GETTING DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS by Ben Vidgen

“Just wear masks, wash hands, use sanitizer. We have 46,000 tested cases in this state of 6.2 million people and 1,500 dead and now heading into a second spike. Although these figures look and sound horrendous, considering this was the US epicenter at first, these figures are actually good. Mostly because of being in a Liberal state with an ok governor (compared to other states here) and generally sensible people willing to wear masks everywhere we go. (Outside of the city itself is a little different but those figures are beginning to show this)”.

A dear friend in the thick of what looks like , from the outside looking in, a borderline civil war wrote the above. She’s smart, she clever, she is also surrounded by Americans and a media feeding frenzy braying fear fear fear.

My response to her and the rest of us caught up in a drama where feeling and passion run hot on both side is it important not to get caught up in the hype. Step back and see the bigger picture unfolding beyond the short term of here and now.

As big as douche as big raccoon one is the predicted death of this for the USA were 5 million deaths (Imperial College Neil Ferguson March 13th 2020) scaled down to 2.2 after report was found to have projected what the NHS on March 19th called a non serious event.

There are no if, but, or maybe, about that fact. Those figures determined what would happen next.

Well four month later the deaths to date are 143K which is only %2.5 of the original forecast attrition rate and way lower than many seasonal out break we did not lock down for.

Don’t get me wrong that a big number (seriously big) buts its still not the black plague that we were told it would be but which the MSM is doing it darnest to make it out to be.

In fact its a figure on par with the collective total of flu and other respiratory death including the Johnson and Johnson fulled opoid crisis of the same period. Where only a year earlier the same media was talking massive law suits and reconsideration of just how much power big pharma should be permitted. As big pharma preyed on the poor and sold poison as cheap medicine for the masses .

This is not an attempt to compare the diseases but to highlight another simple fact. And that is a crisis of equal size unfolded last year and it did not get the same media hype or global response (as it targeted lower-socio economic and minority populations). Again there is no if, but, or maybe, because those are the simple facts and hard numbers at play here.

My fear is what has become different in this event is it become a means to ‘seize opportunity from crisis’. It has become high politicised event and where not longer even addressing the issue of appropriate threat assessment and triage response (if we ever had that dialogue to begin with) . As we settle down to trading blows for the sake of it.

Trump (Big Racoon One) risks become the straw man on this as we fail to address issue the left marched against during the protest on the WTO (Codex Ailmetus) and then the TPPA when we marched against the right of corporations to poison us. Namely the growing power of big-pharma and other companies who have done exceptionally well out of this manufactured crisis [ the virus was real. Its actual damage vs impact socio-economic outcomes has being eschewed ] Companies like Amazon and Merck stocks jumped over 1000% post Covid 19 as the term “.01%” now enters our lexicon.

We still don’t even know the virus origins.

My own epidemiology investigation suggest a collective snafu from inappropriately stored, processed and fast tracked vaccines stored en-mass that resulted in cross contamination. For insurance purpose alone big pharma has spent a lot of money clouding that issue. So four month later the best we have is it did NOT come from a fish market in Wuhan as MSM insisted (with a narrative pushed heavily by the shonky accident ridden bio-lab industry itself) at the on sett. One in which it dismissed any one with alternative finding that challenged their own now disproved theories.

Your not allowed to discuss covid 19 “conspiracy” on Google and Facebook any more largely due to the pressure brought on these companies by Bill Gates (Jeffrey Epstein’s mate) other interests namely the advertising revenue power of McDonald and Coca Cola. Companies renown for their ethics and ability to preserve the Amazon rain forest, not privatise water, not rip it workers off, not solute it host nations and not get millions ill from contributing to a steady diet of legalised poison said no one ever.

The things it wants the right to do via trade deals like the WTO Codex Ailmentus and the TPPA which sane caring people marched against world wide in their millions.

Covid 19 just gave some of the biggest polluting and inhumane ravenously ambitious corporations the power to decided what you can and cant read on line. Let that sink in while you bitch about conspiracy and ‘fakenews’ and those silly ‘anti vaxxers’ – never mind the idea of good vaccines made bad via permission given to cut corners so as to maximise profits.

Here in NZ every day we get another breathless headline (pushed by corporate controlled MSM) that is ‘Covid this’ or Covid that’ and people have meaningless futile debates on the issue.

Meanwhile no one in NZ is talking of the passing of laws which give ministers the right to write blank cheques for privatised infrastructure projects without audit or scrutiny, policy papers advocating more crown investment partnerships, water owner-ship bills, laws to do away with public consultation of the resource management act, forestry privatisation, port privatisation, an army of items which escalate private ownership.

As just like 2008 the government bails out big corporation and throws the little guy to the wolves. 1001 things that will really impact us, affect the well being and safety of us all and were not having those discussion as the panic headline of the day rules the water cooler (owned by Nestle of course) topics we are talking about. And that’s true whether your in the wear a mask or not wear a mask camp.

The issue is compounded by a media that polarise both sides negative traits and creates a vein of reactionary were we lash out (for or against) at the corporate manufactured headline of the day.

Yet we fail to see the bigger issue unfolding which ultimately enforce the centralisation and accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.

And in New Zealand away from the MSM the alternative news (which however remains controlled by corporate owned social media algorithm which determines what gets seen and what does not) has become a night mare.

Trying to get those issues out in a non-partisan manner means having to fight your way though groups of ‘awoke’. Those who descend to feed on a diet of fast food news headline that fit their chosen dogma. Absolute undocumented un-sourced (or badly sourced) garbage that sensationalises and scares people witless steering many towards the radical right and the well funded neocons.

As the ‘left’, as with the democrats in the USA, means in Labours case a party who just like its opposite supported the pro corporate TPPA, supports the pro military industrial complex, supports water privatisation, supports corporate monopolies, and spends large on mass surveillance defence, arming the cops, with an increase amount of funding disproportional to the spending given to health and education.

Left and right behind all the corporate sponsors I cant really spot the difference for the shower of corporate lobby dollar bills and election donations clouding my vision.

Both opponents, bullshit headline of the day aside, support and prop up a plutocracy and that state of play is only escalating.

Yet we privileged 5%’s of the developed world with out Netflix, iphone and online commerce, are so scared we have turned on each other and become experts in pushing each other buttons for a threat that in reality is not as big as we were told it would be.

Again its big but not even on the dart board in terms of how big we were told it was going to be (the old inconvenient truth of the botched Imperial College report).

In the rest of the unprivileged world, were locals fight off malaria, tb, starvation, war and a hundred other things on a daily with with death tolls a lot steeper than were panicking over, the locals are looking at us and smiling with cold blooded amusement. For they comprehend for the first time in many of our sheltered privileged lives were getting a taste of what it like living in the third world.

Aint karma just a bitch.

Honestly eat well, exercise, sleep, laugh, boogie, enjoys the sun and outdoors and love and you have in reality little to fear. At least in proportion to the risk this event poses to the threat the third world lives under every day, mask or no masks.

Be scared and anxious live on a diet of fast food, drown your self in a sea of wifi and instant communication, immersed in a culture where additive are to be found every where and unsurprisingly your immune system going to be shot to shit. So even with a mask and sanitisers your going to be susceptible.

Bottom line in New Zealand if some one tells me to wear a mask having as a thinking adult, with a military grade paramedic training and intelligence education in pathogens, I am going to say yeah I’ll pass (ditto for those communal icky sanitisers in shops which are germ carriers). It is at best a nuisance that will not address the threat in proportion to what kind of mask I will likely to be able to access to begin with. At worse a badge of obedience that I am just not willing to bow down to even though I know this will mean social stigmatisation in some quarters.

Yet in the USA I am not so sure I would take that approach. Largely because of decades of corporate induced hypochondria has created an over sanitised chemically saturated environment that is the USA, land of the Yankee dollar, where corporation can never be wrong and greed is good. Its a condition ripe for for epidemic stimulation. Soaked in fear and toxins.

And that is a situation which was occurring long before Big Racoon One popped up to pour gasoline on the fire. Trump is not America (or the worlds) number one problem. Trump is but a symptom of bigger problems relating to wealth distribution and wealth accumulation which are being glossed over as the working classes battle the middle classes over the ‘Panic’ headline of the day and don’t address the deeper issue at work.

Fact is we have all being sick for a very long time and the condition is far more lethal than Covid 19 will ever be.

Published by BENS WORLD – an interesting read with your coffee.

Ben has worked as investigative journalist, researcher and writers for a number of NZ/Australian publications, radio stations, as well as working for universities, NGO and commercial clients, as well as being a best selling author (State Secrets 1 & II [Return Fire]) specialising in organised crime and national security issues. With a degree in history and political science specialising in political violence and counter terrorism Ben spent six year in New Zealand Army territorial (reserves) serving in the Royal Artillery and the infantry with posting in signals, artillery intelligence, field and counter intelligence, reconnaissance and as a rifleman & platoon grenadier. Ben also has decades of experience in all aspect of the hospitality and tourism industry (from kitchen hand to marketing and promotions) through out Australasia as well a having strong root in the arts community of New Zealand’s South Island his beloved home and were he prints his own cafe publications and books . View all posts by BENS WORLD – an interesting read with your coffee.