Interesting times

OK, I am getting this right? Most scientists seem to be suggesting (if you read the fine print in the main stream media) that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is much *less* dangerous than the Delta variant. Indeed, it seems to be much less dangerous than the original COVID-19 virus. Yet, it´s also expected to "completely overwhelm" the health care system. And for that reason, everyone who refuses to take the vaccine (which may not even work against Omicron - this also according to fine print in the main stream media) will be shut out of society: jobs, supermarkets, public transit, diners, pubs, etc. And, of course, Facebook. You might even end up in jail! Unless you live in a country where *everyone* is locked down...again. 

I call bullshit. It´s becoming increasingly clear that the lockdowns, mandates and passports are really about social control. Or, not to put too fine spin on it, repression. Are we to believe that the same neo-liberal governments *who never gave shit about health care before* (unless you could handsomely pay for it) are suddenly going after the evil evilly anti-vaxxers *because they want to save the health care system (and our public health)* from these truly Satanic minions? Not to mention everything else they screwed up for the past 30 year or so...

No, this is an ersatz state of emergency, a form of creeping authoritarian globo-liberalism, by which a dying class (the PMC) is trying to shore up its crumbling system and thereby its power and privilege. COVID is a real pandemic, but it must have been a heaven´s send that it came in 2020, enabling the US Democrats to defeat Trump in the elections, and then try and deflect (or even repress) popular anger at Biden´s failures by using COVID as the perfect excuse. It also created an excuse for both Dems and GOP to transfer billions or trillions to their fat corpocratic donors (the PMC and the corpocracy of course being tight allies). This also explains the (bizarre) tendency of many supposedly radical leftists (including ostensible revolutionaries) to *support* the state of emergency, which atomizes the working class and often disproportionately hits the specially oppressed. The leftists are based in the PMC, and indeed, under a lockdown, the workers and oppressed will become totally dependent on the work-from-home middle class radicals, who will "lobby" the governments to give the downtrodden at least a token slice of the COVID relief pie. Being does indeed determine consciousness. 

The good news is that the repression will fail. How many people are willing to put up with all this BS for another year? Or two years? And how strong is the globo-liberal establishment *really*? The so-called anti-vaxxers won´t go quietly into the night. Let´s hope there is still room for a peaceful, democratic conflict resolution in 2022. Otherwise, there might be an ugly trial by combat...

I long wondered how the old world would end. Fires? Floods? The Great Meteor? A squamous rugose green monster squid with bat wings rising from the ocean? Or some basic bitch combo of all the usual suspects: peak oil, Islamist terrorists, Russian breakaway republics, melting doomsday glaciers, the mysterious disappereance of the honeybees, and a random dude named Donald? (The SWP and Militant aren´t on the list, sorry.) I admit that I didn´t believe globo-liberalism would meet its Waterloo because of a flu epidemic and the refusal of some QAnons to take a vaccine, but I suppose we live in interesting times.