How to Profit from Pandemics

Three threads from this week outline the political and media pandemic protocol being followed around the world, the similarities and differences between prior pandemics, and how the profit motive fuels it all.

Prognostic Chats outlined a baker's dozen of steps taken by many countries to get us to this damaging place. His post comes with receipts, but I've grown weary of including them. I don't think they need evidence. It's just how most of us are living now. 

"Masks have been removed from healthcare. Now schools are encouraging parents to send their sick children to class. We didn’t get here by accident. We have been brought here through carefully orchestrated system changes. They have been common in many counties. Few have noticed.

1. Relabel everything to do with the pandemic, a global emergency that has so far killed estimated over 24.4 million and resulted in estimated over 400 million post Covid-19 syndrome cases, so it all appears benign. This language will soon enter media & common conversation. Use it, use it often.
2. Stop government press conferences and begin to refer to the ongoing pandemic in its past tense. This begins to create the illusion that it has passed and begins to drip down into common conversation. Never speak about Long Covid or post Covid complications. Don’t mention deaths.
3. Stop [Covid] surveillance systems in your country so there is no way to know how prevalent it is. Continue to use phrases like “during the pandemic”. Now there isn’t any accessible data to prove that wrong. Thank God for private apps like Zoe. P.S. it’s not over yet.
4. Get media to stop reporting on Covid. They have already followed your cue to refer to anything Covid related in a past tense to further public perception it’s over. In fact, remove the Covid section entirely in the BBC news page. Yes that really happened.
5. Remove availability of free lateral flow testing for the public. Now you can’t check if you have it. Like to know if there’s other cases in your area? Too bad, the surveillance system was shut down last month. Oh well; too bad, get back to work.
6. We’ve let you believe a leading cause of mortality and morbidity is “mild,” stopped monitoring and removed availability of free testing. The public has decided it must be 2019 again and are ignoring risk. Now is a good time to turn to stripping back healthcare mitigations.
7. Now that no one’s looking, let’s remove NHS sick leave for Covid and force staff into disciplinary action if they exceed normal sick leave. Let’s tell them that it’s time to “live with Covid.” They’ll probably think we will upgrade ventilation or adopt new approaches.
8. Except we won’t. We will just revert to “prepandemic” policy, remove universal masking, stop routine staff testing (asymptomatic transmission? What’s that?), restrict Covid testing even in symptomatic patients, and reduce time off from work with covid against the science.
9. Now that we’ve fixed Covid in hospitals, it’s time to begin restricting vaccine delivery. Unlike other counties we will only give acute community Covid treatments or vaccines to a select group of the population. No one will care; they all think it’s over; we told them.
10. Let’s have a think about banning masks entirely now. I think the public are sufficiently conditioned to go for that. Yeah, they clapped for those healthcare workers in 2020, but I think we will be ok to push this step through still given they all believe covid's no issue.
11. Let’s force them to send their sick children to school. Hold on, during a pandemic? When we know the risks of multisystem organ damage and Long Covid even in children? Risking repeat infections over and over? Yes. Let’s do it. No one will mind; trust me it’s time.
12. Media never mention it, but weekly death totals are still on websites. We need to bury these further. Let’s include the pandemic years as part of our baseline of “normal” for annual deaths, so the excess deaths during those years is “normal” and hides ongoing death.
13. Hold a ‘Covid Inquiry’ so we can get it on the record how well we did “during the pandemic”; really hammer home the message it must be over, and begin talking about “being prepared” for the “next pandemic.” Really important to repeat those messages again and again.

So there you have it, a 13-step programme for convincing your population that a global pandemic is nothing to worry about, to ensure the media never mention it or the mounting evidence of excess deaths, Long Covid and post Covid health issues in millions. It’s quite impressive really. The worst thing is the longer the Covid Pandemic (yes it’s still here) runs now completely without mitigations, the more it will spread, mutate and more cumulative damage will ensue. Perhaps it’s too late to make change given societal beliefs, but maybe not." 

Then Liz Whatsherface compared our current protocol to what happened in 1918, highlighting parts of the article, "Waiting for the Flu," written by Tom Dicke in 2015.

"We are in a new situation with Covid because it is the first airborne pandemic post-commercial air travel. But previous pandemics can still teach us about human behavior. Historian Tom Dicke studied public awareness and understanding of the 1918 flu in the US. He found a “near universal lack of preparation or panic or other signs of personal concern” among people in as-yet unaffected areas, despite the news coverage. Dicke writes that the widespread understanding of the flu at the time was that it was a “seasonal visitor” that “almost never killed the strong and otherwise healthy." Americans in 1918 read news stories about the Spanish flu, but still could not conceive of the threat it posed. 

Does this sound familiar? 

"Nonchalance was typical of those who had yet to experience the Spanish flu firsthand. For nearly the whole of September in cities and towns across the United States millions sat aware but inactive until the flu appeared and their neighbors began to die." 

Some historians argue that “the flu coverage was purposely suppressed or downplayed in an effort to prevent panic or maintain morale in the closing months of World War I.” Dicke chalks it up to cognitive inertia instead of deliberately downplayed media coverage (though he weirdly bases this purely on the fact that newspapers reported the basic facts). He even notes that many newspapers ran flu stories as joke fodder. Regardless, people were misled. News stories that denied the danger, "did so either by reporting that the epidemic was on the wane or that it was not particularly dangerous to the healthy and vigilant." 

Epidemiologists estimate that roughly 30% of the world's population caught the 1918 flu, which killed 2.5% of the entire population. Fortunately, people were not flying around on airplanes unmasked back then. If they had been, the pandemic would have gone on for way, way longer.

So this tactic is clearly nothing new. 

Finally Laura Miers clarifies the benefit of allowing a pandemic to continue (not to us, mind you). I included the links with this one.

Everyone says “They’ll stop disabling and killing us because they need us,” but they DON’T need us, and they’re investing in healthcare, disability, LTC, and death so they can profit WILDLY as we keep getting sick—lives destroyed in a blink—before premature death finally delivers us. There has never been a more profitable time to become disabled. There has never been a more profitable time to die.  There has never been a more profitable time to require mental health care. Those who have had Covid are 60% more likely to suffer from mental health problems than those who were not infected. When hospitalized, the likelihood jumps to 86%. [Imani Barbarin explains,] 

“Private equity firms are buying up disability services as well as investing in guardianship & conservatorship. . . . They’ll imprison you using the legal system, then you pay them for the pleasure. They’ll take away all your assets & shove you in a nursing home or LTC facility.”

There has never been a more profitable time to require long term care. There has never been a more profitable time to be a “troubled kid” or to bear troubled kids (after Roe v Wade was reversed during a pandemic featuring a novel pathogen that causes untold pregnancy complications & maims fetuses). 

We are hostages, and they have us surrounded. No matter the course your life takes, it’s almost certain your body will be used to generate profits. [From Craig Collins,]

“As profitable sources of production dry up, capitalism will be compelled to turn a profit by consuming the social assets it once created. By cannibalizing itself, the profit motive will exacerbate industrial society’s dramatic decline." 

[And from Chuck Collins,]

“At the end of October 2021, U.S. billionaire wealth hit a high-water mark. The 745 billionaires had a combined $5.1 trillion, a gain of $2.1 trillion, more than 70% over pre-pandemic assets.” 

They are [literally developing machines that can do all of our jobs]. Healthcare workers are told the only available option is working without adequate PPE, becoming disabled and welcoming premature death, and AI will be there with bells on waiting to replace them."

I said much of this a month ago, and I know some people think I've become far too obsessed with Covid and disability, but how can I not when people are becoming disabled from Long Covid in front of our eyes and nobody's doing anything to stop it?? It all bears repeating over and over and over again until we turn a corner on this intentional obfuscation.