{"id":99272,"date":"2020-09-11T08:50:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T13:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=99272"},"modified":"2020-09-13T17:38:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T22:38:43","slug":"commit-suicide-safely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/commit-suicide-safely\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety and psychosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wichita city council this week extended the “mask mandate” into October. Why stop at masking<\/a>?<\/p>\n

How can I avoid the risks of drowning while swimming?<\/em><\/p>\n

Recommendation: if you must swim, always wear a life vest, face mask and snorkel. This can interfere with swimming laps and draw comment at your local swimming club (assuming they reopen after a coronavirus vaccine is available) but your health is more important!<\/p>\n

SER best practice: don\u2019t swim at all. In fact, try not to go near bodies of water larger than a bathtub. Avoid hot tubs, especially if you are very short or have trouble maintaining your balance.<\/p>\n

Pro-action: organize your fellow zero-risk activists to complain to pool operators about persons insensitive to your need for complete safety. Demand that the your health club or swimming pool have two trained lifeguards on duty at all time. Lobby local officials to fence off all ponds and lakes where people might swim unsupervised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

If you really want to do<\/i> something about the CCP virus, Joseph Moore has the most practical suggestion<\/a> I’ve come across:<\/p>\n

Turns out that the majority of the population, those under 50 and in reasonably good health, have an IFR [infection fatality rate] of about 0.0001% \u2013 one in a million chance. (1) With this bit of information in hand, we should rejoice, throw away the damned masks, and throw a huge, sweaty, 2 week-long street party \u2013 for all those who are under 50 and in reasonably good health AND anyone else who would rather party and face a minuscule risk of death than cower like rabbits.<\/p>\n

Because \u2013 pay attention here \u2013 after than 2-week party, we\u2019ll have reached herd immunity! Huzzah! And it would cost us fewer deaths, maybe around 100, from COVID, far fewer than are going to kill themselves coming and going to the party, drinking too much and falling on their face, or in any of the myriad other mundane yet fatal ways healthy people routinely die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

Some perspective on our historical moment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In 2005, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben published the book State of Exception<\/a><\/i>. The title refers to an old idea, traceable at least to the Roman dictatorship, which holds (to coin a phrase) that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.<\/p>\n

Of course, sometimes extraordinary times do<\/i> require extraordinary measures\u2014e.g., the American Revolution. The problem, of which ancient thinkers and jurists were well aware, is that there are always people wishing to proclaim any and every time \u201cextraordinary\u201d so they can grant themselves extraordinary powers which they resist ever giving up. The Roman solution was to limit a dictator\u2019s term to six months and to enforce a strong political-cultural norm that the sooner a dictator surrendered his office, the more honor he gained. Whatever the precise solution, for law and liberty to endure, some means has to be found to deal with extraordinary moments without permanent recourse to lawless power.<\/p>\n

Agamben argues that few, if any, countries\u2014and virtually none in the West\u2014have any such means anymore. And all the elites like it that way. Hence the \u201cstate of exception\u201d has everywhere replaced the rule of law and is, de facto<\/i>, the rule.<\/p>\n

Nothing has made this clearer than the COVID-19 lockdowns, mask mandates, and other executive directives by governors and mayors who make no pretense of even consulting legislative bodies, much less going to the trouble of passing actual laws. They just decree what they want, and that\u2019s that. <\/p>\n

Americans initially were willing to go along because they feared that COVID-19 would turn out to be what the ruling class and the \u201cexperts\u201d still lyingly insist that it is: a once-in-a-century plague primed to kill millions within months. By now it\u2019s obvious that this virus is not that. But the \u201cstate of exception\u201d remains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

And that’s enough. I am beyond disgusted with the viral hysteria and the gangsters who exploit it. From here on out I intend to completely ignore it and return this weblog to its original focus on trivia like literature, cartoons, the end of civilization, botany and music.<\/p>\n

*** Update: I wasn’t happy with the original title, so I changed it. (This<\/a> was in the back of my mind.)<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Update II: Edward Feser is ferocious<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wichita city council this week extended the “mask mandate” into October. Why stop at masking? How can I avoid the risks of drowning while swimming? Recommendation: if you must swim, always wear a life vest, face mask and snorkel. This can interfere with swimming laps and draw comment at your local swimming club (assuming … Continue reading “Safety and psychosis”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decline-and-fall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-pPa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99272"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99544,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99272\/revisions\/99544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}