Water is flowing uphill. Why?

El gato malo does more intelligent analysis in a week than the idiots in our governments do in a year.

Today’s analysis suggests Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche was correct in predicting that applying a leaky vaccine effective at preventing sickness in the middle of a pandemic was a very bad idea.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-leaky-vaccines-driving-delta

all a virus wants is to replicate. “make a copy of me and pass it on.” that’s the biological imperative of the selfish gene. excel at it, you win. fail, you disappear. simple as that.

killing or harming the host is maladaptive to viral spread. it’s like burning down your own house with your car in the garage. now you have nowhere to live and no way to get around. that’s not a recipe for reproductive fitness.

so viruses evolve to become less, not more virulent. they do not want to kill you. ideally, they’d like to help you. figure out how to be a useful symbiote, and you get a huge boost in propagation. (mitochondria were probably bacteria that were so useful, all our cells incorporated them.)

so seeing case fatality rate (CFR) rise in a variant of a virus is like watching water flow uphill. it’s not supposed to do that and when it does, you need to suspect some external force acting on it.

and we’re seeing water flow uphill here.

Key points:

  • Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is rising for Delta and is probably not caused by Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) or Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) because CFR is rising in both vaccinated and unvaccinated, and is not rising in previously infected, and Vaccine Efficacy (VE) for deaths remains good.
  • The most probable explanation is Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) in which a leaky vaccine that keeps the host healthy causes the virus to evolve to a more deadly variant.
  • Vaccine Efficacy (VE) on spread is negative (bad) because infected people don’t know they’re infected which accelerates spread.
  • Everyone is harmed but unvaccinated are worse off creating the illusion that the vaccines are a good idea.

it’s just simple math. if we do something to one group that makes their death rate rise from 1 to 2 per 100 but that also makes the death rate in another group rise from 1 to 4 per 100, that looks like a VE of 50%. in reality, it’s killing 100% more vaxxed people and 300% more of the unvaxxed.

mistaking that gas pedal for the brake and pushing ever harder when you fail to slow would represent an accelerating disaster curve.

I like that el gato malo seeks to prove himself wrong. That’s a strong signal for someone with integrity and intelligence that we should trust.

it’s still, or course, possible that i’m wrong, but this is looking more and more like it has to be the answer. i can find nothing else fits the facts and the facts themselves are weird enough that “it’s just normal” does not look like a satisfying explanation either and we have enough features here that we can really start testing our puzzle pieces. this one aligns in an AWFUL lot of places.

for something this odd to happen, it takes a truly uncommon exogenous stressor.

i’m just not seeing what else it could be than vaccine mediated selection for hotter variants driving pernicious delta evolution.

so, i’m putting this out to you all to see if you can find some other explanation for what’s going on that fits these facts.

looking forward to the peer review as, honestly, i hope i’m wrong here. this is not an outcome that anyone wants. it’s the nightmare scenario both as a pandemic and as a political horror in the making as if this was an “own-goal”, what would the experts and politicians that pushed this plan not be willing to do to avoid accepting the blame?

because this is career or pharma franchise polonium, and that’s if you’re lucky.

I also very much like that el gato malo does not subscribe to crazy conspiracies that lack evidence. I would of course augment el gato malo’s explanation by including an element of genetic reality denial in our leaders.

“But what is the end game if purposefully designed this way?”

i don’t think it was. i think these fools really thought mRNA and adenovirus carrier vaccines would be sterilizing.

they pushed them as herd immunity.

having it all fall apart cornered them but by the time they knew it, they were “pot committed” and had already vaxxed 100’s of millions of people.

this has been this shiny tech they have been trying to make work (and recoup money on) for decades and failing over and over.

i doubt this was deliberate. it was just stunningly arrogant and reckless.

So now the million dollar question:

Assuming a better explanation does not emerge, what should an unvaccinated person do?

Prioritizing self-preservation this analysis suggests one should either:

  • get vaccinated, or
  • acquire natural immunity by deliberately getting infected before the variants become more deadly, and apply early treatment protocols to maximize the probability of a successful recovery.

Choosing to get vaccinated makes the most sense if:

  • you are in a high risk group (old or obese)
  • you do not care about worsening the overall outcome for both vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Choosing natural immunity makes the most sense if:

  • you are in a low risk group
  • you are concerned about the yet to be established long term health effects of the novel vaccines
  • you want to be a good citizen and do what is best for everyone.

I’m old but not obese which makes the choice difficult.

I’m going to watch the data and hope for a better explanation to emerge for a while longer before making a decision.

You can’t make this shit up: observe that our “leaders” are pushing hard in exactly the opposite direction of what wise leaders would do if this VME hypothesis is correct:

  • stop further vaccination of low risk people
  • start collecting the data necessary to prove or disprove this hypothesis
  • promote healthy immune systems (vitamin D, weight loss, etc.)
  • aggressively evaluate and deploy promising early treatment protocols (Ivermectin etc.)
  • aggressively investigate root causes and modify policies to prevent a recurrence.

One more observation to make you admire our “leaders” even less:

the same NIH that was funding the GoF research in wuhan miraculously had the viral code to drop into the moderna mRNA vaccine in under 2 weeks.

that always smelled like a sushi bar dumpster.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/were-some-folks-a-little-too-prepared

17-Oct-2021 Addition

In a paper today, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche argues that boosters will probably boost the virulence of Delta rather than long term protection from severe disease.

Israel is misreading their booster results by only tracking booster effectiveness for 12 days.

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/what-happens-if-israel-fails-the-stress-test

17-Oct-2021 Addition

El gato malo reviewed new UK data today which supports his Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) hypothesis.

Rate of cases down 30% from a year ago. CFR up 3x since June.

getting 50% protection from a tripling in virulence caused by the vaccines is still a net loser for the vaccinated. and it’s savage for the unvaccinated. everyone loses. and this evolution is ongoing.

establishing what is going on here should be the all hands on deck mission of global public health right now.

none of us want to be living in the world where we leaky-vaxxed ourselves into a second pandemic by reversing the evolution of one that was about to go endemic and harmless.

that’s a terrible place to be.

but if that IS where we are, we need to know, and we need to know right now.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/is-this-the-smoking-gun-for-leaky

I keep searching for a rational reason for the obsession with 100% vaccination, other than assuming every health official in every country of the world is corrupt, because that seems improbable.

What if they’re aware of the Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) trend and know that their mistake of vaccinating more than the high risk with a leaky vaccine will kill many more unvaccinated than vaccinated?

They can’t disclose the real reason for the push for 100% because they would lose their credibility and jobs.

This would also explain why they’re so willing to accept possible long term vaccine side effects in low risk children.

It’s analogous to continuing to print money long after it no longer provides a net benefit, because you know if you stop many will be harmed on your watch, and if you continue, many more may be harmed in the future, but it will be on someone else’s watch, and maybe someone will think of something by then.

21-Oct-2021 Addition

A fresh, intelligent, clean sheet, big picture review of vaccine efficacy vs. risk. I remain impressed with el gato malo’s productivity and clarity of thought.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/properly-measuring-vaccine-efficacy

– measuring vaccine efficacy as % reduction in likelihood of severe outcomes can be misleading

– we must also measure absolute risk reduction. 50% drop from 20% risk is very different from 50% drop on 0.2% risk

– vaccines seem to show % efficacy in reducing hospitalization and death

– but for the young, healthy, and recovered, risk was already so low that the absolute drop does not look like good risk/reward vs side effect profile of the vaccines

– vaccines do not provide sterilizing protection against spread and seem to make it worse. there is no case to be made for societal obligation to vaccinate to protect others.

– mandating vaccination rather than allowing personal choice based on individual circumstance will inflict net harm on a great many people

– that’s immoral and represents medical malpractice

478 thoughts on “Water is flowing uphill. Why?”

  1. Dr. Bossche on the same topic today.

    https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/keep-asking-the-wrong-questions-and-we-ll-never-tame-this-pandemic

    Keep asking the wrong questions and we’ll never tame this pandemic

    Experts, Public Health authorities and politicians are all the time asking the wrong questions.

    Questions like: “Who shed more, the vaccinated or unvaccinated?” or “Who is better protected, the vaccinated or the unvaccinated?” are simply completely irrelevant when it comes to understanding the real challenge posed by this pandemic. Everyone should know by now that ALL of us could shed ‘more’ or ‘less’ virus than anyone else or could be ‘more’ or ‘less’ susceptible than anyone else, regardless of our vaccination status.

    So, what are then the right questions to ask?

    The right questions ‘they’ should be asking themselves is: “How can we impact viral infection/ transmission in ways that dramatically and durably reduce overall viral spread of more infectious Sars-CoV-2 variants in the population (i.e., in all of us)?” and “How can we impact host immunity in ways that dramatically and durably increase overall protection against disease in the population (i.e., in all of us)?”

    The answer to both questions is actually rather straightforward and simply based on common sense:

    Population-level viral spread in highly vaccinated populations could dramatically and durably be reduced by massive antiviral chemoprophylaxis of all healthy individuals, subsequently followed by enrichment of these populations with healthy, unvaccinated individuals (hence why we will need a baby boom and encourage the influx of young & healthy unvaccinated immigrants).

    Population-level immune pressure in highly vaccinated populations could dramatically and durably be reduced by massive early treatment of all individuals contracting Covid-19 disease, which would (automatically) be followed by long-lived acquired immune protection.

    Both of the above proposals will effectively contribute to building herd immunity, which is the one and only solution to tame a pandemic. Or are the stakeholders of the current mass vaccination program still convinced that – contrary to all scientific evidence – it is mass vaccination that will ultimately end up generating herd immunity and that the virus will spontaneously tone down its virulence, regardless of all immune and infectious pressure currently exerted by the increasingly vaccinated and virus-exposed population, respectively?

    As the original pandemic is now more and more evolving towards a pandemic of more infectious Sars-CoV-2 variants, we have no choice but to immediately implement a pancontinental intervention with broadly effective antivirals and early multi-drug treatment. Given the enhanced evolutionary context of this pandemic, there is no longer any place for non-sterilizing vaccines, let alone for using such vaccines in mass vaccination campaigns.

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    1. I’m sorry as a educated and trained biologist (my first career was biotech/Big Pharma – later I made the mistake of going to law skool). I am not getting something.

      If:
      “all a virus wants is to replicate. “make a copy of me and pass it on.” that’s the biological imperative of the selfish gene. excel at it, you win. fail, you disappear. simple as that.

      killing or harming the host is maladaptive to viral spread. it’s like burning down your own house with your car in the garage. now you have nowhere to live and no way to get around. that’s not a recipe for reproductive fitness.”

      AND evolution is a random process of mutation of a genome (right?).
      Why?:
      “The most probable explanation is Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) in which a leaky vaccine that keeps the host healthy causes the virus to evolve to a more deadly variant.”

      Wouldn’t random evolution cause both less virulent variants AND more virulent variants? And then those variants “that burn the house down” fail??

      I’m not getting something (maybe it’s just old brain syndrome??)
      Thanks,
      AJ

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      1. People over simplify how bacteria and viruses evolve and then get ‘unexplainable’ results. The little buggers are clever and complex in how they test ideas, communicate and share information with each other. Here’s a consideration: viruses also need people to get sick enough to go out and spread viral loads – so coughing, sneezing etc. If the host has a very poor (or very strong) immune system, they could still die. If the virus has already spread to 10 people by the time the old host dies, why would they care? Another thought, if a virus gets rid of unhealthy and old animals from the host herd, they are optimizing the longevity of the host herd which would help the virus in the long-run too. It will be way more complex in real life than we can explain in a short blog. And we shouldn’t oversimplify viruses just because they are very small

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      3. Good question AJ. Unlike you I’m not a biologist so my electrical engineering speculation may be wrong.

        I think you’re correct that both more virulent and less virulent variants will result from a leaky vaccine.

        If the vaccine is somewhat effective but not perfect at preventing spread, then there will be pressure on the virus to evolve more virulence.

        If the vaccine also does a good but not perfect job of reducing sickness and death, then more of the virulent variants will survive to kill more of the most vulnerable or unlucky vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

        I’m also wondering (but don’t recall Bossche or el gato malo saying this) if those variants that evolve to make the host a little sick, so that coughs & sneezes help spread it, will outcompete those that don’t, and this also will tend to kill more of the most vulnerable and unlucky.

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    2. “. . . subsequently followed by enrichment of these populations with healthy, unvaccinated individuals (hence why we will need a baby boom and encourage the influx of young & healthy unvaccinated immigrants).”

      What the hell? No, we don’t need a baby boom and and an influx of “young & healthy” unvaccinated immigrants. That is insane overshoot bullshit-talk. The first part of his first proposal (massive antiviral chemoprophylaxis) and his second proposal of massive early treatment are on point and well-taken.

      Rob, you’re suggestion of intentional infection as long as it’s combined with prophylaxis and immediate early treatment protocols and current/future good health and lifestyle is thought-provoking. How could one intentionally infect oneself with the lowest viral dose/load possible, or at least the lowest dose needed to cause an infection which will provide durable immunity? Because if you fuck that up (i.e. inadvertently get a large viral dose/load) you could be in big trouble (potential for breathing/O2 concerns, chronic fatigue, Long COVID, death, etc.).

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      1. Good grief I’m reading too fast these days. Bossche tends to repeat the same message over and over so I read the intro and conclusion but missed his new idea calling for an inflow of unvaccinated people.

        I have a hunch he’s not proposing we increase the population. Rather he may be hinting that we should expect an unavoidable die-off in the highly vaccinated and obese rich countries, and that to rebuild their economies they will need immigrants from the less vaccinated poor countries.

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        1. I understand. There’s so much important content on a bunch of essential topics to read and process right now as overshoot is picking up steam. Thanks for clarifying and you’re probably right about Bossche’s thought process as regards recouping population if rapid die-off does occur.

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      2. With respect to intentional infection, I don’t know what is the best method, I just started thinking about this after wondering what I should do if el gato malo is correct.

        I suppose it might involve nothing more than exposure to lots of different people in not too dense situations, with not too little movement of fresh air, for not too long a duration. Maybe like hanging out at the mall. Attending choir practice in a small church might be a bad idea.

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  3. Meanwhile, other disasters we’ve caused continue with less social media awareness…

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-bumblebee-has-vanished-from-eight-us-states-180978817/

    The American Bumblebee Has Vanished From Eight States

    In two decades, the insect’s population has declined by nearly 90 percent due to a combination of threats, including habitat loss, pesticides and diseases

    The American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus)—once abundant and found lazily floating around in grasslands, open prairies, and some urban areas throughout the United States—now face a rapidly declining population.

    According to a proposed rule released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the species’ population has dropped nearly 90 percent and could qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Independent’s Graeme Massie reports. Despite dwindling population numbers, the American bumblebee is not protected in any state or by federal law.

    American bumblebees are a vital pollinator for wildflowers and crops, and their decline could have severe consequences for the environment. The species has completely vanished from eight states, including Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon, Ben Turner reports for Live Science. The bumblebee species have declined by 99 percent in New York. In the Midwest and Southeast, population numbers have dropped by more than 50 percent.

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    1. In Memoriam of the Victims From the the Sixth Extinction. To the ones we lost, you’ll always be a part of the Walking Dead, I mean Planet Earth Family.

      …buzzzz….

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    2. I live in northern NH and can tell you bumblebees are here and happy. We had a large nest under our porch all summer.
      I see them on the wildflowers in our farm fields. So all is not lost. They are fun to watch this time of year landing on the fall asters.

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  4. On another note entirely. What has happened to Albert Bates??? https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/

    He used to be uniformly depressing – he saw extreme overshoot, climate change catastrophe and a collapse of industrial civilization around the corner.

    Now he has gone all techno “green” stuff will save us?? Fake food, electric cars/ride sharing apps for all?

    Is this just denial?
    AJ

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        1. We might differ on this. I think climate change is so serious that no one should be flying, especially green people who should know better. A person does have to make a living. Permaculture teaches that it’s possible to have a profitable farm will few inputs so why not make a living applying your knowledge to set an example, and then teach the locals to do the same? Maybe he’s already doing that, I don’t know, but he shouldn’t be flying.

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            1. I have studied permaculture, and taken a small scale organic farm course, and have worked on several organic farms. I think permaculture’s claims exceed what is possible in most situations. You can make more money teaching it than farming it.

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              1. Permaculture is a scam that, like the mainstream religions, provides a quick and easy solution, which of course is wrong.

                For people that are thinking about paying $5000 for a weekend to learn permaculture – why don’t you ask any old person from a traditional community and you will learn the same techniques but with more realistic hopes.

                In my case, I compared permaculture with the traditional gardening/homesteading in Eastern Europe and everything is there: combining trees with gardens and animals, care of the earth, natural pest removal etc.

                And the methods they used in EE are proven over thousands of years.

                And when I see people (like the person above in this blog) saying: “at least he’s doing some good”, I know that permaculture is yet another cult, like the cult of Greta or Musk.
                I remember the old people saying “do what the priest says, not what the priest does” – I always hated that!

                If a person does not walk their talk, they are not doing good. In fact, they are quite evil and they will turn away many people like me.

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          2. Albert was holed up in the Yucatan for the last year and a half because of covid. Hard to tell from his posts if he’s gotten out. If he has, good for him, but EV-utopia won’t solve our problems.

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          3. I’m not sure in the grand scheme of things that it matters, tho I agree in principle it is better not to fly. But maybe I’m just virtue signaling.

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            1. It’s an open question. A good argument can be made that positive feedback loops beyond our control have taken over. You can also argue that we can still act to make a bad situation less bad. I favor the latter because it also keeps some fossil energy in the ground for the grandchildren.

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              2. It’s not an open question Rob.
                Forget about the physical impact of flying/not flying.
                The important thing is that people that pretend to care about the Earth and say “we have to reduce our footprint” and then fly everywhere (or worse, take a private jet to a CC conference) – those people convince billions of regular humans that they are lying and AGW is either a scam or real but not important.

                Again, think about Greta – a children of privilege, making millions of dollars, in bed with the most corrupt and evil psychopaths. But she is making the right mouth noises, isn’t that something?
                No, because most people are smart enough to look at her actions not her lying words.

                Out of 8 billion hairless monkeys, I know many millions that pretend to be “green” but exactly one that walk his talk – that is John Michael Greer.
                As for me – I am too cynical at this point to even try.

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                1. I am under the impression that Greta is a good person trying to do the right thing, but is young and hasn’t yet figured out that economic contraction and population reduction are the only good paths forward. Can you point me to something that shows she’s corrupt?

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                  1. That’s another proof of how well propaganda is working.
                    I could point you to investigative journalists that show that Greta is a PR scam designed from the ground up by corporations (for example “The Making of Greta Thunberg”).

                    But here is the thing: why do I need to do that? Are you stupid?
                    Just look at her actions and stop being an emotional monkey (oh, she is just a cute kid!). She flies all over the world and is treated like royalty by the psychopaths in charge. She is the media’s darling. Germany does not allow any protests against Covid policies but they allowed and supported a big Greta protest.
                    And aside from the mouth music, what did she actually do? And if you think that at this point what people are saying is what matters, you might as well join the fundamentalists in the bible belt (saved by words) and assume that a serial killer that confesses before the electric chair will go to heaven while an innocent murdered kid will go to hell because he did not know Jesus.

                    I could go on, but again – if you are brainwashed is useless. Just try to put your least favorite politician in her place, doing and saying the same things and see if you feel the same about her.

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                    2. NomadicBeer As far as I know, Greta has never flown anywhere, as least not since she became climate aware. She took a sailing yacht to get to the USA once, and the rest of her time she’s been in Europe, where it’s easy to take the train.

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                    3. There were some critics that pointed out Greta’s sailing trip burned more carbon than a flight, but I think she had good intentions and does not yet understand thermodynamics of the economy, but neither do most climate scientists with PhD’s.

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              3. Guess I’ll have to learn how to fly an ultralight or sail to the Galápagos Islands if I want to see the mating ritual of the Blue Footed Booby, lest I earn the undying enmity of Nomadic Beer.

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    2. Guess we’ll have to search someplace else for for our daily dose of Doom. I’m sure there’s someone out there who can deliver the goods straight up with no sugar. It’s kinda like when a comedian loses his touch and stops being funny – ya just gotta move on. Turn the channel.

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  5. Good God. In Asia, the spot price for LNG measured in a million BTU went from less than $5.00 in September 2020 to more than $56.00 this October. Dramatic.

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  6. How do you explain the Delta variant being discovered in October 2020 and the first vaccines were rolled out in December 2020?

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    1. I’m not sure but it sounds like a good question to ask el gato malo on his blog. He’s pretty good at answering important questions. If I had to guess I’d say “Delta” is not a static genetic sequence but rather a strain of the virus that emerged in late 2020 and has been evolving over time in a certain direction.

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      1. Thanks, I’ll ask El Gato Malo. I thought for a long time that the vaccines caused the Delta variant until I looked at the timeline. Vaccines causing Delta makes sense but the timeline doesn’t look good for that theory.

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        1. We would get variants with or without a vaccine. How the variants continue to evolve under the pressure of vaccines is what you’d look for. Delta was less deadly than original COVID when it emerged

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    2. Also scientists have been researching vaccines for coronaviruses for a long time, especially since 2003 after the SARS outbreak. The covid19 vaccines were not brand new in early 2020.

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  8. It’s remarkable how divergent world views can be among people who study our overshoot predicament. Tim Watkins believes we have 50 years of oil and gas left at our current rate of consumption. I think that’s wildly optimistic. I expect we’ll be consuming at least 30% less by 2030. There’s a huge difference in how we should respond to a 10 vs. 50 year threat.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/10/11/is-this-peak-gas/

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    1. The problem is mixing up oil and gas, and maybe converting gas and coal into barrel of oil equivalents. If there’s only 40 years left of oil, how can we get the 100+ years worth of coal and gas?? If you added oil, gas and coal reserves together and averaged it you’d get a more optimistic picture of the future. I do think humans will continue to mine and burn accessible coal well into the future, but oil and gas are some time in the coming decades. At least I’m young enough to wait and see if I’m right hahaha

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    2. … but further down in the same piece, he writes:

      “While we may have a theoretical 50 years or so of oil and gas available to us then, there is good reason to believe that in reality we will be lucky to have even half of this. Indeed, with oil production already falling, and given that producing gas relies heavily on oil-powered machinery, we may be lucky if we have more than a decade of gas available to us.”

      Converging with your estimate.

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  9. el gato malo went on a rant today about employers requiring vaccination.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/in-support-of-southwest-employees

    I left this comment on his blog:

    We might have more success at shifting the needle if we toned it down a little and focused on the key issues.

    If the vaccines were proven safe after long term testing, and if they were sterilizing and did not promote VME, then it would make sense to encourage everyone to be vaccinated.

    But our reality is:

    1) The vaccines are effective in the short term at reducing sickness.

    2) Your analysis suggests the leaky vaccines may soon make things much worse for both vaccinated and unvaccinated, and this outweighs 1).

    3) We don’t yet know if there are any long term negative effects on health but there are some worrying signals that advise caution.

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    1. Wow.

      It feels like we have finally reached growth limits and begun energy descent and degrowth. Or collapse.

      And not just because of this article from Antonio Turiel on possible peak coal and gas.

      You can now read the daily mainstream headlines now and pretty much get your limits to growth and collapse news.

      So Peak oil in 2018, peak Coal and Gas now.

      Maybe.

      COVID did result in something like a 9% drop in oil production. Therefore I assume there was a commensurate drop in extraction of other natural resources from resource stocks, including gas and coal. I have not checked in a while, but I think we are still 3-4% below pre-COVID oil production levels. The FLOW of natural resources through the economy must still be reduced however.

      So the price spikes in coal and gas might be from the loss of marginal supply in these markets.

      Might be. Can POST COVID oil production climb back to pre-COVID levels? Time will tell. My guess is no, but the resiliency of this fossil fuel powered system has been surprising.

      My guess is the actions taken be governments to paper over COVID with money might have begun the puncturing of credit bubble and fiat money illusion, and this is the beginning of the end of pulling future consumption forward through massive increases in debt. Without massive debt and valued fiat currencies, demand will drop, and then supply. (Or is it supply drops, then demand? Energy stocks like oil create provide the net energy to leverage human labor to extract natural resources and ultimately produce income for spending, that drives demand for more oil. A kind of virtuous feedback loop. Decreasing oil production becomes a negative feedback loop, decreasing income and demand, decreasing supply.)

      Maybe preventing collapse is why governments are so eager to vaccinate everyone with non-sterilizing vaccines in the middle of a pandemic. If they can just get this thermodynamic engine back up to its previous fuel burn rate everything will be ok…………

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      2. Prudent of you to balance your remarks with the caveat that the price spikes might be a result of marginal supplies in these markets. Time will tell.

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      3. We have created a big mess! The self-organised system is ready to collapse:

        The attempt to create a new, lower equilibrium (lower fuel burn rates, adapted to thermodynamic realities) with the support of “Covid-Measures” (Lockdowns and so on), is going to lead to unintended and chaotic feed back loops which will finally collapse the fragil system of industrial cicvilisation.
        I assume, this is the engame, the seneca cliff!

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  11. Interesting comments on China by Jimothy.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/09/25/could-we-be-hitting-natural-gas-limits-already/comment-page-13/#comment-318577

    I’ve been to China a few times, and I speak Chinese. Yes, I think that the energy issues are real. I know people over there and I’ve seen videos I think are authentic of the outages.

    It’s absolutely stunning how much volume there is in China. The population, economy, etc are so massive, and unlike places like India, well developed. It is also extremely chaotic.

    The biggest danger in China is the lies people tell themselves, and each other. For instance, officials get promoted based on economic growth. So you have a township mayor who is incentivized to inflate his town’s economic metrics. Then the county official takes that number, and others, adds them up and inflates it further. This goes on at every level until you get to the national level, at which point no one knows anything because of all the obfuscation.

    This goes on in the power sector too, I think. All sorts of things are obfuscated including prices needed to keep running, as well as stockpiles of coal, availability of wind and solar power, etc.

    So when a crisis like this emerges a lot of things fail at once with little advance notice, and anyone who knows anything either goes to ground or gets arrested, worsening the situation.

    As we reach limits it seems that there’s a weird break that goes on between what consumers can afford and what producers need. Gail, of course, has written on this extensively. That is what is happening with coal in China and is happening everywhere with various things. The government orders coal plants to operate at a loss but without any financial bailout. They have to go bankrupt, or do things like “close for maintenance”.

    I see this happening in the US. In a way the labor shortages are a reflection of that. Workers need society to pay them more (mandates aside) but there isn’t energy in the form of wages to spare. It’s happening with paramedics, teachers, low wage laborers, etc.

    I think governments can’t really bail out the energy sector going forward anyway. It either involves taxes or money printing of some sort.

    Ultimately I think energy has peaked in China. That they are importing coal from Kazakhstan to Zhejiang province is VERY bad. It would be like shipping coal from Alaska to the South. The coal they have left in China tends to be dirtier and wetter (less energy intense) than before, so more tons must be mined than before to maintain output, let alone grow.

    Also, as one last aside, it’s been ten years since the solar craze in China really took off. I imagine those panels are nearing the end of their lives. Not that they do much, but still. And yes, I know panels should last for 30 years but these were poorly made and have been exposed to an awful lot of pollution.

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    1. Good find Rob. A lot of bad things happen in the absence of trust.

      I always felt queasy about the prolific use of phony receipts by the Chinese. There is a cottage industry of black market forged receipts over there costing the Chinese state billions in lost tax revenues. My concern was that this practice might metastasize to the West as our markets became more fully integrated.

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  12. Pride goeth before the fall & the bigger the ego the harder the fall. The Chinese are shooting themselves in the foot with their ban on Australian coal. Just read that India is scooping up Australian coal stranded in Chinese ports at a significant discount.

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  14. Anyone out there able to confirm or disprove these claims by Karl Denninger? I’ve already put the same question to el gato malo.

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243859

    Unfortunately what this means is that now for anyone over 30 you are more likely to get infected, yes, adjusted for the population that is vaccinated, if you are vaccinated. Indeed in the 40-49 age group you’re close to double as probable on a per-population basis.

    This means that if your employer mandates the jabs he or she can be sued for putting those who can’t get vaccinated at double the risk, on purpose, by enforcing the mandate.

    Since there are people who can’t (due to immune compromise, such as cancer patients) be vaccinated this is now intentional risk.

    In other words this is hard, scientific evidence that these mandates by employers have increased the risk of customers (and other employees) contracting Covid-19. This isn’t a natural risk (which an employer is not responsible for) it’s a man-made one created by the employer.

    That’s actionable.

    So far this is not translating into higher risk of Covid hospitalization and death on a per-100,000 basis. But that the vaccine makes you more likely to both get and give to others the virus is now established. It is fact. It is in fact true for everyone who is over 30.

    I have pointed out that preventing infection was never in the cards; it was not part of the EUA, it was not part of the studies, it was never demonstrated. But this is much worse because now we are talking about a direct threat to others.

    The CDC, NIH and Biden almost-certainly know this.

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  15. Rob, this writer is amazing. I’m reading through all his posts. Who is he? Where did you find him? (I’m assuming it’s a he, of course it could be otherwise)

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    1. I assume you’re referring to el gato malo and not Denninger.

      I agree. A reader here pointed me to el gato malo a little while ago.

      I don’t know much about him/her other than he was banned on Twitter earlier this year. I’m guessing that he is employed in some senior technical role in the pharmaceutical industry and thus hides his identity. He seems really bright and knowledgeable and has a libertarian political orientation.

      He’s quickly become my favorite source for covid trends because he does regular original analysis on source data, and he seems to be only motivated by determining what is true based on evidence.

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      1. What do you make of his moniker- el gato malo – as in “bad cat”? Perhaps he’s trying to communicate that his state of mind isn’t good? Or he’s a bad ass? A rebel? I dunno, I haven’t read any of his stuff and probably won’t.

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    1. As far as the trust issue goes, I think the “ALL you Need to Know” might be a give away. Run for the hills and stay away from this dude.

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        1. Nope, can’t say as I have. Maybe I jumped the gun and he’s the real deal. I based my judgement on the inclusion of the word “All” in the title. I’m generally suspicious/critical of papers or books that make grandiose claims. Our knowledge of the science surrounding COVID is not static, new information is coming out all the time so I think it’s hubristic and probably wrong to make such a claim as to knowing it all about vaccine safety.

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        2. I’ve read Steve’s work before and have seen him interviewed. This slide deck presentation is intended as a summary of his research and is not to be taken as comprehensive. Steve is the guy who presented concerns to the FDA recently. I had trouble finding the video of the FDA hearing but I think it’s reposted here: https://citizenfreepress.com/column-1/bombshell-testimony-from-doctors-at-fda-vaccine-booster-hearing/

          I’ve followed his work on and off and think he is well intentioned. Maybe he is mistaken, but he also has put his money where his mouth is with a $1M prize for a research project. https://www.skirsch.io/vaccine-resources/

          He has rejoindered to most “fact checkers” and rebuttals of his work that I can find. To the best of my knowledge he’s on the right track.

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          1. Thanks kindly for the recommendation. I’ll pay attention to him. My one exposure via the Malone/Weinstein interview made me think he was an asshole but I don’t recall any reasons to question his competence.

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    2. Just first links that suggest that one should approach it at least “sceptically”…
      As I already said I don’t engage in COVID discussions any longer as the amount of stuff one has to go through is many times bigger than one can absorb.

      Anyway – you can probably find hundreds if not thousands documents that at first sight look legitimatelly.
      I don’t want to read through that all and spend hours to validate it.
      And I think COVID is amazing opportunity for anti-vaxxers of all kinds to produce disinformation and they are eager to “fight for their cause” without any incentives.
      I just don’t believe that goverments manipulate statisics and millions of healthcare employees are part of conspiracy.

      And one anecdotal thing – when I skim-read it, page 15 took my notice. Using claims of some Ozzie cup as a “medical proof” is very funny 🙂 …

      https://factcheck.afp.com/http%253A%252F%252Fdoc.afp.com%252F9N862V-6

      Steve Kirsch COVID 19 Vaccine claims , one of the worst misuses of statistics in recent memory? from AskStatistics

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      1. It is very hard to sift wheat from chaff on Covid. I tend to rely on the integrity of the source these days. That’s why I asked someone to vouch for Kirsch.

        Your second link reminded me that I saw Kirsch in an interview with Malone and Weinstein. He’s a prick. Thanks for your help.

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        1. I’d recommend you at least check out his FDA testimony. Also listen to the speaker before him who had the opposite concern – about lack of data. I’m relatively comfortable in 3 elements I consider factual, leading to two conclusions – one I consider strong, and the other weaker:

          I have a high degree of confidence that COVID diagnoses and cause of death have been over counted by a statistically significant margin.
          I have a high degree of confidence that the VAERS system indicates the vaccines have more risk than prior vaccines
          I have a high degree of confidence that the VAERS system underreports adverse effects, including deaths

          Therefore…

          The public is accepting a weaker standard for COVID caused deaths than vaccine caused adverse reactions, since both have a significant problem with correlation vs causation.
          It would not surprise me at all if the vaccines are both dangerous enough and weak enough that they should be regulated to only high risk people from a standpoint of traditional medical ethics and risk management.

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          1. I agree with all 3 of your points.

            el gato malo has persuasively argued VAERS grossly under reports adverse reactions.

            It might be reasonable to accept these health risks if there were compensating benefits, like a clear path to herd immunity. But evidence is mounting that the vaccines are reducing herd immunity by promoting VME. You can’t make this shit up. It boggles my mind that our leaders can be so reckless and incompetent. Every day I ask myself, am I crazy?, what am I missing?

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  17. Motherf***er this young woman Whitney Webb made my head spin.

    She’s bright and articulate and rattles off hundreds of conspiracies underway without taking a breath.

    As always there are nuggets of truth mixed with crazy/improbable stuff combined with ignorance/denial of our overshoot predicament.

    Something I think a lot about when trying to understand world events is:

    If I was a powerful person at the top of the sand castle, well connected and respected, with honest and good intentions, and I was aware of the overshoot issues I discuss here, and the universal aggressive denial of those issues, what would I do to try to reduce the suffering and chaos I saw on the horizon?

    Might explain some of the weird things we are seeing.

    https://odysee.com/@Chris_Martenson:2/WhitneyWebb:d

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    1. Right? And your question to ponder is a good one. It doesn’t surprise me that there would be a group of “global elites” trying to forestall our crisis. My gut reaction is that these same folks are highly likely to overestimate the power of technology as a blindspot.

      I have to admit I may underestimate the power of social control and intelligence/collusion. I’ve always been skeptical of conspiracy. But if it’s true this is a blindspot of mine I would predict that many “free thinkers” in the collapse space may share this blind spot. Those who have already shucked many common delusions may conclude it is easier for others to do so than is really possible – with the implication it may be easier to fool the masses on purpose. I’d also admit my attention tends to be narrowly focused on a few issues and I haven’t dedicated time to much of this sphere of concerns.

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      1. You might be right. Many a smart person has criticized me for being blind to obvious conspiracies.

        Back to my question about what a good intentioned powerful person might do, I can think of many examples that can be seen in a different light.

        For example, digital currencies are viewed as bad because they are a means for the state to control citizens. A positive way to view digital currencies is that simple mathematics will soon cause monetary systems to explode resulting in a breakdown of civil society, unless a means can be found to implement negative interest rates, but that’s not possible unless we replace cash with a digital currency.

        Another example, with energy constraining real growth, we are forced to continue to inflate assets to prevent an economic collapse. But with high asset prices most citizens will be unable to afford a house. Therefore get people prepared by starting a meme that we will own nothing and be happy.

        Another example, Cheney’s invasion of Iraq can be rethought in the context of peak oil at that point in history.

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  18. Censorship in general make me cringe but this instance of silencing is particularly cringeworthy. In the “Collapse of Complex Societies” J. Tainter mentions that numeracy and literary decline as societies start unraveling. In other words the educational systems deteriorates. QED – Geophysicist Dorian Abbot was disinvited from giving a climate lecture at MIT. MIT for f…s sake. Not some back water liberal arts college that no one has heard about but MIT. You can read about it in The Atlantic.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest-campus-cancellation-different/620352/

    “Following a Twitter outcry, a scientist was stopped from giving a lecture at MIT for reasons that had nothing to do with the lecture itself.
    Dorian Abbot is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. In recognition of his research on climate change, MIT invited him to deliver the John Carlson Lecture, which takes place every year at a large venue in the Boston area and is meant to “communicate exciting new results in climate science to the general public.”

    Then the campaign to cancel Abbot’s lecture began. On Twitter, some students and professors called on the university to retract its invitation. And, sure enough, MIT buckled, becoming yet another major institution in American life to demonstrate that the commitment to free speech it trumpets on its website evaporates the moment some loud voices on social media call for a speaker’s head.

    But there is more to this story than meets the eye. For although most outlets have covered Abbot’s disinvitation as but the latest example of an illiberal culture on campus, it is qualitatively different from other recent instances in which invitations have been rescinded—and suggests that the scope of censorship is continuing to morph and expand.”

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    1. There’s another troubling issue going on in universities. They seem to be dumbing down their curriculums. I had to take 11 advanced mathematics courses over 5 years for my B.A.Sc. degree. Today they make you take 3 math courses over 4 years for the same degree. It was the math courses that weeded out weak people.

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      1. In Germany, the whole school system – including academia – is getting dumber and dumber. My mother was a school teacher in the 60s and after a longer break resumed the job in the 90s. The difficulty of here old material from the 60s was so high that it only be used in higher grades than the foreseen grade.

        In addition, when I started my Biology studies at the University around twenty years ago, I was astonished about the stupidity of the majority of students. There were preparatory courses at the university, as there was low trust in the high school diploma. We had also a few exams to weed out the chaff (Math, Chemistry and Physics) but it was not nearly enough. When I graduated with my PhD, I was completely disillusioned about the quality of academia, especially in comparison to what I was told by my mother about the challenges, students had to face only 30 years earlier.

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        1. Universities have become factories churning out degrees that everyone thinks they are entitled to so they can enjoy an affluent lifestyle.

          All levels of the school system now seem to avoid failing someone for a lack of competence.

          Many of these incompetent people with degrees seem to end up running our governments.

          Not a good trend.

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          1. Advanced education’s become a halfway house for the unemployable, not a vocation of superior and curious minds. Today’s students sense of self worth is inversely proportionate to their actual worth & many of them think it’s perfectly acceptable to approach and petition the professor if dissatisfied with their grade. That never happened in my day.

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          2. I agree, the quantity of university degrees is way more important than the quality. I would say that this problem is already bad in some of the natural sciences. Biology seems to be the worst in the bunch because it is the easiest to achieve a university degree (at least from my own experience). The awakening comes after you graduate as every second open job position is some kind of sales job (e.g. pharmaceutical representative). There, you compete as a Biologist with a PhD with people, who most of the time did not visit a university at all (like PTAs).

            It is even worth in the humanities . I once read about a woman with a PhD in gender studies who was at the unemployment center in Germany. They offered her a job position as a strawberry picker, because her university degree was basically useless outside of academia.

            Meanwhile, you hear all the time in the media, that skilled workers are missing everywhere (e.g. truck drivers, electricians, healthcare professionals…). Craftsmen can choose their customers due to extrem high demand.
            Since most of the Germans don´t want to do any physically strenuous labor (for low pay), we then import workers from other countries to do the dirty work for cheap (e.g. construction is mainly Eastern Europeans or Turks, healthcare workers from South East Asia and Eastern Europe, etc.)

            How can a system like that work over a longer timeframe? From my point of view, this is doomed to fail due to having too many useless graduates, not enough skilled workers and no more countries to import cheap labor.

            I also agree that many of these useless graduates now flood the government. There are a lot of former humanities students in the government (some prominent ones even without a degree). Therefore, the quality of the government is also decreasing rapidly.

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            1. Nicely put, especially your observation about the over production of useless elites, which is I might add, a hallmark of civilizational decline. And a recipe for revolution.

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            2. If I was a young person wondering what to do, I’d get a trade like mechanic, electrician, plumber, or carpenter. As the world simplifies we will need more people that can fix things.

              I worked part time the last few years as a masonry assistant. It’s hard physical work but very satisfying work.

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              1. Have you ever worked with rammed earth or cob? I almost took a workshop many years ago. I admire the craftsmen in England who specialize in thatched reed roofs.

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              2. I agree with your advice. I am 40 years old and also thinking about getting into crafts since my current office job sucks. Funnily, one of our department managers joked about leaving his “bullshit job” to join his brother´s carpentry. So, it is not only me, who is not satisfied with sitting on his ass for 8 hours in front of a pc.

                How did you get your masonry assistant position? I am intrigued in doing some woodwork, carpentry or blacksmithing. A few years ago, I visited an open air museum in Germany where old crafts are demonstrated in a restorated middle age style village. There, I had a long talk with the blacksmith about his craft. Sounded very interesting back then.

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                1. I helped a friend build his house. He had to hire a mason to build a block retaining wall and the mason needed help so I volunteered. The mason apparently liked my work and then hired me for subsequent projects.

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  19. For what it’s worth, I wish somebody would put something like this together for COVID or other issues. I was raised in an extreme religious environment and freed myself when I had access to the internet and could research my doubts. Among others I had doubts about evolution/creation and had only had access to bad data previously:

    http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

    I found the format of a point-by-point response to be so helpful, as denial often leads people to common rationalization and latching onto spin. Some day perhaps such effort at organizing information will be available for other topics.

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    1. Yes, a cheat sheet would be helpful. There are many lines of evidence and each is complex. It’s very hard to keep track.

      Most people really do accept without question what is on TV news.

      The theme I see in family and friends is “vaccines keep people out of hospital and that’s good enough, don’t ask questions, we’re in an emergency and we need to rally around the flag”.

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      1. Couldn’t agree more Rob, my wife acts like it can’t get on the evening news if it isn’t completely true. That might have been partially true back in the 1960’s with Walter Cronkite but even then I’m sure there was spin. For many people if they had to admit the MSM was lying it would require too much effort to figure out the truth so they just go with what they’re told (denial makes cognitive dissonance go away).
        AJ

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        1. Every time I’ve had personal knowledge of a story in the media, what was reported was around 50% inaccurate (just plain nuts and bolts facts gotten wrong). And those were for very specific small stories. It does make me wonder what % of journalism is plain wrong on basic facts

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    1. Interesting video. I generally like the artwork of the After School videos.

      Regarding the topic of dropping sperm count, I have read an article about the work of Shanna Swan, that with the current decline rate, the industrialized nations could become infertile by 2045 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/26/falling-sperm-counts-human-survival).

      If you look at it from the point of view of declining ressources, it seems to be good that we become more an more infertile, but from the point of view of human wellbeing, it seems to be a major issue for the future of humanity.

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  21. I suggested to el gato malo that he might have a better chance of shifting the needle if he toned it down and focused on the core evidence. He’s going in the opposite direction.

    Maybe he’s right and I’m wrong ? Or maybe something else is going on.

    Perhaps a few powerful people with good intentions are trying to slow down the discretionary energy consuming components of the economy to conserve depleting fossil energy for tractors, trucks, trains and ships, and at the same time reduce CO2 emissions, so that we stand a chance of continuing to feed 8 billion people.

    Panic over a not so serious virus might be a good way to accomplish this.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/lion-awake

    seem familiar? after the endless fear driven propaganda bombardment of the last 18 months, we’re past the point of rational. we can dig and argue and provide evidence until we’re all blue in the the face. it does not move the needle. mostly, we’re talking to one another and preaching to ever more rarified choirs.

    it keeps us from feeling alone, it keeps the gaslighting from spreading, but it cannot roll it back.

    and it does NOTHING to address this:

    going along to get along IS the problem. you cannot comply your way out of tyranny and anyone still waiting for this “temporary” emergency to end is engaging is self-delusion. it will never end.

    grant politicians unlimited emergency power, and you get unlimited emergencies, every time.

    until there is a price for them to pay, until there is clear revolt and they fear the world crashing down around them if they persist, there is NOTHING that’s going to stop them. this will be the one way ratchet to serfdom.

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  22. Nice summary by TonyH…

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-9/#comment-727519

    But the average man is not suffering because the rich are taxed too lightly, but because the manufacturing base that used to pay blue collar workers good wages, has disappeared. The structure of the economy has shifted as the EROI of its driving energy sources has deteriorated. The service economy that has grown up in the absence of a robust manufacturing economy, provides a large number of low wage jobs. Manufacturing generates exports, so the US now has a huge trade deficit. Wages also pay the bulk of taxes, so the US finds itself with huge government deficits, just as the need for social support is growing. The deteriorating energy dynamic and rising inflation makes the decline in prosperity far worse than simple dollar comparison of wages would suggest. So it tends to blindside political elites.

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    1. Re: Martenson
      Anyone up for a mind virus challenge? I suggest we hit the neighborhood streets & start shaking our collective bootays ala Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.” Start a dance plague but with a 10:00 pm curfew. Fun but safe! Get out your boom box and dance monkey dance.

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      1. Tough crowd.
        I guess disco still sucks.

        🎼My baby moves at midnight
        Goes right on till the dawn
        My woman takes me higher
        My woman keeps me warm🐵🎶

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    2. Re: Martenson,
      I’m amazed at how the Dems were so fearful of Trump (and his followers) becoming a fascist dictator. I still think a certain bunch of republicans would love a theocratic dictatorship. But now we have the Dems (and a senile Biden – oops! can’t say that) wanting to demonize republicans and take away all their constitutional rights if they don’t get vaccinated (is that totalitarianism?). I’m always amazed that Dems don’t want the government telling women what they can do with their bodies (re: abortion) but have no problem telling them what vaxes they have to have to be citizens AND the republicans want to force women to have babies (and criminalize all docs who would perform abortions) but don’t want to have a vax they don’t think is necessary. Both sides are descending into madness. Listening to any tribe without critical thought is mind cancer.
      AJ

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    3. Do I know anyone who has gone insane? Are we talking “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) or meowing at strangers and other weird shit? I’m pretty sure that people who wear their mask while alone in their car have a disorder. Maybe they forgot is the most charitable explanation.

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    1. Interesting. I wonder how all cause death figures in Norway, Denmark, and Finland compared. Sweden has a lot more official COVID deaths than its three neighbors.

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  26. Some wise advice from Jill Winger on preparing.

    https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS80Njk0NjUucnNz/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC05MzQ1OTk3

    What if You Couldn’t Buy Food at the Grocery Store?

    When it comes to homesteaders, in many ways we’re natural born preppers. While we might not be preparing for the apocalypse, we’re always focused on looking down the road to be ready for any situation. One particular situation that always comes up in my head is “What if you couldn’t buy food at the grocery store?” In today’s episode, I cover the three steps I’m taking to prepare my family for any food supply related issues. I also explain why it’s important to focus on ‘prepping’ skills and tactics that also improve your life in the present instead of just preparing for some potential event that might never happen.

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  28. Interesting example of how interconnected our world is.

    You can’t run a modern diesel engine without DEF (aka AdBlue). I didn’t know you needed natural gas to make it.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/09/25/could-we-be-hitting-natural-gas-limits-already/comment-page-15/#comment-319088

    Duslo Sala in Slovakia, the biggest producer of AdBlue in Europe, which is used in the diesel cars, is stopping its production because of high prices of natural gas.

    https://alwaysfreshnews.com/news/world/87407/diesel-owners-can-have-a-serious-problem-adblue-is-starting-to-miss-pravda-sk/

    “The largest manufacturer of AdBlue in Europe does not accept orders from new clients, the second largest has reduced its production and the third largest has even stopped completely. The reason is the high prices of natural gas.”

    “It looks like an alarm message, but the truth is that “the production of fertilizers is also linked to the production of AdBlue and Duslo is the largest producer in Europe. The second largest is in Germany and it has started to cut AdBlue production. The third largest is in Poland and it stopped production, “said Minister of Economy Richard Sulík (SaS) at a meeting with journalists earlier this week. According to him, there will be a real problem with enough products in the near future. It may even be that the state will completely ban the export of AdBlue abroad.”

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    1. We took a simple and reliable diesel engine, and made it complex and fragile, to reduce soot emissions, which we actually need to prevent another degree of climate warming.

      Homo sapiens not so wise.

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      1. I wasn’t aware of this – but looks like it’s a Euro zone issue for most diesel (cars only it appears) after 2015. It’s made with urea (made from natural gas). It appears to be a digital control feature of the car which prevents it from starting? I understand if you run out while driving the speed of the vehicle will be limited to limit pollution – as the adblue is injected into the exhaust stream? Interesting here as a mechanical engineer.

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        1. I believe all newish diesel motors use DEF. It’s a liquid that is injected into the exhaust system to help clean up emissions. Like diesel fuel it must be regularly topped up. Our trucking network will shut down without it.

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  29. Totally off topic but I found this to be provocative. I love my fruit. We have quite an extensive back yard orchard with over 100 fruit trees and do lots of preserving in the summertime.
    You’ve opened up a can of worms since you introduced me to Dr Kendrick. There’s all these things about health that I thought were true that I’m no longer sure about. I might have to attend some of Dr Fettke’s talks in the future since he is a local.

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    1. I watched this and it was excellent. Thank you.

      Reinforces what a disgrace the discipline of nutrition science is. They just make shit up with no scientific evidence. They’ve killed millions of citizens with bad advice, and assume no responsibility nor try to mend their ways. And our moron leaders don’t hold them to account.

      Electrical engineers make mistakes, but we don’t make shit up.

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  30. Rob,
    You are the first (and I mean First!!) EE that I have ever respected. My ultra-conservative religious Joe McCarthy loving father was an EE. So is my stupid religious conservative son-in-law. It was always my impression that engineers had a little too much hubris because they had taken some advanced mathematics and were good at it. Engineers as a group might not make shit up, but they are as prone to denial/optimism bias and group think, as any group (except lawyers which are the most illogical conformists – I know that group too well).
    You are indeed a rare engineer – it is a pleasure discussing denial and reality with you!
    AJ

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  31. Well that was a totally draining and discouraging experience. 😦

    I’m a fan of el gato malo’s intellect and analysis of covid issues. Occasionally he veers off into discussions of other problems we face and tends to attribute root causes to politics. More specifically that socialism and big government are to blame for all our ills.

    I thought to myself, here’s a really smart guy that is probably influential. I’m going to try to shift his awareness to the fact that most of our problems are underpinned by overshoot.

    I tried hard and totally failed.

    It’s quite remarkable that someone so smart can be so blind. Very strong evidence in support of Varki’s MORT theory.

    I’m pretty sure we’re going to ride this rollercoaster all the way to the bottom without ever collectively admitting, even a tiny bit, that our species was in overshoot.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/cave-man-capitalism/comment/3244766

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    1. Valiant effort, Rob, but hopeles! El Gato is brilliant on Covid but delusional on overshoot issues (as are many of his readers apparently).

      There being no single font of wisdom we will simply have to sip a bit here and bit there in trying to work out what is going on as we go down.

      Thank goodness for the internet that allows us to monitor progress of collapse in real time…

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      1. Thanks. What struck me was the ultra fast emotional responses without time to view or digest the evidence I provided.

        Also of note was the venom directed at Mathusian theories. Malthus was correct. How could he not be correct? We live on a finite planet. Malthus appeared to be wrong for a little while because we increased the planet’s carrying capacity with non-renewable finite fossil energy. But that doesn’t undermine his theory. A kindergarten student can understand that, provided she’s not in denial.

        Conclusion: Our species REALLY hates to think there are any limits to growth.

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        1. They really like to beat up on Malthus don’t they? Gets under their skin . And Erhlich too – they hate him with a similar passion.

          “In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich achieved infamy by publishing The Population Bomb: Population Control or Race to Oblivion?, one of the most controversial eco-books ever printed. Ehrlich has been condemned to spend eternity with Thomas Malthus, in a dungeon reserved for doom perverts. To this day, professors still use the two lads as great reasons to never take seriously anyone who asserts that there are limits to growth. We all know, of course, that humankind has no limits. We have technology!
          Richard Reese 2015

          https://transitionvoice.com/2015/01/the-population-prophet-we-all-love-to-hate/

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          1. Quite shocking when you see well educated intelligent people argue against the laws of thermodynamics or the finiteness of Earth.

            One of the main reasons I’m attracted to Varki’s MORT is that without some rational explanation for the insanity all around me I’d go crazy.

            When I’m debating someone that’s not interested in truth, I can literally see the denial shutters come down over their mind.

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            1. I just read part of your discussion. It was noble entreaty and total waste of time 😀 .
              Now it came to my mind that there are two kinds of people: these that understand/accept that there is not something like “infinite growth” and those that don’t. In case of first ones – discussion is always worthwhile. But they are scarce minority.

              Here are two things that I noticed:

              most people believe in gravity too. are they all mired in avoidance of unpleasant realities?<<
              – this is not true; most people believe that things wih mass behave as they behave because “god orders them to”
              intellectual property growth is infinite.<<
              – “intellectual property”???? what the f.ck is even this thing? Never found it in physics or biology or any other sciences. “Intellectual property” is as real as “human rights” are. Go to Somalia and talk to people about their “human rights”.

              And here is huge portion of denial from your side, Rob 😛 :
              “So I’m trying to open your mind to some new ideas, because I think you are influential and we need more people like you with an accurate understanding of what’s going on.”
              Why we need more people? Do you really believe that even if 1% of people miraculously agree with you and rest of “doomers”, it is going to change anyhing??

              People want to believe they are only and exceptional event in the whole universe and the whole universe was designed for them. It will never change (at least for great majority).

              We have walked this planet as self-aware species for last 70-80 thousand years. It is nothing in the depth of time. We will disapear soon. If it is 30 or 300 years (or even 3000) – it doesn’t matter. Nothing changes for the universe.

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              2. You’re right about our meaningless to the universe. On the other hand, its likely that similarly intelligent life will be extremely rare and we should be aware of and celebrating that fact.

                You’re also no doubt right about one of my blind spots. Others have also pointed it out. Nothing will change voluntarily because we are what we evolved to be.

                Nevertheless, when I see someone like el gato, who is clearly bright, and who is trying to influence people to make the world a better place, but is going in the wrong direction because he doesn’t understand what’s going on, I’m motivated to engage. Many people are worried and want to improve the future. If they all pushed in a useful direction maybe we could pull the probability of success up a little from the current zero.

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                1. Wow, that was a truly noble effort at education. Sorry it went nowhere.
                  I was impressed at how little people really understood the rising cost of obtaining energy (EROEI). Also interesting was the optimism bias – we will always find some new energy source (yeah! what geology and physics are they using on what planet?). Some of this I blame on Star Trek thinking – Di-lithium Crystals are right around the corner.
                  Again, my complements a heroic effort in the face of a lot of ad hominum attacks.
                  AJ

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                  1. I had the same impression 🙂 .
                    I read the part about the energy a bit later and I can understand that overshoot itself might be complex subject for the fresh-starters.
                    But I was absolutely stunned when I saw that people who claim being knowledgeable about energy defy simple facts like EROEI or finiteness of something material…

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                2. We are of course meaningless o the universe, but my comment was a bit to harsh probably.
                  The meaning is within us – it is infinitesimally small and short-lasting of course – but there are still some things we can do (putting aside discussion about free will). For you it is trying to educate others, for me it is trying to minimize suffering of other beings. So I have one child (I wouldn’t have him if I knew what I know now – although I trully love him) and for sure I will not have anothers. I am vegetarian and I try not to be to awful shit ass to others.

                  And my biggest dilema when meeting other people is – should I keep smile and chime in or should I destroy their good moods with “doomish” discussions. I hardly do the late one nowadays…

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                  1. Keep smiling Madbobul and put up a brave front especially for your child. You never know the inner psychological state of someone so best not to add to their burden. Think of it this way – if a plane is going down b/c of technical difficulties does it help if everyone knows hours in advance? Trying not to be a shit ass to others is about as noble as you can be. Good on you for that.

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              3. Intellectual property cannot grow forever – a good fact to point out to El Gato could be that discussed by Joseph Tainter regarding the diminishing returns on the patent process:

                “We looked at a database of over five million patents over the period from 1974 through 2005. In every field we looked at, the productivity of innovation is declining, and it is declining because innovation becomes more and more complex and more and more costly to achieve. This is Planck’s principle of increasing effort.”

                Also The Rise and Fall of American Growth is excellent on this subject.

                But overall I think nobody will ever get it. We’ll overshoot and collapse. Most people will blame the sinners, or God, or the jews, or the liberals will blame people for not getting vaccinated when the next wave shows up – or those opposed to vaccinations will blame the WEF for conspiring with governments to shut down the economy for the great reset. And everyone will be sure that if “they” had just done it the right way BAU would have gone on forever.

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                1. Good idea about IP, I’ll try to remember to use it next time.

                  I see diminishing returns in my computer hobby. In the early days, speeds doubled every couple years. Now we’re lucky to get a 5% improvement per year. Ditto on hard drive capacities. I suppose the good news is we’ve got all the performance and capacity we need to enjoy computers now so it doesn’t matter if improvements stop. I’ve got spare parts to keep my system going until I die.

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                2. Your point about blaming the wrong actors is very important. I tried to make it to el gato. When people have legitimate reasons to be upset but don’t understand the cause of their pain, it’s a very dangerous situation because wars and revolution become probable.

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            2. The shutters come down because there is no evolutionary advantage to seeing reality. It’s doesn’t aid in reproduction or finding food. Evolution does not have foresight – it only cares about immediate challenges.

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        2. I would say that our leaders are, maybe only subconsciously, aware of the limits of growth but their solution is to expand into space to continue growth instead of staying within our (in the future much reduced) means on earth.

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            2. How does Bezos know it won’t work? FFS WW2 wasn’t that long ago. Rationing austerity worked very bloody well. More like, ‘I can’t stay insanely wealthy when the majority are on rationing and austerity’.

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              1. Even in the 70s, some kind of rationing worked, even though it was fuel back then. I just talked today with mother about the oil crisis of 1973. She said, that it was a big shock for everyone and all people went along with not being allowed to drive. She was at university back then and just took the bike instead of the car.

                Unfortunately, everybody resumed BAU after the crisis was over.

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        3. People want to thrive – something about well-being connected to growth. I’d guess any kind of experience of thriving would involve creating a surplus. And that surplus of everything creates a larger metabolism of the system, requiring yet more surplus to maintain and feel like thriving. Seems so Sisyphean, but alas here we are.

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          1. Yes, the behavior encoded by genes in all life is probably biased to surplus, but the human desire for surplus differs from other life.

            Almost everyone that wants growth does not understand the real reason they want growth. They think the reason growth is good is that tomorrow will be a little better than today.

            The real reason is that with growth, TODAY is much more plentiful, because with growth we can consume much more than we produce through the magic of credit, and credit needs economic growth to be plentiful.

            The best example is a young person today can save 5% of the value of a home and then enjoy 100% of the home through the magic of a mortgage. Mortgages will be scarce or unavailable in a contracting economy. Most young people will probably live with their parents until their parents die like we did before exploiting fossil energy.

            Why We Want Growth, Why We Can’t Have It, and What This Means

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            1. I’m sure you’re right – somewhere in Vorki there is a difference that humans have a consciousness of futurity that is both absent in other critters, and also entails an awareness of mortality, therefore denial, and an attentional bias toward an imagined future.

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        1. A misunderstanding of energy is at the core of much of our incorrect thinking about reality.

          Given that energy is THE most important thing in our economy, it’s remarkable that energy is not taught in grade school and most university curriculums. Neither is how we create our claims on energy, money.

          Every person on the planet wants more money, and less than 1% understand how money works.

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          1. A thought on denial: Marx noted that for capitalism to be profitable some factor of production had to be “discounted.” He thought this was labor. I think it’s energy.

            http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/discounting-in-attribution/

            Discounting is related to denial, I suppose. It’s part of the explanatory process. People under-attribute energy as a causal factor (to say the least) and grossly overattribute human intention, particularly moral intentions.

            I can see discounting and attribution at work in your conversation with El Gato. Readers discounted the possibility that you were sincere, and instead attributed other motivations to you. The way this generally goes is that you make someone feel defensive, then they attribute to you that your intent is what is causing the feeling of defensiveness. This usually quickly morphs into accusations that the other person is being stubborn or defensive (projection). All for the protection and aggrandizement of the ego.

            I used to run a blog on psychoanalyses, then took it down when I said all I had to say.

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            1. Interesting. Perhaps Marx was right because labor is energy.

              I might expand your hypothesis on discounting of energy to include all natural resources, although maybe you’re right because other resources are implicit with energy.

              Of course Tesla is all about innovation and green energy and has nothing to do with mines digging up shit with diesel machines made from steel produced with coal.

              You’re understanding of what goes on in another brain is much more sophisticated and nuanced than mine. I just see denial of reality.

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    1. I have seen a few snippets of Joe Rogan talking with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. I’ve never seen anyone squirm in a conversation like Gupta. Joe Rogan didn´t let him off the hook. I did not have a high oppinion of Rogan before, but I was thoroughly impressed, how he trapped Gupta in a corner, where he could not escape without losing his face.

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  34. The theme of friend Panopticon’s roundup of economic news today is food and energy.

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2021/10/15/15th-october-2021-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/

    I’m watching staples in the grocery store like a hawk. The combination of energy shortages, supply chain breakdowns, and the climate shifting a gear has got to impact food in a big way soon.

    I’m not seeing big increases in prices yet, except for beef and some fats. What are you seeing?

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    1. I’ve seen it mostly in meats and fresh produce, less so in processed foods. I’ve been adding to my canned foods. I used to buy staples from augason farms in #10 cans – last I checked most of my list (rice and beans etc.) were unobtainable. I like to get the #10 air sealed cans of stuff we use regularly and rotate them through.

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      1. Thanks. I considered #10 cans but I couldn’t find affordable sources in Canada. I decided to go with 5 gallon pails and mylar bags.
        I’ve noticed that the quality of imported produce from California is down. Local produce is still good.

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  39. https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-hardest-landing.html

    …the Chinese government just announced today that they will not be bailing out Evergrande, because it’s a “unique” situation. They see no risk of contagion and therefore they have conveniently ignored what is now officially the largest property asset bubble in human history.

    “According to Rushi Advanced Institute of Finance, condominium prices in the southern city of Shenzhen are now 57 times the average annual income, and 55 times that of income in Beijing. Even at the height of Japan’s bubble economy in 1990, Tokyo condos were 18 times the average annual income”

    Picture a middle class family in the U.S. with household income of $80k per year. At 55x they would be buying a home worth $4.5 million on leverage. You get the idea.

    The other crazy statistic is the fact that real estate/property development is 25% of China’s GDP. In the U.S., it’s 6% of GDP. So imagine the magnitude of dislocation if the Politburo is wrong in not attempting to stop Evergrande from imploding.

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    1. I still wonder why nobody has bought this place:

      https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/172-Morris-Turk-Rd-Hankins-NY-12741/2070477824_zpid/

      What a nice hideaway, in upstate New York – when it comes time to head for the hills, the perfect place in the hills to head to. I’d rather live here than in a half-million-dollar condo in Surfside, Florida, in a high-rise building shoddily constructed for drug-cartel money laundering. No mortgage needed – an affordable cash purchase.

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    2. IF Mac10 is right we are in for one hell of a ride down. Many of us will be impoverished and many will starve. I wonder if he actually thinks we will collapse completely or if some bottom is there? I personally don’t mind collapse – sooner or later we will all be back to 1750 (if we are lucky); if we are unlucky we will most all be dead and those remaining will be back at 15,000 BCE. Even that might be lucky because we might not have a livable climate anymore. We, who are living at the peak of industrial civilization have quite a view of the universe – catch the view and enjoy it before it is gone.
      AJ

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      2. I used to think we would “go back” to 1750. I don’t think so anymore because the environment is trashed. We don’t have the kind of resources available that they did back then

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            1. If we don´t have the fossil fuels for powering our society anymore, we should have a lot of people looking for work, since their old jobs aren´t feasible anymore. They could then work again in agriculture. At least, permaculture claims to have higher yields per m2 than industrial agriculture but you have to put in more human work. Is this feasible or wishful thinking?

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              1. A much larger percentage of the populaiton will be required to work in agriculture as fossil energy depletes. I don’t think Permaculture’s yield claims are realistic although they do have some good ideas. We can grow food with less energy and capital by substituting labor, and we can grow food with less harmful chemicals. Feeding 8 billion without nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas will probably be impossible. Suggest you read the Alchemy of Air for the history of the Haber Bosch process and how close we came to starvation as natural sources of fertilizer were running out. Phosphorous without diesel to mine and transport it will also be a big problem for agriculture.

                book review: The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager

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                1. Thank you for the book recommendation. I added it to my reading list. I just read somewhere on the internet about the Haber-Bosch process that it enabled us to double our population due to increased agricultural yields. It will be interesting to see how we transition back to a society with a much larger part of the population working in agriculture. At least we have enough useless elites who we could repurpose to become farmers, not sure whether they would like it.

                  Peak Phosphorus seems also to be a problem that could haunt us in the future. I just looked into it very briefly, but basically Morocco seems to be the only country in the world left with large reserves. According to Wikipedia, the depletion of phosphorus reserves could become a problem within the next 50-100 years. The problem would become even worse, if we cannot even extract the known reservers economically due to declining fossil fuels.

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                  1. Haber Bosch is the most important invention most people have never heard of. About 50% of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies originated from a Haber Bosch factory. When Nixon opened up trade with China, the very first thing they bought from the West was Haber Bosch technology so they could better feed their people.

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          2. Bill McKibben suggested some years back that we should rename the Earth because humans have changed it so fundamentally. He proposed Eaarth but settled on Earth 2.0. I was partial to Earth-redux. Yeah Earth 2.0 is not Earth of 1750. Of course living systems are never in equilibrium.

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  40. Nice recap of our energy predicament by Steve St. Angelo today. Kudos to him for dropping his promotion of that secret sauce energy solution developed by a friend.

    St. Angelo now says the only rational path forward is planned degrowth.

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    1. Yes-very good recap although I’m still not convinced about holding precious metals.
      There’s a blockbuster post by the very impressive Antonio Turiel on the latest IEA report-World Energy Outlook 2021 trying to see the truth in what he says, by usual standards, is a surprisingly short report
      https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2021/10/world-energy-outlook-2021-aqui-tienen.html
      In Spanish but some of the sarcastic humour survives the translator.
      The post is very information dense covering a lot of ground but basically the curtain is being pulled back on what he thinks is going to be the narrative to cover what happens as we go down what Steve St Angelo calls the Energy Cliff.
      As Antonio Turiel says “No Hay Tiempo.”

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        1. Hi Rob,

          I might be interesting to feature this Turiel’s post on the IEA report-World Energy Outlook 2021 in further comments or a separate post. There is a lot there, and a lot to read between the lines in the IEA report. My read between the lines read: “They” know. They know we are facing the energy cliff. This IEA report is drafted to support a narrative of demand for fossil fuels declining through a voluntary move to renewables, rather than involuntary energy decline and degrowth through the depletion of fossil fuels. So how much of the rest of the narrative is controlled or corrupted? My belief is their ability to control the narrative is limited, and things are now getting way out of control.

          I extracted some key notes from Turiel’s post, can send them if you want, but the key point is this…. “We are also reminded that without any additional investment, oil production from existing fields would fall at a rate of 8-9% per year…… at a rate of 9% per year, production without new investment could fall by around 40% after 5 years.”

          I don’t know how to post up a chart in comments, but the figure 6.18 might be worth posting.

          As you say, buckle up.

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          2. Yes I think they (whoever that is) have known for a long time-probably since 1973. They just didn’t know what to do about it -now they possibly think they have the answer. They are ,of course, wrong. Unwinding dissipative systems in an orderly fashion is probably impossible.
            We are now in the observing stage- nothing anyone from the highest to the lowest can do about it-IMO

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      2. Thanks for mentioning the post by Antonio Turiel – very impressive indeed, and it is shocking to see the IEA’s bizarre and grotesque attempts of camouflaging the unfolding situation. This is more than denial, this is fantasizing and creating a “reality distortion field”.

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        1. Agree, denial is not a strong enough word to describe this year’s IEA World Energy Outlook report. Fairy Tale is more apt.

          Expected annual oil depletion rate has increased from 5% 11 years ago to 9% today.

          Our “leaders” are going to try to pitch the fossil energy decline as a planned action in response to climate change, and any problems will be blamed on not investing enough in “clean” energy.

          We’re going to achieve Net Zero 2050, but not by choice.

          We can expect a fast collapse of modern civilization.

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  41. Lie or noble lie to save lives?

    If a noble lie you would expect leaders to also:
    – encourage weight loss
    – ensure adequate vitamin D
    – research & support promising early treatment protocols
    – debate rather than censure conflicting evidence
    – punish rather than reward those responsible

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  42. Got my first vax yesterday (Pfizer). No issues apart from a sore arm. Way less pain than I had with the tetanus injection

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      1. Well if there’s literally anything in between you and the tower you won’t get the signal anyway LOL! 5G is pretty much useless. #diminishingreturns

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    1. Hahahahhhhh. Well done, Sabine! I’ve been waiting for someone of her intellectual and scientific prowess to bring the sledgehammer down on this technofantasy nonsense. Maybe others have already done this, but I particularly enjoy Sabine’s blend of stone cold rationality and sarcasm.

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        1. I always thought that it is absurd to colonize such a hostile environment. Why don´t we start with the most hostile places on earth like the pole caps? Maybe we will do that anyways due to the changing climate.

          I am wondering how such an intelligent person as Elon Musk could be serious about Mars being our exit strategy if we f… up our home planet.

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  46. The human species’ genetic denial of unpleasant realities on full display…

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Much-Oil-Can-OPEC-Realistically-Add.html

    Our ability to increase oil production is low.

    Notice how they spin this as a consequence of choosing to underinvest.

    If incomes are insufficient to afford higher energy prices, because high energy prices are suppressing incomes, because low cost energy reserves are depleted, and debt is maxed out, then underinvestment in energy is not a choice.

    Planned degrowth vs. a chaotic collapse is a choice.

    But only if we first acknowledge our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

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  48. El gato malo reviewed new UK data today which supports his Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) hypothesis.

    Rate of cases down 30% from a year ago. CFR up 3x since June.

    getting 50% protection from a tripling in virulence caused by the vaccines is still a net loser for the vaccinated. and it’s savage for the unvaccinated. everyone loses. and this evolution is ongoing.

    establishing what is going on here should be the all hands on deck mission of global public health right now.

    none of us want to be living in the world where we leaky-vaxxed ourselves into a second pandemic by reversing the evolution of one that was about to go endemic and harmless.

    that’s a terrible place to be.

    but if that IS where we are, we need to know, and we need to know right now.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/is-this-the-smoking-gun-for-leaky

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    1. I keep searching for a rational reason for the obsession with 100% vaccination, other than assuming every health official in every country of the world is corrupt, because that seems improbable.

      What if they’re aware of the Vaccine Mediated Evolution (VME) trend and know that their mistake of vaccinating more than the high risk with a leaky vaccine will kill many more unvaccinated than vaccinated?

      They can’t disclose the real reason for the push for 100% because they would lose their credibility and jobs.

      This would also explain why they’re so willing to accept possible long term vaccine side effects in low risk children.

      It’s analogous to continuing to print money long after it no longer provides a net benefit, because you know if you stop many will be harmed on your watch, and if you continue, many more may be harmed in the future, but it will be on someone else’s watch, and maybe someone will think of something by then.

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      1. I think it also gives them a political out. If they get everyone vaccinated they’ve done everything they can to stop the virus. Lockdowns aren’t working as well anymore. But they can’t just stop lockdowns with no other plan

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      2. One thought I had is that people broadly embraced the logic of masks as in “I wear a mask to protect you, while you wear a mask to protect me.” There is something to that logic in understanding how transmission works (especially when COVID was considered a droplet spread pathogen). Whether masks work or not I think people have falsely applied that logic to vaccines. It’s irrational and if I’m right has more to do with a social momentum and narratives about responsibility than about understanding science.

        It’s all part of shifting goal-posts, which surprised me. I think “slowing the spread” was a good idea. Unfortunately the part people missed is that everybody else needs to get sick gradually to develop natural immunity. Then came the notions of COVID-0 and 100% vaccinations.

        Even if vaccines worked as sterilizing that wasn’t a realistic goal. Hell, even polio still exists in some places. And the virus has a permanent reservoir in animals. It’s never going away – it will be endemic and eventually less lethal and it seems like only risk and no reward in pushing vaccination at this point (beyond folks at high risk.)

        My wife, and a close friend, both have health conditions putting them at risk. So I understand the interest in high risk individuals wanting vaccines and boosters. I’ve also worked in hospitals before which typically require employees and contractors to have a variety of vaccinations which most people don’t get (different HEP strains, etc.), and tests for TB and whatnot. This also makes sense to me if we’re talking about sterilizing vaccines. If I’m going to be walking around a hospital in touch with vulnerable populations it’s reasonable to expect this kind of thing.

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        1. I like your hypothesis.

          My hypothesis charitably assumes health care professionals in aggregate are intelligent and aware, but like most evolved animals, prioritize the short term over the long term.

          Your hypothesis assumes health care professionals in aggregate are not aware or intelligent, preferring to default to the consensus of their leaders. This is consistent with several huge and still persistent errors of their profession such as ignoring obvious harms from refined carbohydrates, and fantasying harms from cholesterol and animal fat.

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          1. From my personal experience as a former pharmaceutical consultant, I can say that most of the physicians are not interested at all in how the prescibed medication is working. I tried to convince them with study results, but most of them did not care and maybe even did not understand the study results at all. I would say that they easily succumb to political pressure (or consensus of their leaders which are often in close contact to politicians) with their default attitude. This seems to be the case with Covid. Our primary care physician is so afraid of unvaccinated people that my mother in law could not get her sickness certificate when she had a mild cold. I had to get it handed over to me outside of the doctor´s office.

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          2. Part of my thinking is informed by my professional experience. Everyone has such a niche and narrow focus. I design sustainable commercial buildings as a large part of my practice. The sector is very focused on global warming. My professional association has released statements about it – but I’ve never seen an article or symposium on energy scarcity, overshoot or related issues. Part of the problem is that professionals have atomized knowledge and can be totally blind to closely related knowledge.

            Of course architects/engineers are unlikely to tell clients they should stop building, build smaller structures, etc. The narrative of build new, spend more per s.f. to reduce energy, and pay for complicated mechanical systems run on electricity has obvious financial appeal. And then denial kicks in when I mention neither the local grid nor the regional energy infrastructure can support this plan.

            One Dr. I talked with recently is a close friend of the family. He was expressing disdain over lack of vaccination popularity. He’s an allergist. I told him that COVID-0 was never a realistic goal, even if the vaccines were sterilizing, as the virus mutates. I said there is no reasonable window of time during which 100% of the global population could be vaccinated faster than variants could arise – and countries can’t do it on their own because they can’t close their borders to trade. His rejoinder was along the lines that “Yes, but the vaccines lower viral load making the vaccinated less infectious.” I don’t know if this is or was ever the case in reality, or even the official logic, but it totally ignored my points.

            One unfortunate side effect of being intelligent is that it can make you better at denial/rationalizing support for false conclusions. Intelligence and sincerity don’t offer much protection from cult membership, for instance.

            Another part of the problem is when people become morally and politically attached to something as being “good / bad” they are now fighting to support both their ego and their group identity. The idea of accepting excess death from COVID is toxic and denial inducing because of the politicization (Some common stupid ideas: All good people should do whatever they can to reduce excess death. Vaccines have no risk, so opposers must be stupid, irrational and selfish – not just concerned or afraid.) I think being skeptical and having a low need to be seen as morally good is salubrious to dealing with reality.

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            1. theblondbeast

              “Intelligence and sincerity don’t offer much protection from cult membership, for instance.”

              What do you think about el gato malo saying that Rob has fallen prey to a “doomsday cult”?

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              1. I think El Gato was dismissive and uncharitable, and seems politically committed against the idea of limits. He hits all the right points about past failures of these predictions. And unfortunately there is a long list of catastrophisation. This is one good reason to doubt serious claims about limits (But please note I’m just saying I understand why people would doubt, not that I agree with those doubts.). Just because I find one hypothesis persuasive doesn’t mean I have to claim that there is no evidence which would more support another hypothesis.

                Some honesty about the doom-o-sphere: There is a psychological appeal to having esoteric knowledge. Those who are “collapse aware” share all the foibles of other human beings. It’s also accurate to say that by engaging in activities like online communities we are getting some of the same payoffs as other types of group-think. This is all too human.

                For this reason I think it’s best to try and avoid moralizing the opposition, and try to avoid grandiosity.

                There has always been some group (religious or otherwise) predicting the end of civilization. Then again, every past civilization has collapsed. A full-picture view has to incorporate both of these facts, and I think Rob’s (and Varki’s) take on denial is valuable here. I came accross Rob’s work through reading and researching Becker’s Denial of Death.

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                1. Thank you for your insights and thoughtful answer. I have been meaning to read Becker for ages. I listened to a podcast of Lex Fridman interviewing Sheldon Solomon, co-author of “The Worm at the Core” and developer of Terror Mgmt Theory mention how influential Becker was on his thinking. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKyNxfyWbo

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                1. There is a famous aphorism by Kurt Tucholsky, which goes in this direction:

                  “Im übrigen gilt ja hier derjenige, der auf den Schmutz hinweist, für viel gefährlicher als der, der den Schmutz macht.”

                  Translated to English:
                  “By the way, the one who points out the dirt is considered much more dangerous than the one who does the dirt.”

                  If you look closely, you see this pattern very often in our society. A lot of problems are swept under the rug by discrediting the people, that point at the problems.

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                  1. Good one. Peak oil is particularly dirty for most people.

                    Neighbors and friends get visibly uncomfortable when I try to discuss it with them, as do truth seeking intellects like el gato malo.

                    Given how EVERYTHING most people value in modern civilization depends on oil, it is AMAZING how little we discuss its finiteness and depletion. That’s the main reason I started writing about Varki’s MORT theory which explains our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

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            2. Thanks, good points.

              I nevertheless do not respect a profession that claims to be concerned about people dying from covid, and then not only does not embrace, but fights against vitamin D, weight loss, natural immunity, and early treatment as complements to vaccines, obscures harms from side effects, and ignores long term risks from VME. Why isn’t the 10% or 20% of the profession not captured by group think speaking out? They’re probably not evil. Are they all idiots? WTF is going on? It makes me crazy.

              A friend made a very large investment in making their home green. The complexity of the system is staggering. Solar water preheat, integrated with a geothermal heat pump, and electric backup, feeding one system for in-floor hot water heating, and another for domestic hot water. There are many electronic control systems, pumps, vales, etc. all made in China. Also a large grid-tied PV system that does not provide any power when the grid is down, or when it is cold and dark, like in the winter. I’m thinking to myself, it would be much more green and resilient to build a smaller home with a wood stove.

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              1. I share your frustrations. I’d like to predict that if things hold together for a few years there will be a massive loss of faith and confidence in our institutions. I certainly have lost all respect for the surgeon general, CDC, FDA, WHO, etc.

                I’ve had a general mistrust of medicine for some time. There are some areas which seem to be very effective, and then a whole lot of modern peripheral stuff which is over-complexified and of dubious value, even harmful.

                Before 2019 I didn’t trust big Pharma – and I’m shocked now at how many forgot the sordid track record of the opiate age. Nobody likes to hear “I believe drug companies have continued their universal track record of profit seeking dishonesty and incompetence.”

                But again, being honest – I don’t use my professional career to beat the drum on collapse. I justify this in a number of ways, some of which I admit are cynical. I cash checks for buildings I sincerely believe shouldn’t be built. I perform life-cycle cost analysis on a 30 year time horizon which I don’t really think is going to happen. The simplest justification is “I could be wrong, it’s not my money after all. And everyone has to make their own decision.” If I really spent my time talking about collapse people would think I’m crazy and I’d soon be unemployed and socially isolated – so it is these fears which guide my behavior in part. I assume many in the medical profession might be in similar situations. I understand there is a great deal of pressure to follow official guidelines, too – as acting on your own opens you to liability. In my case, I have professional/legal codes of ethics I’m signed up to which require me to have stewardship of my clients money.

                Where does the Hippocratic oath start, and the practical requirements of following the official standard practice end? I wish more would speak out, and am galvanized by how many are if you get off main stream sources of news. In fairness, one has to be really sure of oneself to take these kinds of risks.

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                1. I’ve started reading the books of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. He does a superb job of explaining the methods used by the pharmaceutical industry to influence a desired outcome. They don’t lie, but they distort data in a manner that is very effective at persuasion unless you are expert at statistical analysis and critical thinking.

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                  1. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll add to the read list. After you introduce me to Whitney Webb I decided to read up, at least, on the declassified CIA history. https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-of-Ashes-Tim-Weiner-audiobook/dp/B000TD15NE/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=history+of+the+cia&qid=1634667710&sr=8-2

                    I haven’t read the book yet, but here is my predictions:

                    To conspiracy theorist aficionados I think a certain kind of logic goes “If this is what’s declassified, it must be the tip of the iceburg.” And they would expect to find more and larger successful conspiracies.

                    In my mind I go to “I don’t doubt that clandestine interests may WANT to accomplish intricate conspiracies, I just predict to find a history of bungled, hubristic ad-hoc activities lacking any coherent ends, with a history of changing goals and failure.”

                    Time to test my hypothesis!

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                    1. Thanks, someone else also recently introduced me to Dr. Kendrick and I’m really impressed.

                      I just finished his book The Great Cholesterol Con. It’s a great primer on how pharmaceutical companies deceive the medical profession (and citizens) without breaking the law.

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              2. Oh, and by the way – I’ve seen you comment on nutrition related issues. I can heartily recommend Diet Cults, by Matt Firzgerald on the topic.

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  49. This is from a german blog, deepl translated:
    https://limitstogrowth.de/2021/10/07/es-ist-alles-gesagt/#comment-263

    M. Püschel says:
    October 17, 2021 at 3:53 pm
    It is not a decline of civilization, but its normalization.
    Two and a half trillion barrels of oil have been burned in the last 150 years, if gas and coal are converted to oil. That’s another 750 billion people converted to human labor, working through from age 15 to age 70. Without vacation, or holidays. A crazy energy orgy, and the essential part of it took place in the last 50 years. There are supposed to be people who think that was normal.
    Well, that’s over now.
    We are now entering the electrical middle ages, or have already done so to some extent, if I look at the consensus that has been decreed. I’m pretty sure that the elites will win, and the masses will let themselves be put to sleep almost silently in Germany. There will be much more resistance from our neighbors in Italy and France, but he will fail if he doesn’t manage to get enough military potential on his side, which I assume he will.
    When that happens, it will be exciting again, because then the elites will fight each other. That will be the time to do some justice, but not too much of it.
    People like Zuckerberg will not make it either, because they have made themselves vulnerable. Their social network censorship orgies will come back like a boomerang, and they will be charged with anti-democracy blah blah and expropriated. They’re just too rich not to do that.
    But who am I telling – I’m sure everyone here has read the Ugo Bardi blog.
    The new feudal system with digital mass control will ultimately not last long. Maybe a hundred years, but hardly longer, because it depends on the availability of digital devices.

    For the “dropouts”, or better “switchers” among you, I have a simple tip: do something with horses 🙂 That has a future. And somehow that’s the good news.
    The future will be a pony farm.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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    2. Thanks, el mar. I translated the comments (using the right click tool “Translate to English” in my browser) and was impressed by the clarity and utility of some of them. My favorite comments, both from Patrick, are:

      “Therefore, the question remains: where do you want to go?
      Switzerland and Austria are no better either, there are few places where it is better. Sweden is an exception.

      Let’s see how it is: we won’t be able to change anything about the big game.
      There is no safe space anywhere.
      Where you know your way around, where you have roots, where you have connections… I think that there he will still have the best chance of getting by with very limited resources.”

      and

      “In the end, we will all bite the grass anyway!”

      How very true. And I must say I often enjoy translated text (also, people writing in their non-native language) more than the original, if for no other reason than the unexpected vocabularic and syntactical gems that it produces. I’ll leave with this translated bit of comment from H.C. in the same thread, for some comedic relief:

      “The blog here is a pure hobby – like my other. I “afford it” because it is valves for me to write my head empty of all the thoughts. Health care? Plaster gluing is everywhere. And in DE you are a milking cow. Emergency medicine o.k. – the rest, with a few very laudable exceptions, is often for the bin.”

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  50. Gail Tverberg today makes the case that we have reached the end of our ability to increase complexity to support and cope with the high energy prices now required by energy producers to extract from their depleted reserves.

    Tverberg is one of the best of a vanishingly small number of thinkers doing independent analysis on THE most important short term problems we face: the end of economic growth and the consequences of overshoot due to energy depletion.

    It’s a tragedy that she permits so many crazy people to hang out in the comments section of her otherwise superb blog. A newcomer to the topic of peak oil, after taking a look at the comments section with its claims of a global conspiracy to depopulate the planet and faked moon landings, would conclude that peak oilers are wack jobs and therefore energy depletion is nothing to worry about since none of our “important” people talk about it.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/10/18/spike-in-energy-prices-suggests-that-sharp-changes-are-ahead/

    European economists should have told European citizens, “There is no way you can get along using renewables alone for many, many years. Treat the countries that are exporting fossil fuels to you very well. Sign long term contracts with them. If they want to use a new pipeline, raise no objection. Your bargaining power is very low.” Instead, European economists talked about saving the planet from carbon dioxide. It is an interesting idea, but the sad truth is that if Europe takes itself out of the contest for energy imports, it mostly leaves more fossil fuels for exporters to sell to others.

    China stands out as well, as the world’s largest consumer of energy, and as the world’s largest importer of oil, coal and natural gas. It is already encountering electricity shortages that are leading to rolling blackouts. In fact, rolling blackouts in China started almost a year ago in late 2020. China is, of course, a major exporter of goods to the rest of the world. If China has major energy problems, the rest of the world will no longer be able to count on China’s exports. Lack of China’s exports, by itself, could be a huge problem for the rest of the world.

    I could continue speculating on the changes ahead. The basic problem, as I see it, is that we have reached limits on oil, coal and natural gas extraction, pretty much simultaneously. The limits are really complexity limits. The renewables that we have today aren’t able to save us, regardless of what the models of Mark Jacobson and others might say.

    In the next few years, I am afraid that we will find out how collapse actually proceeds in a very interconnected world economy.

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    1. I discovered Gail´s blog a few months ago. The content is always excellent but as you said the comments section is full of crazy people. Funnily, the really crazy ones post stuff that is only marginaly related to the content of the article. I agree that this is detrimental to convince people of the article concent if you only have these crazy comments below instead of a fruitful discussion.

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      1. Sometimes it’s fun to visit the circus. Gail is an indulgent ringmaster and rarely takes out the whip. Enjoy the magic and thrills & don’t take take it too seriously. Yes, at times the comments section has a carnival atmosphere and there is always the danger some clown will throw a custard pie in your face if you’re not careful.

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        1. I get your point, but if you’d like a larger portion of the population to understand what’s going on so that we don’t, for example, start a war by blaming an innocent actor, then a circus of clowns is a bad idea.

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          1. Sometimes I feel sincere people end up as cannon fodder so might as well have a laugh. Admittedly the sideshow detracts from the seriousness of the conversation. Maybe we could elevate the tone by stuffing Fast Eddy in a cannonball and have Norm light the fuse.

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              1. I credit Fast Eddy with making me aware of the danger of spent fuel ponds. For that, I give him a pass on his more extreme theories. He also has appears to have learned some sobering lessons about the difficulties of homesteading/prepping. As one who is trying these things myself I find value in that. I also think he’s funny. That said I also see why some may not want to have him around.

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            2. …stuff him in a cannon would be more technically accurate.

              Step Right Up! The World’s Largest, Grandest, Best Amusement. It will blow you away! Dare Devil Fast Eddy, the Human Cannonball. The man who knows no fear and thinks he’s a God. Disregarding life and limb in his breathless plunge through the air. Come and witness a living God shot through space.

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          2. I remain split on this – Have you considered the possibility that if broad awareness of LTG were truly believed by governments that it wouldn’t start a war based on deciding to eliminate competition, reduce population and seize resources?

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            1. I have thought about that. I can also imagine a citizen living in LA that can’t get gas for their car saying “god dammit, we should use our nukes”. Every good path is blocked by something. That’s why I focus on awareness of genetic denial, but that’s also blocked by denial of denial. It’s a clusterfuck.

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            2. Are you asking that question tongue-in-cheek? I mean c’mon man “eliminating competition, reducing population and seizing resources” IS the story of man writ large. Sure there have been interludes of relative peace, primarily owing to the FF age & I’m sure S.Pinker might object by invoking the better Angles of our nature, but lethal violence and conflict is in out DNA. Humans are highly territorial, we are biologically and genetically triggered for violence. If we want to survive we had better learn, as Peter Watts said “to act unnatural.” A snowball’s chance in hell of happening if you ask me.

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    2. Gail has often noted “we need a variety of viewpoints.” Her own opinion about conspiracies I could generally characterize as skeptical (i.e. she points toward self-organizing and emergent behaviors in a complex adaptive system). However – I’d harken back to our prior comments about conspiracy theories that I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve been overly skeptical of some issues. I personally agree with Gail’s sense that results are emergent and not directly the result of intentional actors. I balance that against the fact that there are indeed powerful global actors with their own agendas. I think they are in denial and can’t actually accomplish any of their goals, though it may eventually look like it. Finally, I think we’d better get used to being surrounded by conspiracy thinking – as collapse proceeds apace I think almost everyone alive will attribute it to the purposeful actions of some group or another.

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      1. Yes, I fear you’re right about the future having less rational thinking. And I expect a lot more religion.

        I get the value of diverse opinions, but I do wish Gail would make a distinction between faked moon landings and speculating that something evil is afoot because supporters of covid vaccines fight to prevent the complementary use of vitamin D, early treatment, and natural immunity.

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        2. Yes, Rob, The future will have lots of less rational thinking and that is my greatest short term fear.
          Tim Watkins today (https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/10/20/yet-another-tory-wealth-transfer/) ended his post with my greatest fear:
          “As happened with Brexit and Donald Trump, if green and left-leaning parties refuse to acknowledge the reality of Tory eco-austerity, then sooner or later a populist right wing party will come to power on a ticket to Make Energy Cheap Again. And if we are not careful, all of those people who screamed “fascist” at anyone who considered voting for Brexit or Trump may well get to see what a real fascist party looks like. ”
          I have argued with many people that Trump was not a fascist in the Hitler sense – he was too self-centered and narcissistic. Hitler had a genius for motivating people to do what he needed done to advance his agenda (which was not all about him all the time – in a narcissistic way). So, we here in the U.S. have to worry about fascists on both the right and left coming to power.
          AJ

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          1. I agree with you. That’s a very probable scenario to worry about.

            My distilled version of what happened in Germany is that the middle class lost most of their wealth when the currency was debased to pay reparations. They were VERY angry and sought someone to blame. Hitler fulfilled their passions.

            That’s why I think it’s a very bad idea that most governments are printing money to extend and pretend, rather than telling citizens to make do with less, along with taking aggressive steps to reduce the wealth gap between rich and poor so keep social unrest under control.

            It would be much wiser to ratchet down than crash down.

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        3. Interesting point you make about the future being less rational. Is theft and predation irrational if it means feeding your young children and ensuring survival of your genes? I think what you’re saying is that what we want and value will change in a world of extreme deprivation and how we act (not necessarily according to norms of fairness and reciprocity) will change (for the worse) and it could get ugly. Hobbes said people prefer to follow the Golden Rule but under difficult circumstances -haha extreme competition, they will pursue their narrow self interest at the expense of the greater good. My hope, possibly naive, is that as social creatures we will cooperate and help one another.

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          1. I think the odds of us helping each other will improve if we understand the reality that energy depletion is to blame for our hardship rather than denying reality and blaming members of the opposing political party.

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  51. Ilargi recaps the insanity today.

    The case is strong against our leaders even without mentioning VME.

    https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2021/10/mistakes/

    Just this morning, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechia, UK and New Zealand announced record or near-record numbers of positive Covid numbers and/or deaths. Yes, here we go again. Sadly, all of it is completely preventable, and all of us choose to not prevent it, because most have never been told this. Once again, an overview.

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    1. I’m not familiar with Swiss construction but I know in the US many commercial buildings require air conditioning 24/7/365 to be inhabitable, some even in winter, based on how they are constructed. If for no other reason IT infrastructure can be damaged in short order without AC. Glad to see someone is planning anyway! Leave it to the Swiss!

      Bans on air conditioning in general seem sensible to me in many areas and building types as a permanent feature of degrowth – the challenges with even this small step are pretty onerous under democratic denial and are a window into why I fear we’ll just collapse instead: (1) Entire regions become almost uninhabitable, (2) Collapse of the property market and economy, (3) Acceptance of excess death of the elderly and those with certain health conditions, (4) collapse of pensions relying on REIT’s, (4) permanent collapse of commercial property sector as most existing buildings in metro areas are uninhabitable without air conditioning, (5) permanent work-from-home for most office work, (6) Many industrial processes have not been designed to work without air conditioning for any heat generating process, (7) some manufacturing such as SC’s cannot physically be done without tight climate control. That extends to most labs and medical care.

      Just off the top of my head. At a minimum perhaps building codes should prohibit air conditioning. Individuals who care should be opting out. But who am I to judge – I went without AC my adult life as a bachelor but caved when I got married. We use it very little – yet, I struggle to get my wife to use rags for cleaning instead of disposable paper towels.

      The best purchase I ever made: https://www.quick-loop.com/

      Good for the prepper as you’ll never need disposable cleaning products or mop heads and can use old t-shirts.

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      1. Your scenario of what fails with the loss of air conditioning is an excellent example of how everything is connected in our modern world.

        We had a very unusual and severe heat wave this summer. I survived nicely with a 20 watt fan. I’ve got an identical spare fan in storage.

        I like the idea of the Quick Loop mop. Others must agree, they’re out of stock! My floor area is very small so my prepper cleaning plan is a bucket of water and a cloth on my knees.

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    1. Thank you, very good.

      What I think Makarieva’s saying is that we need healthy forests to retain a climate compatible with civilization.

      The situation is actually much worse than she appears to be aware of. Forests are not only in decline because of human logging and agriculture. Trees worldwide are also sick and dying due to a rising concentration of ground level ozone, which is a byproduct of most industrial combustion processes, and therefore there is no solution, other than deindustrialization.

      My friend Gail Zawacki has single handedly researched and championed this important issue that few talk about.

      Not the Trees Too Damn It!: On Gail Zawacki

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      1. Hi Rob

        I don’t discount the damage from ground level ozone, but I have thought the damage to trees could be from multiple issues. Our industrial civilization has a massive impact to ecosystems. Just a few notes on some of those changes and impacts to trees.

        Rapid global average land temperature increase from circa 1970. We are now warming at 0.15-0.20°C per decade.
        As a result, you get
        – rapid migration of ecosystem habitation zones northward, and upwards – from higher high temperatures, higher low temperatures with changes in dew point times seasonally
        – Changes in seasonal weather patterns
        – Probably changes in ground level UV radiation (higher) for atmospheric Ozone loss (due to warming and atmosphere changes)

        some other impacts on trees from industrial civilization:

        -Interference from light pollution, especially since the advent of LED lights, on tree phenology
        -Other forms of pollution from industrial civilization in general, including mercury (coal burning), general air pollution in urban areas, chemicals in streams and soils
        -insect declines, other changes in ecosystems trophic cascades upon which trees might be dependent in unknown ways

        On the topic of Turiel’s post, I have been busy, will try to get something over to you tomorrow. Been busy prepping a little big…but only for supply chain disruptions. If we got a rapid collapse – I don’t see preparing for that, I will go down with the ship.

        Regards

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        1. You’re correct that there are other factors harming trees. The experts think climate and drought are the major causes. Gail Zawacki believes the evidence points to ozone as the most important factor because trees are also unhealthy in regions without drought.

          I used to think Zawacki was crazy. That changed when I started paying attention to tree health where I live and hike.

          No rush on Turiel, I’m busy too.

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  55. Crickets from Kevin Anderson, one of the few good climate scientists.

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      1. I read the paper. Not entirely clear on their methodology for assigning consumption based on income. I buy the top 10% conclusion since it includes most of western civilization. I’m skeptical of the 1% claim. It looks like overwhelmingly this is associated with transport – air travel for the 1% and land travel for the 10%. They also assign consumption to importers, not exporters.

        It’s been pointed out elsewhere that a billionaire does not consume 1000 times more than a millionaire.

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    2. Must be he’s hung up on having friends, job and getting invited to cocktail parties. How silly of him. Unfortunately those things become more dear if we feel things are going to the dogs.

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  57. A fresh, intelligent, clean sheet, big picture review of vaccine efficacy vs. risk. I remain impressed with el gato malo’s productivity and clarity of thought. How is it possible that a guy working part time for free can outperform thousands of highly paid government officials?

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/properly-measuring-vaccine-efficacy

    – measuring vaccine efficacy as % reduction in likelihood of severe outcomes can be misleading

    – we must also measure absolute risk reduction. 50% drop from 20% risk is very different from 50% drop on 0.2% risk

    – vaccines seem to show % efficacy in reducing hospitalization and death

    – but for the young, healthy, and recovered, risk was already so low that the absolute drop does not look like good risk/reward vs side effect profile of the vaccines

    – vaccines do not provide sterilizing protection against spread and seem to make it worse. there is no case to be made for societal obligation to vaccinate to protect others.

    – mandating vaccination rather than allowing personal choice based on individual circumstance will inflict net harm on a great many people

    – that’s immoral and represents medical malpractice

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  58. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick explores the link between covid and blood clotting.

    Bottom line: Apply covid vaccines with caution, and take aspirin for a while if you decide to get vaccinated.

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/16/covid19-and-cvd-bridging-the-gap/

    Yes, the spike protein. This, it appears, is the key antigen, the key driver of the immune/thrombotic system in COVID19. This is the factor that can lead to blood bloods, strokes heart attacks…sudden death.

    ‘The number of out-of-hospital sudden death episodes has increased since COVID-19 outbreaks. One of the possible reasons is the high incidence of major thrombotic events in patients with COVID-19.’

    It would therefore seem that caution would be required, if you were to find a way to stimulate the creation of trillions of spike proteins within the human body. Caution.

    Anyway, now you know – I hope – why I became so interested in COVID19. Because it links together a whole series of processes that, I believe, are key to understanding cardiovascular disease. Endothelial damage, blood clot formation, the central role of the blood clotting system.

    Of course, COVID19 represents an acute vasculitis which comes and goes at some speed and is unlikely to lead to the longer-term damage required to create the repeated clot deposition necessary to drive atherosclerotic plaque formation. However, it can still cause acute clot formation, which can lead to strokes and heart attacks and kidney damage, and suchlike.

    It is why, after I got vaccinated, I took aspirin for a month.

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  59. https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-covid-vaccines-will-keep-you/comments?fbclid=IwAR1CjnKIy_GMtjXCGnD4VNBDn8Rj-qsQ39Ir9HsEphkrETZtTyToOlvndl8

    Sorry for the pseudonym Rob but I wish to remain anonymous for this comment.
    Recently I had a good friend tell me I was antivax when I told him I was hesitant about getting vaccinated. It pissed me off a bit to be honest. He more or less told me that layman like me aren’t qualified to make judgements on how to treat covid, that we just need to trust our public health experts and……. go and get vaccinated!

    He thinks that by reading articles such as the one I just posted or by people such as el gato, I’m engaging in conspiracy theories. He thinks that being antivax (and if you haven’t had you covid shot you are anti vax) is a bit like climate denialism, where people go into their own little group on twitter and Facebook and feed themselves the bullshit the want to hear.

    I read a comment by Dave Pollard a while ago and he more or less expressed this same view, using Illargi and David Holgrem as an example. He basically claimed that when it comes to covid Illargi and Holgrem have lost the plot. According to Dave Pollard the evidence is overwhelming in support of vaccination.

    I have no doubt that my friend thinks that by being unvaccinated I’m being socially irresponsible. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m no longer welcome at some point in the future. El gato’s super spread theory, (where he’s actually more of a threat to me than I am to him) would be a laughable conspiracy theory in his books.
    Like wise for treatments such as IVM and HCQ.

    I’ve got a bad vibe that at some point in the not too distant future my work place will mandate vaccination. I’m not sure what I will do then. I can’t afford not to work so I probably just have to cave.

    I really feel for the people of Victoria. You don’t have a choice there. If your listed as an essential worker you must be vaccinated. No jab no work. That’s absolutely fucking nuts. Covid isn’t polio or smallpox. The Victorian police commissioner recently applied to the government for the people to have the right to protest reinstated. Protests will still have to be approved by the state’s Chief medical officer though. WTF!

    I read that Dr Thomas Borody released another study that supports his early IVM, Doxy, zinc treatment. No doubt it will be dismissed. My country has banned doctors from prescribing IVM and HCQ.
    They make it illegal and then wonder why people resort to taking horse drench. Fuck this countries therapeutic goods administration.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by. I totally get how you’re feeling. My friends are distancing themselves and are not interested in discussing evidence.

      I’m still trying to understand why so many health care professionals in so many countries do not care about maximizing health, and have lost their ability to think rationally.

      It would be helpful if people like Pollard presented an analysis of equivalent quality to el gato malo’s that supports his views.

      But they don’t. They just believe.

      Things could get worse ala Salem but I retain a small amount of hope that sanity will prevail because the strength of the evidence that we need a better strategy is growing daily.

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    2. Your find from Alex Berenson seems to be important. El gato malo jumped on it and wrote a detailed post elaborating.

      https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/original-antigenic-sin

      If a recent comment by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) means what el gato thinks it means then the vaccines:

      – not only do not stop you from getting covid and may well make it more likely,

      – but also that they prevent you from getting the full benefit of the immunity you require when you GET covid.

      – if this suppression is substantial enough, it might even render your recovery acquired immunity non-sterilizing and leave you active as a carrier and spreader by preventing the immune response that seems to be generating effective sterilization and replacing it with one known not to.

      – this might make the vaccinated into durable or even perpetual carriers even if they have had disease and recovered.

      obviously, that would be BAD.

      this is not an unheard of idea. there is, in fact, a name for it: original antigenic sin (OAS). this sounds biblical, but it’s not. it’s a well studied immune phenomenon.

      El gato makes it clear that we don’t yet know if this is a real problem.

      just to be VERY clear: this could be minor, it could be nothing, or there could be some other explanation here that i have not thought of. this is, perhaps, smoke, but not yet a smoking gun.

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      1. Karl Denninger is also looking at the same issue…

        https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243905‘

        This very strongly implies that getting Covid-19 after being vaccinated, which we now know adjusted for vaccination population percentage is more-likely now if you’re vaccinated than if you’re not appears to give you zero “N” antibody protection.

        That is, it appears the jabs program your immune system to fight it off without building those antibodies at all. But we know from past experience with coronaviruses that it is the “N” antibodies that are conserved across mutations and thus are critical, over time, to prevent severe outcomes.

        How long this disabling of “N” antibody production is sustained nobody knows, but that it appears to be entirely suppressed in people who have been vaccinated and then get infected seems to be substantiated in that data.

        Now we have an explanation for why, when someone who is jabbed gets hammered, they get hammered fast and hard.

        Oh, and here’s the even-better news: Covid may never stop “breaking through” in the jabbed. If you took the jab you may well be stuck for life with repeated infections, and while protection may well be 50%, 60% or 80% against hospitalization and death for any given single infection if you roll those dice enough times they will come up snake eyes and you’re screwed.

        The only good news is that since Delta appears to escape the jabs sufficiently to infect the mutational pressure may be insufficient to continue generating more strains with even better escape potential.

        If you got jabbed you better hope that’s true; if its not, well….

        Oops.

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    3. Eric Weinstein
      @EricRWeinstein
      Public Health 1.0 cannot work in our era of the Internet.

      Public Health 2.0 is going to INCLUDE responsible heterodoxy.

      If it demonizes heterdoxy & debate. If it attempts to belittle, coerce, shame & chill dissent, it isn’t going to work anymore.

      Think. You know this is true.
      11:36 AM · Oct 14, 2021·Twitter Web App

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      1. Did public health 1.0 ever work? I’d say yes for trauma treatment. Everything else a mixed bag. Statins, one of most common and profitable prescribed drugs, is backed by deceptive crap science.

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  60. Wolf Richter on the inter-connectedness of our world…

    supply chain issues -> product shortages -> no need to advertise -> advertising revenues down -> tech stock prices down -> ???

    Not mentioned but curious minds wonder what effect this might have on all the ETFs that are heavily weighted in a handful of big tech stocks?

    Let’s watch to see if the money printers recover the dip once again.

    https://wolfstreet.com/2021/10/21/afterhours-massacre-intel-shares-plunge-9-for-other-reasons-as-snap-collapses-25-takes-down-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/

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  61. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/20/global-energy-crisis-famine-production
    h/t Panopticon

    The global energy crisis could escalate into a world food crisis leading to famine in vulnerable countries unless urgent action is taken, one of the world’s biggest producers of fertiliser has warned.

    Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Yara, which produces 8.6m tonnes of the key fertiliser ingredient ammonia annually, said high gas costs meant it was curbing production in Europe by 40%.

    The Norwegian company, which has production facilities in more than 50 countries including the UK, has been able to maintain supplies of its soil improvement products in Europe by importing ammonia from its facilities elsewhere in the world, where gas prices are cheaper.

    However, Holsether warned there was no guarantee that process could continue. “It is important to get the message across that the energy crisis now could be the start of a food crisis,” he said.

    “We have to pay special attention to everyone affected by higher utility and food prices, but for some it is a question of living or not. This is about scenarios of famine and food scarcity.”

    He added: “The shutdowns we are experiencing across Europe are now having an impact on fertiliser pricing globally. All the main nutrients farmers use are [priced] significantly higher than a year ago partly because of higher demand and increased cost to produce fertiliser. That is having an immediate impact.”

    The global price of the fertiliser ingredient urea, for example, is now up to $850 (£615) a tonne from about $260 a year ago.

    Julia Meehan, the head of fertilisers for the commodity price agency ICIS, agreed there was “a serious global problem”. She said China was putting in place an export ban on fertiliser, Russia was considering a ban, and Turkey, a large fertiliser exporter, has stopped shipments.

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  62. Liked by 2 people

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  63. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick on C and D with evidence to support his conclusion:

    So, there we are then, vitamin C. My second favourite vitamin, after vitamin D. In the winter I take a gram a day. Along with my nine thousand units of vitamin D. Almost all medics will instantly dismiss this as ‘woo woo’ nonsense. I would tend to argue that this is because they know absolutely nothing about vitamins, or their critical roles in human physiology, and have never bothered to find out.

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/10/22/lets-talk-about-c-just-you-and-me/

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  65. Maybe some good news for a change.

    US doctors are doing the right thing and appear to be winning.

    https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/freedom-and-ivermectin-prevail/article_05d8061e-3035-11ec-bfe8-2b94d8993caf.html

    Today, we notice the United Kingdom, with nearly 70% of its citizens fully vaccinated, has encountered an unrelenting rise in Delta cases. Their Delta Surge began a month before the United States, and it is lingering longer. If the vaccines worked, the United Kingdom should be performing better than the US. But the reverse has occurred.

    The United States, with its vaccinations stagnated at 57.3%, is enjoying a massive drop in cases.

    At nearly the same vaccination rate as the US, 55%, Australia is seeing a deadly and unforgiving Delta surge amidst harsh lockdown measures that are universally failing. As a result, their cases are going through the roof despite mandatory mass vaccinations. At the same time, the United States’ cases are dropping like a stone.

    The reason? Ivermectin.

    In Australia, Ivermectin has been banned, even for off-label use, since September 10, 2021.

    https://www.tga.gov.au/media-release/new-restrictions-prescribing-ivermectin-covid-19

    They have paid a terrible price in cases and deaths – despite having almost the same vaccination rate as the United States.

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  66. Stepping back from the details on Covid, the big question is why have so many people lost their minds?

    To retain power political leaders more often than not follow the sentiment of citizens, rather than shape that sentiment. So we can’t lay all of the blame on our leaders for the stupidity.

    El gato malo today takes a deep dive into one possible explanation for the mass psychosis. He blames it on the meaningless of modern consumer life and the stressors of social media.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/why-covid-is-catnip-for-karens

    it’s structure. it’s easy answers. it’s a clear external enemy upon which to blame their unsettled senses of self. it’s like having the parents they never really outgrew again as they work from home in their jammies. generation infantilization is in the house (and does not want to leave).

    it was enabled by the very technology that spreads the virtue signaling virus. zoom calls did not allow us to cope with lockdowns and business closures. zoom calls CAUSED lockdowns and business closures.

    consider: much of life is about the response to price signals. for the allegedly educated elites and knowledge workers, the ability to telework vastly reduces the price of not going into the office. frankly, i barely missed a beat while working. many others were the same.

    this newfound ability to hunker down and keep being productive and keep getting paid is not distributed evenly. the knowledge worker/peleton bike class has access. the factory worker/hospitality worker/service economy worker does not.

    but which group makes the decisions on epidemiology and policy?

    oopsie.

    do you really think that all the teachers and university professors and epidemiologists and CDC and NIH staff would have pushed these policies if it meant they too had to stay home, miss work, and not get paid?

    it’s not just a groovy little staycation, it’s the alleviation of social anxiety and a massive de-escalation in the rodent-race induced competitive disquietude from always looking over your shoulder to see if the other rats are gaining.

    Maybe.

    I’m thinking a more powerful force is our genes sensing the lichen running low on St. Matthew Island.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island

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      1. This was probably one of the most concise and logical presentations of the data on Covid-19 and the excess deaths in Nordic Countries vs. UK that I have seen. As the author concludes – vaccine passports are a failure of government and propaganda pushed by a compliant main stream media for some other purpose (fascism by the left in the U.S. against “Trump voters” (but really the working class that the Dems gave up representing years ago). I see no difference between the Anderson Cooper’s/Rachel Madow’s of the world and Fox News/Tucker Carlson’s – they both want to be fascists demonizing their opponents. Dangerous times.
        On a side note – the volunteer Rural Fire Dept that I used to be a part of has now stopped it’s EMS service as they would have to comply with Oregon’s mandate that they get vaccinated. Sad.
        Thanks for the link Rob!
        AJ

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      2. Does anyone know about the credibility of Ivor Cummins? I liked this video as you can see from my other comment – it dealt with Covid. BUT, I looked at his website and all the videos he has posted and he is “pushing” (believes strongly in) the theory that all diet advice from the government (CDC, USDA), bigPharma and the medical establishment is wrong. He is of the opinion (??) that one should be on a high fat/protein – low carb diet to prevent insulin induced atherosclerosis (basically a keto diet). In his book he seems to back up all his hypotheses and conclusions with cites to what appears to be legitimate research. Any thoughts?
        AJ

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        1. I have the same question. I listened to a bunch of Cummins’ podcasts and he seems to be intelligent and evidence based. The fact the Dr. Malcolm Kendrick seems to respect Cummins ranks high with me. Still assessing and willing to change my mind.

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        2. I just remembered one red flag about Cummins. I think he may be a man made climate change skeptic. I have not yet heard him make his case so do not know whether his position is science based.

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      1. Yup. Mind boggling it is.

        A couple of years ago I read that flipping oil leases drove the boom in the tight oil industry in the US. An exaggeration? Could it be? Surely not. Then I read about this investor.

        https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/insight-how-a-burmese-immigrant-profited-by-flipping-cheap-oil-leases-from-trump-0

        I wonder what el gato malo would have to say about “price signals” as it relates to all that activity.

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    1. Just curious, has the White House or CDC or FDA stated the purpose of vaccinating children? I assume they are not openly admitting they are taking the risk of vaccinating children for the benefit of protecting adults? I suppose a case could be made that if we don’t get the economy going at full speed again, and vaccinating children would be necessary for that, some number of people will eventually face death by starvation. Officials probably assume that is not a conversation that could had with the American public. Just like they assume that the American public cannot handle the complete risk/benefit discussion on COVID vaccines. Unfortunately for them, we live in the age of the internet and easy fact checking. (Usually by INTP and INTJ types?)

      I think I saw the second in command at U.S. Treasury openly saying that everyone must get vaccinated in order to get the economy fully open…I read that as essentially an open admission that they understand that this economic shark has to get moving at full speed again so the “oxygen” gets through its gills and it does not drown. (Yes, I know, this is not an original analogy. But I like it.)

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      1. Hi Shawn. I assume our leaders think vaccinating children will prevent the virus from spreading with small risks.

        The evidence I see says the only benefit is short term protection from severe sickness in the old and obese, with worrying data suggesting possible long term negative health effects, and some signals that we are pushing more virulent strains that may worsen the situation for everyone in the future.

        Almost everyone I know thinks everyone should be vaccinated, and they think I’m either crazy or irresponsible.

        I’ve been wondering if I’ve created a self-fulfilling bubble of bias around me.

        Can anyone point me to someone as intelligent as el gato malo or Bret Weinstein that dives deep into the data to make a compelling case that our leaders are doing the right thing by pushing vaccination on everyone?

        No puff pieces with platitudes please. Just clear thinking evidence based analysis.

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        1. Lucky you, you only have self doubt. My wife will hardly talk to me about Covid saying I live in a bubble of self selected bogus information. I don’t think so, as I try to get opinion from all perspectives (MSM, liberal, conservative, establishment, etc.). I see those pushing vaccinations as self serving believers in the status quo who have every interest (monetary, social status) in supporting that status quo – they were people who followed the rules, got into the best universities, got the plumb jobs, have a great house in the burbs, true Horatio Alger’s. They go along with what they are told.
          AJ

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            1. Sad to say there would be nothing she could point to. She trusts MSM anchors because they are so earnest and nice (they wouldn’t lie to you?? would they?) – it’s all about feelings and following the “rules” for my wife. And probably a great deal of hopium that the future will be better for her children and grandchildren (thinking about it to deeply or logically might entail changing her habits and beliefs – very uncomfortable with that). I empathize with you as my nearest relative (brother) believes the CNN/MSNBC crap – hook, line and sinker. At least some of my daughters are collapse aware (and don’t ever plan to have kids).
              AJ

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              1. Please have your wife study today’s analysis by el gato malo and tell me where he’s wrong. Or maybe not, it might make her head explode. I can’t see the error in his thinking.

                I find it very humbling to watch the thinking & writing productivity of el gato malo. How does he do it?

                https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/why-are-so-many-in-the-us-now-so

                what if it’s something else?

                what if, for example, this surge in severe case presentation to ER’s with a rise in strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, and respiratory problems has a different etiology, one known to cause heart issues, heart damage, blood clots, and respiratory issues?

                what if these are adverse reactions to a set of vaccines already known to have orders of magnitude worse side effect profiles than any other ever approved by the FDA?

                does this look like a data pattern to ignore when seeking culprits?

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                1. Rob,
                  I liked el gato’s piece.
                  My wife will not look at anything I send to her. She refuses, because she believes everything I look at is ech0-chamber, fake info. She denied having Covid until the results came back positive. As a former tax attorney for the ultra ultra wealthy she goes with whatever the MSM story is (no rocking the boat). She hates anyone who is a non-conformist (except herself). And she hates people who are uncredentialed experts. I tried to explain who Ivor Cummins was and she refused to accept that anyone who isn’t a certified M.D. with an specialization in endocrinology/nutrition could make credible conclusions about health/CVD/diet.
                  As to el gato’s piece I have some reservations. Sure the CDC/NIH and the med establishment lie (and are seeking to demonize what they see as Trump voters) but I don’t know if the statistics he is using (or anyone is using) are accurate. If they are manipulated for purpose (and who on the left or right or libertarian would do such a thing????) then what is to be believed?
                  On a personal level I now wish I had never had the vax, as I “lean” toward believing el gato, but who knows for sure.
                  Isn’t this all indicative of collapse and each side denies the other could have something true to say – because they all want to get back to business as usual and growth?
                  AJ

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                  1. Indeed, what data can you trust? Dr. Malcolm Kendrick concluded he cannot trust any of it and withdrew from trying to analyze what’s going on.

                    I’m still seeking someone who does trust credentialed authorities to send me an analysis that weighs all the factors and makes a persuasive case that our leaders are doing the right thing.

                    I’d like to be shown I’m wrong.

                    Ditto on:
                    – peak oil is a false doomer belief
                    – solving climate change is possible with PV’s and EV’s
                    – 8 billion is not overshoot

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                    1. Even though I could understand the decission by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick to not further bother with analysing the Covid data, I was disappointed that another significant dissident voice basically gave up.

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                    2. Yes, Kendrick has a great mind.

                      I’m speculating but it seems Kendrick’s expertise is identifying statistics designed to influence a particular outcome, when properly designed statistics would not support that outcome.

                      If the underlying data used in a statistical analysis cannot be trusted then there is nothing useful he can do with his expertise.

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      2. One note for clarification of the above. Based on You tube video I watched last night, the FDA approved the relative safety of the vaccine, but the FDA specifically said it is up to the CDC to make recommendations for who should be vaccinated using the approved vaccine. The CDC could come out and say the vaccine is only for use on immunocompromised children who are at high risk of COVID. But let’s see if they recommend for all children in this age group – our guess is they probably will – and how they present the argument. There are scientist and doctors in the let’s vaccinate all adults who think vaccination of this age group is not a good idea. Let’s see if they speak out publicly if the CDC recommends a broad vaccination campaign for this age group. The price of going against the consensus these days it pretty high.

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  70. Chris Martenson is going all in on the idea that the Federal Reserve is evil by knowingly destroying the middle class to enrich the elite.

    Is he right?

    Or is the Federal Reserve doing the only thing it can do to prevent an economic collapse because organic growth has stopped?

    If the fed stopped printing money, would the middle class be better off?

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    1. What is middle class? The question is what activity could substitute that offers value. What would happen instead of financial engineering? A great manufacturing boom in the heartland? To sell to whom? Lots of small organic farms feeding towns instead of corporate food? We’re on one track and the Fed is keeping us on it. Without this QE stuff, we would have to think of a different way to organize society. Big capitalists cannot do much now without big finance.

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  71. Rob I was disappointed to see that Gail Tverberg allows 9-11 Truth comments on her site. I had not really noticed before. Can you recommend other sites/blogs where I can get good analysis on energy issues?

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    1. And allows discussions about fake moon landings. It’s a shame Gail doesn’t see the damage done to her good works, and everyone else that discusses energy depletion.

      Tim Watkins is good but no comments are permitted.
      https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/

      Alice Friedemann frequently posts interesting things, has a huge library, and wrote a very good book.
      https://energyskeptic.com/

      Tom Murphy is excellent for analysis of our predicament and options, but no current affairs.
      https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/post-index/

      I love Tad Patzek but he doesn’t write very often. He also has some excellent YouTube talks.
      https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/

      Nate Hagens is excellent.
      https://un-denial.com/?s=Nate+Hagens

      The early work of Chris Martenson is superb.
      https://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse/

      David J.C. MacKay did excellent analysis on what’s possible with sustainable energy.

      David J.C. MacKay: Thank You and Goodbye

      My friend Panopticon is good for daily news. If something big is happening in the energy space, he covers it.
      https://climateandeconomy.com/

      Richard Heinberg writes very good big picture essays, and has a new book out that might interest you.
      https://richardheinberg.com/

      Tim Morgan writes interesting but somewhat repetitive essays.
      https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/

      Antonio Turiel writes interesting posts (need to translate with browser).
      https://crashoil.blogspot.com/

      Rune Likvern occasionally has something interesting to say.
      https://runelikvern.com/

      Once in a while there is an interesting comment on Ron Patterson’s blog.
      https://peakoilbarrel.com/

      Steve St. Angelo does good work but is behind a paywall.
      https://srsroccoreport.com/

      Art Berman has the best data on production and trends and is active on Twitter.
      https://www.artberman.com/

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      1. Thank you. I appreciate the recommendations. I have W. David Woods book “How Apollo flew to the Moon” which is excellent.

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        1. You can listen to Tim Watkins blog posts with the voice of Amazon Polly. The icon is at the top left of his blog page. I listen to his blog posts while driving to work.

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          2. I think about a year ago I visited his site and left a tip. I had forgotten his name. Interesting site. So much out there.

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    2. Could it be that she just does not care? From time to time, she responds to a comment, but overall my impression is that she does not care about most of the comments (which is still not ideal, given the importance of her work and her blog).

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      1. Hmmm… My impression is different. I observe that Gail replies to most comments that have important information or insights. I think may be a tolerant person, perhaps because she herself has some views on spirituality that are not common in the science community.

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    1. The more you look behind the curtain of the official propaganda, the stranger the whole story becomes. The fact that a ten-year production period was contracted before the vaccine’s time-limited efficacy was established in clinical trials suggests that the developers were aware early on that it would be necessary to continually revaccinate.

      I’m glad there are people like Whitney Webb looking for the truth in this morass.

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        1. I also find it very strange that every other possibility to mitigate the risk of a Covid infection is supressed in favor of the vaccines. We are always told that diversity is strength. Why then is diversity of Covid treatments such a problem that so much information is suppressed? I mean this happened right from the start. Donald Trump was ridiculed to propose that there could be other solutions to the problem (even though I have to admit that his proposal of injection sanitizers was pretty stupid). If you combine this with the dubious background of Moderna (according to Whitney Webb) and other coincidences (like Event 201 and the fast vaccine development), it all smells very fishy.

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  75. Another very strange thing…

    some BIG questions remain. perhaps biggest among them is this:

    what is the relationship between the mRNA vaccines that appeared so suddenly after this virus was allegedly first gene sequenced and this set of projects centered on and around wuhan?

    because the speed of that development has always looked implausible (at best) and impossible (almost certainly).

    no other mRNA vaccine has ever appeared in just a couple weeks. they take years (unless you were already way ahead on the work.) the payload for moderna came from the NIH. pfizer’s came from bioNtech, a tiny EU co that just happened to get a huge pile of bill gates money in the fall of 2019.

    and even now, they cannot build a booster that’s based on delta. so how do you nail the first one in a couple weeks in two different places and then sit unable to to the next one anywhere on earth for 6-9 months?

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/more-evidence-fauci-daszak-and-the

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    1. I thought companies were researching these vaccines for years (both RNA and specifically for SARS viruses)? They just didn’t come up with this stuff overnight

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      1. I’m not well informed on the history of RNA vaccines.

        My understanding is that all previous attempts to use RNA vaccines had failed and it is very odd that they were able to produce the first effective vaccine only 2 weeks after receiving the genetic code.

        If you have a better understanding please educate us.

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  76. companies like pfizer are VERY good at clinical trials.

    they do not make mistakes. they make choices.

    and given these longer term results, it seems clear why they chose to run short trials and then eliminate the control groups after about 90 days. because that’s when things start to go off the rails.

    this means that the efficacy of these vaccines wanes VERY rapidly. you’d need to boost every 3 months to keep it high and every 6 to keep it about about 30% on symptomatic infection and 45% on hospital/death.

    so you’re rebuying immunity every 3-6 months, taking the adverse event risk again, and using it to avoid an outcome (getting covid) that is not terribly dangerous for most and thus getting very little absolute risk reduction (detailed discussion here). this was already a bad bet for most under 50 and pretty much anyone without comorbidities.

    but having to make the bet, over and over, just to stand still means that eventually, it’s a bad bet for anyone because once you get covid, you rarely get it again and when you do, it’s mild. acquired immunity from recovery is FAR superior to vaccinated immunity and looks to be actually sterilizing as well so you’ll stop being a spread vector. (though there is an argument that getting vaxxed prevents you from generating that sterilizing immunity from later exposure through OAS)

    you cannot make a case for boosters by looking at efficacy alone, especially when “50% VE” actually maps to “half of 1% for under 50’s or 1/10th of 1% or less if under 50 and healthy.”

    it does not take a lot of side effects to swamp that, especially if you have to keep running the risk over and over to avoid what is basically a one time outcome.

    the trials were short and rigged to mask fade and side effects while overstating efficacy. VE was used instead of absolute risk reduction, and cost/benefit was not even considered.
    – the immunity was supposed to be sterilizing. it’s not.
    – the effects were supposed to be strong. they aren’t.
    – the efficacy was supposed to be durable. it isn’t.
    – they were supposed to protect the most vulnerable. but that’s who they work least well on.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/swedish-study-shows-covid-vaccines

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  77. https://peakoilbarrel.com/norway-part-ii-production-and-wellbores/#comment-728729

    George Kaplan
    10/28/2021 at 7:18 am

    The “lower for longer” narrative for oil prices has suddenly turned to “higher for longer”, which are just as worthless. Oil supply-demand-price dynamics are inherently unstable. A particular element contributing to this is the inelasticity of oil demand. This means high prices are needed to dampen demand but also that relatively small changes in demand can have very large impacts on price (e.g. a 5% demand drop for Covid has momentary 50 to 100+% effect on prices). The most likely next demand impact will be from a recession, maybe caused by prolonged fuel shortages, but recession seem impossible to predict. Pundits who achieve the feat get lauded for a few years but don’t seem to be able to repeat it so I think luck plays a big part.

    Another destabilizing effect is the long led times between discoveries and production. In the past when the belief was that growth of wealth and oil use would grow for ever investors were prepared to bet on this long term cycle to some extent even as oil prices cycled through highs and lows. Now that seems to have changed, so rather than this destabilizing things it may be acting as a damper on all activity. It will not be evident one way or another except in retrospect in a few years’ time.

    There used to be a negative feedback mechanism that could dampen out some of the price swings, which was OPEC spare capacity that could be increased or decreased to change supply over two to six months. For one reason or another this mechanism is not now available to anything like the same extent. Tight oil has been cited as a possible replacement mechanism but its difficult to see how it has had the same calming influence.

    I think we are heading for high volatility, which will tend to militate against long-term investment (probably exacerbated by there being fewer places to invest with low discoveries in the recent years meaning a short inventory of projects ready for development and the few new exploration areas being quite unattractive with high risk, high upfront costs, low EROI). I can see however the argument that we’ll end up in prolonged low prices with society in depression/recession low investment (and what there is ultimately coming from governments rather than private funds, however this is presented for public consumption).

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  78. I continue to wonder if our collective response to Covid has something to do with an unconscious sensing of overshoot. Detection of and reaction to imminent scarcity must be a powerful evolved behavior.

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    1. From Jacobson’s blog – a few quotes I wanted to share.

      “They realize they are part of the human family on a dying planet and that everyone is experiencing a singular and tragic death together – the sixth great extinction – in their own way.

      No one individually, no society and no other generation of humans on earth has ever had to process events of this magnitude or attempt to express thoughts like these in the context of overwhelming scientific evidence backing this view.”

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        1. He is a mathematician. Strange he would miss that. It’s such a big part of the puzzle. Like you said it’s depletion of “affordable” energy. BTW my energy bill is up approximately $100.00.

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          1. I frequently get wound up by the covid insanity sweeping the planet and then I step back and remember it’s nothing compared to our collective ignorance and/or denial about affordable fossil energy depletion and climate change which are serious, imminent, and real threats to everyone. We are not rational or wise about anything important. Why should covid be any different?

            I’m trying VERY hard to reduce my energy consumption. What are the key things you’ve done to be so low?

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      1. strange….I clicked on the link in your blog and it was a German version with no Mounties. Then it went back to the original English. Weird.

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              1. C’mon, everybody knows you can’t teach charisma.

                You be Jim-dandy. I was just surfing the web and happened on it. Thought it was funny. Watched a few snippets and thought wow this is way too much work.

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    1. Nice picture. Our civilization has become so paranoid, it is hard to bear.

      But I am not surprised that children are also experimented on to “save” lives. If I look around, a lot of people really hate children. They are not the asset, that they were during our agricultural past. Their uselessness is extended even further due to prolonged education (the percentage of students is much higher than when my mother went to the university). In adition, you have to take responsibility for them, which most people eshew if possible since this would conflict with their hedonism.

      I sometimes think, whether this is some kind of unconscious mechanism to reduce the world population due to our overshoot situation. I am thinking the same of the more and more shrill propaganda of sterile relationships.

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      1. Luckily I don’t see the hate you describe. If anything, it seems that COVID has made people value close human relations and family more than ever.

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    1. Lovely comparison. When I was visiting the USA as a child in the 90s, I was suprised about the amount of fat reduced products in the supermarket. I had never seen this before in Germany. The additional suprise was the amout of extremely fat people in the USA, which back then was not a major problem in Germany at all. As a naive child, I thought: “How do these people get so fat, if they only eat fat reduced products?”. Now I know: bad dietary advice based on government fiat. The same applies to Covid, too.

      It seems that we are so fixated on finding the one true solution to a problem to be totally blind to alternatives until our one true solution shows it´s ugly consequences.

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      1. I agree that its bad to do anything about diet based on fiat. That said the whole diet/nutrition field is rife with corruption and self-serving proselytizers.
        As an admission that I too am compromised – I have been a vegetarian for over 45 years. It started with Cooper (of Aerobics fame) in the 70’s and then Pritikin in the 80’s. I’ve tried to adhere to a good jogging/biking/walking routine for all 45 of those years. Yet, I’m beginning to suffer from aging (gee, why??). So, to up my chances of surviving to see collapse I’ve started to read more nutrition. ITS A MESS!!! Whoever writes, publishes, sells or recommends anything or any idea seems somehow compromised. Sure both the high fat/low carbs are good for you AND the complex carbs/low fats are good for you camps have voluminous research to back up what they say. They disparage any research that goes against their thesis and find all the research that supports their thesis. Almost no one tries to knock down their thesis (the true indication of a Karl Popper scientific method-i.e. falsifiability).
        So, I’m left with having to guess. Best guess is what did our Australopithecus and Homo ancestors eat? What did ancient (not modern) hunter/gatherers eat? What have we evolved to eat? For sure not Big Macs/Whoppers, fries and a Coke! But what?
        AJ

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          1. Probably right as far as that thesis goes. Up until very recently enough calories to live were somewhat limited (and still are for those starving), so whatever you ate helped you survive. The problem I have is that at 68 I’ve lived far longer than the average of 150 years ago. Sure, lots died of childhood diseases 150 years ago but a still small portion made it as long as I have and thrived. Those that live longer had good genetics (but they didn’t know that beforehand). Those of us living now don’t know what are genetics are (and siblings are not a reliable indicator).
            AJ

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            1. The one “truth” I do believe about diet is that calorie restriction is the best method of extending lifetime. Our bodies did not evolve to expect abundance all the time. I have a hunch this is why so many otherwise conflicting diets seem to improve health.

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  83. Our leaders have weaseled out of the only climate change commitment we might meet: net zero 2050. Maybe they know but can’t say publicly that we’ll have burned all the affordable fossil energy before 2050. More likely they’re stupid and think we’ll keep growing forever.

    On the final day of the G20 summit on Sunday, leaders made a commitment to reach carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century”. In a final communique, they also called for “meaningful and effective” action to limit global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

    However, the communique contained few concrete actions and made no reference to a specific 2050 date to achieve net-zero carbon emissions that scientists say is vital to stave off disastrous climate change, Reuters reported.

    Moreover, the communique removed references in a previous draft to the target to “reduce emissions significantly”. Instead, it stated that it recognises that the reduction of emissions is one of the quickest, most feasible and most cost-effective ways to limit climate change.

    https://indianexpress.com/article/world/g20-leaders-carbon-neutrality-limit-global-warming-7600640/

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    1. Who expected anything meaningful coming out of this summit? Regarding ideas of concrete action to reduce our ecological footprint, we are already way below “net zero”.

      I am still not sure whether our leaders are cowards, who will not tell the truth due to their own life being in danger then, or just stupid. If I see them on television, I would say that the stupid option is more likely. Maybe they are different, if you meet them in person outside of a prepared environment (e.g. planned interview).

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  84. It’s a bit long. I admire this man’s standards. Well worth a look if only for the first ten minutes. You tube will probably find a reason to pull it down.

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    1. Excellent! Thank you for introducing us to Dr. Petrovsky. I’ll be watching for further work by him.

      P.S. Funny how quickly I’ve changed my behavior due to censorship. First thing I do now when I see something good is download a copy for my offline library.

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  85. I pulled the below script from the TGA’s website. I was unaware that the TGA has sponsors…..
    Nikolai Petrovsky said that in order for their vaccine to be approved in Australia they must pay the TGA 350k…. plus a million or two in other fees (I’m not sure if he was joking about that last bit).
    Having sponsors seems a sure fired way to have bias in your views. Maybe that’s why IVM and HCQ have been banned for use against covid in this country.

    “Before any COVID-19 vaccine is approved for use in Australia, it will be subject to the well-established and rigorous assessment and approval processes of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), part of the Department of Health.

    All COVID-19 vaccine applications are being treated with the greatest priority as part of the Department of Health’s response to the pandemic. Under normal circumstances, TGA’s assessment (for both provisional and general registration) begins once all information to support registration is available. For COVID-19 vaccines, the TGA has agreed to accept rolling data to enable early evaluation of data as it comes to hand.

    Many of the large-scale clinical trials that will provide evidence of safety and effectiveness are still progressing and these results will be provided to the TGA as they become available. The TGA will also evaluate quality data (such as how the vaccines are manufactured).

    The TGA will only be in a position to make a provisional registration decision for a vaccine once all required data relating to safety, quality and efficacy has been provided and assessed.

    With rolling submissions, collaboration with international regulators, and proactively working with sponsors, it is expected the evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines will be significantly expedited without compromising on our strict standards of safety, quality and efficacy. However, the timeframe for the evaluation of each vaccine will ultimately depend on when the complete data package is provided by sponsors. We have not yet received a full data package from any company.

    Further information on the TGA’s evaluation process for vaccines is available at: COVID-19 vaccine approval process.”

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  86. Wolf Richter today does an excellent job of explaining what’s going on with inflation.

    Notice that Richter, like almost every expert, is unable to connect the overshoot dots to explain WHY every central bank is printing money. He explains everything except the most important thing.

    Our genetic denial of unpleasant realities is amazing!

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  87. This Nikolai Petrovsky, the founder of Vaxine, who developed Australia’s first covid 19 vaccine, talking about vaccine ethics. A breath of fresh air. I wish all of our politicians in my country would listen to him.

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  88. I recently started following eugyppius. He seems to be as bright and clear thinking as el gato malo.

    Today’s essay is a nice big picture review of vaccine pros and cons and concludes with what our policies should be if we had wise leaders.

    I observe that he didn’t mention prevention policies (vitamin D etc.) and early treatment policies, which our un-wise leaders also ignore.

    Increasingly, politicians and medical bureaucrats are entranced by a bizarre pandemic ideology. Like most ideologies, it remains oblivious to evidence and argument, holding that the risk of severe outcomes from Corona infection is far more evenly distributed across the population than it is; and allowing only universal solutions, such as quarantining and vaccinating entire populations. These obtuse views, which just won’t go away, are at the root of our failed and destructive policies. For 20 months now, this pandemic ideology has blinded everyone in charge to the possibility of shielding the vulnerable, leveraging seasonal patterns in infection, and leaving the kids alone. The stratified nature of Corona risk is the key to unravelling the pandemic, and it’s the one thing nobody will recognise.

    https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/the-vaccines-cannot-do-what-is-asked

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  89. preptip: White Rice Storage

    I’ve had an occasional problem with rice weevils in my daily use storage of Basmatti rice. I was worried about the rice I stored in 20L food grade buckets 2 years ago because I did not use mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. I inspected this rice and it is in perfect condition. My theory is that the combination of filling the bucket to the top and using an air tight lid is sufficient to kill any eggs. Home Depot sells a very nice white food grade bucket with air tight lid.

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  90. Richard Heinberg today explains that depletion is at the core of our current energy problems.

    I find it humorous that almost everyone who talks about energy depletion adds a qualifier that we’re not about to run out. Of course taking a broad view of our 200,000 year history as behaviorally modern humans we ARE about to run out of fossil energy. I guess if you’re trying to make a living from writing you’ve got to be careful not to lose your audience by tripping their denial circuit.

    But there’s another explanation for the high prices: depletion. I’m not suggesting we’re about to completely run out of coal, oil, or gas; there’s no immediate danger of that.

    Here’s another nice example of denial. Experts say we’re not investing enough but are unable to see that depletion has made investing unprofitable.

    Many economic analysts attribute shortages and price hikes to failure by the fossil fuel industry to invest enough in exploration and production. But, to some extent, that’s just a misleading way of acknowledging that, from now on, extracting fossil fuels from Earth’s crust will take more money, technology, and energy than it used to.

    First: virtually nobody is mentioning depletion. I routinely scan energy-related news articles in the mainstream press, and in its coverage of the energy crisis I have yet to see depletion mentioned once—even though it is undeniably a contributing factor. Why is it being ignored? Maybe because of this second thing: it can only get worse.

    Heinberg concludes with what a wise species would do:

    Policy makers envision an energy transition in which solar and wind seamlessly and quickly substitute for coal, oil, and gas, leaving consumers enjoying just the same comforts and conveniences as they do now, while emitting no carbon. That’s an exceedingly unlikely scenario. The real energy transition will almost certainly be a shift from using a lot to using a lot less.

    If that’s true, then what should we do? Over a dozen years ago, I was among several energy analysts and commentators who recommended the adoption of depletion protocols (which are essentially programs for conserving and rationing nonrenewable resources) as a policy tool for helping society adapt to the inevitable end of the fossil fuel era. Politicians were uninterested. Today, rationing is still the best policy response. Energy could be rationed in several different ways; in addition to depletion protocols, another rationing approach I’ve long liked is tradable energy quotas, which effectively provide monetary incentivizes to those who use less energy. With rationing, those who use the most sacrifice the most, while those who use the least maintain (or gain) access to necessities.

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-11-02/how-much-of-the-worsening-energy-crisis-is-due-to-depletion/

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    2. In a way it is ok to point out that “we are not running out of oil”. The enormous Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia (the largest oil field in the world) has been running for 70 years and is approximately half-empty now. But pumping the second half will be very different from pumping the first half.

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      1. You’re a brave man to state confidently the Saudi’s have 50% of their oil left. Most experts I follow say they don’t know what the reality is since the Saudi’s are so secretive with their data.

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  91. Tim Watkins is very good today.

    Rising energy costs alone now threaten to unravel the global economy. Pull the rug out from what remains, via tax increases, interest rate hikes and the now inevitable rising cost of energy and everything in the economy which requires energy, and you have a recipe for a financial collapse on a scale that makes 2008 look like a cake walk.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/11/02/when-they-say-money-think-energy/

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    1. Not explicitly that I can recall.

      I have written quite a bit about our thousands of religions having a common core belief in life after death and that this is to be expected since behaviorally modern humans with our unique genetic tendency to deny death emerged at the same time that our also unique religions emerged.

      I know little about apocalypse stories other than most religions have some, presumably to dress up and dramatize their core belief in life after death.

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  93. What are your thoughts on this Rob?

    Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, announced an investigation into the right-wing, anti-science propaganda group America’s Frontline Doctors and telemedicine provider SpeakWithAnMD.com following an Intercept investigation. Clyburn called the two organizations “predatory actors” that have been “touting misinformation and using it to market disproven and potentially hazardous coronavirus treatments” such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

    https://theintercept.com/2021/11/01/covid-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-investigation/

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      1. Makes me sick too.
        No one I know – except here – wants to know the truth about anything that is happening in the world. They want to be fed reassuring messages approved by their tribe.
        James at Megacancer had a good response to a post by Dave Cohen (https://peakwatch.typepad.com/decline_of_the_empire/).
        James said: “I hate to say it, but most people I have known have no interest in obtaining a more accurate depiction of reality. It’s as if EROEI is at work and the energy put into acquiring knowledge about reality is perceived as never providing an adequate return. In fact, knowing too much may provide them a decidedly negative return as their illusions are smashed. They may go through the process of getting an “RNA” degree to do a job because they see the salary, but they won’t dive into autodidactic activities that don’t have an obvious reward. That leaves them vulnerable and reliant upon experts with conflicts of interests, propagandists and the herd (as seen on TV.)”
        Seems to about sum up denial of unpleasant information. Don’t look for it and believe what you are told.
        AJ

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  94. China has urged families to stockpile food and essentials for emergency use, triggering concerns over potential food shortages, even as supply chains have been disrupted due to extreme weather and Covid outbreaks.

    The announcement came late on Monday from China’s commerce ministry. It urged authorities to keep supply chains smooth, maintain stable prices and give early warnings in case of any potential shortages.

    The ministry also said authorities must publicise information on where and how they could get supplies in areas that are under lockdown.

    It did not mention any reasons – including food shortages or potential lockdowns in light of recent Covid outbreaks in the country – for the announcement, sparking concerns and triggering a barrage of online speculation.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-food-essential-shortage-winters-b1949770.html

    More from Panopticon here:

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2021/11/03/3rd-november-2021-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/

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  95. I very much enjoyed this interview by Lex Fridman of Michael Mann about rapid covid testing.

    It highlighted yet another wise and inexpensive thing our leaders could be doing to help us return to normalcy, but aren’t.

    Not mentioned in the interview are the other things we should be doing including education on supplements for prevention, home and hospital protocols for early treatment, and applying the vaccines only when benefits exceed risks.

    I find it mind boggling that our leaders are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing, on every dimension.

    As a bonus you get to see another nice example of denial in a smart person when briefly at the end he laments how we’re not taking climate change seriously and wishes more people would buy electric cars while being blind to the more imminent threat of energy depletion.

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  99. It’s official – the world is going to have a food crisis. The CEO of Norway’s major fertilizer company said so at COP-26. Fertilizer has become too expensive to make:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/were-going-to-have-a-food-crisis-the-energy-crunch-has-made-fertilizer-too-expensive-to-produce-says-yara-ceo/ar-AAQj50g?li=BBnbfcL

    U.N. Food Program director and former governor of South Carolina, David Beasley, publicly buttonholed Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to donate to the program.

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    1. I asked the owner of the organic farm I assist if rising prices for Haber-Bosch based fertilizers will also affect organic food prices since we’re not permitted to use that type of fertilizer. This was his answer:

      Organic food prices will probably also rise because there isn’t a large enough supply of manures. Any manure that was going to organic producers will be headed to conventional growers as Urea becomes unaffordable. Also sad to say but the production of organic fertilizers still needs cheap fossil fuels to produce and transport!

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        1. Pre-industrial London had it figured out. The vegetable farms shipped their produce on river barges down to the city. Then the empty barges were loaded with organic refuse and returned to the farms on the high tide.

          All we have to do to mirror that system is reduce our population by about 100 times, get rid of our sewer system, and relocate to towns next to slow moving tidal rivers.

          No problem. We should vote on this plan.

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      2. Our attempt at organic farming is a raised veggie bed in our back yard, that gets regular infusions from our compost heap. All our kitchen scraps, twigs, leaves, prunings, etc. go into it. There is now a thriving underground colony of earthworms, centipedes, mealybugs and other creatures that do a valiant job of turning it all into lovely good dirt, but it takes them time to do that… And the quantity is sufficient just for us – not much extra.

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      3. “Also known as “night soil,” fertilizer made from human feces can help plants grow—but it can also help spread disease. The Romans did use human feces and urine in their gardens, as the organic portion of the poo and the nitrates, phosphorous, and potassium of the urine nourished plants. There seems to have been a healthy trade in feces in Roman times, as the stercorarii—”poop collectors”—were documented to have collected and sold it.

        Although human waste was used in a wide variety of ways in ancient Rome, it’s not clear exactly how it was gathered. Latrines—both public and private—were undoubtedly useful for amassing a combination of urine and feces, but would not have worked for tanners, who needed unadulterated urine. It is clear that the collection of waste wasn’t free. The emperor Vespasian levied a tax on urine around 70 CE. Reportedly, when his son Titus expressed disgust at the tax, Vespasian retorted, “pecunia non olet”—”money doesn’t stink.” His tax was so famous that his name is still used today as a general term for public urinals (vespasiennes in French and vespasiani in Italian).”
        C. Efron

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    2. What does Laura have to say about all the time you spend at the computer? Aren’t you supposed to be relaxing, playing golf and cutting ribbons at county fairs?

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