Tag Archives: Vaccination Conspiracy Bill Gates

Christmas in the Land of Vax

How was it for you?

Published: 3 January 2022 ~ Christmas in the Land of Vax

It was very hit and miss, as though they had taken a leaf out of the government’s ‘How to Pretend that we are Dealing with Coronavirus Convincingly’ manual, the question should the Sheep family invite their relatives, the Woollies, from Scotland to spend Christmas with them or should the Sheep spend Christmas with the Woollies in Sockland?

Christmas was closing in faster than a new coronavirus variant, and with the distinct possibility that Boris might do a U-turn on vaccine passports using Plan B (which some unpleasant people say stands for ‘Bollocks’), it was be damned if you do, be damned if you don’t, and be buggered if anyone from government to Abdul knew what was going on?

One thing the Sheep were sure of was that they had better decide soon before more authoritarianism was brought to bear in the name of beneficent government. Two new strains, mainly on credulity, and 300 additional threats to society, had already been detected in two 5-star hotels, The Grinning Boaters and The Froggy Freeloaders, located on the outskirts of Dover.

Following this discovery, as reported by Nigel Farage, Downing Street immediately issued a warning that Christmas parties, possibly Christmas itself, may have to be cancelled, whilst a silly old chap who works for The Grimstarnian, Jenkinspoop, had nothing better to do than sit at home in his face mask and write an incredibly banal and spurious treatise on the UK’s need for unlimited mountains of migrants, as if he had never heard of Brexit and had no idea why the Labour party had been wiped out in the last election. A possible reason for his renewed confidence in the Kalergi Plan was the recent news that the neoliberals had set the democratic seesaw in motion giving Labour a nine-point lead. ‘Stupid, yes! But not that Stupid Surely!’, Bongo wrote, who had obviously no idea of what it was like to live in a democratic country, although he had booked his hotel and was on his way ~ at speed !

It was little Amanda Sheep who finally brought the question on where to spend Christmas to a decisive conclusion, recalling that the last Christmas they had spent in Sockland had been extremely close to putrid.

The jokes in the Christmas crackers were atrocious: “Question: Where’s the smallest airfield in the world? Answer: Up a Scottish kilt, two hangars and a spitfire!”; Uncle McSock got so sloshed on cheap whisky that he ended up with his sporran on his chin; his wife Agnus ‘Haggis’ McSock insisted on forcing noise out of an instrument that was the equivalent of blowing up the arse of a tortured cat; and the whole evening descended into chaos when someone mentioned Bonny Prince Charlie in the same breath as Nicola Sturgeon. The only person who seemed to be enjoying himself, little Mac McSock, sometimes fondly referred to as ‘Plastic’ or ‘Flashing’, spent the entire evening of Christmas Day locked in his bedroom, practising, or so his mother said, for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Caber Tossing Championship. Little Mac desperately needed a smaller ego, almost as much as he needed greater magnification in the lenses of his spectacles.

Christmas in the Land of Vax a Scotsman blowing up a cat's arse

So, the Sheep remained in England (where else?), where things had gone from bad moral high-ground to sanctimonious worse-ground. Not only was it looking more likely that Boris and Sergeant Daftit were about to go Nazi on vaccine passports (conveniently given the blue light by Omicron) but had introduced more punitive measures in the interests of saving people so that they could spend the rest of their lives in mortal dread of ever going anywhere and seeing anyone again.

This course of action, Plan C (and, for the sake of proprietary we won’t divulge what the ‘C’ stands for, although it is obvious to the majority) has been launched in the name of Protecting the NHS, which by clever coincidence would seem to rhyme with ‘what a nasty mess’. In other words, the UK, like many other countries, seemed to be sliding reptiliously into vaccine passport dystopia. Not only would you not be allowed into pubs, restaurants and nightclubs without an electronic tracking vaccine passport, but added to the no-go list would be DIY shops, non-food store outlets, garden centres and sex shops ~ the latter prohibition would impact really badly on Simon Sheep’s Christmas present list ~ whatever would they buy granny now? (You see, she was a progeny of the progressive and permissive 1960s!)

Christmas in the Land of Vax

So, the Sheep stayed at home and in the tradition of the UK’s meek and tolerant had a ‘make do and mend’ Christmas as their forbears had before them. There are parallels to be drawn here, based on believing what you are told: One generation had gone to war believing that they were fighting to preserve their country (look at it today!); the present generation, who do not feel quite so entitled anymore, believe that in the new war between coronavirus and traditional freedoms our governments are fighting for us. Gullible and Naïve, the London department store, one street lower than Downing Street (is that possible?), were offering a multi-complex, multi-irrational, multi-cultural (am I repeating myself?) solution to getting into their store. Once, all you needed to do was open the door, but now it was lateral flow tests and PCRs (the only things missing are ‘I’ and ‘K’).

Before anyone could think of Christmas shopping, however, there was the house to decorate. Luckily the Sheeps were forward-thinking people. They had been first in the queue when coronavirus was announced and were fortunate enough to have a several bog rolls left from the 20,000 that they had stockpiled in the Great Panic Buying Bog Roll Bonanza of 2020, and big Boris Sheep, in between making plans from the alphabet ~ he would soon be on ‘Triple Z’ ~ recalling his days at public school, when he made enough Christmas decorations from his parent’s allowance to give Oxford the ring road it badly required, set about making paper chains out of used face masks.

The Christmas tree was an ingenuity stretcher, it almost made them wish that Christmas had been banned, as the leftist predecessors to the Religion of Woke wanted it to be back in the days of Sir Tony, but eventually Boris saved the day (sniggers and guffaws) with his Plan ‘Other Characters’ by suggesting that Keir Starmer come round and stand in the corner with his arms out ~ well he had to have some use. Then they dusted off their ancient decorations, including Ed’s Balls, draped the tree in sycophants and lush-living liberal lefties and stuck a great big gender-neutral fairy on the top. Good heavens, how he/she/it/other looked like Larry Grayson! ‘Shut that door!’ It’s too late Larry!

As the big day approached, with Big Pharma cashing in on the traditional uptake of the ‘day after’ pills, Big Tech on the volume of gadgets purchased, mostly during Black (whoops, you can’t say that) Friday, the Sheep family settled down for their second coronavirus Christmas.

As the whole family had been vaccinated more times than you and I have taken a knee, obtaining the components for the traditional Christmas dinner had been as easy as conning countless liberals to vote Remain and then later to remain in their houses.

Eating Christmas dinner with a face mask on had been a very messy business, especially whilst wearing a silly paper hat and a pair of rubber gloves, but at least the latter concealed grotesquely chapped hands from excessive hand-washing and the neurotic application of disinfecting wipes.

As the Sheep family live in Dover, shortly after watching the Queen of Coronavirus’s Speeches by Fool-Them-All Fauci, they retired to the lounge where from their bay windows they had the perfect view of the little boats arriving along the coast. Such heart-warming scenes to be sure! Scores of happy, smiling Christmas migrants gift-wrapped by the French and welcomed ashore by British policeman, who, if truth be told (but only by Sorryarse Fact Checkers!), were rather pleased to have been given this cushy detail, having spent most of the past 12 months either investigating mean tweets or bursting into people’s homes to see if the residents had their masks on.

After a nice glass of Dover Port, which gets more full bodied with every passing month, the Sheep family played ‘WHO Dunnit to Them’, a game by Public Health Charades, in which little Dick Sheep made then all howl with laughter at his superb rendition of a non-vaccinated white man banned from everywhere including his own country ~ they all had another booster shot after seeing that one!

They then watched WHO Dunnit on the television. It wasn’t a bad film, but the plot was so unbelievable, especially at the end where Herculean Plotdemic was about to reveal who the killer really was when thankfully a message popped up on the screen redirecting viewers to the true version of events and Herculean Plotdemic never got another job again, at least not in liberal-lefty lovie land.

They then watched the popular soap opera Coronavirus Streets, which was a touch boring as the entire cast just sat in their houses two-metres apart from each other, twiddling on their outsmart-them phones, and finished off with a quick game of pin the face mask on granny. By now they were getting tired, but fortunately the BBC were running a Dr Who Christmas Special (not to be confused with you know WHO!) and this programme certainly Woke them up!

At 7 o’clock the guests arrived. Only two out of 25 were allowed in, as the others hadn’t been vaccinated. Natural immunity and proven antibodies were no excuse. It was essential (for someone) that anyone coming into the house was vaccinated first, had a Visitors to Your Home DIY Vaccination Kit, played music from the Third Reich and wore small black moustaches, whilst the rest of the family chanted something from a liberal-left website about ‘Thank you for thinking of others and saving their lives for them’ at which everyone fell about for at least 30 proper seconds in a state of rapture bordering on orgasm. Little Dick hadn’t seen anything like this since Tony Blair was elected Chancellor and was then given a knighthood for turning the UK into a kebab shop.

The evening was not entirely ruined, however, as it was not snowing that heavily outside and the non-vaccinated, who were used to being outcasts, they had learnt to accept their place in the New World Order when smoking was banned in pubs and restaurants, accepted their lot cheerfully. Huddling up in the cold was no new thing for them, and besides it was a lot better than being pumped full of a biological substance that didn’t give young, fit, medically proven A1 footballers heart attacks.

Christmas in the Land of Vax

Every now and again, whilst partner dancing six feet apart, little Amanda Sheep would chuck a roast potato or some brussels sprouts at the non-vaxxers from the bedroom window, and her little brother Boris would serve them drinks through the letterbox, wearing rubber gloves, of course, and a hairstyle that he had got out of a Christmas cracker that looked like a face mask blown inside out.

After that they played hide and sneak: someone hid a coronavirus and the rest of the group had to look for it whilst telling the authorities on their mobile phones who had not had the vaccine. This game was as limp as vaccine-induced impotence, as hopeless as finding an ounce of sense in Boris’ haystack and even more ludicrous than trying to stop a virus with a face mask.

Christmas in the Land of Vax an Arse Mask — **Arse Mask ~ the bottom line in Covid protection. As good as face masks but you’ll crack up whilst wearing them!**

Pass the Covid Parcel was far more successful. It was understandable: half of the room wore red rosettes the other half wore blue. It didn’t matter if the music stopped or not, since nobody took any notice, they all kept humming the same tune whilst passing the parcel one from the other — quickly. The coronavirus version of musical chairs was much the same as pass the parcel. “Pass the what?” some wag cried, who was particularly good at inventing cockney rhyming slang. And then came charades, well no need to explain that one, the name speaks for itself, although there was something about Nightingale Hospitals, ‘now you see them, now you don’t’, that nobody understood, least of all those who established them, never used them and then dismantled them. Ahh well, it would make sacking unvaccinated healthcare workers easier!

The highlight of Christmas day was watching the anti-totalitarian riots in Australia and Canada, whereupon the entire family concluded that you would think that they would have something better to do, such as making Facebook avatars with ‘I have had my vaccine’ written in rainbow colours around them or having an interim jab between their twice-minutely booster.

Having to vaccinate at every tick and turn is inconvenient, especially when the nearest vaccination point is 5 miles away. However, using her discount coupon from The Grimstarnian’s Covid Virtue Signalling page, little Amanda Sheep trotted off to her nearest store, proudly presented her lateral flow test and returned home with Christmas stockings full of Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kits, the perfect companion to the Candle-Lit-Vigil Kits, which she had also bought using Virtue Signalling discount coupons from The Grimstarnian’s media website.

Then came the presents: Dick was chuffed with his map to the nearest vaccination clinic, ‘Oohh, it’s just what they’ve always wanted’; the elder brother, Boris, was given his own mobile vaccination centre ~ thus being assured of a job for life ~ he was even given a white coat with ‘I am a WHO scientist’ written on it and a Junior WHO Scientist Kit, the same one that the grown-ups had used to identify coronavirus with. Dad was content to receive a bumper pack of Bile Beans. He had been having a lot of difficulty lately adjusting to the latest propaganda ~ all those new stains! ~ and his Scrabble ability could certainly do with some kind of pill that claimed to cure everything.

Mother’s present was spectacular. She was given a brand-new bottle of vaccination paranoia tablets and a year’s free subscription to The Independent. She also joined Facebanned, a new social media site where account holders were routinely banned, blocked, barred, re-routed, suspended and eventually arrested for crimes against stupidity and for inciting logic and common sense.

Simon Sheep was given a New World Order coronavirus tie, with a Bill’s Gatepost chip inside. The beauty of this tie was that every time you thought or said something that you were not supposed to think or say the tie slowly throttled you. Thanks, Bill, you’re a brick (whoops, there goes that Windows’ spell checker again!).

At the end of the day they all had high temperatures, dry coughs and were feeling absolutely dreadful, although no one went so far as to say ‘like death warmed up’, but at least they could blame it on the Christmas alcohol. After all, it couldn’t be coronavirus, the whole family had been double jabbed and each and everyone had fitted themselves out with a strap-on mobile booster drip which, although physically inconvenient, saved an awful lot of time in running back and forth to hospitals and clinics — time which they could use to their advantage in practising social distancing and trying on their latest face masks.

Yes, it had been a lovely Christmas, and there was nothing to suggest that it would not be the same next year … and the next … and the next … and the next …

And whilst we are on the subject …
How to deal with a vaccinated family member at Christmas
Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!
The Liberal solution to anti-vaxxers

Image attributions
Sheep in Christmas hat: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=237328&picture=christmas-sheep-in-hat
Face mask: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/face-mask-protection-coronavirus-5031122/
Scotsman playing bagpipes: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/160000/velka/man-playing-bagpipes-clipart.jpg
Scared cat: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/rcjKpL6di.htm
Face masks: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/330000/velka/coronavirus-covid-19-face-masks.jpg
Back of terraced houses: Photo by Peter Hall on Unsplash; https://unsplash.com/photos/3gYyO8bN020
Buttocks: Author: OpenClipart-Vectors / pixabay.com: https://www.freeimg.net/photo/101285/anatomy-ass-bare-behind
Cat biting fingers: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/kTKnboxMc.htm

Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus

If’s an illusion

Published: 20 September 2021 ~ Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus

One year and six months into the coronavirus era or, according to your perception of it, the pandemic, plandemic, Great Reset, call it what you will, and the people of the world have gone from being recipients of ‘friendly’, almost parental, advice to stay home and stay safe, to being victims of emotional and moral blackmail, hinged to the requirement, mandatory requirement, to get themselves injected with fast-tracked vaccines, none of which have been conclusively cleared by the usual testing protocols.

In my native country, the UK, already divided along the socio-political faultline of legacy patriotism and social engineering, the imposition of lockdowns, masks and the big issue, vaccination, have galvanised attitudes and entrenched beliefs on either side of a great divide.

Some postulate that the Covid plan, or one dimension of that the plan, is based on the divide and rule paradigm that underpins mass, unwanted immigration for the ends advanced by Coudenhove-Kalergi, contemporaneously run in western liberal countries under the codename ‘diversity’ and sugar-coated as being the best thing since more curry.

Others lean towards the speculation that manifests from a suspected unholy alliance between the WHO, Bill Gates and the Big Pharma connection, or, to put it in its simplest form, discounting for the moment chipping people and culling the world’s population, profit.

This article, ‘While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer’, is worth considering if only because of this statement: “’The last person I would want to tell me if a vaccine was ready to go is a person who has an investment in the vaccine,’ Krimsky said”¹. ‘The last person’ is a reference to Mr Gates; Mr Krimsky is a professor of humanities and social sciences at Tufts University.

And from the same article, “According to Forbes’s estimates, Bill Gates’s private wealth, estimated at around $115 billion, has increased by more than $10 billion during the pandemic. It is unknown if the Gateses have personal investments in companies working on Covid.”¹🐷

Gates, his wealth and his objectives aside, it is the socio-ethical repercussions, the fallout from restrictions and new laws within the Covid orbit, that urgently need addressing, as differences in opinion regarding primarily mask wearing and co-opted mass vaccination is in the UK rapidly creating a two-tier society polarised by those who have been vaccinated and who, supposedly, willingly or unwittingly, support repetitive vaccination, and those who strongly oppose it.

The vaccinated are divisible into two sub-groups, determined by obedience and motive. One group consists of people who believe everything that the powers that be and their media tells them. They question nothing and do as they are told and then, having passed through the chrysalis stage, emerge as moral high-grounders, preaching to all in sundry who are hesitant to take or who are staunchly opposed to the vaccine that their recalcitrance is inexcusable, that it poses a threat to the health of others, and for this they must be blamed and shamed and subject to prohibitions.

The other vaccinated group consists of reluctant ‘volunteers’, those that have accepted the vaccine under duress of saving their jobs and livelihoods. In other words they have been coerced into having a foreign body injected into their body with no convincing assurance that it will not eventually harm them, possibly terminally.

The moral high-grounders, who unreasoningly follow the WHO, their governments and whatever the media tells them, condemn those who reject mass and mandatory vaccination outright on ethical and rational grounds by resorting to terminology custom-made for the purpose by ruling elites and their media factotums. Stigmastisation by the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label is the liberal equivalent of shouting ‘racist’, a means when all else fails of avoiding the issue and closing debate.

The moral low-grounding conspiracy theorists are averse to becoming one of the herd possibly because of the connation that herds are silly things that go willingly off to slaughter, but more likely because unlike the moral high-grounders they are suspicious of the links that exist between so-called non-government organisations, charitable foundations, Big Pharma etc.

Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus

Some of their persuasion believe that pharmaceutical companies, global investment groups and billionaire philanthropists deliberately conspired to instigate the COVID-19 pandemic; others that the conspiracy between them is more likely to have been formulated as an exploitation of Covid circumstances as and when they developed.

This ‘wait and see’ faction are less likely to concede that the practices of social media gurus to ‘protect’ vaccine vacillators from ‘false news’ and ‘false vaccine information’ is conducted on an equitable basis for altruistic ends, and more likely to consider the self-styled fact checking employed by social media giant Facebook and others as being a simple but effective means of censoring and suppressing legitimate, alternative, critical views on (a) the so-called protective measures adopted for dealing with coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to enforced mask wearing and (b) more incisively, to the socio-ethical debate on fast-tracked and mandatory vaccination, where the term ‘mandatory’ encompasses not only legal directives but also the Orwellian implementation and ‘legal’ enforcement of vaccination passports, together with strong-arm fear mongering and emotional and moral blackmail.

The moral high-grounders believe what they are told to believe and do what they are told to do; the moral low-grounders question the validity and credulity of this approach, not only in regard to the approach itself, which is blind and unquestionable, but also from a critical analysis of the people doing the telling and the links between these people, their previous stated objectives and the ever-present profit motive.🐷

Trust the Greatest Victim of Coronavirus

The social media monopolisers, led by Facebook, now operate a blanket and in-depth censorship programme, which blocks content, eradicates comment and routinely reroutes readers to the WHO website or affiliated articles that purport to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Should anyone attempt to post anything that contradicts or challenges the official narrative on coronavirus, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to mask wearing and vaccination, they are vetted, censored and blocked. The same media groups encourage the compliant to advertise their compliancy by changing their avatars to virtue-signalling roundels, ‘I have had my vaccine’. For the initiated, one can only surmise that these rainbow encircled discs are worn as badges of honour; for those who are less easily led, or tend toward skepticism, they are seen as nothing more than misplaced trust and confessions of naivety.

“Currently, Facebook has more than 60 partners who fact-check content in more than 50 languages worldwide. As Remix News has previously reported, 18 out of 20 members of Facebook’s global fact-checking board have ties to George Soros, who has provided funding to liberal causes around the world, including over $50 million he’s spent on defeating President Donald Trump and efforts to undermine conservative governments in Hungary and Poland.”²

The man referred to in the quote above is the same man that the liberal-controlled western media is keen to refer to as a ‘billionaire philanthropist’ and is the same man allegedly whose non-government organisations (NGOs) have facilitated and continue to facilitate the mass mobilisation of people from third world countries into Europe. It is an irony of fate that this man is arguably the de facto precipitant of Brexit.

Eighteen months into the pandemic and the biggest casualty of all is Trust ~ misplaced or abandoned. By the time the ‘pandemic’ is over, by which I mean exposed for what it is or simply eroded by the passage of time and the demise of the main protagonists, will we ever feel able to trust them again? More to the point, do they really care? In the last analysis, trust is a silent commodity whereas money, as we know to our cost, talks …

Is the Vaccine now Mandatory in Russia?

Vaccines & the curious effect of the word Mandatory

Published: 29 June 2021 ~ Is the Vaccine now Mandatory in Russia?

{*image attribution at end of article}

To learn on the same day Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed that he would track down all those who refused the vaccine and inject them in the arse that the word ‘mandatory’ had emerged in Russia relating to the vaccine was arguably not the most auspicious timing possible.

Whilst I have no difficulty imagining these measures being adopted in the UK without much, if any, opposition ~ picture hordes (yes, I said, hordes) of young men dressed only in rainbow underpants skipping, not very fast, through Nob-butts Garden Centre, hotly pursued by several masked and white-coated gentlemen (two looking suspiciously like Matt Hancock and Fauci) with their syringes in their hands ~ the thought of something similar happening here, in Russia, just does not bare arsing about!

Imagine being chased through the tangled undergrowth of the lonely Russian countryside (where, incidentally, the lupins are gorgeous at this time of year) by five burly Russian men in paramilitary uniforms; chased until you cannot go on anymore (you can, but you won’t!); and then it happens ~ one of them brings you to the ground with a rugby tackle and, before you can say Bill Gates, its pants down, vaccination administered!

Well, it probably won’t come to this after all, as, according to The Moscow Times¹, the term ‘mandatory’ is defined like this:

“Though vaccination remains voluntary for Russians, service workers face losing their jobs if they decide not to have the jab.”

The same article states:

“From June 28, all Moscow cafes and restaurants will only serve customers who have been vaccinated, had Covid-19 in the past six months or present a negative test taken within the past 78 hours.”

AP News²reported that 18 Russian regions had made vaccinations mandatory for employees in certain sectors and listed government offices, retail, health care, education, restaurants and other service industries.

Meanwhile in Kaliningrad, a local news report today states that

“in the Kaliningrad region, mandatory vaccination was announced for officials and workers in several areas – trade, catering, transport services, education. By August 20, at least 60% of employees must be vaccinated. Now in the region more than 140 thousand people have been vaccinated with the first component.”³

So, it does look like being chased around the House of Soviets is not an option. Perhaps it is time to put away those running shoes and roll your sleeves up after all!

How & Where to Get Vaccinated in Kaliningrad³

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Image attribution

Image attribution [‘We Can Do It!’]: <a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/we-can-do-it”>We Can Do It Vectors by Vecteezy</a> [https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/98839-vector-poster-we-can-do-it]

Image attribution [pointing finger]: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/1667119.htm

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References
1. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/24/muscovites-flock-to-vaccination-centers-amid-mandatory-jab-push-a74325 [accessed 28 June 2021]
2. https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia-health-coronavirus-pandemic-business-42d0c14f0545371e16a360b677cb4c38 [accessed 28 June 2021]
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/95771-v-centre-kaliningrada-vystroilas-ogromnaya-ochered-v-mobilnyj-punkt-vakcinacii-ot-koronavirusa

Further reading:
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 460 [17 June 2021]

Published: 17 June 2021 ~ Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

My sister wrote to me today from England and at the close of her letter asked, and I quote, “Just to touch on the most current topic … How is the [vaccination] ‘roll-out’ going in Russia?”

The answer that immediately sprang to mind was, I don’t know.

Vaccination Rollout is not Russian but World Roulette

The reaction to and media coverage of coronavirus in the UK is world’s apart from its counterparts in Russia. Even making allowances for the fact that we do not have broadcast TV and that I rarely read the news on the internet, my wife is an inveterate Facebook twiddler so news filters through to me, whether I want it or not.

One thing is certain: There is less hysteria here in Russia, both in respect of media coverage and the reaction of the populace to coronavirus. True, my wife reads news clips on Facebook, but she is more concerned with the ambiguities, ambivalence, seeming double-talk, twists, U-turns and general, what might be scientifically referred to as, arse-about-face of it all than she is in who has had their first or their 55^th jab, the proclamations of new strains and dire warnings of further mutations. She is diehard ‘anti-maskee’ and is always quoting, whenever I mention the vaccine, that never in the history of the world have governments embarked upon a global vaccination programme such as the one they have launched in the name of addressing Covid-19, which she finds suspicious, and she is more concerned with the impact that never-ending social distancing, lockdowns, isolation and general fearmongering is having on the psychological health and wellbeing of millions of people robbed of their need of personal and social interconnection, which in her philosophy is both the essence and hub of human existence.

It was she who sent me the following video link (after twenty-one years of marriage communicating by email is more popular than you might think!), telling me to listen to “what your favourite person [Katie Hopkins] has to say”: https://youtu.be/qQV1Ww9QGmU

It is not that my good lady wife disbelieves the existence of coronavirus or the potential of it pernicious effects, simply that she like many others questions the efficacy of the measures imposed upon us by ‘those in the know’ and like a lot of us is none too comfortable with the gold-rush mentality to be injected with something that has not been tested according to the usual standard protocols. In discussions on the subject, she likes to remind me that I was one of those who casually opined that come the vaccine come the silver bullet, whereas we now know ~ or rather are now told ~ that nothing much has changed and possibly will not change until 2023/24 and perhaps not even ever.

An article published by Elsevier¹ supports my wife’s criticism of me, the commentary clearly stating that ‘Vaccines are not yet a silver bullet’. And yet, I quote from the same article [my emphasis], “In other words, to help societies avoid transmission vectors and start imagining the “new normal”, continued communication about the need for face masks, personal hygiene, and social distancing is of instrumental importance.”

As I understand it, however, in the UK the new normal is resulting in a great deal of new suffering ~ psychological, physical and emotional ~ by those whose livelihoods are threatened, whose businesses are going under and many more who, because of coronavirus prioritisation, are finding that they are unable to gain access to the vital healthcare that they need if they are to survive existing illnesses, regardless of whether they get coronavirus or not.

Whilst controversy over the fallout from coronavirus restriction rules is buzzing around on social media as if someone has kicked the hive, a large vacuous hole continues to exist both in media spaces and authoritative places. Without answers, there are only rules; and rules without answers are there to be questioned, challenged and even ignored.

Nevertheless, my sister’s comment about the ‘most current topic’ had left me feeling out of the loop, so I turned for the answer in the pages of The Moscow Times². Well, why not, for a change!

Accessed on the 17 June 2021, under the headline Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News | June 17, here is my update:

~ Russia has confirmed 5,264,047 cases of coronavirus and 127,992 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 475,000.

~ Russia on Thursday confirmed 14,057 new coronavirus cases and 416 deaths. Of today’s cases, 6,195 are in Moscow.

~ Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday announced mandatory vaccination for service sector workers, saying the measure is necessary as the city grapples with 12,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients and levels of illness equal to last year’s peaks.

And there is more about closing bars and restaurants early and working from home.

But that is Moscow. What of Kaliningrad, where we live (I last checked about 12 weeks ago!). Here is today’s update³:

~ In the Kaliningrad region, 80 new cases of coronavirus were detected. The total number of infected reached 34 694.

~ 56 patients were diagnosed with ARVI, 15 with pneumonia. Nine more had no symptoms.

~ During the day in the region, 73 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 33,525 people have recovered, 538 have died.

So there you have it!

I think that the ‘most current topic’, as my sister refers to coronavirus and the issue of vaccination, is, like a lot of other things, evaluated in a markedly different way by the Russian population compared to the mindset in the West.

As usual, would-be pundits in the West are seemingly confused about why the take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine is not steaming along at full tilt as it is in countries like the USA and UK. I say, ‘as usual, because the inability of western Europeans to understand anything Russian, or to assume that they do not, is not a new phenomenon (understatement intended). Take a look at the screenprint (you may have to magnify the image) that I have included in this post, which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021]:

Vaccination statistics for Russia 16 June 2021

In the circles in which we move in Kaliningrad, there is a lot to be said for my wife’s theory that people tend to judge the coronavirus situation, and personally react to it, depending on what is happening closest to them. In other words, each individual weighs up the pros and cons of the restrictions and vaccine-taking depending on how many people they know who have had a mild attack of the virus, a serious attack, how many people they know who have died as a direct result of contracting coronavirus and how many people they know who have not been infected at all, and then they act accordingly. In the UK, mass opinion is mobilised, and large swathes of people motivated, by what politicians tell them to do and by the national media’s complicity to bring about a desired result by whatever means it has and whatever it takes ~ and it does not take much.

On the wearing of masks, for example, here I have heard it said that most people who wear them, wear them to avoid a fine rather than give credence to the unproven science of their latent life-saving properties, which is possibly why most people wear them with their nose poking out or as under-chin accessories. In the UK, however, whilst some people wear masks for the same reason and in the same way, the majority of mask wearers wear them purely because they are told to do so. In the UK, compliance is king.

On the slow take-up of vaccination in Russia, as you can see from the following screen grab (you may need to magnify), which returns from the Google search ‘vaccination in Russia’ [accessed 16 June 2021], western media is more than happy to tie Russian vaccination reluctance to their efforts to discredit the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which resulted from a fit of pique when Russia won the ‘vaccine race’.

My take on the low uptake from people I have asked is that no such specificity exists. It is not that the Russian people are crying out for western vaccines, just that they are more individualistic and selective in their approach to the whole question of vaccination safety and efficacy. I mean after the latest revelations about the AtsraZeneca vaccine⁴ …

Let’s face it folks, life is a roulette wheel. Whether the vaccine is running around inside you or not, until they finish those vaccine trials, which will not happen before 2023 or 2024 earliest, it is still a game of chance. So, fingers crossed.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

References:
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354621000077?via%3Dihub [accessed 16 June 2017]
2. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/17/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-june-17-a69117 [accessed 17 June 2021]
3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/95599-za-sutki-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-vyyavili-77-sluchaev-koronavirusa [accessed 17 June 2021]
4. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280446-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-may-hinder-blood-clotting-in-rare-cases/ [accessed 16 June 2021]

Photo credits:
Roulette wheel
Photo credit: PIRO4D (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/gambling-roulette-game-bank-2001128/)

Globe
Photo credit: Arek Socha (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/earth-world-planet-globe-1303628/)

Репетитор английского языка в Калининграде

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Wearing a mask is like wearing pants. Really?

Published: 24 November 2020 ~ Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Of all things that are mysterious and confusing about coronavirus, the salient example is mask wearing, or rather the contentious issue of mandatory mask wearing.

Enter Bill Gates. Bill would seem to be an ardent mask-wearing supporter, so much so that he has difficulty in comprehending why anyone should object to wearing a mask. Peeping out into our world from behind his very large wallet, nothing could be more natural or normal to Bill than slinging a piece of fabric about one’s nose and mouth. His is so convinced about the normality inherent in this practice that he considers the psychology of anti-maskers ‘weird’ and asks “I mean, what are these, like, nudists?” Then goes on to make a bizarre comparison between wearing masks and wearing pants: “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing.” {source: www.wionews.com} [29/03/24 Link to this page no longer exists]

You see, Bill, my old mate, the thing is that this comparison is not really a valid one. I don’t know where you wear your pants, but most people wear them around their arse, and have been doing so for years. There are distinct convenience and comfort factors in pants-wearing that do not readily relate to the experience of wearing face masks.

For one, a bandage wrapped around your nose and mouth tends to get in the way of that all-important function of breathing, whereas pants do not, unless, of course, you are wearing them over your head ~ Bill?

Where Bill wears his pants or mask is entirely up to him. Correction, where he wears his pants is entirely up to him; I forgot for a moment that mask wearing is obligatory.

It was not always this way.

Time was once, and recently, although it seems like an age away, when if you were to wear a mask in public you would be guaranteed to excite a certain degree of suspicion. Indeed, before we were forced to do otherwise the only people wearing masks, discounting for the moment those who have a penchant for PVC or leather, were muggers and bank robbers. In the bad old pre-mask days, shops, banks and government offices would not insist that you wear a mask, they would insist that you remove it! How times change ~ and suddenly!

Fauci claimed that “wearing a mask, keeping a distance, avoiding crowds, being outdoors as much as you possibly can – weather permitted – and washing your hands” are the defining ways for one to return to the normal world’. {source: wionews.com ¹} A nice sentence that begs a one-word response. When?

When, Mr Fauci, when?

The mask is the single most potent reminder that normality has gone, and its odiousness is this respect has not been helped any by suggestions that mask wearing may be with us forever. So, for the time being at least (let us be optimistic), the mask is the visual signal, the day-by-day reminder of our altered state of reality ~ the corporate logo of the so-called New Normal.

Some cynics believe that this visual statement, the compliance it represents and the fear it engenders, is an essential weapon in the psychological arsenal of governments and Big Pharma intent on ensuring the maximum uptake of their rushed and suspect vaccine products. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there are millions, billions of people, purchasing cart loads of vaccines, not to mention vitamin pills and, lest we forget (how could we?), masks, there is money to be made. Lots.

But let’s not be trite, here. A few months back there were a number of articles written by medical and health specialists postulating that not only are masks useless in the fight against coronavirus but that they can actually contribute to your chances of catching it. The out and out criticism was that wearing a mask for virus prevention was like wearing string underpants to stop a pea. Here we go again, Bill?

The case against mask wearing has since swung to wearing masks correctly, ie moulded around the facial contours, never touched by hand, changed periodically ~ at least every two hours ~ not placed in one’s pocket, not washed and not re-used. An idealistic scenario unlikely to be achieved when the majority of mask wearers do not seem capable of rising to the challenge of the basic principles of how to wear a mask.

How many mask wearers have you clocked wearing their masks correctly? Sitting baggy, possibly like Bill’s pants (who knows?), swinging from the ears, acting as a chin cuff and, the old favourite, mouth gagged, snout out ~ this is how they are worn.

Whenever I see someone wearing their mask like this, as in the last and most popular example, and, of course, I do, because my wife is one such transgressor (she refers to masks as ‘muzzles’), I am reminded of something I saw on Facebook: two drawings, with captions. The first caption read, ‘Wearing your mask like this …’ (there then followed a drawing of someone wearing a mask with their nose sticking out above it) “is as silly as wearing your underpants like this …” (there then followed an image of a pair of Y-fronts pulled halfway up with a willy hung over the waistband). “That’s funny,” I thought, “doesn’t everyone wear their Y-fronts like this?”

Bill?

And yet the risk of catching coronavirus by improper face mask wearing is possibly not so high as the risk that emanates from face mask fiddling. You see, wearing a chunk of cloth over your nose and mouth is devilishly uncomfortable. After a while it can make your face hot and sweaty, and it can also make you itch. OK, so you can suffer the same inconvenience should you be wearing the wrong kind of pants, but there is a subtle difference. In adjusting your mask and scratching your itch, you generally touch your face and possibly, inadvertently, your mouth, nose and eyes, which is precisely what you are told that you must not do if you do not want to catch coronavirus.

But what about the altruistic argument, the one that goes that mask wearing significantly reduces the risk of passing coronavirus onto someone else, especially if you happen to be an asymptomatic spreader? In the first instance, look no further for the answer in Bill’s string underpants and their pea-stopping potential ~ catching coronavirus is a two-way process: what gets in must get out. And this also applies to the mysterious, unproven asymptomatic as much as it does to the snotty-nosed cougher.

So, extrapolating what we know already about masks from the lack of evidence placed before us, what we can say irrefutably is that no one knows. And this is where we are at, at the moment: mask wearing will protect you from catching coronavirus, mask wearing will increase your chances of catching coronavirus; mask wearing is a temporary measure, mask wearing is here forever. And this ambiguity rolls over into other things, such as: the vaccine is coming, but no one knows when; the vaccine is a game changer, but what game and whose? The vaccine will not be the 100% solution that people have been led to believe: it may work for some and not for others; it may not work at all; it may have serious contraindications; it may have built-in lethal implications ~well, let’s don’t go there for the moment. And what about lockdown? For some it is the bib and tucker; for others it is Bill Gate’s underpants. There is a lot of hot air about it, but no hard evidence to support it, so to speak.

In fact, all that we can say with any degree of certainty about coronavirus, from what we have been fed, is that your guess is as good as mine.

What we can say, getting back to masks, is that generally speaking, the general public are not comfortable wearing them. There is a convincing argument that politicians and big neoliberal corporate globalists have no problem with it as they never show their true face anyway, but for the many, as distinct from the few, normal human contact is not traditionally mask to mask, it is traditionally face to face.

So, to summarise, masks are uncomfortable, they make breathing, one of the main functioning processes of the body difficult and speaking problematic, symbolically they are a constant reminder of a deviant reality, and, at worst, they could actually create the environment for catching the very disease which they purport to prevent.

Whatever one’s feeling about masks, the inescapable fact is that ultimately, human visual contact and human communication is a face-to-face transaction, not a mask-to-mask one, since full-time mask wearing is as alien as it is alienating.

But I should not worry about it too much, Bill, the only confusion you seem to be suffering from is a pants and mask one, and whichever it is and wherever you wear them, it does not seem to have affected you any, as you still seem perfectly capable of talking out of yours.

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants — **NOW, WHERE DID I PUT THAT MASK?**

(Image attribution: https://freesvg.org/johnny-automatic-head-up-ass)

Source:
1. https://www.wionews.com/world/bill-gates-wonders-whether-anti-maskers-are-nudists-and-why-they-wont-wear-masks-343913

😉Coronavirus Language & the Mask Argument

The Anti-vaxxer Problem Conspiracy

How do you solve the problem of those who see anti-vaxxers as a problem?

Published: 28 May 2020

Sitting in the doctors waiting room, which I used to do quite a lot in England, I would see these messages popping up on the electronic notice board and their hardcopy equivalents: ‘Have you had your flu jab?’ I had not. And that was that. But then it never occurred to me, even though I am knocking on a bit, that the flu could prove fatal.

Then, in 2018, I experienced one of the worst respiratory illnesses that I have ever experienced. A doctor advised me that I might have pneumonia and recommended a chest x-ray. I ended up putting off the x-ray and settled for a drink instead. The illness cleared itself.

That’s me, I suppose, an indifferent and stubborn old c … character.

The Anti-vaxxer Problem Conspiracy

So, what about the as of yet mythical vaccine for Covid-19? According to my wife, who is slipping deeper everyday into the coma of conspiracy theories, as soon as a vaccine is announced I will be the first in line to drop my trousers, even though the vaccine jab will be administered in my arm.

She is wrong ~ wives always are. As with anything and everything to do with Covid-19, I shall adopt a ‘wait and see policy’. After all, Obama sat on the fence for the whole of his presidential tenure and everyone applauded him, so what was good enough for him is good enough for me!

In recent weeks it seems as if the focus on when will a vaccine be ready has shifted to when a vaccine is ready should I allow myself to be vaccinated, a realignment of faith brought about by the vagaries permeating almost every aspect of the pandemic from origin to outcome. It is, undoubtedly, this abstruseness that lends itself so readily to accusations of obfuscation from which the world of conspiracy is but a short leap.

As far as I can tell, almost all of the conspiracy theories orbiting in the coronavirus firmament eventually come to rest with a very rich and powerful man in the U.S. whom, in the minds of the conspiracy theorists, is inextricably linked with compulsory mass vaccination.

The Anti-vaxxer Problem Conspiracy

Conspiracy theorists have long been used to being put down as fruitcakes ~ and perhaps with good reason. Take, as an example, the terminology used in this recent article by The Guardian, *‘Europe’s Covid predicament – how do you solve a problem like the anti-vaxxers?’

‘Anti-vaxxers’? There is something overtly discrediting and tacky in this monica, is there not? At any rate, it hardly commands the same respect as counter vaccine protestors, or protestors against mass vaccination, or activists against vaccination, such being the kind of terminology that the liberal-leaning media traditionally reserves for street movements to which it gives the green light. But then, as with Brexit, something funny is going on and for them it is not ‘Ha! Ha!’.

The narrative goes that alarming new allegiance lines are being drawn on the strength of the mass vaccination conspiracy, so alarming that those liberals who identify themselves as activists against mass vaccination are being marginalised by their own kind as ‘esoteric hippies’ and ‘esoteric leftwingers’, and if this slight is not enough, there is the ultimate accusation that in making a stand against mass vaccination they are cuddling up to neo-Nazis. Some might argue that enforced mass vaccination is very much a Nazi-type of thing to do, but then I am no conspiracy theorist!

The esoteric problem of being a liberal Anti-vaxxer

The definition of ‘esoteric’ is ‘intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people’. The implication here being that unless you follow the flock you are no liberal! As for the reference to neo-Nazis, this is the old name and shame game, as well as being a convenient labelling ploy, ie the only people who are resisting mass vaccination are neo-Nazis; good people, nice people and proper liberals don’t do that ~ esoteric ones might, but not you!

Anywhere else, and this association by implication would have some clout but not as clouty as it does here: consider the city and country on which this article focuses and then say the word again (but to yourself, very quietly) ‘neo-Nazi’ and, before you close the window to keep out the chill, add Pegida to that vocabulary.

Pegida is, of course, resurrected in this article and, in the given context, turns out to be a most unfortunate choice of comparison: “fears of the movement [anti-vaxxers] growing into a force equivalent to the Pegida protests against Angela Merkel’s asylum policy seem to be shaping the thinking in Berlin’s seats of power.”

You see, the protests against Merkel’s asylum policy were not restricted to Pegida but very rapidly suffused the greater German populace, particularly after the act, when, despite the media’s best attempts to suppress both the calamity that resulted from it and the nation’s growing resentment to it, the protestations gained such traction that it levered support across the channel for Brexit, sent Merkel into media hiding and is arguably one of the most powerful contributing factors to the course of dissolution and wilful self-destruction on which the European Union seems to be set.

Reeling from the Brexit fallout, the waning popularity for almost all its leaders and institutions, fractured and fragmented by the clumsy and seemingly disinterested way in which it is has failed to assist its member states during the coronavirus crisis, a turmoil that has all but completely undermined any credibility it may once have had as a foundation for a United States of Europe, the entire EU project seems to be teetering on the brink.

Anti-who?

The usual means by which governments and their media handmaidens deal with conspiracy theorists is to ignore them, to deprive them of the oxygen of publicity. Think: when was the last time that you saw a head-on TV debate in which ministers, prime ministers, etc sat in a TV studio with a live audience of conspiracy theorists and addressed their fears?

Perhaps this is the best way, and possibly the best way to deal with the anti-vaxerrs is hands off. After all, anything less will expose the EU to allegations that the self-styled crucible of human rights and sovereign upholder of the tenets of liberalism is nothing but a sham.

There is a lot to be said for sitting on the fence. It might not get you the Nobel Peace Prize as it has for some, but the last thing that Germany needs in these discrediting times is for those in the seats of power to be seen to be rushing to change their underpants¹ ~ conspiracy or no conspiracy.