Question: Is everyone INSANE? Answer: Probably

 Well, it has been a LOOONG time since I last posted. Let's see if this thing still works.

So what has happened since I last posted?

Top of the list has to be the SARS-CoV-2 hysteria - two long years and counting of insane, inane, and unjustified restrictions on ordinary people, all over a disease slightly worse than the common cold.

Not far behind is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This has so many ways of blowing up, literally, in the faces of the protagonists, and very few ways of ending, not peacefully, but at least not disastrously.

War and unrest continues in the Middle East.

Africa and South America continue to be made up of mostly shit-hole countries.

Europe decided that Trump was wrong, and that Putin could be relied on to provide reliable energy in the form of natural gas through the NordStream 1 pipeline. Joke's on you, guys & girls. Don't forget to rug up this winter.

Inflation is running rampant around the globe.

Meanwhile in Oz, the people elected a Labor federal government, which immediately caved to the unions and agreed to wage increases across multiple sectors of the economy. Which, of course, will have no effect on the previous point. Isn't that right, expert economists?

Did I miss anything?

Oh, that's right, I won Saturday Lotto - for a paltry $17.20, so I guess next week's ticket is paid for.

To go back to the top of the list for a moment.

My wife and children are all multiply vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, with a mix of vaccines, as mandated by various employers, and government. Between them they have had three infections with SARS-CoV-2. On each occasion, I have been banished to live in my workshop (15 minutes from home) "for my protection" during the isolation period, which somehow keeps changing. I must confess that I don't really object - I get to turn up the stereo, and tinker on assorted projects to my heart's content, so it's not all bad. I also get to rotate my emergency supplies - use the oldest, and replenish with new.

The thing that DOES irk me is the amazingly stupid pronouncements that I have heard from people in response to them catching a disease for which they have been "vaccinated". They range from "it would have been worse without the vaccine" (bullshit) to "I only caught it because of all the un-vaccinated" (utter rubbish). Not a single person is prepared to say "maybe these vaccines don't work as vaccines".

I can tell you without equivocation that if I had contracted polio after receiving the Sabin (or even Salk) polio vaccine, I would have been irate. Similarly with the cholera, smallpox, typhus, measles, mumps, & rubella vaccines, and justifiably so. These vaccines WORKED - okay not 100%, but pretty darn close.

But, regardless of all this, the MOST irksome part is the overwhelming PANIC about a disease that is 
a) not very infectious
b) not very serious
and
c) not very fatal

I ran the numbers from the Diamond Princess, the "plague ship" refused entry to multiple ports because of an outbreak on board back in January and February of 2020. Partly from curiousity and partly because my wife and I had planned to be aboard for that sailing, but other things came up.

In summary, I discovered:
a) there were about 3,700 people on board - 2600 passengers, and 1100 crew.
b) there were between 704 and 712 positive tests for COVID (accounts differ)
c) 394 of the positive tests were from people who were totally asymptomatic. They would not have known they were infected except for the testing.
d) between 11 and 14 of the passengers died (accounts differ) - none were under 60, and 4 were over 80. No claim was made that these people were among the infected, and no claim was made that they died due to the disease.

So, apparently, I am supposed to be terrified about a disease where less than 20% catch it, even in the disease-ridden confines of a cruise ship, half of those that contract it don't even know, and less than 2% (all of them elderly) die, but maybe not due to the disease.

Meanwhile, the WHO is now trumpeting a new disaster - monkeypox.

All while obfuscating the infection process, refusing to identify the likely victims, and focusing efforts on renaming the disease to avoid associated stigma - to whom, monkeys? 

Hurry up Elon. I want to leave Earth, ASAP.

PS. For those who want to look at the numbers for the Diamond Princess COVID outbreak themselves, do a Google search for "Diamond Princess COVID" - I'm not going to give cites just so people can deny their veracity or pontificate on how they know better. Look it up yourself. Choose which ones you wish to believe.