Fear of Contagion + News from New Zealand + Our Lords at the CDC
A collection of interesting news.
This story is a collection of news that caught my eye.
#1. Does Fear of Contagion Make Us Intolerant and Compliant?
This one caught my eye because I wrote it. My article about “behavioral immune system,” fear of contagion, and “disgustology” was published by Dr. Mercola the other night.
Among other things, I talk about how the formal study of disgust, aka “disgustology,” was used by governments in a calculated manner to make people emotionally volatile, afraid of contagion, and very intolerant of “rule breakers” in the context of COVID. (PDF).
#2. A wonderful interview with Dr. Emanuel Garcia in New Zealand.
Here is also my earlier interview with Dr. Garcia, whose courage and integrity I greatly admire.
#3. Our kind lords at the CDC have loosened the COVID guidelines.
The peasants are celebrating.
#4. TrialSiteNews: “Vaccinated 5X More Contagious Than the Unvaccinated 10 Days After SARS-CoV-2 Infection”
Published recently in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a study led by Massachusetts-based physician-scientists leads to a disturbing discovery: individuals fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 actually recover markedly more slowly from the illness and surprisingly, even remain contagious for lengthier periods of time as compared to unvaccinated persons. While the study didn’t investigate implications associated with illness severity, the findings nonetheless raise significant questions for consideration. This study was approved by the institutional review board and the institutional biosafety committee at Mass General Brigham, and informed consent was obtained from all the participants. The takeaway from this study could be profound should the results scale out to larger cohorts. People that are vaccinated remain five times as contagious as those who are unvaccinated ten days after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Put another way, the vaccinated continue to transmit the disease significantly more than the unvaccinated should the data hold up across broader investigation
The study they are citing:
“Duration of Shedding of Culturable Virus in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (BA.1) Infection”
At five days post-infection, less than 25 percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious, whereas around 70 percent of boosted people were still carrying viable virus particles. For those partially vaccinated, around 50 percent were still contagious at this point.
Even more strikingly, at ten days post-infection, one-third of boosted people (31 percent) were found to still be carrying live, culturable virus. By contrast, just six percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious at day 10.
#5: European Journal of Epidemiology: “Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of COVID-19”
The question is, are the lying bullies in high chairs going to be held accountable for the lives lost?
(Thank you for your support, I greatly depend on it!)
It seems to me that there is a moral component to the disgust reflex you mention. Just looking at people around me during the *ahem* “pandemic”, it was as though fear had ripped off their metaphorical mask, exposing a deep ugliness underneath (their actual mask remained very much in place).
On one occasion, I was talking with a (former) friend about a local county fair that was coming up. Now, this individual is far from a deep thinker, and while he is an avowed Christian, literally never exhibits any such values. I asked him if he intended to go to which he said assured me that he most certainly would not be as it was likely to be a “super-spreader event.”
Aside from how utterly moronic this statement is, it is also a clear illustration of what he thought of the decent, rural folk who typically attend the fair. I saw countless such behaviours exhibited by those around me – friends recoiling from guys in overalls, family members speaking of certain businesses like they were a rat’s nest – and truly, it upended my world. Over the course of just a few months, I came to realise just how many of the people I loved were in fact, shallow, egotistical bigots. Worse still, they were absolutely adamant that they were the ones being virtuous.
Great minds think alike, Fear definitely was the driver of the pandemic and it's still flying down the highway!