At this point, everyone knows that miracle of miracles, I survived COVID along with my 15 and 17 year old sons, despite being unvaccinated.
In early 2020, I would wake up to death threats via anonymous Twitter people. I lost friends. Didn’t talk to my sister or parents for long stretches because it would always lead to arguments. My eldest was discriminated against. And “we” were told at least once a day we were horrible people that didn’t care about anyone else. What a difference 15 days make.
A couple of thoughts on the last 24 months now that the narrative has so massively shifted to “Putin is to blame for prices at the pump AND inflation.”
1. The unvaccinated were the control group. All the people tweeting “it could have been so much worse if I wasn’t vaccinated …” that’s bad science. If you are in your 40s or your teens, you have to compare yourself to us. That’s what trials are for. None of us have set foot in a hospital for more than 2 years so I guess we flattened the curve? So if that was the goal, was restricting healthy people really the best solution? We know now, as I wrote about then, it wasn’t.
2. While having a debate with someone, when you aren’t winning, don’t say “you are just a horrible person…” or “public health…” or “you don’t like my grandma.” It’s possible that your opponent has looked at math, data, studies and has a point. Feelings shouldn’t win debates. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
3. The media doesn’t have your best interests at heart. They are paid by advertisers to sell eyeball time. The number of false statements and pure propaganda that were featured there and compared to where we are today, should make you ask more questions. My overarching thesis was “if they won’t let anybody debate them, what are they hiding.” You can see very clearly narrative over discussion has been the feature of the media and government machine and it didn’t yield the best answer or policy.
4. If you supported a mask mandate and aren’t wearing a mask today, you should ask yourself some deep, personal questions about the consistency of your beliefs. If you supported a vaccine mandate and believed people should lose their jobs and don’t believe that today, you should ask yourself “what changed?” And “how can I be more intellectually consistent in the future?”
5. Censorship is not the way forward. Suppressing those with ideas different than yours, not engaging in debate, and canceling them is why it took us just slightly more than 14 days to get here.
As you know if you followed me, I have not varied from “you do you” or “everything is about trade offs” since the beginning. And more than anything I have asked the question “but at what cost are we saving everyone’s grandma, who is 85 and has diabetes….” I raise this uncomfortable topic because COVID is a small problem (cost) relative to what “climate catastrophists” are preaching today.
I strongly suggest you evaluate all policy recommendations through the lens of “at what cost, based on what data, based on what debate and what will be the unintended consequences of that action.”
COVID led to broken supply chains, broken friendships, digital passports, travel restrictions, 7.9% inflation and $6 trillion of debt that your kids will have to pay (or worse).
It wasn’t COVID that changed lives, it was the crafted response and forced narrative by monetarily interested politicians and corporations who bought TV time and canceled dissenters. This is true for the climate narrative, too. One should ask themselves, am I being educated? Or led? Because those are two different things. COVID wasn’t the problem, society/government was.
David:
I attended an Oil and Gas Law Seminar today and this is what is happening to my industry, your freedom and our country’s ability to power our economy:
1) Out of the 700 Million Mineral Acres managed by the BLM, (which should be the property of the States in which they reside, but that’s a separate issue),
a) 673.4 Million acres of that is currently UNLEASED by Oil and Gas Companies for development.
b) 26.6 Million Acres are leased.
c) 13.9 Million acres is NOT producing.
d) 12.7 Million acres IS PRODUCING
e) 480,550 acres is disturbed acreage by drilling operations. Tank batteries, well pads, etc. That’s 0.07%!!! (I’m not sure how much acreage is disturbed by pipelines, but animals and people can still use and access that land).
2) Out of the 9,000’ Federal permits that Jen Psaki suggests, (not sure where this number comes from), 2,200 of those permits are currently tied up in courts due to lawsuits brought by WildEarth Guardians and other such Organizations and they use NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The SEC is working on a requirement that company’s incorporate climate considerations when approving funds for drilling. That won’t encourage drilling.
3) The pipelines necessary to get Natural Gas from a lease to a pipeline in order to sell the Natural Gas often traverses federal lands and it takes years to get the BLM to approve those. So, what do they do? Liberal states have implemented no Flare rules on the Industry. If you can’t sell the gas produced with the oil and you can’t flare it, then you won’t be able to produce the oil.
4) In NM, a judge recently ruled in favor of an operator. In WildEarth Guardians v. David Bernhardt, the Judge ruled that that the Company complied with NEPA requirements. So what happened? The BLM activist still haven’t approved their permits.
5) In 2021 the EPA imposed the Social Cost of Carbon cost at $51/Ton of CO2. If that is the measure, then the EPA can state that if a well will produce 5 million tons of Carbon, then preventing it will save $255,000,000 worth of damage, so if they tax that in order to allow the permit, it is now uneconomic to drill the well. LUCKILY, the Louisiana court ruled that this was unconstitutional, BUT the Administration will prevail someday. All you need is a few well place judges and we’re screwed. Here’s the Government article describing their disastrous and illogical plan: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-12/documents/social_cost_of_carbon_fact_sheet.pdf
6) In NM, since oil was found in the 1920’s, the NM Oil Conservation Division, (OCD), the Regulatory agency like our Railroad Commission, couldn’t impose penalties on operators without filing an action in district court. BUT in 2020 the Legislature amended the O&G Act so that they no longer have to get a judge to sign off on any penalties. The legislature put a cap on any penalty to $200,000. BUT the activists, some of which are elected, at the OCD got creative and have imposed the $200,000 to each rule violation, which now results in the $Millions. The activists put together a Base Penalty chart and a chart for Adjustment Factors. I will send the charts when I get them from the seminar people. AND, the OCD can increase the penalty if the operator had an incident in the past or if the operator was deemed to have done this “willfully”. What liberal judge in NM will rule against them?
So, we are, as we’ve known for years, being destroyed from within! Without reliable and plentiful energy, the US will not be able to sustain our freedom nor our national security. The Communists are winning, and our children have been miseducated, so they have no clue. The ignorant blindly give $ to these organizations that do not use the $ as they advertise and is used to undermine our economy.
I could go on, but please try to educate your family, friends and especially your children!!
D. Briggs Donaldson
Whoa....number 4 is hitting some nerves. The sooner we comes to grips that our irrationality as a species is how we get ourselves into these jams the better. What concerns me about the HYPER rationalists (e.g. Sam Harris) is that they then believe they are right about everything. We are but apes with tools with a knack for making them ever more dangerous...ego is the enemy, humility in short supply, self-reflection absent in the day of social media hectoring us endlessly.