Yep. And all the trumpets, who were mostly not essential workers, parroted all of their talking points.

If in some alternate universe, I were in a creative writing class and tasked with writing a story full of cliche metaphors, and handed in a story about the past year here…that’s a solid B+/A-.

Ok, sure, fine, that’s probably factually inaccurate, idk I’m not a mechanic, I just play one on an occasional weekend.

But you follow the metaphor? You know that there will be a segment of drivers that would see through the lie and realize that they obviously should change their oil…but you also know that the vast majority of drivers would just agree because insert mechanic techo babble from corporate sales floor.

Like should I trust Volkswagen is truthfully handling emissions because they say so, or should I trust the scientific method which discovered and then confirmed the scandal?

Revealing that secret means the people can’t be extorted anymore. There’s a narrow window when they can speak freely before…

Well…do you remember The Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones? Sort of like that, but defenestrations.

I asked ___ if she knew what being circumcised meant and she stated no. ____ then said that she thought Epstein was in steroids because he was a “really built guy and his wee wee was very tiny.” Gonzalez would explain that when she stated “wee wee” she meant penis.

I shouldn’t laugh…the situation is terrible…but damn, that’s gold.

Not from your doc. From volume 4, doc 7157, page 15.

Edit to add: some of this is just straight up teasing. I just opened a few that were just scanned pictures of microcasette tapes. Wtf am I supposed to do with that? Can I print it out and play it on a fax machine?

Let’s do another release with everything redacted except for the names (aside from victims, obviously).

Give us some random adjectives and maybe a noun here and there, too. We’ll figure out the rest.

…Peter Thiel…Bill Clinton…door knob…large, black…Bill Cosby… orangutan…Musk…umbrellas…Jared from Subway…foot-long… boofing…Brock Allen Turner…Harambe.

That’s exactly what I’m saying?

I’d trust the WHO before I’d trust the CDC (currently)…primarily because the WHO is aligned with the scientific consensus, while the CDC isn’t.

But now? If my doctor works for a medical conglomerate? And the CEO is saying to follow this CDC’s lead? That’s a significant hit for my doctor’s credibility. Now if my doctor’s recommendation is aligning with the CDC and not the WHO, which should I trust?

I know which one I would trust, but what about the typical patient?

I think you misunderstood my comment. It’s not that I don’t trust my doctor, it’s that I’m skeptical of profit-driven healthcare. Vaccines are oil changes; having your kid die of preventable disease are the engine rebuilds.

Trust and skepticism are not mutually exclusive, and people need to realize that.

I’d love to trust my doctor, and I feel like I can, because I live near a coastal city and most of our doctors actually follow the science. Smaller hospitals and private practice are generally alright but they are disappearing fast by these massive “healthcare systems”. And the doctors have to upsell or they get cut loose.

Meanwhile smaller hospitals and private practice is becoming increasingly difficult to administer. Look at the staff ratio at any private practice office. How many office staff to medical staff. That’s unsustainable.

Pharmacies are seeing the same fate. Look at how few independent pharmacies still exist. Pretty much everything else is CVS (and their pharmacy benefit management, Caremark…and given the state of both industries that whole arrangement should be broken up by antitrust laws).

And when there’s medication shortages, those independent pharmacies have the hardest time reliably obtaining product while CVS scoops up all of it.

So now good honest doctors and good honest pharmacists are just as hard to come by as a good honest mechanics. Given enough time and lack of regulation, they are bound to become about as common as good, honest cops.

Profit-driven healthcare will do what brings in the most money before killing you…and that means skipping preventative maintenance (oil changes and vaccines) and upsells (clear coat protection and elective c-sections).

We are put into a position where we have to put blind faith into a system that is openly corrupt. One where people feel a need to educate themselves, while also lacking any education.

My brother-in-law is a pharmacist for a major hospital network (and prior to that, a major retail chain). He’s riddled with stage 4 tumors all over his body. His oncologist gave him 90 days, two years ago.

He’s convinced the ivermectin and vitamins are what has been keeping him alive (and everyone on that whole limb of the family will gladly tell you all about it…fortunately he’s my wife’s step-sister’s husband, so not really “related”), and not the elaborate cutting-edge real treatments that have been pumped into his system. That’s “what’s killing him” (their words…)

Should I trust him for medical advice? He’s clearly long since drank the Koolaid and is a babbling idiot, but he’s a medical professional, and not even an outlier.

Edit/preface: If the down votes are because people think this position is antivax, they’ve got reading comprehension issues. This post is a warning of where US healthcare is, and where it is heading.

You have far too much faith in doctors, and more importantly the massive industry that is healthcare.

They will do what will deliver the most profit to the system.

Lemme tell you something…no mechanic ever made a great living just doing oil changes. They’d make a lot more money doing engine rebuilds.

So once the majority of the mechanic industrial complex is owned by a colluding group of conglomerates, they can all agree that oil changes aren’t recommended anymore. They’ll stop stocking as much oil and filters. They’ll tack on additional shop fees for disposal and materials. They’ll stop taking walk-ins. They’ll make it as hard as possible to get an oil change.

Meanwhile, there will be some car owners that would think about this for two seconds and ask “are you on fucking crack? Of course you need to change the damn oil”. But the mechanic will say some mumbo jumbo about synthetics and AI and most drivers will just believe it.

There will still be trustworthy independent mechanics, but not for very long. They’ll be spending all their time doing oil changes and not making nearly as much money as the conglomerates.

And then what’s the point in spending all that time, money, and effort getting ASE certified…to waste your time doing oil changes while those other mechanics sold their souls to live like kings?

I’ve been a lot more cynical of hospitals since realizing that my wife and I got “up-sold” to a cesarean child birth.

Politically exposed individuals.

Here’s the question, why are they in the files doing something that merits redacting them?

Call it what it is. You aren’t “redacting the names of politically exposed individuals”. You are “protecting the reputations of politically-aligned pedophiles”.

The same guy who said Rob Reiner “died due to TDS”?

Proof of concept fails in a spectacular fireball?

Fuck it, owners are too invested, ship it anyway.

Feels like I work for the same company.

Why repair the plane on the ground…if it’s a real problem, we can fix it mid-flight.

Nah, capitalism is clearly broken, and I agree that socialism is the most appealing -ism.

But a key requirement to socialism is a strong and stable central government. And we…don’t have that. Instead we have consolidated power in the executive and a judicial branch which is clearly bought and paid for.

We need to replace the roof before we think about putting in a pool.

We’ve outgrown our entire system of government…or managed to shape it into something that clearly does not match the will of the people.

We need to rewrite it with more fail-safes and circut-breakers for corruption. Social programs need to be uncuttable. Then, socialism has a fighting chance. It can be done, but not easily or willingly.

One of the big (and actually valid) concerns about socialism is “the government giveth, the government taketh away”.

Socialism is a great goal but I think this year kinda taught us that we are much further away from realizing that goal than we thought we are, if a dude like trump can come in with the trifecta and rip it all to shreds overnight, like a bully to a 5th grade diorama.