Stockholm Syndrome

Posted on by Thor

COVID-19 is here to stay. Any chance of defeating the virus has long since passed. Airlines spread it around the world and countries no longer are making any attempts at mitigating it’s spread. The virus has won and humans are it’s fuel. Just as humans lust for fossil fuels, the virus loves each helpless host it infects.

I haven’t dropped my mitigation measures. I continue to filter the air I breath with a HEPA filter in the studio and anytime I am out in public, I wear an N-95 mask. Since COVID is airborne and can spread much further than 6 feet, I tend to maintain 22 feet of social distancing if unmasked outside. Basically if I hear to see someone the mask goes on. My thought is that if the artist Banksy can hide his identity all these years, I can certainly always be masked anytime I am seen in public.

Most of the country however has lovingly embraced the virus. I seldom see anyone masked anymore. For the past two semesters all my students have been unmasked. I hold the classes outdoors for their protection and mine. Only a few times have we worked indoors. In those cases I keep the door open and spread the mask less students out as much as I can. Those students only ever see my eyes.

Once infected, people seem to experience Stockholm Syndrome where they love their captor and drop all attempts to protect themselves and others. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Stockholm Syndrome as “the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor.” Once infected people lovingly promote the spread of the virus by hosting superspreader events in indoor spaces. Feeling invincible, since they survived the initial infection, they return to indoor bars, theaters, gyms, and restaurants. Huge indoor concerts are being held except when the performers become ill and have to cancel.  For the infected their new lover is a fast and wreck less return to normal.

This love affair is only in the best interest of the virus. It continues to spread as asymptotically among friends and family. One in five of these lovers develop long COVID and the quality of their life is sometimes forever destroyed. More and more people are not returning to the work force because they can not get out of bed. As a conservative estimate, about 16.3 million have long COVID so far. About 4 million people are out of work due to Long COVID. That number will continue to grow at the country promotes mass infection. According to one study Long COVID could cost the United States 3.7 trillion dollars a year. Improving ventilation in all buildings and educating the public about ways to avoid infection would cost a whole lot less.

Lion Infects Handlers with COVID

Posted on by Thor

The New Scientist reported that, A lion at Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana, tested positive for COVID after it started coughing and became breathless. Zoo workers who had cared for the lion later caught the infection. The lion that was infected with the coronavirus probably passed it on to two zoo employees, researchers have said in a new paper. Viral samples collected from the animal and the two workers were identical, with contact tracing suggesting the employees didn’t catch the infection in any other way.

After the lion tested positive, keepers wore respirators when interacting with the lion and all other animals at the zoo. The lion was old and needed to be hand fed by the keepers. The lion was likely first infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper. The lion had two vaccinations for COVID in September and October 2021. By the time the animal was infected the immunity from the vaccinations had worn off.

COVID-19, can infect many species, and it can pass between humans and animals. The virus likely jumped from an animal to a human in the first place, and past studies have suggested that pet cats and dogs catch COVID from their owners at extremely high rates. Other studies have shown that deer have transmitted the virus to humans. Infected hamsters in a Hong Kong pet shop sparked a human outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID.

A wide variety of zoo animals have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 including gorillas, snow leopards, hippos, hyenas and giraffes. The first zoo animal in the U.S. known to be infected with COVID-19 was a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City back in April 2021. However, animal to human transmission of COVID has not previously been reported in a zoo setting.

People have always died from wildfires!

Posted on by Thor

Misinformed minimizes love to portray COVID-19 as just a flu. In 2021 the flu accounted for 5,000 deaths in America. In 2021 there were 460,000 COVID deaths in America. That is a hell of a lot more deaths due to COVID-19. COVID is not the flu.

Influenza (flu) and COVID-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by different viruses. COVID-19 spreads more easily than flu. Compared with flu, COVID-19 can cause more severe illness. Other diseases with flu like symptoms include, Polio, Legionella, Lyme Disease, HIV, TB, Leishmaniasis, Syphilis, Hepatitus, Smallpox. Histoplasmosis, and Antrax.

Even a ‘mild’ case of COVID can result in destruction of the bodies immune response to to other viruses. COVID damages vital organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, nervous system and can cause Long COVID in about one in five people infected. Symptoms of Long COVID can appear months after the initial infection ‘recovery’.

COVID is not the flu. COVID is a much deadlier viral pathogen with debilitating long term effects which can destroy any quality of life. “COVID damages CD8 and T cell response an effect akin to that observed in earlier studies showing long term damage to the immune system after infection with viruses such as hepatitis C or HIV.” –NIH funded study Getting infected with COVID offers no immunity boost.

3 years into this pandemic and the American response continues to be denial. COVID is not the flu.

Breath is the New Body Fluid

Posted on by admin

COVID-19 is airborne. Airborne is when a droplet containing a virus is small enough to float in the air. This simple fact was not fully acknowledged by scientists until recently. It took the World Health Organization (WHO) to admit this truth, yet even now the WHO website claims that COVID is spread through close contact which is where the six foot short range distance myth was generated.

COVID can spread much further than six feet. It wafts through the air like cigarette smoke. If you were to enter a room where someone was smoking you would immediately smell the smoke even if the person were across the room. I personally have ascribed to a 22 foot social distancing rule. In public, no one will see me unmasked for the foreseeable future. To date I have never tested positive for COVID.

Early in the pandemic the false narrative lead to control measures that involved  reducing direct contact, cleaning surfaces, putting up plexiglass barriers, 6 foot physical distancing, use of masks within droplet distance, and wearing high-grade mask protection only for so-called aerosol-generating health-care procedures. Millions were infected while they whipped down surfaces and breathed infected air.

Reducing airborne transmission of the virus requires measures to avoid inhalation of infectious aerosols, including good ventilation, HEPA air filtration, reducing crowding and time spent indoors, use of masks whenever indoors, and attention to mask quality and fit. Masks worn as chin straps or loose fitting cloth and blue surgical masks don’t stop an airborne virus. Quality well fitted N-95 masks are needed.

As the pandemic continues we are growing numb to the mass death, hysteria, and fear. People have come to accept mass infection and disease. COVID breaks down the immune system in much the same way that AIDS breaks down the immune system. The virus damages CD8 and T cell response in much the same way as hepC or HIV. There is now a sharp increase in hepatitis, rsv, flu, norovirus, UTIs, staph and fungal infections.

In the 1980s everyone became very aware of possible transmission via body fluids. Today the invisible wafting breath of people around you have become the body fluid to be most aware of. People do not believe in what can not be seen, so most are happy to live in a fantasy and go about life as if the virus were no in every breath they breath.

Wildfires can’t do any long term damage!

Posted on by Thor

About one in five people who have been infected with COVID-19 experience health problems long after the initial ‘recovery’. Long COVID,  involves a variety of new, returning or ongoing symptoms that people experience more than four weeks after getting COVID-19. In some people, post-COVID-19 syndrome lasts months or years or causes disability. Many who were infected early in the pandemic still have problems three years later. It is not clear if the symptoms will ever go away.

The most commonly reported symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome include:

  • Fatigue
  • Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort
  • Fever
  • Lung (respiratory) symptoms, including difficulty breathing or shortness of breath and cough

Other possible symptoms include:

  • Neurological symptoms or mental health conditions, including difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand, pins-and-needles feeling, loss of smell or taste, and depression or anxiety
  • Joint or muscle pain
  • Heart symptoms or conditions, including chest pain and fast or pounding heartbeat
  • Digestive symptoms, including diarrhea and stomach pain
  • Blood clots and blood vessel (vascular) issues, including a blood clot that travels to the lungs from deep veins in the legs and blocks blood flow to the lungs (pulmonary embolism)
  • Other symptoms, such as a rash and changes in the menstrual cycle

Keep in mind that it can be hard to tell if you are having symptoms due to COVID-19 or another cause, such as a preexisting medical condition.

A 26 year old British Olympic athlete rowing team was exercising 35 your a week post COVID. She experienced a mild case of the disease, so she felt able to make a quick return to training. The intense exercise may have exacerbated the virus, and she developed long COVID symptoms that forced her off the Olympic team. Getting out of bed became the burden she had to overcome each day. That became her exercise goal for the day. Intense fatigue only allows her to carry out a few hours of normal activity per day.

A high jumper for the United States was hoping to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. A bad case of Covid-19 derailed her chances and she failed to qualify.

CDC Muzzled

Posted on by Thor

The New York Times recently published an article with the headline: “We were helpless.” It wasn’t news that the 45th president has muzzled The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but there were new insights into the mood in the agency as their research and advice was ignored and silenced. The article is supported by interviews with 11 current and former agency employees, as well as a review of text messages and other documents. Which showed the agency under the thumb of the former president.

In February 2020, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, warned Americans to prepare for a pandemic. When The former president learned of the announcement he was furious and severely reprimanded her. With her silenced the entire agency was put under political pressure to downplay the pandemic. Vice President Mike Pence, with no epidemiology experience was put in charge of the coronavirus task force. It was his job to silence and spin communications from the CDC.

CDC officers were sent to airports around the country to screen passengers flying into the United States from China. They were told however that they could not wear medical masks because the politicians did not want to alarm the general public. Passengers from China were wearing masks but the medical professionals were forced to go mask less. It soon became clear that the virus was spreading not just from people who showed visible symptoms, but also asymptotically.  Just screening for visible symptoms was pointless. The public needed to be warned but the CDC was silenced.

Privately, CDC  officers were calling friends and family asking them to cancel weddings and planned vacations, to stay home, and to wear masks and even goggles when they venturing outside. The general public was not told. Those who shared their thoughts on social media were told to stop or be fired.

A month later the CDC director finally announced the asymptomatic spread of the virus. Finally after two months, the white house begrudgingly advised the public to wear masks. Had the CDC been allowed to advise the public when they wanted, 36,000 lives could have been saved. Considering the ongoing mass hypnosis and denial that number is a drop in the bucket in the ever escalating preventable COVID death toll.

So is the CDC being muzzled in 2023? It would appear so.

Did a Racoon Dog Start the Pandemic?

Posted on by Thor

Genetic material collected at the Wuhan Chinese Market where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA commingled with COVID-19. Some scientists believe COVID most likely jumped from animals to people, others believe the virus could have been leaked from one of the several Wuhan coronavirus research facilities. The genetic material collected does not prove that a racoon dog stated the pandemic. Human DNA was also found in the sample. A human may have infected the animal, or the animal may have never harbored the virus.

The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan Seafood Market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019. The racoon dogs, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China. Some of the COVID positive samples were collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade. The sample also contained raccoon dog genes. The genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The genetic sequences were then removed from the internet, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus. The WHO stated that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”

The inconclusive analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that racoon dogs infected humans.

What the flock are they doing?

Posted on by Thor

Most sheep are easily controlled and manipulated. The rebel black sheep cares about the herd. The United States has decided mass infection is the cheapest cost of action. If you wanted to thin the herd by several million people then convincing the population that a deadly virus is “mild” would do the trick.

Propaganda is now in the works to make those who wear masks seem like outliers. The mayor of NYC is asking store owners to insist that people entering their stores must remove their mask. It might be far easier to ask them to show their drivers license, but the point is to discourage the population from protecting themselves from an airborne virus that has killed millions of Americans and continues to do so.  The unintelligent are scapegoating the intelligent.

Floriduh Governor Ron DeathSantis wrote an order, that directed the state’s health and education departments to issue rules preventing the implementation of school mask mandates in an effort to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

Mandatory masking in schools reduced the spread of the virus. Some masks are better than others. Cloth masks and the flimsy blue medical masks are not as effective as N-95 masks. By the time quality N95 masks were being advised, masks had already become a political flash point.

CDC released three studies in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that highlighted the importance of using layered prevention strategies including universal masking to stop the spread and minimize disruptions to school operations for safe in-person education. These studies found that school districts without a universal masking policy in place were more likely to have COVID-19 outbreaks.

There are no longer any states requiring people generally to wear masks in public places. Several states still mandate masking for most people in certain high-risk settings, including health care and long-term care facilities. The federal government’s nationwide mask order for public transit, commercial flights and transportation hubs such as airports and train stations was struck down by a federal judge in April 2022. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has stopped enforcing the mandate and major U.S. airlines made face-covering optional on domestic flights.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend that people ages 2 and older wear masks while on public transportation and at transportation hubs.

Though president Joe Biden has decided to promote, “the pandemic is over” since he is eyeing a re-election run. No level of fantasy or denial can dispute the fact that several thousand people continue to die every week inn America due to COVID-19.  The American workforce is also continuing to thin as more and more people are crippled by long COVID.

People who are going about life unmasked as if the year were 2018 are fearful of those who wear masks since it reminds them that the pandemic is not over. Seeing someone in a mask can actually make them angry.

Fetal Brain Hemorrhages

Posted on by Thor

COVID-19 infection may induce fetal brain hemorrhages, scientists from King’s College in London warn. There’s evidence of the virus in fetal brain tissue in instances of the pregnant mother passing the infection to their children.

The research team studied 661 human fetal tissue samples collected between July 2020 and April 2022, observing hemorrhages in 26 of them. COVID-19 was present in all of the tissue samples with evidence of hemorrhaging. All the samples were collected from electively terminated pregnancies.

Researchers highlighted signs of a reduction in blood vessel integrity and an increase in immune cells infiltrating the brain as being linked to tissue damage. This may be a direct result of the COVID-19 infection or an indirect result of the mother’s immune response.

The number of women who died in child birth surged 40% during childbirth. Those deaths were preventable. The study highlights the need for pregnant women to be vaccinated against COVID-19, thus avoiding complications for both mother and baby.

COVID Face Blindness

Posted on by Thor

Medical Press reported that COVID-19 can cause ‘face blindness‘ and navigational problems according to a new Dartmouth study in Cortex. The researchers worked with Annie, a 28-year-old customer service representative and part-time portrait artist, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020 and suffered a symptom relapse two months later. Shortly after the relapse, Annie noticed difficulty with face recognition and navigation.

Annie began having trouble recognizing her family. When her father called out to her, she thought his voice was coming out of a stranger’s face. She now relies on voices to recognize friends and loved ones. She began having difficulty navigating the grocery story and could not find her parked car.

She was presented photos of 60 celebrities and could identify just 29% of them. Most people can identify 84% of the celebrity faces. Granted Tom Hanks could resemble Mr. Rogers or the serial rapist who lives down the street and who needs to be able to identify Tilde Swinton anyway? She isn’t actually a celebrity.

She was given the Cambridge Face Memory test in which she was shown photos of 6 men. She was then asked to discriminated between those men and photos of other strangers. Annie could identify the faces 56% of the time while most people get 80% correct.

Her test scores in face detection, face identity perception, and object recognition were normal, indicating respectively, that Annie’s problems with faces are due to face memory deficits and are not a more generalized impairment.

Annie had flawless test scores in scene processing. When she was shown a set of landscapes and was then shown them again with a new set, she made no errors in identifying the landscapes she had been previously shown.

Annie also did really well in voice recognition tests in comparison to the controls, so the researchers think that her problems with face processing are mostly likely due to a deficit within the visual system.

There may be a lot of other people who have quite severe and selective deficits following COVID. To test this theory researchers polled 54 individuals who had long COVID with symptoms for 12 weeks or more; and 32 persons who had reported that they had fully recovered from COVID-19. A broad majority of people in the long COVID group reported noticeable difficulties doing things that they were able to do before contracting COVID-19. One of the challenges that many respondents reported was a difficulty with visualizing family and friends.