☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, September 9, 2021 ☙ Christmas in September 🦠

Joe Biden will unveil his pointy new Covid plans today, and unvaccinated people better watch out. I wonder about where all this high anxiety might be leading us ...

Joe Biden will unveil his pointy new Covid plans today, and unvaccinated people better watch out. I wonder about where all this high anxiety might be leading us and what kinds of things that we are seeing could be explained by progressive anxiety disorders. A new bill just filed in the Florida legislature needs to get passed — stat. A new study suggests kids have more risk from the vaccines than from Covid. Delta releases a new study showing air travel is less risky than walking around. And more.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY*

🔥 Get ready! White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that former vice-president Joe Biden plans a major announcement for today. He will outline a “robust six-pronged strategy” to fight the Covid Delta variant and increase the number of American who are vaccinated. Robust! That sounds promising. And, thank goodness. Finally, the government is DOING something! We’re saved!

And guys, listen, I think it’s really going to work this time. I mean, there are SIX PRONGS to Biden’s new plan. That’s a lot. It’s more than three or even five. Anyway, Psaki strongly suggested yesterday that the six pointy prongs will be aimed right at the pillowy parts of all those pesky unvaccinated people. In yesterday’s press briefing, Psaki said:

Psaki: “Will there be new steps the president announces tomorrow? Absolutely.”

Reporter: “Will those steps influence average Americans’ day to day lives? Should we expect any new mitigation recommendations, as an example?”

Psaki (smiling): “It depends on if you’re vaccinated or not.”

She’s such a tease! I’ve been waiting SO LONG for someone to suggest that we should catch up with Israel so we can blow it out just like they’re doing. So, for the betting pool, I’m guessing … federal vaccine passports! And boosters. Let’s see if I’m right.

Forbes reported that Biden plans to get the federal government ALL the way involved, this time. Since the feds been so hands off, so far. Because Delta variant. “While officials were still finalizing specifics early this week, the speech will have multiple components related to schools, private companies and requirements for federal employees. It’s the most they have done to date,” Forbes reported Tuesday.

So … I’m thinking maybe some more money strings getting tied to schools and private businesses related to vaccination targets and masking, or something. I’m so excited to find out what we’re getting! Aren’t you? I hope it goes as well as Afghanistan. I mean, these guys have been just knocking it out of the park lately. Right?

🔥 Yesterday, Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini filed HB 75, a draft bill that would prohibit local governments in Florida from enacting mask mandates or vaccine mandates, or publishing Covid-19 vaccination information. It would also prohibit private businesses from requiring Covid-19 documents from customers, and would make “certain actions” related to vaccination status or having an immunity passport into “unlawful discriminatory practices.”

I took a quick look at the draft bill. The “certain actions” that would be defined as “unlawful discrimination” by private actors includes withholding services, employment opportunities, health care access, public accommodations, or educational opportunities based on vaxx status. It would also prohibit employers from “refusing employment” to people or discriminating in their compensation.

You couldn’t possibly pass this bill fast enough for me. Legislators? This should be your FIRST order of business on September 20th when you guys and gals return to Tallahassee. PASS IT. PASS IT NOW. And don’t screw around with the language, like adding exceptions for healthcare workers. Unless you WANT to crash the state’s healthcare system.

✈️ Yesterday, the unfortunately-named Delta Airlines announced the results of a study of 10,000 passengers who flew on Delta’s Covid-tested flights between New York and Atlanta and Rome. The study concluded that when the average community infection rate was at 1.1% – or about one in 100 people – infection rates on Covid tested flights were 0.05% — or five in 10,000 passengers.

In other words, airline infection rates were MUCH lower than community infection rates.

Delta’s chief health officer Dr. Henry Ting said, “the risk of [in-flight] transmission is less than one in one million between the United States and the United Kingdom, for example.”

He also said, “We are going to live with Covid-19 variants for some time.”

You don’t say.

🔬 A new study published yesterday in MedRxIV concludes that the risk of cardiac injury exceeds the risk of Covid infection in children who receive the vaccine. Specifically, the study concluded that the “Post-vaccination [Cardiac Adverse Event] CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.”

What do you want to bet that pro-vaxx parents will immediately discount or ignore this information without even looking into it for ten seconds?

🔥 I did some research on paranoia this morning. Paranoia is a symptom of psychosis, a group of thought disorders that makes people lose contact with reality.

First of all, did you know that sustained, high levels of anxiety often lead to clinical levels of paranoid delusion? Wikipedia defines “paranoia” as “an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself.”

Sound familiar?

In July, a study in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease reviewed FIVE MILLION hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It found that “anxiety and fear-related disorders” were now tied for first place with obesity as the number one risk factor for dying of Covid. In other words, people are experiencing levels of anxiety so high that it is LITERALLY killing them.

On August 8, the UK Mirror published an article headlined, “Covid has cause a tsunami of anxiety, depression, and mental distress.” A TSUNAMI. Unprecedented worldwide levels of anxiety, with no end in sight. Levels of anxiety that are constantly being stoked and reinforced by the media. The cover to Newsweek’s August 13th issue features a bright-red cover and a giant headline: “The Doomsday Variant.” It asks, “How worried should we be?”

In May, the World Health Organization warned of “a massive increase in mental health conditions in the coming months.”

Would it surprise you if a lot of people anxious about Covid were progressing along the spectrum of disorder to clinical levels of paranoia? Paranoia is a coping mechanism, a way to shift the unendurable levels of anxiety that a person is feeling to someone or something else. It allows the anxious person to redirect their internal negative feelings toward others, providing a kind of release.

In addition to anxiety, feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability can also lead to clinical levels of paranoia. Powerlessness is the “belief that important outcomes in one’s life are controlled by external forces and other persons, rather than by their own choice and effort.” External forces like, say, a virus. Or “other persons,” such as those who “refuse” to wear masks or get vaccinated. Individuals with paranoia think “they have no control of their lives and are living in fear of being harmed by outside sources.”

Know anybody like that?

According to Psychology Today, paranoid people “will pay no attention to rational arguments except to find in them some aspect or feature that confirms his original view.” Do you know anybody like THAT? And, “once a suspicious person accepts a belief based on some piece of evidence, he is reluctant to give it up. When confronted with new evidence, he is less likely to revise his original judgments about the possibility of alternative explanations.” Know anybody who refuses to give up their original beliefs in the face of new evidence? Know anybody like that?

I spoke to a gentleman in my office yesterday who works at the Veteran’s Administration. He is one of the few holdouts there who’s not vaccinated. He told me how several doctors recently tried to convince him to get the jab, because otherwise he might infect his coworkers. He explained to the doctors that vaccinated people can also infect others. The doctors refused to believe it. “Where’d you hear that?” they demanded to know. When he replied, “the CDC,” the doctors just kept arguing he should get vaccinated to avoid spreading the virus. Like he’d never even said anything at all.

Paranoid people shift the blame for their anxiety to other people, to cope with their crippling levels of worry and fear. “Paranoid people blame others and they explain life events by blaming others. For example, they explain negative events, such as [getting sick], by attributing them to the malicious intentions of others rather than worrying about whether they are inadequate in some way.“ They often become hostile and aggressive toward other people, especially those whom they blame for how they are feeling.

PsychToday also says that paranoid people tend to develop “overvalued ideas,” which it defines as a simplistic idea resembling a delusion, and which “often guides specific behavior.“ It calls this “magical thinking.” The article offers examples such as believing in the 10-second rule or avoiding the number 13. Or … maybe thinking that wearing masks outside protects people from dying or something. Or, how about all the hand washing and social distancing and isolating?

A paranoid person “can be absolutely right in his perception and at the same time absolutely wrong in his judgment.” They are unforgiving and hold grudges. They are hypersensitive and take criticism poorly. They often become controlling, and refuse to see their own role in creating problems or conflicts. They are described as “hostile, stubborn, and argumentative.” Universally, paranoid people think they are always right and refuse to consider that they could be wrong — about anything.

Paranoid people often tend to develop negative stereotypes of others, such as thinking that other people are motivated by impure selfish reasons and not rational self-interest. The difference between someone experiencing anxiety and someone with clinical levels of paranoia is that the anxious person knows they are having trouble coping but realizes they are not really in danger. But the paranoid person does not realize that they are paranoid. To the paranoid person, their disordered reactions to others seem perfectly reasonable, to them.

Paranoia is a dangerous mental disorder that can quickly become a permanent condition. Because paranoid people tend to resist treatment, and because it is self-reinforcing, the delusional disorder quickly becomes chronic, and can last throughout a person’s life.

Here’s where I’m going with this. I’m wondering if all the people who are blindly accepting the CDC’s endlessly-changing guidelines and can’t wait to get their booster shots, and blaming people who haven’t taken vaccines, are now suffering from full-blown clinical paranoia as a way of coping with eighteen months of high anxiety. I honestly can’t think of any other reason why they are so unwilling to discuss and consider all the new evidence — even the evidence from the CDC itself. What do you think?

💉 Double-vaccinated hall-of-fame boxer Oscar De La Hoya announced on Twitter Wednesday that he was out of the hospital after being treated for Covid-19: “Hey guys, I am out of the hospital. I was in there for three days. Covid hit me really hard,” De La Hoya said in a video message. “I was in the best shape of my life and I really can’t wait to get back in the ring. Thank you very much for all your well wishes and all your support. I appreciate it.”

Good. Glad you are feeling better, Oscar.

🔥 The CDC changed its long-standing definition of the word “vaccination” last month. The previous definition of “vaccination” was “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce IMMUNITY to a specific disease.” But last month, the CDC quietly changed the definition of “vaccination” to “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce PROTECTION to a specific disease.”

So, there you go! Case closed! Stop arguing the mRNA vaccines aren’t really vaccines, people. I mean, it’s been settled now.

🔥 Fox reported yesterday that the White House changed its mask guidance for kids after the teacher unions threatened White House officials with publicly releasing harsh criticism, newly-released internal emails show. Had we only known that harsh criticism would do the trick.

📉 Florida’s r-naught is now down to 0.62 — the record lowest level in the entire pandemic. So.

Have a tremendous Thursday and I’ll be right back here tomorrow.

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