What's the true nature of the global COVID crisis?
19 Nov '21 02:18:5520
What follows are just a few unbridled thoughts. Thinking out loud, if you like.
I just tried to get my head around the COVID numbers. All it takes is a bit of googling.
- Every day, globally, 155,000 people die. That's 57 million people every year.
- Currently, about 30 million doses of COVID mRNA vaccine are injected into arms, every day.
- So far, 7.6 billion doses have been administered, covering over 52% of the world population.
So what are the implications of these numbers?
For argument's sake, we could say that half the people who die, globally, will have been given the COVID vaccine.
From this perspective, it is going to be very difficult to attribute deaths that happen after a COVID injection as adverse consequences of that injection.
That is because of the sheer magnitude of normal deaths that happen every year, from all causes, and the high proportion of people that have been given the COVID injection. If any statistician can find a correlation, good luck to him or her.
If nobody in the world had been vaccinated, there would still be 57 million people who die every year due to normal causes.
Now, so far, this "novel" coronavirus has killed about 5.1 million people over the last 22 months.
The real number, as many of us believe, will be less, due to the incentives given to hospitals and age-care facilities put "COVID" on death certificates, when other normal causes of old-age death are the rule rather than the exception.
So, assuming the numbers are correct, that translates to, say, a COVID death rate of 2.8 million people per year. That compares to the 57 million people who die every year from normal causes, with or without COVID.
What about the children?
The death of a child always results in grief experienced by parents and/or loved ones that is an order of magnitude greater that the grief that arises from the death of an old person.
This is due to the hard reality that life is defined by death; life and death are inextricable. As the scriptures tell us:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. - Psalm 90:10
According to UNICEF, over 5 million children under the age of 5 are dying each year from preventable disease.
Yet, this scarcely rates a mention in the media.
On the other hand, over the past 22 months, the media (including alternative media such as Fifth Estate Press) has been talking about little else other than, relatively speaking, the lesser problem of COVID deaths.
In Australia, the median age of COVID deaths is 86. That's well over the fourscore years the the scripture tells us have been allocated to us by our Creator. It would hardly cause the reservoir of grief that would exist if the median age of COVID deaths was less than 5 years of age.
Perspective
The loss of over 5 million children every year is a much more serious problem for humanity relative to COVID, that kills say, only 2.8 million old people every year (if we can believe the data)
This suggests something else is going on with the extraordinary, inordinate government response to the COVID crisis.
But what is going on?
As to what this crisis is, and is not, we can only speculate.
The conclusions we come up with will depend on our mindset.
Conclusions that intellectuals come up with will be shaped by their philosophical and political position, including the level of trust in what they are told by government authorities and public health officials.
Their conclusions would be shaped by e.g., whether they subscribe to libertarian principles, utilitarian principles, authoritarian principles, religious principles, and so on and so forth.
Is the crisis one of capitalism, not coronavirus?
I just listened to a book on the pandemic, authored by the irrepressible, humorous, scholarly Hegelian-Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek.
He believes what is going on is a crisis of capitalism, leading to a new, higher form of communism emerging in the world.
In historical terms, this might be as significant as, for example, the crisis of the Feudal System caused by the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
As far as I can gather, Žižek has been, in the past, the darling of the Western political world's intellectual leftists i.e., anti-capitalists. And he has been the adversary of the anti-leftist/conservative intellectuals
He was the guy who publicly debated Jordan Peterson in a crowded hall on the subject of Marxism. I think Jordan Peterson won the debate, but others think it was a draw. You can see the YouTube presentation of this town hall debate here: here .
Žižek does not question the medical and epidemiological narrative of the pandemic itself. He just seems to take it as a given. He accepts the reality of the situation.
But what he does believe, is that the world is experiencing a crisis of values and politics of gigantic proportions. He believes the world will not be the same again.
He seems to suggest that the pandemic has resulted in a historic crisis of capitalism as predicted by the Marxist theory of history.
Žižek suggests the world may be entering a new era of communism, arising from the inability of capitalism to deal with the pandemic.
Implicit in this view, is a belief in the Marxist historical dialectic.
From google:-
"The dialectic is a philosophical method of understanding the way things are and how they change. Marx and Engels adopted the dialectical method of their ideological predecessor, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and updated it with a materialist understanding of reality"
Afterthoughts
1. The printing of 5 trillion dollars in the USA, to prop up the economy during their COVID lockdowns, is hardly capitalism. But it could be seen as Keynesian Economics, that is, a form of socialism. See July 2020 opinion piece on John Maynard Keynes and Cold War 2 here.
2. We must not forget that George Orwell, whose writings have inspired so many of us to understand the nature of totalitarianism, described his own political position as "democratic socialism".
Overall conclusion.
None.
I am as confused as everyone else as to the true nature of the global COVID crisis.
I used to love listening to Zizek! Seeing his image drew me right into this story.
I disagree that it is Capitalism coming crashing down.
I'm more inclined to believe it is Democrazy going through its standard cycle as outlined by Alexander Fraser Tytler. And instead that Cronyism is what is hopefully crashing. I guess one could argue that Capitalism leads to Cronyism. I'm not sure if this is indeed true or not. Maybe Democrazy leads to Cronyism? Maybe Corporate, finance based Government leads to Cronyism? Maybe Capitalism leads to Democrazy?
Whichever is correct, it still remains that it is government interference through sanctions and subsidies and bribes and payoffs that directly result in the crash. And treasonous Government policies and management which allow Cronyism to take place. It's not Capitalism itself.
Here's an interesting presentation which I think adds to the overall discussion and how it relates to the downward spiral we see in society.
The War Against Competence
Rumble
“Democracy,” in classical political science, was the old word for what we now call “socialism”. As America lurches from a republic into a democracy, it has shifted from its end-goal being virtue to it
Many thanks TheRevolutiLeni. This comment of yours sent me down a rabbit hole for a few hours. First stop was the Wikipedia entry on Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. You've got me understanding better the primary dichotomy between a constitutional monarchy and a republic. I think you are on to something to help us understand what is going on now with the unprecedented slide into COVID-induced bondage, as outlined by the Tytler model.
And thanks also TheRevolutiLeni for putting me on to Daniel Natal. I guess he's the modern day influencer who put you on to these ideas about the inherent flaws of so-called democracy (which you have named 'democrazy': quite a clever pun). I think I will start listening to Natal. He sounds academically highly qualified in history and political philosophy, but I can't fine his CV on the internet. I am drawn to what he has to say, because this COVID catastrophe is showing us democracy has broken down and government has taken full control as predicted by Tytler.
Shock horror. Daniel Natal who operates under the banner of *The New American* magazine is deemed to be "far-right" by Wikipedia,
The New American, from Wikipedia
The New American (TNA) is a far-right print and digital magazine published twice a month by American Opinion Publishing Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the John Birch Society (JBS), a far-right organization, The magazine was created in 1985 from the merger of two JBS magazines: American Opinion and The Review of the News.
Just watched the video. Awesome, he is so spot on.
It wasn't just Natal. Natal is just the latest of those I've come across.
I hear people like Ron Paul talk about the flaws of Democracy. Also Alex Newman (also from The New American). Pretty sure there have been others as well but I particularly like Natal since he brings in a lot of Greek philosophy.
Thanks for that Geoff. Tech skills are something I don't have so your helpful comments and encouragement are much appreciated.
I have a problem because for me it is all crystal clear. Obviously time and space prevent me from a quick explanation. When I have finally put it all together it will be published right here. But it may be a time for unlearning a few things or at least a different and deeper interpretation. Sorry if I seem arrogant.
Well, that is encouraging. This would be a good platform for you to publish your thesis. Keep working on it! The nice feature of Fifth Estate is that you can work on your draft online with the ‘publish’ button turned off. Ideally, your story will contain embedded hyperlinks and embedded images to make it more readable and eye-catching. When you believe it is in good shape, then you simply switch on the ‘publish’ button and then ‘save’
I for one look forward to reading your thesis.
The title of my commentary was in the form of a question.
Now if the true nature of the COVID crisis is crystal clear to you, based on all your thinking and reading, then I for one, and many other confused folks will want to hear what you have to say!
A thesis? I would n't trust any person who writes a thesis :) Anyway, I don't see much confusion here at all. We all have pieces of the puzzle.
I think you are the Cat and we are the Pigeons ;-)
A thesis?
Definition: "a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved"
e.g., "his central thesis is that psychological life is not part of the material world"
synonyms: theory · contention · argument · line of argument · proposal · proposition · premise · assumption · presumption · hypothesis · postulation · surmise · supposition · belief · idea · notion · opinion · view · theme · subject · topic · text · matter · theorem
--
So Cat Among the Pigeons: you admit that the COVID crisis it is a puzzle.
But you appear to believe you have all the pieces.
Look at it this way:
Each of the dots in the attached picture is a factoid, or, in your terms, a piece of the puzzle.
What is a factoid?
Definition: "an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".
e.g., "he addresses the facts and factoids which have buttressed his view of the film's theme"
Looking at the attached image, different people can connect the dots in different ways, to come up with a different picture.
That's how we get our particular picture of reality, and it can be different for different people.
Now an autistic person with a remarkable associative memory, can remember thousands of dots. So he or she can connect the dots in remarkable ways, to suit the desired picture of reality.
Somebody who is only exposed to a limited number of dots, endlessly reinforced by the infinite feedback loop of social media, will be subjected to what is called "confirmation bias". This gives them a sense of certainty, or, as Maxamillion says, a sense of "crystal clarity"
Confirmation bias, definition "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories"
I agree with most of what both Peterson and Zizek have to say. The institution of a Universal Basic Income, financed by a suitable tax on the super-rich would have the effect of lifting everyone above the level of the destitute and preventing the super rich from using their ridiculous wealth from distorting the efficient operation of the market economy.
Happiness is the successful pursuit of your most important objectives. So you can be unhappy if you pursue conflicting objectives, unachievable objectives or if you have too many objectives, or no or too few objectives. There are many ways to be unhappy. This follows Aristotle's analysis of happiness, on which neither Peterson nor Zizek have offered an improvement. But the above analysis also explains why happiness cannot be pursued directly, a point both your men touched on, assuming that it was some sort of blessing.
You draw a long bow there Robin. Please show me where I said I had all the pieces. I said "we all have pieces of the puzzle." I thought suspicion was a song by Elvis Presley.
My apologies to Cat. Through carelessness, I misinterpreted his comment. That's the trap of social media. It's worse on Twitter. What you said is so true: "we all have pieces of the puzzle". Therefore, to make sense of this COVID phenomenon, it is helpful to share our pieces of the puzzle on a site such as this.
Reply to Maurice. I have come across several other respected thinkers who are supporting the idea of a Universal Basic Income. So thanks for introducing the idea, triggered by this discussion.
Re comment on Happiness by Maurice. That's an interesting opinion that Aristotle's ideas on this subject remain universally valid. His teleological argument makes his conclusion that happiness is the purpose of the human physical body hard to argue against. The purpose of the eye is to see, the purpose of the ear is to hear, and so on . . .but Peterson has taught that the quest for happiness is ultimately self-defeating, and that the quest for meaning is more important (Viktor Frankl)
Just as long as it was n't a rush to judgement, Geoff, for some other ulterior motive, like an assumption that I am a "know all." ..sigh! Btw, Suspicion is not a song by Elvis Presley. It's a song by Terry Stafford recorded in 1964. Suspicious Minds was that Elvis classic.
"Happiness is the successful pursuit of your most important objectives" Too true. Aand my most important objective is to never seek happiness outside of myself. "the kingdom of God is within you. "
Speaking of Happiness and Aristotle, this is specifically what is discussed in this video.
In case you can't tell, I'm a big fan of Daniel Natal :)
Ethics: Part 3
Rumble
In this third part in the Ethics series, we cover the concept of Aristotle’s “telos,” or the purpose of a thing: Its end-goal. The telos of a knife is that it’s supposed to cut things. The telos of a