It can be frustrating trying to reach the people who have fallen for the propaganda and fear porn of the COVID cult. But each of us might know one or two people who can be reached and awakened from their deep sleep. I have personally awakened a few dozen people over the last 18 months, and I will continue to do my best to help others. As this video points out, some people have breaking points, such as when the schools force 10-year-olds to get a vaccination they don’t need or when a person gets fired from his or her job because of their private medical decisions. Let’s work with them to help them out of their hypnosis. The first step may be showing them this video by the inventor of mRNA technology. It’s worth a try.
The Millennial Star
It’s been interesting to see some very committed leftists/progressive women on twitter being red-pilled to Covid and other things. One of these ladies, a lawyer no less, was beyond shocked when she learned that Kyle Rittenhouse killed white guys not black guys. She’d only ever listened to CNN & MSNBC and thought the victims were black. She was angry that the media lied. And while I was happy for the realization, I also felt like tweeting her a big fat “I told you so!”
Wait, are you saying that CNN and MSNBC are not completely truthful???!!! This is my shocked face.
Good video. I hope it can reach some people.
It’s interesting that more and more splinter issues are becoming akin to religious conversion battles.
I’ve followed this page for a while but have never commented. I’m genuinely curious and open to being wrong. Is it bad that I got vaccinated and recently got a booster? I really haven’t seen a lot of reputable sources reporting health issues when it comes to the vaccines, beyond rare adverse reactions, which happen with every vaccine. Do you agree that COVID has been an unprecedented health crisis? Isn’t nearly 800,000 dead Americans a massive tragedy? And it’s not just the old (though I don’t accept the thought that we should be ok with the old dying before their time from a preventable disease). I guess either way we were doomed from the start because Democrats and Republicans botched the public health response to the virus so badly in the beginning. What’s the overall goal that you would want to achieve with your advocacy? Again I’m open to being wrong. Just trying to understand.
Jeff, thank you for your respectful comment.
I would start out answering you by saying that I have written dozens of posts on the response to the pandemic. Why have I done this on an LDS blog? Because the over-the-top response to the pandemic is the single greatest threat to human liberty we have seen since World War II. Take yourself back to Dec. 2019. Could you ever have imagined a scenario where Australians are being sent to concentration camps because of a virus? Could you ever have imagined a scenario where many countries and US states are creating a two-tiered society where unvaccinated people are confined to their homes — for life — to force them to take a vaccine? Health authorities worldwide are aware and admit that the vaccine does not prevent people from getting COVID and they also admit that the vaccine does nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Yet somehow these same authorities see unvaccinated people as a threat? Can you see the lack of basic logic here? Can you see that this is about fear, not logic or reason or even public health? This is about control, domination and forcing mass conformity.
If you watch the video, there is a comparison to another time when control, domination and mass conformity were imposed on a population, and the result was the Holocaust and tens of millions of deaths. You must ask yourself: how could a great, educated people like the Germans oversee such madness and mass death?
Interestingly, this is exactly the question that the prophets who wrote the Book of Mormon were concerned with. How did the Jaredites end up killing themselves in a massive war to the death, and how did the Nephites and Lamanites end up repeating the process hundreds of years later?
We know as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that Satan will reign with blood and horror on the Earth until Jesus comes again to end the madness.
My real and sincere concern is that there is a madness, a mass death cult, around this virus. Do you really think that people will meekly allow themselves to be confined to concentration camps and to their homes indefinitely without eventually responding? Based on world history, what are the chances that this response will spur worldwide violence? You have to admit that the possibility of violence is higher now than it was in Dec. 2019, right?
So, there is of course nothing wrong with you getting vaccinated and getting a booster. Based on your comment, it seems like you are a pretty reasonable person and not part of the cult. So, this post is not necessarily aimed at you.
I don’t know how old you are, but I am approaching 60, and I lived through a very bad pandemic in the late-1960s. This was the Hong Kong flu, which I caught, and I was very, very sick as a young child because of this flu. Now, this flu killed millions worldwide, but there were no masks, and no lockdowns and no school closures, and no mandates of any kind. An eventually we recovered as a society.
In fact, we go through pandemics at least once a decade, but this is the first time we have seen the panicked response. Now, keep in mind that if you are under 50 the likelihood you will die from COVID is miniscule. If you are under 30, the flu is significantly more dangerous to you than COVID. The overall IFR of COVID is .27 percent, meaning that the overall survival rate including old people and obese people and other people with pre-existing conditions is above 99 percent. Yet when people are asked what the survival rate is, they will say it is 70 percent or less. Meaning that people really think that 30 percent of the people who get COVID will die.
So, there is a disconnect between reality and peoples’ perceptions. And health authorities constantly gin up the panic rather than being honest.
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that one of the best and easiest things you can do to avoid dying from COVID is to lose weight and to take vitamin D, yet you never hear that from Fauci and the other health authorities? I have lost 30 pounds since the pandemic started, and I take a lot of vitamin D, and I am approaching 60, and when I got the virus a year ago I was mildly sick for a few days and since then…nothing. I feel great. Isn’t is strange that you never hear stories like that?
Doesn’t it trigger your BS meter when you see the constant references in the media to the Omicron variant of the virus, and when you actually look up information about the Omicron variant it turns out that almost all of the people who have gotten it are vaccinated for COVID and that the variant appears very, very mild and does not really seem to be that much of a threat after all? Why all of the panic?
So, based on my study of history, I actually don’t agree that COVID is that unprecedented. I think the 800,000 number is false because there is a difference between people dying “with COVID” and people dying “because of COVID,” and the 800,000 number measures the former, not the latter. Did you know there is a massive financial incentive for hospitals to claim that somebody died because of COVID because they get more money from the government? So, like many things related to this virus, you really cannot believe the officials numbers. But even if you choose to believe the official numbers, as I say, the actual death rate from COVID is .27 percent. The people most at risk at the same people who are most at risk of dying from many other things. So, obviously the virus is real and it is a threat, but the extent of the threat has been exaggerated beyond credulity.
So, what do I want to achieve with my advocacy? I want to avoid a worldwide civil war with hundreds of millions of dead. And the crazy, over-the-top response to the pandemic will, as I explain above, likely end in massive violence. I want us to have a reasonable response to the virus, meaning that we protect the people most at risk while allowing everybody else to go about their business. (This was basically Sweden’s approach, and Florida’s approach, and interestingly these are two of the places least affected by COVID in the long run). I want to wake up people who believe that the threat of the virus is worse than it is. I want to avoid a world of fear where people go around telling other people what to do with their private lives.
I have no problem with people deciding voluntarily to take the COVID vaccines. Just as a point of reference, I would tell you that this is the first time that a worldwide vaccine has only been good for a few months and has required immediate boosters. So, again, your BS meter should be going off if you are taking a vaccine that requires a booster a few months later. The evidence seems to be that the boosters also last just a few months, so people will be taking boosters every 4 to 5 months for the rest of their lives. And of course there are no long-term tests yet on the effects of the boosters. But if you are OK with a booster every few months the rest of your life, it doesn’t really affect me, so I don’t have any issues. But if your response is that I must be vaccinated because of your fear, then, yes, we have problem. Nobody has the right to tell me what I must do with my own body — sorry, that is a line that cannot be crossed (especially when I have already had COVID and have natural immunity and am extremely unlikely to pass on COVID to anybody else).
Regarding the safety (or lack of safety) of the vaccines, there are literally hundreds of reliable and reputable sources that have pointed out that these experimental vaccines are actually the most dangerous and deadly vaccines ever, especially for men under 30. But this comment is getting very, very long, so I will not expound on that at this time. I wrote a bit about it on M*, and Jacob Hess looked into the history of the vaccines when it comes to children, so I would encourage you to read these two posts. Other than that, good wishes and thank you for your comment.
https://www.millennialstar.org/doing-our-own-due-diligence-as-parents-on-the-covid-19-vaccine-for-children/comment-page-1/#comment-185320
https://www.millennialstar.org/the-coming-covid-19-vaccine-fallout/comment-page-1/
If I may, Jeff, I’d like to offer a more concise answer than Geoff. No offense, Geoff. 🙂
Nobody (or at least nobody here) is going to mock you for getting vaccinated. So long as you thought about it and made the decision you felt was best for your life, we’re all good. However, there seem to be an awful lot of people who have hitched their philosophical wagons to the idea that vaccination decisions should be a legal basis on which others can be denied access to various pieces of normal life, and a growing population of people are starting to seriously question that. Making your own decisions and being willing to explain them is a very good thing. Forcing others to pretend to agree with you is very not.
Lattertarian, why say something in 100 words when you can say it in 2,000 words?
To be fair, I’ve seen exactly this from some pro Trump anti vax friends in my ward. The difficulty of this situation lies in how the narrative is constructed and reinforcement by selective use of manipulated and imprecise data. Small case in point, I’ve never imagined a new drug would become recommended based on a very narrow window of is effectiveness that isn’t monitored for safety or effectiveness outside that window.
And then it becomes mandatory once it’s seen to be much less effective than sold as. The same trend applies exactly to lockdowns, and masks.
Vaccine passports will save us from Xi variant, even though the variation can only have spread between nations among the vaccinated since there are vax mandates on international travel. Ergo, we need more vax mandates.
So yes, this psychosis is real, and dangerous. More dangerous as I’ve been saying all along than the virus itself.
But while that psychosis is real and dangerous, so too is the obsession of some of my dear friends who can’t stop giving their precious attention to it.
The Brethren can be a great example to follow in this regard. They are supportive of the vaccine, which ought to enthuse the pro vaxers. And they aren’t harping on covid incessantly, but continuing to focus on their mission. We ought to follow that pattern, especially if you’re not getting vaccinated. Focus on Christ. Not on secret combinations that have manipulated a Gordian knot of intrigue that only undermines your credibility to point out and distracts you from your main mission.
Sute, this very short discussion between Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson should perhaps help you understand why people need to speak out about the COVID cult. I consider this an obligation of all free people.
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1468273632140939265?s=20
I see some disconnect between Geoff’s posts and Sute’s comments on “the COVID cult” and what The Church is actually doing in response to COVID.
For example, The Church is still cancelling and/or greatly limiting events. The Brethren are fully vaxxed and presumably now even boosted, but they are still masking and social distancing (at least on TV). They’ve issued official statements encouraging vaccinations and compelling masks in temples, but have said nothing about the devastating effects of school closures. How do you reconcile all of that?
Longtime Lurker, I am not sure what you mean by “disconnect,” but I am going to assume you mean that I am not in line with the Brethren in one way or another on this issue.
The first point I would make is that Elder Bednar spoke very forcefully against the lockdowns, especially of churches, early in the pandemic. But in fairness, I agree that the primary message since then has been to encourage masks and vaccinations. I am going to the temple tomorrow and I will be wearing a mask, just to cite one small example.
I might be one of the few people who feels this way, but I see no disconnect between 1)supporting my Church leaders in every way possible (which I do) and 2)speaking out in favor of liberty and against the mandates and lockdowns. In fact, I believe that individual Latter-day Saints have an obligation to speak out in favor of liberty and against the mandates and lockdowns.
For the record: I have never criticized a Church leader, either publicly or privately. This includes my local leaders and the Brethren. If you go through my posts, you will see me write over and over again that I will not criticize Church leaders.
Should the Church leadership and individual members always say exactly the same things in exactly the same ways? I would say no. Everybody has a different calling within the Church and a different responsibility. The Church leadership is on a tightrope right now, trying to lead a worldwide church through a new environment where many countries, like Australia and NZ and several countries in Europe are instituting draconian measures because of COVID. But at the same time, a lot of the membership is against these policies and is speaking out publicly against these policies. To give one example, in my ward in semi-rural Colorado, I would say that all of the members are against the mandates, the lockdowns and the masks. But the Church cannot be known as the “anti-vax church” or the “anti-mask church.”
So, I would say that I completely understand and support the Church’s position. The Brethren are doing what they need to do to keep chapels and temples open and to spread the Gospel.
Does this mean that every member needs to just shut up about concerns about liberty and the tyrannical measures taking place around the world regarding a virus with a 99.7 percent survival rate? I would say no. We are not automatons, and the Church believes in free will. I have explained my position to my local bishop and my wife (the two people who actually have a right to be concerned with my personal worthiness), and both of them support my efforts. And in fact if you are a liberty-loving person, I would say you have an *obligation* to speak out against this tyranny. The tyranny is imposed by the government, not the Church, after all.
Longtime Lurker, let me ask you a question. Let’s say you lived in Germany in the 1930s and you watched the Nazis taking over. The Church’s position on politics was completely neutral in Germany in the 1930s, and there is no record of Church leaders in Utah calling for Germans to rise up against the Nazis. Obviously the Church supported the war once it started, but the Brethren did not lead any kind of movement against the Nazis and did not call on individual Germans to fight against their government. But let’s say individual German Latter-day Saints DID speak out against the Nazis. (I think there are a few examples of this, but I can’t remember the details right now). In any case, would you consider the German Latter-day Saints who spoke out against the Nazis heroes, or would you say they had a “disconnect” with the Brethren who did not speak out against the Nazis?
We are not yet in 1930s Germany, but I believe with all of my heart that unless people speak out against COVID tyranny we will soon be in 1930s Germany. I am not exaggerating. That is how strongly I feel about this issue — we are right on the edge of worldwide tyranny unless we speak out now and insist on liberty. So, your claim that I am somehow not in line with the Brethren falls flat, and I will continue to speak out in my little way until the day I die. I am completely at peace with my position, and if the Savior walked into my house right now, I would feel comfortable with my actions. (This does not mean I am not without sin — obviously I am a sinner just like all other people. But I do feel I am taking the morally correct position regarding the COVID cult). Meanwhile, you of course do not have to read what I write. But I find your argument very unconvincing for the reasons I have stated here.
I do agree with you Geoff about speaking up as appropriate. I just don’t want anyone to focus an inordinate amount of time on what is obviously planned tyranny in one way or another. The Brethren seem to see that this entire response to the pandemic is designed to marginalize *anyone* who speaks out against the supposed scientific consensus. Let’s be clear. The people who have the power to destroy the planet for generations are behind at least some aspects of what’s going on.
The machinations at every level of our government are disturbing. I don’t fuss over this because there is literally nothing I or my children can do. None of this is worth wasting the blood of patriots on.
Patience, looking to Christ and enduring what we are asked to endure, while speaking up for our principles as appropriate is the way. But surely we can also see the only response the Brethren can give without majorly distracting from their true mission is to “follow the wise counsel of your doctors etc”.
I admire their faith, patience, and long suffering. It shows me they are better than I am. I would also say I have no illusions that they would stand up to Hitler in Germany. Nor would they stand for the colonists at Lexington and Concord. We have a faith and a life of difficult contradictions on difficult issues. I’m ok living with them. I’m also OK with wondering if their advice can go turn out poorly in the short term (Martin Harris mortgages and looses his farm, Kirkland banking society, Zions Camp, hand carts, even vaccine deaths). Things didn’t exactly turn out well in the short term for Peter or many of those who followed him either.
We can quibble on a lot of this stuff and point to the upsides or misunderstandings. I’m OK with life being messy.
Sute, & Longtime L:
I’m with Geoff. I don’t see a disconnect. Though I think Geoff’s recent posts, individually, sometimes leave things unsaid, and therefore the reader can too easily assume that he believes something that he doesn’t.
(Because “signaling” is so common nowadays, on all sides, if you don’t give the expected signal, people assume you are on the opposite side from them.)
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I think the Brethren see the forces of statism and totalitarianism as well as anyone.
My take-away from the First Presidency message is: ___vaccines and masks are not the hill to take stand on___.
Also, we need to put focus on what follows “We know that…” Those three words have special meaning in an LDS context. When prophets/seers/revelators say “we know that…”, pay special attention to what follows. If someone seeks an exception, they should ponder what would be needed for an individual (who supports them as prophets/seers/revelators) to claim a personal or individual exemption/exception. (Hint: Then elders Nelson and Oaks addressed that specifically in talks they gave in 2005, which I have
quoted/cited elsewhere.) — (I think Geoff wrote that he did pray about it and was told a specific vaccine would not harm him.)
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The vaccines have shown that they don’t totally prevent the spread, but it is clear that they _reduce_ the spread. And it clearly appears that the vaccines reduce the severity (hospitalizations and death rate) when a vaccinated person does get a break-through infection. IMO: _Those things are totally in line with the First Presidency statement._.
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Also, in my opinion, getting the pandemic over ASAP, via vaccines, takes momentum away from the forces of statism and totalitarianism. The pandemic, while real, has been an almost perfect vehicle/excuse or cover-story for implementing totalitarianism. IE, “don’t let a crisis go to waste.”
So… I wonder of the statist forces have actually manipulated/fostered anti-vaccine sentiment to further/prolong the crisis, as fuel for their agenda. It’s the perfect Hegelian Dialectic maneuver: Create a crisis for which the “solution” is what you had always wanted to do, but the populace would never accept that thing with a crisis as a justification/excuse for it.
Correction: but the populace would never accept that thing withOUT a crisis as a justification/excuse for it.
Book, good comment. You wrote:
“Though I think Geoff’s recent posts, individually, sometimes leave things unsaid, and therefore the reader can too easily assume that he believes something that he doesn’t.
(Because “signaling” is so common nowadays, on all sides, if you don’t give the expected signal, people assume you are on the opposite side from them.)”
I find the signaling very tiresome, although I am often forced to do it because people are so dense and unable to read nuance into what people write. If you defend Trump on one issue, this does not mean you support him on all issues. Same with Biden. Same with the vaccines. I always support the Brethren in everything they do, but this does not mean I support the governmental policies that the Brethren are reacting to. Nuance people, nuance.
Book, with regards to vaccines getting this over, I’d just add the same reply I gave Trumper friends 2 years ago when they said it will all end after the election –
Wars have been fought over far less than shutting down the global economy. You don’t shut down the global economy to sell everyone 2-3 vaccines. And you certainly don’t do it to manipulate an election cycle which you already have control over both sides anyway.
So no, getting vaccinated will not solve this issue. Complying will not solve this issue. We are now in it for the long haul. The people who know better need to how we have enough patience to endure the years of burdens being placed on our necks, and outlast the machinations of the devil which will always fail. Eventually, others will notice and their schemes will fall apart. Let’s pray that it doesn’t take as long as the iron curtain did to fall.
And that’s a good parallel. Imagine the church was primarily in soviet Russia. The church would be focused on doing its mission however possible and not rocking the boat.
Sadly, for the ardent patriot and social justice warrior alike, the church is not an institution for any form of revolutionary change other than repentance and personal righteousness.
That’s my take at least.
Sute, I agree that the pandemic and vaccines aren’t the end-point. The statists will move on to the next crisis, magnifying an existing crisis or even creating one if needed. I think they planned on playing the pandemic card for much longer. That’s why I think getting over the pandemic will slow them. I agree that it won’t stop them.
And, hopefully, when people see that the end of the pandemic doesn’t stop the rush to totalitarianism, those who were duped might wake up and slow it down.
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I’ll save comments about elections for another post.
Geoff, I am not in any way saying you are “not in line with the Brethren in one way or another on this issue,” nor did I “claim that [you Geoff are] somehow not in line with the Brethren.”
Indeed, I personally agree with almost everything you post about governmental and societal responses to COVID. Please try to assume that I am doing my best to comment in good faith even if inartfully.
The disconnect I see is perhaps between your personal views on governmental and societal responses to COVID and what the Church is doing. The Brethren are not simply encouraging masks. Masks are mandated in all temples now. Current and future Church events are being cancelled or drastically limiting in-person attendance. Why? Perhaps I’m projecting on to you my own personal struggle of attempting to reconcile similar views to what you’ve expressed about the terrible governmental and societal responses to COVID and what the Church is doing.
I am going to respectfully decline to go down the Nazi analogy road.
LL, OK, thanks for that explanation. I can tell you that I know many latter-day Saints who are expressing the same concerns you are expressing here. Ten years ago I remember wondering why other generations of latter-day Saints seemed to suffer more adversity than we are suffering, but now it is clear to me that this generation is being tested in a different way, a way that I never would have expected. God will test His people. I just hope we can pass the test.
Bookslinger’s comments strike me as very prescient:
-“My take-away from the First Presidency message is: ___vaccines and masks are not the hill to take stand on___.”
-“Because “signaling” is so common nowadays, on all sides, if you don’t give the expected signal, people assume you are on the opposite side from them.”
As today’s conversation mentions, vax & masks are a tactical battle in a much deeper change war. Our authoritarian castes are really good at using Hegelian dialectics & crisis change tools. The moral essence of various health and safety messages have crystallized so much they’re not simply rational ideas, but a new type of moralized Collective agent. Theory suggests all the back and forths on masks and stuff actually solidify people’s ability to infer what fits and what doesn’t the Collective’s morals (see the List & Pettit book at the end).
That’s why I think Bookslinger’s comment about signalling is so apt. And, that’s why I think Geoff’s worries are so grounded – this level of moralized Collective is by nature un-controllable, at least in any rational way.
Surviving in the same house as such a beast requires strategic sophistication. You don’t just get to say, no, anymore than 15th century Spanish Jews and Moors did. This is especially true when the majority of people don’t even realize how possessed they are by Collective dynamics (and its slippery slopes). I’m quite happy for The Brethern to strategize about what chips to give up and play in order to preserve fundamental Mormon values on agency. That’s because the question is “how do you give up agency while preserving it as the most essential eternal principal,” is not trite needle to thread, especially in a hostile mob dominated ant-religion environment.
https://www.amazon.com/Group-Agency-Possibility-Design-Corporate/dp/0199679673/