Redistribution of Wealth

The top 1% of households in this nation holds $34 trillion in wealth, which sounds really appalling. We should, we are told, take some of that wealth away from them (Elizabeth Warren says 2%) and give it to the 99% who are not wealthy.

Defining a “household” as three people (definitions run from 2.6 to 3.4 persons) there would appear to be 110 million households in the US, of which 1.1 million are in the top 1%, leaving 108.9 households as recipients of the largesse.

So let’s call Elizabeth Warren a piker and take all, not part, of the wealth of the top 1% and give it to the 99% equally. Each household would get $31,313 as a one-time bonus. Elizabeth Warren's 2% would give each household a $631 bonus.

If we decided to give it only to the bottom 50% then each household would receive a $62,000  bonus. One time only, remember. There wouldn't be any more, because we took 100% of their wealth.

Don’t spend it all in one place.

The Grand Experiment 3

By way of a followup, when in the history of the practice of medicine has anyone been told that they needed to be vaccinated against a disease that they had just recovered from?

The Grand Experiment 2

Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is suspended due to a reaction which occurred in six people, out of 7 million people who have received the vaccination. There have not been six deaths, only one of the six died, so we are talking about one death out of 7 million vaccinations.

We are in the midst of a frantic effort to get everyone vaccinated in the face of what is being presented as the most dangerous pandemic in modern history, one in which the fear of death is presented as imminent and all-pervading. And we stop use of a successful vaccine because of a one in 7 million chance that it might kill you.

There is something going on here that we are not being told about.

A Narrative Of... Magic?

We will have to wear the mask, we are told, even after being vaccinated. Not just for a couple of weeks until the vaccine can establish our own immunity, but for an indefinite length of time “until herd immunity is achieved.” That just makes no sense to me.

How is herd immunity to be achieved? Well, by vaccination, of course. So we have to wear a mask until everybody else is vaccinated. Why? What does someone else’s immunity have to do with my risk of catching the virus, or with the danger of me spreading the virus?

It makes it sound like there is no such thing as individual immunity, There only exists a magical “herd immunity” which suddenly appears when a critical mass of vaccinations have been reached. No one is immune until everyone is immune.

We can take off the mask after being vaccinated, we are told, only if we are in small groups of other people who are all also vaccinated. What?

That kind of sounds like they are saying that the vaccine protects me from the virus only if I am not exposed to the virus, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Making even less sense is the idea that my immunity depends on someone else being vaccinated.

 “Follow the science,” we are told. This narrative doesn’t sound like science to me. It sounds like magic or, perhaps, sorcery. If you follow this, the only place you are going is down a rabbit hole.