The CDC vs 'the People's CDC' and tankie fellow travelers, #BernAnon and #antivaxxers

And, yes, it's about the semi-continuing #MasksUp and related bullshit hashtags on Twitter. 

I'm going to keep dropping links to old blog posts there calling you people out, as well as continuing to post a link to Worldometers showing that we continue to remain under 200 deaths a week, which extrapolates to no more than 10,000 a year, far less than "just the flu."

That leads me first to this self-own:

How many flu deaths do we average per week in the summer months? Hmm, gladfly?

— @CycleLobbyWR (@cyclelobbywr) August 27, 2023

To summarize my response? There are some summer flu cases, but I'll set that aside. The 25K deaths in even a mild winter-half flu season or 50K in a bad one, extrapolate to 50-100K for a full year, showing "just the flu" is even worse worse yet than current COVID. (I also thanked them for making my point for me.)

Second? I go first to the last hashtag. An antivaxxer of some sort challenged my tweet last week on this subject, saying they were always masked, insisting by insinuation that others should be, and then spouting antivaxxer type gibberish. I called them an antivaxxer, then blocked.

Now, to my original "CDC vs People's CDC" story. Some of the People's CDC complaints at the time has some degree of validity, but not full validity. Many of them had no validity. That's in part because, as noted a month later, these people have no nuance. Half the time, I think they don't realize that. The other half, I think they do, and don't care, either because they think the situation has no nuance, or they're trying to "own" the other side.

First, per Idries Shah and what I'm writing as I type, there's more than two sides here. Second and related, that's tribalist. Third and related, it fails, not only with the "other" side of more than two, but with people outside the box like me. Fourth, for the reasons some do this, on political motivation, it's kind of disgusting. More on that in a minute.

But, yeah, even for people who have not heard of the People's CDC movement, its ideas are percolating. And, for the reasons above and more, yes, you're tankies, or some equivalent thereof. Deal with it, even though you won't actually deal with it, for the reasons above.

Now, back to that "hold that thought" and the #BernAnon hashtag. (Said hashtag, AFAIK, invented by me, and discussed in a long Substack re COVID and many other things here.) I called out Pat the Berner by Twitter name six months ago for what I saw as attempted politicization on this issue. I called out Ryan Knight by meatspace name at Substack, more for other issues.

Now, a few school districts are reporting an uptick, even closing a few schools, but the story notes that an uptick in communicable illness happens at the start of every school year.  And, Virusmonger Joe is talking about another COVID vaccine. He's not used the word "mandate," powers of which are limited at the federal level, but wingnuts read him that way. I oppose this but for different reasons than the wingnuts. First, since Novavax boosters still aren't out, and due to what I believe was a Biden Administration overcautious fuck-up over the original Johnson and Johnson vaccine, we'll never get one of its type of boosters. I've covered this in detail here. So, that means Virusmonger Joe will be Pfizermonger, or Modernamonger, take your mRNA pick. Hard pass, on the effectiveness claims, the BigPharma patent money and more. There's also no indication this new one would be free. #BernAnon as well as pre-Bernie Greens (except for the antivaxxer contingent) and I agree.

There's plenty of actual reasons to call out Warmonger Joe, starting with him being Warmonger Joe. Besides Ukraine, add in Palestine, his ties to Hunter's corruption that in part itself includes Ukraine, his oil-drilling frenzy, no national health care, and much more. COVID isn't one of them.

Finally, I wrote about "follow the science" on masks two months ago, also noting that despite tankie claims, in reality, mask-wearing was dropping elsewhere in the world, even in places like Japan. I threatened now to call you COVIDIOTS-lite, like the wingnuts got labeled by many 2-3 years ago.

In reality? More and more of you are about to be called COVIDIOTS period. I'm tired of you, but, as long as you keep posting WILLFULLY ignorant stupidity on Twitter, I'm not letting up on firing back.