Last month, my wife, Ellen, and I visited Costa Rica. Being there reminded us of our prior trip there in 1989, before it went zip-line/eco-tourism mainstream. At that time, after riding six hours from the capital, San Jose, in an old school bus, mostly on rutted dirt roads, we stayed in a remote Pacific Coast village. Geographically, logistically and scenically, it felt like the end of the world: monkeys swinging through lush forests that adjoined empty beaches sloping into waves in an unimaginably vast ocean.
Dearest Mark - your prose is always a lovely way to start my day. A very thought provoking read. My mother always said there are worse things than dying. For me, I’d rather die than not be around the many people I love and cherish. I don’t care what germs are being spread. Spreading love and affection is what matters. My heart goes out to people that don’t need others. Why did God give Adam, Eve???
On the other hand, it also makes me so grateful for you and for everyone who retained their common sense and respect for others. Thank you. When I read your work I feel like I'm right there with you experiencing it all.
Yep! I never had the thought to not hug a friend or ask them to wear a mask. It was like "bring on the Covid" before I'd let the rules come between us.
I came down with covid in late July 2020. I was at a friend's house on a Friday evening, and noticed feeling funny a day/two later. It gets rather warm in the central valley of California. I grew agitated to air conditioning and noticed that I was developing a fever.
My friend phoned me 36-or-so hours later to break the news that he had tested "positive" and I was likely going to experience the same onset of what he was experiencing. Let the good times roll and I get 10 days away from the office.
Long story short, I survived. Two weeks or so later, as I reconvened at my friend's house, he immediately apologized profusely for "infecting" me. I told him it's nothing to dwell over, I wasn't the type of person to hold a grudge over willingly going out and about and socializing with him.
Like Mark says, only a small percentage were at-risk.
Apr 13, 2023·edited Apr 13, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
One of the true stories I discovered early in 2020 was of the men of an Antarctic expedition in 1969, where 6 of 12 men developed colds despite all having been isolated from any other people for at least 17 weeks. It was very clear from this case study, written up in the Journal of Hygiene in 1973, that stopping people from going to the office or the pub was really not going to stop Covid in its tracks. To pretend otherwise was, at best, idiotic.
this time another polar expedition got covid, even though all precautions taken. I think they were Belgian but forgot the details. It will probably still be online as it made the news
I am persuaded that germ theory is really flawed. We are not using the right model to understand illness. Have you read the Contagion Myth by Dr. Cowan?
I haven't, but I have read quite a bit by some of the people who hold similar views. I am sure that we are a long way from understanding disease transmission and I am also sure that 'the terrain' is vitally important, but I do find it very difficult to believe that there are no pathogens. Just my everyday experience seems to refute that and it is difficult to understand why we would have an immune system if there were not pathogens to combat. That said, I am also aware that my knowledge of all this is shallow so try to keep an open mind.
There are many viruses and some of these can sicken people, esp. those who are old and otherwise immunocompromised. But when people get sick from respiratory viruses that cause the normal range of symptoms: coughs, fevers, aches, etc., it's impossible to tell if one virus or another--including SARS-CoV-2-- caused the illness because people live among, and host, many different viruses. Many people who tested positive were asymptomatic. And high-cycle PCR tests yielded 90+% false positives.
I have an idea that the more they study everything the less they know. I wonder if it could be, because they don't look at the big picture and try to 'cut' everything up in small pieces. There might be viruses and surely there are bacteria, but that field theory counts for some, too. And when you move elsewhere, you will notice you get way sicker from minor things, than the locals (I remember my first fire ant bite!)
You could definitely be onto something there. Just from my fly on the wall perspective about just how broken the peer review process is, and has been for some time leads me to think that it's just a lot of words and $$ for formalizing groupthink. I don't know who said it, but an expression that sums it up for me is, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know. And admitting that is the first step to trying to suss out what the truth really is.
Apr 13, 2023·edited Apr 13, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
Thought-provoking as always, Mark. The AIDS/HIV story still hasn't been fully told and explained. Or if it has been, the books and articles that give us the most-likely true story have been censored and cancelled.
I also read “The Real Anthony Fauci.” If I remember correctly, RFK Jr. tells readers that Fauci, at least initially, believed the disease was restricted only to promiscuous gay men (and IV drug users). As one might imagine, some in the gay community were screaming for more good science and awareness to fight this “plague.” Fauci then flipped the narrative and said the virus was a “threat” to EVERYONE. This was met with approval from the promiscuous gay community as it effectively said their own behavior was not the causal agent - that everyone was equally at risk.
As Celia Farber, the rare brave real journalist, has written, this effectively was the end of real science and the beginning of “politicized” science. The narrative also allowed the NIAID to take charge of AIDS response and dramatically increased funding and influence of this (then) largely irrelevant healthcare agency. Today, we see the results of that.
Even when I was a teenager (when AIDS hit), I figured out the disease was no threat to heterosexuals who didn’t share needles when they did heroin. It now seems pretty clear to me that massive numbers of people probably died from the “treatment” for AIDS/HIV (from toxic drugs like AZT, etc.)
RFK, Jr. points out that in America today, AIDS still only kills gay men and IV drug users. However, in Africa, most people who are diagnosed with AIDS/HIV are heterosexuals, and large numbers of children. I’ve never understood why this virus would affect gay men in America, but everyone in another continent. The virus is different in America?
Something - a lot of somethings - simply don’t add up.
I remember when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV/AIDS. We all knew that Magic would be dead in a couple of years. Well, 30 years later, he’s an ultra-successful business man.
Maybe medicine and science deserve some credit here. It appears that certain cocktails of drugs stave off the disease, which is no longer fatal for most/many people. Or maybe these mortality risks were massively over-hyped all along?
(According to Kennedy, Arthur Ash probably died from his AZT treatments not any virus).
And we still don’t have an AIDS/HIV “vaccine” … although Fauci said we’d have one in a couple of years. This is surprising too. It would seem that Fauci could get a vaccine authorized for the sniffles.
Anyway, AIDS wasn’t the end of the world like we were told it would be. Just like Global Warming, Swine Flu, Sars-1, the ozone hole, etc.
A healthy skepticism about the fear-mongering of “the experts” would be a welcome “public health” advance.
... I also hope the son of your dentist friend grew up to play the saxophone in crowded clubs all around the world. However, he’d need to cut a hole through his masks to allow him to perform safely.
Every single idiotic measure & mandate to “defeat” & “arrest” a respiratory virus was deliberately counter-productive, counter-intuitive, cruel & designed to cause great physical & mental anguish that is ongoing as the plotters behind the scenes continue threatening us with CBDC, 15 minute cities, “climate change”, WWIII, “vaccinating” the food supply, poisoning the skies & the next super virus, to name just a few. It’s true that mankind has survived & as you said, thrived despite everything from the beginning, but these gain-of-function schemes to create very dangerous new pathogens is really concerning (in addition to the litany above). Still stymied as to how to thwart it all. It seems insurmountable
I told my husband at the earliest moments of this crime -- I mean, crisis -- that people will most certainly go along. After all, I said, it gives them a chance to be "in the club." The "club?" Yes! Most people love being in clubs. This one gave them a chance to say that they lived through history. The most staggering and deadly viral outbreak since that other one...caused by filthy masks, overdosing via aspirin -- and maybe, just maybe -- some kind of injectable junk that made a lot of soldiers really, really sick.
Modern "club" members raised their status if they got the big "C" and survived...which, well, everyone should have in the world's super duperest healthcare system in the world's lone "superpower" with running water and everything with the super duperest doctors ever in the history of the world. 𝙍𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩?
😂 This made me laugh out loud. So true! Had a dear, dear friend from my early life (20's) with whom I stay in touch call me yesterday. Wonderful person, was a kind of mentor to me and treasured friend. In his 70's. It had been a while since our last conversation.
Has to ask me how me and the hubs did re the big "C." "Oh, I said, we're fine. Never got it (whatever "it" is that's different from the usual symptoms of respiratory infections)) and we're doing great."
A little surprised, he said that that was good, but went on to say that we'd probably "get it eventually." I wanted to ask him, "Get what?" but I did not have the heart.
There's still a sizable minority of people here in Berkeley/Oakland wearing masks, including outdoors and alone in their cars. There is one bakery/pizzeria with long counterculture roots and owned by a lesbian couple that are the last holdouts for requiring masks, and that's just for ordering at a counter. Meanwhile the mandates have at last been dropped from health care facilities.
Again, Mark...you’re a voice of reason in a world that is anything but reasonable! I love reading of your adventures and how you’re able to weave them into today’s stories (aka, madness).
I can’t run off to Costa Rica...but I do find myself seeking out things (from years gone by) that bring me some kind of (at least temporary) comfort...ie old songs, old movies, familiar places, getting together more often with my siblings, just reminiscing about a time that wasn’t like this. Intellectually, I realize that it’s impossible for life not to change...in fact, change is one thing you can be certain of (like death and taxes), but I think that perhaps it’s the rate at which our world is changing that is creating so much chaos. Before one can adapt, adjust, and accept the changes, more are occurring simultaneously. The political , social, medical, financial, world events, and technological changes are coming at us so fast that it’s hard to catch your breath…it’s just overwhelming sometimes.
When things get really bad…I imagine myself packing a small suitcase, grabbing my cat, loading up my vehicle and driving east until the road ends…preferably in a small, coastal town, in say…South Carolina. I find a cute studio apartment with a little balcony over-looking the quaint town and the ocean in view. There’s a small cafe (within walking distance of course) and I get a job there as a waitress. The people are so friendly…everyone knows everyone and there hasn’t been a crime committed there since 1962 (just years before I was born). After a hard day’s work…I walk home and I’m immediately greeted by my cat, Jordan and she sits with me on the balcony where I sit with my bare feet curled up on an old metal patio chair (that squeaks when it’s rocked). I have a small glass of wine and contemplate the life I left behind. Then I realize that while it seems so peaceful and serene…I could never stay in that place without my Love, my heart and my heart’s heart (my husband, my kids, and my grandkids)…then I take a quick trip back to reality and I’m home in the town I’ve never left with those who are most important to me.
I’ve always felt that our world today is much like the Wizard of Oz…it’s just one crazy thing after another…always trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy. The bad witch who’s trying to destroy us and the good witch who’s trying to help and guide us home…and then seeing behind the “curtain” and the realization that there’s an entity (call it the cabal or the elites or the One World Order) that is operating all the levers and buttons (very much includes the main stream media). Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, you can never “un-see” it. Only then can it be realized for what it really is. How did Dorothy combat the evil?? She only had to acknowledge that thru out her crazy dream, she was still safely in her bed the entire time with the very people who meant the most to her and that her own mind was Oz.
I believe very much that so much of what is happening all around us is very much planned and created to keep us frightened, confused and always searching for “home”. They say that “home is where the heart is”…where your loved ones are! I seek out that which is familiar and comforting to remind myself what this life is really all about! Sorry this was so long…I don’t reply often, but when I do, my fingers seem to get carried away, lol!
When the scamdemic arrived, I watched as people slathered their hands with toxic sanitizer and couldn't help but think "If I am exposed a little bit by touching potentially infected areas that would be like a natural vaccine." Both my husband and myself are elderly and did the same, we didn't stay home and hunkered down, we went out and about and didn't follow the arrows in the stores and didn't wear masks unless we were forced. Neither of us got ill.
Being an observer of humans, I couldn't help but notice those who are germphobes and would see them in the grocery store masked, shielded and even with rubber gloves wiping down their grocery carts to remove the dreaded virus. I would then see those same germ phobes in the check out line and take a quick view of what was in their carts, which was always processed and convenience foods and sugar laden snacks. My suppressed urge was to comment "Staying healthy means not what's ON your cart but what you put IN it."
Prepping may be good for those who can go the full distance with it. But still the value of building a new group cannot be denied. A new group, like with home schooling, is a start. And so would the preppers joining forces. Churches may be our new salvation in more ways than one! The brutality of the fight is mind boggling. How to maintain the current existence while building a new one.
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Now that's a good story! And I learned a new word. Sedevacantism is a doctrinal position within traditionalist Catholicism which holds that the present occupier of the Holy See is not a valid pope.
Thx. Great story about Costa Rica, though, and the dentist. I hope the son was able to study the sax: I played as a kid. And the dad re-engaged with life and not retreating from the world. No one should, no matter the cost.
For example, seasonality of the flu and cold doesn't happen near the equator.
Winter with it's limited sunlight and an already vitamin D deficient populace is a recipe for sickness.
You mentioned AIDS being caused by toxic drugs and toxic treatments, very similar to COVID killing people due to remdesevir, midalozam, and ventilators.
Why do we still focus on the "bugs" and ignore the other many factors that lead to disease? Perhaps because treating bugs is more profitable than fixing the deficiencies and preventing the other causes.
Here's a good one explaining that doctor turned fisherman.
"The evolutionary psychologist William von Hippel found that humans use large parts of thinking power to navigate social world rather than perform independent analysis and decision making. For most people it is the mechanism that, in case of doubt, will prevent one from thinking what is right if, in return, it endangers one’s social status. This phenomenon occurs more strongly the higher a person’s social status. Another factor is that the more educated and more theoretically intelligent a person is, the more their brain is adept at selling them the biggest nonsense as a reasonable idea, as long as it elevates their social status. The upper educated class tends to be more inclined than ordinary people to chase some intellectual boondoggle. "
"Winter with it's limited sunlight and an already vitamin D deficient populace is a recipe for sickness."
I'm more than convinced that the level of Vitamin D deficiency is the culprit in so many illnesses. I live below the 37th parallel in latitude (south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border), where the sun shines on most days of the year. Dr. Ryan Cole, MD has noted that the chances of contracting COVID are related to the amount of natural Vitamin D, a person has (or lacks), which is correlated to their exposure (or lack thereof) to the sun.
Anecdotally, this winter I contracted a nagging cough. It lingered for months through December, January, February and March. The weather here has finally turned sunny and warm enough to get outside in the sunshine within the last two weeks.
Just this evening I realized that the cough is gone.
PS: Has anyone else started questioning the standard recommendations to lather up on the sunscreen? I've never been a sunscreen user, though in my earlier decades I worked outside as a surveyor. I haven't used it at all for years, and with the exception of high-altitude snow skiing, I *never* have. (I'm 60 years old, and of Nordic / Irish / English genetics.)
Many years ago, the thought occurred to me, "How is it biologically possible that human beings survived for eons without using sunscreen?" Same question goes for how have we as a species existed for literally hundreds of thousands of years without needing to take dozens of pharmaceutical prescription drugs, right up until about ten minutes ago in terms of human history.
The entire history of virology is tainted by the widespread misunderstanding of correlation not implying causation. Ice cream consumption goes up in the warmer weather but it doesn’t mean it’s causing the inevitable rise in crime during the summer season. The fear of death and disease can make even reasonable people quite mad and the CoVid craziness is a great example of that. Blaming illness on invisible all powerful bugs is a great way to control people and make fortunes.
Thanks to you and people like you, we can see the joke in all this - a fisherman at sea with a mask on! that deserves a meme. 100 people in a store and one is wearing a mask. Cows with a mask!
But in a way I can relate to the story, because I left Belgium not for a virus, but first of all, of course, for love, but also because of the dense population. Being a loner in a crowd is not easy, I felt constricted. And America still has lots of open areas, lightly populated, and probably Middle America still has even more, and a more abundant nature. To run for this latest hysteria was impossible - are there even places that did not go along? I hear of Ethiopia and North Korea, but not really a choice was there?
You're correct, Ingrid. As hard as it is for Manhattanites and the coastal elites to imagine it, North America is almost completely empty of people.
One of my favorite trivial facts is that you could fit the entire population of Earth with the borders of Texas. Another is that the halfway point between Houston and Los Angeles is still in Texas.
I remember the first time crossing Texas. My husband asked if I needed to go in the next 150 miles. That is how far it was to the next facility. And very little bushes too
I've always remembered one plane trip I took from New York to California, and how I marveled at how empty and undeveloped most of the American continent seems. The main populations are clustered on the coasts and in certain big cities.
Thank you for continuing to be the voice of reason- I recently quit reading/following those who push the self sufficiency aspect as people where putting things up like "get a big freezer for supplies and water"- but never though about the use of electricity to keep all that going. If "they" turn off your water, you can sure as hell predict gas and water would be squelched first...so I voiced that on the forum and was told I had "dark humor"...no, I won't live like that. And yes, those with the most ammo would win, but really would you WANT to? Not I! I started up a "rogue" ukulele group well after a year from March 2020 and there are those who are still angry with me for doing so. Those of us who did attend NEEDED that human contact and socialization. Sometimes the music we made together brought me to tears. Guess what? We are all still alive and kicking and I don't think we killed anyone else. Thank you for your beautiful and timely writings!
Just this week I bought my first freezer - it's massive: about 7 feet tall.
I finally succumbed to my wife's constant droning of "we should get a freezer" because of the reports that they're going to start inoculating our food supply with mRNA.
Yeah, I know. Mark's essay is a great reminder that we ain't getting out alive, no matter how big the freezer is in our garage.
Dearest Mark - your prose is always a lovely way to start my day. A very thought provoking read. My mother always said there are worse things than dying. For me, I’d rather die than not be around the many people I love and cherish. I don’t care what germs are being spread. Spreading love and affection is what matters. My heart goes out to people that don’t need others. Why did God give Adam, Eve???
Thank you. 😘❤️
Thanks, Laura.
People lost their minds and lost much that was important.
Worse, they externalized their irrational fear on others and thus, caused OTHERS to lose out on important parts of life.
Yes Mark, so true, and exactly why I no longer care to associate with them in any meaningful way.
On the other hand, it also makes me so grateful for you and for everyone who retained their common sense and respect for others. Thank you. When I read your work I feel like I'm right there with you experiencing it all.
Yep! I never had the thought to not hug a friend or ask them to wear a mask. It was like "bring on the Covid" before I'd let the rules come between us.
You were exceptional.
yes! This ^^^^
I came down with covid in late July 2020. I was at a friend's house on a Friday evening, and noticed feeling funny a day/two later. It gets rather warm in the central valley of California. I grew agitated to air conditioning and noticed that I was developing a fever.
My friend phoned me 36-or-so hours later to break the news that he had tested "positive" and I was likely going to experience the same onset of what he was experiencing. Let the good times roll and I get 10 days away from the office.
Long story short, I survived. Two weeks or so later, as I reconvened at my friend's house, he immediately apologized profusely for "infecting" me. I told him it's nothing to dwell over, I wasn't the type of person to hold a grudge over willingly going out and about and socializing with him.
Like Mark says, only a small percentage were at-risk.
and certainly would prefer to die here at home, than surrounded by peeping and ticking machines in a hospital, taken 25 pills a day
Your mother was right. Most people only know the first half of the quote: "Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils" - Gen. John Stark
True then, true now.
Thank you Chris. I did not know that quote by Stark.
One of the true stories I discovered early in 2020 was of the men of an Antarctic expedition in 1969, where 6 of 12 men developed colds despite all having been isolated from any other people for at least 17 weeks. It was very clear from this case study, written up in the Journal of Hygiene in 1973, that stopping people from going to the office or the pub was really not going to stop Covid in its tracks. To pretend otherwise was, at best, idiotic.
The "novel" virus made it to all seven continents.
You can run....
this time another polar expedition got covid, even though all precautions taken. I think they were Belgian but forgot the details. It will probably still be online as it made the news
I am persuaded that germ theory is really flawed. We are not using the right model to understand illness. Have you read the Contagion Myth by Dr. Cowan?
I haven't, but I have read quite a bit by some of the people who hold similar views. I am sure that we are a long way from understanding disease transmission and I am also sure that 'the terrain' is vitally important, but I do find it very difficult to believe that there are no pathogens. Just my everyday experience seems to refute that and it is difficult to understand why we would have an immune system if there were not pathogens to combat. That said, I am also aware that my knowledge of all this is shallow so try to keep an open mind.
For now, I'm going with:
There are many viruses and some of these can sicken people, esp. those who are old and otherwise immunocompromised. But when people get sick from respiratory viruses that cause the normal range of symptoms: coughs, fevers, aches, etc., it's impossible to tell if one virus or another--including SARS-CoV-2-- caused the illness because people live among, and host, many different viruses. Many people who tested positive were asymptomatic. And high-cycle PCR tests yielded 90+% false positives.
I have an idea that the more they study everything the less they know. I wonder if it could be, because they don't look at the big picture and try to 'cut' everything up in small pieces. There might be viruses and surely there are bacteria, but that field theory counts for some, too. And when you move elsewhere, you will notice you get way sicker from minor things, than the locals (I remember my first fire ant bite!)
You could definitely be onto something there. Just from my fly on the wall perspective about just how broken the peer review process is, and has been for some time leads me to think that it's just a lot of words and $$ for formalizing groupthink. I don't know who said it, but an expression that sums it up for me is, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know. And admitting that is the first step to trying to suss out what the truth really is.
Flawed is the word 🙂 A balanced viewpoint neatly summarised --> https://tessa.substack.com/p/jj-couey-virus-no-virus#%C2%A7heres-how-jj-very-elegantly-resolves-the-virus-no-virus-argument-by-bringing-back-the-complexity-and-the-nuance
Thought-provoking as always, Mark. The AIDS/HIV story still hasn't been fully told and explained. Or if it has been, the books and articles that give us the most-likely true story have been censored and cancelled.
I also read “The Real Anthony Fauci.” If I remember correctly, RFK Jr. tells readers that Fauci, at least initially, believed the disease was restricted only to promiscuous gay men (and IV drug users). As one might imagine, some in the gay community were screaming for more good science and awareness to fight this “plague.” Fauci then flipped the narrative and said the virus was a “threat” to EVERYONE. This was met with approval from the promiscuous gay community as it effectively said their own behavior was not the causal agent - that everyone was equally at risk.
As Celia Farber, the rare brave real journalist, has written, this effectively was the end of real science and the beginning of “politicized” science. The narrative also allowed the NIAID to take charge of AIDS response and dramatically increased funding and influence of this (then) largely irrelevant healthcare agency. Today, we see the results of that.
Even when I was a teenager (when AIDS hit), I figured out the disease was no threat to heterosexuals who didn’t share needles when they did heroin. It now seems pretty clear to me that massive numbers of people probably died from the “treatment” for AIDS/HIV (from toxic drugs like AZT, etc.)
RFK, Jr. points out that in America today, AIDS still only kills gay men and IV drug users. However, in Africa, most people who are diagnosed with AIDS/HIV are heterosexuals, and large numbers of children. I’ve never understood why this virus would affect gay men in America, but everyone in another continent. The virus is different in America?
Something - a lot of somethings - simply don’t add up.
I remember when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV/AIDS. We all knew that Magic would be dead in a couple of years. Well, 30 years later, he’s an ultra-successful business man.
Maybe medicine and science deserve some credit here. It appears that certain cocktails of drugs stave off the disease, which is no longer fatal for most/many people. Or maybe these mortality risks were massively over-hyped all along?
(According to Kennedy, Arthur Ash probably died from his AZT treatments not any virus).
And we still don’t have an AIDS/HIV “vaccine” … although Fauci said we’d have one in a couple of years. This is surprising too. It would seem that Fauci could get a vaccine authorized for the sniffles.
Anyway, AIDS wasn’t the end of the world like we were told it would be. Just like Global Warming, Swine Flu, Sars-1, the ozone hole, etc.
A healthy skepticism about the fear-mongering of “the experts” would be a welcome “public health” advance.
... I also hope the son of your dentist friend grew up to play the saxophone in crowded clubs all around the world. However, he’d need to cut a hole through his masks to allow him to perform safely.
Yes, so many rabbit holes, to go down, so little time.
Every single idiotic measure & mandate to “defeat” & “arrest” a respiratory virus was deliberately counter-productive, counter-intuitive, cruel & designed to cause great physical & mental anguish that is ongoing as the plotters behind the scenes continue threatening us with CBDC, 15 minute cities, “climate change”, WWIII, “vaccinating” the food supply, poisoning the skies & the next super virus, to name just a few. It’s true that mankind has survived & as you said, thrived despite everything from the beginning, but these gain-of-function schemes to create very dangerous new pathogens is really concerning (in addition to the litany above). Still stymied as to how to thwart it all. It seems insurmountable
Amen, Cindi.
I love your stories, Mark.
I told my husband at the earliest moments of this crime -- I mean, crisis -- that people will most certainly go along. After all, I said, it gives them a chance to be "in the club." The "club?" Yes! Most people love being in clubs. This one gave them a chance to say that they lived through history. The most staggering and deadly viral outbreak since that other one...caused by filthy masks, overdosing via aspirin -- and maybe, just maybe -- some kind of injectable junk that made a lot of soldiers really, really sick.
Modern "club" members raised their status if they got the big "C" and survived...which, well, everyone should have in the world's super duperest healthcare system in the world's lone "superpower" with running water and everything with the super duperest doctors ever in the history of the world. 𝙍𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩?
It’s still going on. People, in a hushed voice, saying, “I just had covid.”
I want to answer, “who cares!”
😂 This made me laugh out loud. So true! Had a dear, dear friend from my early life (20's) with whom I stay in touch call me yesterday. Wonderful person, was a kind of mentor to me and treasured friend. In his 70's. It had been a while since our last conversation.
Has to ask me how me and the hubs did re the big "C." "Oh, I said, we're fine. Never got it (whatever "it" is that's different from the usual symptoms of respiratory infections)) and we're doing great."
A little surprised, he said that that was good, but went on to say that we'd probably "get it eventually." I wanted to ask him, "Get what?" but I did not have the heart.
Really. Just keep shaking my head...
There's still a sizable minority of people here in Berkeley/Oakland wearing masks, including outdoors and alone in their cars. There is one bakery/pizzeria with long counterculture roots and owned by a lesbian couple that are the last holdouts for requiring masks, and that's just for ordering at a counter. Meanwhile the mandates have at last been dropped from health care facilities.
Man, you are Metamucil.... you make everything come out alright!
Have a great day, Mark. This was more sunshine needed.
Perhaps the cure the blonde dentist needed was just a vacation, and some doses of reality from you.
Lmao
All the experts did is follow the script the movie “contagion”. A vaccine will save us! LOL.
Again, Mark...you’re a voice of reason in a world that is anything but reasonable! I love reading of your adventures and how you’re able to weave them into today’s stories (aka, madness).
I can’t run off to Costa Rica...but I do find myself seeking out things (from years gone by) that bring me some kind of (at least temporary) comfort...ie old songs, old movies, familiar places, getting together more often with my siblings, just reminiscing about a time that wasn’t like this. Intellectually, I realize that it’s impossible for life not to change...in fact, change is one thing you can be certain of (like death and taxes), but I think that perhaps it’s the rate at which our world is changing that is creating so much chaos. Before one can adapt, adjust, and accept the changes, more are occurring simultaneously. The political , social, medical, financial, world events, and technological changes are coming at us so fast that it’s hard to catch your breath…it’s just overwhelming sometimes.
When things get really bad…I imagine myself packing a small suitcase, grabbing my cat, loading up my vehicle and driving east until the road ends…preferably in a small, coastal town, in say…South Carolina. I find a cute studio apartment with a little balcony over-looking the quaint town and the ocean in view. There’s a small cafe (within walking distance of course) and I get a job there as a waitress. The people are so friendly…everyone knows everyone and there hasn’t been a crime committed there since 1962 (just years before I was born). After a hard day’s work…I walk home and I’m immediately greeted by my cat, Jordan and she sits with me on the balcony where I sit with my bare feet curled up on an old metal patio chair (that squeaks when it’s rocked). I have a small glass of wine and contemplate the life I left behind. Then I realize that while it seems so peaceful and serene…I could never stay in that place without my Love, my heart and my heart’s heart (my husband, my kids, and my grandkids)…then I take a quick trip back to reality and I’m home in the town I’ve never left with those who are most important to me.
I’ve always felt that our world today is much like the Wizard of Oz…it’s just one crazy thing after another…always trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy. The bad witch who’s trying to destroy us and the good witch who’s trying to help and guide us home…and then seeing behind the “curtain” and the realization that there’s an entity (call it the cabal or the elites or the One World Order) that is operating all the levers and buttons (very much includes the main stream media). Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, you can never “un-see” it. Only then can it be realized for what it really is. How did Dorothy combat the evil?? She only had to acknowledge that thru out her crazy dream, she was still safely in her bed the entire time with the very people who meant the most to her and that her own mind was Oz.
I believe very much that so much of what is happening all around us is very much planned and created to keep us frightened, confused and always searching for “home”. They say that “home is where the heart is”…where your loved ones are! I seek out that which is familiar and comforting to remind myself what this life is really all about! Sorry this was so long…I don’t reply often, but when I do, my fingers seem to get carried away, lol!
I enjoyed it, Carolyn. It was vivid.
Thank you Mark!
When the scamdemic arrived, I watched as people slathered their hands with toxic sanitizer and couldn't help but think "If I am exposed a little bit by touching potentially infected areas that would be like a natural vaccine." Both my husband and myself are elderly and did the same, we didn't stay home and hunkered down, we went out and about and didn't follow the arrows in the stores and didn't wear masks unless we were forced. Neither of us got ill.
Being an observer of humans, I couldn't help but notice those who are germphobes and would see them in the grocery store masked, shielded and even with rubber gloves wiping down their grocery carts to remove the dreaded virus. I would then see those same germ phobes in the check out line and take a quick view of what was in their carts, which was always processed and convenience foods and sugar laden snacks. My suppressed urge was to comment "Staying healthy means not what's ON your cart but what you put IN it."
Amen, Jersey Girl.
Prepping may be good for those who can go the full distance with it. But still the value of building a new group cannot be denied. A new group, like with home schooling, is a start. And so would the preppers joining forces. Churches may be our new salvation in more ways than one! The brutality of the fight is mind boggling. How to maintain the current existence while building a new one.
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Yes. Build your support group of the non ‘brain-washed.’ Your safety depends upon it.
Within the last year we've moved our parish home to a tiny sedevacantist chapel about 50 mins from our city home. We love those people so much!
And as a bonus, more than a couple of them raise their own beef and pork, so we have an untainted food supply for when the SHTF.
Now that's a good story! And I learned a new word. Sedevacantism is a doctrinal position within traditionalist Catholicism which holds that the present occupier of the Holy See is not a valid pope.
Thx. Great story about Costa Rica, though, and the dentist. I hope the son was able to study the sax: I played as a kid. And the dad re-engaged with life and not retreating from the world. No one should, no matter the cost.
Keep up the great writing!
Danny
Thanks, Danny.
Yes, I wonder how their lives turned out. They def were taking the road less traveled.
The germ theory of disease ignores other issues.
For example, seasonality of the flu and cold doesn't happen near the equator.
Winter with it's limited sunlight and an already vitamin D deficient populace is a recipe for sickness.
You mentioned AIDS being caused by toxic drugs and toxic treatments, very similar to COVID killing people due to remdesevir, midalozam, and ventilators.
Why do we still focus on the "bugs" and ignore the other many factors that lead to disease? Perhaps because treating bugs is more profitable than fixing the deficiencies and preventing the other causes.
Here's a good one explaining that doctor turned fisherman.
"The evolutionary psychologist William von Hippel found that humans use large parts of thinking power to navigate social world rather than perform independent analysis and decision making. For most people it is the mechanism that, in case of doubt, will prevent one from thinking what is right if, in return, it endangers one’s social status. This phenomenon occurs more strongly the higher a person’s social status. Another factor is that the more educated and more theoretically intelligent a person is, the more their brain is adept at selling them the biggest nonsense as a reasonable idea, as long as it elevates their social status. The upper educated class tends to be more inclined than ordinary people to chase some intellectual boondoggle. "
-Sasha Latypova
"Winter with it's limited sunlight and an already vitamin D deficient populace is a recipe for sickness."
I'm more than convinced that the level of Vitamin D deficiency is the culprit in so many illnesses. I live below the 37th parallel in latitude (south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border), where the sun shines on most days of the year. Dr. Ryan Cole, MD has noted that the chances of contracting COVID are related to the amount of natural Vitamin D, a person has (or lacks), which is correlated to their exposure (or lack thereof) to the sun.
Anecdotally, this winter I contracted a nagging cough. It lingered for months through December, January, February and March. The weather here has finally turned sunny and warm enough to get outside in the sunshine within the last two weeks.
Just this evening I realized that the cough is gone.
PS: Has anyone else started questioning the standard recommendations to lather up on the sunscreen? I've never been a sunscreen user, though in my earlier decades I worked outside as a surveyor. I haven't used it at all for years, and with the exception of high-altitude snow skiing, I *never* have. (I'm 60 years old, and of Nordic / Irish / English genetics.)
Many years ago, the thought occurred to me, "How is it biologically possible that human beings survived for eons without using sunscreen?" Same question goes for how have we as a species existed for literally hundreds of thousands of years without needing to take dozens of pharmaceutical prescription drugs, right up until about ten minutes ago in terms of human history.
The entire history of virology is tainted by the widespread misunderstanding of correlation not implying causation. Ice cream consumption goes up in the warmer weather but it doesn’t mean it’s causing the inevitable rise in crime during the summer season. The fear of death and disease can make even reasonable people quite mad and the CoVid craziness is a great example of that. Blaming illness on invisible all powerful bugs is a great way to control people and make fortunes.
they perfectly followed the playbook of major religious institutions
Thanks to you and people like you, we can see the joke in all this - a fisherman at sea with a mask on! that deserves a meme. 100 people in a store and one is wearing a mask. Cows with a mask!
But in a way I can relate to the story, because I left Belgium not for a virus, but first of all, of course, for love, but also because of the dense population. Being a loner in a crowd is not easy, I felt constricted. And America still has lots of open areas, lightly populated, and probably Middle America still has even more, and a more abundant nature. To run for this latest hysteria was impossible - are there even places that did not go along? I hear of Ethiopia and North Korea, but not really a choice was there?
You're correct, Ingrid. As hard as it is for Manhattanites and the coastal elites to imagine it, North America is almost completely empty of people.
One of my favorite trivial facts is that you could fit the entire population of Earth with the borders of Texas. Another is that the halfway point between Houston and Los Angeles is still in Texas.
I remember the first time crossing Texas. My husband asked if I needed to go in the next 150 miles. That is how far it was to the next facility. And very little bushes too
I've always remembered one plane trip I took from New York to California, and how I marveled at how empty and undeveloped most of the American continent seems. The main populations are clustered on the coasts and in certain big cities.
Thank you for continuing to be the voice of reason- I recently quit reading/following those who push the self sufficiency aspect as people where putting things up like "get a big freezer for supplies and water"- but never though about the use of electricity to keep all that going. If "they" turn off your water, you can sure as hell predict gas and water would be squelched first...so I voiced that on the forum and was told I had "dark humor"...no, I won't live like that. And yes, those with the most ammo would win, but really would you WANT to? Not I! I started up a "rogue" ukulele group well after a year from March 2020 and there are those who are still angry with me for doing so. Those of us who did attend NEEDED that human contact and socialization. Sometimes the music we made together brought me to tears. Guess what? We are all still alive and kicking and I don't think we killed anyone else. Thank you for your beautiful and timely writings!
Hahahaha!
Just this week I bought my first freezer - it's massive: about 7 feet tall.
I finally succumbed to my wife's constant droning of "we should get a freezer" because of the reports that they're going to start inoculating our food supply with mRNA.
Yeah, I know. Mark's essay is a great reminder that we ain't getting out alive, no matter how big the freezer is in our garage.
I am sure it will come in handy...for awhile!
Little did the dentist know that he was wading right into a monkeypox hot spot!