Greetings PANDA and all. Thank you all for your knowledge, expertise and persistence.

“But time will not permit: all is uneven, And every thing is left at six and seven”. William Shakespeare

I was a musician. The lockdown obliterated the music business and my already meager income. My wife is a nurse. I live in the hot, arid southwest desert of the U.S. From these perspectives do I write.

A recent conversation I had with my wife is characteristic of the times;

We enjoyed two movies recently; ‘Embrace of the serpent’ a story set in the Amazon showing the mortal corrosion resulting from european exploitation and clerical incursion contrasted by the incomprehensible, interconnected living organism which is the Amazon. And ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring’ by Kim Ki-Duk, a kind of poetic cycle of human failings and growth with a Buddhist perspective.

I learned that the shaman in ‘Embrace’; Antonio Bolívar, and Kim Ki-Duk both died from “complications due to Covid-19”. A lifelong musician friend of mine has also died from covid. My wife of course sees covid patients. With all of this sobering covid mortality before us, my wife implored me to get vaccinated.

My response is that we can grieve and pay tribute to the fallen, even as we live another day, but that its incumbent to put covid in perspective. Thanks to smart and diligent scientists like John Ioannidis we have some idea of the relative seriousness and dangers. But a line was drawn in the sand and beyond this point my wife could talk no further on the subject. She was after all on the front line and I was missguided.

My other friends had quit talking to me months ago after I made the error of sharing various counter narrative data like the PANDA graphic showing no effect from lockdown, some John Ioannidis videos, and a Marc Lipsitch paper ‘Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period’ suggesting certain lockdown scenarios can counterintuitively increase the number of infections.

What I have learned in the last long year of loss is that talking about Covid-19 is taboo. People dont want to know. They seem to be self blinkered.

This remarkable global gestalt opens the door to the hydra of social psychology. The covid era may be remembered for something besides the vicissitudes of the viral pandemic; A social phenomenon of mass psychology, corresponding to dramas of life during monarchy and feudalism, or mass hysterias. To ignore the import of this sociology is to inadequately diagnose the disease of the patient which is now civilization.

In view of the barbarous media and social response to John Ioannidis who is without doubt one of the most qualified and thoughtful scientists in the arena, authors Lenzer and Brownlee wrote the opinion piece ‘John Ioannidis and Medical Tribalism in the Era of Covid-19’ which, for my taste, missed expounding on the key word; tribalism.

Covid-19 laid bare a profound emotionally underpinned social psychology. It’s arguably a long standing pathology of our species. One sees moral indignation overpowering reason; unchallenged belief and submission to various ‘authorities’ and their rhetoric; a mass blindness of perspective and selective retention. Civilization everywhere is in the grip of a Karpman drama triangle.

After three months of lockdowns, after John Ioannidis wrote the op ed warning about draconian measures without adequate data, after we knew more or less the IFR and could finally apply some retrospection, he said this in a video; “lockdown, ok we did it, congratulations to everyone, and never do it again” (June 22)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdb27Dzqi9o

Then something remarkable happened; Nothing. The world continued for eight long months in lockdowns and abject fear. Only vaccines and Fauci could save us from nightmarish suffocating annihilation from the century’s worst pandemic.

Now there is a visceral relief. People believe they are safe now with a vaccine. The efforts to provide truth and promote rational response didnt work. The truth of what flatten the curve really means and what the outcomes are, the chance to expose the ensuing business model which emerged; ‘we lock you in your homes and shut down your livelihood and in return for certain freedoms, you will pay us to inject you with experimental meds’

Lets admit it; the ‘elite’ won, the people lost. The billionaires amassed a trillion. Hysteria and compliance won over equipoise and knowledge. Society is petty, a kind of hive ape which constructs the world with memes appealing to the amygdala. Now professionals in the field argue for yet more stringent lockdowns to reach zero covid, ignoring such realities as tuberculosis and everything that contributes to mankind’s ills like air pollution and wealth transference.

Its tragic. Ominous.

Kind regards to all,
Max

The phrase, “to set the world on six and seven”, is used by Geoffrey Chaucer in his epic poem Troilus and Criseyde written around 1380.
An interpretation is given “The idiom at sixes and sevens means in a state of complete disarray and confusion, in a complete mess. A state of disagreement between two or more people.”

Chaucer’s poem is also known for the phrase: “all good things must come to an end”