Lockdown Fanatics Are Everywhere in Retreat

Just two weeks ago Oregon extended its lockdown into July, establishing itself as one of the governments the most in thrall to the COVID Rouge. However since then the state of 4.4 million, which has recorded just 145 COVID-positive deaths (it lost 500 to the 2018 flu), has embarked on a silent reopening. While the state still maintains a state-wide state of emergency allowing the Governor to save face, 29 of its 36 of counties have now been exempted from the lockdown and even the remaining ones have been allowed noticeable liberalization. So behind the facade, even the fortresses of the Flat Curve Society are having to slowly retreat, and much faster than they had anticipated.

About two months ago an iron carpet was descending over the world. Since then the pendulum has well and truly turned. It has been a kind of Global War on Terrorism on steroids. I’ve never seen anything like it, with a trickle of “converts” turning into a deluge in such a short time. What took years in the 2000s now only took weeks. So untenable, anti-human, and plain mad, has been the position of the COVID Rouge.

Where two months ago even half of the alt-media had succumbed to government-promoted groupthink, we now have even parts of FOX and some of the rest of the Trump-friendly media on the case.

In the early days (crazy to think that was just 8 weeks ago) Anti-Empire seemed one of precious few outlets, along with the likes of Off Guardian, Swiss Ppolicy Research, Peter Hitchens and the Ron Paul Institute still sticking up for sobriety and the big picture. (Even the often-good Marxist-libertarian Spiked was busy endlessly qualifying its arguments, repeating over and over again that Covid was “not the flu”, and treating the Imperial College with reverence.) Since then far bigger operations with enormously bigger resources how started poking holes in the officially-mandated narrative.

Their fare might not be as principled, well-reasoned and scorching, but nonetheless it is obviously much more influential given their far greater reach. This has meant Anti-Empire has naturally become a relatively more peripheral voice outshadowed by the big guys, akin to a sling shooter who finds himself reinforced by war elephants and heavy cavalry. Nonetheless, we have every intention of patting ourselves on the back for carrying the weight in the very first skirmishes, and for having been the ones to man the ramparts of the anti-lockdown resistance when the skies were darkest, the odds were longest, and our cause a lonely one indeed.

The job that still remains is to expel the COVID Rouge from every last bit of our rights they have taken for themselves and not allow any bit of the dystopian “new normal”. However, this is a struggle that will not be decided by Anti-Empire or any other media, but by the people. It will not be determined politically but organically. If the people everywhere start to cast away and ignore the insane arbitrary impositions on normalcy then the-powers-that-be will be forced to give up on them formally as well.

I also hope there will be blowback against the insanity of the COVID Rouge and that we might actually convert the experience into some gains for civil liberties and immunity from similar panics in the future. However the opposite with normalization of even more permanent surveillance is just as likely.

In any case, as the lockdown crisis continues to recede the Empire will be back to its old tricks and it’s safe to say FOX and pro-Trump media will be of no help here (to the contrary), so it will again fall to Anti-Empire and the alt-media to do what we can.

Where for a time COVID self-sanctions by governments on their own nations had briefly become the single most immediate threat to human life and its flourishing, that title will revert back to the wars and sanctions that governments — particularly the global hegemony — impose on other nations.

Anti-Empire will be mixing it up in that, as well as trying to push back (or at least document) the cronyism and economic regimentation with which the governments will react to the coming economic crisis. A crisis they laid the foundations for, have now triggered, and will now be deepening and prolonging with their corruption, impulse to control, short-sightedness, and ignorance.

Nonetheless, do excuse me if the site is updated somewhat less frequently through the end of May. Blowing up the Flat Curve Society has been as exhausting as it has been necessary, and more than that, I’m not able to get proper R & R, because where I am it’s still a strict lockdown. Even were I to chance an encounter with the police without a permit there’s nowhere to go as everything but grocery stores are still shut down.

One more thing, albeit the text above speaks of skirmishes, ramparts, slingshots and heavy cavalry that’s just picturesque language. Producing a website isn’t really a war or a battle, nor should it be.

Just as consuming a website is at its most valuable when it’s a learning experience, the same is true for producing it. It’s not about coming up with arguments for one side or another, but about figuring out the truth and speaking up for that. And that takes something that we humans find exceedingly difficult and that’s intellectual honesty.

It is the case that almost always we of the human species form our positions not on reasoned examination but on near-instantaneous hunches. Most of the time we’re merely seeking out ammunition for what we already believe in. That’s the case for the sharpest among us, as well for the simplest one. Intelligence is unfortunately merely an aid that helps us find more arguments to justify what we already hold to be true, but most of the time plays no role in determining what that something is.

The few exceptions when we’re capable of some intellectual honesty is when the opposite position is held by someone we have great respect or affinity for, or when it’s a question that is very unimportant to us, or new.

Anyone who has been a reader of this site for a period of time will notice it has a certain anti-government bias. When it has a nice word for a government it’s usually only in the sense of a check on the power of another government, or as a positive example of a less repressive state than the norm.

As such you could be excused to suspect its anti-lockdown stance is simply an automatic outgrowth of its existing biases, but is that correct? Actually, by early-March I was an agnostic on the disease willing to entertain the idea this was a disease outbreak with some unique qualities, and that there was perhaps a legitimate argument it warranted special measures. So much so that on March 10th I ran Comrade Moon’s explanation of flattening the curve. Those are not the actions of a close-minded party-fighter.

But what blew my mind, was the March 17th article by John Ioannidis in Stat News. At the time I wasn’t even aware Ioannidis was considered a superstar in the “scientific community” so I couldn’t have been swayed by his authority. For all I knew, this was some obscure article by some obscure doctor. But the information contained was explosive: The coronaviruses we already knew about before the PCR test infected tens of millions each year, and were capable of ramping up fatality rates as high as 8% when they infected nursing homes.

We were at risk of putting on an iron straightjacket over something there was no strong evidence was much more of a threat than the coronaviruses which visit us every single year.

Subsequent developments showed we would have acted prudently to have heeded Ioannidis’ warning.

What happened in, for example, New York, Northern Italy, and Belgium was sad, and we would do well to study why the outcomes there were so grim. But that has been far from the outcome everywhere. The majority of US states and European countries did not even detect excess deaths and are reopening not having gone through anything unusual in the illness sense.  Clearly some, as of yet poorly understood, local factors must had been at play beyond the straightforward virulence of the virus.

And besides, just because you got pneumonia doesn’t mean you should also cut off your leg to boot. It’s difficult to say New York improved its position by stacking Covid deaths, lockdown deaths, and economic devastation on top of each other.

164 Comments
  1. carlo151 says

    This article is a bunch of foolish thinking.

    Places like NYC and Milan were surprised and are pedestrian cities, older narrow streets and small quaint restaurants. Covid is second only to measles when it come to catching it in public.

    If you go out and get close indoors enough times, people start to travel around and it spreads again, you or someone you know will certainly get it.

  2. Afshin Nejat says

    Just imagine if these fools had full control of the government. What would that look like?

  3. Rowdy-Yates says

    The shutdown has accomplished in destroying key segments of the economy that were not needed and kickstarted a process to introduce a new economy based on Artificial intelligence and a far more sophisticated surveillance system to control and manage a population,

  4. dreamjoehill says

    Ryan Marino, MD: “I’ve been called a lot of names & accused of a lot of things by ER patients but it’s surreal to have a patient accuse me of falsifying their COVID result – because they don’t believe the virus is real – as I’m actively trying to keep them from dying from multi-organ failure from COVID. This is not a critique of the patient in this case, who needed help and had been lied to by others, but a critique of the fact that we live in a time where people are willing to deny their own reality to fit an imaginary narrative.”

    Who’s really a fanatic?

  5. sabelmouse says

    here in ireland there’s worries about ”policing the reopening of the country”
    what’s wrong with this sentence?!

  6. Kay Bee says

    Here in Indonesia some places started to begin the lockdown. And that’s when some people had found it uninteresting, boring. It’s a matter of question how long they can stand it, being locked home seeing themselves impoverished. Thanks for bringing up the news for us liberty lovers….

  7. freewheelinfranklin543 says
  8. BADGER BADGERISM (GRANDWORLDDR says

    NO FASCISM…NO VACCINE…if you want a WAR YOU WILL GET ONE

  9. nick1111 says

    These bastards wants this things stay forever this way,
    some of them created and released this coronovirus

  10. Starfire says

    Even here in remote southeast BC, the lockdown fanatics are in retreat. Our local paper, The Valley Voice reports: “Medical experts say Covid-19 mortality rate actually very low.” And they cite Doctors Wittkowski and Ioannidis. I couldn’t figure out how to post a screenshot, but it’s the last article in the edition if interested. http://www.valleyvoice.ca/_PDF_2016/ValleyVoiceweb200423.pdf

    1. dreamjoehill says

      And what will you be writing & citing when COVID deaths soar in BC post-lockdown?

      1. Collectivist says

        Excellent question.

      2. Starfire says

        Perhaps you missed this: “While many governors followed Science and shut down their states early and still have stay-at-home orders in place, Florida kept its beaches open through Spring Break and has already begun its reopening plans. Science says Florida should have seen skyrocketing deaths from COVID-19, but instead Florida — despite its large elderly population — has not seen anywhere near the number of problems faced by states like New York and New Jersey.” https://babylonbee.com/news/florida-ruled-to-be-in-violation-of-science-for-not-having-more-people-die G’bye, Joe.

        1. dreamjoehill says

          Perhaps you missed this:

          “The scientist who created Florida’s COVID-19 data portal wasn’t just removed from her position on May 5, she was fired on Monday by the Department of Health, she said, for refusing to manipulate data….”

          she confirmed, as reported by CBS-12 in West Palm Beach that she was fired because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”

          ‘https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/19/florida-scientist-refused-manipulate-covid-19-data-and-fired/5219137002/

          Or this:

          “Two weeks after Florida allowed a partial reopening of businesses, the state still has been reporting at least 500 more infections per day of the new coronavirus….

          “Almost 2,100 people across Florida have died from coronavirus-caused illness — with South Florida having the majority of the deaths. The report shows 2,096 confirmed deaths across the state, which is an increase of 44 over the past 24 hours.”

          As to beaches, I agree that closing outdoor recreation was not reasonable as COVID has been shown to spread mostly in crowded indoor environments and those with poor ventilation. I’m not saying it can’t be spread outdoors, but outdoor spreading requires far closer personal proximity

          “G’bye, Joe” You can’t hack any dissent from your COVID denial. That’s obvious. Why are you so rigid and close minded in your beliefs about COVID-19?

          1. Mensch59 says

            FL Leading Causes of Death, 2017 Deaths Avg/day
            1. Heart Disease 46,440 127.2
            2. Cancer 45,131 123.6
            3. Accidents 13,059 35.8
            4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases 12,619 34.6
            5. Stroke 12,602 34.5
            6. Alzheimer’s Disease 6,980 19.1
            7. Diabetes 6,172 16.9
            8. Suicide 3,227. 8.8
            9. Kidney Disease 3,172 8.7
            10. Chronic Liver Disease/Cirrhosis 3,098 8.5
            —————-
            Given that you’re so gung-ho over Covid-19, what’s the average daily death toll for Covid-19 in Florida? What’s the daily excess death toll from Covid-19 in Florida taking into account these morbidities?

            You can’t hack any dissent from your COVID denial.

            Question: Why don’t you actually quote her where she denies that Covid-19 is a disease which kills people? Answer: Because you’re a troll.

            Why are you so rigid and close minded in your beliefs about COVID-19?

            She doesn’t have a phobia about the virus or the disease. She’s a lockdown and social distancing skeptic — not a disease denier.

            Why be skeptical about social distancing and the healthiness of social disruptions caused by lockdowns? See this interview with epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski — https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/ — for starters.

            Why are you, dreamjoehill, so rigid and closed-minded regarding social distancing and lockdown-generated unemployment and social disruptions? Is it because you’re a conformist and because you’re so trusting of authority? Why do you attack skeptics? Putting down skeptics today is as wrong-headed as putting down the skeptics of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Iraqi army killing incubator babies in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein having WMD’s and him being weeks away from having operational nuclear weapons, Russia stealing emails from the HRC campaign, Russia electing Trump, Russia trying to get Bernie Sanders nominated. Granted, this was skepticism over political disinformation. Now there’s skepticism about the political response to a new corona virus.

            From the moment of “COVID-19’s” naming—and particularly since the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—some people have smelled a rat. And with each passing week, the smell becomes worse. A growing chorus of ordinary citizens and world-renowned medical and scientific experts is raising questions about matters ranging from the coronavirus’s origins to the rationale for continued lockdowns. The mainstream media have shown themselves only too ready to lob ad hominem attacks against any and all such non-conformists. However, one does not have to be insensitive to the illness and deaths associated with COVID-19 to recognize that powerful agendas are riding on the coattails of SARS-CoV-2.

            Would you like the thirty names of these “world-renowned medical and scientific experts”? Read this paper — “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza” — in order to see the scientific case for why lockdowns & ordering healthy people to social distance & socio-economic disruptions are NOT the ways to tackle viral pandemics. Or maybe you’re such a Corona-phobic that you believe that coronaviruses shouldn’t be compared with influenza viruses.

            Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

            Do you understand what “communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted” means?

            1. sabelmouse says

              i remember that blocked by me ”professional” poster 😉

            2. Mensch59 says

              I really ought to treat commenters on social media who support a totalitarian lockdown the same way I treat climate science deniers and supporters of imperialist warmongering.
              With these three types of people, it’s like attempting to reason with a brick.

              I’m talking about actual, bona fide fascism, or totalitarianism, if you want to get technical. The kind where governments declare a global “state of emergency” on account of a virus with a 0.2% to 0.6% lethality (and that causes mild, flu-like symptoms, or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, in over 97% of those infected), locks everyone down inside their homes, suspends their constitutional rights, terrorizes them with propaganda, and unleashes uniformed goon squads on anyone who doesn’t comply with their despotic decrees.
              I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the police track you down with your smartphone data and then come to your house to personally harass you for attending a political protest, or attack you for challenging their illegitimate authority, and then charge you with “assault” for fighting back, and then get the media to publish a story accusing you of having “set up” the cops.
              I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the secret police are given carte blanche to monitor everyone’s Internet activity, and to scan you with their “surveillance helmets,” and dictate how close you can sit to your friends, and menace you with drones and robot dogs, and violently pry your kids out of your arms and arrest you if you dare to protest.
              I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism that psychologically tortures children with authoritarian loyalty rituals designed to condition them to live in fear, and respond to absurd Pavlovian stimuli, and that encourages the masses to turn off their brains and mechanically repeat propaganda slogans, like “wear a mask” and “flatten the curve,” and to report their neighbors to the police for having an “illegal” private party … and to otherwise reify the manufactured mass hysteria the authorities need to “justify” their totalitarianism.

              CJ Hopkins, “Brave New Normal (Part 2)”,

            3. sabelmouse says

              when you say climate science deniers you’re using the same language though.

              meanwhile, i think i might be shadow banned on tumblr.
              after deleting my second account i made another one but can’t message anybody, can’t find myself in tags, and the former mutual i found don’t react to me, i seem to be invisible.

            4. Mensch59 says

              Shadow banning is another tool for the censors.
              🙁

            5. sabelmouse says

              i didn’t know tumbler did this.
              it’s gone from being lousy with porn to this.
              the porn is back though.

            6. Mensch59 says

              What’s the political orientation of tumblr?
              All over the place?
              Definitively anti-science, i.e. there’s no such physical phenomenon as biological sexual differentiation?

            7. sabelmouse says

              it never had one. it used to be huge and varied.

            8. Mensch59 says

              The science of anthropogenic global warming and anthropogenic climate change is well established.
              The science of crashing the economy as a response to a pandemic isn’t science at all.
              Denial, as a defense mechanism, is a real phenomenon.

            9. sabelmouse says

              if it’s well established past mere consensus it doesn’t need religious language like denial/heretic as defence.

            10. Mensch59 says

              “Denial” is more a psychological term than a religious one.
              I’m pretty sure that cognitive psychologists study denial as a real world phenomenon along with other common defense mechanisms.
              I’m not sure about “heresy” though, especially with the widespread acknowledgement that we now reside in a post-truth / post-reality political environment where postmodernism has thoroughly saturated both identity & politics creating an identitarian mindset.
              Identitarianism is a sociological term meaning “Politics based on social identity.”
              There are no heretics in this postmodernist, post-truth, post-reality political environment.
              There are only competing social identities.

            11. sabelmouse says

              applied like this it’s religious and quite frankly, in psychiatry it’s often enough used as a tool to make the patient comply.
              i recommend ”woman on the edge of time” by marge piercy.

            12. Mensch59 says

              Well, I’ve discovered that making myself aware of various kinds of self-deception and cognitive biases and psychological defense mechanisms has been personally rewarding.
              Maybe it’s about accepting wrongness as a big part of the human condition, but learning to be less wrong.
              I haven’t discovered anything psychopathological studying the most common defense mechanisms — i.e. denial, displacement, identification, projection, rationalization, reaction-formation, repression, and sublimation.

            13. sabelmouse says

              it’s about HOW words are used to subjugate.

            14. Mensch59 says

              True. Additionally, it’s how we subjugate ourselves through self-deception and how all underclasses are subject to the ruling class.

              I’ve found self-talk (i.e. thinking negatively about myself) to be subjugating at times, perhaps even most times. How about you?

              When I think of most defense mechanisms being about protecting the ego, it’s liberating to think in terms of how defense mechanisms are utilized.

            15. sabelmouse says

              defs, though also illuminating, and important to find out what we say to ourselves to work on it.
              it’s a good method re affirmations.
              write positive/write negative that comes up, find a new positive to counter and so on.
              none of that will help if a therapist who has real power as inside institutions demand that you agree , or you’re in denial and won’t be released.

            16. Mensch59 says

              none of that will help if a therapist who has real power as inside
              institutions demand that you agree , or you’re in denial and won’t be
              released.

              Too true, sm. Sadly. Stay away from the medical system unless it’s an ICU type emergency or a life-saving surgery. Especially stay away from psychiatry.

            17. sabelmouse says

              defs! haven for psychopaths/y.

            18. Mensch59 says

              You and I have a healthy disdain for Sigmund Freud, but you might get something from this article — https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/30/hero-john-gray-sigmund-freud

            19. sabelmouse says

              i abhor freud! misogynistic enabler of child abusers, and worse, for generations to come with his ”children want sex” message.
              and don’t get me started on that corporate sponsored astroturf rag!

            20. Mensch59 says

              I only wanted to introduce you to some of John N. Gray’s thinking.
              I quite enjoy reading his philosophical musings.

            21. sabelmouse says

              i’ll check him out off guardian 😉

            22. Mensch59 says

              Smart. Try reading some reviews of his book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013). That was my personal favorite.

            23. Mensch59 says

              Oops. I bought the “wrong” book today. Woman On The Edge by Samantha M. Bailey

            24. sabelmouse says

              :))))
              maybe it’s good!
              i like thrillers, well who/why dunits.

            25. Mensch59 says

              I really ought to check out your recommendation, Woman On The Edge Of Time.

            26. sabelmouse says

              you ought. also he,she and it, and gone to soldiers. fly away home too.
              meanwhile i just finished paretsky’s critical mass, and am reading reg hill’s collaborators.
              all fitting to the situation in some way.might read Los Alamos
              by Joseph Kanon, continuing the nuclear theme started by critical mass, one of the characters was inspired by marrieta blau and the institute for radium research she worked at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marietta_Blau

            27. Mensch59 says

              Did your library close down for Covid or do you usually purchase the books you read?

            28. sabelmouse says

              all libraries in ireland have been closed for 2 months and as yet no sign of reopening.
              i used to have to buy books [secondhand pb] until a couple of years ago all the libs merged and i could get 90+ % of what i wanted from all over the country.
              i have a good few books that i’ve been re reading [ for years i looked at my shelves and told them, an my children, that 1 day, post apocalypse, i’d be happy about hoarding those books. ]
              and that’s pretty much the 1 thing i am happy about these days.
              i have been buying a few more, to fill gaps in series i have, or in fact, i even bought a brand new hardback [1/3 off at least ] from the book depo, paretsky’s lates, on my lib waiting list but i am not even optimistic about those reopening 🙁
              maybe as part of austerity there will just not be any funding for such tings, or only ebooks.
              the libs continued with those, no use to me.

            29. Mensch59 says

              Our library has reopened for picking up books. That’s the main reason we’re making the drive into town today. The only books available though are ones at the branch. No interlibrary loans yet.

              We used to try to have a weekly date for lunch in town too, but that’s been mostly on hold for the last two months.
              Hopefully we can have a lunch date too today.

              I’m still working on a memoir which was a Christmas gift from my younger daughter. It’s entitled Border: A Journey To The Edge Of Europe.
              From the blurb:

              When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the border between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. She remembers playing on the beaches of the Black Sea only miles from where an electrified fence bristled, its barbs pointing inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.

              I think that these leftist-Marxists have a warped view of the Cold War and a warped view of state socialism as NOT totalitarian. Maybe that’s why (it seems that) these leftist-Marxists have no problem with the overt totalitarian social controls being imposed in the name of “public health”.

              When a group of people are authoritarian & radical statists, both the left-wing and the right-wing versions seem to embrace BOTH totalitarianism AND their follow citizens/subjects as the enemy. They can never quite seem to wrap their head around the State being as much the enemy as the socioeconomic class which controls the State. It’s like these leftist-Marxists view the Western political class as divided from / separated from / independent of the billionaire class. You’d think that these leftist-Marxists would know better.

              I just finished Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle as well as the “wrong” woman on the edge.

            30. sabelmouse says

              sadly yes re the totalitarianism and views 🙂

            31. Mensch59 says

              I hope that I can learn soon to ignore the apologists for totalitarian social control — even if it’s in the name of abolishing private property for the liberation of the proletariat — and ignore their perspectives on this kind of apologetics.
              They’re not going to move away from their views justifying overt totalitarian social control mechanisms. They’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

            32. sabelmouse says

              just saw an opinion piece titled “promoting lockdown isn’t authoritarian. promoting civil disobedience is.”
              from tumblr

            33. Mensch59 says

              The insanity will only get worse with crap like “civil disobedience is authoritarian” floating around in the ether.

            34. Collectivist says

              No excuse for political ignorance. . .Even for ‘universal liberals’ like yourself.

              common anarchist misconception about Marxism is that socialists are “pro-state.”

              “THOUGH HOSTILITY to state power precedes anarchism, the idea of a society without a state has now (wrongly) come to be associated exclusively with anarchism. Conversely, Marxism is almost universally identified (again wrongly) with the idea of state ownership of the economy, and, by extension, with strengthening the state, rather than doing away with it.

              This mistaken idea that Marxism is somehow pro-state comes first from the development of reformist Social Democratic parties after Marx and Engels’ death that indeed argued that the path to socialism led through the existing state institutions. In particular, Social Democracy of the early 20th century envisioned socialism as something to be achieved by gaining a majority within the representative institutions of the state, and then using its electoral conquests to implement a series of social reforms, leading to full socialization of production.

              These ideas–which were practically discredited by the fact that this particular brand of social reformism tended to adapt to capitalism rather than transform it–became associated, wrongly, with Marx.

              COLUMNIST: PAUL D’AMATO
              Paul D’Amato is managing editor of the International Socialist Review and author of The Meaning of Marxism, a lively and accessible introduction to the ideas of Karl Marx and the tradition he founded. Paul can be contacted at pdamato@isreview.org.

              There was a brief revolutionary hiatus in which the Russian revolutionary Lenin rescued from oblivion the original ideas of Marx and Engels on the state–that it was an instrument of class oppression and, therefore, could not be used by the working class to change society. When Lenin began to argue that the state should be “smashed” and on its ruins new organs of workers’ democracy erected, his fellow revolutionaries accused him of a lapse into anarchism.

              The degeneration of the Russian Revolution–a process inescapable once the revolution became isolated and encircled by hostile powers–and the rise of Stalinism on its ruins once again entrenched a conception of socialism as statification of the economy.

              Marxism and anarchism do have different conceptions of the state, and, therefore, of what should be done about it. Both anarchists and Marxists seek a stateless society–the anarchists because in the state they see the root of all oppression and exploitation, and the Marxists because the state, as the instrument for the maintenance of class rule, must fall away when class rule is done away with.

              Frederick Engels expressed the difference well in a letter to an Italian anarchist on Mikhail Bakunin, a contemporary of Marx and Engels:

              Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own…the chief point of which is in the first place that he does not regard capital, and therefore the class contradiction between capitalists and wage earners which has arisen through social development, as the main evil to be abolished–instead, he regards the state as the main evil.

              While the great mass of the Social Democratic workers hold our view that state power is nothing more than the organization with which the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists have provided themselves in order to protect their social prerogatives, Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by favor of the state.

              As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to hell of itself. We, on the contrary say: do away with capital, the appropriation of the whole means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall away of itself.

              Bakunin’s own writings, I believe, misconstrued the differences between the two doctrines. “They [Marx and his followers] are worshippers of state power, and necessarily also prophets of political and social discipline and champions of order established from the top downwards,” he wrote. No doubt there were socialists who worshipped state power and top-down control, but neither Marx nor Engels were one of them.

              In his pamphlet, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels explicitly rejects the notion that state ownership equals socialism:

              Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.

              MARX AND Engels were opposed to the idea that revolutions could be made by minorities on behalf of the working class.

              Marx, for example, rejected the politics of the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, who viewed the working class as a sort of stage army that would help him into office, after which he and his cohorts would implement socialism from above.

              “He behaves,” Marx complained of Lassalle, “with an air of great importance, bandying about phrases borrowed from us–altogether as if he were the future workers’ dictator. The problem of wage-labor versus capital he solves like ‘child’s play’ (literally). To wit, the workers must agitate for universal suffrage and then send people like him ‘armed with the unsheathed sword of science’ into the Chamber of Deputies. Then, they form workers’ factories, for which the state advances the capital, and these institutions by and by embrace the whole land.”

              Though they admired his devotion and courage, Marx and Engels were critical of the politics of the French revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, who, according to Engels, believed “that a small and well-organized minority…could carry the mass of the people with them…and…make a victorious revolution.”

              Engels also criticizes the Blanquists for seeking a “dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.”

              The last point is important, because the standard anarchist critique of Marxism is that it stands for “dictatorship,” and what Engels’ makes clear here is that by this loaded word, they did not mean the rule of a minority, but the rule of the majority (the working class) over its former exploiters (the minority).

              An anarchist might argue that it is still an argument for an authoritarian state of some sort, even after the revolution. And they would be right.

              Anarchists and socialists both agree that we need to do away with unaccountable authority, and all forms of authority that are deployed to maintain the current relations in society of exploitation, inequality and oppression. Beyond that however, the agreement begins to break down.

              In his essay, On Authority, Engels wrote:

              All socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed.

              Engels concluded by arguing that revolutions are, by definition, authoritarian, because they involve one part of society (the majority of oppressed and exploited) imposing its will on the other (the minority of exploiters and their supporters). The question then arises: how can a new society be built if the new revolutionary power refuses to establish a new power, i.e., a state, to prevent the old order from regaining its foothold?

              Lenin put it this way: “We do not at all disagree with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as an aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, temporary use must be made of theinstruments, means and methods of the state power against the exploiters, just as the dictatorship of the oppressed class is temporarily necessary for the annihilation of classes.”

            35. Mensch59 says

              All you have to do is look at how Marxism is implemented in order to see that it’s radically statist, radically pro-state.
              Try to feed your “You’re politically ignorant” lies to someone else.
              You’ve become a walking & taking contradiction.
              Regarding you calling me “Fredo” and your Django Unchained avatar, maybe I ought to call you “Stephen Warren” or “‘Monsieur’ Calvin J. Candie”.
              Do you have a preference?

            36. Collectivist says
            37. Mensch59 says

              Blahdy blah blather.
              All I have to do is READ you and your ilk. Your own words. Not the words you parrot.

            38. dreamjoehill says

              Hey idiot, all ten are non-contagious. That means you don’t catch them from other people except indirectly through industrial pollution. Not from a sneeze.

              I read no more of your screed.

            39. Mensch59 says

              LOL. So you really are phobic about contagions.
              What a fckin’ nutcase!
              Thanks for the laugh.

            40. dreamjoehill says

              You’re babbling.

              Wipe the drool off your chin.

            41. Mensch59 says

              More troll words.
              Keep ’em comin’.

            42. dreamjoehill says

              ROFL. Take a look in the mirror, troll.

            43. Mensch59 says

              Yep. Interacting with a joe hill dreamy, self-loathing homophobic troll who is hysterical & psychotic about a virus (with a 0.2% to 0.6% lethality and that causes mild, flu-like symptoms, or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, in over 97% of those infected) brings out my inner troll.
              You caught me. “Birds of a feather…” and all that jazz.

            44. dreamjoehill says

              You’re obsessive in your irrational COVID denial.

            45. Mensch59 says

              You are a liar regarding my “denial”. This article — https://www.anti-empire.com/this-is-huge-cdc-now-estimates-that-covid-19-fatality-rate-is-in-the-ballpark-of-seasonal-flu/ — isn’t about denial.

          2. Starfire says

            Why do you have a private profile, oh trollish one?

            1. dreamjoehill says

              To keep trills from cyber-stalking me.

              Why does your screen name imply that you are new age imbecile?

            2. Starfire says

              Consider yourself blocked.

            3. dreamjoehill says

              Consider yourself unable to tolerate questioning of your opinion, you pathetic freak.

            4. Mensch59 says

              Are all of you self-loathing homophobes so misogynistic?

            5. Mensch59 says

              You troll her and then say that you have a private profile to prevent from being trolled.
              What a sick & twisted fckin’ hypocrite!!

            6. dreamjoehill says

              You seem confused.

              New meds?

            7. Mensch59 says

              That’s a line that trolls always use.
              At least you’re consistent.

            8. dreamjoehill says

              Go fq yourself. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the experience.

            9. Mensch59 says

              There’s that self-loathing homophobia again. Better keep that in check.

            10. dreamjoehill says

              Wrong. My loathing is directed at you and I’m not homophobic, shithead.

              Your pop psychology is on a par with your political philosophy. Both are self serving fantasies

            11. Mensch59 says

              I’ll stick with my assessment of you as misogynistic and self-loathing and homophobic based on your words. I’m not privy to your misogynistic and self-loathing and homophobic behavior — nor would I want to make your acquaintance in real life.
              I’m guessing that you are worse irl than online.

            12. dreamjoehill says

              Maybe you should pay attention to real and powerful homophobes:

              + Jenna Ellis, a top adviser and lawyer for President Trump’s re-election campaign, has a long history of pushing anti-gay positions, including linking the legalization of same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia.

            13. Mensch59 says

              There are homophobes big & powerful and small & impotent.

            14. dreamjoehill says

              LOL.

              Had a few bad dates aye?

            15. Collectivist says

              And then there are those with short attention spans; convenient excuses for not watching this . . .yet claiming left libertarianism.

              Who better, for ‘them’ to go to than this guy, in a time of crisis?

              Of course, some of us have much more to go to, but others need to begin somewhere. . .

              First things first, though.
              (I love music)

              https://youtu.be/RiTwf45cH6M

              https://youtu.be/zi6ae6kZNqE

            16. Collectivist says

              The best and most relevant part, imo:

              “The libertarians are criticizing the corruption that the economy has fallen into quite rightly and that’s certainly what we agree upon, but the problem is that the kind of free market that is advocated by most libertarians is basically antigovernment, and it’s not only antigovernment, it turns out in practice to be anti-labor and basically endorsing austerity. . ” Hudson

            17. Mensch59 says

              You’re boring, Collectivist. Please troll someone else.

            18. Collectivist says

              O.k.
              Something for those with short attention spans:

              https://youtu.be/4b6GvszlkR0

            19. Collectivist says

              Your ‘boy’, at his best:

              “The libertarians are criticizing the corruption that the economy has fallen into quite rightly and that’s certainly what we agree upon, but the problem is that the kind of free market that is advocated by most libertarians is basically antigovernment, and it’s not only antigovernment, it turns out in practice to be anti-labor and basically endorsing austerity. . ” Hudson

            20. Mensch59 says

              So you’re an apologist for statism, more especially an apologist for the power of the state to bring about collectivism & abolish individuality, correct?
              You and your ilk desire the power of the state in order to control the marketplace, correct?
              You and your ilk are not opposed to master-servant social relations, because you and your ilk crave mastery, correct?
              (Will you answer three direct question or run away from them?)

              Where did Michael Hudson err in his description of the corruption of the economy? This is precisely what the capitalists classes (i.e. the financiers & the rentiers) have done, isn’t it? They’ve seized the power of the state in order to impose austerity and to crush labor, i.e. make the working class impotent and disposable.

              From “COVID-19 as a Weapon. The Crushing of the Disposable Working Class – by Design” (April 13, 2020) by Cory Morningstar:
              “The arrogance and brutality of the ruling class – is nothing less than breathtaking. Let’s begin.”

              It’s hierarchical social power relations — which manifest as polities, states, governments — which allow for the formation of an economic ruling class. Leftist authoritarians/statists want to destroy the present ruling class but see themselves as the legitimate ruling class. Why that legitimacy? These leftists desire to maintain hierarchical social power relations in order to impose collectivism and dictate market controls. In other words, leftist authoritarians/statists are completely anti-liberty, anti-liberal, anti-libertarian — because the libertarian opposes BOTH the hierarchical social power relations which creates states AND master-servant social relations which create injustice.

              Your type of leftism isn’t revolutionary. It’s reactionary. It’s merely not as reactionary as the authoritarians who want to preserve private property (i.e. the presently constituted ruling class) and the libertarians who want to preserve private property (i.e. Ayn Randians who want pure capitalism, unregulated competition, a perfectly free marketplace).

            21. dreamjoehill says

              Blah blah blah, more moralistic bullshit from the prissy little libertarian.

              You need to lose your bullshit bourgeois morality and reacquaint yourself with working class materialist thinking.

            22. Mensch59 says

              I’m completely disinterested in “working class materialist thinking”.
              I’m interested in working class concrete actions and practices.
              I’m interested in opposing ruling class concrete actions and practices.

              That which is thought is opposed to that which is perceived, sensed, observed, directly experienced.
              Thoughts and ideas and beliefs are the products of social practices, not the reverse.

            23. dreamjoehill says

              So you think there’s s difference between “material” and “concrete?”

              As to your emphasis on “action”, what actions are you taking doing to oppose ” ruling class concrete actions and practices.”

              BTW, thoughts guide actions, except when actions are taken mindlessly. Your perspective on this is quite perverse. Maybe that explains why your positions seem so mindless.

            24. Mensch59 says

              So you think there’s s difference between “material” and “concrete?”Nope.

              … what actions are you taking doing to oppose ” ruling class concrete actions and practices.”

              I don’t discuss my real life with trolls on the internet.

              I make a distinction between a thought (noumenon) and what is sensed, observed, perceived, directly experienced (phenomena). Phenomena guide material/concrete actions. Thinking, esp over-thinking, gets in the way of taking action.

              Maybe that explains why your positions seem so mindless.

              This is why I don’t discuss my real life with internet trolls like you, dreamy.

            25. dreamjoehill says

              It makes no sense to scream action, and then bail on the specifics.

              Save the Post Office!

            26. Mensch59 says

              I’m not going to discuss specifics with you.
              You haven’t earned the necessary trust and respect.

            27. dreamjoehill says

              Then your claims to “action!” are irrelevant .

              Too bad you never learned the basic rules of debate and reasoning.

            28. Mensch59 says

              There are formal rules of “debate” and informal ones.
              In the broad realm of argumentation, debate is differentiated from rhetoric and minor logic (the dialectical method) and major logic (critique/critical analysis).

              Maybe you are incurably ill with the cognitive bias of illusory superiority, i.e “winning” debates and “proving” how much more reasonable you are in said “debates” have become pathological.

              I gave you reasonable answers as to why I won’t discuss any of my action plans with you.
              You have not earned the necessary respect and trust in order to discuss actions and action plans and what might be considered by some to be revolutionary behavior.
              IOW, you are as irrelevant to me as my claims to putting actions before thinking are irrelevant to you.

            29. dreamjoehill says

              If you won’t discuss your actions, then why claim that action is so important to you?

              Smells like bullshit to me.

            30. Mensch59 says

              I’ll happy discuss my actions, my action plans, what inspires revolutionary action.
              Just not with you.
              You haven’t gained my respect, my trust.
              If you believe that this is bullsh¡t reasoning, too bad.

            31. dreamjoehill says

              I imagine you do nothing at all.

            32. Mensch59 says

              That’s why you’re dreamy.
              I imagine you think that your actions as a union activist have been world-changing.
              “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

            33. dreamjoehill says

              At least I don’t hide my actions. You claim to be all for action, but really you’re a sneaky coward.

            34. Collectivist says

              Irrefutable.

            35. Mensch59 says

              Target someone else, troll.
              Target leftists on these threads who you are proud to call comrades or brothers or whatever and talk with them about their out-in-the-open concrete activism or world-changing material thinking.

            36. dreamjoehill says

              Except you are the one that was raving about being all for action, and unconcerned with thinking.

              And you’re hardly being “targeted.” that accusation reveals you to be a paranoid in addition to a coward.

            37. Mensch59 says

              If you wish to persist in your preoccupation with thoughts & ideas & beliefs being the driving force behind concrete actions — as opposed to thoughts & ideas & beliefs being the product of social activity, not the reverse — that’s your prerogative.
              Frankly, I loathe you as much as you loathe me — so you posting to me has become loathsome.

            38. dreamjoehill says

              Materialist thinking, which you utterly rejected in your previous post, involves thinking (I know that’s hard for you).

            39. Mensch59 says

              What a fcktard you are!
              Oh wait.
              My materialist thinking informs me that you are both grotesque and intellectually disabled.

            40. dreamjoehill says

              Blah blah blah. Is that all you got, wimpy?

            41. Mensch59 says

              Meh.

            42. Collectivist says

              If Mensch, and esp. his U.S. cohorts, were really concerned about the ‘totalitarian’ lockdown, they’d be protesting in the streets or at least advocating online to end the lockdown of 80% of the people in U. S. jails and prisons; incarcerated merely because they can’t afford bail.

              Here in Louisville, Ky, and across the country we have been doing “Freedom Friday” caravans – driving around the House of ‘Justice’, demanding these people’s release*, esp. the old and sick.

              * This has been part of a Bail Project, in which we have, among other things, gone door to door getting people to sign petitions that we will present to local judges.

            43. newestbeginning says

              Irrefutable.

            44. Collectivist says

              Nice.

            45. Mensch59 says

              New estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that COVID-19 may have an infection fatality rate as low as 0.26%,a number that is double the seasonal flu but significantly lower than earlier estimates.” [Source: Just The News, “GAME OVER: CDC Puts the Covid-19 Fatality Rate in the Ballpark of the Seasonal Flu”]

              (lede) “CDC’s “current best estimate” is that Covid-19 fatality rate is 0.4% for symptomatic cases, 0.26% overall” by Daniel Payne

            46. dreamjoehill says

              Where’d you find that whopper? It’d be nice if it were true, but I could find nothing to support your claim.

            47. dreamjoehill says

              + Arthur Virgilio Neto, mayor of Manaus, the largest city in Amazonia: “We aren’t in a state of emergency – we’re well beyond that. We are in a state of utter disaster, like a country that is at war – and has lost.”

            48. Mensch59 says

              Horrible, just terribly horrific! Just imagine if a seasonal flu with these mortality numbers were reported with such hysteria and panic!!
              Yes, we must all treat this pandemic as an utter disaster, like it’s a lost war.
              /s

            49. dreamjoehill says

              Your brutal inanity is noted.

              “Hospitals in Montgomery, Alabama and El Centro, California have been forced to restrict admission of new coronavirus patients after caseloads of COVID-19 spiked during the week. The situation in both cities developed as the number of confirmed cases in the US passed 1.6 million, and the death toll approached 100,000.”

              https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/23/trum-m23.html

            50. Mensch59 says

              How horrible!! Let’s drag up the death tolls from other communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Pneumonia, Infectious diarrhea, Malaria — paying especially close attention to the deaths of children in poverty by ethnicity. I’ll bet the yearly death tolls are in the millions.

            51. dreamjoehill says

              I’ll leave you to that. It’s clearly whataboutism. Very propagandistic.

            52. Mensch59 says

              Meh! again.

            53. dreamjoehill says

              + New estimate on grocery worker deaths from UFCW: They say at least 68 workers have died, and at least 10K sick or exposed to COVID19, but that is only among chains where they represent workers. Numbers for the industry in general would be higher.

              + Christine, a Kroger employee from Michigan, said on a UFCW conference call this morning that she used to politely offer shoppers a mask if they weren’t wearing one. Not anymore. “Now masks have become a political war. Employees are downright scared.”

              + Eight people who worked JBS’s Greeley slaughterhouse in Greeley, Colorado are dead. When Tina Aye, a refugee from Burma, went to the company clinic with Covid symptoms, they told her she just had a “normal cold” and instructed her to get back to work. She spent a month battling on a ventilator before dying.

              + Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, says Colorado has tested about 23,000 people for COVID-19. They estimate that about 3% of the population has had it (167,000 people). “We’re really just still at the beginning of this epidemic.”

            54. Mensch59 says

              Be afraid. Be very afraid.
              /s

            55. dreamjoehill says

              The fear mocking is your creation, but so is the fear. You’re mocking a straw man that you created yourself.

              It has nothing to do with the question of whether the virus is reemerging now that the lockdowns have eased or ended.

            56. Mensch59 says

              No. I’m mocking a pandemic of panic & hysteria bordering on mass psychosis.

            57. Mensch59 says
            58. dreamjoehill says

              From the article you cited:

              Those numbers, while much lower than the earlier estimates that drove the lockdowns, still represent a significant number of deaths, as well as a significant burden on local healthcare systems that can become overwhelmed by COVID-19.

              The CDC estimates that as many as 60,000 Americans die of the flu in an average year, meaning—if the agency’s current estimates are correct—the U.S. could still see tens of thousands of more deaths before the fatalities begin to recede.

              The disease itself also appears to spread more easily than seasonal influenza, meaning even if COVID-19’s infection fatality rate were equal to that of the flu, the total number of deaths from it would still likely exceed that of influenza simply because it would infect more people.

            59. Mensch59 says

              Yep. So? Is that justification for lockdown-generated unemployment and social disruptions? Nope. See Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses — “There was limited evidence that social distancing was effective, especially if related to the risk of exposure.”

              See also “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza” by Donald A. Henderson, primary author, along with co-authors Thomas V. Inglesby, epidemiologist Jennifer B. Nuzzo, and physician Tara O’Toole — with this conclusion: “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

              Do you want an epidemic when the normal social functioning of society is NOT least disrupted, dreamy?

            60. dreamjoehill says

              Trump has decided to play it your way, and re-open w/o the medical infra-structure to deal effectively with a less optimistic case scenario.

              At least T-rump admits he’ll re-open regardless of a COVID resurgence. He doesn’t pretend to have any great humanitarian concern or ethical consistency.

            61. Mensch59 says

              Trump has decided to play it your way…

              You are delusional. I have no influence over Trump.

            62. dreamjoehill says

              I wasn’t implying that you had influence over Trump. I was stating that you and Trump share a similar perspective on stay at home orders.

            63. Mensch59 says

              RE comparing me and Trump: Meh!

    2. sabelmouse says
      1. Starfire says

        Thanks for the link. “Around the world, many people are understandably reeling in shock at the rapid economic, social and cultural changes that have followed in the wake of the phenomenon called “COVID-19.” Many of these changes involve ever-tighter restrictions on our rights and freedoms, accompanied by inexorable messaging—both public and subliminal—that a “vaccine for all” and 24/7 tracking and surveillance are the only way out. Increasingly, however, there are hopeful signs that more members of the public are recognizing the duplicity and self-interest of those offering false salvation. Each of us needs to do our part to expose these issues…” https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/361e3f36ab1f6662a13dc6cfd7f4de31b7e09cc0c6632ae72d5a09e61f24f496.png

        1. Mensch59 says

          Also from the article:

          From the moment of “COVID-19’s” naming—and particularly since the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—some people have smelled a rat. And with each passing week, the smell becomes worse. A growing chorus of ordinary citizens and world-renowned medical and scientific experts is raising questions about matters ranging from the coronavirus’s origins to the rationale for continued lockdowns. The mainstream media have shown themselves only too ready to lob ad hominem attacks against any and all such non-conformists. However, one does not have to be insensitive to the illness and deaths associated with COVID-19 to recognize that powerful agendas are riding on the coattails of SARS-CoV-2.

          Plenty of ad hominem attacks against all non-conformists from our conformist peers on Disqus too.

          1. dreamjoehill says

            Conforming to the dictates of reason & good sense, not to social pressure, is a virtue.

            1. Mensch59 says

              Seems to me — one who esteems himself as relying on reasonable common ground based on common sense — that it’s the corona-phobics who are conforming to the social pressure to treat SARS-nCoV-2 viral infections like something orders of magnitude worse than novel influenza viral infections.

              If you’re interested in facts instead of fear-based propaganda, then here’s a good source which conforms to the dictates of reason and good sense: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR0dnG1i3bqxXFG-pM7TfPeIPAGTu4EEKnc8nmO0CLecF_caQYQ1h48ZzRM

            2. Starfire says

              I’m pretty sure Joe’s not interested in facts..

            3. dreamjoehill says

              ROFL.. You block anyone who questions your opinions. You are in no position to criticize anyone else’s regard for facts.

              You are a typical delusional new ager.

            4. Mensch59 says

              I’m pretty sure that that azzhole @andrewlazarus:disqus — even though he claims to be a mathematician — is not interested in mathematical facts either.
              Andrew belongs in a separate oubliette too.

            5. Andrew Lazarus says

              Anyone with the slightest Google skills could come up with my training.

            6. dreamjoehill says

              Seems you want to throw everyone who disagrees with you into a dungeon. You’re a sterling example of the hypocricy of Libertarians.

            7. Mensch59 says

              You’re confusing libertarians with saints, nitwit.

            8. sabelmouse says

              most pro vaxxers commenting online claim to be scientists/doctors while probably posting from a cubicle.

            9. Mensch59 says

              That azzhole @dreamjoehill:disqus belongs in an oubliette.

            10. dreamjoehill says

              Or IOW a dungeon. How terribly “libertarian” of you. What a hypocrite.

            11. dreamjoehill says

              Studies of COVID mortality are all over the charts. You found a website that is advocating a low estimate. There are others that disagree.

              Anyway, thanks for the link. It has some excellent articles regarding the CIA & the media, a topic that has interested me for many years.

            1. Mensch59 says

              I saw that it was last updated two and a half weeks ago.
              Hopefully the nest next time I read it, the article will have some new facts.
              “Swiss Policy Research” seems like a pretty decent site.

            2. dreamjoehill says

              Quarantine in the US happens at home. There are no gov’t quarantine facilities

              adamsmith.org? You’re citing false rightist propaganda,

        2. Collectivist says
      2. Mensch59 says

        The first four hyperlinks in that article are well worth the read.

        1. sabelmouse says

          yes.

      1. Starfire says

        Yup. That’s the one.

    3. carlo151 says

      You may live fool, but two people I know who had it, lived, that part is true, one in his early 50s said it was the most horrible and painful month of fevers and extreme headaches making it near impossible to sleep.
      The other, 22 years old and healthy, had a similar experience but it lasted less than 2 weeks. And it took a month before he got back to close to normal.

      Other than that in NY, I lost a dear former co-worker who was hospitalized for a broken leg and caught covid while in the hospital and really before they knew how many had it, he was 74.
      The other friend of mine lost his mother. A visiting nurse gave it to her. She was 97 and the next flu would like have taken her.

      But by all means, get out there and test the water. See if it is not that bad, maybe you will be symptomless.

      But those being cautious like myself will gladly enjoy you getting us up to herd immunity.

      You will get it if you continue to be stupid.

      1. Mensch59 says

        You may live fool, but… You will get it if you continue to be stupid.
        Be afraid, be very afraid.
        Be hysterical, be very hysterical.
        Be paranoid, be very paranoid.

        1. carlo151 says

          If you do not live nothing else matters.

          1. Mensch59 says

            I’m not anxious, afraid, hysterical, or paranoid about the RNA makeup of the SARS-nCoV-2 virus and the infection caused by the virus and the disease (Covid-19) caused by the infection.
            Just like I’m not anxious, afraid, hysterical, or paranoid about influenza viruses.
            The CDC’s “current best estimate” is that Covid-19 fatality rate is 0.4% for symptomatic cases, 0.26% overall.
            See https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/cdc-says-coronavirus-infection-fatality-rate-could-be-low-026-nearly

            1. carlo151 says

              Except your estimates are leaving out how contagious this virus is. It will infect more people. We have seen how fast it spread from a single infected person in New Rochelle NY.

            2. Mensch59 says

              Not “my” estimates, carlo. The CDC’s. But you people in the throes of hysterics from corona-phobia know how to estimate the spread of infection better than the CDC does, right?

            3. carlo151 says

              No, you interpret the correct percentage of those who have died compared to those that have just gotten sick from the virus.
              We have some level of flu every year. However it is somewhat rare to hear somebody who got it, and even rarer to get it yourself.
              I never gave it a thought and I have in past years been around many people.

              The problem is as I stated, it is a extremely contagious virus. One to many. Studies have found the person in a restaurant spreading to 5 or 6 others in nearby tables. Or 50 people getting it from one person in a church choir practice.
              That is why the ER beds got overwhelmed in NYC. It spread to quickly , very contagious.

              I am not afraid, I am following the science and trying to not be like you, stupid.

              And the CDC has been an unreliable source as Trump people have cleared out those who have sounded the alarm.

              Poor management can ruin anything. Companies, military units, and now scientists.

            4. Mensch59 says

              Bully for you that (1) you claim that you follow the science and (2) you claim that the CDC is no longer a trustworthy source of scientific information because of Trump being POTUS for almost three & a half years. You are so so so much less “stupid” than myself.
              /s

              Now that we’re agreed that you’re so scientific and smart, you can deal with Covid-19 as an infectious disease which doesn’t kill children in large numbers to be included with these infectious diseases which kill millions of children yearly. Or maybe you just don’t give much thought to diseases which kill children who aren’t your skin color in poor countries?
              · Acute lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia
              · Diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera, typhoid and dysentery, spread chiefly by contaminated water or food
              · Tuberculosis
              · Malaria
              · Hepatitis B infections
              · HIV/AIDS
              · Measles
              · Neonatal tetanus
              · Whooping cough
              · Intestinal worm diseases.

              If you doubt that these infectious diseases are worse than Covid, then consult the figures provided by the World Health Organization. Since Trump doesn’t like the WHO, you must consider them a top notch source of scientific information, right?

            5. carlo151 says

              We have developed treatments for these diseases and others. I have had both measles and whooping cough. My dad had malaria. TB is still very much around, as is hepatitis.
              Treatment is available for those who see a doctor and get vaccinated.

              Only measles is more contagious than Covid-19.

              All should be taken seriously in US as well as any country.

              I care very much about people, but I cannot fix poverty.

              I believe in the ACA (Obamacare) because it works to prevent the list of diseases you mention and chronic diseases. Somebody who sits next to another in a bar, a bus or a church who does not see a doctor because of poverty is as dangerous as a covid spreader who does not know they have it because they have no health insurance.

              Covid has been beaten in countries who locked down quickly and tested.

            6. Mensch59 says

              You don’t pay attention to seasonal flu death tolls.
              But now that Covid has become a recently added infectious disease and now that we’re being bombarded with information about this disease, you think that you can post bullsh¡t & propaganda about herd immunity and how others are stupid but you’re not and a new virus’ rate of infection and hospitals getting overwhelmed yada yada yada.

              Frankly, you have nothing to contribute to a discussion on the science. In that regard, you’re a common, average, ordinary troll.

        2. sabelmouse says

          another pv.

          1. Mensch59 says

            Your abbreviation “pv” stands for?

            1. sabelmouse says

              pro vacine and also possibly paid, or just fanatical. he doesn’t post that much, there’s some who do while claiming to be busy dactars, and whatnot.

  11. Ave Milagrosa says

    Marko, can’t thank you enough for all the great work you’ve done exposing this hoax. Anti-Empire has been – and remains – one of the touchstones for the pandemic sceptics (i.e. rational thinkers). Keep up the good fight.

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