“When the ‘Spanish Flu’ took over 50 million people in just two years, it didn’t scare people half as much as Covid-19"

“After more than 70 years of peace, at least in Europe and with growing prosperity, this crisis could not have hit us any more unprepared. When the ‘Spanish Flu’ took over 50 million people in just two years from 1918 to 1920, it didn’t scare people half as much as the COVID-19 pandemic does today, as far as I can see — without all the lockdowns and masks and vaccination debates.”

“...Was it perhaps because the peoples at that time were by and large more at home in religion, and its consolations and resilience? I don’t know. From my family history, I only know that in the generation of my grandparents, death was still perceived and accepted, in a certain way, simply as a ‘part of life.’”

Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, in a lecture online at the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna.

Douglas Murray, talking in The Strange Death of Europe, says 'Western Europeans have lost what the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno famously called the “tragic sense of life.”' He was talking about the effects of mass immigration but also about the death of religious belief and the attempt to find substitutes for it. 

One of them is to put man firmly at the centre of the universe, as indeed he is if God does not exist. This carries the grave responsibility to do godlike things like control the climate and control viruses. 

It is odd, if you think about it, what things governments are expected to do, such as control viruses, take responsibility for human rights in Afghanistan and Burma, allow boys to become girls and vice versa, and things they are understood not to be able to do, such as close borders to illegal immigrants.

Had Charles married Marie Astrid he'd have spared himself and us a world of pain - and answered the Irish Question

I posted a very uncharitable attack on the egregious Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and intended to link to a very uncharitable and very just attack on her by the thrice blessed Douglas Murray, but I failed to do so. Here is the link to the article which appeared under the headline

Meghan Markle is a US culture-war missile aimed at the heart of Britain and Europe

In my post I said she is evil but so was the Duke's mother and almost all men marry their mothers.

I originally welcomed the match despite her being divorced, American and left-wing but my female Facebook friends all saw that she was a wrong 'un immediately and I saw it too in a while. She began at nine by writing a letter to a TV company complaining about an advert that showed a wife washing dishes and continued in her twenties complaining about being ogled.

The world must be peopled, ma'am.

I liked the fact that the duchess is mixed race, which seemed to strengthen the monarchy, but I should have kept to my opinion that princes should marry other princes. 

If only Charles had married Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, necessitating a change to the Act of Succession. I said this to Richard Overy at my admission interview for Cambridge when he asked me what is the answer to the Irish question. I said this would have led Paisley to take Northern Ireland out of the union. This was not something I desired to happen but he rewarded with with an open scholarship

Alas he had gone when I went up and I was left in the hands of an authority on mediaeval Burgundian numismatics.

What a world of pain the pretty blonde Marie-Astrid would have saved the Prince of Wales and England from. She would have conducted herself as she should, however the Prince behaved. And how nice to have Catholics on the throne again after so long.

Instead he married a godless Whig noblewoman with borderline personality disorder.

Belgium

Lord Curzon said that without India England would be a greater Belgium. A greater Belgium sounds to me very like modern Europe.

Julie Burchill said that in the 1970s Britain tried being Belgium and didn't like it.

Meghan and malignant narcissism

Douglas Murray beautifully expresses in this essay his very justified loathing and contempt for Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

I foolishly was first hopeful about the Duke's marriage despite the Duchess being an American and a divorcee and left-wing. My female Facebook friends saw she was a bad'un from the off.

The Duchess of Sussex may be evil, a word I almost never use of anyone, but so was the Duke's mother. 

Men generally marry their mothers, unless they do not marry at all.

I recently had some unpleasant interaction with a malignant narcissist which made me read up on a subject I once knew lots

32 studies find no evidence that lockdowns reduce the numbers of deaths from Covid-19

The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is an American free-market think tank with its office in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which has issued publications which portray the risks of climate change as minor and manageable. In October it issued the "Great Barrington Declaration" which argued against lockdowns and for a strategy of achieving herd immunity to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Despite being written by eminent epidemiologists it was scarcely reported.

The AIER has listed 31 scientific studies into the efficacy of lockdowns published last year and this which conclude that there is no evidence, surprisingly enough, that lockdowns reduce the numbers of deaths. 

Knut Wittkowski today

"That lockdowns cause more harm then good was well known since end of March (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v1). In the meantime, we have learned about two more side effects: (1) universal mitigation causes more COVID deaths, because it deprives the vulnerable of the advantage from self-isolation while the virus spreads among the young and healthy until HI is reached. (2) Epidemics that last more than 3 months (from "flattening the curve") incubate the resistant strains that cause the next epidemics, which started in Oct/Nov 2020."