I’m breaking the radio silence out of rage. So much stupidity while living “in the best of times” is unbearable. Given that I gave up any social media presence, here I am, ranting on my personal blog, where nobody reads me–and nobody can censor me either.

I promised myself I won’t follow the news anymore, but it’s impossible to live under a rock. I’ve quit Twitter, but I still get some news even from the radio; and then, even I have fewer and fewer apps on my smartphone, every once in a while I happen to open one of these…

…and all hell breaks loose.

This Part I will treat (after a long pause in which I didn’t care to write anymore on the matter) COVID-19, the reaction to which seems to mark the end of modern civilization and the triumph of idiocy.

At least in a number of European countries, COVID-19 is getting worse and worse. While nobody wants to hear of another “full lockdown” (which is a misnomer, it never was as strict as in China), and it’s not always clear whether it’s “a second wave” or it just is what it is, some countries already started a second lockdown (e.g. France, where schools remain open this time, despite parents working from home when possible; Israel, which actually already relaxed this second lockdown; Germany, where only the Horeca sector is strictly under lockdown starting Nov. 1st; Belgium: «confinement sans isolement»; Austria, Britain and Greece) or prepare for it (Switzerland, Romania)–with Italy still resisting a true lockdown, but closing the nightlife.

Either way, this is a sign of a collective failure.

The public authorities (“the powers that be”), being them the WHO, the national health or political authorities, or whoever else influenced, guided or directed the public, were criminally inept for the entire period of pandemics. We all know all the stammer regarding the utility or inutility of the masks, of the distancing, of the alcohol, etc. etc. I’ll only recap a few things:

∎ There are still people arguing that the virus is so tiny, hence the masks are totally useless. How retarded must they be to believe SARS-CoV2 travels as is, like the anthrax, when in fact it’s carried by the droplets each of us is issuing when exhaling, speaking, coughing, sneezing? Therefore, even if a mask is more effective in protecting the others, not the bearer, thus having a real impact only when everybody wears a mask, only an idiot would say that wearing a mask offers ZERO protection against this coronavirus. The list of such idiots includes Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency.

By the way, in most countries one can see some people (or shop assistants) wearing transparent face shields (visors), which obviously only offer a limited protection, like the one provided by a plexiglas separator. And yet, with a few exceptions, NO AUTHORITY bothered to clarify whether such a shield is a LEGAL replacement for a face mask or not! Is it tolerance for an infringement of the laws and regulations, of carelessness if not idiocy, as more people would wear such shields instead of masks, should they be acknowledged as a valid protection measure?

∎ There are also people insisting that “there is no science to support social distancing and lockdowns” and writing about “the myth that lockdowns stop pandemics.” By “science” they mean “studies” that simply cannot be made to the highest standards–all you can do is count the dead people. While most such people are blatantly idiots, there is a criminal idiocy that supports them: the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control–an agency of the European Union!–concluded in 2009, with regards to the impact of influenza pandemics in Europe: “There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread. It is hard to imagine that measures like those within the category of social distancing would not have some positive impact by reducing transmission of a human respiratory infection . . . However, the evidence base supporting each individual measure is often weak.”

It’s no wonder then that smarter people, such as Enzo Pennetta, fall for this lack of logic and claim that “if the lockdown is the solution, the problem is you.” When replied that “With all due respect, no model is necessary to understand that ZERO interactions help in an outbreak. But the lockdown was not TOTAL (only hibernation would be total), hence the lack of effect,” he simply answered that mathematical models are important, as they “quantify the results.” Well, the truth is this one, something he couldn’t digest: “Sometimes the logic of a biologist cannot be different from that of an engineer; and sometimes qualification (what is it) is more important than quantification (how much it is). If any coronavirus (common cold) spreads through the droplets containing the virus (emitted through speech, exhalation, sneezing, coughing), no study is necessary to ascertain that when people cannot meet other people’s droplets, the contagion decreases. If you can explain why this basic logic is false, please do so. But it is not necessary to prove that every brand of mineral water is wet, once we know that water is generally wet. OK, each virus has a different contagiousness, a different resistance on surfaces, a different amount that causes an infection, etc. So a specific study will determine a specific effectiveness of spacing/lockdown measures; but the principle remains: if something aggravates a situation, try to do it as little as possible (here: human/social interaction).”

Common logic is lacking nowadays. Also, people hide behind Excel sheets pompously labeled “studies” (peer reviewed when possible), just because they know how to use the p-factor to claim their results are statistically significant.

∎ Some objected that the countries with the most severe lockdowns had some of the poorest results in avoiding the spreading of this coronavirus, while countries like Sweden are “done with the epidemic, and they did it without lockdowns, masks, shutting schools, shutting restaurants or violating human rights.” Such simplifications are comparing apples to oranges, for they assume we’re all identical culturally and socially.

In truth, Sweden has not done any better than any other European country, and the incidence of COVID-19 cases is on the rise. What should be taken in consideration is that the Swedes are socially more solitary than people in Southern Europe; when they meet, they don’t cheek-kiss each other two or three times, like the French and the Italians do ; most of them are living alone, whereas in other countries two or three generations are living together; even many couples are not sharing a household. There might be other factors too–even genetic ones–but there’s no time for complex cultural studies.

Also with regards to the lockdowns: when they say “but restaurants weren’t infection clusters,” the reality is that nobody truly knew who was in contact with who, despite the measures taken in a number of countries to write down the names and addresses of the customers: written on paper and never properly centralized, and possibly even false (everyone was free to write anything!), the whole thing was 100% useless–as useless as the famous “Corona apps” that most people didn’t bother to use. Then, while in lockdown “we opened some schools and the kids didn’t spread the disease,” the truth is that when a limited number of schools reopen, and it happens that no kid is infected, then who the heck were to spread the virus?!

∎ This leads us to “but kids don’t spread this disease”–akin to the absurd belief that doctors had in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, that children don’t feel pain. In the case of SARS-CoV2, the idiots claim “science doesn’t support the idea that children spread the virus,” ignoring the basic logic.

This is nothing but a coronavirus. Do children only spread the flu? Whoever has children knows only too well that when a few kids have the common cold, the entire class gets contaminated, and in many cases the parents are hit harder than their children exactly because they get multiple coronavirus strains–children being in close contact, closer as they are younger, they altruistically mix their common cold virus strains! Now, this “novel coronavirus” being just a coronavirus (like the common cold), regardless of how many people might have mild or non-existent symptoms, why would anyone assume it’s NOT spread by children? Shouldn’t we ask for studies that prove that it does NOT spread this way? In the meantime, even if we were only to apply “the precautionary principle” that grounds all the aircraft of a type when one crashes, we should assume kids can spread this respiratory coronavirus the same way they do with other respiratory coronaviruses.

So no, despite some “studies” claiming to prove that opening the schools doesn’t significantly increase the transmission of this coronavirus, the truth is elsewhere. After all, these are NOT studies, but merely Excel sheets counting the infections! A real study would be like this:

  • Take 10 infected kids and put them in a school with 1,000 kids.
  • Take 10 infected adults and put them in a corporate office with 1,000 people.
  • After a month, compare the outcome in both cases.

And it’s not only what they do in class; I live near an elementary school, so I could see how are the kids acting during the break, especially during the mid-morning recess: it just doesn’t matter that they’re outside; their play is more like rugby, so this is how a schoolyard looks like if you ignore the different clothing:

No, they can’t spread any disease if they’re kids!

I understand that children should require an education, and that whatever can be done via Zoom, Google Classroom and whatnot isn’t a valid replacement. But this has been done before: in 1937, during a polio outbreak, Chicago schools closed down and user the radio to teach children!

∎ Another criminal line of thought was to manage this pandemic in terms of an “compromise in economics”: let’s not kill the economy, so let’s not impose a full lockdown until a certain number of cases is reached. Then, even when in lockdown, when the cases drop, judging that “the hospitals can handle the situation,” the politicians decide to relax the lockdowns, declaring that if the number of cases rises again, stricter measures will be put in place one more time. Thinking in terms of “sinusoids of deaths” is genocidal! “Not enough deaths, let’s let the economy free; oops, the city morgues are full, let’s put in place some restrictions,” and so on.

Umair Haque dixit:

Successful societies — New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and many more — deliberately crunched the curve. Their strategy was to eradicate Covid, through what’s now a global template of best practices — lock down, test, trace, quarantine, isolate, and so forth.

The West, though, tried a different approach. Its idea was that because there was a “tradeoff” between “the economy” and public health, eradicating Covid wasn’t realistic. It could only be controlled, in some vague way. And local, temporary lockdowns would keep it under control. Now, most scholars and scientists in this field disagreed vehemently. But Western leaders were not listening.

The approach of Western leaders, in other words, was reactive, hesitant, and cautious, not decisive, swift, and proactive: “When the numbers rise again, then we’ll act.” Not: “We are going to stamp this out totally, so the numbers don’t rise again.” Lockdowns were therefore lifted too early, and even the new national lockdowns are no such thing, really — in France, for example, kids still go to school. Good luck stopping Covid that way.

Western leaders, in other words, modelled toxic indifference for their societies. They gave people a license to be indifferent, by acting largely indifferent themselves. “When the numbers rise again, then we’ll take care of it” is not a responsible attitude — it is an indifferent one. But catastrophes like pandemics thrive on such indifference.

∎ The truth is simpler: the ONLY way we could have been in a different situation now was to impose A TRUE LOCKDOWN, LIKE IN CHINA. You could blame them as much as you want, and their human rights record is questionable, but one thing they did–albeit too late: a FULL lockdown.

This is what the West would have needed: 6 weeks of complete lockdown. By complete I mean: nobody gets out of their houses, buildings, block of flats, complex of buildings, with the necessary exceptions of those needed to ensure we all have electricity, water, health care, public order and the like. Food is to be delivered–by the Chinese model–to the entrance of the compley of buildings. Contact between people is reduced by 99.99%. People not able to order online should be assisted–again by the Chinese model–by members of local “committees”; and so on. Workers at the power plants and the like don’t get back home–they sleep on the premises, or in temporary shelters. National emergency being declared in each country, such drastic measures would have been possible.

Instead, the reaction to this pandemic was uncoordinated, hesitant, and illogical. When countries like Italy, France, Romania imposed self-issued lockdown permission forms (attestation de déplacement dérogatoire in France; autodichiarazione in Italy), this was the supreme measure of mental idiocy: not even under a dictatorship or under the Nazi occupation were self-issued Ausweise issued. It was for the State to issue them–and in this case the Governments could have issued something between cheque books and rationing books of stamps that the citizens would have needed to fill in with the date, time and reason, and sign. Something like 30 exits per month, plus 5 emergency exits, and nothing else! Or, even better, no exit during the full lockdown, and unrestricted exits otherwise. Maybe things went so badly in Italy, France, Romania and other countries because people really hated their governments, and it’s no wonder why.

Nowadays, idiocy returns: when e.g. in France they closed again the restaurants (in the meantime they announced a full-ish lockdown), they didn’t only say “nobody in a pub after 9 PM”; what they imposed is a curfew, so that the PM Castex said: “This means at 21:00 everyone must be at home and, without exception, every place, business or public service open to the public will be shut.”

Can anyone explain why people can be on streets during the day, but not between 9 PM and 6 PM? With restaurants and pubs closed, they would just walk or (cough) visit each other; but the police could patrol easier when the streets are almost empty than during the day. In my opinion, while a complete lockdown would have saved us, any curfew is pure dictatorship.

Now they finally decided a lockdown is a better choice, but–as to salvage a bit the education of the youth–with schools open; as for the adults, they need a valid reason and a self-written… fucking attestation (affidavit) to be able to quit their homes.

Patrie des cons, ton nom est France.

∎ We have lost the war with COVID-19, and the worst is going to happen, as I predicted: the economy is in shatters, never to recover; and instead of 6 weeks of freeze, years of deep crisis will follow. Meanwhile, instead of revolting against the real (and criminal) idiocies of the governments, they revolt because they can’t get to the pub, because they want back their nonchalant lifestyle that includes unlimited self-indulgence, zero intellectual depth and pure, stupid, and criminal interaction.

What the youth wants is this:

Typical binge drinking in Britain

When this is not allowed to them, what happens is this:

Riot police in Naples on October 23, 2020 (Carlo Hermann/AFP)

It’s exactly as this article says:

These days, the tourists are gone, mostly. But — and here’s the point — the bars, restaurants, and clubs are still full. I pass by them on my daily walk to the park and wonder: what are these people doing? How are they sitting there so close to one another, with no social distancing in place, laughing, joking in the middle of a literal pandemic that’s exploding all around them? What the? […]

They have made a choice. Their beer and burger or cocktail and steak matters more than stopping the spread of a deadly disease. What the? Nevertheless, no matter how foolish this choice seems, let us try to understand it. They want life to “go back to normal.” That is what they are trying desperately to do — party, like nothing much has changed. But for whom?

This group is putting the most vulnerable in society at profound risk. […] The young and working class seem to have decided that the lives of these groups are not worth protecting, saving, or investing in, even with the simple choice of taking the social gathering home, or not having it. Let me say it again. Certain groups in Western society have made the decision that the vulnerable’s lives matter less than their right to party, to have a beer and a burger, a cocktail and a steak, a laugh at the pub with friends. What the?

The test of a civilised society is how it treats its vulnerable. Most reasonable people will agree with that. The problem is that that test is precisely the one the West is flunking. Yes, it’s true that healthcare workers are making heroic efforts to save lives. But they are having to do so precisely because the virus is being spread by certain social groups that appear to simply not care.

∎ In truth, even the Swiss admit that this pandemic is out of control. Not only in their country is the new raise of cases more abrupt than in the first wave:

Of course, what really matters is not the number of positive cases, but the number of serious ones–including deaths. But such charts count the number of hospitalized cases–and the Intensive Care Units are getting fuller and fuller every day, in more and more countries. The Swiss might need to apply the ICU triaging criteria originally concocted back in March, which for instance means that patients over 85 years are not to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit; the same would apply to those over 75 years if they have at least one of the following: cirrhosis of the liver, chronic renal failure stage III, heart failure class NYHA over 1 and estimated survival at less than 24 months. When the resources are severely limited, the exclusion criteria include e.g. recurrent cardiovascular arrest, severe dementia, NYHA class IV heart failure, end-stage degenerative disease.

Which reminds me to name…

…some more criminal actions or non-actions that made this carnage possible. How about the Big Pharma’s war with the reality and with we all?

First, Remdesivir (by Gilead) was deemed useless, then all of the sudden it became “very promising” and approved and recommended by several corrupt and incompetent national medical authorities. Recently the truth finally reached the mainstream media: Remdesivir is very mediocre at best, but with FDA’s and EU’s backing, Gilead secured $1.2bn in Europe only. (Read an excellent summary in Science.) This was made possible by discrediting the hydroxychloroquine (in association with azithromycin, and possibly with zinc and vitamin D also)–a drug known (as chloroquine) for 80 years already and who helped about 2 billion people mostly in preventing or treating malaria, but also in lupus (an autoimmune disease) and rheumatoid arthritis. They made this by giving huge doses that would kill a horse even to patients to which it would have been contraindicated. Those studies were made to fail, only to prevent a cheap medication save lives!

Secondly, the most criminal measure was to administer whatever they tried (even hydroxychloroquine or remdesivir) when it was too late! Both drugs, but especially the HCQ, work best in the initial stage of the disease. But in the initial stage of the disease the patients are told to isolate themselves at home, with only paracetamol for the fever, so that when some of them finally need to go to the hospital, their lungs are already destroyed, and they occupy a mechanical ventilator in the ICU with not more than 50% chances to survive!

Especially the elderly in France’s nursing homes (the EHPADs) were simply left to die without any decent attempt to a treatment. People with risk of thrombosis weren’t told to prevent it not even by taking an extra aspirin daily. Preventative, the administration of such a cheap thing as a vitamin D pill was discouraged (“QAnon and all kind of conspiracists and deniers claim that Vitamin D protects against COVID”), despite a recent study in a Spanish hospital finding that over 80% of COVID-19 patients had vitamin D deficiency.

Maybe Trump was lucky to have been given everything that was available, as soon as it was known that he’s positive; but Bolsonaro got well mostly with hydroxychloroquine, except that it was administered early and in combination with other drugs. Regular people don’t have the right not even to regular drugs (since this pandemic, the HCQ is heavily regulated, so heavy that it’s harder to find than most illegal drugs).

∎ No, they didn’t do this to kill as many people as they could. No, they didn’t do this to have reasons to impose further restrictions and to establish a new kind of dictatorship. They did this because they’re as stupid as a dead rat.

It’s been years since I said I’d write a book on the idiocies of our times, one chapter of which being dedicated to the drugs they illogically and criminally forbidden after decades of successful use. I never found the proper motivation and the right conditions. I’m not going to dig into my saved references, but I’ll quote from memory a few blatant cases.

∎ Pharmaceutical intermezzo and the idiocy of the medical bureaucrats.

Diane-35, an effective birth control with ethinylestradiol (35 μg) and cyproterone acetate (2 mg), and as effective as any other combined oral contraceptive birth control pill that contains a progestogen and an oestrogen hormone, has been discontinued in 2013 from the regular usage in France after four stupid French teenagers died while taking it. Of course, it was known that such a pill incurs a risk of thromboembolism, and of course, whoever prescribed it should have examined those girls. It’s true that Diane-35 was usually prescribed as a treatment against severe acne thanks to its androgen-blocking effect, but all combination oral contraceptives pose a certain risk. The real idiocy? While it was forbidden in France, the only birth control pills left on the market were the older formulas from the 60s and 70s, which contain much higher hormone amounts! It’s like, “oh, my, this little hammer might hurt you, let’s forbid it; use a sledgehammer instead”! Fortunately, in an unprecedented move, the European Commission and the European Medicines Agency’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee forced the French ANSM to reinstate Diane-35, albeit with warnings and limitations.

With other drugs, the European and national regulators were even dumber. The metamizole, either as sodium metamizole (Novaminsulfon, Dipyron, Анальгин, Algocalmin) or as magnesium metamizole (Nolotil), is banned in several Western countries (starting with the late 1970s), and available by prescription in others, after having been tremendously successful around the world for many decades, usually as an over-the-counter drug (at least in Russia, Romania; it’s still very popular in Mexico, yet illegal in the US). The reason? A tiny risk of agranulocytosis and neutropenia. Heck, I knew someone who took 4 grams a day for about 20 years, the person having several severe morbidities, and it was just fine. After all, the patients of risk should be monitored, and everyone should know themselves and notice if they don’t tolerate well a drug. Nobody died suddenly after having taken metamizole!

Metamizole being a derivative of aminophenazone (Pyramidon), one can easily guess that the access to aminophenazone is severely restricted too. For instance, in Germany and Switzerland it’s forbidden since 1978 for being potentially carcinogenic. Another prohibited drug that once was extremely popular: phenacetin (withdrawn: Canada 1973, US 1983, Germany 1986). [LATE EDIT: propyphenazone, introduced in 1933 by Hoffmann-La Roche as Saridon, in combination with phenacetin (later with paracetamol) and caffeine, was supposed to be safer than aminophenazone, but it’s no longer available in Germany; also banned for production and sale even in Turkey (1986) and in some other countries (off and on in India, I believe it’s again available now). Saridon is still available in Romania.] A last victim, for which I only know the Romanian commercial name: Acalor (Antigermin, Germicid), in fact orthoxyquinoline sulfonate of aminophenazone (a natrium salt of aminophenazone with the 8-hydroxyquinoline-5-sulfonic acid), which was the best antipyretic on Earth (better than the metamizole). Here’s a catch: the unique replacement for all these drugs is no other than the infamous paracetamol (acetaminophen, Tylenol, Panadol, Doliprane), which is actually a much less effective antipyretic than metamizole, and a much less effective pain killer too. When people only have access to a less effective drug, they tend to overdose it, and given that the paracetamol is extremely toxic for the liver, it’s no wonder its overuse the number one cause of acute liver failure (ALF) in the United States, accounting for 50% of all cases of ALF and carrying a 30% mortality. But they forbade other drugs, leaving this killer on the market, as the only replacement.

Regulators being regulators, their tiny brains found a quick fix: let’s limit the quantity that can be bought at one time, e.g. to 16 grams in UK (1998) or 8 grams in France. The same “brilliant” idea was applied to many other OTC products (e.g. those containing pseudoephedrine, which is now unavailable or prescription-only in most countries), sometimes in the form of limiting the quantity of the active ingredient, such as limiting a Vitamin C pill to 1 gram. What the heck, if it’s OTC, I can go to several pharmacies in a row! And if a pill only has a limited amount of something, what prevents me to swallow the entire box at a time?

Back to some brilliant drugs severely restricted by dumb bureaucrats–as dumb as those who are denigrating the HCQ today:

  • Celebrex (celecoxib), severely restricted because it “may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction and stroke” (very effective, even my mother was very happy with it); OK, a 2016 study said it’s safe, a 2018 one suggested it’s not, and then… what “peer-revied study” to trust? (The one in The Lancet, right?)
  • Vioxx (rofecoxib), a similar drug, was approved in the US in 1999 and withdrawn by the manufacturer from the market in 2004 “because of safety concerns.” This is ridiculous: all COX-2 selective agents pose similar risks, should we ban them all?
  • Arcoxia (etoricoxib): “the drug could cause as many as 30,000 heart attacks annually if widely used,” said the FDA. The truth? Arcoxia is a miracle drug! When I had a fissure in a metatarsal bone, a smart orthopedist prescribed me Arcoxia 90 mg, and despite being “just a COX-2 inhibitor” (with anti-inflammatory results), it was taking my pain as if it were morphine! The doctor explained to me that nobody can get hurt from only one pill, and that one must be a complete idiot to continue to take it if side effects are noticed, so that the denigrators of such a drug are preventing people to get a better treatment. To me, it was the most effective drug I ever took in my life! Arcoxia is still illegal in the US.
  • The Roter tablets, used in Western Europe since the late 1940s, were extraordinarily effective in the treatment of peptic ulcers (my father was saved from a surgical operation by Roter in the late 1960s), and was later produced in Romania as Ulcerotrat; it was also magical in the cases of acid reflux with dyspepsia, but it’s now banned in the “civilized countries” because one of its ingredients, the bismuth subnitrate, is “highly toxic” (yeah, I didn’t know why I died and I’m now a zombie: I also took it for quite some time). It’s still manufactured in Hong Kong.
  • Since 2004 the formaldehyde (formol) is considered carcinogenic and banned in the EU; a very popular Italian drug, Formitrol, doesn’t contain it anymore, despite dozens of millions having taken it without any problem; there was also a French solution against foot odour whose name I can’t remember (it contained among others formol and citronella), and of course they don’t make it anymore! In the former Soviet Republics one can still find something called Formidron (3.7% formol), but it’s not authorized in the EU.
  • Another forbidden drug, quite recently banned in the EU: fusafungine (Bioparox, Locabiosol). I don’t remember why they said it’s dangerous–it’s not.
  • A last one I remember about: the nootropic meclofenoxate or centrophenoxine (Lucidril). It’s still available with a prescription in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, but it was OTC in the 1980s even in Socialist Romania! No major pharma company makes it, so it’s very difficult to find it (it might be still sold online by a company in Luxembourg, and possibly in the US, as a dietary supplement). What the heck, it’s harmless as long as the dosage is not counted in buckets!

Are we supposed to trust these mega-fuckers who ban drugs THAT WORKED FOR 60-100 YEARS? (No, this is not about the cocaine cough syrup, nor about the cocaine toothache drops–they were on the market for a shorter time, long ago.) Now you should understand better the hydroxychloroquine issue. There are doctors who save lives, and there are bureaucrats (sometimes paid by Big Pharma) who deserve the guillotine. The degree of trust I have in doctors is close to zero, but I cannot fill a prescription myself, and for lab tests and other investigations there is a need for them; but unless I need to be cut open because there’s no other way to save my life, I don’t fucking want to see them! (They got rich while not saving my grandmother; their incompetence killed my father and a good friend; my mother would probably have lived with a different medical system. So fuck off, you parasites.)

If you want to kill yourself, you can destroy your liver with paracetamol–it’s perfectly legal and not banned, despite being more toxic than all of the aforementioned medicines!

∎ Medical intermezzo (I’ve just remembered something): if you thought the medical science knows a lot about the human body, you’re both right and wrong.

Even in the 21st century, there are new discoveries in human anatomy, and the article I linked to is far from being complete. Of course, it mentions e.g. the mesentery (2017), and the fabella (a tiny bone located in a tendon behind the knee), but they forgot about the anterolateral ligament of the knee, rediscovered in 2013 after having been mentioned as early as in 1879 by a French doctor, Paul Segond (but he wasn’t believed, despite being the founder of obstetrics in France, and an expert on the knee, the one who described the Segond fracture). I mean, how on Earth can an entire “medical science” not notice this ligament (as well as the fabella) in more than a century of dissections after the first mentioning of it? What the fuck are they doing in the medical school, learning dogmas and the anatomy of the 17th century? Of course, in 2017 we discovered a new function of the lungs–and an “unexpected one” at that!

One more time: are we to trust such ‘”geniuses” on getting us rid of the SARS-CoV2?

Est-ce que ça vous chatouille, ou est-ce que ça vous gratouille?

∎ Because, if you had hopes in some of the 142 attempts of a vaccine, you’re a fool. The chances that such vaccines be effective are close to zero. Coronaviruses are changeable and quick to mutate, so I very much doubt any such vaccine could offer durable protection. Of course, it might help (it should help!), but to which extent? And how do you imagine a working logistics able to provide this vaccine at least for the 1 billion people of Europe and North America? There are still idiots who think a vaccine as Pfizer’s, who requires storing at minus 70 degrees Celsius, could be distributed!

Did you know that the Pneumococcal vaccine, the one that almost gave the coronavirus to Angela Merkel because the doctor who administered it was positive, is simply unavailable to the general population since then? They’re fucking unable to provide this vaccine, who would at least ensure your lungs are clean of Streptococcus pneumoniae, and you’re confident they’ll vaccinate you against this new beast?

We are facing 2-3 years of a “Special Period” (not this one though) that will change forever everything on this planet.

∎ I’ll restate it: only a full lockdown would have helped us. But now it looks like it’s too late for that. Because we didn’t observe an extremely severe lockdown months ago (say, back in April), everything we’re doing now is only going to hurt the economy to such an extent that some sectors might never recover. And people will continue to die because of this virus.

Hotels, restaurants, everything tourism-related, then theatres, concert halls, etc. etc.: everything that is going to die is going to die, while Amazon and the likes, as well as everything Internet-related, will continue to thrive. This is already a madhouse, and it’s getting worse.

And it’s not those people who are the most vocal. Those who make the streets look like scenes from Mad Max are hooligans, vandals, ultras, anarchists, criminals–not hotel-keepers, barkeepers, restaurators. The decent people are only to lose.

As for governments, here’s one of the so many proofs that France is ruled by idiots who should have been guillotined long ago: in the new lockdown, bookstores were deemed “unessential” (sure, people have Netflix and Facebook, who’d need an old-fashioned book?), hence closed. But the department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets who happen to also sell books can still sell them, which means that if Amazon didn’t kill all the bookstores, this second lockdown would do it. Ironically, FNAC, originally a bookstore, is open because it also sells computers–which are “essentials” in the times when a crappy shit like Zoom is the #1 software. As the bookstore owners protested, and as the only logical measure the government could and should have taken were to let the bookstores open (have you ever saw a bookstore as crowded as a pub?), the government didn’t do anything of the kind, but FNAC and the others decided to stop selling books, in solidarity to the bookstores (and to end the severe discrimination generated by the government). No, this is not a dream, this is the reality.

∎ These are the morons who rule planet Earth. These are the morons who own planet Earth. These are the morons who are destroying planet Earth. And we’re all guilty for this, especially the youngsters. The young fucking hipsters are not interested in politics as long as the question at hand is not “Save the planet by praising Saint Greta Thunberg!”. These snowflakes are only interested in electric scooters, bike lanes, LGBTQ+ and gender issues (“don’t call me he/him or she/her, I’m not binary” and “mom, I want to change my sex!”); they want to demolish statues and rewrite the history, they want to completely forbid some words (“oh, words can hurt so much!”), and generally, they’re the most stupid generation this planet ever had!

Maybe this civilization should become extinct, as it was the case with some other civilizations before. But we’re not there yet. For now, we’re still in Eugène Ionesco’s Jeux de massacre (1969):

Arrange-toi bien, ma fille. Mets tes boucles d’oreilles. Mets ton collier. Nous allons au bal clandestin.

Une société d’imbéciles ! Une ville de crétins !

Chers concitoyens, je vous ai convoqués pour vous parler de l’avenir de notre cité. J’ai enfreint les ordres qui s’opposaient à cette réunion publique et vous êtes venus en grand nombre au nez et à la barbe de nos dirigeants actuels. On veut nous enfermer dans nos demeures et dans notre angoisse. Sous le prétexte d’une maladie qui sévit parmi nous, et tous les prétextes sont bons pour nos dirigeants, sous le prétexte de nous préserver contre le mal, on nous immobilise, on nous empêche d’agir, on nous paralyse, on nous possède, on nous détruit.

To be continued.