patrick.net

One of the most alarming developments of the past few years has been pandemic groupthink and the ferocity with which it has stifled dissenting views and debate. Anyone who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns was accused of deliberately endangering the lives of others. Those who sought out alternative COVID-19 treatments rejected by mainstream experts, such as hydroxychloroquine, were shamed and even deplatformed by social media companies. The message was simple: Question the COVID narrative, and there will be consequences.

But there were still many brave enough to buck the mob mentality. And as time has gone on and scientific data on COVID and pandemic restrictions have become more accurate, it has become clear that the dissenters were right. Lockdowns didn’t save lives; in fact, they likely cost more lives than they saved. Masks, specifically the cloth masks experts pushed on the public, are ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus and are harmful to children's development. ...

Unfortunately, nonconformists have had to pay an enormous price for being right.

Take, for example, Jennifer Sey, the global brand president of Levi’s, who resigned this week, giving up her two-decade career at the company because it did not want her to speak out against COVID school closures. In an article for Common Sense, Sey wrote:

In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call. “You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company,” our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down. I responded: “My title is not in my Twitter bio. I’m speaking as a public school mom of four kids.”


But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to “think about what I was saying.”

However, Sey refused to stay silent. She kept speaking up, meeting with local California officials, going on TV, and writing about the danger of remote learning and how it would hurt children. After appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, Sey knew her time was up. Sure enough, the head of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Levi’s reached out to her and asked that she do an “apology tour.” ...

This past month, Sey was informed that it had become “untenable” for her to stay on at Levi’s. She was offered a $1 million severance package, but she refused to take it, knowing that if she did, she would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring her from speaking about why she was leaving the company.

She lost it all: her career, the chance to become Levi’s next CEO, which was well within her grasp, and the money she was owed — all because she questioned one aspect of the COVID narrative and refused to stay silent.

Here’s another example. Eric Flannery, a veteran who owns a burger joint in Washington, D.C., decided that he would not enforce the city’s vaccine mandate, which required all businesses to ask patrons to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 when officials implemented it last month. His reasoning was simple: "I’m not a government agent, and quite frankly, it’s not my job to check your personal medical history for you to come in,” he said. “I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t have any opinions on the vaccine. You should talk with your medical doctor and make an informed decision on your own and decide that.”

As a result, Flannery’s bar, the Big Board, was slapped with multiple fines, and its liquor license was revoked. Ultimately, Flannery was ordered to stop doing business altogether by the D.C. Health Department. And last Thursday, D.C.’s Assistant Attorney General Anthony Celo demanded that D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration make its suspension of the Big Board’s liquor license permanent, arguing its “continued operation places the community at risk.”

Just four days later, D.C. announced it would lift the vaccine mandate.

In other words, the city destroyed a man’s small business just to turn around and agree with him that the mandate isn’t necessary. Flannery was right, but he lost his livelihood because he spoke up before anyone else was willing to.

This is not just a pandemic of a virus. It is also a pandemic of mania that has produced some of the most egregious acts of intolerance many of us will ever witness. The latter is the real crisis, as people like Sey and Flannery have learned the hard way. But if we're to break through and dismantle the stifling groupthink that still hangs over society, we'll need many more like them: people who have the courage to stand for what they believe is right, even if it's unpopular, no matter what it costs them.

Furious over the expected easing of 'Covid restrictions,' fanatical New Normal Germans have started a hashtag #DieMaskebleibtauf (i.e., the mask stays on) ... and of course they have. The masks are symbols of allegiance to the new official ideology, as this lapel pin once was

the studies undertaken to “prove” efficacy were shams, lacked control groups, used cherry picked data, fraud, and methodologies so hilariously bad as to call into question the basic competence and honesty of those pushing them. the CDC has been a disgrace.

and yet the intensity of the push for this meaningless mitigation ratcheted ever upward. a certain class of person loved this, demanded this, needed this. no data could dissuade their desire.

even those who gathered the data that proved so helpful in proving this such as emily oster backed away from their own output because it so clearly contradicted the narrative of their tribe. she, an ivy league economics professor, disavowed her own discovery and flipped to team emotion. (another dark day for the gato alma mater)

it was sad to see, but altogether predictable.

masks are signs of subjugation. they dehumanize. they alienate. and this is WHY they are so attractive to so many.

this is why forcing them on kids to dominate them and force them into compliance with state over self or even parents is such a high priority goal for those that have collectivist plans for their futures. it establishes precisely who is in charge.

masks are not about public health.

masks are about hierarchy.

they not only represent a high visibility in-group/out-group tribal marker, but they have wonderous potential as a form of separating the powerful from the powerless, the nobles from the commoners, the dictators from the dictated to.

it has become the opiate of the classes.




perhaps some women are more equal than others?

i suspect that this is why mandating masks is more popular among the well heeled than the working class: the rich and powerful know they will not have to follow these rules in the manner that the grubby commoners shall have to and this frisson of aristocratic privilege thrills them.

this is also why they love making you do this then getting caught not doing it themselves. they do not feel shame. they do not feel hypocrisy. they feel power: the power to flout the very rules they impose and to be free from consequence as they do so. this establishes them as a ruling class possessed of royal prerogative.

CLAREMONT, CA—Sources have confirmed that local assistant professor of Applied Gender Entanglement Studies, Spenther Dillstump, unsealed his front door for the first time in two years then, clutching his emotional support Fauci Doll and whispering a prayer of righteous safetyism to Dr. Rachel Walensky, emerged from his home to face the eerie dystopia of people living normal lives.

“Eeek! What’s that horrific monstrosity! We’re all gonna die!” yelled Dillstump according to witnesses who reported him pointing at the unmasked smiles of an older couple walking past. The quadruple-masked adventurer was also seen trying to ward off the couple with a printout of outdated CDC guidelines while shouting long-disproven facts about natural immunity.

Numerous eyewitness accounts describe Mr. Dillstump as frantically scurrying behind trees and dumpsters whenever humans passed by in their threatening states of happiness and normalcy.

Onlookers later described police arriving at the city park in search of terrorist groups acting violently, as described by an anonymous 911 caller. All they saw were a few families enjoying the fresh air, children laughing and playing, and a crazed man behind some bushes gargling hand sanitizer. Underfunded and overworked, the officers were unable to question the individual—identified by onlookers as Dillstump—as dispatch sent them away to the 39th carjacking that day.

Exhausted and overwrought, Spenther Dillstump eventually snuck back to the eternal safety of his home, having never found a store that sold hazmat suits and still mandated masks, vaccines, social distancing, and BLM attire.

Crafting Messages for Vaccine Compliance. “Guilt, Anger, Embarrassment or Cowardice — What Works Best?”
Researchers Study

this stage of the pandemic is really one of the more mystifying parts. if you listen closely, you can hear the popping of burning wires.

i got vaccinated.

i got covid.

i got really sick.

thank goodness i got vaccinated!

you should get vaccinated too!

i mean, at a certain point you’re thanking your lucky rabbit foot for keeping you from having lost your gold fillings on top of your wristwatch last poker night…

it’s like the last vestiges of observational capability have finally been beaten out of a meaningful portion of the population.

truly, we have entered the post rational world of the unfalsifiable claim.

“it would have been worse if i had not!”




it’s such a wonderful meme. so pervasive. so persuasive. and so totally, utterly impervious to contradiction.

it’s the perfect brainworm to justify what you did.

you can show them all the societal data you like about higher rates of hospitalization this year than last in groups that were 95%+ vaccinated.

it does not matter. no aggregate data can refute any individual belief about one specific datapoint among many.

“i’m sure it helped.”

this belief lets anyone feel good about vaccination and boosting even as they fall ill.

it literally turns the contraction of covid by vaccinated people into the belief that covid vaccines worked for them.

this may be the most successful piece of product positioning in human history.

cognitive bias becomes cognitive dissonance becomes an iron bar certainty that your virtuous behavior saved you.

as a perfect pathway to self justification and validation of priors, it’s near 100% effective if you simply believe hard enough. ...

the alternative is admitting that you were played for a chump. people are highly averse to such conclusions.

of course, spotting the chump is easy:

ask such a person what would convince them that the vaccine did not prevent covid from being worse.

see if they have an answer.

if they do not, well, then it’s pure presumption.

that which cannot be falsified cannot be proven either.

bingo. chumpitude verified.

and boy do people not want things proven.

we’ve reached the point where agencies will no longer publish objective data because it does not support their conclusions.

“we cannot provide data because people might analyze it!” is not much of a mantra, is it? ...

NEW - Public Health Scotland will stop publishing data on Covid deaths and hospitalizations by vaccination status because there are "significant concerns about the data being misused deliberately by anti-vaccination campaigners."

cognitive bias becomes cognitive dissonance becomes an iron bar certainty that your virtuous behavior saved you.

https://notthebee.com/article/many-americans-say-theyll-continue-to-mask-even-after-mandates-go-away?source=patrick.net

I understand wanting to believe. I want to believe that the vaccinated are at least somewhat protected, either from getting the disease at all or from getting a severe case.

He was double jabbed and insisted that it was a "vaccine" and not a jab. It was a friendly and polite discussion but after I presented some facts to him, he replied, "I will not believe that my government lied to me."

Pharma uses our own instincts against us

Social belonging is so important that most bougiecrats would rather die of a heart attack or give their kid autism than risk being labelled an anti-vaxxer.

I found it deeply disturbing that a professional attempted to train this girl to wear a dehumanizing mask, which caused her mental anguish, so students, their parents, and teachers at my school could feign a false sense of security. I told my principal that no child or adolescent should have to get used to something as ludicrous and harmful as wearing a mask just to receive an education, especially if they suffer from an anxiety disorder. Furthermore, my school administration believed it necessary to reveal this student’s “vaccination” status in order assuage people’s irrational fears, and to force her to undergo weekly burdensome testing, since they considered a maskless child a safety concern! I called out the administration’s callousness towards this girl, and in effect caused my first ripple of the year, which later turned into waves of criticism of my school’s unscientific policies of Covid containment.

It’s like a priest wearing a backwards color, a symbolic gesture of piety.

Masking and vaxxing are mental illnesses.

Last night, one of my subscribers posted this comment on “In memory of all those who ‘died suddenly,’ February 15-21”):

A few days ago the Chicago theatre community was shaken by the loss of one of our own. She had moved to LA to pursue acting and was missing (we all shared her info like crazy) only to be found dead on the 18th.

I’m a pariah amongst my colleagues for my stance on vaccines so I can’t even utter the notion around them. But I’m pretty sure it’s the vax.

Sanjoy Mahajan’s reply:

I'm with you on not even uttering the notion. There's so little point. The people in the Covid trance cannot even hear the idea.

Last April, the father (healthy, 48 y.o.) of my daughter's good friend from school died suddenly in his garden. It was 1 day after his age group (55 and under) became "eligible" as they say (as if it were akin to being an "eligible bachelor"). It happened in a city of jab fanatics, so my guess was that he had got his first jab the previous day and had a cardiac event or stroke. His obituary said that he died "of no known cause" -- my first personal encounter with that phrase. ...

Is it possible to break that trance? The personal tragedy of losing someone to the jab, or of losing one’s own health because of it, has snapped people out of it; but there are all those who’ve been hypnotized so deeply that no personal loss, or agonized firsthand account of suffering, will wake them up. They’re like kamikaze pilots, or sleeper agents mind-controlled to carry out assassinations. If anything can wake them up, it would have to be some intervention far more radical than simply trying to talk them out of it, whatever you may say.

So it would seem that we have lost them, too, to this grotesque worldwide experiment, even though they’re still around.

Often, in an argument, what people think they are arguing about is not the
real subject of disagreement, which is deeper and often unspoken, if it is
even understood. So it is here. The divisions that have opened up in
society about the covid vaccines are not really about the covid vaccines at
all: they are about what vaccination symbolises in this moment. What it
means to be 'vaxxed' or 'unvaxxed', safe or dangerous, clean or dirty,
sensible or irresponsible, compliant or independent: these are questions
about what it means to be a good member of society, and what society
even is, and they are detonating like depth charges beneath the surface of
the culture. ...

We could all throw peer-reviewed studies that we don’t really understand at
each other, and they would all miss the mark because the vaccine is not the
point. The point is what it symbolises - and what it is being used to build.
I am a writer. I know how to construct stories. I know what makes them
succeed or fail, and I have a nose for when a story does not hang together.
The covid Narrative is just such a story. It doesn’t fit together, even on its
own terms. Something is wrong. The surface tale does not reflect what lies
beneath. And what lies beneath is what interests me now. ...

Most of all, it has revealed the authoritarian streak that lies beneath so
many people, and which always emerges in fearful times. In the last month
alone I have watched media commentators calling for censorship of their
political opponents, philosophy professors justifying mass internment, and
human rights lobby groups remaining silent about ‘vaccine passports.’ I
have watched much of the political left transition openly into the
authoritarian movement it probably always was, and countless ‘liberals’
campaigning against liberty. As freedom after freedom has been taken
away, I have watched intellectual after intellectual justify it all. I have
been reminded of what I always knew: cleverness has no relationship to
wisdom. ...

Most of all, though, what the covid apocalypse has revealed to me is that
when people are frightened, they can be easily controlled.
Control: this is the story of the times. Across the world we are seeing an
unprecedented claim to control staked by the forces of the state, in alliance
with the forces of corporate capital, over your life and mine. All of it
converges on the revealed symbol of our age: the smartphone-enabled QR
code that has, with frightening speed and in near-silence, become the new
passport to a full human life. As ever, our tools have turned on us. Another
revelation: they were never our tools to begin with. We were theirs.

In the coordinated propaganda and censorship response to the COVID-19 public health crisis, globalists and corporatists are directly incorporating Hitler’s own principles for crowd control. If we look closer, we can clearly see coordinated actions by the BBC-led Trusted News Initiative, various Scientific Technological Elite, large financial groups (such as Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street), and the World Economic Forum acting in real time to suppress a growing awareness by the general public of having been actively manipulated. It is increasingly becoming clear that these organizations and aligned nation-states have been using crowd psychology tools to generate significant fear and anxiety of COVID-19 to advance their agendas on a global scale. They have used COVID to drive a planned and coordinated agenda, the Great Reset.

Multiple governments have now admitted to actively using fear and 'Mass Formation'-related theories as a tool for totalitarian population control during this outbreak. These are basically psychological operations aimed at populations of nations. One glaring example has been operating in the UK:

“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was “unethical” and “totalitarian”.

SPI-B warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase “the perceived level of personal threat” from Covid-19 because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”.

Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: “Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.”

(Published in The Telegraph “Use of fear to control behaviour in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian’, admit scientists Members of Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour express regret about ‘unethical’ methods” by Gordon Raynor, Associate Editor, May 14, 2021)