1
(Links to previous Chapters are available here: Part I, Part II, Part III)
June 20, 2020.
For now, the blatant fact that COVID-19 is first and foremost a massive operation aimed at ultimately dehumanizing people and is not quite obvious to these very people.
Comments on previous episodes of The Meaning of the Game on the coronavirus problem included questions about my expert knowledge on what is happening.
What is expert knowledge really? It is either access to secret information obtained by special services or by private intelligence, or it can be your own private intelligence, capable of engaging itself somewhere to obtain such information, or contact with those who have this information, or… or it can be just what I’ve presented based on data collected by a large research team. This team can work with open information in such a way as to obtain certain knowledge that others cannot, and thereby generate this very expert knowledge.
So how exactly does one work with the data? Not using a free handout in the form of some special information someone obtained for you, but working with real data. With the data that everyone has. How can one utilize it in a special way so as to receive such information and to demonstrate this expert knowledge?
First of all, you need the ability to pull this valuable information from this confounding information stream, which is always superfluous and unreliable. It exists, “Poetry is the same as extracting radium.” but it is difficult to extract. Today’s world, fundamentally, is based not on a deficit, but on an excess of information. There is too much information, and it is always confounding. And when the media respond to super-events, this information becomes both super-excessive and super-unreliable.
So, you don’t need an army of James Bonds to figure it out. You need a large team that is ready to work hard to sort out the available open information. Moreover, I repeat again, we are talking about information obtained from authoritative open sources.
Of course, that’s not all. Valuable information is also obtained during big scandals between competing elite groups. In these cases, competing groups leak secret information to the public. They do it themselves. They bring secrets to light. The owners of information themselves are forced to violate this secrecy to some degree – at least during the scandal. And to report, for example, that certain authorities conducted certain investigations with one set of results or another.
But this is not the most important part. The most important part is who you work with. Are you working alone? Are you working with random people? Are you working with some kind of biased people who want to a quick reward? Or do you have a large and reliable team, who really want the truth, and who are ready to work hard to find something meaningful from among the noise?
These people must not only be close to each other. Not only must they not be free from private conflicts of interests. They also need to have a common methodology and the same methodological training. The kind of training that throughout the world is called transdisciplinary, metadisciplinary, or multidisciplinary.
I remember talking with the head of a large foreign organization that calls itself a multidisciplinary college, training multidisciplinary specialists. When I told this very good, decent and intelligent person what we were doing, his reaction was: “only Russians can do this.”
I asked, “How come? You call your organization multidisciplinary.”
He replied, “Well, yes, multidisciplinary – in the sense that we study the economic, financial, political aspects of a problem simultaneously. That’s it. But to create such holistic pictures… well, firstly, only you can do this. This is art, and you cannot teach this.”
I said, “But what about the artisans who taught their apprentices in the pre-industrial era?”
He continued, “Well, and secondly, the West has nothing to do with this. And if it does, then it concentrates this knowledge in an extremely narrow circle. And it is not at all interested in creating any big colleges that will teach truly multidisciplinary research.”
I repeat: economics, finance, politics. That’s all. Maximum. That is already too much.
In the Soviet Union, there was such a culture of transdisciplinary research. It was being developed, and I participated in its development. And I conveyed what I learned and what I developed during the post-Soviet period to a large group of people. And this is not just knowledge. It is a way of working. Because you will never understand as much in a certain area as a specialist, who has spent his entire life working in this narrow area. Don’t even try to gain that level of understanding! Nothing will come of it.
But learn to understand who understands, learn to recognize these people and speak with them in a decent language. Find this interface between their language, in which they discuss the special knowledge that they have, and a language that you understand. Next, having understood this, you must pass it on to society. And that is a separate problem.
So, an expert who cannot appraise the quality of the narrow specialists, on whose information he must rely, and who cannot quickly gain the necessary mastery of professional specifics in order to understand a narrow specialist, but not replace him, – this is not an expert, but a confused collector of heterogeneous information. A garbage collector.
Such a garbage collector can talk about something with an air of importance, until the stakes go up. But in the face of any serious disaster, he becomes hopelessly lost. I’ve seen all this before. Here doesn’t matter, whether it’s Chernobyl, the Spitak earthquake, a major ethnic conflict, a geopolitical “hot spot”, or the coronavirus. No difference. Confusion immediately sets in, because you need to stop pontificating and present something meaningful, but you have no such capability, so all you can present is garbage. The dumpster is only good when you can dig around in it and act knowledgeable. But when the situation becomes acute, and all you respond with is dumpster fodder, people see this, and it creates an unpleasant impression. Then it’s better either to shut up, or to start gliding on the surface, so that nothing can be understood. But with an air of importance.
In any case, even just understanding of something complicated (and the coronavirus is a very complicated thing) requires integrating information from diverse areas. In general, we are entering an era of complexity. This complexity arises from informational diversity. But the world has not yet learned how integrate this diversity into some kind of uniform knowledge. This is not a local problem, this is the main problem on which the fate of science depends, and therefore the fate of humanity.
What do we have now? We have a situation where each of these diverse areas has its own language. Its own jargon, its own way of understanding what is happening. The language of each of these diverse fields is qualitatively different from the language used in the neighboring field…
Am I revealing some truth that no one knew before? Everyone knows this, it just gets forgotten from time to time. But at least within the scientific community, let us say frankly that a biophysicist no longer understands a biochemist. He really doesn’t! He pretends to understand. And a molecular biologist does not understand an epidemiologist.
These people can meet and discuss something “in general”. But when they try to speak not “in general”, but “very specifically”, they begin to speak each in their own language and cease to understand one another. They can only understand the final assessment, which is voiced no longer in a special language, but in a common language.
But as soon as there is a need to sort out something related to several different areas at once, the problem of this discussion itself – and even more so conveying the received knowledge to the public – it becomes very difficult, if not a dead end. And all the assembled working groups, interdepartmental commissions and other bodies called upon to solve such a problem find themselves incapable. Not because each of the people gathered is absolutely incapable. Separately, they are competent. But together they do not represent anything. It’s but a sum of individuals.
If the lack of mutual understanding can be mitigated at the level of a general transdisciplinary methodology, much can be done on a methodological level. To some extent, you can overcome terrible and frightening blindness. You can start seeing clearly, at least on the intellectual level. Or intelligibly, as Husserl put it.
This can be extended further up to other ways of seeing, experiencing and awakening – this is now the main human problem that the situation with the coronavirus exposed.
And this is the main problem of science in the 21st century, which, I emphasize once again, is monstrously amplified by everything that produces this increasingly narrow subspecialization. Because some reputable virologist or geneticist can really have something valuable to communicate, but in a language that is absolutely incomprehensible to society, related to a very narrow area that he has been working on for decades. That is his role in the scientific community. He is valued for this, for he has been working in this narrow field for 30 years and has serious knowledge. But when he goes beyond his narrow field, he gets lost. Even the neighboring fields are completely alien to him. As soon as he needs to discuss them, he falls into the deepest confusion.
And if he needs to discuss it with the public, on television for example, then the confusion becomes so extreme and obvious that it causes severe rejection by society. We have all observed this with our own eyes in cases when experts, directors of scientific institutes, and other people began to appear on television, and they were called upon to represent the position of the entire scientific community. Most of the time they were especially unconvincing. But since people who watch television equate them to a certain extent with science as a whole, the audience perceives their weakness as the weakness of science as such.
In addition, there are also questions apart from very special ones that you can examine absolutely professionally if you really want to understand something, without being a subspecialist. Such questions require reasoning, logic, a general approach, a certain perception that you need to use your head as intended, to really think things through.
I repeat, there are questions that cannot be discussed without being a specialist and without having the right dialogue with subspecialists, but there are questions that can be discussed. And these are serious questions.
I want to discuss one such obvious issue that I already directed attention to when such a discussion was considered “muddying the waters” (“Whose hands are you playing it into?” “Don’t make insinuations,” “What are you getting?”). I mentioned that you can actually start coming to your senses. But the response was, that we were “muddying the waters” and so on.
And now the things which I spoke about from the most general positions, are being discussed by experts.
What do I mean? This can be understood from common grounds and without any simplification.
Humanity is burdened with various diseases. It fights these diseases. Certain resources are allocated to fight each of these diseases (like tuberculosis, heart disease, strokes, vascular disease, etc.). This is money. But this is also something else. These are trained personnel, this is specialized infrastructure, this is equipment, this is a huge number of things that together can be called the sum of resources allocated to fight a specific disease – disease X, Y, Z, and so on. The production of drugs is included, for example. Compensation to specialists, and most importantly – their lengthy training.
These resources are distributed among those who treat people with various diseases. And suddenly a new disease appears: coronavirus.
What should be done in this situation? In theory, we should leave everything related to other diseases at the same level of support as it was. And for a new disease called COVID-19 – you need to allocate completely new resources. This includes the producing medications, vaccines, etc., and the creation of new medical facilities, training, and everything else. But to create such a diverse and new type of support for combating a new disease in a short period of time is actually impossible.
So, either you have some kind of reserve that is always ready for use. And you are able to quickly orient this reserve with its human, industrial, infrastructural, and intellectual components to fight the new disease, which is a fundamentally difficult task. This is a kind of massive rapid response service, a kind of medical special forces.
Or you begin to redistribute resources in favor of the new danger. But then the old dangers will begin to increase. And you must compare the benefits you can derive from this redistribution with the resultant losses that it generates.
If the benefit is more than the harm, then you do it, albeit with a sore heart.
And if the benefits are less, then you do not.
So, what happened with the coronavirus?
First of all, the post-Soviet reformers of the Russian health care system said that no reserves were needed. That these reserves are not vital. That this is not what the fate of humanity depends on. That all this is “commie bullshit.” That’s what they said. That this whole system that is capable of transferring these special forces and keep in a state of readiness, and this is a very difficult issue… Do you know how difficult it is, for example, to keep the people at nuclear plants, who are supposed to immediately spring into action in a time of emergency, on standby mode? They have to do something the rest of the time, you know. If they sit idly, you can’t activate them. If you come up with fictitious work for them, they still won’t activate. Special groups have to work with them. The same goes for this huge, complex reserve. You deploy on the count of three. It is called mobilizational deployment. Only not in war, but also in a disaster.
So, the Soviet system created such reserves. Because the state was centralized, and it was accustomed to trouble, with its vigilant understanding that trouble was still possible (the generation that remembered the Great Patriotic War was still living and working), finally due to the fact that after World War II, there were Korea, then Vietnam and Cuba, and anything else that could explode tomorrow – due to all this, this system kept it together. Not ideally, but it worked. And it had reserves.
Now the optimizers come and say, “What is this? Why do we need it? What are you all doing here? Wasting money?”
And the optimizers began to ferociously deal with these excessive reserves, as it seemed to them. And there was a certain philosophy to it: everything is already fine, now that the “commies” are gone, there will be no conflicts, and it will be even better. This is called the “linear theory of progress”: from good to better. And I responsibly declare that, apart from their mentality, these “optimizers” had an obvious economic interest.
The contemporary elite is not a community of weak individuals. And don’t these primitive slogans by the opposition, Communist, leftist, etc. It is shameful, because each time they yelled about how weak Yeltsin was, he knocked them all out with his left hand. It turned out that those who did the yelling were themselves helplessly weak. Then why yell? It would be better to recognize the strong points in Yeltsin, and not only him. Why downplay the enemy? Why this strange game? In short, those who say that the contemporary elite consists of weak individuals are lying, and it’s shameful.
I’m saying something different. I’m saying that the contemporary elite is a community of very strong people, mainly oriented towards the privatization of the Soviet inheritance. Why are they stronger than others? Because they clearly see where something is that can be privatized. They have perfect vision, in terms of understanding where it lies, in what form, and how much. They have everything they need inside to get what they want. They jump and take it! Here’s the bounty!
You know, this is a certain quality, a predatory instinct. They can digest what they took. They have 20/20 vision, their reaction is excellent, their muscles are strong. But these are all things pertaining specifically to privatization. Science calls them an elite of the “primitive accumulation of capital”. If the primitive accumulation is criminal, then it is a criminal elite.
And this elite rejects everything beyond this framework that I just outlined (see, analyze, jump, grab, drag away, and eat). Naturally, they also reject morality. But they also reject long-term strategic responsibility. And even more so, they reject everything dealing with some abstract value – for the nation, or what have you.
Why do they reject it? Because it is a burden, it interferes with their snatching. It is incompatible with success as it is defined by the strategic formula for privatization. Those who are burdened with all this (“God, what about the national interest!”, “God, what about morality?”, “God, what a pity!” etc.) are thrown to the sidelines. Those who are free of this burden triumph through privatization.
This is called “specific selection with specific success criteria applied.” That’s what we have, and it’s much worse than empty talk about “C-students and weaklings in power.” Come to your senses! Open your eyes! See where you are. The coronavirus showed everything. Look at it carefully and honestly. Do not be afraid.
So, you are dealing with a successful elite representative who has gone through the school of this specific selection, and now has discovered these reserves. The elite member asks, “Why can’t I steal these resources?”
They tell him that this reserve exists just in case, in the event of an emergency.
The elite member simply laughs in their face and says, “Go suck a lemon! Reserve needs – that’s all commie ideas. Now we have it good, and we’ll have it even better. Time to live for the here and now.”
There was once a certain large hospital in Moscow, I will not say which one (it eventually survived). This hospital had something that the privatizers could not appreciate – a nonmaterial resource: traditions, specialists and their school. All this in the eyes of the privatizer has no value.
And what is valuable? What does he see? He sees a large territory within the city, well-landscaped – the flowers smell good, the trees grow. And he quickly realizes how many single-family homes can be built on this territory, at what price they can be sold for, and how much you can grab.
Then he asks, “What the hell do we need this hospital for? We don’t need it. We can have something really profitable here, and you’re telling me about some traditions, some expertise, some school…”
This particular hospital that I am talking about now, was saved from the privatizers with great difficulty. We managed to save this particular one, but what about the rest?
Let’s say we have an Academy of Sciences, and it represents a certain nonmaterial reserve value. For example, people with a special type of intelligence who have tremendous experience, achievements, and more. What does it mean for a privatizer? Nothing. All that does not exist in his eyes. For him, there is real estate, financing, and other “goodies.” Talking to privatizer about humanitarian potential, about nonmaterial assets, about intellectual capital is like asking a crocodile to show brotherly love to the antelope that he is about to eat.
Therefore, everything that does not have value for the privatizer will be destroyed for the glory of privatization. That is, for the glory of the grossest, most primitive material acquisitions, to which the elite reduces everything. For the sake of gaining these acquisitions, it can show nuance, intellect, and courage, and some kind of energy potential. But only for the sake of acquisitions. It’s regress, do you understand? This is what we are dealing with, not with weakness.
A privatizer is not a coward. He’s not a coward at all. He would not be afraid of a competitor attacking him with his thugs. But he has cast off his higher functions as unnecessary. And having cast them off, he knows nothing about what can be answered only with the help of these functions. He does not have them. Therefore, he is afraid of everything incomprehensible. That includes everything that is beyond the scope of primitive material gains.
Suddenly some kind of trouble appears. And it is about to touch him and those who are close to him. You can get sick, damn it! There are reserve resources, for they have all been eaten by the privatizer and people like him. What is he going to do if this unknown muck threatens him? He is going to redistribute resources in such a way as to direct them to combat this unknown muck. And where he gets them from is not important. Whatever! You are threatened with a knife and there is a beautiful Raphael painting on the wall. You take it and use it as weapon. A friggin painting, whatever…
In short, the privatizer begins to redistribute these resources from cardiology, oncology, whatever. He’s guided by his instincts – they are still there. What do his instincts tell him? Not some higher intellect, which he abandoned as something useless, but instincts that are well developed. They say that things are bad and that you need your own capabilities, financial and otherwise, for a rainy day. That is, you need a nest egg. You need it. How do you get it? You know how.
So, these resources start getting reappropriated to even a much greater extent than usual, they get taken from the socially necessary sphere to the sphere of personal consumption. That’s what our elite representative has been doing for the whole previous era. That’s why he’s successful, because he was good at stealing things. He doesn’t know how to do anything else. But if in a normal situation, the personal withdrawal coefficient would be something like 50%, in this situation it would be 80% or 99%.
And you don’t have to be a virologist, a molecular biologist, or a geneticist in to understand what I’m saying. The only thing that is personally incomprehensible to me is how this can be not understood. As Pushkin’s Salieri said on this point, “This to me appears as clear as any simple scale”
So, the resources will be redistributed. Of course, new resources will be allocated to fight the coronavirus. But this money will be appropriated by people worried about making a rainy-day nest egg. In addition, one cannot reduce everything to money. This is the contemporary elite’s favorite pastime. When there is a difficult problem, elite representatives say, “Well, take some money! What can we do? We can give you some money.”
But you can’t quickly build a new high-quality facility out of money. People are trying now to free everything from unnecessary Construction Norms & Regulations. Some of them were made up to take bribes for passing those requirements. But some are really necessary; otherwise, everything will come crashing down on your head.
And you can’t quickly train new high-quality specialists, etc.
Therefore, they start redistributing all the resources towards the coronavirus: the territories of existing medical facilities, medical specialists of other profiles, and so on, and so on.
But if these resources are redistributed in favor of the coronavirus, together with part of the financial resources, how can this not entail costs for the areas these resources are taken from? How can this not happen? What kind of benefits this would bring to the fight against the coronavirus is a separate issue. But how can this not cause harm to the areas that resources are diverted from – that’s not clear. After all, these resources were there for a reason. In order to save a certain amount of people from certain misfortunes – heart attacks, strokes and so on. The more resources – the more people can be saved. Of course, this is not a linear relationship, but still. And the less resources – the less people you can save. And the elasticity of such a system is very limited.
So, all you have to do is be able to think, to understand that redistributing resources in conditions when not only the simplest resources, like money, are needed, but also other resources – infrastructure, production facilities, personnel, and so on – can’t help but harm areas where these resources are taken from. And since there will be also maniacal embezzlement and unprofessionalism, the benefits for combating coronavirus will be minimal, and the harm from redistribution will be much greater.
And when you present this consideration, which is inexorable in its logic, you are told, “So what? Considerations, some general reasoning! Where are the numbers, where is the evidence? Where are the authoritative judgments?” – “According to Newton’s law, this stone will fall on you and break your head.” “Then let it! What you are trying to peddle about Newton’s law is all speculation and manipulation!”
Well, since we have what we have, we have to respond to all these exclamations. We live here in this reality. It is irrevocable in nature; and therefore, it is necessary to have patience and to prove repeatedly that two plus two is four. And hope only for one thing – that this constant rain of facts will wear away the stone of arrogant elite refusal to understand anything that is beyond their excessively narrow “privatization” framework!
Here I start to discuss these rain drops.
Geneva, May 11, 2020. On the website of UNAIDS – the joint UN program to combat HIV / AIDS – a joint statement by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization was published. The publication delivers a lot of important and concrete things. There are so many rain drops in the form of concrete facts to wear away at this stone of arrogant misunderstanding, that I will read everything.
The following is said, “A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related illnesses, including from tuberculosis, in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020-2021. In 2018, an estimated 470 000 people died of AIDS-related deaths in the region.”
That is more than double. Next it states,
“There are many different reasons that could cause services to be interrupted – this modelling exercise makes it clear that communities and partners need to take action now as the impact of a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could effectively set the clock on AIDS-related deaths back to 2008, when more than 950 000 AIDS-related deaths were observed in the region.”
That is, these additional 500 thousand and those 470 thousand that now exist. And there will be approximately 950 thousand – the way it was 10 years ago.
“And people would continue to die from the disruption in large numbers for at least another five years, with an annual average excess in deaths of 40% over the next half a decade. In addition, HIV service disruptions could also have some impact on HIV incidence in the next year.
‘The terrible prospect of half a million more people in Africa dying of AIDS-related illnesses is like stepping back into history,’ said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization.
“We must read this as a wake-up call to countries to identify ways to sustain all vital health services. For HIV, some countries are already taking important steps, for example ensuring that people can collect bulk packs of treatment, and other essential commodities, including self-testing kits, from drop-off points, which relieves pressure on health services and the health workforce.” These are Ghebreyesus’ words.
Doesn’t it seem tragicomic to you? People start doing self-delivery and self-treatment. Okay. But there are places that lack even this. And all this is necessary in order to offset the load on medical services and health care workers. Why it should be offset? Because it was transferred to another problem – COVID-19. Otherwise, why to offset the load?
“‘We must also ensure that global supplies of tests and treatments continue to flow to the countries that need them,’ added Dr Tedros.”
Yeah, we must ensure this, but we cannot, because everyone has been redirected.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 25.7 million people were living with HIV and 16.4 million (64%) were taking antiretroviral therapy in 2018 (these are all statements by UNAIDS and the WHO – not some outcasts, alarmists, or dissidents. – S. K.). Those people now risk having their treatment interrupted because HIV services are closed or are unable to supply antiretroviral therapy because of disruptions to the supply chain or because services simply become overwhelmed due to competing needs to support the COVID-19 response.”
They tell you directly what is happening. Who else do you need to hear? Are these facts not enough? I continue to quote.
“‘The COVID-19 pandemic must not be an excuse to divert investment from HIV,’ said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. ‘There is a risk that the hard-earned gains of the AIDS response will be sacrificed to the fight against COVID-19…’
Did you hear?
“There is a risk that the hard-earned gains of the AIDS response will be sacrificed to the fight against COVID-19, but the right to health means that no one disease should be fought at the expense of the other.” This what Winnie Byanyima said.
But what can be done? What can we do here with the “optimizers”?
I continue to quote the statement by UNAIDS and the WHO.
“When treatment is adhered to, a person’s HIV viral load drops to an undetectable level, keeping that person healthy and preventing onward transmission of the virus. When a person is unable to take antiretroviral therapy regularly, the viral load increases, impacting the person’s health, which can ultimately lead to death. Even relatively short-term interruptions to treatment can have a significant negative impact on a person’s health and potential to transmit HIV.
This research brought together five teams of modellers using different mathematical models to analyse the effects of various possible disruptions to HIV testing, prevention and treatment services caused by COVID-19.”
Did you hear?
“Each model (I know what models like that are worth, but nonetheless… – S.K.) looked at the potential impact of treatment disruptions of three months or six months on AIDS mortality and HIV incidence in sub-Saharan Africa. In the six-month disruption scenario, estimates of excess AIDS-related deaths in one year ranged from 471 000 to 673 000, making it inevitable that the world will miss the global 2020 target of fewer than 500 000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide.
Shorter disruptions of three months would see a reduced but still significant impact on HIV deaths. More sporadic interruptions of antiretroviral therapy supply would lead to sporadic adherence to treatment, leading to the spread of HIV drug resistance, with long-term consequences for future treatment success in the region.”
So, they stopped treatment for a short time, because all the resources were transferred to COVID-19, and during this time the virus stopped being sensitive to the drugs it was previously sensitive to. That’s what it says. And then what are going you going to do next? Are you going to start giving drugs again that will no longer work?
“Disrupted services could also reverse gains made in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Since 2010, new HIV infections among children in sub-Saharan Africa have declined by 43%, from 250 000 in 2010 to 140 000 in 2018, owing to the high coverage of HIV services for mothers and their children in the region. Curtailment of these services by COVID-19 for six months could see new child HIV infections rise drastically, by as much as 83% in Mozambique, 106% in Zimbabwe, 139% in Uganda and 162% in Malawi.
Other significant effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the AIDS response in sub-Saharan Africa that could lead to additional mortality include reduced quality clinical care owing to health facilities becoming overstretched and a suspension of viral load testing, reduced adherence counselling and drug regimen switches.”
This applies to everything – not just AIDS!
“The research highlights the need for urgent efforts to ensure the continuity of HIV prevention and treatment services in order to avert excess HIV-related deaths and to prevent increases in HIV incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be important for countries to prioritize shoring up supply chains and ensuring that people already on treatment are able to stay on treatment, including by adopting or reinforcing policies such as multi-month dispensing of antiretroviral therapy in order to reduce requirements to access health-care facilities for routine maintenance, reducing the burden on overwhelmed health-care systems.”
That’s ridiculous, to give these medications “in advance” to people with their level of drug-taking culture and say, “Stay away from the hospital, it is overloaded. Go self-medicate! We will throw these pills to you, and you can choose the dose yourself.”
“‘Every death is a tragedy,’ added Ms Byanyima. ‘We cannot sit by and allow hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young, to die needless deaths. I urge governments to ensure that every man, women and child living with HIV gets regular supplies of antiretroviral therapy – something that’s literally a life-saver.’”
I read all this in such detail for several reasons.
The first reason is that it is just blatant in itself. They’re talking about children who are left without treatment, and who can be saved. They’re talking about a huge number of people. A colossal number!
The second reason is leading organizations are saying this. They are sounding the alarm and saying directly that all this will happen because of COVID-19.
The third reason is that it concerns not only HIV and associated diseases. The same is happening with many other diseases. Because you cannot escape this logic. If there are no reserve systems (because the optimization scheme is in effect) and you cannot quickly shore up a new front with any reserve units (because you don’t have any), but you still need to transfer some forces to this front, then other fronts will suffer. They are under attack. That’s if you use military language.
The same thing is happening with the economy. You threw some money and people from one area to another, and what are you going to do with this first area? The weak spots break.
The same thing happens in life. If you care too much about one thing, but neglect another, then it will cause you pain. It’s like that everywhere, these are general laws.
Some may say that in a disaster we have more important things to worry about rather than people in Africa. But one must at first have the guts to say such thing to the global community. Plus, I’m not talking about Africa. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” It is not about Africa. It is about what is happening both here and around the world. Everywhere.
Some may say that people sounding the alarm are afraid that they will begin to receive less money, and this will reduce their ability to embezzle. Does this exist? Sure. And what? This doesn’t negate the fact that they’re right. In all such statements corporate interest and truth are always intertwined. But this does not mean that there is no truth, that the basic facts that UNAIDS and the WHO reported are falsified. They are not falsified! UNAIDS and the WHO, of course, are peculiar folks. They try to evade the question, and they say things through clenched teeth. But they cannot help but speak, because the facts are blatant.
And finally, some may say, “We’ve seen this mathematical modeling! The model can show whatever you ask for.”
Sure, that’s right.
But first of all, people are embezzling everywhere. And in the fight against AIDS, it is the same as in other areas – it’s part of our lives. Therefore, the question is not that they want to save their embezzlement. Embezzlement is a percentage of the services provided. And failure to provide services is fraught with certain things.
Secondly, they are not self-sufficient crocodiles who do not hear what their people working in Africa and the African governments are shouting about.
Thirdly, newspapers will start yelling about it right away.
Fourth, mathematical modeling is, of course, problematic. But you can’t just neglect it; because if you do, then you’ll return to the Middle Ages. Alarming statements are made not only by UNAIDS specialists, who can be accused of hogging resources, but also by the WHO. Is it important for the WHO where to embezzle from? Embezzling from COVID is even more convenient.
Nevertheless, these details should not obscure the picture or be discussed separately from the methodological significance of my words. Wherein lies the significance? An extremely authoritative body (and no one can say that they don’t know what they’re talking about, or that they lack the details) says the same thing that was previously said on the basis of general considerations and calculations that are irrevocable in nature.
The methodological significance of my words also lies in the fact this applies to all areas of health care. From AIDS in Africa to cardiology and oncology here.
That’s if it all came down only to one statement. But no. There are plenty of statements. Different doctors make them. And not only on the basis of prognostic modeling.
Of course, any large-scale and mysterious event elicits diverse responses. COVID-19 is one of the largest and most mysterious events that obviously affected the fate of billions of people. Accordingly, this event can’t help but generate very diverse consequences. And if we mix them all together, and modern Internet culture facilitates this, then we will never understand anything.
Therefore, it is not only necessary to discuss what exactly is said. We also have to discuss who exactly said something worth talking about. And as soon as you start discussing it, you have to overcome the enormous forgetfulness that modern Internet culture begets. As well as a lack of awareness regarding even the obvious events that occurred several years ago. Not to mention the events that took place several decades ago, and are not related to our current story. So, I’ll remind you of something.
Circa 1830 (West India, Rajasthan, Kota)
Ludwig Erhard is a Christian Democrat who is of special merit to post-war Germany. He was the Minister of Economics in Konrad Adenauer’s government. And he did a lot for what is called the “German economic miracle.”
His policies led to a West German economic boom in the 1950s that made the West German GDP growth rate the highest in Western Europe, which was very different from the previous post-war period – after the First World War.
Erhard often clashed with Adenauer, who appreciated his independence and competence. In 1963, Adenauer retired, and Erhard succeeded him as the chancellor. But unlike Adenauer, who was an incredibly long-lived political (he ruled the Federal Republic of Germany for 14 years), Erhard spent only 3 years as chancellor.
In 1966, he was forced to resign.
In 1967, Erhard founded the Ludwig Erhard Foundation, which operates to this day.
Erhard died in May 1977.
For 10 years – from his resignation to his death – remaining a member of the Bundestag, he was most seriously engaged in his foundation. And then other authoritative German scientists and politicians became engaged in it.
The Ludwig Erhard Foundation presents the Ludwig Erhard Medal for achievements in the field of social market economy. It also presents prizes for successes in fields like economic journalism. And these are all highly regarded awards.
I have never seen any skeptical assessments regarding this foundation’s activities. None of the more or less authoritative people have ever claimed that the Ludwig Erhard Foundation is a bizarre conspiracy thing, devoid of political and scientific respectability.
Mr. Roland Tichy has been the Chairman of the Ludwig Erhard Foundation since 2014. He is a prominent German journalist and public figure. Tichy is also highly respected in the Berlin Society of Friedrich von Hayek. They awarded him their medal.
So, who is Tichy? Is he an authoritative Western scientist, expert, and public figure? Or is he a COVID dissident – a crazy hack job without any sense? He has already awarded the Von Hayek Society medal. And he runs the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. Isn’t that enough?
He is an authoritative liberal conservative. And he is no less of an authoritative scientist. Therefore, it is unlikely that our Westerners will have a desire to call Mr. Tichy’s opinion the ravings of a worthless and bizarre conspiracy theorist.
Mr. Roland Tichy puts out a publication called Tichys Einblick, which means “Tichy’s Insight”. This man’s insight on what is happening.
As it follows from the very name of this publication, and from the content of the information provided by this publication to the public, Mr. Roland Tichy visibly or invisibly stands by each issue of the publication called “Tichy’s Insight.” And he created this publication so as not to confuse his own views that are presented in this publication with the views that can be presented in other publications, where Mr. Tichy is the esteemed author.
Having given such a detailed explanation, because no one remembers anything, and they can’t correlate things, I can move on to presenting information that is so impressive that I had to provide this short comment about who presented this information to society.
On May 9, 2020, Tichys Enblick reported that, according to a German government source, the fight against coronavirus has led to more deaths in Germany than the coronavirus itself. The main reason for the mass deaths in connection with the pandemic, according to the source inside the German government that Tichys Einblick is quoting (and hardly anyone can doubt that Tichy, who runs the Ludwig Erhard Foundation, has such sources at his disposal), is the restrictive regime in hospitals, aimed exclusively at the treatment of coronavirus patients.
According to the publication, it was necessary to prematurely stop the treatment of hundreds of thousands of people across the country because of coronavirus. At the same time, it is difficult to calculate the exact number of deaths caused by this premature treatment termination, but the source, referring to internal government data, suggests that the number of additional deaths caused by coronavirus panic ranges from 5 thousand to 125 thousand people.
First of all, we are talking about patients with known cancer or with cancer that have not yet been diagnosed, who died as a result of the COVID shutdown. There was also a sharp decrease in people getting admitted with strokes or heart attacks to German hospitals.
On the other hand, as the date when Mr. Tichy interviewed his source, about 7.5 thousand people died from coronavirus in Germany.
So, the question is not only about Africa! Or does anyone really think that Germany is a horribly dysfunctional country that lacks resources, and distributes them irresponsibly? That is obviously not the case. So…
I am not a physician, or a Ministry of Health official from Germany or anywhere else. I do not have and cannot have my own information on this subject. But I expressed the hypothesis (not now, but earlier) that the coronavirus frenzy can cause great harm in the form of increased deaths from diseases that affect people who are disadvantaged with regard to their treatment. And their misfortune comes not from a terrible, implacable necessity, but from this coronavirus frenzy, the nature of which I’ve described.
Now my hypothesis is confirmed by the estimates from a variety of physicians and reputable experts who have the necessary data. What I’ve quoted is a small portion of such authoritative assessments!
The authors of these assessments – those provided by the UN, by the WHO, by professional physicians from Switzerland, France, and so on, by various social organizations, which are very authoritative and have great merit in the field of health care, never use unverified information. We have analyzed this. And they are reputable experts in the field of treating certain diseases – AIDS, heart disease, cancer, etc. Therefore, they have the necessary information.
Once again, I draw your attention to the fact that in this case we are talking about Germany, where the health care situation is relatively favorable.
Now imagine that this assessment is accurate. We have all the rights to insist on this. But let’s not insist, and simply ask ourselves, “What if it’s true?”
Suppose this is true (I emphasize once again that I only say “suppose”, but there are substantial grounds for such assumptions), then we are talking (if it is so!) about the deliberate mass extermination of innocent people.
Since a German government source estimated 5 thousand people as the minimum number of deaths caused by prematurely stopping treatment, and that 3.5 thousand people died because they couldn’t have elective procedures done, it means that the minimum number of victims of coronavirus redistribution frenzy was 8.5 thousand people. Germans are accurate people. And the number of victims of the coronavirus itself was 7.5 thousand. One thousand less.
Does anyone have any evidence that a huge number of people were saved through such redistributive frenzy? Give the ordinary doctors their due. But what salvation are you talking about? With the help of what – ventilators? But you already know that this is not so. And it can’t be.
Truly intensive medical care for people who are seriously ill from the coronavirus is, to put it mildly, marginally effective. This is constantly being discussed – when they talk about the insufficient effectiveness of mechanical ventilation, and when they say that there is no vaccine, and when they say that there are no other medical procedures for COVID-19 that can save patients who are really seriously ill. And when they say that this coronavirus is a trigger, other diseases interfere, but they cannot be treated, because… Refer to the aforementioned.
And, finally, it is more than problematic to save people from serious infections by placing them in medical facilities not geared for infectious disease patients. And since very different people are hospitalized there, being in these facilities is far from lifesaving, it can also be the opposite.
Some thief needs to increase the number of people he will treat for coronavirus in order to collect money for this. He makes his diagnoses based on anything. As we already know, these diagnoses are not always correct. And then a person is placed in ward that is not intended for this, and there he becomes ill. They say, “See, our diagnosis was correct.” Isn’t this happening?
And if the placement of patients in repurposed facilities turned out to be ineffective and highly costly, then what? Then we are saying that the coronavirus frenzy, with its many causes, entailed costs in the form of the death of a huge number of innocent people, whose lives were laid on the altar of this frenzy, instead of their lives being saved from the coronavirus.
Could this kind of sacrifice on some altar not be a crime? So why is there no investigation that will either confirm or disprove this crime? And what happens if this investigation confirms that this crime took place?
If the victims were victims of terrorism, and not just this frenzy, then this would give rise to a huge explosion public opinion. Where is this explosion after the authoritative Mr. Tichy’s statements? Where is this explosion in response to a statement by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization? Where is the explosion in response to statements by reputable European or American doctors?
And I repeat, hardly anyone believes that these things, which could be very well qualified as a mass medical crime, apply only to Germany. Since deaths are taking place in large numbers because qualified medical care is not being provided.
In private conversations, our doctors talk about a huge number of deaths resulting from the fact that qualified medical care was not provided. But it was not provided specifically the “COVID” frenzy and repurposing medical facilities. But why is this being said only in private conversations? It is necessary to comprehend not only COVID-19 itself, but also the human content of those who could correct the tendencies that I call the “COVID” frenzy.
Couldn’t members of the medical community give a consolidated response to ensure such a correction? So why didn’t they? They will say, “Because the bureaucracy does not give a damn about such a response.”
First off, that is not entirely so.
And, secondly this reaction could at least save the public reputation of our medical community. And what in other times was called the honor and dignity of this community, its fidelity to the canceled Hippocratic oath.
But let’s not ascend to such moral and existential heights. Let’s discuss at least professional reputation.
Does our elite understand what the collapse of this reputation is fraught with? And other public reputations?
Do they understand that every family is talking about the results of so-called distance education?
That almost every Russian citizen privately knows doctors, who are already telling everything to their friends?
That we are witnessing absurd administrative actions such as performances in which every spectator who comes to the theater is surrounded by a two-meter safety radius?
And every client who comes to the hairdresser should be at least one and a half meters away from the working hairdresser?
Some of this can be partially invented or exaggerated. But that does not change anything considerably. After all, not everything is invented and exaggerated! And we see it every day.
We hear official orders over and over again – to pay doctors the necessary money, that has already been transferred to the accounts of those who write the paychecks. Such orders should not be repeated. It must be done once. Society should not hear them repeatedly. Because when it does, it understands that these orders are not being followed over and over again. And what does that mean? Do you seriously believe that this does not cause any negative social reaction?
I repeat, at quite an official level we hear that orders to provide certain payments (primarily to health care workers) are given and not being followed. Because if they were followed, then these instructions would not be given again and again. And they are given repeatedly.
And why are these instructions not followed? Because, I’ll allow myself a daring hypothesis, those to whom this money was transferred for paying health care staff have already stolen this money. And they stole all of it. And does anyone have other options for explaining what is happening? Are we deaf and blind? Do we live on Venus? Is there a chip inside us called the “moral code of the builder of capitalism”? How else can you explain this? I do not insist on anything. I am just proposing my own hypothesis in the absence of other opinions.
So, my idea is that the money was transferred to those who can’t give it to the doctors, and have no intention to do so. Because the money is all gone.
And when the embezzlers are told to pay, they grin and shrug. The consequences of such grins and shrugs are obvious. And they do not lead to a social explosion. Believe me, everything is much worse. Such consequences are called “complete system dysfunction.”
With such a dysfunction, the system encourages society to disregard everything that this system requests of it.
In The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery the king says to the prince,
“I forbid you to yawn”
“I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself,” murmured the little prince.
“Ah, then,” the king said. “I order you to yawn.”
This king controls the prince’s behavior much better than our system controls our citizens. Because when they flat out ignore the system’s orders forbidding them to walk, and they continue to walk, the system doesn’t say, “Then I order you to walk”. It keeps forbidding walking while there are crowds on the streets.
So, what’s next? Spontaneous social self-organization in the context of such a system dysfunction? Where does it lead? What will it engender in the minds, souls and concrete behavior of the citizens, whom the system pushes to such indifference? Will this indifference apply to everything? And what happens in the event that the system needs to really mobilize its citizens for something? How will it work in conditions of complete dysfunction, which it has descended into during of COVID frenzy?
So, all this is completely unacceptable and needs to be immediately corrected. But I do not understand how, for instance, in a situation when doctors aren’t getting paid that it is possible to ensure a radical change without bringing those responsible for the payments not getting out, to criminal justice. Moreover, the prosecution should take place on a sufficiently massive scale. Otherwise, such diseases cannot be cured. But in order to cure them in this way, you need to have doctors treating the disease called “degenerate theft”, who are determined enough, capable of and not infected with the same disease called “degenerate theft.” and there should be plenty of them, lastly they must have the appropriate authority.
But first of all, these people do not exist in the sense that the system does not have access to them. The system is afraid of these people; it does not understand them; it tries to interpret their behavior in its own way, and it is blatantly alien to everything that motivates such people.
And secondly, these people themselves are incompatible with such a system. This is exactly what Lenin meant when he said, “Either the lice will defeat socialism or socialism will defeat the lice!”
This system needs a certain worker. For example, a doctor who is motivated not by his passion to treat people, but by something else. Or not motivated by anything. And when in contact with the system, he shows two qualities (remember Molchalin [from Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit” – translator’s note], who says to himself that he has “two talents: moderation and accuracy”) – the utmost agreeableness and a certain skill in terms of participating in kickbacks, in preparing the appropriate papers, and meeting to the certain indicators.
But if you get sick, such a doctor will not cure you.
And such a teacher will not teach your child. Etc.
Someone who can and wants to work will not act like a lackey. He will not treat kickbacks with understanding. That is, for this system he will be dangerous outcast, not a desirable working element.
If earlier the head of a large organization played political games, while one deputy embezzled, but the other was working, now everything is different. Everything is much worse. Earlier – I mean in the late Soviet period. I witnessed it all.
And the one who services the kickbacks and behaves properly, like a lackey, can’t do good work, do you understand? He can’t do quality work at all. He can neither fight for real, nor can he treat patients for real, nor teach for real, nor create high-quality equipment.
At best, he will freeload for a time off those who can do good work, like a little boss. But because these people inherently have human dignity along with their professional qualities, they will quietly leave; because surprisingly enough, they have somewhere else to go. At least to their own garden. Either that or they will break. And once they break, they can’t provide what their job is to provide. That is the tragedy.
This breakdown is even more dangerous than the actions of the so-called administrative system. Which has become markedly worse compared to Soviet times (regarding the Soviet times, I recommend watching Kheifetz’s film “My Dear Man” with Batalov in the lead role), and it has grown insanely. Today’s paperwork, the madness of this paperwork, is equal to nothing from the Soviet era. This madness has increased a hundredfold, as has the bureaucratic apparatus, which, as people said, was always inflated, but now it has become different in quality, and much more vast, incoherent, and strange.
This system can’t handle stress. It can only exist in relatively favorable conditions. As soon as trouble arises, the cogs that make up this system reveal their human content (as some of them brought out their inner content in October 1941). And after bringing out their foul content, namely cowardice to the point of panic, dishonesty, and outrageous incompetence, they destroy the system.
This is where the professional community should have intervened. Or a collection of professional communities. This is where, at the very least, professional honor should have shown itself. In the Stalin era, industrialists, the military, and academicians defended this honor when they directly told Stalin, Beria, and the others, what exactly the right decision is, as opposed to that time’s analogues of the “COVID” nonsense, that is, administrative nonsense… My mother told me about it, the last phrase, which this decaying Soviet bureaucracy could still hear and perceive was, “Let us do our job.” They could still hear it. But not their modern counterparts; they just laughing at those words.
Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the academicians never acted like lackeys. Sakharov was never expelled from the Academy of Sciences. There were attempts, but he remained an academician.
So what kind of moral and professional catastrophe, and otherwise, has happened now? Where did it come from? The fear of losing one’s salary? In other words, the dictatorship of the golden calf crushes people harder than other dictatorships?
I am convinced that even now many people are fulfilling their professional duty. Otherwise, it would be a thousand times worse. But this does not change the fact that I have directed attention to. This fact is already obvious. And the information I began my program with is a drop in that sea of global insanity, which – sooner or later it will have to be admitted – is generated by the outrageous depletion of humanity. By this very regress, by not just the befoulment of individual groups, but something immeasurably bigger.
The more depletion and insanity are accumulated, and it is accumulated rapidly in conditions of trouble, the more impudent the system becomes. It grows in cowardice, insanity, stupidity, and disinhibition. It cannot control anything, but it imagines that it will finally subjugate the worthless humanity that has fallen into insanity; to insert chips, electronics, genetic engineering, anything else – and will rise immeasurably above the deplorable trash. Then they’ll live for real!
A high-ranking figure spoke about one minister, “We are saving him from rebellion against him.” He is asked, “Who is the rebel?” The high-ranking figure answered, “What do you mean, who? All his subordinates.” That is, the minister does not need subordinates. And it is like this everywhere. This autoimmune disease is everywhere. This is what Marx called a transmuted form. The bureaucracy (and the government as a whole) is striving to transmute itself, do you understand? It strives to make it so university departments wouldn’t need students, doctors wouldn’t need patients, military brass wouldn’t need the army, and teachers wouldn’t need schoolchildren. Here is the transmutation, it is ripening! And it contains this dream of microchips, electronics, passports, etc. They can do nothing, they’re scared to death, they do not understand anything. We’ve been challenged to a game of four-dimensional chess, but they can’t even tell their left from their right.
Even if this sea of delirium, depletion, and everything else, the stench of which is so rancid that it is fit to speak of the Inferno or the end time, there is something else that preserves the relics of human dignity and human responsibility, this other thing is shrinking, while the insanity is expanding and becoming ever more tenacious.
Though the coronavirus makes this all blatantly obvious, it may well contribute to certain ambitions of primitive, but quite powerful social predators, who revel in the impunity they obtain thanks to the delirium of those who submit to these predators, growing ever more delirious from their futility.
Do I not remember how the Academy of Sciences top brass behaved when it was reduced to nothing? Did it even try to move? It was busy figuring out who would get the left-over money. Look how it has fallen! Not only from the era of Vernadsky or Pavlov, but from the era of Landau and those with him. How it has fallen!
As the novelist and film director Shukshin once said, “What is happening to us?”
Maybe we should try to answer this question?
Because the enormity of what is happening to us is not as mysterious as it seems to some. It has been described for a long time and has different names. It is called “sleeping on the run” as the fundamental way of life for a mechanistic or one-dimensional person. That is, a person whom Marx considered alienated from his human nature.
Since only this human nature inside a person can respond to a disaster (the Divine Spark in religious terms), any disaster that happens when people are alienated from this nature, which is supposed to respond, can only deepen the collective slumber. They mutter in their sleep about everything — about how “we will wipe them all out”, about how now “it will all be over”, about the dark forces that viciously oppress us. They mutter about all this in their sleep. And they run to nowhere, that is, into the abyss. The collective slumber is the greatest danger that this current situation presents. “COVID” makes it obvious. This disease. It’s a lot worse than COVID-19.
I will recite Tvardovsky from memory [“Tyorkin in the Other World” – a poem about how a half-epic, half comedic literary hero of World War II finds himself in hell – translator’s note],
Final rest. The law of nature. Seeing all these things around, Tyorkin asks his guide:
— What is here? What’s the business of this world? This or that, there should be something, That the people do? — Well, no.
See, here is the very essence of our special way of life, That from the biggest to small Everyone here is in charge.
— Can it be without production? , the recruit he fires back, Are there only the directors? — No, not only. There’s accounts.
Brother, that’s where lies the essence, Which is closed for simpletons: There’s no factories, nor mowing, There’s no ploughing, nor machines.
This would all just cause us trouble Coal, and steel, and flocks and grain – So it’s like this! Then I guess, It’s okay. But here’s the trouble
Like an Ambulance is running Through the streets of this poor town (to the question of COVID – S.K.), By itself it runs you over, Then it renders care to you.
— Listen, soldier, you had better Keep these jokes unto yourself. — Jokes! I’ve been here 24 hours, I can’t find where to lay down.
I would not disturb a soul here, Without bombing, calm and warm, I would sleep here like I never Ever managed to on Earth.
— Here’s a crank, you are so clueless: don’t you know that here in hell, the profound repose has reached you, and for you has tolled the bell.
What to you are living habits? Bed and sheets and all that stuff?… — Then for what are these departments, And the building full of bosses, And the rest of the red tape?
This “Virgil”, who is accompanying Tyorkin through hell, next says that nothing can be done to downsize it — so it has to be upsized.
To form a committee on downsizing means to upsize of the bureaucracy.
When someone gets asked to vacate, But they still don’t want to leave. They get sent to work as censors, Getting very highly paid.
And nobody in their right mind, Ever would vacate this job… Still then, what decide you, Tyorkin?
What does Tyorkin say?
— As it goes, I choose to live.
This decision, the decision to live, is one that you need the guts to make. That is, to wake up.
But in such a collective slumber, the final rest from “Tyorkin in the Other World”, every individual social atom, i.e. every mechanical man, every one-dimensional man, or every Posthuman, is also asleep.
When there’s a disaster, such a person, unable to unite with the nature that can respond to disasters, he falls even deeper asleep and runs somewhere ever faster in his dream. At the same time, he always asks, “where should I run in my sleep? Give me guidelines!”… “Once I was mistaken and chose Yeltsin. Now I want to make the right choice. Where should I run in my sleep?” They tell her, “Honey, it doesn’t matter, you need to wake up!” But this causes a severe rejection. To wake up means to make a connect to your human nature, to talk with it, to recognize and process the truth, which is not sweet at all. And start acting after that. After that. But to act before that is the catastrophic slumber on the run.
A person who is alienated from his essence is deprived of the real energy that allows him to act. The creative energy. He can say that he can do something. But he can’t do anything. It’s like a joke about dystrophics: “When there is no wind — we’ll go whoring.” His gas tank is empty, but he wants to go somewhere, and he is talking about where to go. But where’s the gas?
And even if he starts to act, armed with the energy accumulated in his own underground (in the subconscious, in the sphere of instinctive), it will be even worse. He’ll just kill both himself and the others around him.
In the subsequent programs, I will discuss the specifics of the political situation in Russia caused by the coronavirus. As well as everything that deals with the possibility of a non-catastrophic development of this political situation.
But you can’t reduce everything to how somebody will do something. Yes, you need to take it into account, it is necessary, but insufficient. We have to act to achieve change.
In the late 1980s, a very smart person I spoke to in one of the flashpoints told me, “This is a yum-yum society that can be slaughtered by a single wolf.” He meant [Gorbachev’s aide and puppet master – translator’s note] Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev.
So, if one considers this not as a private statement, but as a kind of general metaphor, then it is senseless to discuss the destiny of sheep that the catastrophic situation brings about. Because the sheep have no destiny. One wolf or another will slaughter them. We can only discuss how a man differs from the sheep. He differs by having a human essence.
If a person connects with it, he will not be a sheep. And he won’t sleep on the run. He’ll awaken. As soon as he wakes up, he will find a variety of ways to answer the call. Otherwise, there are none. Just don’t confuse your dream about waking up with actually waking up.
My conclusion: what is unfolding around the coronavirus pertains to the human being as such. I am going to prove it. He, the human being, will either be finished off, finally having been turned into nothing, devoid of a soul and a spirit, or the human being will rise up and look for the possibility of gaining what was taken from him – this very essence. He won’t be able to stay as he is, even if he really wants to. He won’t stay alive in a half-sleep. He will either be ultimately driven into this hell of nothingness, or he will have to painstakingly break out of it.
Consequently, everything is divided into three major subclasses, the first of which is fighting to preserve what exists now, the second is preparing to finally and irrevocably become this “nothing” or to become animals, and the third is looking for something other than self-destruction (not self-isolation, but self-destruction), or the convulsive desire to return to what existed before the coronavirus. The third is this very connection with one’s essence. Because you can, of course, destroy yourself entirely, to sludge, to nothing. And you can, of course, yell, “I want it to be like old times! Don’t touch it!” But both are meaningless. The scale of the systemic disaster called “Coronavirus” is too large.
The bitter irony about self-isolation has already turned into what the Governor once said in Gogol’s “The Inspector-General”: “What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself, oh you!” But for some reason, all variations on the theme of “self- anything” (self-isolation, self-medication, and so on) do not contain the main “self-item” around which everything revolves – self-destruction.
In the movie “Station for two”, one of the characters tells the female conductor he is going to hump: “Quick, quick, all by yourself» (meaning “get undressed, get in bed”). So those who are overseeing everything now, they want everyone to get undressed “quick, quick, by yourselves.” For that reason, not only are they letting the public panic about the coronavirus grow, which shouldn’t have been the case. They engage in fearmongering in every possible way.
I understand that the struggle to preserve the human remnants that previous pre-coronavirus rut allowed to exist, is of course, better than the willingness to submissively self-destruct. But I emphasize that such a struggle to preserve the old order is completely out of proportion to what is happening.
The sleeping human being, or more precisely, the pseudo-human being who is profoundly unplugged, and who is able to escape this state only by mobilizing his residual brutality, will eventually accept the self-destruction offered to him. Either immediately or under pressure. And no matter how doubtful the struggle to regain the lost humanity is – doubtful because of its refinement, it appeals to a minority, the tremendous effort it requires – there is no victorious alternative to such a struggle. And soon everyone will see this. Everything else is a loud, brisk, but quick defeat.
For now, the blatant fact that COVID-19 is first and foremost a massive operation aimed at ultimately dehumanizing people, is not quite obvious to these very people.
People refuse to understand what, for example, the special conditions they must fulfill mean, in renouncing what humanity has never renounced. For example, collective religious practices that bear absolute significance for truly religious people, to the ranks of which I do not belong. What does it mean to renounce them? Or the burial of one’s ancestors, something that has been generally significant for all people, beginning from the moment they separated from nature and come out of the animal state.
By the way, does anyone realize how the burning of corpses during cholera differs from what is currently being done in connection with COVID-19?
The source of cholera is an intestinal infection caused by certain bacteria. It is important that these are bacteria! And a bacterium is very different from a virus. A bacterium is larger than a virus — if you compare it to a watermelon, the virus is a mosquito. This is the approximate size ratio. And the bacterium functions very differently.
It is a full-fledged living organism that can live independently. It lives and reproduces in another organism. But it possesses autonomy in relation to this organism.
A person can live while there are colonies of bacteria inside him. These bacteria don’t invade human cells. They are too big and independent.
But a virus can’t live without infecting a living cell.
Bacteria, for example, multiply well in nutrient broths.
And the virus can only continue to function in a living substrate consisting, for example, of chicken embryos. In these live embryos, the virus may exist. And in a broth, which is very attractive to bacteria, it cannot exist.
Bacteria, I repeat, can exist in a dead substrate. And since cholera is a disease caused by bacteria, the corpses were burned.
But COVID-19 comes from a virus that is diametrically opposite to the bacterium in a number of properties. You may not know these properties, but you need to know that it is a virus.
That is, we need at least some explanations about why you cannot bury your loved ones, who should always be buried with honor, from authoritative experts.
I’m not going to pronounce any verdicts here. But it is quite obvious that at the level of individual countries and almost at the global level people are being taught to reject many things that formed the core of human life itself (the ritual burial of loved ones is clearly part of this).
There is an American movie where a father keeps stopping a guy from kissing his daughter, because he doesn’t know whether the guy is infected or not. He hits this guy, throws him out, and so on.
Then, finally, the guy walks into their house and says, “I have a certificate of vaccination. Can I come in?”, “Yes,” father says, “please!” And they dance. Will it be a good marriage later?
You can cancel all human social practices or instill the fear of implementing these practices in people’s minds. But what happens next? The human being is a social animal. You have destroyed this sociality to the ultimate degree — what will happen then? What is life in self-isolation, in this solitude, with constant fear that something might happen and that someone who is close to you might harm you? Don’t you understand the psychological, anthropological, existential consequences?
So, you will either have to put a lot of effort and painstakingly break out of this trap, returning your stolen essence to yourself, or give it up completely. One can and should react to protect the residual aspects of this essence. Do you hear me? Can and should! But this activity, which the majority of the partially damaged humanity will likely chose, is strategically futile. And this will become clear in the near future.
But for all the fundamental significance of this particular coronavirus circumstance, there are other circumstances that are more obvious and extremely significant.
And I would be a liar if I refused to discuss them in greater detail.
(To be continued.)
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/2020/08/31/coronavirus-its-goals-authors-and-masters-part-iv/
This is the translation of the forth article (first published in the “Essence of Time” newspaper issues 382 on June 12, 2020 and 383 on June 27, 2020) by Sergey Kurginyan.
