rattlesnake

People are going nuts.

Indeed, it was deemed “the deadliest pandemic since the Spanish flu” etc. But the mortality rate was extremely low. It is one more respiratory ailment and the rest is just political. Just two weeks to flatten the curve… Just six weeks to slow the spread… Just until a vaccine is available… Just until the elderly and most compromised are vaccinated… Just until all adults are vaccinated… Just until 80% of everyone over 12 is vaccinated… Just until 85% of everyone over 5 is vaccinated… Just show your vaccine passport… Gotta laugh about it really.

The topic of the thread is It's official "We can treat covid like the flu" according to the CDC. Of course those of us who said from day 1 that Covid was merely a flu are going to react to that, what do you expect?

Firstly, the post-Yanukovych Ukrainian government is entirely under US control and effectively constitutes a Western stronghold in the country. A couple of sources to illustrate this: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin John J. Mearsheimer https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf How the CIA Supports Ukraine – and Vice Versa https://www.kyivpost.com/post/28664 Secondly, the Donbass has been consistently the theatre of persecutions and killings by the Western-backed Ukrainian government since 2014, as Anila Lipp reports (also check out Anne-Laure Bonnel): German journalist Alina Lipp personally witnesses civilians dying in Donbass each day: We are under fire here every day, and the shelling is not at all for military purposes. Most of the men are at the front now. There are also women, children, elderly people here. For some fundamental information on why the Western establishment wants to subvert Russia at any cost, again, I recommend reading The Grand Chessboard, which was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the chief architects of the US' modern foreign policy doctrine, member of the Trilateral Commission and the brains behind the first Afghan war, which was effectively a proxy war against Russia in the 80s.

I was just going to post that, thank you.

The facts reported in this article were confirmed by multiple other independent sources on the ground, such as Anne-Laure Bonnel.

Evidence that the Ukrainian government, backed by the Western establishment after the removal of President Yanukovych, has been relentlessly repressing, humiliating and killing the Donbass population, the vast majority of which is culturally Russian and speaks Russian as a first language. From that same article: Considering those preceding events, but above all the country’s profound historical divisions, particularly between its western and eastern regions—ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic and political—the rebellion in the southeast, centered in the industrial Donbass, was not surprising. [...] But by declaring an “anti-terrorist operation” against the new protesters, Kiev signaled its intention to “destroy” them, not negotiate with them. [...] Zealous, barely trained and drawn mostly from central and western regions, Kiev’s new recruits have escalated the ethnic warfare and killing of innocent civilians. (Episodes described as “massacres” soon also occurred in Mariupol and Kramatorsk.)

She is a famous and influential US media personality, and her claims definitely contributed to establishing the idea that the vaccine would end the pandemic in the collective mind. For instance, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, an outlet with a decidedly liberal audience, noted in March 2021: ‘Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.’ However, this claim was not possible to make at that time, nor was it true. https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2023/06/09/jme-2022-108825

Video of Biden Saying Vaccinations Prevent COVID Resurfaces After Infection Video of President Joe Biden assuring Americans exactly one year ago that they would not get COVID-19 if they are vaccinated resurfaced Thursday after the commander in chief tested positive for the novel coronavirus. https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-2021-video-saying-vaccinations-prevent-covid-resurfaces-1726900

I did but they wouldn't listen.

He refers, among other things, to the Donbass and the way the US-backed Ukrainian government has been treating people there since Maidan. Here is a 2014 article which might help you grasp the reality of what is at stake in this region: For months, the US-backed regime in Kiev has been committing atrocities against its own citizens in southeastern Ukraine, regions heavily populated by Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. While victimizing a growing number of innocent people, including children, and degrading America’s reputation, these military assaults on cities, captured on video, are generating intense pressure in Russia on President Vladimir Putin to “save our compatriots.” Both the atrocities and the pressure on Putin have increased even more since July 1, when Kiev, after a brief cease-fire, intensified its artillery and air attacks on eastern cities defenseless against such weapons. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/silence-american-hawks-about-kievs-atrocities/

Please handle it yourself. Have you ever listened to – or read a transcript of – a Putin speech?

All one needs to do is listen to his speeches to see what a great leader sounds like. No wonder he is supported by the vast majority of Russians. If only we had someone like him in France, instead of the little Rothschild employee who openly despises the French people and precipitates us further down the abyss every single day…

Yes. MARIUPOL, Ukraine — A volunteer brigade with self-proclaimed Nazis fighting alongside government troops against Russian-backed separatists is proving to be a mixed blessing to its cause. [...] A drill sergeant who would identify himself only as Alex wore a patch depicting Thor's Hammer, an ancient Norse symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In an interview with USA TODAY, he admitted he is a Nazi and said with a laugh that no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/10/ukraine-azov-brigade-nazis-abuses-separatists/24664937/

Please remind me how many wars Trump started during his term.

Please explain this.

FYI: In contrast, death rates fell in countries like Sweden and Norway and also New Zealand, who contained the virus successfully before its vaccination programme took off. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65975154

"How much credibility should Hemachudha be given on this topic when he's relying on a documented misinformation purveyor as his source, and ignoring the numerous fact check reports and the opinions of multiple experts in the field both posted above that say embalmer Hirschman's claims relating to COVID vaccines are not credible?" Definitely a lot more than all of us here, given his background, experience and expertise.

It definitely seems to be when you look at its structure objectively. The post-Soviet system was modelled on the West under Yeltsin. https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/d513a1/pdf/ Back to Navalny, the Russian courts were actually very lenient with him in 2013 as he was given probation despite the serious embezzlement crimes which he was found guilty of. He was even allowed to run for Mayor after his conviction. It were his repeated breaches of his probation terms which eventually led to his arrest in 2021. A somewhat more nuanced reality than the "Putin jails his opponents" catchphrase. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/world/europe/russian-opposition-leader-is-spared-jail.html

For this comment to be valid, one would have to demonstrate that the Navalny brothers did not steal money from Yves Rocher, VTB Bank and Transneft, amongst a flurry of other crimes. Snippets from Wikipedia using terminology such as "widely seen as political" do not cut it.

You mean people like Thiravat Hemachudha, head of the Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Disease Health Science Centre of the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University, who was a vocal proponent of the jab during the crisis and is now calling for investigations? Has he become a conspiracy theorist, all of a sudden? “There is an organised effort to cover up information and facts about the number of people who have died or are suffering from Long COVID by means of under-reporting their numbers and an effort to prevent public access to such information on social media, leaving many people unaware that they are being affected by Long COVID from vaccination and depriving them of proper treatment.” https://www.thaipbsworld.com/allegations-made-over-cover-up-about-long-covid/

Navalny was jailed because he was a multiple-convicted crook.

... Says the Western media and political establishment, whose lies and contradictions I have extensively demonstrated in this thread.

In the midst of the crisis, YouTube and other major social media platforms censored all alternative views on the vaccine harshly and were the last place to go for the truth. Dr Campbell, at the time, was very much pro-jab and I have never watched any of his videos.

The Russian people are not children and don't need Western intervention to "save" them.