PS

US did spend more money on Covid than Scandinavia & got worse results:

https://sensiblemed.substack.com/p/sacrificing-childrens-health-in-the?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

PS: Yes, Mr. Hail, indeed I remember the ending of that mask BS on the airliners by a judge in Florida.* Passengers were very pleased, and I had a lot to say about it at the time.

During that same timeframe, late Winter/early Spring of this year, the airline execs were bitching about passenger disturbances. They wanted a national (OK, another) no-fly list for people involved. It's wrong to begin with and quite different from one company refusing service to a passenger who's caused trouble.

While they were scratching their heads wondering why, why, this problem has increase, they didn't want to think about the masking. They had complained about the masking going on too long that they, the airlines themselves had pushed for a Federal mandate on back in '20 (so that the Flight Attendants and agents could simply say "Federal Law!" instead of arguing). Oh, could these 2 things possibly be related? Nah, don't mention that.

If it comes back, passengers will be pissed, and disturbances will come back too.

I check your comments section at least daily.


* Florida has been the sanest of States during this PanicFest. Is it simply that they need things to be normal for tourism, or is it just good people. (That's after subtracting out the scum like Uhlfelder.

PS

Masks were another suddenly big industry. Business must have slumped a lot now that mask mandates are gone, and especially since a U.S. court banned the lingering mask mandates in April 2022.

Do people remember this? The outbursts of cheering when the flight attendants announced passengers could take off masks by order of the court? Spontaneous cheering reported all over.

Guess what? The case is still going on. The U.S. "federal" government is pushing full-steam ahead with trying to overturn the ban, led by Attorney General "Merrick Garland" (possible real name Mendelnik Garfinkel, per Adam Smith's findings) who is said to have been personally outraged that some nobody-judge could block masks just like that.

The appeal is ongoing and may soon be decided. Twenty-three states are jointly taking the offensive against the possibility of Biden/"Garland" winning the appeal and immediately re-imposing masks. The lead author of the salvo against the Biden mask mandates is: Florida attorney general Ashley Moody, lead author of an "amicus brief" on behalf of 23 states attacking Biden and the CDC for illegal and immoral behavior.

See here for more on this new development this week:

https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2022/08/01/daniel-uhlfelder-the-covid-demagogue-and-panic-pusher-runs-for-florida-attorney-general-2022-a-close-look-at-his-campaign-and-rivals/#comment-49256

PS

"I was told "Yes, it's FREE, FREE!" by a pharmacist. I cannot remember, unfortunately, whether that meant via insurance or the government directly, as I can't remember if I showed them a card at the drive-through."

My understanding is that even if it "via insurance," the cost is entirely reimbursed by "the government" in most of the testing programs.

If so, don't know why they ask for insurance at all. I guess just out of habit, or box-checking purposes, or another way to collect data, or even a simple charade to make people feel more comfortable because it's what they otherwise do, or a negotiated PR move by the insurance companies to make it seem like the insurance is patriotically covering all the cost themselves (when it's actually just tax money).

PS: Mr. Adams, thanks for all the replies with the info. and laughs. I did recognize, OK, "the floor recognizes the raghead from Minnesota" in the video. They all are a bunch of tools. They had it made before youtube and those meddling kids.

Yes, that $9,000 matches what my friend told me. I don't know about the $13,000, but if I can get him, I'll ask a doctor friend if he knows about that.

PS: Mr. Hail, indeed panic can be lucrative, if you get in on the ground floor. Speaking of the ground, I've joked about the idiotic floor stickers a lot. Someone made out pretty good. At least the ubiquitous alcohol wipes are still good for many things, as I've noted in regards to gym equipment - wiping with a towel seems pointless and just for show.

Thanks for the summary of the "free" testing money-making. I remarked here that I DIDN'T take one when I was (almost surely) sick with the Flu Manchu, but I DID take one - just that one time - when was required for a specific doctor visit. Before that occasion, I was told "Yes, it's FREE, FREE!" by a pharmacist. I cannot remember, unfortunately, whether that meant via insurance or the government directly, as I can't remember if I showed them a card at the drive-through.

What I do remember from the drive-through is that my wife gave me some concoction - a gel of some sort - to put in my nose first. The idea was that I didn't want a + result. I'm telling you, I barely stuck the probe into that gel, as the guy wasn't looking, and I could have stuck it into the oil pan of our car via the dipstick, and I doubt anyone would have cared - or other places ...

O/T someone, but I just remembered but I got the current Kung Flu Panic-story from a guy who knows about Japan. It's not very pretty, even today! I had no idea this stuff was still going on until now.

PS: Dieter, the one horizontal bar graph with the male life expectancy changes is pretty hard to wrap my mind around. I think I see what he's doing, showing (for example) fewer cancer deaths on some age group bars, meaning. a higher life expectancy due to that disease, but then countered with more of other deaths ...? Some have the hash marks meaning only '19-'20 deaths, and some don't meaning '10-'20. It's pretty busy - I'll have to go over it some more.

Thanks for that one, but also for the video. That one needs to appear here in a post for sure.

PS: Good afternoon, gentlemen,

Dieter, the young woman at 34 sec. is Ilhan Omar, the congress woman from little Mogadishu.

https://www.startribune.com/go-inside-little-mogadishu-the-somali-capital-of-america/414876214/

https://www.today.com/health/health/fema-funeral-assistance-program-offers-9000-coronavirus-funerals-rcna27297

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/26/1068103241/fema-wants-to-give-families-up-to-9-000-for-covid-funerals-but-many-dont-apply

Are hospitals still getting $13,000 per covid patient?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

CoronaVirus tests are good for the economy!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-diagnostics-breaki/breakingviews-how-u-s-made-covid-19-tests-a-profitable-disaster-idUSKCN24O2XI

https://i.ibb.co/nLzCcJJ/Curious-George.jpg

Hope you all have a great day!

☮

PS

Another financial incentive is related to the Panic's mass testing policy.

Generally the Covid-tests were free. Totally free, even to an anonymous no-insurance person who wanders in. For those who do use insurance, it was all repaid by the government.

How much money was wasted on testing for one flu virus in the early 2020s?

When money gets sloshed around like that, people change their behaviors and entrepreneurs dive in to try to cash in. A small insta-industry arose of catering to infectees and potential infectees, a mix of psychological and financial incentives going on, all created and propped up by the Corona-Moloch overseeing the whole, overseeing the Panic-enforcer minions, the active and passive Panickers, and the demoralized Anti-Panickers sometimes forced to participate in the system.

There was a class of (usually-)Blue people who tested themselves weekly, "out of an abundance of caution" in some cases. Some universities forced multiple tests per week with expulsion the penalty for non-compliance. One student told me he had failed to update his test result one day late once, and his building access was revoked, he was locked out until he got a test again. If any of those tests were positive, he'd also be banned (quarantined). A "lose-lose," with enforced penalties to keep any potential virus-disloyalists in line.

But on the testing financial incentives. In most places, with a little work, you could get all this cray mass testing for free, at least to the individual. I know this from experience, as I had to do it multiple times related to travel. In some countries, there might be a trivial charge but it was still 90% subsidized.

The big losers were either low-info people, foreigners ineligible for free testing in some places, or those trying to travel and in desperate time-pinch related to travel who needed quick results on site (I recall a case of Australians stuck in airports for days with the jumble of rules and cancellations and the Australian quotas on re-entry, who had to keep re-testing because results kept expiring, leading to lots of wasted money, days of airport-camping, and angry shouting matches). These cases may have to pay large fees. But on the outside, these were free.

I shudder to think how much this all cost, the subsidized testing. And it created incentives to continue testing, both for the insta-industry aforementioned and to the "abundance of caution" people who saw no downside to tests at $0.00, but might have been dissuaded were it $200/test.

PS: "To phrase it in a more trite or obvious way, the Panic created the financial incentives; the financial incentives didn't create the Panic." I agree that was the case at the very start of it, Mr. Hail. Before long though, the financial incentives were used to bolster the Panic. They kept the numbers high for people who weren't so awful panicked so much as strapped for cash.

I believe those stories about motorcycle wreck and broken ankle Covid cases (there are some STRANGE symptoms!), but I am sure there were thousands of times more instances of general maladies being marked up as Covid. There were many financial incentives. I have my personal experience, being told for at least a year, maybe closer to 1.5 years, that there would be no deductible and no co-pay for "covid-related" health care.

Doctors don't want trouble with billing. (It's a significant chunk of the operations for big and small medical businesses.) Both the doctor and the patient would have done much better chalking up some minor malady - perhaps unknown, perhaps known, to Covid-19. The patient saves money, and the doctor does indirectly - his billing department could avoid all collection hassles for those patients.

PS

Two tweets (Aug. 3rd and 11th - scroll a bit - both are inshightful) by Robert Pezer about life expectancy in California and in the US from 2010 through 2020

https://twitter.com/rpezer1/status/1557990257626386432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

PS

Vaccine hesitancy because of Trump

https://twitter.com/cwt_news/status/1557561395704635395?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Btw.: Who is this young women 34 sec. in saying she won't be vaccinated because of the harm that would ensue?

PS

This was one reason, but only one of many reasons, why the "Covid death counts" were tainted data. Prominent people citing those "big board death counts" had to be suspected of being in on it, when numerate and thoughtful people with any sense of how statistics work would know they are unlikely giving a fair picture of the "pandemic."

The reason I like to use the word "Panic" (Corona-Panic) instead of the politicized word "pandemic" is it implies all thinking, including ideology (anti-flu-virus crusade-ism), actions, and incentives to bend the truth or lie or willingly go along with lies, all became distorted.

Before the Panic (as social phenomenon), nobody would want to lean on a death certificate filler-outer to say, "Well, yes, he did have this list of major health problems, but there was this flu virus..."

The measurable financial distortions are only one part of the distortions. While easy to quantify and point to, they are unlikely convincing to believers in the Panic, who will dismiss this piecemeal attack on the Panic as more nutty flu hoaxing by tinfoil people, or something.

To phrase it in a more trite or obvious way, the Panic created the financial incentives; the financial incentives didn't create the Panic.

_____

On the forced-reality-distortion aspect of the Panic, encouraged from many sides and embraced by political power almost everywhere to some degree. I continue to find it disturbing, even as it hardly affects ay-day-day life anymore. I am dismayed there has been no greater pushback.

Something in interneticized world-civilization has created conditions that allows or encourages these "panics," much more than the old analog world. We may be "in for" a lot more unnecessary damage.

PS: Thanks, Dieter. I will go to youtube to see if I can enjoy that lovely 3 minute video.

PS
Even the once almighty Dr.Anthony Fauci loses his appeal:


https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1557703897313157123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

PS: Houska I will have to find more about exactly what "program" this is. Instead of Long Covid, is it Long Cares Act?

I'm sorry your family members took that step, WPD. I could hang a Curious George flag outside, I guess, on behalf of the MonkeyPox. I don't want to encourage people to bash him though.

PS Muh Cov-LARP? Updated to the rumpy pox, please set out your decorations for the season and paint a blue D over your door so that the plague passes.
All clowning aside several elder family members passed on after rushing out to get the not-a-vaxx with some going into terminal decline cognitively and physically in a matter of weeks.
The Great Leap Forward will go into Chairman Mao mode after the silent generation and boomers are gone?

O/T-Gut busting Peak Clown. The Washington Compost is reporting that the FIB raid was looking for nuclear intel to be shared with Lil' Kim!
Nooklur fweedom fwies with the taco bowls of love.

PS " a determination of Covid-19 as cause of death would result in a $9,000 payoff from the Feral Gov't."

How did this "$9,000" covid payoff get started? A law, a decree from bureaucrats?