Yeah, it is a name that typesetters are less than thrilled with. It is German, and that “O” with the two dots over it (an Umlaut) is not something one finds normally in English. The guy I am referring to is Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrödinger who in 1935 was having a discussion with Albert Einstein. As you can guess from the participants and date, this era was the theoretical dawn of atomic physics and the subject was radioactive decay.
Schrödinger was trying to argue and explain the concept of “quantum supposition.” Short form, atomic nuclei can't have their state predictively definitively described. They can be either decayed or intact, but it is a matter of probabilities.
Greatly simplified, Schrödinger offered this experiment:
“A cat, a flask of poison and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.”
The key point for our purposes (unless we are making a nuclear reactor) is that to physicists there is a part of the state of nature where things can be considered simultaneously alive and dead, or two opposite and contradictory things, at the very same time. That is the territory where the American Left, and their home base the Democrat Party, lives exclusively. Or as Lewis Carroll's Red Queen said in 'Alice in Wonderland;' “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Today our subject will be viruses and diseases as defined in the Democrats' wonderland. And the irreconcilable opposites that they demand we simultaneously believe.
Now we seem finally to be beating a disease called Covid-19. Covid being the abbreviation for CO-rona VI-rus D-isease. 19 refers to the year when it was first described, which is of some import. Coronaviruses are a group that primarily attack the respiratory system and include known deadly diseases such as SARS, MERS, as well as the COVID we are dealing with now; along with a bunch of others that are pretty much harmless to people. They are different from most disease viruses in that they take over a cell's Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) instead of the more common Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA). One difficulty with that is that we do not have testing for RNA viruses as nailed down as we do DNA viruses.
Now as y'all (family comes from South China) have probably figured out, I keep an eye on news from China, because I am a damn cynical and suspicious soul. And I do not trust Communists, be they round-eyes or slant-eyes. And I expect to be lied to by them.
When word of this strange disease first came out, I zeroed in on it. It was first formally described in December 2019, thus the number. And it began to spread through China with really bad effects. The first infectious variants of a disease have the worst effects because the infected population has no natural or built up immunity. Incidentally, a disease that is too rapidly and totally fatal, itself dies out because it kills the host before it can spread.
As you probably have figured out by now, I have a pretty good knowledge base about foreign military and political affairs, have a huge library here, and decades of experience in finding things online through resources and friends. I began getting unclassified information about this nasty disease, efforts to quarantine whole cities, and the involvement of the Peoples' Liberation Army in mass cremations in cities all over China.
For the first few months, there was a consistency in the back-story. Supposedly, the virus had been formally described in a Chinese biological warfare center in the city of Wuhan. And the description of the location of the center was consistent for months.
Now Wuhan is where three huge Chinese cities (Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang) grew together and outward. It is one of the largest cities in the world, and one of China's largest industrial cities. It is a h**l of a place to put a biological warfare center in the middle of. But it was/is there. The source as admitted by China for months was the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, which is a technically civilian facility contracted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). That is an insane thing to have deliberately sitting literally in the middle of an overcrowded city of at least 11-freaking-million people.
In early 2020, several things happened that convinced me that things were really bad, and we were being lied to, foreign and domestically. For those who don't know, Chinese New Years is when Chinese families gather together with more urgency than say Thanksgiving and Christmas together here. It seems that half of China is trying to visit the other half for two weeks (that is how long New Years is). Days after Chinese New Year began in late January 2020 by western reckoning; China quarantined Wuhan and several other big cities. That is not a step to be taken lightly. And shortly after that, the mass cremations in cities all over China began. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese are not telling us the truth. I also note that China put no restrictions other than the normal ones on Chinese visiting foreign countries. Almost as if they would not mind if they were not the only victims of this.
Then there was another thing that made me sure that they were covering up. As you can see above, it has been narrowed down as to where Wuhan Covid-19 came from and who they were contracted to. When you can be that specific and you know where to look, you can get maps and/or low-resolution satellite pictures of d**n near everything even in China. For weeks, I had the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products located on a map furnished by an American company with large investments in China. As China admitted at first, the WIPB was about 1 1/2 blocks (Chinese blocks are not standardized, but they generally are a little smaller than ours) from a “wet market.”
I can say with some confidence that 95 percent+ of the people in our county have never dealt with a wet market. Picture blocks of tents, lean-tos, sheds, etc. open to the outside with no refrigeration and no running water and live animals being sold. And not sold whole. If you buy the animal, or part of it; they slaughter it and break it down right there in the open. This is not City Market, Safeway or Wally World. But it is how Chinese have bought food for thousands of years. It is conjectured that the virus escaped from WIPB, possibly when less than sanitized employees went shopping. I'll accept that possibility, but I leave the question of the motivations of the actions of the Chinese government afterwards in reference to foreign countries open to later explanation.
But the key thing, as China began to be blamed, the WIPB disappeared from the maps, and re-appeared miles away from the wet market. Almost like they were seeking deniability.
We in the First World did not react well to the arrival of Covid. Socialist Europe has a socialist medical system, with the disadvantages of being an old socialist medical system. They work not to be ready to react to crises, but rather to trying to maintain the average and what Democrats here call “equity” (q.v. “Procrustes' bed.”) They stalled treatment until things got so bad that the patients had to go to the local ICU too late in the course of the disease. Patients died, the medical systems were overloaded and the medical personnel were burned out.
Those of us here in the United States were luckier. We have a larger medical system per/capita, more medical personnel, AND to the extent that one size fits all was NOT imposed by force; medical practice could adapt and overcome.
And though it is now an article of Democrat faith and theology that President Trump did nothing and that it was the Biden administration that was saving us even before they stole the election; it was the Trump Administration that limited the damage. And here is where we go back to Schrödinger. In the end, something is either real or not real. Democrats want it both ways switching back and forth at will and being believed both ways.
What was the first thing that was ordered when we realized (during Chinese New Year) that we had an epidemic if not a pandemic coming at us? President Trump ordered the borders flat closed to foreign nationals, AND if you will remember ordered American nationals returning home to go through a two-week quarantine. Most went through the quarantine with admittedly some inconvenience. Some went through it on land or sea, and were diagnosed infected and got medical care before they could spread the disease. We had the disease hit us, but not nearly as badly as it would have otherwise.
At the same time the quarantine was in progress, the Federal government was urging people NOT to gather in crowds. One of the really big gatherings on each of the coasts was not coincidentally, Chinese New Years in San Francisco and New York City. Been there, done that, in the past. In opposition to the calls to avoid crowds, Democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi and Democrat Mayor of New York Cuomo loudly called for more people to come claiming it was perfectly safe. It wasn't.
At the same time today, it is Democrats mandating restrictions on movements and closing of businesses of individuals in the name of stopping the spread of Covid-19. Simultaneously, it is Biden's Democrat regime that has literally thrown the southern border wide open, inviting any illegal invader to cross into our country. And then releasing them all over our country. Funny thing. About 10 percent of those invaders test positive for Covid . . . before they are released. Schrödinger's Virus. If it is let into the country by Democrats, apparently it is not a bad thing. But if anyone who is not a Democrat fails to stop a case coming in, the whole pandemic is their fault.
The most visible sign of attempts at preparedness are the masks we all wear. Even though to be honest unless the mask is the non-reusable N95 super tight weave and sealing mask [which is hard to wear for any length of time because breathing is important] those masks are functionally useless. Masks are good at stopping droplets; coughs and sneezes. They block bacteria and slow the spread of standard DNA viruses. RNA viruses are so much smaller than regular viruses that the weave of the masks being used is akin to a chain link fence trying to stop a BB.
The role of the mask is more as a marker of control in urban areas. We have plenty of data over the last year or so. In cities controlled by Democrats, there are riots, arson, and robberies. Committed by Democrat auxiliaries called BLM and Antifa. While those who are actively burning buildings and attacking people wear masks, most who are looting do not. And the same cops in those strict Democrat areas who will arrest someone not wearing a mask on the street, ignore those looters; both for looting and for lack of masks. Schrödinger's virus.
The virus is political. We are now, finally, getting a significant portion of our population vaccinated against Covid. I will note that my whole family has had both shots and been through the waiting period for full immunity. If you listen to the government, all the Covid vaccines are 95 percent effective. Not perfect, but d**n good. And by the way, the vaccines were developed under President Trump who ordered Operation WARP SPEED in May 2020 and authorized spending $17 billion to get 300 million vaccine doses ready by January 2021. We got them. With as I said 95 percent immunity, which is a lot better than most vaccines.
Especially when you look at the other regular annual vaccination campaign, for flu. Flu vaccines are developed to match up with the specific strains of flu virus that are expected. How effective are they? To quote the Centers for Disease Control that develops and pushes them; “reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40 percent and 60 percent among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.” In other words in a good year, it reduces the flu by about half, both in cases and in seriousness. Flu is a killer, especially in the exact same groups where Covid-19 hits worst, the elderly and those immune-compromised.
The 95 percent effective Covid vaccine is twice as good as the flu vaccine, which has a similar total annual mortality rate. And yet, and yet, we do not mask up for the flu. We do not shut down businesses for the flu. We do not destroy the economy or override personal freedoms for the flu. We must be doing it, and keeping it that way, for some other reasons that they are not talking about.
Schrödinger's virus is making American liberty like the cat in that box in the experiment. When we open it, will we be free or not?