It says a lot about the barrenness and lack of imagination of our age that megaton-level putzes like Yglesias think things like the Moon landing were pointless wastes of time while they also claim efforts like Medicare for All are impossible.

These two facts are extremely related.

Holy fuck, this thread is deeply stupid and ahistorical. No disease save smallpox has ever been eliminated in humans, and that only occurred because its only host is humans.

But ZeroCovid is a religion that never had any basis in reality or the world at all. Like all religions, it has a doctrine, zealots, rituals, etc. And like a lot of religions, hurts tons of people for no real reason.

A lot of this is just anger that societal alterations that the Covidians thought would occur didn’t, so they have to make up bogus stats about Long Covid being civilization-ending. And most “Long” Covid will be “Medium” or “Short” Covid, just like other similar viruses.

Fucking idiots like Ian Welsh (et al.) are making it seem like an international crime that Lithuania is not allowing goods bound for Russia to transit its borders.

Here’s the thing: Lithuania is a sovereign country and can allow whatever the fuck it wants to enter its boundaries. Or not, as in this case. Imagine that Japan was at war with Germany for some reason, and Japan attempted to ship goods across the US. We tell them, “Nope, can’t do that.”

Does Japan have some sort of right, some sacred duty, to be able to move goods through the US to eventually reach the German theater? No it does fucking not. The same is true with Lithuania, or any country. No duty at all to allow anything into its borders. That’s what being a “country” means.

Welsh and his kooky coterie are enormous hypocrites here because they so badly want Russia to rise up and…do something? Not sure what. But it’s sad that I ever relied on these people for intellectual probity or clarity.