🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

[GURPS]

🗞*THE STATE OF THE UNION* 🗞​

The most hilarious feature of the speech was Biden’s ghastly and inept attempt to co-opt conservative messaging. As democrats kept leaping to their feet to applaud punch line after punch line, Biden claimed he was going to:

crack down on illegal immigration (after manufacturing a gigantic crisis on the border), I am not making that up,

lower prescription drug prices (after revoking Trump policies that actually did lower most drug prices, like insulin),

re-fund the police (after leading a two year charge to de-fund them),

support the troops (after getting them killed in a hasty Afghanistan withdraw and using them as human pincushions for experimental drugs),

rebuild manufacturing capacity and direct the government to “Buy American” (after encouraging employers to fire unjabbed employees and discriminate against them, and locking down US manufacturing for a year — just ask Elon Musk, who had to move his whole operation to Texas),

cutting child-care costs “in half,” somehow (after driving costs up astronomically by quarantining school-age kids every ten minutes using witless contact tracing),

crack down on social media giants (after pressuring them to become vastly powerful government censors),

end inflation by lowering the deficit (after almost doubling the amount of circulating currency and while calling for even more infinitely expensive programs),

cure cancer (after coercing Americans into taking jabs with known cancer risks), and

support mental health (after bombarding adults with military-grade propaganda and mentally torturing kids for two years).

Gee, I guess all those conservative talking points are resonating with the people for some reason. On the other hand, completely missing from the Former Vice-President’s speech was any reference to: equity, diversity, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, police violence, gender reassignment, Afghanistan, student loans, unvaccinated people, school board investigations, January 6th insurrectionists, Capitol attackers or even rioters, misinformation, disinformation, Fauci, Walensky, overwhelmed hospitals, China, the CDC, or the FDA.

In fact, I’m starting to think we need to put the little faces of normal liberal talking points on the sides of milk cartons, because it looks like they might have been kidnapped or something. I can’t begin to tell you how bizarre it was to see democrats clapping like trained seals begging for fish when Biden said he’s going to stop illegal immigration at the border using high-tech sensors and Mexican patrols.

 

[DaSDGuy]

That Buy American is hilarious, since he is shutting down our access to American oil and increasing our purchases of Russian oil.

 

[GURPS]

That Buy American is hilarious,

how many covid test kits came from China

 

[PJay]

If there are side effects from the vaccine found the companies involved can't be blamed. The left leaning media will blame Trump.

Released yesterday

Side effects

Mindy Robinson on Gab: 'I’m so glad we were all “conspiracy theorists” th…'

Mindy Robinson on Gab: 'I’m so glad we were all “conspiracy theorists” that had to be censored for spreading “misinformation” about the side effects of the vaccine. I am 100% there are currently trying to start WW3 to distract the masses from the fact they just tried to sicken and kill...

gab.com

 

[PJay]

I remember Trump saying

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF”

 

[PJay]

Judge Unseals 400 Pages of Evidence, Clears Way for Pfizer Whistleblower Lawsuit

A whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trials is moving forward, after a district court judge unsealed the complaint, including 400 pages of exhibits.

childrenshealthdefense.org

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, March 3, 2022 ☙ GO GET HIM ​

I laughed so hard at this next article that I snorted coffee into my brain pan. Yesterday, twenty-four hours post-SOTU, the Daily Mail UK ran an article headlined “So, What Was the Point? Cloth Masks Allow 90% of Particles to Filter Through Giving Them Little Ability to Prevent COVID Transmission, Study Finds.”

Hahahahahaha! What WAS the point, indeed, my jolly old chaps!

If only someone had warned us! If only there had been some way to know that cloth masks don’t stop viruses! My GOSH! Good thing the science has finally figured out this incredibly difficult enigmatic physics mystery. I hope somebody wins the Nobel prize for this, I really do. So let’s see what incredible new discovery the researchers uncovered to unravel decades, I mean months, of established scientific wisdom.

The researchers noted “that unlike N95 or surgical masks, cloth masks are not built using material made to filter out particles.” Wow. This is cutting edge science right here people. Pay attention to the miracles of the modern era. “Woven fabrics, such as cotton, make for good jeans, shirts, and other apparel, but they are lousy air filters,” said Richard Sear, co-author of the study and physicist at Surrey University.

PHYSICIST. Not doctor. Doctors NEVER should have been advising people about masks because they don’t understand basic physics. Masking isn’t medical science, it’s PHYSICS, because it’s about airflow and the behavior of tiny floating particles. With all due respect to doctors, and I know a bunch of good ones, they tend to think they know everything and can be pretty free with their opinions when they should probably refrain from comment.

In other words, Doctors should shut up about masks, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Respectfully, of course.

Again, the story ISN’T that this study, which is based on a 3-D model, dissed masks and showed it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for them to filter virus particles. The study is not high-tech. The article is not complex. Both could have been done in about ten minutes back at the start of the pandemic. There’s nothing new here. Nothing’s been “developed.” The REAL story is that the Daily Mail ran the article at all, which can now be used to humiliate mask holdouts by unsympathetic or angry folks who were forced to wear useless masks for two years. Here’s the link: https://tinyurl.com/3p8ybxk3.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, March 4, 2022 ☙ FOUND HIM ​

Business Insider’s totalitarian tendencies flared up in an article last week headlined, “Airline Passengers Who Refuse to Wear Masks Have Turned Violent — and if the TSA Extends Mask Mandates This Month, It’s Going to Get Even Uglier.”

The federal airline mask mandate is set to expire on March 18th, and Business Insider is completely triggered about the looming deadline. They’ve found a target for their anxiety: angry passengers who don’t like mask mandates. In what may be the most tone-deaf thing it’s ever printed, the Insider wondered, “Imagine the fury among anti-mask passengers if the federal government continues to enforce a mask requirement on airlines into the spring and summer, when no one’s making people mask up anywhere else.”

So dumb. Hey, Insider. IF NO ONE’S MAKING PEOPLE MASK UP ANYWHERE ELSE, WHAT EXACTLY DO AIRPLANE MASKS PROTECT ANYBODY FROM? Please, try to think.

The news spurring the article was a letter Delta Airlines’ CEO Ed Bastian sent to the Justice Department, begging it to create a national “no fly” list banning passengers with a “history of unruly behavior” from boarding ANY commercial flight, not just the ones where there was a problem. ALL of the flights. Forever. That will teach them!

It’s hard to say who is stupider, Business Insider’s reporters or CEO Ed Bastian. Ed apparently learned nothing from when the National School Board Association sent that letter to the DOJ asking it to investigate moms who were angry at school boards about masks, and now the NASB is just about out of business. Supposedly — and I recognize that it’s getting harder and harder to tell where private corporations stop and government begins these days — supposedly Ed is running some kind of business. That’s what I heard, anyway. It seems like asking the government to ban customers from using your business seems, well, a tad counter-productive. Just a smidge.

The other airlines seem not to have been infected with the Moron Virus like Ed. The Insider reported, “Other than Delta, [the others] been mum on the subject.“ I guess the other airlines aren’t suicidal.

Anyway — if you don’t LOVE masking on airplanes, Delta doesn’t want you as a customer. So keep that in mind. Just saying.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, March 7, 2022 ☙ RISK BUDGETS ​

Well, THIS explains a lot. The Blaze News finally got a response from HHS on its FOIA request. Turns out that HHS used your money (tax dollars) to buy massive amounts of advertising from major news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC; from cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC; from legacy media publications like the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post; from digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax; from YouTube for segments featuring celebrities garnering millions of hits; and from literally hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations.

HHS’s pro-jab marketing campaign was a financial bonanza for the entire media apparatus, new media AND legacy media, who all lapped up the government money just like thirsty labradoodles after a hot afternoon at the dog park.

The money drove countless articles and video segments about the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about its safety and efficacy. HHS treated the shot like a product to be sold to American consumers, and undertook the most expensive “comprehensive media campaign” in history. HHS was playing with a one BILLION-dollar-budget in 2021 to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.”

HHS entered into myriads of ad contracts to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”

No WONDER it was so hard to cancel the pandemic. The media never wanted it to end. Why would they? It’s much easier to sell non-bid ad contracts to the government than sell ads to private companies. Just imagine the massive commissions the ad department has been earning.

Even Fox, dammit.

The documents show the Biden administration bought ads on TV, radio, print, and social media to manufacture vaccine confidence. The government’s media contracts pushed “influencers” from “communities hit hard by COVID-19” and “experts” like that parasitic worm Anthony Fauci and other “academics” to be interviewed and to promote vaccination in the news. They were like HHS’ salespeople.

Although the government’s “salespeople” — its experts, academics, and government officials — were repeatedly interviewed during straight new segments, the media never disclosed the massive advertising payments they were receiving from the government to hawk the jabs. It was a massive undisclosed conflict of interest.

The Blaze said HHS has not yet disclosed how much advertising money was paid to each media platform. They’ll have to, though. When we get that information, we should compare it to each platform’s pre-Covid annual ad sales. I bet I know what it will look like. It’s going to be uglier than a Fauci-Pelosi love child.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, March 9, 2022 ☙ THE ALOHA SPIRIT ​

We have a critical C&C Army assignment today. It’s more than an assignment, it’s a CIVIC OBLIGATION. Remember last week I reported about the U.S. Surgeon General’s call for snitches to report “major sources of misinformation?” Well, SG Murthy has now setup a helpful website where people can report or describe the misinformation and finger the misinformers. We need to help him out, pronto.

It is our patriotic duty to report misinformation by visiting www.surgeongeneral.gov/rfi and completing the form called “Request for Information.” There are a few categories of questions at the beginning that won’t apply, but not all the questions have to be completed. The good ones start at about question number 4 or so.

I filed a report this morning. In my report, I noted that Francis Collins, director of NIH, and Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, were MAJOR sources of misinformation during the pandemic. Fauci first said masks didn’t work, then he said they did work, then we found out they didn’t work. He even misinformed people that a cut-up t-shirt would protect you from Covid, and it didn’t, not even close, what a dumb idea, but it was repeated endlessly online, confusing policymakers and literally killing grandma.

I also noted that Collins and Fauci conspired to knowingly publish false information online about the origins of the pandemic, racing against time to suppress true information and misinform people that, instead of leaking out of the coronavirus research lab in Wuhan, China, the virus came from a farmer’s market a mile down the street where people were pigging out on raw bat meat or something. The two moronic docs even procured a fake letter from scientists misinforming people about the lab leak theory. It was total misinformation and sent a lot of scientists on a wild goose chase, I mean bat chase.

Finally, I pointed out that Collins and Fauci also conspired to knowingly spread false misinformation about the focused protection strategy advocated by the scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Focused protection would have ended the pandemic a year earlier, saving trillions and trillions and who knows how many lives, but because of Collins and Fauci misinforming people, only NOW have public officials realized that focused protection is the only way forward.

I’m not a hog. I’ve left LOTS of material for other people to report. For example, how about the FDA misinforming everyone about the efficacy of the vaccines? Remember 95%? How about Joe Biden misinforming people that “if you take the vaccine you won’t get the virus?” How about the CDC misinforming everyone about how if you get “fully vaccinated” then you won’t get sick, not ever, or it will be super rare, but then a lot of people DID get sick anyways? How about when the CDC misinformed everyone that the mRNA vaccines with their “Alpha” variant spike would be protected forever against any new variants and then it only took about ten minutes for that to be proven wrong?

And don’t forget to let SG Murthy know about your own local misinformers, like scientists and doctors who witlessly repeated the vast array of CDC misinformation to school boards, county commissions, and city councils, wreaking untold error and confusion. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one local UF scientist and a major hospital CEO around here who fit that description. Murthy needs to know about these misinformers.

It will only take you a couple minutes. We need for all 100,000 C&Cers to pitch in and let the Surgeon General know about all this misinformation out there. And maybe you should forward this assignment to everyone you can think of to help Murthy find out where all this misinformation has been coming from.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, March 10, 2022 ☙ THE MORAL GRAVITY OF THE UNIVERSE ​

My ultimate reasonable conclusion: someone other than Biden is in charge, even if just implicitly. Biden isn’t calling the shots.

With me so far? Now we can make some predictions. What is likely to happen if Biden isn’t in charge? For now, forget about speculating as to who or what is really in charge at the White House. We can’t know that. We could make some educated guesses based on whose agenda the administration’s priorities are most consistent with. That is good circumstantial evidence, but it’s not enough to close the deal.

Prediction No. 1: the proposals from the White House will become more and more extreme as the year continues.

Absent a miracle, Biden is extremely unlikely to run for re-election in 2024 just given his age and health; so he is politically disposable. He can be hated by everybody by 2024, who cares? Even Biden doesn’t care. If he only sees what they want him to see, he doesn’t even know if he’s hated anyway, so what’s the harm? Treating Biden like a disposable resource is consistent with his cratering poll numbers and indefensibly damaging decisions like surrendering Afghanistan and handing all our military gear to the Taliban.

If whoever is in charge won’t be blamed because they’re anonymous, and if Biden getting the blame doesn’t hurt anything because he’s a lame duck anyway, and it appears they’re going to lose Congress in January, then they only have nine months to accomplish as much of the agenda as they can. So we’ll see the proposals and executive orders get even more extreme and more invasive as the year continues. Prepare yourselves, it will be a wild ride.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, March 7, 2022 ☙ RISK BUDGETS

Well, THIS explains a lot. The Blaze News finally got a response from HHS on its FOIA request. Turns out that HHS used your money (tax dollars) to buy massive amounts of advertising from major news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC; from cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC; from legacy media publications like the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post; from digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax; from YouTube for segments featuring celebrities garnering millions of hits; and from literally hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations.

HHS paid media to advertise COVID vax as outlets gave positive coverage​

In spring of last year, Congress appropriated $1 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director "to strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States … provide further information and education with respect to vaccines … and to improve rates of vaccination throughout the United States."

The Biden administration paid for advertisements on hundreds of news platforms, according to The Blaze, as part of its "COVID-19 Public Education Campaign," a "comprehensive media campaign" to "educate people about the importance of vaccination and basic prevention measures to prevent COVID-19 and protect public health."

Some media outlets aired HHS commercials with celebrities promoting the vaccine, and others sympathetically covered "fear-based vaccine ads" from COVID patients who survived after being hospitalized in intensive care units.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, March 11, 2022 ☙ AMPING THE DOSAGE ​

There’s one sure way to get deaths down. A story published yesterday by WCVB Boston is headlined, “State health officials announce new criteria for counting COVID-19 associated deaths.” New criteria! Why new criteria? This is going to shock you, but apparently, according to Massachusetts public health officials, they haven’t been counting right. The way they were counting before resulted in a “significant overcounting of deaths.”

I know, right? This seems impossible. How could a mistake like this happen?

First of all, they were just too generous or something. DPH Commissioner Margret Cooke explained that “over time, our approach proved to be too expansive and led to a significant overcount of deaths in Massachusetts. People who had gotten COVID earlier in 2020 and died for other reasons ended up still being included in COVID associated deaths.”

Sloppy.

Plus they explained the state needs to STANDARDIZE, because it’s good to have standards, and they just noticed that fact, for the first time ever. “We are adopting the new definition because we support the need to standardize the way COVID-19-associated deaths are counted,” said DPH State Epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown.

Better late than never?

If only someone had pointed out these counting problems earlier in the pandemic. A lot of people might have been spared a bunch of anxiety and worry and stuff. Oh well. Mistakes were made. What can you say? After the retroactive “fix” of death calculations, the state’s overall Covid death count will immediately fall by 3,700 — about 15% of the total.

So … does Massachusetts have the right number NOW? Or are there MORE mistakes?

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, March 14, 2022 ☙ TRIGGERED ​

Georgetown University is finally dropping its mask mandate. In a memo to the study body, GU was clear that nobody — not ANYBODY — should be forced to wear a mask:

Please respect the decisions and privacy of fellow community members by not asking why someone is wearing a mask. Please help all members of our community feel welcome and sage, and consider putting on a mask when interacting with someone who is wearing a mask. Do not pressure someone to put on or take off a mask.

So, NOW the university thinks you shouldn’t pressure someone to put on a mask. Where was all this respect for private decisions ten minutes ago, when it might have been useful?

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, March 15, 2022 ☙ COLD SHOWERS ​

It’s ANOTHER pandemic. People ran an article yesterday headlined, “Blood Clots Like Hailey Bieber’s Are Happening in ‘Younger and Younger People’.” See, blood clots are like a virus. They spread and stuff. It’s probably a new blood clot variant infecting younger people now. If you don’t wear your mask, you’re going to catch clots, or something.

But it is definitely NOT anything to do with a certain medication, which wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the article about increasing numbers of blood clots in younger folks.

People interviewed a cerebrovascular doctor, Shazam Hussein. (I wonder if, right after a patient wakes up from surgery, he exclaims “Shazam!”) Dr. Hussein explained blood clots like Hailey Bieber’s can form “for different reasons.” That’s a technical term.

He warned whatever it is, is spreading. “We think of stroke as being something that happens in older ages, but we are seeing it in younger and younger people,” Hussein said.

Hussein explained that you’d better watch what you eat now. “It relates, generally, to people having unhealthy lifestyles, maybe not eating as well or not getting in regular exercise, along with other factors like genetics,” Dr. Hussein explained. He recommends sticking to a healthy diet, getting in shape, keeping cholesterol under control, and quitting smoking.

They always told us that eating junk food would give us blood clots and strokes, but we just wouldn’t listen. Now look what happened.

Dr. Hussein didn’t mention the jab. Neither did People. But curiously, People quoted him dismissing the Covid virus as the culprit. It says he noted that, while Covid-19 has been shown to cause blood clots, “fortunately most people don’t run into that issue.” So.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, March 16, 2022 ☙ REBUKED ​

How long have you been waiting to see something like THIS? Yesterday, the Washington Post, of all places, ran a story headlined, “These Schools Did Less To Contain Covid. Their Students Flourished.”

Flourished! By doing LESS! You read that right. Hades has frozen over, or something.

The article drives an anecdotal stake through the demonic heart of school mask mandates.

It reports that “thousands of school districts — typically small ones in conservative-leaning counties” re-opened fast, stayed open full-time, and eschewed mask mandates in favor of recommendations. And, the article suggests, students in open schools did better academically than students in closed, mandated schools. Just as you would expect. And they didn’t experience Covid outbreaks or deaths or whatever.

WaPo stopped short of drawing the ultimate conclusion, the strongly implied opposing conclusion: that students in closed mandate schools SUFFERED academically, for no benefit in Covid stats. WaPo must feel SAYING IT would just be too much, too soon. But corporate media is clearly trying to shut down school masking, which is still the hottest issue activating previously apolitical people.

 

[GURPS]

️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, March 16, 2022 ☙ REBUKED ​

Fox ran an interesting explainer yesterday, headlined “Russia Duped Europe Into Energy Dependence By Funding ‘Rabid Environmental Groups’: Experts.” The subhead explains, “Russians actually fund some of the most rabid environmental groups in Europe.”

The gist is that Russia has been creating or supporting anti-energy environmental groups in Europe and the U.S. to stop everyone from developing their own sources of energy, like shale gas.

The article reports that 15 years ago, Europe produced more natural gas than Russia, but all that changed as Russia increased its natural gas production and Europe reduced it. “Europe decided not to frack in large part due to CLIMATE ACTIVISTS,” the expert explained.

Unsurprisingly, it also happened here in the U.S.. WikiLeaks published a private 2016 email from Hilary Clinton, where she’d written, “We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.”

One of the first things Joe Biden did after getting hold of the executive pen was to shut down U.S. fracking. Just like Putin wants. Just saying.

 

[GURPS]

Nigeria, with only 4.4% fully jabbed out of its 206 million people, reported zero deaths and only 87 cases this week. Weird. Wouldn’t it be great to have a well-funded government health agency that could investigate stuff like this and figure out how the clever Nigerians are avoiding stealth Omicron? Maybe we’ll have something like that someday.

☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, March 25, 2022 ☙ THE SANCTIONS DIET 🦠

A new scarient is making the rounds but Fauci says don’t worry; new challenges for airlines; an unexpected retirement; NATO adventurism; a Biden sanctions diet.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

Vanity Fair published a blockbuster expose late this week after reviewing over 100,000 documents and interviewing more than 30 people about the effort starting in early 2020 to squash the Wuhan lab-leak theory. Apparently — and this is going to shock you to your core — EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak led a heroic behind-the-scenes effort to discredit every single scientist who thought Covid might have come out of the WIV, and label the theory as “misinformation.”

See, this is the problem with the whole “misinformation” deal. Once you let the “misinformation” genie out of the bottle, anyone can use it to slander anybody they don’t like. It doesn’t matter whether the information is true or not, don’t be ridiculous. It only matters if you can make the charge stick. Which the NIH and Daszak quite effectively did, long enough to dissipate all the perfectly legitimate anger toward China and the U.S. agencies responsible for this pandemic. Racism! Misinformation!

Verminous plague-doctor Anthony Fauci was in it up to his wormy little neck, too. Tick-tock, doctor.

☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Saturday, April 2, 2022 ☙ RUBLES FOR GOLD 🦠

Drama-specialist Will Smith dramatically resigns from the Academy — to no effect; Vanity Fair exposes government-fueled attacks on Wuhan-lab theory proponents; sanctions fail spectacularly; much more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

Which brings us to some thoughts about Faith and the Pandemic, and it seems like the day before Easter is a good time to delve into them.

One thing that has struck me, and others, is how many of the truth-telling heroes of the pandemic have been devout Christians. Docs like Cole, Littell, and McCullough, for example. Or stand-out churches that were among the first to push back against lockdown restrictions in California. Back on April 5th, 2021, the New York Times even blamed evangelical Christians for the US’s poor vaccination rates in an alarming article headlined, “Millions of white evangelicals do not intend to get vaccinated.”

(The headline was especially hilarious given low vaccination rates among black Americans, including evangelical ones, but I digress.) The Times reported — as straight news — that “the sheer size of the [evangelical] community poses a major problem for the country.” The christians were a major problem all right.

The religious exemption to vaccination has proved to be the most difficult barrier for the federal government in achieving Biden’s stated “100%” vaccination target. Where even serious medical objections have been blithely denied, many folks subject to mandates have still succeeded in asserting their good-faith religious beliefs as a barrier to injection. And the pro-life argument — that the vaccines rely on aborted human tissues — has been the most convincing argument to courts in upholding religious exemptions to vaccination.

Among others defying mandates, christians have braved backlash, job loss, and cancellation, and it’s not surprising given the tenets of that faith. Christians believe they answer to a higher power than the government, and that all trials and suffering in this life are small parts of a glorious plan that ultimately works for complete good. And they believe that, if they die from Covid, it was part of God’s original plan for this flawed world, and they will be resurrected in an indestructible new body on a perfect new Earth.

In other words, Christians’ faith is an antidote to FEAR, the psyops weapon primarily relied on by the government to “nudge” our compliance with the jabs. If you think about it, faith and fear are mutually exclusive. You can’t hold them both in your mind at the same time. Each pushes out the other. If you have faith, what is there to be afraid of? “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul,” Jesus advised.

As an agnostic intellectual who came to faith later in life, I totally understand the skepticism that many folks have about preposterous-seeming religious claims to an afterlife. It sounds a lot like wishful thinking. Karl Marx famously claimed that Christian theology is just the opium of the masses, a mind-drug deployed by powerful forces to keep people from rebelling against their difficult economic conditions. Of course, Marx was insane, and a terrible economist, so there’s THAT.

As Marx showed, Christian theology can be made to appear anti-intellectual, as it is “faith based” and relies on an unprovable belief in an afterlife. But I can tell you from personal experience that studying “real” theology — not the media-hyped straw arguments — has been a profoundly intellectually rewarding pursuit. Try reading some Augustine or Kierkegaard sometime.

There is no such thing as a purely-objective, non-faith-based worldview. Everybody, even hardcore atheists, takes the universe, and their place in it, on faith. For example, to be a good atheist these days, you must faithfully accept that a “multiverse” exists, which makes for an entertaining Spiderman movie but is just as unprovable as life after death.

So it all comes down to a decision about WHAT to take on faith. If you have to choose SOMETHING, isn’t it better to decide to believe in the thing that wipes away fear, explains suffering, erases guilt, and fills you with hope no matter how dark things in the world seem to appear? The multiverse can’t help too much with that. But Easter can.

☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Saturday, April 16, 2022 ☙ 🥚 BONUS EASTER EDITION 🕊️ 🦠

Musk’s battle with Twitter heats up; what Hunter Biden and Merrick Garland have in common; an Easter message about hope over fear; and a surprising visitor in Tallahassee.

www.coffeeandcovid.com