The Daily Sceptic reported recently on the plight of Kiribati, a remote island nation in the Pacific Ocean with a population of around 122,000, which until two weeks ago had avoided having any cases of COVID-19 at all, but following an outbreak has now imposed its first lockdown. What we didn’t know then is the detail of the extremely strict protocols the virus circumvented.
Not only were all 54 passengers on the flight fully vaccinated, masked, and tested negative for Covid three times in nearby Fiji before arrival, they had also been in pre-departure quarantine for two weeks before the flight, and were put in quarantine with additional testing when they arrived.
Despite this, two-thirds of the passengers (36 of 54) tested positive for Covid after arriving from Fiji on January 15th. This has led to the island’s first outbreak, which as of January 31st consists of 460 reported infections (and no deaths) and, despite the lockdown, is growing fast.
Kiribati declared a state of disaster and imposed the lockdown on January 22nd. A third of Kiribati citizens are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Paul Sacca on the Blaze notes there was a similar situation last month in Antarctica, when “nearly two-thirds of the research staff based at the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station became infected with COVID-19 despite strict health protocols in place. The workers at the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station were also fully vaccinated, took multiple PCR tests, and quarantined before arriving at the research facility”.
While the episode illustrates once more how hard it is to keep out a highly contagious respiratory virus, it also raises questions about how it got through. It’s hard to discern what exactly happened. How, after weeks of quarantine and multiple tests did a plane rock up at the airport and two thirds of passengers go on to test positive? Did one passenger have a strangely long incubation period and infect the others on the flight? Or was there some laxness in the application of the rules?
Either way, it underlines the pointlessness of restrictions on travel, including testing, privileges for the vaccinated and the requirement to mask, which are just costly inconveniences that deter travel and achieve nothing.
Stop Press: Ryanair has said it expects masks on flights to remain for years to come as “a small price to pay” to avoid other restrictions. Depressing stuff.
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Read the article earlier. Of course Shriver is right, but she neglects to give us a suggestion about how we counter this menace, unless she just thinks that each mania will blow itself out, and eventually the behaviour of the maniacs will soften and come back to reality..?
That’s obviously her idea of it.
No, she seems to be suggesting that one mania follows rapidly on the heels of another.
Stuff like this has happened in the past: for example Tulip Mania in the 17th century when men ruined themselves to buy overpriced bulbs; and the South Sea Bubble in the 18thC when so many piled on the dodgy investment. Common sense, prudence and rational thinking were all ditched.
But those manias were largely about making money and one didn’t follow the other with such rapidity. There was no mass communication.
Beatlemania came along with mass media and TV.
In the last few decades, the internet has spread IDEAS (memes) across continents in a matter of hours and most humans are conditioned to be groupthinkers, copying each other’s behaviour.
Although I appreciate Shriver’s broad arguments, I can’t agree with her sweeping statement that ‘EVERYONE’ thinks, talks of, believes in and promotes the latest mania.
As someone who has rejected climate change, transgenderism, covidia, BLM, and me-tooism, I hope there are many, many more of us who are sceptical on a daily basis and eschew the herd mentality.
But manias today are like buses – there’ll be another one along in a minute.
The global boiling crescendo is the same people who brought us COVID — The Virus Strike Back! continuing to use their newly learnt rethoric and other tricks, especially the substitution of facts with ever more hysterical lying, for their other hobby horse. Deadly heatwave season, with weather forecast maps all in RED!!!, has apparently already been started in Germany despite real temperatures remaining in the lower 20s, coming hot after a string of Hottest ever! months, starting with (I kid you not) unusually warm snow in winter.
“all white people are genetically racist”…..Why would that then exclude black racism towards white people?
These manias as she calls them often come at a time when something else big is happening in the world and is handy to keep the plebs looking the other way.
I’ve found some mania. Not that anybody can escape maniacs and mentalists these days so it’s not exactly a challenge. Look what these entitled, narcissistic little scrotes have just done today. They’re not even bothering to hide their identities. What do you think happened to them as a result of their actions? No doubt the parents will fit the bill and say ”well done!”
”BREAKING: We Painted @UKLabour HQ Red
Labour has blood on their hands. They are complicit in the murder of Palestinians, and millions of people around the world, as they continue to drive genocide.”
https://twitter.com/Wayward_sestra/status/1777380981432861020
Climate Catastrophism has been around a while now – since the ’70s at least. It has had various episodes, such as The Coming Ice Age, The Ozone Hole, Global Warming, Climate Disruption, etc.
I think Climate Alarmism is more of a money-driven scam by an elite rather than a mania of the masses. The Blob has found it a useful way of extracting extra tax from the populace and is keeping it going. It will lbe up to the populace to stamp it out, and there are signs (not least on the Daily Sceptic) that this is starting to happen.
I wonder if the next trend will be identifying as a different colour and ethnicity. We might all go Michael Jackson in order to get the jobs and sports scholarships allocated for those people.
Trans men are simply oddball gays or
paedos using it as cover and protection. Trans women are likewise. Gay people are often very narcissistic so being trans plays to this internal desire to be adulated
There’s a third option: They get paid for playacting something in public.
And the Putin threat mania? Once he is finished in Ukraine, he will first take Europe and then the rest of the world. Everyone to arms!
The herd is easily stampeded. It has always been this way. Just look at the toilet roll mania at the beginning of the covid scam or I can go back 60 years to bread strikes. I can also talk to the power of advertising. People of my age will remember The Golden Wonder peanut advert with the strap line “their jungle fresh”. People were coming into our shop asking for “Jungle Fresh” not simply peanuts.
But now with global connections and social media, nearly all the world goes mad together.
2016 also brought in the crazy clowns craze. Also going back a few centuries was the dancing craze.
I hope you are not referring to Brexit. The only crazy clowns between 2013, when the Referendum was announced, and 2016 when LEAVE won, were the Remainiacs. Idiots who predicted, like Chicken Licken, that the sky would fall down if we left the EU.
Crucial point: All of these manias conform to the agenda of the fashionable ruling elite. The institutions in power have every incentive to promote, support, and reward those who advance the progress of each of these trends.