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purplesurveys · 4 months

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1790

Is there a gang problem in your area? Not that I know of. If there were any it would be super underground.

Do you make your Starbucks order more complicated if it isn't busy? No. The extent to which you could customize your drinks at that place scares and overwhelms me, lmao. I've always just gotten whatever's on the menu.

Do you consider airports to be emotional places? Yes, I've always held a quiet resentment towards airports because sending off my dad, who works abroad, has been a regular occurence in my life since I was 2. I've never felt nice in them, even when I'm already the one traveling, because the bitter goodbyes are all I remember.

Where do you need to be? Nooooooooooofuckingwhere. I'm happy to be home and holed up in my room. I've been out all week for Christmas parties and errands.

Would you date an already attached person? No.

When you marry, will you wear white? Yeah, assuming that happens to me.

What vaccine that you've received hurt the most? All injections hurt the same to me – it's the side effects that vary. So far the Covid vaccines and boosters have sucked the most.

Do you ever feel like you're being watched? I mean sure, but it's never been like a stalker-type situation. It's fairly easy to find myself in situations where I'm watched, like when I'm presenting a Powerpoint to a whole room.

What will it take to make or break this day for you? My day's already made because I got a box of macarons from a frequent work supplier today. As far as break, idk. There's loads of bad news I could possibly get.

Would you give up a dream for someone you loved? I was willing to in the past, and looking deep down I don't think that has changed. I love deeply. I can always find ways to make the most out of life, and I think the only time I would back out is if our values or directions in life are entirely different and stand no chance of being reconciled in any shape or form whatsoever.

Could you date someone who's only been your friend for a long time? I did. Prior friendships are what I prefer in relationships too.

Do you prefer to date various people or do you pretty much fall into monogamous relationships quickly? I've only ever been in a monogamous relationship. It's what I prefer as a setup, but generally I don't date anymore.

Are you afraid to ask people out on dates? It's not that I'm afraid. I'm just not interested.

Do you think it's better to look for love or let it find you? I let things happen naturally.

Have you ever found yourself worrying about commitment? Never been a problem for me.

Would you get involved with someone if they had a child already? Preferably not but if I'm really into the person, I think it's something I'm willing to try. I'm nowhere near ready to be a stepmom, but no one ever really is.

Have you ever learned an important lesson as a result of a break up? Yeah. I think that's part of the role of breakups...

Have you ever gotten back in touch with an old flame after a time of more than three months of no communication? Nopes, it was more the opposite for me. I kept in touch for the next three months thinking things had a chance of changing, then realized how unhealthy it was for me so I promptly cut off all lines of communication with them when the new year rolled in.

Do you or would you ever wear fake eyelashes? I did just once, realized how much I hated being made up like that, removed them before the event was even over, and never wore them again.

Do you think that smaller breeds of dogs are cuter than big ones? I like all dogs but I will say I like bigger dogs a teeny weeny bit more.

When was the last time you slept in a tent? Two years ago.

What brand of make-up do you prefer to use? I don't follow makeup brands.

Do you have any siblings and if so, what're they like? Nina is very independent, naturally defensive (almost to a fault), but also sensitive. We all kind of tiptoe around her since she can cry about anything. She's incredibly artistic and resourceful and is reliable in many situations. I don't know much about my brother apart from him liking K-pop girl groups and having a sharp memory. He doesn't show much of a personality beyond those two things.

What was the last television show that you sat and watched multiple episodes of? Gyeongsong Creature.

Is there anything significant happening this month? It's Bea's last working day on the 31st and after that I'll be pretty much left to my own devices with an entire team to run.

When was the last time you plucked your eyebrows? I don't do that.

Do you have any chronic pain? No.

When was the last time you had a Poptart? Either a year or two ago. Can't remember. I don't have them often.

Do you like hot chocolate? Not in general. There's only one variant of hot chocolate I'd get on the regular, and that's a local restaurant's San Gines hot chocolate.

Who is your best guy friend? Hans, if any.

What’s your favorite Michael Jackson song? Either Smooth Criminal or Bad.

Where did you buy your favorite pair of jeans from? I don't even remember. I've had it for so long as my fave and I refuse to throw it out hahaha. Maybe at an ukay?

When was the last time you got your hair done professionally? A couple of months ago when I got another dye job.

Do you like TGI Fridays? I think it's extremely overpriced and that automatically makes me not a fan. Why pay triple the price for a plate of wings?

Have you ever gotten your legs waxed? Nope, I just shave them.

Have you ever read anything by Edgar Allen Poe? I don't think I have.

When was the last time it rained where you live? Last night the rain was pretty strong! I think we have a typhoon.

Do you like horses? They're okay, but I'm not attached to them like some people would be.

What are your grandfathers’ names? I'll only share their nicknames, which are Jun and Boy.

Have you ever seen a snake in real life? Yes. I've held one.

Do you know anyone that has been held hostage before? Only by association, but my sister's boss from when she was interning.

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ineffably-good · 3 years

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A Brief Covid Lament

Got exposed to COVID again yesterday -- for those of you who don't know, I'm an occupational therapist in geriatrics and I work in a SNF, in Seattle, where COVID started.

Yesterday, I got strong armed yet again into floating to another building where they're low on therapists to help out, and then treated a patient face to face who tested positive later in the day.

It's not a huge deal -- it's the worst exposure I've had in a long time because circumstances weren't great in that she was nauseated and I handled her emesis bag and she coughed a few times and I removed my face shield for a while because she couldn't hear me through it, but I did have a surgical mask on the whole time. Didn't occur to me that she had COVID but I did walk out and tell the rehab director that her patient was sick sick sick and that I couldn't get the full session done. Testing has been so stringent that it just never occurred to me. Wish I hadn't taken off the face shield.

Still, though, I doubt I'll get it. I'm vaccinated, plus I had it already. But it's possible. And now I have to swab test daily, although I'm still allowed to go to work as long as I'm symptom free. A year ago I would've bene quarantining at home for the next two weeks, which honestly, I'd appreciate right about now. Damn.

But *man* I'm tired of this. As a front line health care worker it's been twenty solid months of constant chaos since COVID started. It's so freaking depressing and I just feel like work is never ever going to go back to normal, ever. This is as good as it gets. Twenty months and we are *still* getting shut down to new admissions every few weeks because of an exposure or a positive test, and *still* having health scare after health scare and workload is all over the map -- more work than I can possibly get done some weeks, barely any work other weeks -- and so many people have left the workforce over the course of this that none of our open positions can be filled anymore because there aren't any applicants and those of us who are left are so, so, so crunchy and burnt out and exhausted.

I almost rage quit yesterday over the pressure to float to other buildings and that was BEFORE I cooperated and did so and then got immediately exposed to a sick person who slipped through the system.

I'm tired.

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

#whining #covid #healthcare

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tinyshe · 3 years

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Story at-a-glance

In the spring of 2021, the Biden Administration said it was seriously looking into establishing a vaccine passport system that will allow unvaccinated individuals to be legally treated as second-class citizens

In Israel, vaccine certificates are already required for entry into many public spaces. Activists warn it’s become a two-tiered society where the unvaccinated are ostracized

The public narrative is not only building prejudice against people who refuse to wear masks or get an experimental vaccine, but is also using healthy people as scapegoats from the very beginning, blaming the spread of the virus on asymptomatically infected people

With the rollout of vaccine certificates, we are stepping firmly into discrimination territory. The last step will entail persecution of non-vaccinated individuals. At that point, we will have replicated the Nazi regime’s four-step process of dehumanizing the Jews, which ultimately allowed the genocide to occur

Vaccine passports are about creating justification for segregation, discrimination and elimination of certain groups of people, in this case, people who don’t want to be part of the experimental vaccine program, which identifies them as noncompliant with top-down edicts

This article was previously published on April 6, 2021 and has been updated with new information.

As predicted in 2020, vaccine passports are being rolled out across the world, including the U.S. As reported by Ron Paul in his Liberty Report,1,2 which streamed live March 29, 2021, the Biden Administration said it was "seriously looking into establishing some kind of federal vaccine passport system, where Americans who cannot (or will not) prove to the government they have been jabbed with the experimental vaccine will be legally treated as second-class citizens."

While Biden has yet to formally announce such a program, Paul warns that if it happens, this system "will quickly morph into a copy of China's 'social credit' system, where undesirable behaviors are severely punished." I've been saying the same thing for many months now, and there's every reason to suspect that this is indeed where we're headed.

Indeed, listen to Ilana Rachel Daniel's emotional plea from Jerusalem, Israel, where a "Green Pass" is now required if you want to enter any number of public venues and participate in society. Daniel, who emigrated from the U.S. to Israel 25 years ago, is a health adviser, activist and information officer for a new political human rights party called Rappeh.

The COVID-19 data simply don't support the rollout of this kind of draconian measure. In the absence of a serious, truly massively lethal threat to a major portion of U.S. citizens, having to show vaccine papers in order to travel and enter certain social venues is clearly more about imposing top-down government control than safeguarding public health.

We're Looking at the End of Human Liberty in the West

Mandatory vaccine passports will be massively discriminating, and are quite frankly senseless, considering the so-called COVID-19 "vaccines" don't work like vaccines.

They're designed to lessen symptoms when the inoculated person gets infected, but they do not actually prevent them from getting infected in the first place, and they don't prevent the spread of the virus — which is being proven by the number of fully vaccinated people who not only are coming down with the Delta variant of COVID, but are being told they can spread it to others.

With statistics like this, vaccine passports are nothing but loyalty cards, proving you've submitted to being a lab rat for an experimental injection and nothing more, because in reality, vaccinated individuals are no safer than unvaccinated ones. It's a truly mindboggling ruse, and unless enough people are able to see it for what it is, the world will rather literally be turned into a prison planet.

In Israel … we're hearing from activists that it's a two-tiered society and that basically, activists are ostracized and surveilled continually. It is the end of civil society, and they are trying to roll it out around the world. ~ Naomi Wolf

As noted by former Clinton adviser and author Naomi Wolf, mandatory COVID-19 passports would spell the "end of human liberty in the West." In a March 28, 2021, interview with Fox News' Steve Hilton, she said:3,4

"'Vaccine passport' sounds like a fine thing if you don't understand what those platforms can do. I'm [the] CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it's not about the virus, it's about your data.

Once this rolls out, you don't have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all. It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency. Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans.

Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. You credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included.

This has already happened in Israel, and six months later, we're hearing from activists that it's a two-tiered society and that basically, activists are ostracized and surveilled continually. It is the end of civil society, and they are trying to roll it out around the world.

It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized."

Largest Medical Experiment in the History of the World

As noted by Donald Rucker, who led the Trump Administration's health IT office, the individual tracking that goes along with a vaccine passport will also help officials to evaluate the effectiveness and long-term safety of the vaccines. He told The Washington Post:5

"The tracking of vaccinations is not just simply for vaccine passports. The tracking of vaccinations is a broader issue of 'we're giving a novel biologic agent to the entire country,' more or less."

In other words, health officials know full well that this mass vaccination campaign is a roll of the dice. It's the largest medical experiment in the history of the world, and vaccine certificates will allow them to track all of the millions of test subjects. This alone should be cause enough to end all discussions about vaccine mandates, yet the experimental nature of these injections is being completely ignored.

Again, by shaming people who have concerns about participating in a medical experiment and threatening to bar them from society, government officials are proving that this is not for the greater good. It's not about public health. It's about creating loyal subjects — people who are literally willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their children at the request of the government, no questions asked.

Vaccinations Are the New 'Purity Test'

Wolf also points out the horrific history of IBM, which developed a similar but less sophisticated system of punch cards that allowed Nazi Germany to create a two-tier society and ultimately facilitated the rounding up of Jews for extermination.

Suffice it to say, some of the most gruesome parts of history are now repeating right before our eyes, and we must not turn away from this ugly truth. Doing so may turn out to be far more lethal than COVID-19 ever was.

The short video above features a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor who compares mask wearing to, as a Jew, having to wear a yellow star to mark their societal status. However, back then, everyone understood what was happening, she says.

At no point were they lied to and told that wearing the star was for their own good, which is what's happening now. So, in that respect, the current situation is far more insidious. She says the "hypocrisy in the public narrative," which claims that we need to wear masks to protect the old, "is absolutely unbearable." "I would love to die in a state [of] freedom," she says, "than live like this."

She adds that at her age, her life expectancy is short, and she would gladly exchange her death for the life and happiness of the next generations. She wants the younger generations to have the freedom "to live their lives, as I have lived mine ... To see people defile their children with masks is something totally unbearable to me," she says. Vaccine credentials, in my view, are even more comparable to the Jewish yellow star, but in reverse.

Not having the certificate will be the yellow star of our day, which will allow business owners, government officials and just about anyone else to treat you like a second-class citizen and deny you access to everything from education, work and travel, to recreation, social engagements and daily commerce — all under the false guise of you being a biological threat to all those who have been vaccinated.

According to the public narrative, vaccine certificates are a key aspect of getting life back to normal, but the reality is the complete converse, as they will usher in a markedly different society that is anything but normal.

Florida Bucks the Trend

As a resident of Florida, I must applaud Gov. Ron DeSantis who announced March 29, 2021,6 that he would issue an executive order forbidding local governments and businesses from requiring vaccine certificates.

He followed up with that order April 2, 2021, saying he was calling on the state legislature to create a measure that will allow him to sign it into law. Unfortunately, U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams issued an injunction August 8, 2021, against enforcing the order; whether DeSantis chooses to fight to keep it is yet to be seen.

"It's completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply participate in normal society," he said at the time he announced the order.

But, no matter what comes of DeSantis' order, other states and countries that do decide on such a requirement are also bound to face the problem of black market vaccination certificates, which have already started emerging.7,8

As reported by the Daily Beast,9,10 a number of health care workers have been caught bragging about forging vaccination cards on their social media channels. Apparently, they have not yet realized the public nature of the internet, but that's beside the point.

In Florida, a man working at a web design company was fired after posting a TikTok video advertising fake vaccine cards,11 and in Israel, where the two-tier society is already forming, a man was arrested for making and selling forged COVID-19 vaccination certificates, which are now required for entry into restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, swimming pools and other public venues throughout the country.12

Around the world, people are also being arrested for administering fake vaccines13,14,15,16,17 and selling bogus COVID-19 tests.18,19

Eugenics and Hygiene Obsessions

While it's often considered bad policy to compare anything to the Nazi regime, the comparisons are growing more readily identifiable by the day, which makes them hard to avoid.

Aside from the parallels that can be drawn between mask wearing and/or vaccine "papers" and the Jewish yellow star, there's the Nazi's four-step process for dehumanizing the Jews,20 — prejudice, scapegoating, discrimination and persecution — a process that indoctrinated the German people into agreeing with, or at least going along with the plan to commit genocide.

In present day, the public narrative is not only building prejudice against people who refuse to wear masks or get an experimental vaccine, but is also using healthy people as scapegoats from the very beginning, blaming the spread of the virus on asymptomatically infected people.

With the rollout of vaccine certificates, we are stepping firmly into discrimination territory. The last step will entail persecution of non-vaccinated individuals. This in and of itself also harkens back to the Nazi regime, which was obsessed with "health guidelines" that eventually led to the mass-purging of "unclean" Jews. As reported by Gina Florio in a December 2020 Evie Magazine article:21

"When Hitler first came to power in Nazi Germany, he kicked off a series of public health schemes. He started by setting up health screenings all over the country, sending vans around to every neighborhood to conduct tuberculosis testing, etc.

Next up was factory cleanliness — he launched a robust campaign encouraging factories to completely revamp their space, thoroughly clean every corner … After the factories, the next mission was cleaning up the asylums …

What started as seemingly innocent or well-meaning public health campaigns quickly spiraled into an extermination of races and groups of people who were considered dirty or disgusting. In short, the beginning of Hitler's reign was a constant expansion of who was contaminated and who was impure …

We're seeing an obsession with covering our faces all the time so we don't spread disease or deadly germs; most public places we walk into won't even allow us to enter without slathering our hands in hand sanitizer; and people act terrified of someone who isn't wearing a mask.

Nobody can say with a straight face that this is normal behavior … We're even seeing people advocate for some kind of tracking device to show that a person is vaccinated or 'clean' enough to enter a venue … Let's hope we can all learn the lessons from the past and we don't witness history repeat itself."

History Is Repeating Itself

Indeed, everyone calling for vaccine certificates — which became part of the public narrative early on in the pandemic — is guilty of following in the well-worn footsteps of this infamous dictator, repeating the very same patterns that were universally condemned after the fall of the Third Reich.

Highlighting them all would be too great a task for one article, so two glaring examples will have to suffice. In December 2020, Andrew Yang, an entrepreneurial attorney with political ambitions, tweeted the following:22

"Is there a way for someone to easily show that they have been vaccinated — like a bar code they can download to their phone? There ought to be … Tough to have mass gatherings like concerts or ballgames without either mass adoption of the vaccine or a means of signaling."

Signaling what, if not your "unclean" biohazard state? In his March 2021 Tweet, law professor, political commentator and former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Harry Litman, was more direct about the ill intent behind vaccine certificates, saying:23

"Vaccine passports are a good idea. Among other things, it will single out the still large contingent of people who refuse vaccines, who will be foreclosed from doing a lot of things their peers can do. That should help break the resistance down."

Comments like these demonstrate that vaccine passports are about creating justification for segregation, discrimination and elimination of certain groups of people, in this case, people who don't want to be part of the experimental vaccine program.

The justification is that they're too "unclean," too "unsafe" to freely participate in public society and must therefore be identified and shut out. In reality, it's really about identifying the noncompliant.

During the Nazi reign, those slated for segregation, discrimination and elimination were identified by their affiliation with Judaism (there's controversy as to whether Jewishness is an issue of race, ethnicity, religion, national identity or familial bonds, which you can learn more about on JewInTheCity.com,24 but all were relevant criteria in the Nazi's hunt for Jews).

Today, the global elimination strategy foregoes such identities, and focuses instead on identifying who will go along with the program and who will be a noncompliant troublemaker.

In short, vaccine passports are a device to identify who the loyal subjects of the unelected elite are, and who aren't. Those unwilling to enter the new world of technocratic rule without a fuss are the ones that need to be eliminated, and willingness to be a test subject for an unproven experimental treatment is the litmus test. It's really not more complicated than that.

Are You Ready To Be an Outcast?

This is essentially the conclusion drawn by Mike Whitney as well, detailed in an article25 posted on The Unz Review. I would encourage you to read the entire article as it succinctly summarizes the reasons behind the current censorship.

In his article, he points out that behavioral psychologists have been employed by the government to promote the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and maximize vaccine uptake. They also have a "rapid response team" in place to attack the opinions of those who question the "official narrative."

Mike also highlights a National Institutes of Health report26 titled, "COVID-19 Vaccination Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence," which lays out the intent to turn vaccine refusers into social outcasts as a tool to coerce compliance.

"This is very scary stuff," Whitney writes.27 "Agents of the state now identify critics of the COVID vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don't agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe …

If behavioral psychologists helped to shape the government's strategy on mass vaccination, then in what other policies were they involved? Were these the 'professionals' who conjured up the pandemic restrictions?

Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted by 'experts' as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people?

Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions, the dramatic restructuring of the economy, and the imposition of a new political order? These questions need to be answered …

Vaccination looks to be the defining issue of the next few years at least. And those who resist the edicts of the state will increasingly find themselves on the outside; outcasts in their own country."

Will You Obey?

As detailed in an internet blog titled, "Will You Obey the Criminal Authoritarians?" the 1962 Milgram Experiment (embedded above for your convenience), tested the limits of human obedience to authority, proving most people will simply follow orders, even when those orders go against their own sound judgment. They'll commit atrocious acts of violence against others simply because they were told it's OK by an authority figure.

We've already seen examples of this during the past year's mask mandates. Suddenly, people felt empowered to verbally harass, pepper spray and physically attack others simply for not wearing a mask. Families were kicked off planes because their toddlers wouldn't wear a mask. People were even shot for the grievous "crime" of not wearing a mask.

If those things were allowed to happen over mask wearing, one can only imagine what will be tolerated, if not encouraged, when vaccine certificates take full effect. The most obvious answer is to take a firm stand against devolution into inhumanity, regardless of whether you think COVID-19 vaccinations are a good idea or not. The question is, will you? In many ways, the months and years ahead will test the ethics and humanity of every single one of us.

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kamiboothblog · 3 years

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Diary of an Anxious Person Getting Her First Covid Vaccine

- Awoke at 5 a.m, two hours before the alarm, and couldn’t fall back to sleep. Why? WE KNOW WHY.

- Put on extra deodorant because, well, stress.

- Drank LOTS of water because Mom said it might help. She’s been telling me this since I exited her womb and after 51 years I finally decided it might be a good idea.

- Arrived at the medical facility a half hour early (because one can never be too early for things that terrify us). Sat in the car for 15 minutes, stomach churning, heart palpitating and also wondering what they serve at the cute little diner on the corner. Considered canceling my vaccine appointment but want to be able to attend future 80s hair band concerts without risk of covid infection so in the name of Tommy, Gina and all others who are Livin’ on a Prayer I bravely stepped out of my car.

- Entered the doctor’s office and found some relief in the fact that hardly anyone else was there (fewer people to witness the fainting spell that was soon likely to occur).

- Listened to the balding guy in front of me joke to the receptionist that she has plenty of room up on his forehead to take his temperature. Decided that if Balding Guy and I are going to die next to each other in Vaccination Land, at least he will make me laugh as we go out.

- Decided not to read the covid vaccine pamphlet that was handed to me because the mere mention of side effects would most certainly guarantee I will experience every single one of them. This is The Law of Anxiety. Plus, I’ve had them memorized for months.

- Stood on the first “X” of three taped on the floor outside of the patient rooms, waiting for the nurse to take me back for my shot. Silently congratulated myself for putting on extra deodorant.

- Looked deep into the nurse’s eyes to see if she looked competent to administer the lethal injection. She barely passed the test...but I liked her hair.

- Found out the nurse hadn’t personally been vaccinated yet. She was supposed to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because she hates shots and that only requires one shot not two. Now that Johnson & Johnson’s is temporarily off the market, it’s a future two-fer vax for this nurse. Felt immediate bond with her because we share a fear of shots - and, judging by her ‘do, a love of big hair. Began chatting with her like I was her new bestie. Made awkward jokes. Wondered if Balding Guy was making his nurse laugh. Probably a lot more. I decided to shut up.

- Felt the long-awaited needle penetrate my left arm muscle. Waited for Death to arrive.

- Wondered why I was still conscious. Rose from my seat and followed the nurse into the hallway where fellow vaccine-ers were sitting in socially distanced chairs for 15 minutes of “observation.” My hypervigilant brain began scanning my body for any unusual sensations or signs of my early demise. Nothing - except a desperate need to pee.

- Got text from childhood friend asking how I was doing. I explained that I was trying to remain upright. Friend felt this was an impressive goal. We discussed the vaccine and anxiety to keep my mind off the vaccine and anxiety as I waited to pass the crucial 15-minute mark. If I had no serious reaction to the vaccine after 15 minutes I would be allowed to go home. Home! I tried not to imagine the vaccine seeping into my organs. I wondered what other things I have taken that are not officially “FDA-approved.” Vodka?

- The nurse called several others under observation one-by-one to her station to ask them questions before allowing them to leave: What is their birthdate? Are they finding it hard to breathe? Any dizziness? And just like that, I forgot if and when I was born, gasped for breath and grabbed the edge of my chair to stop the room from spinning. Wait - no, I was fine. Good one, anxiety. Good one.

- Balding Guy got called by the nurse. He asked “how much vaccinated” he is now. The nurse guessed 60 percent. My brain channelled the Hunger Games: “May the odds be forever in your favor.”

- Finally, I was called. I heard myself answer the nurse’s questions correctly as my brain screamed, “Son of a gun! You are gonna make it, you crazy kid! You are really GONNA MAKE IT!!!”

- Deemed suitable to return to society, which I found quite concerning if not downright negligent, I was released from observation. I raced to the nearest bathroom, where my bladder let out a huge thank you. Once again, Anxious Brain scanned my body for any signs of vaccination distress. Maybe death comes at 30 minutes, not 15?

- Drove home, listening to the 90s on 9 channel to reassure myself that if Britney Spears and her boyfriend can make it through covid vaccinations without any drama, so can I. That’s right - work, b**ch.

- My new vaccination card is a reminder that in one month I have to do this all over again. Talk about a Debbie Downer. But hey, at least I’m halfway done with this process, which means I’m halfway back to hair band concerts. Balding Guy, see you again on May 14th - and maybe at a future hair band concert (I hope he sees the irony in that last statement).

Hair’s to a freer, healthier, safer summer!

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didanawisgi · 3 years

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Response to attacks from dr. David Gorski

Published on TrialSite (August 25, 2021)

My name is Geert Vanden Bossche. I received my PhD in Virology at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, and I have held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Germany and Belgium. I also have worked in R&D and vaccine development for GSK, Novartis, and Solvay Biologicals. Next I was a Senior Program Officer for the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team, and from there went to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) and was the Senior Ebola Program Manager. Then I joined the German Center for Infection Research as head of the Vaccine Development Office. Currently, I work as a consultant on biotech/vaccine issues, and I also do my own research on “natural killer” cell-based vaccines. I have argued that immune escape due to the current COVID-19 vaccines is driving new variants as the virus evolves its way around the inoculation. Dr. David Gorski is a Wayne State University of Medicine (Detroit) associate professor in oncology and surgery. He is also chief of the breast surgery division. Gorski has launched several “hit pieces” about me and my views. In one article, he attacks the notion that vaccines have a part in driving variants. He also has criticized YouTuber/intellectual Brett Weinstein for supporting the use of ivermectin in our pandemic.

Lack of Expertise

In my view, Gorski is both stigmatizing honest scientists and seemingly trying to create socially-dangerous tensions between the vaxed and the unvaxed and between medical experts who hold different views on our current vaccines. Gorski creates false dichotomies wherein one is good (pro-vaccine, put faith in government) or bad (anti-vaccine, open to alternate views and arguments), and this type of discourse and rhetoric is incompatible with science.

Gorski is also largely scientifically illiterate in the fields of virology, immunology, vaccines, and evolutionary biology. He cannot see that both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are involved in the evolutionary dynamics of the pandemic; his effort to blame the latter category is unfair and potentially dangerous. Dr. Gorski is quick to mix up unrelated topics to create parallels that don’t make sense. He unscientifically conflates or compares data about: live vaccines and inactivated vaccines; epidemics and pandemics; measles and SARS-CoV-2; herd immunity and vaccine coverage rates; efficacy with effectiveness in vaccines; and sterilizing immunity with transmission-reducing immunity.

He also unfairly lumps me in with antivaxxers when I am pro (beneficial) vaccines. Much of this is likely based on the fact that Gorski’s expertise is largely lacking. His professional expertise in breast surgery seemingly does not allow him to opine intelligently about the topics at hand. And he regularly gets tangled up in his own misunderstandings and contradicts himself. Also, he sets himself up as a maximal “pro-vaxer” despite the noted lack of expertise in the various disciplines that apply to vaccination during a pandemic.

Innate Immunity

Gorski possesses no understanding of the workings of innate immunity, i.e., innate oligospecific antibodies or natural killer cells. He does not know the difference between innate (i.e., polyreactive) and naturally-acquired (i.e., antigen-specific) antibodies. This is clearly reflected by Gorski’s list of ‘factors proposed to explain the difference in severity of COVID-19 in children and adults’. None of these factors could explain why not only children, but any young and healthy individual, could become susceptible to Covid-19 disease only a few months after they got asymptomatically infected. This can only be explained as a result of suppression of protective, innate antibodies by spike-specific antibodies (including vaccinal antibodies) as the latter outcompete innate antibodies for binding to SARSs-CoV-2. Gorski’s list, therefore, is completely irrelevant in regard of the overarching mechanism of natural immune protection against Covid-19.

He doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the difference between naturally acquired immunity’s sterilizing cell-mediated immunity (CMI) and the S-based vaccines’ lack of CMI. He fails to see that there is currently no evidence of population-level immune selection pressure on CMI-mediated, sterilizing immunity induced in previously symptomatically infected persons. He doesn’t seem to realize that only a minor fraction of the population acquires protective immunity against COVID-19, whereas the vast majority are naturally protected by their first line of innate immune defense (a notion, he obviously didn’t even hear about).

Gorski specifically claims that younger people are now getting infected more because, “the variant is so much more transmissible and, therefore, the higher the percentage of the population that needs to be immune.” He doesn’t even seem to realize that these younger (<65 years) and healthy people (i.e., the majority of the population) proved to be immune during the previous waves. So why would they all of a sudden lose their immunity a few months later? Further hurting his credibility, Gorski refers to ivermectin as an “anti-worm” drug and wildly misrepresents the evidence so far showing that it can help with COVID-19. Again pushing the false either/or paradigm, he puts ivermectin in the “bad” category without any nuances.

Contradictio in Terminis

The doctor seems to miss the fact that, “spreading” SARS-CoV-2 relates to infection or pathogens, not to the disease they may potentially cause. Gorski seems to forget that despite the fact that all knew that the efficacy of these vaccines was not 100%, the primary goal of these mass vaccination campaigns was to generate herd immunity. Now, maybe Gorski doesn’t really understand what herd immunity is about, but it suffices to remind him that it relates to the observation that unimmunized people can be protected provided the vaccine coverage rate in the population is high enough to prevent viral transmission. Gorski is trying to make people believe that herd immunity would imply vaccination of the total population, which is almost a contradictio in terminis.

By going to ridiculous extremes to make his case, Gorki is basically just making himself ridiculous. He also lumps me in with folks claiming that stray spike proteins from the vaccinated are causing major harm, when I have never taken that view. He thinks that because a virus has a somewhat higher infectiousness, it will in no time dominate all other circulating variants, no matter the pressure that is exerted by the human population. All of the more infectious variants were isolated before end 2020. So why is it that only quite recently have the more competitive ones started to spread widely? For somebody who obviously has big holes in his knowledge of virology and basic immunology, it can, indeed, be difficult to understand that viral spread in a population is determined by the interplay between viral infectious pressure and population-level immune pressure. The most blatant example of this is where he contradicts himself in saying: ‘Vaccines is a selective pressure’. Per definition, though, selective pressure is known to drive immune escape. And thus, according to Gorski, ‘vaccinating as many people as possible as fast as possible’ is the way to go!

“Quo vadis, homo sapiens?”

It is simply impossible to achieve herd immunity with these vaccines for reasons I clearly explained in my contribution titled, “Quo vadis, homo sapiens?” No matter the level of uptake of these vaccines, they’ll never produce any kind of herd immunity, as they’re merely turning young and healthy people (who’re naturally capable of eliminating the virus) into asymptomatic spreaders. Secondarily, herd immunity has nothing to do with immune selection pressure. On the contrary: neither innate antibodies nor immunity induced by recovery from disease (i.e., the only 2 types of immunity that contribute to herd immunity) are spike (S)-directed, so they do not exert selection pressure on viral infectiousness (i.e., determined by S), in contrast to the immune response induced by vaccination. Gorki is among the many stubborn know-it-alls who pretend that further increasing vaccine coverage rates will stop the virus from spreading and further evolving. All this without any single scientific argument backing his statement. Substantial outbreaks are still taking place in countries with high vaccine coverage rates, clearly demonstrating that vaccine-induced herd immunity is a myth.

Gorski is also completely missing the point on the lambda variant. He stares at different variants in regard of their sensitivity to vaccine-induced neutralization whereas the key message of the publication I alluded to was that i) increased viral infectiousness is insufficient to ensure sustained viral transmission in a massively vaccinated human population (i.e., a population that exerts widespread spike-directed immune pressure on viral infectiousness and ii) that additional mutations in the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the spike protein may substantially contribute to the decreased neutralizing capacity of vaccine-induced antibodies against any given variant (as mutations in the RBD alone may not explain the decreased neutralizing titers). In other words, variants may incorporate additional mutations in the NTD to dramatically increase their resistance to vaccine-induced anti-S antibodies. This mechanism of escape neutralization is of course very problematic if it occurs in a variant that as already a high level of infectiousness (e.g., delta variant) as this may lead to a steep increase in morbidity and mortality rates in the population. Gorski’s conclusion that ‘there is plenty of reason to conclude that the vaccines offer considerable protection against at least severe disease from these variants’ is, therefore, anything but based on an understanding of the virus’ evolutionary adaptation to enhanced, widespread immune pressure on viral infectivity. As a matter of fact, a such dramatic combination of high infectiousness and complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines has recently been reported https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.22.457114v1.full.pdf.

We’re curious to learn about Gorski’s predictions on how much protection the vaccines are going to provide against highly infectious variants that are completely resistant against the vaccines…

Vaccine efficacy versus vaccine effectiveness

Regardless of the fact that Gorski does not understand the difference between vaccine efficacy and vaccine effectiveness, he doesn’t even realize that the main issue is not whether or not the vaccine protects 100% or less; the real issue is that imperfect vaccines will enhance propagation of naturally selected immune escape variants, especially if high infectious pressure is combined with widespread immune pressure (due to mass vaccination).

Lies

If Gorski is unable to make his point otherwise, he’ll rely on lies:

I never stated that the emergence of more infectious variants was caused by the vaccines as Gorski pretends

I never stated that vaccines are ineffective, dangerous and that they make the vaccinated dangerous to the unvaccinated as Gorski pretends

#Geert Vanden Bossche #immunology #sars-cov-2 #covid-19 #covid-19 vaccine #selection pressure #viral escape #family medicine

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keyerrasthoughts · 3 years

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"You want to go back?"

I wanted a space for my loved ones to hear directly from me about my life updates. To hear from my perspective, why I make the decisions I make, and what my new life updates will entail. So, that is the purpose of this platform/space. Hopefully, I'll use this consistently, but only time will tell.

I wanted this post to be both my reaction to a question that I get all the time and an update on my current situation. I'll start with the update!

As I am typing this, I'm on a flight to training for a Peace Corps Response position that I have been accepted to fulfill. I will be serving as a COVID-19 Community Vaccination Center Mission Support Volunteer for the next 3-ish months. I've been asked multiple times "what will you be doing?" Long explanation short, I'm not entirely sure. I will be serving in Maryland doing logistical support to vaccine clinics. That could mean a lot of things from helping people sign in, traffic control, line control and more. Fortunately, I'll be training over the next couple of days and will be able to give a more detailed explanation in the future. But for right now all I can say is I'm truly honored to be able to serve in this capacity to help with Coronavirus relief and response.

Secondly, I wanted to address a question that I get a lot "you want to go back?" Some context, I get this question often in response to me saying that my plan is to return to my Peace Corps service when it is safe to do so. I served in Tonga for 7 months before we were evacuated due to Covid-19.

Honestly, it frustrates me when I'm asked because the question feels based on misconceptions about the country where I served. Tonga is a beautiful country and I had an amazing time serving there. I was welcomed with open arms and hearts into my host family's home, the community that hosted our training for 2 months, and my community where I served for 5 months. I am forever grateful for each of them.

It's true that where I served I only had electricity from sunset(8pm-ish) till about 2am. And I didn't have running water in my bathroom, so bucket showers were my thing for a bit. But, I loved it. All of it. The sunlight gave me all the light I needed in my lovely home. And particularly on hot, humid days a cold bucket shower was just what helped me cool down.

To me, electricity is nice but not needed. Running water is cool, but I won't die without it. And that's part of the reason I was placed on an outer island where those were the conditions. Because I didn't mind doing without. This wasn't the experience for every volunteer in Tonga. All of my friends had running water and electricity 24/7. But I was SO HAPPY in my community! I felt a very pure and genuine form of joy that became my norm. A joy that I hadn't experienced in America, even with constant electricity and running water. It feels that maybe we're focused on the wrong things?

One of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers worded it perfectly, "the feeling that I'm the luckiest person in the world." I felt that all of the time! That I was the luckiest person in the world to be serving where I was. It was an honor. An honor that I hope I will be able to return to soon.

That's not to say that my service was perfect. There are problems with Anti-Black racism in Tonga. And the expectation that all Americans are White led to me being asked "where are you from?" more than I liked. Lastly, my classroom management skills were not on point, so the struggle of teaching my kids English and keeping them engaged was where a large amount of my growth occurred.

But it's THAT growth that I saw, even in those 7 months, that I hope to expand upon in my return to Peace Corps service. So when people ask me "you want to go back?" I hope you now understand why I say "yes" without hesitating. For me, from my perspective, it's a no-brainer.

I hope this shed some light on my perspective. And if you made it all the way to the end, God bless you. I appreciate you going through this with me. I'm so grateful for the love and support that I receive.

Reach out to me with your reactions, questions, and comments! I'd love to hear them all.

Thanks for reading!

With love,

Keyerra

#peacecorps #blog #lifeupdate #thoughts #keyerrasthoughts

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allie1804-fan · 3 years

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Please Assist Me (Chapter 19)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Ch6apter 10 , Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 , Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18

She Said

Back in LA, I found myself home schooling again as Covid was seeing another surge and there was still no vaccine on the horizon. It was definitely a struggle not having Keanu there in my regular day to day life especially as I still had to deal with the downsides associated with being his girlfriend – like not having my social media fix and getting photographed looking like shit while doing the grocery shopping!

The memory of that day alone together in New York was seared in my brain; And it either helped me get through, looking forward to having him home again or made things 50 times worse because it reminded me how much I missed him.

After the amazing sex and snoozing, we’d headed to a café for brunch then spent a couple of hours walking in the park. We weren’t bothered by any fans or photographers and we were just able to enjoy a relaxing time together. It was what we needed after the tension that was there because of the whole publicity issue. And the sex had left us physically relaxed too. We talked about plans for later in the year after John Wick 4 filming had concluded. There would be a 3 week spell of filming in New York then another 3 week shoot in Russia before heading back to New York to finish for a couple more months. The Russia slot had changed due to some problem with permissions to use a specific city which was why they had to break up the New York shoot.

I found myself far more stressed by the renewed lockdown and home schooling this second time around – I think I’d just got too used to Keanu being around so it was like readjusting to being a single parent yet again and I definitely had a shorter fuse.

Keanu came home for a couple of days between the New York and Russia shoots and unfortunately I took out the tension I was feeling on him. He came straight to my house from the airport, exhausted from the shoot where they’d tried to get ahead of themselves so had been doing 12-16 hour days. He’d accumulated a pile of dirty laundry which he asked if I wouldn’t mind doing.

“What? You couldn’t get hotel services to deal with this?” I snapped

“Come on, I’ve been working 6 til 10 every day this week, I just forgot” he pleaded.

“Whatever!”

Later I apologised to him. I put it down to having just had two consecutive school days that week which was exhausting physically and mentally and I’d been a bit under the weather. He forgave me but there were a couple more tense moments before he went to Russia.

The car to take him to the airport was due soon and he gathered his bags and then pulled me close. I didn’t want to let him go.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been such a bitch!” I grovelled, looking up into his beautiful chocolate brown eyes.

“Hey, it’s OK, I know it’s tough being here holding the fort. I’ve got it good, I know that. I’m busy all day and sometimes into the night on set and I don’t have all the responsibilities you have so, I know it’s hard hun but just think, in August. I’ll be back and we can all just be together for as long as we like. I haven’t accepted any other work yet so it’s just promo for Matrix and John Wick that will definitely happen and that might be done more on line now that we know it works! And who knows, I might just get you pregnant as well!”

“You have to be here to do that sweetie”

“I know” he grinned giving my nose a tweak.

He Said

The first shooting in New York went well and whilst I missed Sophia and the kids, I was working so hard that there wasn’t much time for me to dwell on it. And the memory of that special day alone together sustained me, knowing that at the end of the John Wick shoot, I’d have at least a few months at home before having to go anywhere on a shoot or promotional tour.

I kept in touch via messaging and calls and the occasional bunch of flowers or a book sent to her to let her know she was in my thoughts but I know it was harder on her being alone especially when they had to start home schooling again. Julie was still part of the bubble but her baby was still small so she wasn’t always able to do her share, so Sophia and Miranda picked up the slack.

When I managed to pop back to LA in-between the first New York and the Russia shoots, Sophia was tetchy and I wondered whether it would have been better to simply go straight to Russia and stay out of her way! But she looked tired and drawn so I tried my best to be patient and took the kids out to play in the park for a few hours to give her a break whilst I was around. It wasn’t fun being on the receiving end of her temper, but I wished I could make life easier for her all the time and not have yet another period of location shooting ahead of me. I reassured her that once I was home, we’d have a few months at least together and I hoped that maybe then we’d strike it lucky with the baby plans.

She Said

While Keanu was in Russia, it really was a case of soldiering on. I was still feeling under the weather and constantly taking my temperature in case I was somehow going down with Covid but it was always normal regardless of how rubbish I felt.

We mostly did our calls in the mornings at around 8am as Russia is 10 hours ahead. Sometimes it was phone and sometimes video call depending on how good his internet was.

The kids would usually pile in in front of the iPad at some point in each call and his smile was so heart-warming to see when they popped up.

“You got any messages for Karina?” I asked him on one call “I’m meeting her for coffee tomorrow”

“Just say hi and that I’ll try to see her and mom when I’m home in-between Russia and NY OK? Only 2 days to go.”

“Yup, I’m counting down the hours” I said showing him my phone screen where I’d set a countdown on my home screen.

The next day, Karina and I sat in the sun enjoying a coffee. Well, I should clarify, she was enjoying a coffee and I was finding mine distinctly weird.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with this milk. My coffee tastes weird."

“no mine’s fine” you sure you’re OK. You look kinda pale.

“Yeah I just think this whole lockdown and home schooling thing is wearing me down. I was OK first time around when it was just 2 a week but now I sometimes get 3 days with 5 kids and I miss Keanu!”

“Poor baby – you should see your doctor though if you don’t feel better soon …………… or maybe your OBGYN!” she said, whispering the last part.

“What?!”

“Don’t tell me it hasn’t occurred to you” Karina said incredulously. “You two are trying right?”

“What?”

‘What’ is all I seemed to be able to say! She started laughing then.

“Don’t worry, he didn’t tell me anything, I just guessed by some stuff he said without realising and now here you are looking distinctly sickly …… and you were last together about a month ago right?”

I nodded, doing the maths and realising she had a point – I hadn’t had my period in how many weeks now? I hadn’t done the calculations, what with everything going on, it had totally slipped my mind.

I could feel the colour rising in my cheeks.

“you got a test at home?”

I shook my head.

“Well go get one right after this! – he’s home the day after tomorrow right? Well you might have a lovely surprise for him eh?”

After our meet up I went straight home deciding against getting a test - I was paranoid about picking one up in person and someone recognising me and alerting the press. Instead I ordered one from Amazon which would be delivered the next morning. Karina texted me a couple of hours later to ask if I had done a test and was frustrated to hear I’d not got one yet though she got why I had bottled it. I told her I wasn’t about to tell her the result before her brother anyway!

He Said

I sank into the seat on the plane next to Chad, relieved to have the Russia shoot in the can. One of the stewards bought my requested Bloody Mary and I took a sip, a satisfied sigh leaving my lips.

“Happy?” Chad asked.

“Yeah, just glad to have a few days with Sophia if I’m honest. After this movie, my foot is coming off the pedal, I swear”

“Hard being away right? When you have a special someone at home that is?”

“Yup and she’s not been well this whole time - she’s been doing all this home schooling and it’s too much on your own. I mean those kids are great but, you know, they bounce out of bed at 7 and they just keep on bouncing til 7 or 8 at night like Duracell bunnies!”

“And you want more?”

“What?!” I spluttered.

“Come on, I can tell. You’ve said too many things that have clued me in”

I was blushing fiercely but there was little point trying to hide this from Chad. He’d known me for over 20 years and could read me like a book.

“Oh man, I must be the most transparent person on the planet”

“nahh you’re good at being guarded when you need to but, I just know you, OK? Good luck to you. I hope it works out, you both deserve it”

“Thanks man”

We landed in the early evening in LA. With the magic of the time difference, our bodies had had 12 hours of flight but it was just 2 hours after take off in terms of the time on the clock. I’d tried not to sleep too much but just enough so that I could stay awake till maybe 10 or 11pm and then catch up on my sleep that evening. I’d then have a 5 day break with Sophia before heading back to New York for the rest of the shoot.

She Said

I was like a cat on a hit tin roof from 6pm when Keanu texted to say he’d landed. I got the kids ready for bed but let them wait in their PJs so they could see him - he was there by 7.30. We kissed briefly in the entryway before he came into the house proper to greet the kids and thrill them with a Russian doll and traditional ushanka hat each. We managed to get them off to bed by 8.30, finally collapsing on the sofa.

I nestled into Keanu’s side, relishing in the warmth and closeness I’d missed for the past 3 weeks.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked.

“No, I’m fine – the only thing that seems appealing is a hot chocolate before bed if I’m honest, I’m running on empty, trying to stay up as long as I can!”

“mmmm, me too and I don’t have the excuse of a long haul flight!”

“Are you ready for your gifts?”

“mmmm yes please”

He kissed my cheek and got up to hunt in his bag.

He’d got me a bottle of Beluga vodka and a gorgeous traditional Russian scarf with pretty red roses woven on a black background.

“Hey, I guess we could have a little welcome home shot on ice?”

“Yeah sure”

“I’ll just get the glasses and I’ve got a little gift for you too.”

I went to the kitchen where my gift was already waiting on the counter and grabbed a shot glass and some ice and went back to the living room and sat down beside him again.

“Just one glass?” he queried.

“Yup, I don’t fancy it right now, sorry – anyway, here” I said handing him a small gift.

“You didn’t have to get my anything!”

“I kind of did” I said simply, making him cock his eyebrow quizzically at me as he pulled on the ribbon and unwrapped my gift. There was tissue paper inside which he pulled open.

He was quiet for several seconds, staring down in his lap before he lifted his dark eyes to mine, a single tear escaping.

“Come ‘ere”

He Said

I could often be taciturn, in difficult interviews for example, but it was rare for me to be rendered speechless yet that’s what I was after unwrapping Sophia’s gift. I’d never actually seen one before in real life, a strange thing to admit maybe for a 56 year old man, but there it was in my lap: A positive pregnancy test. We’d done it, conceived at our combined age of nearly 100!, without any great stress or strain and I was thrilled - even in my jet lagged state I felt elated and I kissed and hugged Sophia until she couldn’t take any more!

We skipped the vodka and went straight to bed, talking briefly about the details before falling asleep, both of us exhausted for our different reasons. I spooned behind her with my hand resting on her belly and her hand over mine and smiled as I drifted to sleep.

@fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithk’eanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles @bitchyslut99

#keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu #keanu reeves #romance with boss

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emptymanuscript · 3 years

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Well on both the upside and downside I talked to my eldest sibling last night. To cancel plans to see each other because of new stay at home irders. But she told me that one of her oldest friends, we’ll call her T, is a Doctor serving King and Snohomish Counties, the main facility she works in in Seattle actually treated the first identified Covid patient in the US.

According to my sister, so second hand information - making this third hand information, Dr. T has been contacted and scheduled to receive the Covid Vaccination at the end of December. Not future tense. That part is done. And barring disaster the Vaccination will occur on schedule.

Upside: vaccination distribution infrastructure has started, distribution plans are underway, and the vaccines are coming online. This is nothing short of a triumph for science and industry. It’ll be literally a life saver for millions.

Downside: Dr. T is extremely front line and she’s still not getting vaccinated until the end of the month. Whereas other places have already started distributions. That should probably set a general expectation. Yes, we’re going to get the vaccines. As individuals we’re probably not going to get vaccinated anywhere near as soon as one would hope. And there’s still a long wait ahead.

The speed of rollout has been truly phenomenal. If it’s not the record by a mile, I will be surprised. AND, in the most dialectical use of AND, it’s going to continue to be too slow for those who needed it yesterday and not tomorrow, the end of the month, or this time next year. Both are true. Neither is false. That the best ever, of all time, can still not be good enough is just the acceptance of the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. It’s not a statement of blame, simply the acknowledgement that we live in an imperfect universe.

And in this imperfect universe full of trials, tribulations, betrayals, and failures, it’s important to acknowledge both the triumphs you make and that you may still not get what you need. Otherwise you’ll just be angry all the time. Take that from someone who is angry all the time. More to the immediate point, EXPECT to keep your jammies on longer than you want. There’s a lot more difficult times ahead. The vaccine is a step toward a solution NOT the final end of the problem.

Stay in place. Stay safe.

#covid 19 #covid #covid vaccine #Covid-19 #covid quarantine

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5secondsofdrama · 4 years

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dunno if anyone listened to his interview on Feldy's podcast, but he spoke to them about how he's been writing and recording during this time and how Matt Pauling was teaching about music production. Ash prides himself on being a multi-instrumentalist, and we know he has had alot of inner demons. For anyone who listened to that podcast (incl. myself) it shouldn't come as a shock he's made this album. when i listened to that podcast i did wonder if he'd release solo stuff. 1/2

also not to mention that it looks like this covid thing is probably going to run into at least 2021. in the uk (where i am) for example it looks like we're heading into another lockdown potentially for six months. so likely music events and concerts probably will potentially be cancelled that occur in the first half of next year. just my opinion on the current state of affairs right now. glad he's doing what he loves during this time. so very pleased for and proud of him. :) 2/2

***************************************

I remember hearing about the podcast, but I did not actually listen to it in its entirety. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find it because I am interested in hearing what he talks about with Feldy. I don’t think I was shocked that he created a solo album, I think what surprised me the most was the fact he had to have Modest create and run the website for him. I mean solo stuff he does shouldn’t have to be under the same management team as the band as it’s entirely separate from the band. So, unless he actually asked for Modest’s help, I’m not sure why they had to get involved. As for events and concerts being cancelled for the first half of next year, I’ve always felt like this social distancing lockdown stuff would span into next year. Of course I wanted to be wrong about that, but we are currently in October and there still hasn’t been a vaccine discovered for this virus yet. I am definitely pleased and proud of Ashton though for creating his own solo stuff.

#ask #anon #piper #10/03/2020

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tania-grey · 4 years

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Look.

I dont care what y'all do. Y'all can protest or whatever for your freedom after the pandemic. I get it. Y'all're scared that this thing is gon' be permanent, that the right to assemble will be taken permamanently. I get it. These are terrifying times.

But for those in the USA, can I jus' remind yuns that all presidential rein is temporary? That, almost guarunteed the next batch of candidates is gon' undo everything the current president put in place like he did to Obama? Like nearly every new president (slight exaggeration, but still.)?

Look. Im not for trump, i ain't against him cuz my allegience belongs somewhere else entirely. What I'm saying is y'all're so focused on yer own rights that you don' care if you spread this thing further. I saw plenty o' posts talkin' about how 'healthy people should be allowed to leave home.' Excuse me, but are you not gettin' the same news we are?? You can look and feel 100% healthy for literal weeks (a month) prior to testing positive, but still be carryin' that little bugger around an' spreadin' it everywhere. For all intents an' purposes, we are all sick before we ever feel the first symptoms!

If I'm feeling fine and have zero symptoms, that means squat. It literally means nothing when we are in the middle of a corona virus/covid19 epidemic. In this light, is it really that hard to believe and understand why governments world wide, including the US of A, is enforcing a complete lockdown? Please keep in mind that they have been using social pressure to try and keep people home. That's why the schools in the state of MO all locked down before the governor ever put out a statement to do so. The problem was- and is -that people still think its a joke, that its not a real problem and think its just like the flu....until it lands right on their front door step.

If Corona virus/covid19 was just like the flu, then we could invent a vaccine to create an immunity and insist everyone get the covid shots just like they enforce the flu shots. But there are two glaring flaws with this logic.

Research to create the needed shot will take time. Time that is not available during a wide-scale, very high mortality rate pandemic. But the doctors and supplies needed to safely carry out this research isnt properly available in the first place because of the sheer numbers of those infected and the high infectious rate with which it spread and the stark shortage of protective and medical equipments.

To have a functioning vaccination, it relys on bodily immunity that naturally occurs from exposure. The way vaccines work is they take old or weak versions of the sickness and insert it into your body. This gives your immune system the chance to successfully fight off the illness and retain a memory of the illness it fought. With this memory, it can effectively fight the full strength of the illness with minimal symptoms, if any at all.

The problem with a covid vaccination is that people who fought covid19 successfully are not immune to it. In fact, they have it again. This means there is no vaccine possible and that the only hope is to find a cure, rather than a vaccine, since the human body is not capable of 'remembering' the covid virus to fight it off effectively.

So if you see people trying to prevent a mass gathering, dont be so shocked. Those nurses see first hand the horror of what goes on in hospitals and are doing you a favor. They weren't asked by the government to protest your protests. They asked themselves if they could live with letting people get even more sick, making more patients suffer through covid 19 and they looked at themselves and asked what kind of nurse or doctor would they be if they did. And so when they get off work, instead of sleeping or eating, they stop you from making the pandemic worse because they are thinking about your individual well being. Because they cant handle the thought of yet another person dying from asphyxiation and blue lips. They cant stand having to watch yet another person getting a tracheotomy. Having to force people in pain to stand up and walk around their room when it literally is the painful equivalent of glass in their lungs because that they only way to break it up and the patients are begging to lay back down where its comfortable. People are are getting painful bronchitis and pnemonia from this thing and now... doctors are saying it can even be spread through farting. How the h*ll are we supposed to protect ourselves from farts??

For the love of all our grandparents. For the love all those with immune disorders. With lung disorders. With allergy disorders. For the two week old babies testing positive. For the love of yourself. Just. Stay. Home. Its not some flipping joke. My sister is not a joke when she says a doctor in her hospital just got a tracheotomy a whole week later than he should have because the people working there were too emotionally attatched to treat him like any other patient. Yeah. Because dying people is joke (#sarcasm). Please be selfless to save other people. The laws made are because of idiots who dont listen so if you wanna go off on someone, go off on the idiots instead who let their children bike around the neighborhood with their friends and make large gatherings at the local parks talking and drinking and not caring if there's over 15 people withing a single 8 foot radius. They are why lockdown is now politically enforced.

Would you like some more facts about covid19 that makes it terrifying? Its stays in the air for 3 hours. You really think its a bright idea to go protesting about literally anything? You really think a mere 6 foot distance is gonna help you when you walk through that same air space mere seconds after the last person did when its stays in the air for three flippin hours?? I'm sorry, but where is the logic in this?

To protect me, to protect my family, to protect my friends, to protect literally every human I'm surrounded by, I'm happy to give up my right to assemble. Because you know whats more important than my individual rights? Human lives. And that is the hill I will die on.

#tg 4/21/k20 #covid2019 #covid 19 #covid2020 #covidー19 #covid19 #covidmemes #quarentena #quarentreino #quarentine #corona virüsü #coronavirus #virus corona vũ hán #coronamemes #coronavid19 #coronapocalypse

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theseadagiodays · 4 years

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May 4, 2020

This is Not a Performance

Irving H Bolano’s incredible repurposed newspaper fashion for the Met Gala Challenge on Twitter #HFMetGala2020

May the Fourth be With You as you reach the next chapter of this current sci-fi drama we seem to be living through. As the saying goes, reality can be stranger than fiction. But it just happens to be a many red-eyed virus rather than an evil, black-masked father that we’re fighting as we all walk around like Storm Troopers.

There are so many aspects of our lives, during Covid, which make it feel like we are actors in a make-believe story. First of all, we’ve all become movie stars, with our faces, homes, and even pets showcased on our own silver screens. As isolated as we are, our private lives now play out in the public sphere more than ever - no paparazzi required. For some, this invasion of privacy is unwelcomed. But for many people, it satisfies a secret longing to share themselves with a wider audience. After all, deep down, everyone wants to be seen and heard (I guess, me included, since I have this blog, after all). It’s why TikTok and YouTube and Facebook have become multi-billion dollar companies so quickly. And now, while this pandemic is a harsh daily reminder of the impermanence of all things, it makes sense that these digital missives are an attempt to seek immortality, in some strange way.

As someone whose work responds to human’s need to have a voice, I truly get why this is the case. And I love that this time has turned housewives into opera stars, and health care workers into hip hop dancers, and housepets into circus performers. But, at the same time, I have become very aware of the masks that we wear, even inside our homes, to portray a certain self to the world that may stray quite far from our authentic selves. The expression “dance like no one is watching” acknowledges the fact that we all tend to perform when we have an audience, and perhaps we’re only truly ourselves when we don’t. I understand that the way we “perform” ourselves online gives each of us a chance to reinvent the fictions we want our stories to have. So, while I surely take some guilty pleasure from intimate glimpses into strangers’ lives, I also do so with a certain skepticism about the veracity of what I’m seeing.

This became particularly true for me when I received a recent link from my friend and amazing singer/songwriter, Dominique Fricot. Capitalizing on this current trend of oversharing, he cleverly asked his fans to film their morning routines for the music video of his new song, Wake Up, by his duo, Flora Falls. Dom’s warm tenor voice blended with his partner’s breathy tones feel just like a lazy morning in bed. But I’ll leave it up to you to decide just how accurate these portrayals of people’s idyllic daytime rituals actually are.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EbsqXou5FeY

May 5, 2020

Homeschool Heroes

About twenty years ago, I was invited to adjudicate a youth music competition in the Yukon. Travelling to one of the northernmost inhabited spots on earth, I imagined that my greatest surprise might have been a polar bear or Northern Lights sighting. But it turned out to be something entirely different. Among the 25,000 residents of the thriving metropolis of Whitehorse exists a treasure trove of talent. I could not believe the incredibly honed skills and nuanced expression with which these 11-18 year-olds played. Wondering why, I developed a theory that I now call SLoW: Sheltered Living Wonder. When long, dark days, cold climates or pandemics force people indoors, they tend to spend inordinate amounts of time on creative endeavors and skill development. In other words, they slow down and take time for wonder.

This theory has surely applied during these past few months of sheltering in place. One of the most remarkable examples has been the inventiveness that many of my friends have brought to their first attempts with homeschooling. So, I wanted to give a few shout outs to some of these Homeschool Heroes and the highly imaginative projects they’ve done with their kids.

Stunning Easter Eggs made from natural materials and dye, by my friend Jane Cox and her kids (Botany lesson)

Candy Covid virus, made by Amelia, my friend Jen Sanke’s daughter, as she learned about the virus’ proteins (Biology lesson)

But perhaps the prize for most complex homeschool project has to go to my architect friend, Bryn Davidson, who upon returning from Australia, in late March, had to fully quarantine for 2-weeks. So, with his 5-year old son Bei as helper, this Physics lesson allowed him to enjoy home delivery beer while in isolation. Just brilliant!

https://youtu.be/FF9-2dWoUtc

May 6, 2020

Living in livestream

So today, 5 million British Columbian’s awaited our “sentence” with baited breath, as word spread that our provincial prime minister would deliver the Re-Open BC plan at 3 pm. I have to admit, it felt a bit like when you were “grounded” as an adolescent and then your parents returned certain privileges to you. Of course, I’m well aware that our province has already been far more licentious than many places around the globe. We’ve been fortunate to maintain reasonably low numbers of infection (just over 2,000), with counts as low as 8 new cases per day, at this point. So, while our provincial parks closed, our beaches never did. While we were encouraged, within a reasonable range of home, to be active outdoors, we were not restricted to walks only within the 100 metre radius of our house, as my Israeli friends were. And while we could still shop at gardening and furniture stores, to make sheltering at home more enjoyable, New Zealanders had nothing but grocery stores and pharmacies open, for two months.

I have sensed the gratitude my fellow Vancouverites have felt about these privileges. But that does not mean that we aren’t still anxious to return to other aspects of living which we’ve missed. When lockdown began, ominously on the Ides of March (the 15th), I’d harboured a secret hope that certain restrictions might be lifted on my birthday (exactly two months later). And it turns out that Phase Two of the BC ReOpen plan will commence on May 19th, just 4 days later than I’d hoped. What I most look forward to experiencing again are small gatherings with friends, (we’ll soon be allowed to socialize in public with up to 10 people); meals inside certain restaurants and pubs (those that are able to function within WorkPlace BC’s safety regulations); visits to registered massage therapists; and hugs with select people, (”using one’s own ‘risk assessment’.”)

But in the long-range plan, the harsh reality for artists has been laid out, as Phase Four (which includes resuming large-venue concerts, conventions, and international travel) can not occur until either a vaccine has been developed, an effective treatment plan is widely available, or herd immunity is achieved. And this is not estimated to occur until mid-2021 or later. So, the prospects are still bleak for symphony orchestras, opera and dance companies, artists who perform in crowded bars, or musicians who travel for arena shows and festivals. This likely means that in order to satisfy audiences’ need to access live performance, and for artists to continue to share their creativity, livestream formats will still have to persist for some time. Therefore, I thought I’d share a few regular weekly livestream arts events here, both from Vancouver, LA & NY.

Canadian National Live Art Champion, Dmitri Sirenko, who we featured at our non-profit’s annual benefit on February 20th, 2020

Every Monday Night at 7 pm PST (Vancouver) Poetry Slam: https://www.facebook.com/Vancouverpoetryslam/

Every Thursday at 5 pm PST (LA): LIVE Art Battles - Watch painters do their magic in just 20 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWJoWGVwzGtk99nTOCib9vg

Every Thursday at 8 pm EST (NY): Spotlight on Plays - famous actors perform readings of theatre pieces, online: https://www.broadwaysbestshows.com/post/the-best-of-series/

May 7, 2020

Collateral Blessings

So many thoughtful writers are adding to the discourse, as we all strive to make meaning from what can feel like a senseliess time. I have so appreciated the abundance with which people are sharing these missives, right now. Every day, bursts of inspiration or flickers of insight come my way, thru texts, emails and Facebook. Like adventurers, traveling together thru the dark of night, we shine light on guideposts, anywhere we can find them, as we collectively quench each other’s thirst for wisdom.

One of the most profound writings I‘ve recently discovered came from a stranger’s blog. In The Examined Family, Courtney Martin, without ever diminishing the gravity of the havoc that this virus has wreaked, writes about some of the assets that have also come out of this time. New friendships with neighbors. A long-neglected puzzle completed with her kids. The time to draw and truly notice an artichoke in her back garden. My good friend Juan calls these collateral blessings. This reference to the accidental gifts that this cruel virus has given us, is a beautiful twist on “collateral damage”, a term coined to explain accidental friendly-fire deaths during the Gulf War. Commenting on the anticipatory nostalgia that she projects she will feel about certain things, once this time has passed, Courtney writes:

“I instantly feel overwhelmed at the prospect of schedules and stuff. I don’t want to go back to our former accumulation or frenetic pace. I don’t want to stop texting (my neighbor) my little triumphs. I don’t want to forget about the artichokes in the garden. I don’t ever want to forget this happened--the grief and the beauty of it. I’m not even sure that will be possible, but if it were, I wouldn’t want it. I don’t want to vote like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to eat like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to consume like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to schedule like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to mother or daughter or befriend or neighbor like it didn’t happen. I don’t want to sit inside this little life, noticing and appreciating and breathing, like it didn’t happen. There is unnecessary suffering all around me, and inside of me, too, but there is also necessary meaning. May we hold on to that.”

You can read her full entry here: https://courtney.substack.com/p/unnecessary-suffering-and-necessary?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3OTg0NDcyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzU1NDMsIl8iOiJCTnk2VyIsImlhdCI6MTU4NzA1MjgyMCwiZXhwIjoxNTg3MDU2NDIwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjA5MjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.puI9NMne-783ypInpvTkJ96T237WcrTo2ItDhqlkMiY

May 8, 2020

Nostalgia

I’m rarely one prone to nostalgia. My childhood photo albums are in storage. I have no family heirlooms displayed in my home. My tendency is to revel in the present or dream about the future. But this pandemic has strangely turned me into a sentimental fool. Perhaps this return to simpler times, where we seldom shop, where we wander mostly by foot, or where we get to know our neighbors better, makes us long for the past in certain ways.

For me, I’ve honored this by resurrecting my daily teenage Twizzler habit - a candy I’ve rarely eaten since then, but that now feels so satisfying during my Netflix & Chill evenings (while watching films almost as old like Groundhog Day & Anchorman).

I’m also listening a lot to Old School Hip Hop, where the explative-free rhymes of the 90’s feel so strangely innocent. It’s refreshing to listen to these musicians spit verses that merely celebrate the joys of dance and rap, rather than ranting about gun violence and other societal ills. Run DMC It’s Tricky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-O5IHVhWj0) and Beastie Boys Body Movin’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvRBUw_Ls2o) happen to be personal favorites.

Last month, I was tickled by an old memory while planting a lilac bush in my backyard. I suddenly remembered a story about my college boyfriend, whom I hadn’t thought of in 30 years. Our relationship started a bit secretively, so as not to hurt his ex’s feelings. So, one May afternoon, we snuck away to a distant park that was hosting a Lilac Festival. Unfortunately, our ruse was quickly spoiled when a candid photo of our picnic under the purple blooms was plastered all over the front page of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle the next morning.

Another sweet memory returned in culinary form. Every Tuesday, for 7 years, my mother selflessly drove me an hour from home and back, for my flute lesson. And to break up the long drive, we regularly stopped at Bickford’s Pancake House for my favorite adolescent treat: breakfast for dinner. Their specialty was the Dutch Baby Apple. And I finally made my first homemade attempt at this deceptively easy delicacy, last Tuesday.

This has also been a time to return to bedtime stories (some I’ve read to friends’ kids, and others for adults to hear.) The Great Realisation by British performance artist, Tom Foolery, has been making the social media rounds. But in case you missed this touching tale that looks back on this time as if the tale is being told in a not-so-distant future, it’s a wistful story about some aspects of modern life that we may never long for in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4

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argylemnwrites · 4 years

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Sorry to bother you, but how do you think the impact of COVID-19 would be on developing countries? And are all the rumours about tropical countries wouldn't get affected much true? And how far is the advance in research about possible cure or vaccine for this (will it be available before huge damage occurs both regarding mortality and economic concerns)?

Not a bother at all! I’ll be up front and say that my healthcare experiences are exclusively US-based and that I have never spent time on a medical mission or done Doctors without Borders or anything like that.

In general, developing countries don’t have the healthcare infrastructure that would be needed to get through COVD-19 at the best-case fatality rate. Their hospitals do not have enough of the equipment, specifically ventilators, needed to support the worst cases through the infection. What is being seen in Italy, where doctors have to decide who gets a ventilator and who gets to die, would absolutely happen there, possibly on a larger scale. I suppose if the country was sufficiently rural, and populations were more isolated, the spread might be slower, but most countries do have an urban center or two, so while certain regions might not be too affected, I think the countries would still feel the impact harshly.

Another factor to consider is that protective equipment (masks, eye gear, gowns) for providers is probably in shorter supply in developing countries. This means that more doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, etc would probably contract the disease and therefore not be available to help treat and care for the ill. I think developing nations could see a higher fatality rate for COVID-19.

So work is already being done for cures/vaccines, but it will take time to get implemented, I’m going to start with vaccines, since we can use H1N1 as a guidepost. During the swine flu pandemic, a vaccine was able to be implemented with the next year’s flu vaccine. So with creation, testing, and trials, we realistically won’t have a vaccine for about a year. This, of course, only applies to the US. I am not familiar enough with restrictions on clinical trials in other countries to speak to timelines there. It wouldn’t surprise me if other countries start mass vaccination earlier, but just from a development standpoint, it would still probably be months from now. It is also worth noting that a vaccine does nothing for a patient who already has contracted the virus. At the rate this virus can spread through a community, even if we developed a vaccine today and started inoculating people ASAP, the time it takes to roll out a widespread vaccination program to millions of people is probably too slow to actually noticeably slow the rate of spread at this point.

As far as cures go, doctors are trying medications we already have to see if they have any effect, but it’s too early to prove if any medication is actually treating COVID-19. Since this a viral illness, the body will, in the majority of cases, clear it on its own. So if someone gets better after taking a medication typically used to clear influenza quicker or to suppress HIV replication, did they get better because of the treatment or did they get better as they naturally would have on their own? It will require more time and more patients in treatment trials to gather enough data to say for sure whether any of these medications have an effect, but some people are optimistic that antiretroviral meds used to treat HIV are having an effect.

The economic impact is already here en masse. Stock market in the US has crashed hard, which will impact spending for years as people worry about their financial security for retirement. Manufacturing lines in China have been disrupted, so shortages of key industrial and consumer products will inevitably occur over the next weeks to months. Italy, which is one of the 10 largest economies in the world, I believe, has come essentially to a halt. Small businesses will go under in droves. All we can do now is to try and lessen the loss of human life. And at this point, the best way to do this is to slow the inevitable spread (the term here is “flatten the curve.”), and social distancing, frequent hand washing, and self isolation if someone is ill is the best way to do so.

#not Choices #not fic #tw: coronavirus

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tcsparky-blog · 2 years

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A few thoughts on Biden’s first year

Just over a year ago, many people in this country were celebrating the results of the 2020 presidential election when Joe Biden picked up a very controversial victory over President Trump. People were seen dancing in the streets and pictures were shown on social media of folks partying all because their hated President lost. It was widely believed by many that Biden's controversial win would return America and Washington to some type of normalcy. But one year later, has it? Are we better off under Joe Biden than Donald Trump? In my opinion, absolutely no! The Biden regime has really been a complete failure so far on so many levels. What exactly has he accomplish in the past year? Let me discuss some of his many failures.

1. The Pandemic. Biden campaigned and promised that he had a better plan to fight the pandemic than Trump and many people bought into it. Now one year later, there have been more deaths and cases in one year under Biden than Trump. How does that happen? I thought Joe had a plan.? Well Joe's plan apparently isn't working! His plan and many of his fellow Democrats plans involve mandates. Like vaccine and mask mandates. It is their belief that these mandates will help stop the spread. Many individuals and businesses have been greatly affected by these mandates. People have lost jobs due to these harsh mandates. The lack of flexibility or other ideas of combating the spread has really disappointed me in their handling of this virus. What about the concept of "natural immunity" which has been proven to be just as effective as any vaccine? Why should someone have to get a shot when they have already had Covid? What proof is there that becoming fully vaccinated helps stop the spread? This administration continues to rigidly stick to the same old scientific theories that have been proven questionable in the past few months. Meanwhile the cases and deaths continue to mount across the nation with no end in sight. Many of these cases are in the most vaccinated areas of the country.

2. Inflation. Inflation has risen to levels we have not seen in nearly 40 years. Most of these jumps have occurred during Biden's first year. Biden stands in front of a camera and brags about all the jobs his administration has created and how wages have increased. Is he even aware of the steep cost of living increases that many Americans are suffering from? What good is my 3 percent raise if I have to pay 7 percent more this year for groceries and other products? Gas prices have gone up dramatically as well. Biden decided to cut a pipeline that would have dramatically decreased our reliance on foreign oil. Biden has this genius plan called "Build Back Better" which will create the biggest tax increase in United States history and further increase inflation. Biden and his cronies have absolutely no idea how to generate a booming economy. They only know how to tear one down!

3. The southern border. Every day, thousands of undocumented people try to enter the United States at the southern border. It is among the highest during any presidency. The Biden administration seems to be turning a blind eye to this increasing problem. While we try to be as compassionate as possible, it is impossible to help every single person trying to enter this country. Our resources simply cannot allow that to happen. My biggest worry is how many foreign terrorists are entering as well. Another 9/11 is bound to happen if we continue on this lack of border security that Biden seems to be okay with.

4. Afghanistan. The debacle in Afghanistan in late Augustis a huge foreign policy blunder. While many Afghans were evacuated, we left many Americans still there. People were begging for help. The next time, maybe it might help to keep the military there until citizens are evacuated, just a thought! Biden has a long history of foreign policy disasters. And now we have the Ukraine crisis. I have absolutely no faith in this administration effectively dealing with foreign policy affairs. Imagine what Putin is thinking now? Do you think he is remotely afraid of Biden?

5. Divisiveness and leadership. A good and effective leader is able to bring people together and not point fingers. Biden has not demonstrated either during the past year. First, he quickly blamed Trump for leaving the cupboards bare in his pandemic fight, what a bunch of bull! Trump left him numerous vaccines that Biden was originally afraid of taking. Then he pointed fingers at the unvaccinated for causing the pandemic to continue. By the way Joe, many vaccinated people are also spreading the disease. Forgotten as well is his lack of transparency and work ethic. While all these problems are mounting, he is off to his home state of Delaware. And last week, he gave his first press conference in how many weeks. A good president will keep the American public in the know on his plans. Biden doesn't seem willing to do that.

Biden and his team still have time to time to turn things around, but will they? His approval numbers are dropping every day and people are getting deeply frustrated. 2024 cannot come soon enough. About 81 million voted for this guy. I often wonder why? What have we gained as a country having him lead? I really doubt things will really change anytime soon.

#biden #biden first year

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tinyshe · 3 years

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Story at-a-glance

In October 2019, mere months before the pandemic was announced, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted Event 201, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, funded by billionaire technocrat Michael Bloomberg. This tabletop exercise simulated the global response to a fictional coronavirus pandemic

Event 201 confirms that even if the virus itself wasn’t preplanned, the unprecedented and draconian response to it was

The goal of this pandemic is to usher in the Great Reset, a strategy developed and promoted by the World Economic Forum. Previously referred to as the New World Order, this “reset” of the global economy and society as a whole has been carefully planned for decades

A key component of this agenda is the transfer of global wealth and assets into the hands of the wealthy

source please go to source for video

In this video, Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, and I discuss “The Truth About COVID-19 — Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal,” which we co-wrote.

The book was released yesterday. If you preordered, thank you! If you didn’t, you can now pick it up without delay.

Thanks for all your support with the book. This is going to be an overwhelming best seller, and likely No. 1 in the U.S. We preordered 50,000 copies, but Amazon told us a few weeks ago that they needed 100,000 copies, which only happens a few times a year for any new book. The orders were placed weeks ago, but this pandemic has massively disrupted the printing industry so it is taking far longer to print books than it used to.

For that reason, your books will be delivered just a bit later than anticipated. However, if you are like me and only read Kindle books, you can get the book now! The good news is that at least 50,000 of you will get the book next week and start to understand the deep web of deception you have been led into. I deeply appreciate all your support on this book and the project to educate the masses about the truth about COVID-19.

As mentioned by Cummins, the COVID-19 pandemic surprised a lot of people, but in researching this book, we learned that vaccine companies and their investors had been anticipating a scenario like this for a very long time.

Event 201 — A Prescient Foreshadowing

Interestingly enough, in October 2019, mere months before the pandemic was announced, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted Event 201, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, funded by billionaire technocrat Michael Bloomberg. This tabletop exercise simulated the global response to a fictional coronavirus pandemic.

Amid predictions that 65 million people were dying, mass lock downs and quarantines were implemented around the world, and alternative viewpoints were suppressed through censorship under the guise of fighting “disinformation.” They even discussed the possibility of incarcerating people who question the pandemic narrative.

The need for radical censorship was perhaps one of the most striking foreshadowing in that exercise. In my view, Event 201, as a whole, confirms that even if the virus itself wasn’t preplanned, the unprecedented and draconian response to it certainly was, and Gates is a key figure in this scheme.

He may not be the mastermind, and he’s certainly not the only person involved, but he appears to be one of the front men for the technocratic elite who are using this pandemic to further their own agenda, which is nothing short of world domination through subjugation of the people.

Science and Facts Tossed by the Wayside

Many of the containment measures employed during this pandemic have never been used before, ever. Among them are the shutting down of businesses and forcing people to self-isolate at home for weeks and months on end — around the whole world! It’s quite unbelievable, and few would have thought it possible.

Clearly, it would not have been possible were it not for having spent long periods of time grooming the right people, infiltrating the right organizations and government agencies, influencing politicians and granting nongovernmental bodies global influence.

We’ve also never quarantined healthy people before. Usually, you isolate the sick and contagious. This is standard practice. But you don’t isolate non-sick people. This is a brand-new idea that has never been tried before and has no scientific basis whatsoever.

They were able to do all of this because the World Health Organization is the de facto ruler when it comes to global pandemics. What they say is what member nations will follow. And who’s the primary funder of the WHO? Not any nation, but Gates. He has, by the way, been involved with the WHO for over a decade, so this is not something he or anyone else dreamed up over some weekend event.

The End Goal Is to Usher in the Great Reset

As we describe in the book, the goal of this pandemic is to usher in the Great Reset, a strategy developed and promoted by the World Economic Forum. Previously referred to as the New World Order, this “reset” of the global economy and society as a whole has been carefully planned for decades.

A key component of this agenda is the transfer of global wealth and assets into the hands of the wealthy. According to a September 2020 economic impact report1 by Yelp, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed their doors as of August 31, 2020, and of those, 60% — a total of 97,966 businesses — were permanent closures.2

Meanwhile, between March 18, 2020, and April 12, 2021, the collective wealth of American billionaires increased by $1.62 trillion — 55% — from $2.95 trillion to $4.56 trillion. One-third of the total wealth gains by billionaires since 1990 occurred in the last 13 months!3

As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.”4 The primary benefactors of the pandemic measures include the finance and tech industries and the pharmaceutical and military-intelligence sectors.5

Vaccine Passport Is Your Ticket to Tyranny

As you’d expect, vaccine companies have been able to exploit this pandemic, in large part due to the heavy censoring of any and all preventive and early treatments. Without that censoring, I don’t believe as many people would be lining up to get these shots, seeing how they are experimental gene therapies miscategorized as vaccines.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market has been licensed. They are all being used under emergency use authorization, and a condition for an EUA is that there are no other effective treatments available. This, I believe, is the real reason why effective prevention and alternative treatments were so heavily suppressed. They, quite simply, would have rendered the vaccine moot.

In the book, we also detail how inaccurate tests, used inappropriately, created the illusion of a highly infectious pandemic and served as the basis for the fearmongering spewed by the media. In reality, the vast majority of “cases” actually weren’t. They were false positives and/or people being counted multiple times because they kept being retested, and instead of counting people, they were counting tests.

Fatality statistics were also grossly inflated by suddenly changing how death certificates are filled out and marking any person who died having had a positive PCR test within the last month, or who was simply suspected of being positive, as a COVID-19 death. Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted that 94% of COVID-19 deaths were people who died with the virus, not from it. The real cause of death was another underlying, often long-term chronic condition.

All of these statistics were artificially manipulated to make it appear we are in a sufficiently deadly and horrible situation to warrant vaccine passports, without which you won’t be allowed to participate in certain social activities or travel.

The irony is that the COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to prevent infection or spread of the virus, so being vaccinated won’t do a thing for public health. At best, it may protect the vaccinated individual from having a more serious case of COVID-19 if or when they do get infected. They encourage everyone to get vaccinated in order to ensure we reach herd immunity, yet these “vaccines” aren’t designed to provide immunity!

Since vaccination won’t prevent viral spread, the vaccine passport will fulfill but one purpose, and that is to usher in a digital surveillance mechanism that can then be expanded to encompass many other areas of life, including financial data. So, the vaccine certificate is not a passport to freedom. It’s your ticket to tyranny.

How to Take Control of Your Health

I believe your best bet, moving forward, is to address your foundational health, starting with your metabolic flexibility. You want to be metabolically flexible. What does that mean? It means that your body can seamlessly transition between burning fat and burning carbohydrates as its primary fuel. This is important, because when your body can do this, it means you are not insulin resistant.

When you’re insulin resistant, you’re more likely to have complications such as immune insensitivity, obesity, high blood pressure and distorted cholesterol patterns. Your risk for severe COVID-19 will also be dramatically increased. Thankfully, many of these issues can be simply reversed for no cost with time-restricted eating.

Secondly, you need to have enough vitamin D. For optimal health, you’ll want your vitamin D level, which you must measure using a simple blood test, to be between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (100 nmol/L and 150 nmol/L).

My peer reviewed published study6 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity” is available for free on the journal’s website. In the book, we go into more specific details about these strategies, and many others.

Freedom of Speech Is Officially Dead

“The Truth About COVID-19” will become all the more important to own and share in days to come, as I was recently forced to permanently remove all articles on vitamins D, C and zinc, as well as most articles on COVID-19, from my website. This book will now be a primary source of such information.

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

Through these progressively increasing stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these relentless attacks. I have been willing to defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats recently became very personal and intensified to the point I could no longer preserve much of the information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them.

Politicians in January 2021 managed to pass the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act.7 This piece of legislation was hidden in a 2,100-page bill8 that now provides the government with enormous legal authority to prosecute anyone for “crime” of disagreeing with the official narrative that the vaccine is the ONLY approved approach to treat or prevent COVID-19. Here is the relevant portion of this Act:

This Act makes it unlawful under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act for any person, partnership, or corporation to engage in a deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation, or diagnosis of COVID-19 or a government benefit related to COVID-19.

Remember, Hitler and Mussolini came to power LEGALLY, because they subverted the legal structures of their country. Folks, you are now seeing the same kind of subversion happening in real time in the U.S. It is obvious that this is the first assault, designed to remove your personal freedom and liberty. This law essentially abolishes the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with respect to ANY dialog on COVID-19.

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