Senators Warren and Booker tested positive for COVID with mild symptoms. According to the official COVID narrative, the vaccinated aren’t infectious. Does this mean that Warren and Booker won’t be required to quarantine? If they still have to quarantine, that can only mean that “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated” is untrue. Why is every vaccinated person who tests positive still required to quarantine? Have the people who repeat the mantra about the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” asked themselves this question?

I know the answer because I read the original papers Pfizer published when the vaccine was released. But let’s say you didn’t have time to do that. Why aren’t you wondering about these things now? When the vaccinated Governor of Texas tested positive, why did he quarantine? Moreover, would you hang out with a vaccinated friend who tested positive yesterday? If you test positive after vaccination, will you feel no compunction circulating freely? Or would you stay home for a while? You know the answer.

If we all know the answer, why does the lie persist? Why does it get repeated? To discourage the infected from quarantining? Probably not. Then why? There’s got to be a purpose to such an obvious untruth being peddled so insistently.

Montreal announced a new round of COVID restrictions today. Among other things, the gyms are getting closed once again.

In Canada, fewer than 2% of COVID deaths are in people under the age of 50. Over 65% of deaths are over the age of 80. But the government is working hard to protect the elderly fitness freaks from congregating in the gyms and conking out from COVID right in the weightlifting room.

I know it’s useless to appeal to reason. This will end when Canadians decide it should end. For now, most of them seem to be enjoying all this.

In the meantime, I’m off to the gym.

It’s a good thing she didn’t need an elephant trunk to be herself.

This is completely anecdotal and isn’t aimed at drawing any conclusions but right now I personally know more people seriously ill with COVID than at any other time. Until very recently, the person I knew with the worst COVID symptoms was actually me. Everybody else I know who had it had very mild symptoms, including people over 70 and even 80. For the first time, I know people who are in the hospital for it, some for the second time in two weeks. These are all elderly people with a bunch of other illnesses but this obviously doesn’t make me care about them less.

What are your personal COVID stats?

“Well, I refuse to accept that we should just learn live with COVID,” somebody I know announced grandly.

There’s absolutely no better summary of the neoliberal mentality than this. People see everything as a matter of choice. Everything that happens is a result of either good or bad choices that you make. You can choose your way out of every situation. Nothing simply is. The possibility that your refusal to accept something might have zero bearing on the outcome is unthinkable.

My car refused to start because it doesn’t like cold weather. I’m the exact opposite: I can’t start in hot weather, so I feel resentful against this car.

The funny thing is that nobody said anything of the kind. Pfizer was very clear back in January that it wasn’t supposed to stop transmission. Anybody with half a brain cell could see why there was no scientific mechanism for it to stop transmission. Nobody promised an end to restrictions either.

People just assumed. They assumed that consenting to coercion would bring freedom. Instead, it brought more coercion.

Will they learn now?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that (some) normies are figuring things out. I want to be more patient with their mournful, confused bleatings. But it’s hard. It’s been two years, and it’s only dawning on them now how this works? And only on a few of them?

“But how could they do this to us? We trusted them? How could they?”

It’s painful to watch. Give them another decade and maybe they’ll clock on to the fact that everybody is out for themselves and if you don’t defend your interests, no one else will.

I went into Klara’s room at midnight to see if I’d remembered to pull down the blinds. She opened her eyes briefly, said “I’m happy, mama, I’m so happy,” and fell asleep again.

I cried for 30 minutes.