They also knew about lead in gas and smog. They knew that touching or breathing gasoline fumes causes cancer. They also start wars in order take supplies off the market to drive up prices.
Also, the tobacco companies knew about cancer; McDonald's knew about clogged arteries; the CDC knew that cloth masks and the vax are useless; the FDA knew about toxic ingredients in vitamin supplements; the USDA knew about acrylamide in french fries and toast...
We need a major reset.
@Pat The vax isn't "useless". Death rates are nearly eight times as high in unvaccinated people.
@Pat That certainly doesn't match what the CDC is saying now:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html
I think the people at the CDC have been doing their best, but the GQP crowd prevented them from doing any more than they did.
Evil is, as you say, in the minority. If it seems particularly vicious right now, it's because it knows it's outnumbered.
Despair is a tool of those who would have us give up. We're in the world we're in, most of us are pulling in the right direction, and we make the changes we can. The road is very long, but we're making progress every day.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
>"I think the people at the CDC have been doing their best, but the GQP crowd prevented them from doing any more than they did."
I don't know what "GQP" means.
The CDC did not do their best to stop the pandemic, they did the opposite. I've been following this very closely. I've watched nearly every presser from the WH response team and CDC, and the Senate Health Committee. I read many papers on what is effective and what is not. I've called and spoken to the authors of those papers to make sure I understood. I understand this better than most people.
The CDC, Congress, the White House, and the mainstream media worked together to make the pandemic worse. They wanted more people sick so they could spend more money and so the industry could make more money. That money goes to conspiring mainstream media as advertising; it goes to Congress as campaign donations and high-paying jobs after they leave Congress; it goes to corrupt administrators in research; it goes to CEOs and investors in the industry.
They literally killed more than a million people just so they could make a little more money. That's what happened.
>"Evil is, as you say, in the minority. If it seems particularly vicious right now, it's because it knows it's outnumbered."
This is very true. A lot of this is in response to a huge shift in information and awareness to the people, and democratization of media. They don't want people aware and informed and empowered. They are willing to kill millions and destroy democracy in order to hold on to power.
>"Despair is a tool of those who would have us give up. We're in the world we're in, most of us are pulling in the right direction, and we make the changes we can. The road is very long, but we're making progress every day."
I haven't given up, I've shifted strategy. They are so entrenched that it will take a major reset to take them down. If that's a revolution (non-violent of course), then that's what it takes.
>"'We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin"
Capitalism is the worst economic system there is, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
No economic system will work if those in control are corrupt and it is unjust, and it doesn't allow people to be free.
I don't believe we have anything resembling free-market capitalism in the US. We have a fascist oligarchy. A plutocracy.
@Pat "GQP" is my snarky conflation of GOP and QAnon. It seems that the majority of that party has gone off the deep end.
I guess I'm not ready to believe in the sort of vast, evil conspiracy you describe. Even Trump doesn't have killing people as his goal; he just doesn't care about anyone but himself. I certainly don't believe Fauci or Biden want more people to die.
The difference with Exxon is that we have the smoking gun: they paid for ads saying climate change isn't a problem while their internal research said the opposite. (See also the Ford Pinto.)
When I complain about "capitalism", I mean runaway, unregulated, laissez-faire, every-man-for-himself, predatory capitalism. I'm not opposed to commerce or a profit motive within limits, but we need to tax the rich and spend tax money on things that benefit all of us (like health care and public transit).
Elections are, of course, the easiest means to nonviolent revolution. Don't like the people in power? Throw 'em out. Our elections are flawed and under attack, but changing things any other way is much more difficult.
>"I guess I'm not ready to believe in the sort of vast, evil conspiracy you describe."
Well, we didn't have more deaths than any other country just by mistake. How do you think it happened? Have you been following all of the primary sources or are you just relying on mainstream media?
(BTW, twice as many people died under Biden, as did under Trump.)
>"Elections are, of course, the easiest means to nonviolent revolution. Don't like the people in power? Throw 'em out. Our elections are flawed and under attack, but changing things any other way is much more difficult."
I can't see how anyone in their right mind could support a country that just killed a million of their own citizens. I don't think just checking "Tweedle Dum" instead of "Tweedle Dee" is the appropriate response to that level of carnage.
This is a major catastrophe due to corruption within all segments of leadership in society. It requires a major reset.
@Pat Media and some other sources. I don't claim to be an epidemiologist.
That said, even if the TOTAL deaths under Biden have been higher, you have to take into account that Biden has been dealing with the pandemic for about twice as long. The deaths PER DAY have been lower under Biden.
Why do I think we had more deaths than other countries? Republicans, pure and simple. Even as health authorities begged people to get vaccinated and wear masks, Republicans told people not to and sued to prevent any mask requirements.
DT was in office for the first 11 months of the epidemic in the US. During the first 11 months of the Biden admin, more people died than under Donald.
But this is not a Democrat or Republican situation. It's our country's leadership across the board, public and private.
I'm sure you've read my previous posts on this, how the CDC hoarded respirators in the Strategic National Stockpile while they lied, telling people there was a shortage; how they told everyone to wear cloth masks (which don't stop the virus).
They knew right from the beginning that respirators are the most effective way to stop the infection and spread of the virus. They even said so. They said (paraphrasing) "N95 masks work better, but there's a shortage so everybody needs to wear cloth masks. (see attached pic of N95 inventories, which show that supplies INCREASED during the pandemic -- that's right, they pulled N95s off of the market during the pandemic and put them on the shelf so people could couldn't wear them.)
Here's a quote from a Harvard Med. study (Aug. 2021),
"Using data from the third wave, we showed that the epidemic could be eliminated in the USA if at least 40% of the population consistently wore respirators in public."
Biden finally called out the Army to distribute the N95 respirators in Dec. 2021 (because the CDC refused to release them). Look up the death rates to see what happened when they were distributed.
Did you hear about any of this in the mainstream media? Did hear any PSAs telling people to wear respirators?
> DT was in office for the first 11 months of the epidemic in the US. During the first 11 months of the Biden admin, more people died than under Donald.
That's cherry picking. It ignores the lower numbers in Biden's second's year and includes a huge spike just as Biden took office, before his policies could have changed anything. It's also not true.
> I'm sure you've read my previous posts on this
You would be wrong about that.
> Did hear any PSAs telling people to wear respirators?
Yes! Constantly! Through the mainstream media!
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-updates-mask-guidelines-know-n95-kn95-masks-rcna12302
That NBC piece was not a PSA but a report about the release of the respirators in December 2021, AFTER a million people had already been killed, as I just said above.
I just provided hard data that the government and media of United States killed a million of its own citizens, yet you seem to not want to acknowledge that.
Alright, you covered your ass.
Enjoy your tenure.
Stock up on toilet paper...
@peterdrake
My point wasn't about the vax, it was about the absolute evil of the CDC and the pharma companies who developed a vaccine that was less than 50% effective at preventing infection and which didn't slow down the spread of the pandemic at all, then when they released it they mislead everyone into thinking it was 90% effective and told everyone that they didn't need to wear masks or take precautions anymore. They did this intentionally. They wanted more people to suffer and die.
My point is that humanity is fucked. There is a minority of people who are just so evil that they will kill a million people just to make an extra dollar or two, and these people seek out power and end up running things and make the world a miserable place with lots of unnecessary suffering.
We're just fucked and the world needs a major reset. I don't know if that's an asteroid that wipes out our species so a better species can take our place or if it's a worldwide revolution that takes down all those grasping assholes, but we desperately need a reset.