I expect it to go higher. Not that it's particularly relevant, but the US's inflation rate is 7.9%, a 40 year high. Omicron, and every subsequent variant will continue to hit the global economy, and there is no sign that supply chains will relieve themselves if Covid restrictions continue, so I don't expect inflation to stabilize. If the mere announcement of new Covid variants can cause entire markets to tank, as with Omicron, the same cycle will happen with whatever the "new" variant of the quarter is.

There can't be a reasonable expectation of a 2% inflation target if governments decides to restrict it's economy for nearly 2 years by isolating workers and slowing down production.

You can carry a gun so you're hard to kill, but being hard to kill doesn't make you immune from repercussion. Self defense goes both ways, for police and the citizens. Except for Kazakhstan, even some of the military have joined in on the protests. So the entire government system is falling apart, and without a government to prosecute crimes. I guess it's free self defense for everyone. One of the unfortunate unintended consequences when the legal system falls collapses.

It's a direction towards self preservation, and Turkey is all but a dictatorship, so the self preservation is essentially government institutions maintaining themselves. And Erdogan has attempted to silence his political opponents in the past placing them under arrest, so his intent is clear that he doesn't care about his constituents.

The theme repeats itself - government functioning against its citizens, and consolidation of power disrupts any sense of democratic rule.

Government is only willing to take as much power as the people are willing to give it, until inevitably they overreach. I am not opposed to letting people dictate the way they want to live. If they wish for government to micro manage every faucet of society, it's their choice. How many people would have been against government measures in March of 2020? Perhaps not many, because there was too much uncertainty, and fear overlaps rationally. Contrast is now, people are done with Covid, but the government isn't.

What do you think is happening today, Twitchy?

Oral arguments for Biden's vaccine/testing mandates.

And CNN is covering this matter very closely too, if Fox News isn't your cup of tea.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-covid-vaccine-mandates-supreme-court-01-07-22/index.html

It isn't mine either, to be honest, but I did not see such a bizarre comment from a SCOTUS judge on the CNN live updates page, otherwise I would have posted it from there. What happens today is monumental. And if a SCOTUS judge can't understand basic statistics and overstates the risk of Omicron, you think that might influence how they vote? I understand we're past the point of using facts when discussing Covid, but I'd hope someone in any position of power would be able to discern facts and feelings. I didn't have any elevated expectations, however. If you've been paying close attention to nations like Australia, France, and Germany, their courts have also declared Covid to be a severe emergency, such that law enforcement can imprison those that might be outside without a mask or enter a building without being vaxxed.

Imagine two years ago if someone had told you people would be jailed for not showing you they took a shot.



There were plenty more misstatements of fact. I only picked the most egregious one that is easily disputable. There is no possible way to believe Omicron is as deadly as Delta.

US Supreme Court Justice says Omicron is as deadly as Delta - https://twitter.com/ShannonBream/status/1479480779747045381

Forgetting the position of a SCOTUS judge for a second, I see this a lot -- the conflation of variant strains merely because the uncertainty lies within the data, so the immediate worst outcome must be accepted. We do have most of the data for Omicron, so it's possible this judge just is refusing to accept the data, or is allowing emotions to get the best of her.

Fact - There has been less than 100 deaths world wide of Omicron. Someone should have told her before she made a fool of herself.

Do performance based pay. Get out all the teachers that teach nothing, collect a paycheck from the government, and indoctrinate the minds of children. Then, you have less terrible teachers, more money to spend on good teachers, and there's an incentive structure that motivates results.

Most people only experience mild symptoms, if any symptoms at all.

Worth noting that most everyone in the world will eventually get Covid. Even the folks living remotely in Antarctica had Covid outbreak - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59848160. There is no point in controlling a highly transmissible upper respiratory virus. It's too late for that.

So if living in the most isolated continent in the world will not protect you, it's better to embrace it. Anywhere from 3 in 10 to 4 in 10 cases are asymptomatic, and roughly 10 percent of cases (probably even less) are severely symptomatic. Roughly 5 percent of confirmed Covid cases result in a person being admitted in the hospital. Approximately 0.1 percent of overall cases result in death (0.1 percent death rate without vaccination, to be clear). And, some have speculated, for every one confirmed Covid test case, there could be 4x as much unconfirmed cases, at a minimum.

With Omicron, highly transmissible and less than 100 deaths world wide, perhaps millions of confirmed cases. A death rate of virtually zero.

Covid is now more mild than the flu.

So a lot of turmoil in Kazakhstan. The President is forced to resign because of protests regarding the energy prices, and apparently there's been multiple deaths related to the protests both on the side of protestors and law enforcement/security.

https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-enrgy-price-protests-zhanaozen/31637647.html

According to this source, sharp increase in liquefied petroleum gas, resulting in days of protest. All the financial markets have dipped recently, not just crypto, so it isn't clear on how large of an effect this has.

More research is required. We don't actually know what the link is, only that more woman have reported menstral issues after taking the vaccine than before.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting#annex-1-vaccine-analysis-print

See the numerous reports pertaining to menstrual issues.

I am not saying these issues are statistically significant, but again, as with anything vaccine related, to categorically reject the notion that there could be side effects to the vaccine that are currently unknown is to pretend that we know the long term side effects of vaccines. We don't.

And btw, Dr. Malone has plenty of patents pertaining to mRNA technology, I don't think his disgruntled wife changes that.

For some cultures, sex isn't enjoyment, they just do it to pump out as many offspring as they possibly can. Jewish communities in particular will have as much children as they can because it's in their own self interest to procreate. And if I remember correctly, a few Jewish communities might have even prohibited the Covid vaccine for children because of menstrual cycle issues some of the lipid nanoparticles are causing (this, according to Dr. Robert Malone, creator of mRNA therapeutic technology).

https://www.axios.com/macron-piss-off-unvaccinated-people-498b180d-a8eb-49d8-a61c-5a7f67aece73.html

Macron wants to "piss off" the unvaccinated in order to coerce them into taking the jab. I speculate which public health measure does this fall under, perhaps a new division -- bullying and harassing the noncompliant into bodily procedures that they are in no position to consent to. "Forced consent" as they might call it. Despite being an oxymoron and entirely unethical, Macron isn't fazed. It starts at forced vaccinations, and once government has control over bodily autonomy with a vaccine under emergency use by most developed nations, the possibilities are endless.

At least France is not Australia yet and beginning to use police to throw people in jail for the crime of being outside without a mask, but surely they aren't far off.

Insurance companies will provide the data to law enforcement to investigate crashes, because if law enforcement request the data, insurance companies will comply with any requests. Large telecommunications companies do the same when police want to locate geo data of someone's cell phone. It seems innocuous at first, having the insurance companies install a black box to vindicate teen drivers of exorbitant insurance prices. But you give them a little and they will take a lot.

But as I alluded to before, this sort of "mass surveillance state" has been going on for decades. Whether it be cars or not -- ie ISP's routinely monitor user activity and will gladly hand over that data if asked by the government. Car location/data is just another layer to the mass surveillance

Many new cars already have this, directly installed by the manufacturer and sold to whatever country the company ships vehicles to. Some companies can even remotely control the car and cause the car to become disabled (in the event it is stolen, law enforcement can usually contact providers with access to on board components and remotely stop the vehicle). The question is, what will they use black box data for? Wait till they make it a crime to remove any such "black box" from your own vehicle.

To the extent Covid has made us all deranged, perhaps the most overlooked phenomenon of Covid is the mass formation psychosis generated out of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety.

See Dr. Malone, Harvard trained medical doctor, explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eJSwigON0k

As explained, an intellectual inquiry made by social scientists as to how it was possible that Nazi Germany would arise from a well educated population comprised of a civil society. How was it possible that a democracy could result in fascism comprising of the systematic extermination of 9 million jews. Surely humans weren't animals in the 1930's, yet we acted like it. Mass formation psychosis was the proposed answer.

It doesn't take much for humans to lose grip on reality, it only takes a bit of fear for emotions to run rampant. How people still fear Covid after 2 years, vaccines, therapeutics, and variants with less virulence is beyond comprehension.  

Want to end Covid? Turn off the news. There, Covid's over.

You will eventually get Covid if you have not gotten it already, so don't bother worrying about a disease that you have a 99.7 percent chance surviving. If you get omicron, you have virtually a 100 percent chance surviving. Is that something you want to have anxiety over?

Covid is endemic, there is no putting an end to it. There's only people that will not let it go.

Video clip of Joe Rogan interview with Harvard lecturer, MD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn1UwPSzTV4 - The Troubling Story of Vioxx, nonsteroidal inhibitor drug.

Who created Vioxx? Merck, the same company that has created the new anti-Covid pill. In the video, Dr. Abramson explains that Merck falsified its clinical trial data when publishing to the regulatory agencies/medical journals which allowed Vioxx to be released onto the public market and adopted by physicians to prescribe to their patients. Turns out it had cardiovascular side effects which was hidden by Merck, 40-60k people died of strokes/heart attacks before it was removed from the market in '04.

Remember, we're suppose to trust big pharma, folks.

This is not to say that pharmaceutical companies do not produce life saving medications, they do. But behind these medications are the profit motive. And to blindly trust corporations with a profit motive is a lapse of judgement.

So technically these sort of savings would cause a deflationary period, because money isn't circulating in the economy anymore. But then the US government chooses to begin printing an undetermined amount of money (at the time), paying people to stay home and issuing out business loans with no hope of them ever being paid back due to Covid restrictions. It sure is easy to save when you hand out money like candy.

Easy answer, it's because Saint George Floyd took a bit too many drugs than he could handle. Recall in May of 2020, before the DNC convention, Biden was going to pick your typical white woman democratic politician, maybe Amy Klobuchar, had it not been for BLM terrorists setting cities ablaze. It was only after Floyd's death that Biden proclaimed he *must* pick a woman of color. And so Harris is was. To not pick a woman of color during such racial tensions was to desecrate amongst the sacred space of woke social justice politics, and of course Biden must oblige to the radicals.

I agree, she's terrible.

I don't think my definition of "low Covid" is at all consistent with your definition of "low Covid" at all. I don't care if people die from Covid, because people die every day from things out of their control. It only becomes a problem when many people are dying from Covid and there is no way to manage, or when Covid death rates are out of control.

We can manage Covid, we have therapuetics. So from a public health standpoint, Covid is over. No need for mandates, government interference, or any such aggressive enforcement tactics seen all over the world in Australia, Austria, Germany, France, (need I go on).

But government won't let this go, they love having power.