we have no  time to spare. We have no time to remain idle, hoping it will all just go back  to normal on its own. The answer is peaceful mass civil disobedience.“There's hope in mass peaceful civil disobedience … when things  are really dire,” Wolf says. “My favorite story is about the singing revolution of Latvia,   Lithuania and Estonia, in which they were under the grip of the Soviet Union, a  massive tyrannical monolith. They all decided to just peacefully gather on a  highway that extended the length of their three countries and sing. They kept peacefully disrupting business as usual in their cities,   making it impossible for work to continue, for traffic to go on. They sat down,  they linked arms and they sang. Over time, they just wore down the Soviet Union.  That's a beautiful model. Same thing with Dr. Martin Luther King. His was a  peaceful revolution of civil disobedience.”This strategy is time-consuming,  however, so be prepared to stand your ground for as long as it takes. It can  take months, years even, when you have nothing else in your arsenal. Peaceful disobedience  is the primary strategy in armed countries as well. As mentioned, we must also  rally behind legislation that prevents the alteration of laws that safeguard  our freedoms.Join the Five Freedoms  Campaign!To that end, Wolf has started the Five Freedoms Campaign, which you can find on her Daily Clout website. The campaign focuses on creating legislation to preserve key  freedoms and prevent emergency laws from infringing on our freedom to assembly,   worship, protest and engage in business. Legislation is also being crafted to  open schools, remove mask mandates and eliminate requirements for vaccine  passports.“We've had overwhelmingly high levels of support,” Wolf says. “I hope your  followers will also join us. We hired a really distinguished lawyer who is drafting  model legislation. She has finished the new vaccine passport bill and we've  gotten state legislators in Maine, New Hampshire and Michigan to sponsor to  pass that legislation. I'm sending out the request for 47 other state legislatures to   adopt this model legislation. Contact me, I'll come out, I'll speak to your  legislature. We'll do a rally, we'll do a press conference, as we're doing in  Maine on April 27. We've got to pass these bills. Then she's going to work on an omnibus bill to make all five   freedoms inviolable so that no one can pass mask mandates as they did in  Michigan today. No one can force vaccine passports as they're doing in New York,  so that we can get our freedoms back.”Wolf and her team are making this  interactive process as easy as possible by posting good model bills on  dailyclout.io, and proactively drafting much-needed bills. Many state  legislators are not lawyers, and they don't have lawyers at their beck and  call. Citizens can now send these model bills to their legislators, knowing  that they’ve undergone legal review and are ready to be passed. You can also go  even further than that:“You can tell us the bill you want. We can upload a campaign for that bill. We can hire our lawyer to draft a model bill and then you can pass  it. What we've been doing is gathering names and zip codes, so that we can add  real voters to this piece of model legislation in real states and send it to  real state legislators and say, ‘Look, the supporters are all there. All you  have to do is pass this.’ It's a fantastic intervention in the political process, restoring   real democracy. It's why we founded Daily Clout, but it's beautiful to see  hundreds and hundreds of people from all walks of life rushing to give us  support and resources, to become members and give us donations, which we  appreciate, so that we can keep our lawyer busy creating these draft bills.  It's not just for this issue. Once we get our rights and freedoms back,  whatever [citizens] want, we can draft a bill for you, and you can [call on  your legislators to] pass it.”Limiting Emergency PowersAnother facet  that needs to be addressed is governors’ emergency powers. Some states have  been locked down under emergency power for more than a year, which is insane,  considering we’re not in an emergency and haven’t been for many months. These  emergency powers need to be limited in some way, as they are at the heart of  all this unlawful behavior. As explained by Wolf: “Emergency law basically suspends  the Constitution of the United States. As I've said elsewhere, the Constitution  doesn't say all this can be suspended if there's disease. We've been through  typhus, cholera, smallpox, HIV, Spanish flu, polio, tuberculosis — disease   after disease, without ever having emergency law extended without review month  after month. We've had world wars fought  without emergency laws. We were attacked on our soil without emergency law  being declared in New York state after 9/11. There's no justification for it. It's  against everything we believe in. It's unconstitutional.” So, one of the  five freedoms Wolf’s campaign focuses on is the restriction of emergency laws.  New Hampshire has become the first state to pass a bill that accomplishes this.  It reforms emergency law such that the Governor’s emergency powers cannot be  indefinitely extended without review by the legislature. They also passed a  bill that guarantees freedom of worship, and another bill that ensures  emergency law cannot be invoked indefinitely in any future crisis.4“We've now passed along our model ‘No vaccine passport’ bill to   the New Hampshire legislators,” Wolf says. “If they can do it in New Hampshire,  with our help, with your help, they can do it across the country. But we need  to get that model legislation out to every legislature and mobilize that  grassroots movement to pass the end of emergency law. I mean, look what's happening in New York State. It's insane. Fourteen  state legislators are trying to get Governor Cuomo to end emergency law. But as  our laws are written, Governor Cuomo has to be the one to end his own emergency  law. There're a huge amount of lobbying that has to happen for these   legislators to understand that there are eyes on them, that they're accountable.  I'm going to be reporting and … hopefully millions of people will be following  and helping to pass these laws to get back our rights.”Daily Clout Empowers Citizens  to Lobby for Freedom. To be clear, the Daily Clout is  not a lobbying group. YOU are the ones lobbying your legislators. Daily Clout  simply provides the needed assistance so that you can do that easily and  effectively. “It's such a beautiful effort, because you'd have to come out and  say, ‘The people of New Hampshire have no right to pass their own legislation’  in order to oppose an effort like this,” Wolf says. “We're not a special interest. It's just the  people. It's the people of New Hampshire, people of Maine, passing their own  legislation. I do hear, consistently, that Democrats won't help, that in many   states with their democratic majorities, it's going to be difficult if   Democrats don't reach across the aisle and add their names. I'm sending out the  call to Democrats to support this legislation. I'm going to warn everyone, speaking as a former political   consultant, that the party that embraces the restoration of freedom is going to  be the party that wins in 2022 and 2024. There's no question about that. This  is going to be a winning issue. People know something is terribly wrong, but they don't know what   to do. This is a completely unprecedented assault on liberty. With my many  years in national politics, I know what to do. This is why we developed Daily  Clout. If you show up with a turnkey piece of legislation and some turnkey  supporters, that's a very quick fix for a really catastrophic crisis that has a  legislative solution. As long as there's still legislatures, we can pass good  legislation at the state level. At the federal level, it's going to be harder,   because there isn't any balance right now. I'm very inspired there's so many people serving at the state   legislature level who are really decent citizens, who are not partisan hacks. People  who really ran to help their neighbors and help their communities and who are  not wholly owned by China, Big Tech or whatever, and who want to do the right  thing. I could be wrong, but in two weeks [since we launched the Daily   Clout site] we've already been invited to address state legislators and draft  legislation for three, and that's without any marketing budget or anything but  platforms like this, where I say it's available. We started Daily Clout because citizens didn't have a platform to   be effective at lobbying for their own issues. This is a turnkey platform that  does that for them. I designed it that way. I designed it, as a former  political consultant, knowing that the way things are set up, ordinary citizens  don't have a seat at the table. There is no easy way to engage in civic action.  

This makes it easy, makes it digital and people are using it.”How to Use the Daily Clout Site.So, how do you get involved?  First, go to  dailyclout.io and sign up to become a paying member or free subscriber. You will then receive an email explaining how to use the Five  Freedoms Campaign.

Presently, there is a model “no vaccination passports” bill   that you can send to your state legislator.There’s also a feature called  BillCam, where you can see who your state legislator is by entering your zip  code. Daily Clout will also email you links and explain how to find your state  legislator. If you provide your name and zip code, which will remain  confidential, your state legislator’s contact information will be included in  the email.“We're creating a widget right now to attach your name and zip   code to the model bills so it goes right to your state legislator, showing that  the bill already has support,” Wolf explains. “But in the meantime, you can look up any bill on BillCam. Those are  bills that have already been introduced or passed. There are ‘No vaccine passport’ bills, for instance. We're   showcasing them on BillCam. It's already set up, so you can just tweet it to  the sponsor, tweet it to representative. You can Facebook it to your community.  It already goes through social media and you can show support by ‘voting on it’  in the widget on BillCam as you share legislation with your community.”Once you’re a subscriber or  member, you’ll get regular updates about happenings around the U.S. and  community events. They’re also installing a widget that will allow you to meet  with like-minded people in your state who want this legislation passed. Lastly,  you can write to Daily Clout and ask them to draft a bill. A lawyer will then  be assigned to draft it for you.“Right now, we're focused on the Five Freedoms Campaign, but there  is that functionality. You can write a blog and explain the bill that you want.  You can send us a video and explain what your issue is, and all of this goes to  shining a light on the legislators. They're not used to having a light shone on  them. That really does drive outcomes. Those are the steps that you can take,” Wolf says. We’ve already seen how effective  this strategy can be, with New Hampshire passing three bills to protect  citizens’ freedoms. “I never want to take credit away from legislators working hard to  pass bills, but I know that we helped,” Wolf says. “I know that our lawyer has been in close  touch with some of those state legislators in New Hampshire and provided  language that we pay for, so that those legislators would have a turnkey bill  to act on.”Hundreds of people also wrote to  New Hampshire’s Governor Christopher Sununu, urging him to lift the mask  mandate, which he recently did. Knowing that the Daily Clout would report on  the outcome of that campaign, he not only felt the political pressure, but he  also knew he had support from his constituents. So, please, use this unprecedented  opportunity to get involved, in any capacity that you can. Your freedom, and that of future generations, hinge on  our getting involved and fighting for it. Last but not least, to understand  where we are and how we got here, I strongly recommend reading “The End  of America.” In the video below, Wolf reads select  chapters from the book. You can also download  the first and last chapters for free on the publisher’s website,  chelseagreen.com.5 

Life Talk

1.)  I won Nanowrimo

2.)  My house is sold

3.)  I’m tryyyyyyying to taking it easy

More below the cut.

So, I won Nanowrimo.  It’s roughly 30K Four Years and 20K Tri: Integrity Lens.  I feel very... blank about it, though.  In the last few years, I’ve been trying to celebrate when I win Nanowrimo, but...  I don’t have any emotions about it this year, probably even less than usual.

I should probably back up and say that, when I was growing up, I was the type that got all As, won every contest, was the lead in plays and singing events, got the good behavior awards, won state-wide science and poetry contests, was on the select sports teams.  I’m not saying this to brag- I was hyper-involved in school and extracurriculars because it kept me away from home.  

It got to the point at home where, if I won an award, the reaction was, “good.”  If I didn’t, it was, “Why didn’t you win that award?  We don’t have money for tutoring, so you had better figure it out *vague threat* ”  Stuff like that.

Basically, it’s hard for me to feel proud of anything.  If I succeed, that’s “baseline.”  Good, I won’t be scolded.  If I don’t, that’s anxiety- “I will be scolded, I will be punished.”  

I can’t change that concept as an adult- it was cemented into me during my formative years.  But I can see it, and I can tell myself- it’s okay.  Don’t beat yourself up over not feeling a certain way.

The big thing on my mind now, still, is that we sold our first home successfully a few days ago.  It’s the most enormous load off my mind.  This whole time, I’ve been wondering- I keep pinning everything on when the house is sold.  Will it actually be a relief?  Will it actually free up emotional and mental real estate?

SPOILER ALERT: IT DID, I FEEL GREAT!  

I told my therapist that I couldn’t feel “at home” and “settled” until I sold the old house, and she challenged me to not wait for some kind of...  Permission?  Catalyst?  Like, don’t put things off citing “my old home isn’t sold” as a reason, because suddenly, a year will have passed and you still haven’t painted your room or put up photos or turned the house into your home.

I absolutely see her point, but I also see mine.  Frankly, now that I’m not paying for two mortgages, I can afford to do some of that stuff (buy paint and supplies, buy a rug, buy a lamp, etc).  It is true that I could have hung my photos at any time, so that was just a mental/stress block, but I do think that pointing to the money that was tied up in paying the mortgages for both homes, and for repairing things at the old home at the buyer’s demand, was... you know, a valid reason not to be throwing money at our current home.

Right now, my anxiety is free to be directed at the fact that the CDC is forecasting such drastic pandemic leaps.  It’s expected to hit in about 10-ish days after today, 11/29, a Sunday that will likely be the largest single day for travel as people head back home in droves to make it to work on Monday after going away for Thanksgiving.  It’s expected that we’ll be seeing 4,000 covid deaths per day in the states around week 2/3 of December.

I really don’t want to go to work physically, because I know coworkers who travelled.  I wish we could all stay home for two weeks, when the symptoms will show for carriers who are not asymptomatic.  I will definitely be limiting my time in the office to after 3 PM, when a lot of coworkers have gone home.  It’s still a risk that I’m not sure is worthwhile.  

Ah!  I should probably say that my therapist is talking about ending therapy.  I started in... I wanna say March or April of 2019?  Is that right?  So I guess it’s been...  Like, 19-ish months?  I’ve learned so much, but I would say...  The biggest difference is that I can see my behavior patterns for what they are, and then decide what to do with them.  I haven’t “changed” at my core.  I can’t, not in the way people mean when they say “you’ve changed.”  The same learned behaviors, belief systems, and emotions from my childhood are there.  I just recognize them when they pop up and can make informed decisions about how to approach them.  

Which, it turns out, makes a huge difference, even if it isn’t really “change.”  I’m always in danger of being too distraught to see what’s in front of my face, though (thanks, anxiety!).

What else...  My husband and I did cheese fondue and hot pot for Thanksgiving!  It was easily the best holiday I’ve ever had.  Holidays are always... so high pressure, always such events that turn a day off into a giant list of chores that might span weeks to complete beforehand.  Plus, I’m always hoping I’m not about to be dragged into some kind of “trap” conversation by both my family and my husband’s, who have very different political views compared to me.

But on Thanksgiving, my husband and I ate amazing food, spent a lot of time together, and I felt so loved and cared for and valued, because my husband came up with the idea and made it happen, all so we’d have a nice holiday together.  Honestly, I don’t deserve him.  I don’t get it.  He’s so amazing?  I love him so much.

As for my writing, I’ve been feeling...  Bad about it, frankly.  I think it’s partially because it honestly looks like no one is reading Tri: Integrity Lens.  I don’t get it?  It was my most requested story in 2018/2019, and I know people wanted a sequel to Growing Up with You, so why is TIL doing so poorly?  At first, I thought people were going back to read GUWY again first, since I saw a huge surge in hits for it.  Now, I’m not sure?  Like, if I open my stats, some random GUWY chapters will have over 10 times the hits as the newest TIL chapter???  ???? ????  ????  ?????

I’m wondering if it has to do with Tri itself...  I think that, the more time passed, the more people who liked Tri are maybe defensive about how... negative the fandom reaction was, overall.  Meanwhile, people who dislike it, I think, have maybe simply... chucked it out the window, and don’t think about it much.  Whereas, when it was still coming out and directly after it wrapped up, I think people who disliked Tri were more interested in imagining ways they might have personally tweaked it.

That makes things awkward for someone like me, who thinks Tri has amazing moments basically... tacked onto a crumbling base.  

Actually, let me give you my weird metaphor for Tri!

When I am deciding if I’m going to write a new fic, often what happens is...  A few powerful ideas coalesce, a few themes and characterizations.  Some people say they are lead by a few powerful scenes.  I think of these ideas/themes/character ideas (or scenes for other people) as sparkling ornaments on a Christmas tree.

The problem is that...  Ornaments in a box don’t... do much.  You need to display them on a tree, right?  The ornaments need to be connected and supported by a plot (unless you decide to write a focused oneshot, which is my recommendation in most cases).

In short: Tri has amazing ornaments, but the tree is... not... doing that well.  The ideas are there, there are plenty of awesome moments, but something about the actual story/execution just...  Didn’t do it for me.  But dang, those are some nice ornaments!

That was quick and dirty, but hopefully it conveyed the general idea.  

ANYWAY, I’ve been trying to decide if I’m going to continue TIL.  I think right now, I would definitely finish Ketsui, since I have so much material written already.  Why waste it, right?  But I’m not sure what the future of the story will be- not plot wise, but rather, “is my time better spent elsewhere”-wise.

I’m not sure if I need to focus on a new story, if I should take a break, or what.  I need to write for my mental health, but it doesn’t have to be a fanfic.  It can be anything, as long as I explore whatever is eating at me.

And that is where I am!  I hope you’re all staying safe <3

Once On The Brink Of Eradication, Syphilis is Raging Again

In certain circles of San Francisco, a case of syphilis can be as common and casual as catching the flu, to the point where Billy Lemon can't even remember how many times he's had it.  หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

"Three or four? Five times in my life?" he struggles to recall. "It does not seem like a big deal."

At the time, about a decade ago, Lemon went on frequent methamphetamine binges, kicking his libido into overdrive and silencing the voice in his head that said condoms would be a wise choice at a raging sex party.

"It lowers your inhibitions, and also your decision making abilities are skewed," says Lemon.

He's sober now and runs the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, which is not a resort, but a place where gay men come to get help with addiction, especially meth. Lemon says syphilis comes with the territory.

"In the 12-step community, if meth was your thing, everybody had syphilis," he says.

In 2000, syphilis rates were so low, public health officials believed eradication was on the horizon. But the rates started creeping up in 2001, grew steadily for the next two decades, then spiked 74% since 2015. There were nearly 130,000 cases nationwide in 2019, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In California and the US, about half of syphilis cases are in men who have sex with men. More than a third of women in the western United States who have syphilis also use meth, a drug that has seen its own surge in recent years.

These are just some of the trends causing overall national cases of sexually transmitted diseases to hit an all-time high for the last six years in a row, reaching 2.5 million. And the consequences are now trickling down to babies who are contracting syphilis from their mothers: these congenital syphilis rates nearly quadrupled between 2012 and 2019.

This was all before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the US, and with contact tracers and testing supplies diverted from STDs to COVID, the CDC is predicting 2020 numbers will be no better.

"We are quite worried about this and have seen this trend over time," says Dr. Erica Pan, California's state epidemiologist. "Unfortunately, with years of not having enough funding and infrastructure in public health, and then in this past year, of course, both at the local and state level, a lot of personnel who had been focusing on STDs and syphilis follow-up have really been redirected to the pandemic."

Billy Lemon is executive director of the Castro Country Club in San Francisco, where gay men can get help with addiction. Lemon says that when it comes to methamphetamine use in particular, syphilis often comes with the territory.

Beth LaBerge/KQED

A number of factors are fueling the syphilis surge

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of STDs, and syphilis in particular.

In the gay community in San Francisco, for example, the rise of mobile dating apps like Grindr and Tinder made finding a date "faster than getting pizza delivered to your home," says Dan Wohlfeiler, an STD prevention specialist and co-founder of Building Healthy Online Communities, which uses these apps to improve gay men's health.

When the dating apps first came on the scene around 2009, they made it harder for disease investigators to track the spread of STDs and notify people who may have been infected, because men don't always know the names of the men they hook up with.

"They sometimes only know their online handle," says Dr. Ina Park, associate professor at UCSF School of Medicine and author of the book Strange Bedfellows, about the history of STDs. "And if the sex didn't go well, then sometimes they will block the person from their app and they don't even know how to reach that person again."

Online dating began back in the late 1990s, which was around the same time effective medications to prevent the transmission of HIV became available: first, antiretrovirals that suppress the virus in those who are HIV positive, and then later, in 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PreP, which prevents new infections in people who are HIV negative, but considered at-risk for exposure to the virus.

With the risk of contracting a deadly disease falling to almost zero, condoms fell even more out of favor than they already were, says Park.

"If one man is taking PreP and the other one is virally suppressed, there's no HIV risk at all," she says. "So why use condoms if you don't mind having a touch of syphilis?"

Diagnosing syphilis is tricky

While syphilis is not benign – it can cause blindness, deafness, or brain damage – it is easy to treat. Typically, a shot of penicillin in the butt will cure it.

But diagnosing syphilis can be tricky, says Park, who treats patients with STDs at the San Francisco City Clinic. She often finds herself crouched low in the exam room, "lifting up their scrotum and lifting up their penis," craning her head to get a look from all angles.

She does these gymnastics to find rashes associated with syphilis. Some are obvious, others subtle. She says doctors in regular family medicine clinics often aren't trained on where to look, or when.

"The patient came in saying, 'I'm tired,'" Park says, referring to a common symptom of syphilis. "How many people are going to say, 'Take off your pants and lift up your scrotum, I want to look? We only do that at the STD clinic because that's what we do."

But specialized public STD clinics, like the one where Park works, have been shutting down nationwide. One reason is persistent underfunding of public health programs, a trend laid bare during the coronavirus pandemic. Another reason is the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the 2010 law intended to expand access to health care actually contributed to the closure of STD clinics.

"Honestly, I think everyone thought they weren't going to be necessary," said Dr. Karen Smith in 2019, when she was the director of the California Department of Public Health. She says once Obamacare was in place, the thought was that STD testing would happen in primary care clinics.

"We sort of all assumed that if you've got health insurance and you've got access to a doctor, that's all that you need," she said. "It turns out that that's not really all that you need."

People still had affairs that they didn't want to talk about with their family doctor. And some family doctors didn't want to probe into their patients' sex lives. Young people, in particular, prefer clinics geared to them, out of their parents' purview.

"That loss of anonymous care really was a problem," Smith said.

The spread of syphilis is reaching newborns, too

When Christian Faulkenberry-Miranda decided to become a pediatrician, she never thought she'd become an expert in syphilis.

In 2010, shortly after finishing her medical training and starting work at the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California, she began seeing babies with a rash on their tummies that looks like a blueberry muffin. At first she thought it was a common viral infection, until these babies tested positive for syphilis.

In those early days, Dr. Faulkenberry-Miranda saw perhaps a few instances of congenital syphilis each year. Now she sees two cases every week. It's important to start the 10-day antibiotic treatment right away, to avoid complications, but she still follows her patients through their first year of life, and often through their childhood, to watch for vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, attention deficits, and learning disabilities, all of which can result from congenital syphilis infections. In 2019, 128 of these congenital syphilis cases resulted in stillbirth or neonatal death.

"The disappointing thing is that syphilis is very treatable," she says. "This is something that's completely preventable, with proper screening and treatment of these moms during pregnancy."

Congenital syphilis cases hit a troubling milestone in 2019, increasing 279% over the previous five years, and hitting a high of cases in the U.S. That is more mother-to-child transmissions of syphilis than there were at the peak of mother-to-child cases of HIV in 1991.

"How could this be happening? Testing is cheap and widely available. The same treatment we've been using since the forties still works," says Dr. Park, who has also seen an increase in congenital syphilis cases in San Francisco. "And yet we have this completely out of control epidemic among the most vulnerable babies in our society."

Many of the women who give birth to babies with syphilis have had no prenatal care. They often use drugs – mainly methamphetamine – and they are often homeless, said Dr. Karen Smith, former director of CDPH. This makes them more likely to trade sex for housing, food, or drugs, prompting Smith to call congenital syphilis a "disease of despair." Drug use, in particular, makes women less likely to recognize that they're pregnant at all, and less likely to seek health care if they do.

"They're very concerned about what's going to happen when they're found to be pregnant and using drugs," said Dr. Smith. "They're concerned that their drug use will be reported and then CPS will be involved and their children will be taken away."

Romni Neiman is a veteran contact tracer with the CDC. Before she got redirected to COVID last year, she was working on STD prevention in California, including the problem of congenital syphilis. Neiman says when she tries to reach pregnant women who may have been exposed to syphilis, it's extremely challenging.

Neiman remembers looking for one woman in the late 80s in Chicago. She used drugs, was pregnant and had been exposed to syphilis. The woman's housing was so unstable, that Neiman went to three different places before finding her. The woman had no car, so Neiman offered to drive her to the clinic to get tested. The woman had no safe place to leave her toddler, because a man in the place she was staying was abusive, so Neiman took care of the child while the woman saw the doctor.

"She was just trying to do the best that she can, and she was really afraid," Neiman remembers. "Sometimes it's really taxing and really sad. And you come home at the end of the day and you're like, 'Wow. Wow.'"

Those challenges, combined with persistent underfunding for public health, is what led to the initial spike in congenital syphilis cases in Fresno County in the 2010s, says Park. Local contact tracers couldn't keep up, and the state had to step in with reinforcements. After leveling off for a couple years, congenital syphilis rates in Fresno spiked 900% in 2018.

The state is taking new measures to address the rates, says state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan, like requiring women to be screened for syphilis twice during pregnancy, instead of just once. And, rather than waiting for women to come in for prenatal care, the state is doing more outreach, and screening pregnant women in the emergency room, and in prisons and jails.

Dr. Pan believes the coronavirus pandemic has created an opportunity to invest in a more nimble response to emerging and re-emerging public health issues, like syphilis and congenital syphilis.

"It's been a really long, hard year responding to this pandemic, but people have really acknowledged and realized the impact of divesting in public health infrastructure," she said. "I hope that a lot of the resources that we hope to bring to bear in the longer term after this pandemic will benefit STDs as well."

Being a Starbucks Barista During COVID-19

So…I’m a Starbucks barista that decided to go back to work. For those of you who don’t know, Starbucks gave their employees the option of whether they wanted to go back to work or not. We get paid our average hours through May 3 regardless of what we decide. I’ve been with the company for over 2 years now and have never taken a vacation. So of course I took advantage of taking a week off and getting paid to do that. Being who I am, I lasted only 1 week before I got stir crazy and wanted to go back to work. There were also some good incentives to go back to work such as our usual free drink/food and coffee bean mark-outs, but we also get an extra $3/hr, 50% discount and tips. The tips definitely make it worth it (I went from getting $20 to $120 every week!!). Anyways, I got some insight for you on what it is like to work during COVID-19 as a Starbucks barista.

Company-wide: Cafe stores are closed, hours have changed, drive thru and grab-and-go only. Most stores in each district are closed. The amount of stores that are open are dependent on the amount of employees willing to work. We, the employees, are not to blame for stores not being open close to hospitals. The stores are determined based on if they have drive thrus and if they have enough space to accommodate grab-and-go pickup. 

My store: We are only open 7-2 because our district thought it was best to have 2 stores open instead of 1 to alleviate the line a bit. Our line begins forming 30 mins to open and continues being busy until we cut off the line 30 mins to close. Sometimes, the line gets out of hand and wraps onto the main road in front of our building. We have had the cops come and redirect the traffic because it gets bad at times. Typically our line is 30+ cars long and it takes us anywhere from 30-50 mins to get through the line depending on how large the orders are and who is actually making the drinks. People make the decision to get in line despite knowing it will take awhile.

At my store in particular, we get quite a few bad, rude and/or entitled customers.

“Since I can’t come inside to enjoy my drink, can I get 2 free coffees that Starbucks is offering?” Umm..what now? We are in a pandemic and we are not giving you free coffees because of the mild inconvenience. On top of that, the offer is for front-line health care workers to get a free tall hot/iced coffee. The coffee isn’t for bored soccer moms with nothing else to do...

“This line is ridiculous!! You need to get employees that can actually do their jobs.” Sorry you feel that way. We have been trying our best. Taking it out on the employees is not going to solve the problem. On top of that, we don’t have enough employees. If you want the store to remain open, you have to deal with the line. Plus we didn’t hold you at gunpoint to get in line. The only way to make the line shorter is for customers to obey the stay at home order.

“You need to open more stores.” Sorry, we don’t have enough employees. (I had to repeat this at least 3 times per person because they weren’t grasping the concept of work being voluntary.)

My manager and I went out to cut off the line because we were about to close and a woman tried cutting in front of 10 cars to make sure she could still get a drink. I told her that the line goes back behind her, that she was cutting the line, and that we were not taking any more customers. She ignored me, sped to the back of the line where my manger was and lied to her saying that I told her that she could get in line. My manger, not wanting to deal with it, told her that I 100% didn’t say that but let her in anyways to avoid any more lies and yelling.

Customers have attempted to bribe the barista stopping the line to let them in. 

Several customers have ran over our sign with our hours that blocks the drive thru when we close. They think that by getting into the drive thru lane automatically means we have to serve them. Sorry, that is not the case.

One customer yanked and banged on the front door after we closed. Keep in mind, we have 4 signs on our door and I wrote our hours largely on the windows too. He proceeded to look confused, walked around to the side of our building to the drive thru window and started banging there too. If he didn’t leave, we were going to call the cops. Thank goodness it didn’t have to come to that. Our store has made too many calls to the police this past year.

“You guys always run out of food.” We order as much food as we can that makes sense. We have donated so much food to Salvation Army at the end of each day. Trust me, we only run out of popular food and that happens maybe an hour to close. If you come late, there’s a good chance that the food item you want will be gone. 

Customers will crowd around the front door and attempt to drink on the patio. We have to continuously go outside to tell customers to stay 6ft apart and that they have to enjoy their drinks in their car and not by the door.

A lot of young teens come through the drive thru and then park in the lot to spend time with each other. 9 times out of 10, they don’t practice social distancing. Since they are on our property, we can get in trouble too so we try to shut it down as much as we can.

I also spend a lot of time online when I am not at work. I’ve looked on reddit, tumblr, twitter, facebook and the news to see what customer concerns were.

One customer was mad that they could no longer access the free internet we provide. Saying that we “needlessly closed the cafes.” Sir, we are not purposely attacking you. We have to think about our safety as well as yours. If you need internet, several grocery stores have free internet. You can sit in the parking lot and still access it in most cases. 

“Starbucks is not an essential business and shouldn’t be open.” I generally agree with you. However, the amount of healthcare workers that come through and show us immense amount of gratitude makes it worth it. We are meant to be open to serve them. Sadly, we get more people that are meant to stay home, coming in. They make the line too long where some essential workers don’t have time to sit and wait.

Customers have been complaining on reddit that we have been rude. I can’t speak for other stores, but mine has tried to remain positive and friendly. Keep in mind that we are scared and worried just like you. We can only hold back our fear from turning negative for so long. We deal with customers not following social distancing and the stay at home order coming in. They can be mean and downright disrespectful at times. We wish that we could refuse service but we need to keep in mind our policies. Overall, we are stressed to the very limit while working. All stores are. Lines are too long, some cars have families who order 6 custom drinks that take extra time. Then mobile/delivery orders come through with up to 20 drink orders at a time. 

However, there are some pretty great times too.

Customers bring in their dogs to get pup cups. I take pictures of course! They brighten up our day so much.

Customers are generous with tips. We may have tipped the scale a bit by putting two tip jars out with a yes or no questions attached to them. We have done simple questions too like “do you like cats or dogs?” or our best question was “Did Carol Baskin kill her husband?” We have fun with it and so do our customers.

We get customers that are extremely funny or pleasant to talk to while we make their drinks.

We get to meet employees from all around and make new friends. 

We have the honor of serving our front-line workers.

If you decide to come to Starbucks:

Make sure you have time to wait in line.

If you don’t have 30+ mins, mobile order and come to the front door. Please give us at least 5-10 mins if you can.

Pay with card or phone to prevent cash handling. Every time we handle cash, that person has to go to the back room and wash their hands. Save everyone’s time by doing that.

Wear a mask. The CDC recommends it and it gives us more peace of mind.

Don’t touch our hands when we hand you your items. Again, we have to wash our hands, which wastes precious time. 

Only front-line workers get to take advantage of the free drink promotion. 

Have backup food/drink items in mind! Due to the increased volume of orders, we run out quickly. We don’t want you to waste time in line if we don’t have the specific item you want. It sucks waiting so long and to not get anything at all. 

Don’t try to be funny and fake cough. It makes us freak out.Don’t be that person.

Don’t smoke cigarettes in our drive thru. Some of us have allergic reactions to the secondhand smoke. We have told people before. Most don’t listen. We have, in the past, shut the window and refused to serve them until they put it out. We hate doing that but we are not putting our employees in harms way just so you can have a quick high. Wait until you leave our drive thru please and thank you.

Be aware of our hours. Don’t get mad when we stop letting new cars come through. 

Please refrain from ordering at the window. It messes up the groove of the people making drinks. It makes the line stop longer than it needs to. 

Let us know if the food item you want needs to be warmed. Some items come warmed automatically while others don’t. If you come to the window, take your items and then tell us you wanted it warmed up, we have to throw the item away and get you a new one. Don’t waste food. 

Same goes for drinks. Let us know if you wanted it hot or iced, what size and if there needs to be sweetener. The drinks all have their own presets. If you don’t tell us, don’t get mad when we make it to the preset. It is up to you to order correctly. Side note: if you think you are going to pull off the TikTok hack where you purposely order a grande and get to the window and say otherwise, you are mistaken. You WILL NOT get the extra drink for free nor will you get away with not paying for the size up-charge. It has happened way too many times and we are over it.

Tip your barista? We don’t have to be here, but we are. Most of us rely on tips to pay our bills. Some of us got laid off from our second jobs. Some of us have partners that got laid off and need as much extra income as possible. 

In general, be nice. It makes everyone’s day better if you do. We get nasty customers and having great ones help make the day not suck. Trust me when I say that being called a c**t, a b***h, a w***e, etc. for just doing my job to the best of my ability sucks. It makes you not want to come to work anymore. Plus I believe in karma. 

That’s all for now folks! Message me back stories if you are also a barista, I would love to hear how your store is doing. I will block and report trolls so don’t do it. I may update this post or make a part 2 if I have more stories. Let me know if you want to see the dog photos? Umm I think that’s it?

Not ready for a pandemic to end?

My life changed on July 2nd of 2018, I started this job with a credit union and had just enrolled to begin my associates degree, I found myself at a peak in life, working somewhere I loved, with people I liked, and had genuine connections with. The next year and a half were, nothing short of amazing, and then, it was almost like a horror movie played out before my eyes.

On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organization announced the Novel Coronavirus a global pandemic, in the very beginning, there was an overwhelming amount of uncertainty and doubt about just how strange and fatal the virus was. Grocery stores were practically barren as people rushed to stock pile on food, toilet paper, and disinfectant. Schools, libraries, restaurants, venues, malls, practically everything was closed and shut down for almost three whole months while everyone quarantined at home and entertained themselves on… unique documentaries, such as Tiger King, okay mostly Tiger King. However, I, in the last couple semesters of my associates degree at Forsyth Technical Community College, continued going to work every day (socially distanced of course). Truliant Federal Credit Union (where I have been employed in the Member Contact Center since July of 2018) sent anyone who could work remotely, home. Those of us on the phones stayed in the office or were across the building. Now I have to admit that when the pandemic begun, I, much like everyone else, was quite anxious about the next couple months, and was especially careful to avoid falling ill. The idea that all meetings and classes were being moved online was quite stressful to regular students, however, this switch to an online school format was routine for me. I had been taking exclusively online classes at Forsyth for the past 6 months and adjusted rather quickly. Suddenly, I found time to study and work on projects where I had not before. Having meetings and doctors’ appointments digitally, only benefitted me more, since I did not have to drive all over Winston Salem and could be home at a decent time so I could study. I did this and even connected with old friends and extended family thanks to the increased use of platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype.

So maybe the pandemic had not changed everything quite as dramatically as I thought it would…

Other than increased feelings of worry and anxiety, I was doing well in these first early months of the pandemic, I was in my final semester at Forsyth Tech when one day in June of 2020, I felt warm and noticed that my cheeks were very red, I had also noticed that all of a sudden, I had lost my sense of smell and taste. On June 19th I had been officially diagnosed with COVID-19 and took a 10-day quarantine per CDC guidelines. After the first initial days of general illness, I took up working on final projects during my quarantine and eventually graduated from Forsyth Technical Community College in July of 2020. I continued working full time and by this time had been accepted as a transfer student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Communication Studies. Some areas of life had begun to reopen and life was slowly gaining some degree of normalcy again. Classes for the most part still remained online, I had gotten into a routine that worked well for me, I got up and went to work in the mornings, worked all day long until 5:45 pm, got home at 6:00 pm, had dinners, worked out a bit and got started on class at 7:30 pm to about 10:30pm and then went to bed. I would even have some time to work on some school work during lunches and breaks at work, so I was feeling quite confident in my abilities of juggling UNC Greensboro’s classes and work just as I had been before, so confident in fact that I had decided that I would declare not one, but two minors in addition to my Communication Studies major, I was now going to be seeing Psychology and Spanish in the Spring. Since there was still only speculation of when a COVID vaccine would be approved for human use, I thought I had plenty of time before having to worry about face-to-face classes.

Well, I was wrong…

In December of 2020, finishing the fall (and my first) semester, the United Kingdom announced that it had approved Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use, and the vaccines would soon be distributed for the elderly and health care workers across the U.K. Soon enough the U.S would follow suit and approve the Pfitzer and Moderna vaccines. Okay, I thought, surely it will take a long time before I or anyone close in age could be vaccinated, right? I was wrong again. Just yesterday I got an email from UNCG stating that residents on campus could get vaccinated starting on March 24th, and while that is amazing news and I am more than excited at the idea of normal life and travel, this also means that my classes will be moving to a face-to-face format again. This announcement lined up quite well with the release of the Fall 2021 schedule for classes and for the first time in a year, I was met with a conflicting schedule. Most of the classes that I need to take are all on campus, in Greensboro, during the day, and I work in Winston-Salem, from 8:45 am to 5:45 pm. So, what now? Well, any logical person would say, just change your schedule at work! And while I am fortunate enough that Truliant has been incredibly supportive and willing to work with my schedule in the past, I only have so much wiggle room I could possibly ask for. 3 out of the 4 classes I will be taking have meeting times, and 2 of them are on campus, both more than an hour long and 30 minutes both ways from work, so now I am in a position where I am just not quite sure what to do. Being so close to the finish line (rising senior) but also being content with my job to the point where I see myself staying with the company for many, many years. There is always the option to work part-time for Truliant (which is actually how I started with them) but there is of course no guarantee that there will be a full-time position available as soon as I am done with school. In conclusion, I am ready for normal life to return, however, it would be beneficial to some of us, if universities and colleges, kept the online option for classes.

Resources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55280671

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen

Saw this on Reddit. It made me sad and angry. What if, ya know?

Disturbing scenario... only dare to read it if you are open to The Reality. Not a debate, not written by me. Take care. Thank you Jenny Mynhardt

"Nobody forces you to believe this. Do your own research. Freedom of thought. Criticism is welcome but I won't entertain it. Take it or leave it......

Event 201 = Gates

ID2020 = Gates

Coronavirus patent = Gates

Covid vaccine = Gates

WHO/NIAID/CDC/UN funding = Gates Fauci/Birx/Tedros funding = Gates

New Economy based on Human Activity (060606) = Gates

Hypothesize a simulated global outbreak, required steps, various phases, overall timeline and expected outcomes (Rockefeller - Lock Step, 2010).

-Create a very contagious but super low mortality rate virus to fit the needed plan (SARS/HIV hybrid research strain created at Fort Detrick class 4 lab from 2008-2013 as part of a research project to find out why coronavirus's spread like wildfire in bats but have an extremely hard time infecting humans (hence the 4 HIV inserts, aka the missing key to infect the human ACE-2 receptor)

-Create a weaponized version of the virus with a much higher mortality rate as a "BACKUP plan" ready to be released in phase 3 BUT ONLY IF NEEDED (SARS/HIV/MERS weaponized tribrid strain created at Fort Detrick class 4 lab in 2015)

-Transport the research strain to a different class 4 lab (National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg Canada) and have it stolen and smuggled out by China (Shi Zhengli) on purpose and taken to China's only class 4 lab (Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan China) for added plausible deniability and to help cement the wanted BACKUP public script as something to fall back on IF needed (primary script being its natural, backup script being that China created it and released it by accident)

-Fund all the talking heads (Fauci/Birx/Tedros...) and agencies (WHO/NIAID/CDC/UN...) that would be involved with pandemic response prior to the planned release of the research strain to control the wanted script throughout the operation.

-Create and fund the vaccination development and roll-out plan so its capable of being rolled out on a global scale (Gates - Decade of Vaccines: Global Vaccine Action Plan, 2010-2020)

-Create and fund the vaccination verification/certification protocols (Digital ID) to enforce/confirm the vaccination program after the mandatory roll-out is enacted (Gates - ID2020)

-Simulate the Lock Step hypothesis just prior to the planned research strain release using a real-world exercise as a final wargame to determine expected response/timelines/outcomes (Gates - Event 201, Oct 2019)

-Release the research strain at the Wuhan Institute of Virology itself and then blame it's released on a natural scapegoat as the wanted primary script (the Wuhan wet market, Nov 2019)

-Downplay the human-to-human transmission for as long as possible to allow the research strain to spread on a global scale before any country can lockdown/respond to avoid initial infection

-Once a country has seed infection in place, lockdown incoming/outgoing travel but keep the transmission within the country spreading for as long as possible

-Once enough people in a country/region are infected, enact forced quarantines/isolation for that area and expand the lockdown regions slowly over time.

-Over-hype the mortality rate by tying the research strain to deaths that have little to nothing to do with the actual virus to keep the fear and compliance at a maximum (if anyone dies for ANY reason and is found they have COVID consider it a COVID death & if anyone is thought to of MAYBE had symptoms of COVID to assume they have COVID and consider it a COVID death).

-Keep the public quarantined for as long as possible to destroy the regions economy, create civil unrest, breakdown the supply chain, and cause the start of mass food shortages, as well as cause peoples immune system to weaken due to lack of interaction with other people/bacteria (the outside world... aka the things that keeps our immune system alert and active).

-Downplay and attack any potential "treatments" and continue to echo that only a "cure" is viable to fight this virus (aka a vaccine)

-Continue to drag out the quarantine over and over and over again (in 2 week intervals) causing more and more people to eventually stand up and protest/defy them.

-Eventually end the phase 1 quarantine once they get enough public push-back (~June 2020), and publicly state that they still think it's "too early" to end the isolation but are going to do it anyways.

-Once the public go "back to normal" wait a few weeks and then continue to over-hype the research strain mortality rate (~Aug-Sept 2020), and combine it with the increase in deaths due to people dying from standard illnesses at a higher rate then normal due to having highly weakened immune systems from months of being in isolation, to help further "pad" the mortality rate and hype the upcoming phase 2 lockdown.

-Eventually enact phase 2 quarantines (~Oct-Nov 2020) on a even more extreme level and blame the protesters (mostly people who don't trust their government already) for the cause of the "larger" 2nd wave (we told you so, it was too early, this is all your fault cause you needed a hair cut, your freedoms have consequences...).

-Enforce the phase 2 quarantines at a much more extreme level, increasing the penalty for defiance (replace fines with jail time), deem ALL travel as non-essential, increase checkpoints (including military assistance), increase tracking/tracing of the population (mandatory apps), take over control of food/gas (large scale shortages) so that people can only get access to essential products/services if they are FIRST given permission.

-Keep the phase 2 lockdown in place for a much longer period of time then the phase 1 lockdown, continuing to destroy the global economy, further degrade the supply chain, and further amplify the food shortages, and alike.

-Quell any public outrage using extreme actions/force and make anyone who defy's them appear as public enemy #1 to those who are willing to submit. -After a rather long phase 2 lockdown (6+ months), roll-out the vaccination program + vaccine certification and make it mandatory for everyone (giving priority access to those that submitted from the start), and have those that are for it attack those that are against it saying they are a threat and the cause of all the problems (we can't go back to normal until EVERYONE takes the vaccine... people defying them are hurting our way of life and therefore are the enemy).

-If the majority of people go along with the agenda then let those people enter the new system (new normal) while limiting the minority that defy the agenda's ability to work/travel/live.

-If the majority of people go against the agenda then release the weaponized SARS/HIV/MERS tribrid strain as phase 3, a virus with a 30%+ mortality rate as a final scare to push the minority to quickly become the majority and give a final "we told you so" to those that didn't listen.

-Enact the new economy model (Microsoft patent 060606 - Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data) which is based on human behavior and willingness to submit (tweaked version of Black Mirror's "Fifteen Million Merits") using food/water/shelter and other essentials as a weapon of enforcement of the new economic system. Basically do what we want and get rewarded (gain credits/score and gain more access to things you need to survive) or go against what we want and get penalized (lose credits/score and lose access to things you need to survive).

...Welcome to the New World Order.. And I would like to add that if anyone thinks that this isn't true then check out parts of China, they already have the cryptocurrency system in place in certain areas.."

A natural disaster … in all 50 states’ is unfolding just as travelers disperse nationwide after Thanksgiving

As millions of Americans head home after Thanksgiving, the coronavirus could be hitching a ride — threatening to plant seeds of infection across the country as the US on Sunday topped more than 100,000 new cases for the 27th consecutive day.

So far Sunday, the United States has reported 109,671 new cases and 731 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

A surge of new travel-related infections could overwhelm hospitals already stretched to capacity. Hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients reached a record high of 93,238 on Sunday, trumping Saturday’s record-breaking 91,635 figure, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12882

It is the third time there have been over 90,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 — the first being Thursday with 90,481 before a drop to 89,834 Friday that could be attributed to inconsistencies in reporting over Thanksgiving.

“There’s no way that the hospitals can be fully prepared for what we’re currently facing,” emergency medicine physician Dr. Megan Ranney said.

“This is like a natural disaster occurring in all 50 states at the same time. There are not adequate beds. There are not adequate staff. And because of the lack of national preparation, there are still not adequate supplies,” said Ranney, a CNN medical analyst and director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health at Brown University.

“Here in Rhode Island, we are currently planning to open our field hospital on Tuesday because our hospitals are so full of sick Covid-19 patients. But not every state has that option,” she said.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12886

“And even if you open a field hospital, if you have hundreds of staff who are sick — which is what many states across the country are currently facing — if you don’t have nurses and doctors and respiratory techs, even a field hospital isn’t going to save you. Our health care system is literally at the breaking point right now, thanks to Covid-19.”

New cases now mean new hospitalizations by Christmas

Sunday is expected to be the busiest air travel day of the entire pandemic even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans not travel for Thanksgiving.

Roughly 6 million travelers passed through security at US airports after the CDC’s travel warning in the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

But it will be weeks before anyone knows how much of a role Thanksgiving gatherings and travel play in new hospitalizations and deaths.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12893

“When you look at people who are hospitalized today, they were infected two weeks ago, maybe more,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University. “And then it takes usually another week for folks to succumb to the illness.”

So infections picked up on Thanksgiving “are going to show up in three weeks and are going to show up in deaths over Christmas and New Year’s and are going to spread in every state,” Ranney said.

Statistics reported in the days after the holiday might show a relative dip in Covid-19 cases, followed by a surge due to a lag in government agencies’ reporting over the long weekend.

And given coronavirus’ lengthy incubation time and how long it takes an infected person to test positive, cases related to Thanksgiving are unlikely to show in public data until the first full week of December at the earliest.

Even before then, Covid-19 is killing Americans at a staggering rate. At least 1,189 new deaths were reported on Saturday alone, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12894

More than 266,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began.

Birx: ‘If you’re young and you gathered,’ get tested

Health experts say anyone who gathered with people outside their household should take serious precautions in the coming days, especially young people who might be carrying and spreading coronavirus without any symptoms.

“If you’re young and you gathered, you need to be tested about five to 10 days later,” said Dr. Deborah Birx on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “You need to assume that you’re infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask.”

Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, recommended those over age 65 get tested immediately if they develop any symptoms.

“If you’re over 65 or you have comorbidities and you gathered at Thanksgiving — if you develop any symptoms, you need to be tested immediately,” she said.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12896

ER doctor wants people to follow stay-at-home orders

Many hospitals are on the brink of exceeding capacity, threatening reduced care for everyone — even those without coronavirus. So officials around the country have reinstated or rolled back on restrictions. In Los Angeles County, a three-week stay-at-home order goes into effect on Monday.

What I wish is that people would follow those stay-at-home orders,” said Ranney, the emergency medicine physician in Rhode Island.

“I can’t tell you how many patients I take care of who tell me, ‘Well, I just went to an indoor restaurant.’ Or, ‘I just went to a party with a few friends. I didn’t actually think I was going to catch Covid.’ So those stay-at-home orders are critical.”

The Los Angeles County stay-at-home order prohibits all public and private gatherings with people outside a single household.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12897

“Residents are advised to stay home as much as possible and always wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when they are outside their household and around others,” the county’s public health department said.

The order is in effect through December 20. It does not apply to “faith based services and protests, which are constitutionally protected rights,” the health department said.

Essential retail businesses will be limited to 35% occupancy, while the occupancy limit for nonessential retail operations, personal care services and libraries will be 20%, the county said.

“Even if you’re not feeling sick, the simple act of gathering with people outside your household puts everyone at risk,” county health director Barbara Ferrer said.

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12899

Ranney said it’s possible some schools and workplaces can operate safely if precautions are met.

“I think it’s really important that you keep safe workplaces and safe schools open,” she said. “We know that in those structured settings, where people are masked, keeping a distance, having adequate ventilation, the spread of the virus is pretty low in those settings,” she said.

“I am hopeful that that type of order will be effective. And we’ve seen in France that it works,” Ranney said. “I sure hope it will be (effective) in L.A., and I hope the rest of the country can follow suit. Because we need to do something, or — again — this virus is just going to just continue to grow out of control.”

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12901

California set a new pandemic record on Sunday with 7,415 Covid patients in its hospitals, according to data provided by the California Department of Health.

That eclipses the previous California hospitalization record of 7,170 people on July 21.

The Transparent Face Mask has Just Arrived to your city: Comfortable, elegant, communication MUCH easier and it makes you smile!

This unique transparent mask has taken the world by storm! It puts a smile back on your face, is stylish and breathable, yet comfortable and highly protective! Recommended by 98% of buyers with a rating of ⭐⭐⭐⭐, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular…

Who else hates wearing a mask?

The problem is that surgical masks, made of paper and fabric, hide a large part of your face. They make everyday tasks more difficult and it becomes impossible to speak in public, right?

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12904

Old masks become hot and stuffy too. Not only they do damage your makeup and are unhygienic, but they also make breathing uncomfortable and difficult .

And on the other hand, another harmful effect of wearing this kind of mask is how it makes you feel: ignored, isolated, misunderstood, frustrated and even depressed…

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Many people HATE to wear a mask for these same reasons…

But, masks aren’t going to disappear anytime soon, are they ? That’s exactly why a team of professional designers have been working on this issue to find a comfortable and affordable solution to the problems that masks have created…

Today, their innovative new product is finally available for sale right now! It solves all these problems and is already selling like hotcakes, let’s take a look at what has made it a success……

Site: https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/node/12908

What is it called?

Called Cleanshield, it has already seduced tens of thousands of users who have already replaced their suffocating disposable masks for these wonderful transparent masks… And it’s not surprising, Life seems more cheerful with this transparent protective mask…

Site: https://aldeliana.medium.com/a-natural-disaster-in-all-50-states-is-unfolding-just-as-travelers-disperse-nationwide-after-9f122b62f8ab

My opinion doesn’t matter, but who cares?

Let’s be clear: Fuck 2020. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s continue.

It’s so easy to be a nihilist in this day and age, yeah? We’re so dominated by what we find on social media that it’s basically a second nature to discredit everything else we might see or hear no matter how logical or reasonable it may seem. 

Literally, it’s a mindset of “Fuck the facts and your reality, I’ll substitute it with my own.” The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election is literal proof of this as well as what came in the aftermath. 

What makes it all the more painful is how easily we’ve all become divided over the years. How the capability to think and reason was taken from us and substituted with whatever we find on social media. God knows I’ve been guilty of that on occasion as well. 

For example, look online. Right now it’s #Trump2020 vs. #BlackLivesMatter vs. #WearYourMask vs. #SaveTheChildren. A fatal four-way of different ideologies with three of them not realizing they can coexist. Black lives do matter. That’s not a crime movement, it isn’t about subjugating the white male, or anything like that - White people are privileged. If you can’t see that that’s not talking about nice homes and swank digs, then you must educate yourself. 

Wearing your mask isn’t about Liberal mind control or some dumb shit. We’re in the middle of a fucking pandemic, and I’m sorry, but if wearing a mask so I don’t get sick makes me a scared little bitch, then so be it. I hate being sick and if I can avoid it, then all the better. 

Then we have talks of pedophilia rings among the world’s upper echelon as human trafficking is a very real, very fucked up problem we have in this day and age. It’s a noble thing to take note of, no doubts about that. But there’s always that handful of people who say, “The government is distracting you with a pandemic while the real problem is the pedo rings among the rich and powerful.

Child sex trafficking is a fucking scary problem in the world. End quote. Nothing will change that. But when it comes to the pandemic, over 180,000 dead in America. The stats, as far as we’re concerned, don’t lie. I usually let guys smarter than me handle the numbers - not Facebook. Therefore I’m inclined to believe the CDC before I believe random assholes on social media or an inept Orange Julius Caesar who endorses demon semen and injecting bleach. 

So yes, raise awareness for the victims of trafficking, do your part, and don’t fucking let up. But also, wear your mask regardless of whether you believe it’s real or not - I kind of hate getting sick. At the same time, stand up and be an ally for our black neighbors, because they need it now more than ever. Their lives matter. 

Of course, all lives do matter. That’s a given. But a lot of white people really don’t act like it when they move to discredit black men and women and their plights. So how can you say all lives matter when you don’t do shit for your black neighbors? Thus, when it comes down to it, “All Lives Matter” is just some inept bullshit. Until black lives actually matter, then “All Lives Matter” is just vacant lip service. 

Go on, prove me wrong. 

It’s the same with other bullshit such as the “Antifa is terrorism!” talk. As far as I’m concern, any group who is against fascism gets a pass from me. The real America that my ancestors fought and died for wouldn’t stand for such foolish cock-knockery. 

And Blue Lives Matter? Look - I believe that good cops should be lumped in with the bad cops. I don’t subscribe to the #ACAB schtick. I don’t. But with the laziness and conduct that an overwhelmingly large amount of cops have conducted themselves by, it’s hard to fathom why anybody would stand up for that. So many people have been slaughtered by police ineptitude, crippled by their indifference, that I cannot in good conscience endorse them and feed into that behavior. 

For that matter I’d explain why #DefundThePolice would work by way of allocating the funds to other aspects of community services and help while retaining the good police officers, but there’s an overwhelming amount of people out there who think that defund and disband are the same thing. 

They aren’t.

But what I say doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fit with the stupid fucking narrative. So yeah, I can’t help but be a nihilist. We suck and we will be the end of us. We aren’t great. And the cult around Trump will ensure that nothing will fucking get done about it. 

Fuck this.

Miss Manners on: Wearing a Mask

Q: The science on wearing masks seems inconclusive, leading to near-religious zealotry on both sides. In public, there is no way to avoid taking a side. Governors, mayors, news anchors and doctors appear on TV hectoring the public to wear masks, while not wearing them themselves. I can see why people dismiss such guidance and feel the need to take the matter into their own hands. Individuals who would ordinarily mind their own business now feel empowered to demand others accommodate their views. What is a person to do when confronted in public by busybodies who disagree with their choice?

Miss Manners says: It was to avoid such problems that quarantines used to be (and still have been) given the force of law. When they come in the form of guidance, the best defense for an individual is still citing authority, as in, “I’m doing it because the CDC says it will protect your health.” Miss Manners cautions against trying to reason with those who prefer the medical advice of politicians and news anchors to that of doctors. The only conflict remaining, then, is with those who are against social distancing -- so removing oneself from their vicinity serves a double purpose.

Your Head Bitch says: No, sorry, but in fact the science on masks is NOT inconclusive, and I’m not going to be disingenuous and agree with you that it is to protect anyone’s feelings because people’s actual lives are on the line. The US government didn’t do anyone any fucking favors early on by hedging on the mask issue at the beginning (although, to be fair, it definitely wasn’t their only mistake), and now, like so many other things in America that are actually facts, people act like this is something it’s okay for everyone to have an “opinion” on, like it’s a CBS prime time sitcom, and not, you know, fucking SCIENCE. In fact, study after study has shown that masks are a significant weapon against the coronavirus with no downsides aside from being a little hot and uncomfortable sometimes -  one study showed that they are even significantly better at controlling coronavirus than they are influenza or more common rhinoviruses. One of the biggest arguments for masks is that they protect others rather than you -- in fact, newer studies suggest they actually do BOTH. Because people can spread the virus before developing symptoms, and indeed without showing symptoms at all, masks are the single most important weapon we have for protecting ALL of us. We have seen evidence of this firsthand during this pandemic -- when two hairstylists in Springfield, MO tested positive for covid, because they were wearing masks they gave it to NONE of the 140 clients they saw during the time in which they were contagious. Wearing a mask can reduce your risk of catching the virus by 65% and your risk of giving it to someone else by more than that. If even 80% of the population would wear masks, covid rates would plummet, so forgive me, but there is no question here. The only polite choice, and to be perfectly frank, the only MORAL choice is to wear a mask. I’m not under any illusions that these facts will change the minds of people who believe the word of a TV host over a medical professional, but for everyone else, please do us all a favor and wear a mask. And stop perpetrating the lie that the science is inconclusive. It is not. Avoid anyone who isn’t wearing a mask or tells you you should not wear one like the plague (LITERALLY) and please, spread the actual truth to anyone you can. We are not going to get out of this by ignoring it, or by acting confident. The way out is to listen to the professionals, act responsibly, and be a good fucking citizen at every opportunity. As has long been the motto of this website, DON’T BE A DICK. This is not the way anyone wanted to spend this year, but we can make it better by doing everything we can to reduce the spread until there is a vaccine or we can continue to let tens of thousands of people die. I know which side I’m on, and I know my conscience is clear. Please take this seriously, and please WEAR A MASK. Period.

And no, it doesn’t effect your oxygen levels you dumb motherfuckers, shut up with that nonsense.

Should Unvaccinated People Be Put on No-Fly List?

In June 2021, the U.S. National Security Council released a new “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” document.1 While it’s being largely framed as a tool to fight White supremacy and political extremism, the definition of what constitutes a “domestic terrorist” is incredibly vague and based on ideologies rather than specific behaviors.

It’s not difficult to imagine this policy being used to silence political opposition simply by labeling anyone who disagrees with the government as a domestic terrorist and charging them with a hate crime.

We’re already seeing signs suggesting that this is the path we’re on. July 28, 2021, Dr. Peter Hotez published a paper2 in PLOS Biology titled “Mounting Antiscience Aggression in the United States,” in which he suggests criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists ought to be labeled a “hate crime.” Commenting on the paper, Paul Joseph Watson at Summit News writes:3

“This is yet another transparent effort to dehumanize anti-lockdown protesters and demonize people who merely want to exercise bodily autonomy while elevating Fauci and his ilk to Pope-like status. Science isn’t supposed to be a religious dogma that is set in stone, it’s an ever-evolving knowledge base that changes and improves thanks to dissent and skepticism.”

Science Depends on Questioning and Challenging Assumptions

Attorney Jonathan Turley also responded to Hotez’s paper in an August 4, 2021, blog post, saying:4

“’Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.’ Feynman’s statement captures how science depends upon constant questioning and challenging of assumptions …

[T]here remain important debates over not just the underlying science relation to Covid-19 but the implications for such science for public policies. Criminalizing aspects of that debate would ratchet up the threats against those with dissenting views, including some scientists. That would harm not just free speech but science in the long run.”

Should We Have Protected Classes That Cannot Be Questioned?

Turley also points out how making scientists a protected class (and one would assume only those with specific political leanings) is a slippery slope that will likely have unwieldy ramifications:5

“The federal hate crime laws focus on basis of a person’s characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We have seen calls for adding professions like police officers, which I also opposed.

As with police officers, the inclusion of such professions would have a direct and inimical impact on free speech in our society. Indeed, it would create a slippery slope as other professions demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians. Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.”

Will America Accept No-Fly List for Unvaccinated?

Writing for The Atlantic,6 former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem posits that people who do not want to be part of the COVID injection experiment “need to bear the burden” when it comes to preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

“The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available,” Kayyem writes.7 “Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone.

But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.

The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate … but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.

It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel — and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.”

Travel Ban Identified as Effective Coercion Strategy

According to Kayyem, traveling in general and flying in particular is not a human right, and putting unvaccinated individuals on a no-fly list is a matter of national security, in the sense that the country needs to protect itself from people capable of spreading this dangerous virus.

She makes no mention of the scientifically confirmed fact that none of the COVID shots actually prevent you from getting infected, and that “vaccinated” individuals carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated,8,9 which means they’re just as infectious. The main difference is that vaccinated individuals might not realize that they’re carriers, as the primary effect when the injections do work is lessening symptoms of infection.

Kayyem also cites a New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll in which 41% of unvaccinated respondents had said prohibition on airline travel would sway their decision, including 11% of those “adamantly opposed” to vaccination. In other words, where free doughnuts and million-dollar lotteries have failed to coerce people to get the shot, an airline travel ban might do the trick.

Despite her former position within government, she makes no mention of laws forbidding coercion of medical volunteers, such as the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A, the Belmont report),10 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty,11 the Declaration of Helsinki12 or the Nuremberg Code.13 Supreme court rulings have also clarified that Americans have the right to choose their own health care in general.14,15

Reframing to Confuse the Issue

Kayyem suggests circumventing such basic human rights by reframing the issue. She writes:16

“The public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that … suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily.

What is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people ... rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone.

Americans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits. Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart … People who still want to wait and see about the vaccines can continue doing so. They just can’t keep pushing all the costs on everyone else.”

As pointed out by Swift Headline,17 the owner of Atlantic magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns two private jets herself, giving her the freedom to fly around the world at will, regardless what vaccine mandates might be in place. Many other ultra-rich individuals would also be able to ignore the rules due to wealth alone, essentially turning them into a protected class. Swift Headline points out this projection:18

“The Atlantic went on to say unvaccinated people who are exercising their individual rights as free Americans ‘do not deserve’ to be a ‘protected class’ …

Jobs’s wealth and class status is detailed in Breitbart News’ Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow’s book, ‘Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruptions,’ which ‘exposes the hidden connections between the establishment media and the activist left.’

As Marlow details, Jobs’s past is a privileged one ... Jobs ‘married well and inherited a lot of money, and her wealth is tied up in some of world’s biggest companies,’ Marlow continues. ‘She is the establishment.’”

The Price of Admission to Society

August 2, 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle also published an opinion piece19 by the Chronicle editorial board, in which they suggested we ought to “Make vaccination the price of admission to society.” One way to evaluate the reasonableness of such a proposition is to replace COVID “vaccination” with anything else. How about: “Make proof of contraception use the price of admission to bars and nightclubs.”

“Make clear skin the price of admission to gyms and public swimming pools.” “Make being taller than 5’ 9” the price of admission to theme parks.” “Make having a BMI below 25 the price of admission to airline flights.” “Make proof of not having an illness the price of admission to in-hospital care.”

According to the Chronicle editorial board, “the unvaccinated account for over 95% of hospitalizations and deaths.”20 The board does not cite where it got that data from, so let’s review the source of that data.

In an August 5, 2021, video statement, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted that this statistic was obtained by looking at hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021 — a timeframe during which the vast majority of the United States population were unvaccinated.

The narrative that we’re in a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.

January 1, 2021, only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots,21 and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully “vaccinated.”22

The CDC has also pointed out that you are not considered “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot.23 This means that if you receive your first dose on June 1, you won’t be “fully vaccinated” until eight weeks later, around August 1.

So, the narrative that we’re in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.

Vaccinated Now Comprise the Bulk of Hospitalizations

For example, August 1, 2021, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of Israel’s Public Health Services, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.24

A few days later, August 5, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients are fully vaccinated, and that they make up 85% to 90% of COVID related hospitalizations overall.25

In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July were vaccinated,26 and in Gibraltar, which has a 99% COVID jab compliance rate, COVID cases have risen by 2,500% since June 1, 2021.27

A CDC investigation of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts between July 6 through July 25, 2021, found 74% of those who received a diagnosis of COVID19, and 80% of hospitalizations, were among the fully vaccinated.28,29 Most, but not all, had the Delta variant.

“What the breakthrough cases appear to show is that the delta variant of the coronavirus is more easily carried and transmitted by vaccinated people than its predecessors,” the Chronicle editorial board writes.30

“In any case, the greater apparent transmissibility of the variant makes it that much more important to protect as many people as possible from severe COVID by increasing inoculation rates.”

What the board appears to be saying is that unvaccinated people must be protected against severe infection, against their will, if need be, and the best way to do that is to discriminate against them and treat them like second-class citizens.

Again, a simple way to check the reasonableness of this argument is to swap out the COVID reference for something else. How about, “It’s important to protect as many people as possible from dying in car accidents by raising car prices so fewer people can get behind the wheel.”

Can ‘Big Brother’ Save You From a Virus?

As early as April 2020, The Times in the U.K. weighed in with similar suggestions, stating “We need Big Brother to beat this virus.”31 Clare Foges, the author of the piece in question, went on to say, “Don’t let the civil liberties lobby blind us to the fact that greater state surveillance, including ID cards, is required.”

The argument that Big Brother can protect us from infection is ludicrous on its face, because no amount of people surveillance can prevent microscopic viruses from circulating.

The No. 1 place of viral spread is in institutions, such as nursing homes and hospitals, yet the staff within them are among the most well-trained in pathogenic control. If trained hospital staff can’t prevent the spread of viruses, how can government officials do it?

Importantly, the argument that we need vaccine passports to prove we’re “clean” enough to participate in society immediately falls apart when you take into account the fact that the COVID shots do not provide immunity. You can still be infected, carry the virus and spread it to others.

We’ve already seen several examples of situations where 100% of people were fully “vaccinated” against COVID-19 yet an outbreak occurred. We’ve even seen over 100 fully COVID injected people die from COVID in one state alone, Massachusetts,32 so it is likely there are now many thousands of fully “vaccinated” who have died from COVID.

Even a 100% Vaccination Rate Cannot Eliminate COVID

Most recently, Carnival cruise lines experienced an outbreak despite every last person on that ship having proof of COVID “vaccination.”33 The cruise liner had even intentionally reduced capacity from 4,000 to 2,800 to provide ample social distancing capability. None of the measures worked. People got sick anyway, which makes perfect sense if you remember that the shot doesn’t provide immunity, only symptom reduction.

Cases such as these clearly reveal that even if everyone gets the shot, SARS-CoV-2 will mutate and continue to circulate, taking people out here and there. To think that giving up basic rights and freedoms is the answer simply isn’t logical. Taking responsibility for your own health is, and that includes deciding if and how you want to protect yourself from SARS-CoV-2.

Not everyone is deathly afraid of COVID-19. Many realize there are safe and effective treatments available, such as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s I-MASS Prevention and At-Home Treatment protocol and I-MASK+ Early Outpatient Treatment protocol.

Nebulized hydrogen peroxide can also be used for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper34 and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” And if there’s effective treatment, there’s little need to risk permanent side effects from an experimental gene technology that can only provide a narrow range of protection in the first place.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola  August 17, 2021

If Swine Flu Happens During COVID-19, Are We Screwed?

It feels like 2020 can't get any worse, but it always does. Genetic testing of pigs in China from 2011 to 2018 leads us to consider a truly dire possibility: What if we weren't just dealing with one historic and deadly pandemic, but two? Could it even happen?

There’s an outbreak of H1N1, or the “swine flu", running through China’s pig farms right now. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recent genetic testing of pigs in Chinese farms show genes “similar to [swine flu ‘09] virus,” and has “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus.”

So, how worried should one be about a second pandemic-within-a-pandemic?

As it so happens, the flu is more infectious than even COVID-19, but the world is also better prepared to battle it. It’s been doing so for more than 100 years, after the 1918 pandemic ravaged a world that hadn't yet discovered flu viruses. And the world, if not the U.S., is already at heightened alert for infectious disease. It’d be hard, but not impossible, for two pandemics to run through the world’s population at the same time.

Early warning signals are working

Despite what you may have heard, COVID-19 is not the flu. And the fact that we even know about the possibility of a swine flu outbreak is because experts know all about influenza and take it incredibly seriously. That we are discussing a possible pathogen as it is being reported in academic journals is a good sign. In many ways, health experts are playing catch-up when it comes to Covid-19.

“So what we're seeing a little bit is what public health is constantly doing,” Theresa MacPhail,a medical anthropologist andAssistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, told Motherboard over the phone. MacPhail was in Hong Kong in 2009 during a previous outbreak of H1N1 and worked with the CDC to contain it.

The World Health Organization runs the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. (GISRS) Established in 1952, GISRS constantly monitors influenza hotspots and coordinates with healthcare providers and world governments to keep things in check.

“In China, [government officials] regularly sample birds on duck and chicken farms and pigs on pig farms and all the workers who work there for this reason: to see what strains are in circulation to see if there are any potential problems," MacPhail said. "So that's what you're seeing is this particular strain has been in circulation for a while.”

According to MacPhail, there’s good cause to worry, but not to panic, yet. China’s experts sounding the alarm this early is a sign that the system is working as intended. She also said these kinds of alerts and alarms happen all the time. “Most of the time that stuff is ignored by the public,” she said. “You don't know that this is normal.”

Katherine Mason, a medical anthropologist and an assistant professor at Brown University, said that the world is prepared for the flu in a way it wasn’t for the coronavirus. “Everyone always thought the next pandemic was going to be an influenza pandemic,” she told VICE on the phone. “Every year you get news of some new strain of flu … [scientists] have spent a lot of time and resources trying to be able to anticipate the flu, which is partly why Covid-19 caught people off guard.”

Nidia Trovao, a virologist at the National Institute of Health, said she’s watching the new H1N1 strain but isn’t particularly worried about it. “I think the probability of having two pandemics simultaneously is really really low,” she told VICE over the phone. She said that the virus has made the jump from human to pig, but only in the workers in close proximity to the swine. It has yet to move from human to human. “The big evolutionary hurdle is for the virus to gain the capacity for human to human transmission.”

Flu is watched so closely because, in the past, it’s been devastating. The 1918 flu pandemic was a predecessor of H1N1. While it’s often called “the Spanish Flu,” epidemiologists traced its origins to pig farms in Kansas, where it spread through U.S. Army bases and into the wider world. Epidemiologist and historians estimate that the flu killed more than 50 million people worldwide. It was devastating, but scientists learned a lot about how to fight a global influenza pandemic.

The concept of social distancing and wearing masks to prevent the spread of infection were lessons learned during the 1918 pandemic. One of the reasons that the flu spread so fast was because of the close quarters assigned to troops in the U.S. military. Much of the world’s modern health system and America’s modern mliitary’s sanitation practices are direct results of what we learned during the 1918 pandemic.

“This is actually a system that's working that's been in place for a long time,” MacPhail said. “And scientists are relatively on top of it.”

Health measures are already in place

According to MacPhail, the world is better positioned to deal with a flu outbreak than any other infectious disease, even Covid-19. “In some ways, this is the best possible time that's ever been for a new dangerous flu, and this one isn't even that dangerous. It looks like the cases in people are pretty mild,” she said.

She acknowledged that the flu mutates all the time. What seems mild one day may yet turn deadly. But the world is already at least familiar with the measures it needs to take to avoid mass infection. They look a lot like what the world (except much of America) is already doing: masks, shutdowns, social distancing.

“But, say we do have something terrible,” MacPhail said. “We’re already wearing masks…we’re more prepared than we’ve ever been for something like this.”

The GISRS meets twice a year in Geneva to create the seasonal flu vaccines. “This works by having more than 100 laboratires around the world that get samples from these patients with influenza-like illness, then they test for flu using different methods,” Trovao said. “The good thing here is that countries in the Southern hemisphere are currently facing their flu season so we can learn a lot from their experience. We’re seeing lower levels than we usually observe this time of the year. Of more than 2,000 sample tests, only 37 were positive for flu. Those are good results.”

But Trovao those good results should be interpreted with caution. “The pandemic crisis forced us into isolation which will naturally curb transmission,” she said. She also noted that there have been some reports of people getting both the flu and Covid-19 at the same time. “Clinicians should be alert that the positive test for either virus does not rule out the possibility for the other.”

Flu is more transmissible and it evolves more quickly, but the period between contracting the virus and showing symptoms is much lower than Covid-19. We also have vaccines for the flu and systems in place to develop new ones quickly when a new strain appears. According to MacPhail, a new flu vaccine takes roughly 9 months after experts identify a strain. More than 130 separate Covid-19 vaccines are in development currently. The world is spending billions to rush one to market and best estimates say it won’t be available until early next year.

“We were not prepared for Coronavirus in the same way,” MacPhail said. “We weren't really surveying Coronavirus the way that we do flu and we don't have the vaccine technology in place already for something like Coronavirus. So that's what we're seeing right now and why this is so bad.”

H1N1 isn’t the only influenza strain on the watchlist. Experts are constantly tracking outbreaks across the globe. “Every day there’s something,” MacPhail said. “Normal people don’t know that there’s a botulism outbreak in cheese in Ireland right now.”

There’s also an ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cases of bubonic plague in Mongolia, and yellow fever in Ethiopia.

The point is: the world is filled with disease. A new one popping up isn't cause for panic, especially when it's being so closely watched, but it is an opportunity to be vigilant.

But what if it's bad?

These assurances are good reminders of the world’s robust public health system, but they’re cold comfort in the U.S. where COVID-19 infections and deaths rise daily.

In America, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, COVID-19 isn’t just a public health issue, it’s a fiercely political one. State and local officials push back against CDC recommendations, citing economic concerns. Anti-maskers make public scenes that are quickly posted online and go viral. In my own neighborhood message board here in South Carolina, anti-maskers are boasting that they won’t wear a mask under any circumstances. A U.S. passport, once the key to unlocking a world of travel, is now a scarlet letter. So many countries are turning Americans away that it’s easier to list the countries Americans can still travel to than those that block them.

MacPhail initially didn’t think COVID-19 would be that bad, but told VICE after it became a pandemic that she’d been wrong. According to MacPhail, she failed to predict that the U.S. Government would do such a horrible job containing it.

It’s possible, and even likely, that a new round of restrictions based on a new outbreak wouldn’t be enough to convince people to change their opinions on masks and social distancing. They might even double down, at least at first.

Mason said she worries that fighting a second pandemic would be hard, in part, because the flu and COVID-19 have such similar symptoms. “If Covid continues to rage the way it has been here in the states, it’s gonna be very difficult to separate out the appearance of a new flu strain. That’s what I’m worried about.”

Winter is coming, and winter always brings the flu and other respiratory diseases. “I have two kids,” Mason said. “My kids, in the winter, pretty much always have a virus for like four or five months. So it’s going to be hard to differentiate a new one from the one we already have. That’s number one. Number two is the capacity to deal with it which is non existent in the United States at the moment. If the flu started going around, I would be surprised if it made things better rather than worse.”

According to Trovao, the scientific community is already worrying about the flu season. “By itself it already causes high morbidity and mortality,” she said. “I think this is the year where we encourage people even more strongly to get the flu shot, because it lessens the burden on the healthcare system so those beds and capabilities can be directed towards the pandemic.”

“What we are doing to curtail Covid-19, might also curtail the spread of other viruses and reduce transmission of both viruses,” Trovao said. “That’s where we need to focus—keeping people wearing masks and continuing to physically distance and getting the vaccine that we produce every year.”

Anyone can catch COVID-19, but the rates of infection and death are highest among the people at the margins of American society—the elderly and members of racial and ethnic minority groups in particular. This may make it easy for the powerful and privileged to ignore it, and even demand that others risk their lives to provide them with goods and services. A flu with a higher death rate than even Covid-19 (which doctors now believe may cause extensive and life-altering complications even after recovery) would not be so easily mentally sidelined even with the buffers of wealth, power, and even youth.

"I just keep thinking, ‘Thank god [the death rate is] only between one and two percent,’” McPhail said. “But that’s shitty, because that allows us to ignore it for longer. I guarantee you, if a bunch of 20 and 30 year olds were dying right now we would be taking this much more seriously. And if it was killing kids, we’d be on top of this.” (Younger people and children do catch Covid-19 and die, but at rates much lower than older people with underlying conditions.)

“The flu strikes children pretty hard usually,” Mason said. She stressed that every flu strain is different, and affects different groups in different ways. “But if it follows the same pattern as most flu outbreaks, we would be seeing a lot more children dying.”

In particular, Mason pointed to people's reluctance to get flu shots as a reason for its annual death toll. Concerningly, anti-vaccine conspiracies have already begun to circulate regarding a possible Covid-19 vaccine.

“Covid is worse, don’t get me wrong, but the flu is still a big killer every year,” she said. “Part of the reason is people don’t get flu shots even though we have them because they don’t take the flu seriously enough. The flu just spreads like wildfire. If we think Covid spreads easily, if we’re hit with a really serious and deadly flu pandemic it’s going to be even worse.”

According to McPhail, a deadly flu pandemic on top of COVID-19 would be nothing short of a national "reckoning."

“Coronavirus is playing into our worse national traits whereas flu would make us have a reckoning,” MacPhail said. “This is why, traditionally, we’ve been more afraid of the flu. Because it kills indiscriminately across age groups.”

Mason pointed out that even if there’s not a strain of H1N1, seasonal flu on top of the Covid-19 pandemic in the winter, when people get more respiratory diseases, is still concerning.. “[Winter] is going to be really bad. I’m very very concerned about it. If we throw the flu on top of it, even just seasonal flu… nature doesn’t care whether you’ve had enough. It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. It can get a lot worse.”

Which is why, thankfully, the world's health experts and governments do all they can to contain swine flu. The 2009 H1N1 epidemic began in Central Mexico and spread out of control before global health measures, including a vaccine, brought it under control. The newest outbreak is in China, a country taking active measures to contain and control the virus’s spread.

The pandemics of 1918 and 2020 have taught us a valuable lesson, though: the world's virus response is only as strong as its weakest link, and now as in the past, that weak link is the U.S.

If Swine Flu Happens During COVID-19, Are We Screwed? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

Evolution

Image credit: Edel Rodriguez, from Der Spiegel

Donald Trump, World Economic Forum, January 22, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, January 30, 2020: “Working closely with China and others on Coronavirus outbreak. Only 5 people in U.S., all in good recovery.”

Donald Trump, Fox News, February 2, 2020: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. But we can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. We’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, February 24, 2020: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Donald Trump, New Delhi, India, February 25, 2020: “I have spoken to President Xi, and they’re working very hard. And if you know anything about him, I think he’ll be in pretty good shape. They’re — they’ve had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control. So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, February 25, 2020: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world. It was opposed by the Dems, ‘too soon’, but turned out to be the correct decision. No matter how well we do, however, the..... ....Democrats talking point is that we are doing badly. If the virus disappeared tomorrow, they would say we did a really poor, and even incompetent, job. Not fair, but it is what it is. So far, by the way, we have not had one death. Let’s keep it that way!”

Donald Trump, White House Press Conference, February 26, 2020: “I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up. ... We have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job. ... When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Donald Trump, White House Cabinet Room, February 27, 2020: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Donald Trump, White House South Lawn, February 28, 2020: “We haven’t lost anybody yet. And hopefully, we can keep that intact. We — there have been no deaths in the United States at all. A lot of that is attributable to the fact that we closed the border very early. Otherwise, it could be a different story. So we’ll — we’ll just keep doing a good job. We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of — a lot of elements that, frankly, we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical. We are working on cures and we’re getting some very good results. As you know, they’re working as rapidly as they can on a vaccine for the future.”

Donald Trump, White House Cabinet Room, March 2, 2020: “We will confront this challenge together, and we will continue to do exactly what we’re doing. And we’re going to be very successful.  A lot of things are happening.  A lot of very exciting things are happening, and they’re happening very rapidly. ... You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

Donald Trump, Fox News, March 4, 2020: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better. ... I will say, though, the H1N1, that was swine flu, commonly referred to as swine flu. And that went from around April of ‘09 to April of ‘10, where there were 60 million cases of swine flu. And over -- actually, it’s over 13,000. I think you might have said 17,000. I had heard it was 13,000, but a lot of -- a lot of deaths. And they didn’t do anything about it. Interestingly, with the swine flu, children were -- in particular, they were vulnerable, sort of the opposite in that respect. But children were very vulnerable to the swine flu. But they never did close the borders. I don't think they ever did have the travel ban. And we did. And, again, they lost at least 13,000. It could be as high as 17,000 people. And we acted much differently.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, March 5, 2020: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

Donald Trump, CDC, March 6, 2020: “As of the time I left the plane with you, we had 240 cases. That’s at least what was on a very fine network known as Fox News. And you love it. But that’s what I happened to be watching. And how was the show last night? Did it get good ratings, by the way? ... I heard it broke all ratings records, but maybe that’s wrong. That’s what they told me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine that. But what happened is, if you look at the number at the time we left, it was 240 cases, Peter, and 11 deaths. That’s what it has been. Now, you look at — throughout the world, I mean, other countries have — South Korea, Italy, and in particular China have many . ... I think, importantly: Anybody right now and yesterday — anybody that needs a test gets a test. We — they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test. If there’s a doctor that wants to test, if there’s somebody coming off a ship — like the big monster ship that’s out there right now, which, you know — again, that’s a big decision. Do I want to bring all those people on? People would like me to do that. I don’t like the idea of doing it. But anybody that needs a test can have a test. They’re all set. They have them out there. In addition to that, they’re making millions of more as we speak. But as of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test — that’s the important thing — and the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good. ... I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship. That wasn’t our fault, and it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship, either. Okay? It wasn’t their fault either. And they’re mostly Americans, so I can live either way with it. I’d rather have them stay on, personally. ... I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down. We’ve really been very vigilant, and we’ve done a tremendous job at keeping to [sic] down. ... You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, March 8, 2020: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus. We moved VERY early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend. V.P. is doing a great job. The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!”

Donald Trump, Twitter, March 9, 2020: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

Donald Trump, White House Press Briefing, March 9, 2020: “We have a great economy, we have a very strong economy, but this came — this blindsided the world. And I think we’ve handled it very, very well.”

Donald Trump, Twitter, March 13, 2020: “For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further..... .... Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!”

Donald Trump, White House Press Conference, March 13, 2020: “To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort, today I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words. ... No, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a — a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. ... If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people. And they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late. ... [Q: Mr. President, the last administration said that they had tested a million people at this point.] Well, ask them how they did with the swine flu. It was a disaster. Next, please. Next, please. They had a very big failure with swine flu. A very big failure.”

Good afternoon~ I have had a lot of trouble making myself get on here. It’s like once you push it off for a couple of days, you just continue to put it off.  Guess it’s a great example of my extreme procrastination that I deal with. But, aside from being away from the blog for a bit, a lot has still been going on (as always.) We’re currently in a world-wide pandemic with this Corono-virus that’s going around. A lot of people aren’t taking it seriously because CDC first announced that people ages 20 to 44 were pretty safe from getting it. But those people weren’t understanding that they could still carry the virus and give it to those either older or with health issues, like myself. 

A lot of people say “Oh it’s just a flu”, but the issue is not the flu-like symptoms, it is the fact at how fast it is able to spread and mutate. It is mutating strands at a very fast rate, along with affecting hundreds of people at once. So that one person that thinks they’re immune to it or just have the flu, they’re actually personally affecting tons and tons of people, who are in turn affecting more people - and within those people being affected, there’s of course going to be people of all ages, including elderly and people with chronic illnesses or low immune systems. That is why it has become such a big deal and needs to be nipped in the butt before it continues to spread at the rate it’s at. But other than a world-wide quarantine, life has kind of just been going. I’m personally an introvert and spends my days at home watching netflix anyways, so not much has changed for myself.  This past weekend though I did go to Florida to be with my family for the one year of my brother’s passing. I honestly never imagined a life without him and I can’t seem to grasp how an entire year has passed already... It’s just kind of mind blowing how time just passes by as you’re standing still. But all I can do is take it day by day and do the best I can because I’ve learned that not only is there no wrong way to grieve, but that grieving also has no time. “There are some who bring a light so great to the world that even after they have gone, the light remains.” Until next time, Rest Easy

Felicia

I Intro I read a lot. I research. I pay attention to the news. I do a lot of fact checking. I have 10 to 15 news sources and the news I pay attention to is domestic and international. I spend hours fact checking because people lie. I also make mistakes. If you can prove to me, logically, that I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, apologize and write a retraction. Keep all of this in mind as you continue. II History I’m a student of history. My favorite periods are Ancient and Medieval, however, I’ll read about any period. I spent a few years digging into WWII because my Grandfathers served then. For the last few months I’ve been focused on WWI and the Spanish Flu. The H1N1 virus got it’s nickname not because of where it originated. Spain was neutral and wasn’t under media censorship like the countries fighting the war. Anything detracting from the war effort was not allowed so the news you saw then was not impartial. Spain, however, reported on a disease that was killing people. While H1N1 impacted us in 1918 and 1919, there were reports of it back in 1915. Yes, our government knew about it and restricted the information because of the war effort. The H1N1 virus hit America in three waves, the second wave being the worst. A deadlier strain of H1N1 surfaced and was spread by the massive troop movements of the war. It’s been said that the dropping of the quarantine restrictions are what caused the second wave and that’s incorrect. While it was a small factor, the troop movements are what spread the new strain. The cramped conditions and the malnutrition among the soldiers hastened the spread. It’s estimated that 500 million people died from H1N1. While that doesn’t sound devastating today, in 1918 that was about one third of the world population. The transmission vectors for H1N1 and Covid-19 are similar and a century of time doesn’t tend to change that. While we lack the troop movements and the conditions of WWII, we more than make up for that with our transportation technology. If that technology had been present in 1918, the death toll would have been much higher. We’ve been extremely lucky so far, yet stupidity is attempting to alter that. III Rampant Stupidity Why do we refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past? We have people protesting, with loaded guns, because they want a hair cut. Instead of throwing these morons in jail, they are allowed to continue in their stupidity. I have a few questions for these paragons of questionable intelligence. Where did you get your medical degrees? What? You don’t have medical degrees? OK. Then your Google Fu must be strong. What? You didn’t use Google? Where are you getting your information then? Ahh, I see. It all becomes clear to me now. This is not about politics and it never has been. These shining examples of American arrogance are simply angry because they’re being told what to do. They think they know more than the experts and they rage against any kind of restriction. Instead of doing what they need to do to protect their families and themselves, they prove their stupidity by endangering everyone around them. If people are still wondering why I view humanity as a failed experiment, this is a perfect example. IV The CDC I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. They have advanced degrees that qualify them to advise us on disease, contrary to what some might choose to believe. Science is fact. Disbelief of science does not invalidate it. In the middle of a pandemic, these are the people I'm going to listen to. Our politicians have no more training in this than I do and out President is less than worthless. To the idiots protesting: No. Your Google Fu is not strong. You're not a scientist or a doctor of anything. If you won't protect others by doing what you're told then stay away from me an mine. I'm 54 years old with a stressed immune system. I follow what's been laid down because I refuse to put you at risk. I could be asymptomatic, meaning I could have the virus and have no symptoms. Having no symptoms does not entitle me to disregard the advice of the experts. Your Pastor or Priest is no more an expert than you are. Some churches ignored the restrictions and what happened to them? Many got sick and others died that may not have if they had done what they were told. V Trumpus Defectus To be clear, our president is neither insane or damaged. He simply doesn't care about you. As long as you vote for him, you could die immediately after casting that vote. He's a billionaire and you're not therefore you're beneath his notice. You don't care about the feelings of a bug when you step on it and that's all you are to him. He's been trained that way since birth. Most of the other billionaires are just like him, he's simply in the public spotlight. Most of the older politicians are no better than he is. They've been bought and paid for decades ago. The sooner we realize that we're nothing more than voting numbers to them, the sooner we can actually make our votes mean something. VI The Economy Money is nothing but ones and zeros in a computer. The dollar is worth what those computers say it is. The economy should have been shut down completely, No money, no revenue, no bills yet everything continues. We could have stayed home, ordered what we needed until this virus burns itself out. Afterwards we could have restarted things, there would have been no penalties and everyone would have been fine. If we had done that it would have restructured the economy, which is exactly why it wasn't done. Another option would have been to turn all of the billionaires into millionaires. Take everything that the filthy rich have, above $500 million, and use it to pay the American people to stay home. We don't need billionaires or the class distinctions they create. It's obvious why this wasn't done. VII Mental Restructuring Since I can't give our country the mental ass kicking it so desperately needs I have to focus inwards. While I'd like to say that this is by choice, it was forced by recent events. Few things are more painful than discovering, or feeling, that you're insignificant in the scheme of things. During a pandemic, our focus should, understandably, on our families and ourselves. Survival is paramount. Understanding that, with the exception of two people, I've done all of the reaching out to make sure that people are OK. These are the same two people that poke ate me if I've been quiet for too long so I wasn't surprised that they reached out first. I'm not a needy, whiny bastard. I'm fairly self-sufficient, I can order what I need and I'm a fairly good cook. Pumpkin, Onyx and I are fine alone, especially since I'm not a big fan of humanity in general. I love certain people but humanity, as a whole, is a lost cause. I didn't reach out for personal connection. I did it see how my friends were doing mentally. The Covid-19 situation has been tough on everyone, especially those of us with mental illnesses. I'm 54 years old with ADHD, Anxiety, Depression and three hernias requiring surgery, which explains the stressed immune system. If it wasn't for the fact that my meds had been increased a month or two before this happened, this situation would have broken me. Two people checking up on me would not have been enough to stop me from imploding. I would have been reduced to a gibbering mess because of the stress or I'd be dead. I'm fine because I noticed a couple of things about five months ago and I consulted my doctor about it. Most people in this situation aren't as lucky as I am, which is why I reach out. Having only two people that bothered to make sure I was OK was eye opening. I'm forced to reevaluate why certain people are in my life and who remains. VIII Bye, Felicia This has honestly been coming for a long time. There are people that only contact me when they want something, usually money. There are others that don't do anything. It's past time to do some pruning. I don't like giving up on people which is why I've avoided this for so long. There are some that are immune to this. My three adoptive sisters in my local area and the ones I love who are out of state. CA, WA, CO, UT, WI, WY, LA, TN, TX, GA, NJ, NY, NH and MD. Wow. Apparently I love more people than I thought I did. They know who they are. If not then they aren't paying attention. If I contact you or interact with you, in any fashion other than work, then I probably love you. Toxic people are leaving as I can't afford to keep them around. Stupidity is also making an exit. Stupidity is Willful Ignorance so why would I want them around to begin with? I have a perfect example of both. There's a post circulating on Facecrack. This one states that the plight of the jews in the Nazi concentration camps is comparable to the Covid-19 quarantine. An old friend shared that on my timeline. If he had been anyone else, I would have deleted and blocked him without hesitation. The only reason he remains is that I've known him for 38 years. I'm waiting to see what he does next. Student of history, remember? I studied WWII in depth so that means that I know more about the concentration camps than most people. The jews were herded there a variety of ways, primarily by train. They were tortured, experimented on, starved, brutalized, a huge number of them were gassed to death and those are actually the high points. It was much worse than I'll ever be able to properly describe and in no way is it even remotely similar to our quarantine. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. We're all free to say anything that we want to. We just need to be prepared for the repercussions that arise. If anyone else is stupid enough to share something like that on my timeline, or share it any other place that I can see, they are gone. No questions asked. All anyone needs to do to understand the difference between the two situations is to read a US history book that covers WWII. Posting crap like means that you're choosing to ignore basic evidence. I have no room for anyone like that so Bye, Felicia. IX Best vs Worst This situation can bring out the best or worst in people. You can rise to the occasion or you can sink into depravity. There are plenty of example of both around us. I'm working from home. My bills remain paid. My cats and I are fed and safe. I choose to help where I can. While it's true that I have little faith in humanity, that doesn't mean that I have to circle the drain with the rest of them. I will always try to help those around me. I've been extremely fortunate during this and that should be shared with those that are struggling. This is going to get worse before it gets better. I hope I'm wrong yet there are reports of increases in the infection rate where businesses are being reopened. The last thing we need is a second wave but I'm afraid it may happen. X Dystopia I look around and I have to wonder if we're ever going to grow up as a species. We keep making the same mistakes decade after decade. It's a wonder that we haven't blown ourselves off of the planet. The truth is that this is already a Dystopian society. It's not as bad as the examples we see in movies and on TV yet we are moving towards that. Compared to 20 years ago, we have less privileges now than we did then. We gave them away in exchange for the illusion of safety. We have privileges, not rights. Rights don't exist and are simply an invention to make us feel superior. If it can be taken away, it's a privilege. XI Conclusion While that last part was a little darker than I intended, it is true. I write, primarily, to relieve stress and to clear out my head. It gets pretty cramped in there otherwise. While this won't win me any friends, I may actually post this. My life needs some simplifying anyway. Namaste