The choice is ours – how opening up will turn us into moralists of daily life.

This article is just garbage. It’s full of unevidenced assertions, false choices, and an utter ignorance of how people actually behave. But it’s pretty typical of the “experts” we’ve relied on during this pandemic. However, a commenter said it better than I could about why this whole method of thinking is flawed and plainly disastrous:

The pandemic goalposts have been strapped onto an SR-71A Blackbird and it has taken off, jetting away at top speed. Remember “flattening the curve?” Or in the UK, “Protect the NHS?” Remember “when the vaccines are here, we’ll be able to get back to normal?”

I do. Not many people seem to recall those things, but I do.

What exactly is the end goal, the desired state of the lockdown lifers? I don’t think they have one. I think lockdown is now the goal.

Israel is averaging two — 2! — deaths per day

I swear this dude is a masochist, it’s the only explanation https://t.co/g6tNGMuo8j

— Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) July 19, 2021

The liberal messaging now has decidedly shifted to “the vaccines do not work” while the non-extremist conservative messaging has converged on “the vaccines work but I shouldn’t be forced to have one.” It’s been interesting to watch the propaganda streams shift positions and in many cases completely reverse. (“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”)

Admittedly, other than just a tactic to keep enriching the plutes, I am having trouble understanding what exactly is going on here. Is this just about identity? If so, then why do the propaganda streams and beliefs seem to have no consistency at all? And why can people not recall what happened just a few months prior? We’re not talking years or decades here — no, this was the very recent past.

For the liberals, is staying inside forever really that attractive? What happened to “believe science?” Haven’t seen that formerly-ubiquitous mantra being chanted much lately, which makes sense because if you do in fact believe science it’s obvious that the vaccines are working quite well.

I don’t understand what the fuck is going on here and it bothers me. Is it just fear? Identity dominating all other concerns? Or maybe many people truly do want to cower inside until the sun goes supergiant.

Lockdown last winter means that millions protected from Covid won't have any immunity to flu this winter.

So the solution will be to lockdown again this winter to "save lives".

Can anyone guess what will happen to flu in the winter of 2022/23…?🤔😬

End the madness now. pic.twitter.com/UKAZxFodZP

— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) July 16, 2021

In many places, lockdowns will never end. I expect that this will be true for Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and a few other countries or regions. By “never end” I mean there will be repeated lockdowns in perpetuity as some new crisis is ginned up.

In the US I’d expect less of this but with eco-fascism on the way, who knows?

Luton airport baggage arrivals hall on a Sunday in mid July. Madness. pic.twitter.com/aXGjbpRs1x

— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) July 18, 2021

That is indeed total madness. I cannot believe what we have done to ourselves.

Haters gonna hate ✈️ ➡️ pic.twitter.com/qvtlpexsqX

— Dr. Cam Sepah (HIRING) ‍♂️ (@DrSepah) July 18, 2021

There is a very valid critique of capitalism in the actions that Musk, Bezos, Branson, et al., are taking regarding space — but for most liberal types, it seems to be that anyone is doing it at all that’s the issue.

These are the same types of people that denigrate basic research because to them it seems trivial or unnecessary, who imagine there is a big pot of money somewhere space exploration is reducing, and who are just general assclowns all around.

The Reassuring Data on the Delta Variant. There’s no sign of a surge in hospitalization or severe illness, and the vaccines remain extremely effective.

But the liberals told me that the vaccines are totally useless against Delta and we certainly must hide inside until at least 2040. Also, inevitably, Covid will evolve to be the size of a tiger and will slaughter you with one spiky paw-slash — because in their minds, this is just how mutation works, duh!

It’s funny when the “hide inside forever” crowd started (thankfully) losing the debate, that’s when they switched to the “vaccines are almost useless” claims, directly opposite what they’d been asseverating just a few weeks before.

Is hiding inside really that much fun?

Everyone quotes what Robert Oppenheimer said at the Trinity test because it makes them sound smart by proxy, but test director Kenneth Bainbridge’s statement was more apropos and accurate.

He said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”

That’s the meat of it.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Flights between the U.S. and China

How it started. How it’s going. pic.twitter.com/5vDhvryRcH

— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) July 17, 2021

Damn.

I wrote this little snippet a few years ago. I think it’s pretty good. It’s from a larger story that was not, alas, pretty good:

“What we said was not what we were saying; we didn’t know how to vibrate the air to have any hope of correspondence with anything that we had been and were now. We stood there, less alone than any two people had ever been, but some bridges cannot be built, not with any act of commission or commiseration or brute construction.

‘I hope your eyes stay that shade of green,’ she said, and looked at her feet. ‘I always liked them. They’ve seen so much of me.’

I’m not sure if times were more complicated or easier then. In ways they are now not, then they just were. They were about to become less were and more of something else, something more present in the front of the mind, present and pressing like a stone over a chasm. We’d not really thought about anything beyond the moment for the past four years. We didn’t want to start now.”

When I want to show it, I have some talent. But writing like that is hard, even for me. I see why more people don’t do it.

The mother’s assertion below that the children’s trauma is “small” really bothers me. I know she says “grand scheme” but the tone is just so glib and barely-concerned that she obviously doesn’t care that much.

I don’t think most parents are very good ones. The majority wish to exert authoritarian control over their charges. Inside, she’s probably reveling in this devastation. That’s why she can barely muster up the heart to even appear a little sad about it all.

The reality is that kids do not have to be tortured this way; it’s a choice made freely. Crises reveal people’s true colors, and in most those hues are not very pleasant to behold.