Cherry Tree Chopper

Thursday, September 2, 2021

The Psychology of Pandemics

Steven Taylor is a professor and clinical psychologist who wrote a book titled The Psychology of Pandemics. The book was published in October of 2019, just a month before the Covid-19 story broke. One might suggest that he predicted or had insider knowledge about the coming event because of how prescient his book is. I can't find much information about Taylor outside of his publications, so I can't confirm or deny his involvement in any sort of conspiracy (I checked into obvious connections like Bill Gates, World Economic Forum, etc.).

However, coincidence or not, he demonstrates so many similarities between past viral outbreaks to the Covid-19 event... all the lessons were already there from history, only this is a hyped-up "pandemic" on steroids. [1]

Much of what Taylor has to say is tedious and overly focused on how to make the herd comply with their overlords for pandemic preparedness. Taylor knew there would be a future "pandemic," as many have happened in the past, and every year, there are scientists warning about future pandemics. But could he have predicted a more impotent virus? You would think he would denounce this as a hoax. "I meant an actual pandemic," he would say... If you thought that, then you'd be wrong, because he is promoting the same hoax as the MSM.

None of the supposed post-1918 pandemics have been all that noteworthy, and we certainly haven't had anything on the scale of the bubonic plague. The key ingredient is the pharmaceutical industry gearing up in tandem with the media to hype these events, so they can sell their vaccines. The Covid-19 hoax is profitable and expedient for far more than vaccine manufacturers. You can also look to the "Great Reset" of the World Economic Forum and adjacent groups. The environmentalists are chipping in for climate lockdowns. Technologists will also have many applications when it comes to the expansion of the surveillance state and the implementation of gene therapy and other innovations.

1918 Influenza Pandemic

Taylor chooses to start his first chapter with a quote from a man who experienced the 1918 influenza pandemic. Both Covid-19 skeptics and believers [2] alike have referred to the 1918 event to support their arguments, and it's very often that skeptics will say that the severity of the illness, number of adverse events, hospitalization, and rate of death were much higher in 1918, yet they didn't do lockdowns, wear masks, or do anything overly drastic. They just "kept calm and carried on" as the stoic British phrase went (now a bit of a cuck mantra).

The more I read about 1918, the less true that seems. In the man's anecdote, he states that "The city had ground to a halt. Schools and theaters were closed, and dances and other social gatherings were banned. James was not even allowed to go to the local playground because his father feared he would fall ill. Church services were banned, despite protests from the clergy... People were afraid to leave their homes, he recalled, although it was necessary for the government to impose fines if an infected person was out in public, because some sick people refused to stay indoors." (p. 1)

Facemasks were widely used during this period, and they were even mandated by law in many locations. The article cites one instance of a man being arrested for non-compliance. The Oakland Tribune reported that the police chief had stated, “We are going to enforce this mask ordinance if we have to pack the city jail with people. This epidemic is too serious to be taken as a joke, and men arrested … will find that it’s no laughing matter when they face the police judges.” It's also true that masks are unsanitary and useless for preventing the spread of viruses—no one should even argue that cloth and surgical masks are anything but worthless.

The mask mandates led to the Anti-Mask League forming to advocate against mask usage. Taylor also promotes masks. They were useless during 1918-1920, and they are useless now. Not very surprising.

Another interesting aspect is that experimental vaccines were rolled out in 1918 as well. They were absolute rubbish as a result of the erroneous belief that influenza was caused by bacteria instead of a virus. (p. 16)

Vaccine hesitancy he mentions as a problem for seasonal flu, but their isn't much evidence flu shots are really that effective, and we can easily see that Covid-19 vaccines are worthless, since they're already pushing booster shots and mask mandates for the vaxed, and the most vaxed countries are experiencing higher rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths compared to more relaxed areas.

This is a psychologist's perspective of the "pandemic" that is in line with the true believers. It of course touches on the propagation of conspiracy theories and misinformation during the time of a pandemic (p. 15).

Almost all the medical totalitarianism we're seeing was happening during the 1918 pandemic (perhaps it can be argued that some of the measures, even if they may not have been effective, in retrospect, at least appeared a bit more reasonable for those circumstances; and enough information should have been gathered from that incident to prevent us from making any of the same mistakes, but history is especially prone to repeat itself when it will benefit the elites.). There were the true believers and the skeptics. There were lockdowns, there were masks, and there were vaccines; there was also opposition to all of these measures. The only difference, according to Taylor, is the scale of the measures and the opposition is grander and broader.

There will, and has, been a backlash, and that has always been the case when harsh measures are taken.

“The anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-vax protests have been a lot more prevalent than they were 100 years ago, even if they were motivated for the same reasons,” he said. Taylor theorizes that with the Delta variant on the rise, any return to lockdown could trigger an exaggerated backlash and rebellion – part of the psychological phenomenon commonly known as pandemic fatigue.

Psychology

Chapter 9 especially—and some others—are heavy on propaganda and seem to be a masterclass in how the establishment can propagandize the masses, but the issue is that all of this very precise psychological theory can be narrowed down to those who believe in the narrative and those who don't. The narrative is false, so those who don't believe in it are actually correct, and if not for censorship, it's unlikely Covid-19 would have been such a successful project for the elites.

Taylor decries conspiracy theories and how the skeptics have "erroneous beliefs," but the author applies no critical thinking to the subject, nor does he look at information that would lend credence to what the skeptics are saying. I could presume his research is rather poor, but I think he recognizes these gaps—he's probably ambitious and concerned about his legacy within the system, and he won't deviate from what he's realized to be the "proper" narrative foisted upon us by the elites. He simply cites "authoritative sources" that label his critics as uneducated, of low intelligence, etc. This same tactic is used with so many threads of the mainstream narrative. Whether it's the medical and agricultural establishments, government corruption, Jews, the holocaust, anthropogenic climate change, etc. It's lazy, shallow, and frustrating.

How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge about what is going on submit to "health authorities" to decide everything for them? At least Taylor is a little more subtle than Forbes or New York Times, when they tell you to not do your own research or use critical thinking, and you should instead listen to the bought and paid "experts," yet his "just trust the science, guys" sentiment is more or less the same.

Many aspects of how Covid-19 measures were rolled out were incompetent, to say the least, and Taylor's main focus ever since the event began is to fine tune the process. He has a blog where he posts semi-regular updates on Covid-19 developments, his own research, and the research of others.

Reducing vaccine hesitancy is one of his concerns. There have been efforts to increase the vaccination rate by offering incentives, such as food, gifts, money, and other perks—as well as a lottery of $1 million in Ohio. They don't work, for the truly hesitant (and not just disinterested) are concerned about safety. Unfortunately for his ilk, the vaccines are demonstrably not safe according to VAERS and European databases and news reports.

Vaccine hesitant people are unlikely to be persuaded unless a swat team rappels into their house and holds them down for an injection. There definitely are people who didn't want to take the vaccine, but they succumbed to pressure to maintain their careers. There are also people who have gotten the shot with the naive belief of "going back to normal." The coercion campaign has been effective for certain subgroups, but the intense pressure also is bound to generate skepticism about whether or not the vaccine is safe.

With Australia-esque restrictions and coercion that prevents working or buying food, along with martial law, could lead to the acquiescence of a further number of those who are hesitant, but lack either the resources or the resolve to resist.

Australia, as of now, still only has an estimated 26% of their population fully vaccinated (I believe this is currently about 50% of the population if we're counting only 1 jab), which is well-below most of the other developed countries.

Either the Aussies are less compliant, or their government is overplaying its hand. They have some of the most extreme restrictions, but they're, so far, relying on coercion by private businesses to encourage vaccination, rather than a forced vaccination mandate.

Lockdowns and social distancing result in loneliness, mental health problems, and economic hardship. There is a telling quote in Taylor's book: "However, during the next pandemic, many people will become fearful, some intensely so. The psychological 'footprint' will likely be larger than the medical 'footprint.'" This psychological impact will be more pronounced, more widespread, and longer-lasting. (p. 23)

It's true. The psychological impact is much greater. A psychologist should be the first to warn against these measures unless the disease is sufficiently severe. You know, like a highly infectious and deadly pathogen that leaves piles of bodies out in the streets—especially one that is killing the young and healthy. Covid-19 mostly kills very old people, obese people, and those with over 2 comorbid illnesses. The restrictions, masks, and fear/stress are worsening the mental health and immunity of the population. People are foregoing medical checkups and delaying treatments at high rates. They're being manipulated and lied to about a dangerous vaccine.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic

House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic is an "alternative" documentary from filmmaker Brent Leung concerning whether or not HIV causes AIDS, and it has been labeled as a propaganda piece for the AIDS denialism movement. It was made in 2009, so some of the information on HIV/AIDS and medication is out of date, but the film mostly touches upon the AIDS crisis and deception from the medical establishment up to that point, and subsequent developments aren't too important within the context of this documentary.

I want to state that I'm not doing an in-depth analysis of every little point of the documentary—I have seen some of the criticism, and this documentary, whether correct or incorrect, is a fantastic piece of propaganda (to be clear, propaganda refers to the advocacy of a position, independent of the information being true or false—but people often use it to mean that something is both persuasive and false; I believe the former definition is superior and more useful as a term).

I'll eventually grapple with these criticisms when I do a more in-depth literature review of the AIDS crisis. I think what the documentary presents is mostly convincing, but there are a few problems with one of its main arguments, which I'll get to towards the end of this article.

Where I think the film is strongest is in demonstrating the corruption of the CDC and the medical establishment as a whole. The press ramps up their narrative to be far, far scarier than it ever should be for the majority of people.

In actuality, the transmission rate of HIV is quite low, so it's not like you are guaranteed to get HIV from an HIV-positive individual (I'm not basing this view on the documentary—I have seen studies indicate this as well) even from receptive anal sex. This seems to indicate getting HIV is less likely for a person with a strong immune system. The more engaged you are in unhealthy behavior, the more compromised your immune system will become, and those who get HIV usually lead such lifestyles.

Promiscuous heterosexual encounters are also unlikely to result in either the man or woman getting HIV. Any sexual route of transmission other than receptive anal is exceptionally low. The way HIV finds its way into heterosexual communities seems to either be through drug use or when promiscuous bisexuals infect women through anal sex—usually these women are prostitutes or highly promiscuous themselves.

Despite this, the media presented sex without a condom as a death sentence. Sex education is hellbent on reinforcing the "progress" of the sexual revolution and emphasizing sex as merely for pleasure rather than reproduction and family formation.

When it's actually the promiscuity that society now endorses, which is only possible through contraceptive drugs, that is the reason for the explosion in STDs. If the culture still shamed casual sex with sufficient rigor, and the average age of marriage was lower... say, about the age of the early 20th century, which had an average age of 21 for women and 25 for men, then we'd be better off. Most important is marrying off the women instead of them focusing on careers, otherwise they get into society-wrecking feminist/refugees welcome/climate change/anti-racism/LGBT activism.

Enabling homosexuals and the rest of the alphabet persons also leads to a greater spread of STDs and antibiotic resistant strains, the overburdening of the healthcare system, as well as a disproportionate amount of medical resources and research being shuffled towards their needs, and a soul-crushing malaise that infects the nation.

By the way, this is the documentary with the infamous clip where Dr. Anthony Fauci pretends that AIDS is not associated with a particular dangerous lifestyle—the homosexual. Fauci was always scum.

The AIDS Crisis

Moving on from the disastrous symptoms of the sexual revolution, the CDC's budget was decreasing in the early 1980s due to federal budget cuts that were introduced with Reagan. There was increasing inflation, high unemployment, and a further expansion of the military-industrial complex.

The CDC was hoping for a new epidemic or disease to come along. Polio had declined by the 1980s, when the "gay diseases" began. The CDC were becoming pretty much irrelevant, and they were looking at the possibility of reduction, if not outright closure. They needed to scare the American people to get more money.

Several gay men were found to have pneumocystis pneumonia. Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare cancer, was also diagnosed in gay men around this time.

What we now know as AIDS started as GRIDS (gay-related immunodeficiency), implying it would only affect homosexuals. Nobody cared, for the most part.

AIDS didn't get any coverage until it was widely disseminated to the public that it was a virus—i.e., it was infectious, and it could spread quickly amongst everyone. Though the disease mostly affects homosexuals, heterosexuals rapidly came to fear the virus.

Then there was a lot of money to study HIV/AIDS, and it has been a heavily researched topic ever since.

It's stated in the documentary that the data from the CDC showed a decline in AIDS cases by 1993, but how AIDS was defined began to include a CD4 T-cell count below 200 as part of the criteria, which sent the number of cases skyrocketing, though the subjects in question may not have necessarily been ill at the time.

HIV/AIDS soon ceased to be an epidemic and then became a pandemic. Africa was hit the hardest. The first of 41 countries on Wikipedia's HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate list are all majority black. Most black countries have a rate of at least 2%, and the top 3 range from 22%-27%. For reference, the U.S. rates at only .40%, and most European and Asian countries are similar or lower—rarely much more than 1%.

That's pretty insane. Rapid tests in South Africa and other areas seem to have high rates because the tests are inaccurate. There is a lot of illness in Africa, and many of these people who are believed to have HIV/AIDS may actually have something else.

There are screening tests and confirmatory tests (latter to rule out false positives). In the developing countries they mostly just use screening tests according to the documentary. In some case these diagnoses are based not on a test, but interpretation of symptoms.

It's unlikely the prevalence rate statistics are actually that realistic or reliable. The numbers are perhaps even elevated to use Africa as a testing ground for HIV/AIDS treatment. I suspect plenty of false positives.

Based on the interviews, HIV/AIDS testing (in the third world especially; obviously, the quality of testing also varied throughout the decades.) actually seems to be liable to problems not too dissimilar from the current RT-PCR tests used to pad Covid-19 numbers. I'm not closely scrutinizing any of this, however, for I wish to leisurely research this topic at another time. Even once a more sophisticated test was available, those interviewed, along with the fine print on the document, indicate that it wasn't necessarily that accurate. The documentary is from 2009 and is a bit outdated, but the point remains of there being issues with the testing back when HIV/AIDS was considered a death sentence.

If we concede the point that everything the documentary is saying is true, and the medical establishment has been highly deceptive about HIV/AIDS, then it's quite scary. This crisis emerged before the internet, so alternative journalism would have been less abundant. You would have your investigative journalists, but the media had a tight enough control over much of what the public consumed, and you'd likely only see a thorough critique in a book or an obscure journal or article.

Covid-19 being a hoax (i.e., it's just pre-existing viruses we're already familiar with, not really any worse than a flu or the common cold) seems very obvious to the skeptic who is watching it unfold with the help of alternative media pointing out what the MSM doesn't want you to see... but what will Covid-19 look like to people 10-20 years from now? Sure, there's a wider range of information coming from a greater number of sources, but how do we know most of that information won't be scrubbed or virtually impossible to find for the next generation? I've heard rumors that even some of the archive.org articles on the Wayback Machine are quietly being updated or removed. It's a disturbing thought.

It's often said that the FBI has very few serious terrorist incidents to tackle, so they perform sting operations—that is, setting up a gullible or mentally deficient individual to bomb a federal building or commit violence. They manufacture crimes, so they can then swoop in to save the day, often being praised afterwards by the media. This "success" then warrants more funding. Accolades from the media are heaped upon the FBI, reinforcing the trust the commoner has for this corrupt institution.

Well, the CDC operates in a similar manner. That's not to say everything they are invested in is fake, but exaggeration for their own benefit becomes a distinct possibility.

The CDC is a corrupt organization now. Should one be surprised if they were just as corrupt in the early 1980s or in 2009? Of course, just because the CDC is in on the Covid-19 hoax doesn't mean they were manufacturing a crisis with the AIDS epidemic, too, but from everything I've seen, it sure looks like they were. Even if what is actually going on here is "somewhere in the middle" with the CDC's handling of AIDS, as is so often said in a platitudinous—and occasionally fallacious—manner, it seems more than clear that the CDC has greatly exaggerated the AIDS crisis. AIDS has become an ample source of funding, with money thrown everywhere, especially in impoverished countries where immune systems are compromised and health is poor.

There are two core demographics contracting HIV/AIDS at high rates, and a third minor demographic, though this latter one often overlaps with the other two. For undeveloped countries you have blacks in Africa, whereas with developed countries, you can always count on the homosexual population, and to a lesser extent, intravenous drug users, to hedonistically crank up the AIDS prevalence number.

Notice anything in common with these three groups? All either live in poverty or lead unhealthy lifestyles. Blacks live in squalor in several of these African countries; their sanitation and hygiene are poor, and pests like flies and rats spread the ample amounts of bacteria festering within their cramped shantytowns. They become ill because of their environment, and their immune system is compromised. This can easily make it appear that they're affected by what we call AIDS, though most likely they're ill with various diseases and are malnourished.

Homosexuals engage in high amounts of risky bareback sex (meaning anal sex without a condom), end up with lots of STDs and infections that they need antibiotics for, and use drugs at high rates—poppers are often mentioned as being a catalyst for the collapse of their immune system and a causal factor for what we call AIDS. This kind of risky lifestyle is very hard on the immune system and multiple organs.

Intravenous drug users have at least the drug component down, though their HIV rate is lower than the homosexual.

Amongst the heterosexuals who suffer from the illness... how many are also drug users or have health issues or something that compromises their immune system?

The sexual revolution led to an epidemic of STDs, and homosexuals were more out of the closet than ever before. They were free to seek out a greater number of sex partners in more shameless ways.

One thing I'm very curious about is what kind of conditions were affecting homosexuals at higher rates prior to the sexual revolution. Were they experiencing, albeit, in smaller numbers, a debilitation similar to what we have observed with AIDS, only behind closed doors and without the sensationalism in the 1980s from the medical establishment and the media? If they had fewer sex partners, or if they were marginalized by the media (the media didn't always speak of them in such glowing terms, and they were considered to be mentally ill by the psychological establishment as late as 1973), these very same deaths could easily go unnoticed.

HIV Medication, and Does HIV Cause AIDS?

The filmmakers indicate that the medication for HIV/AIDS were causing a lot of deaths, and in many cases led to the development of AIDS. HIV medication improved in terms of efficacy over the years, and so the deaths associated with it were higher in the past. Some of the people who contracted HIV and didn't take the drug died early; on the other hand, there were also people who contracted HIV and took the drug... and they still died. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't, it seems.

This is where I think I deviate from the filmmakers. Does HIV cause AIDS? In the sense of HIV not being isolated with Koch's postulate, I suppose it can be difficult to tell for sure whether or not HIV actually causes AIDS, and it's not some other co-occurring pathogen or other bodily problem.

However, it seems to be the case that HIV is a marker for a compromised immune system, at the very least. AIDS itself seems to be virtually indistinguishable from a severely compromised immune system, and what we see as AIDS can happen without a person contracting HIV, but those who have HIV are more likely to have collapsed immune systems and exhibit what we believe to be AIDS.

Even if HIV doesn't cause AIDS, it is a sign that something is wrong, and there is a strong possibility that the subject's health will decline if there isn't an intervention at some point.

I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether or not HIV causes AIDS, but a marker of HIV is not the benign irrelevancy that the documentary portrays it as.

Nowadays, HIV/AIDS medication is more effective. Perhaps it doesn't work well for everyone, and many patients may experience significant side effects, but these new drugs allow the patient to virally suppress their HIV, extending their life further.

That was not always the case, and back in 2009, I'm not sure the people who refused to take AZT were really missing out on much. Years prior to 2009, people with HIV would often die much earlier than the general population while on the drug. Go back far enough, and not taking HIV medication might have been better for increasing longevity.

Based on a small sample of people featured in the documentary who had HIV and were abstaining from using AZT, the average lifespan for a normal (i.e., not a homosexual) person seems to be about 20-30 years before their immune system declines enough that they would become terminally ill. This is a small sample, and their personal and medical history isn't entirely clear.

That brings us to the main issues with the documentary that most of its detractors criticize it for. Several of the people in the documentary who had tested positive for HIV died soon either before the documentary was finished or just a few years after.

One man who tested positive for HIV died before the film was complete, and the audience was informed of this part way through. Most of the other HIV-positive people who died before the film's release date were only acknowledge to have died at the very end of the credits in small print. Most people probably won't watch the credits all the way, and I admittedly didn't know they were listed as having died at all until I checked the film's article on Wikipedia.

Their acknowledgement reads:

The filmmakers acknowledge with sadness the passing of three generous contributors to House of Numbers before the completion of the film.

Martin Delaney, Christine Maggiore, Hank Wilson.

(Their deaths were unrelated to HIV.)

The parenthetical bit is based on their theory about how HIV works—that it is relatively benign and/or doesn't cause AIDS. It's really hard to rule out that their HIV wasn't a factor, and it appears to be a factor, indeed. At least in the case of Maggiore. I didn't look into Delaney or Wilson much.

However, it doesn't stop with those three. Another contributor was Kim Bannon, who died in 2011. I expected Lindsey Nagel might be alive, but, alas, she passed away in 2014.

I'm not sure how much of an impact HIV was for all of them, and I don't know if their T-cell count was low enough to indicate AIDS, but I imagine HIV was at least a strong contributing factor for Bannon and Maggiore—Nagel, who contracted HIV at birth, or as a baby, died at the very early age of 24, and it's obvious her immune system was very poor as a result of having HIV at such a young age—her child also contracted HIV. Most of these people succumbed to illnesses they probably would have been able to fight off with a better immune system.

Nagel was actually placed on AZT when she was very young, and she suffered serious side effects. By being free of the drug, she thrived, or so it seems. It's stated in medical reports that out of 12 children with HIV in Minnesota, she was the only one that survived childhood. For some people, the side effects may render AZT nearly unusable. This aspect of the story appears quite strong, until we learn of her unfortunate passing. She was back on AZT near the end, which probably led to AIDS denialists to say it was the AZT that killed her, but she was obviously in bad shape if she went back on AZT in the first place.

It would be interesting to look into a wider sample of people who tested positive for HIV and see if they managed to live longer or die due to causes that don't appear to be related to a diminished immune system. However, at this stage, it looks like HIV is a significant enough factor to lead to greater illness and/or death, and if you've HIV-positive, the current batch of antiretroviral drugs are probably worth taking, unless there is a natural way to suppress the virus (I'm not aware of any).

There are cases of HIV where the subject has an undetectable viral load, and they don't require antiretroviral drugs to maintain their health. Scientists have taken to calling them "elite controllers." One such case is Loreen Willenberg, was tested positive in 1992 and is still alive. These are extremely rare deviations from the norm.

There are also claims that many of the scientists were taken out of context by selective editing, but in some cases, that's probably the scientists simply trying to save their ass from being crucified by the medical establishment.

The really serious issue is definitely the fact that all of the filmmaker's "healthy" contributors with HIV died off in quick succession. While I would like to look at a larger sample of HIV-positive individuals who took medication and a control group that did not take medication, the outcome pretty much killed that one contention about HIV not leading to serious illness. People are ready to dismiss the documentary for that reason alone, but I think this film has merit for elucidating aspects of the medical industry, CDC corruption, a few questionable aspects of the AIDS crisis, and for giving a plausible explanation for what's going on in Africa.

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Mary "Typhoid Mary" Mallon Erroneously Being Used to Stoke Fear of Asymptomatic Spread of Covid-19

The story of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, is often repeated and well-known by many a school child, so as to instill awareness about the possibility of asymptomatic carriers, disease transmission, and to promote better hygiene and hand-washing. I personally remember learning about her sometime between kindergarten and third grade.

Mallon was a cook who infected over 50 occupants of many households with typhoid between 1900-1915. At least three people she infected died, and it's assumed she likely infected more people than could be traced. The bacteria salmonella typhi causes typhoid fever, affecting the intestinal tract and the blood, with symptoms that include high fever, headaches, constipation, diarrhea, and fatigue, among others. You can definitely tell when someone is sick from typhoid, but Mallon never showed any signs of being infected at all.

She was confined to a hospital, but was eventually released on the condition that she no longer work as a cook. Unfortunately, she didn't have any other skills and she went back to work as a cook, and once she was again apprehended, she was forced to remain in quarantine for the rest of her life, adamantly refusing the notion that she was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. There were hundreds of other asymptomatic carriers of the disease that were found around the same time, but Mallon was the only one with such a sad fate.

The concept of an asymptomatic carrier was fairly new at the time and would only really have been known by a select few healthcare workers and scientists—not the general public, so it wasn't something Mallon could easily believe. One would think they could have allowed her to continue working as a cook, if they had imparted proper hygiene upon her...

Salmonella typhi's route of transmission is oral-fecal, and it's commonly acquired from contaminated water and food; other possible routes of transmission are from surfaces and flies. The bacteria can be found in both feces and urine, so, presumably, as a cook, Mallon failed to wash her hands after she used the bathroom on some—or all—occasions when she prepared meals for her clients; cooked meals are hot enough to kill the bacteria, but George Soper, the sanitation engineer who tracked her down, noted that on one particular day of the week, Mallon had prepared a cold dessert for her clients.

Hygiene—including hand-washing—became a more serious matter for surgeons when germ theory was developed in the mid-1800s, "and by the 1890s and into the early 1900s, handwashing moved from being something doctors did to something everybody had been told to do."

Of course, one shouldn't expect hand-washing was actually that regular or often for the average person. Though it's difficult to find information other than anecdotes from that time period, we can assume that more people wash their hands now. Clean (relatively speaking) water and soap are in most restrooms now and we're bombarded with advertising on the subject.

In a study of 404 bus and train commuters in the UK, 28% had fecal matter on their hands. Another study in northern England found that mothers washed their hands only 42% of the time after changing a dirty diaper; 1/5th of the subjects failed to wash their hands after using the toilet. A third study looked at 96 empirical studies and found a median compliance rate of only 40% for hand-washing (the authors add a caveat about the studies they looked at: "In general, the study methods were not very robust and often ill reported.").

In most cases, it's less crucial to wash the hands when feces isn't involved, but one study looks at No. 1 and 2 separately. "After urinating, 69% of women washed their hands, and only 43% of men," she says. "After defecation, 84% of women and 78% of men washed their hands. And before eating – a critical time to wash your hands – 10% of men and 7% of women washed their hands."

Even healthcare workers are often lax: "A study conducted in a teaching hospital at East Tennessee State University in 2007 found that staff handwashing between attending patients in all intensive care units (ICUs) had an overall compliance rate of just 54%. Staff in the paediatric ICU were much more conscientious, with 90% compliance, compared with just 35% in the adult ICU. After intervention and training, however, the compliance rate in the adult ICU was raised to 81%."

Mallon's story is illustrative of the possibility of asymptomatic transmission and the importance of hand washing and other forms of hygiene to reduce the spread of pathogens, but can it really tell us much about the current situation with Covid-19?

It's alleged that the theory of the "superspreader" originated with the story of Typhoid Mary, and this term has been increasingly used since at least the 1990s, rising in subsequent decades, and reaching a crescendo with Covid-19. So-called superspreaders can be symptomatic or asymptomatic, but asymptomatic and infectious could potentially yield the most effective rate of transmission, as no one will be aware they should keep their distance, and the carrier won't know to stay at home.

A quick search yields many results, such as "Opinion: Not planning to get vaccinated? Look up Typhoid Mary," "The Law and You: What does ‘Typhoid Mary’ have to do with COVID-19?," "What Typhoid Mary's Story Tells Us About COVID-19 Tensions," "'Silent spreaders' may be responsible for half of Covid-19 cases, study finds," and "To beat Covid-19, find today’s superspreading ‘Typhoid Marys’." All of the articles are about the dangers of asymptomatic spread, superspreaders ruining everything, and mulling over the detainment of those who don't want to wear masks or get vaccines.

Ultimately, the term superspreader tends to be used because it sounds scary, and what is considered a superspreader event is politically motivated—Trump supporters or anti-lockdown protesters gathering would be labeled a superspreader event by the media, whereas the BLM protests were praised as being important for social justice, and infectiousness suddenly didn't matter.

It became expedient to throw about the term superspreader to imply the unvaccinated or the unmasked were spreading their sick, when asymptomatic spread of Covid-19 appears non-existent. They've done the same to encourage vaccination by saying those who aren't vaccinated are superspreaders; of course, it's now widely admitted that the vaccines do not curb transmission rates, but instead reduce mild symptoms only... The main goal is to create paranoia and fear around a virus that is not anymore lethal than the flu.

Monday, June 7, 2021

Do Aliens Exist?

Painting by David Huggins

As vast as the universe is, I think it's quite likely some kind of alien organisms exist on another planet. If we want to narrow our criteria down to single-cell organisms, that greatly increases the possibility—some bacteria and archaea can live in very "extreme" or inhospitable environments—so-called extremophiles. These organisms can be found to inhabit the depths of the earth's crust, the deep ocean, extreme levels of acidity and alkalinity, extreme hot and cold environments, toxic waste, etc.

The point being is that unicellular lifeforms can evolve to become highly adaptive to niches that most multicellular organisms could never tolerate. Cyanobacteria in particular can thrive in a diverse range of environments. The same for fungi—including the multicellular variants.

A planet can certainly be too inhospitable for these ecological niches to form in the first place, but it's thought that Mars once had a stronger atmosphere that would have rendered it closer to earth in terms of habitability, and the same could hold true for many a planet. Extremophiles could have formed in the coldest ecologies prior to the planet being unable to support the burgeoning of new life, perhaps even lying dormant in permafrost.

However, I think most people are probably not terribly excited by the prospect of "lower" forms of life being out there; sure, they would be excited if a simple organism were found on mars, but finding any kind of life suggests there is a greater diversity of organisms to be found, perhaps more complex ones. Most people really want to find something humanoid, intelligent, and, most of all, relatable. Why? Probably out of sheer curiosity, some existential itch that needs to be scratched, to understand more about the universe, or to have sex with the aliens... I'm not kidding. "Sexy aliens" are very common in pop culture. Pornography of such encounters would probably be circulated within a blackmarket before casually being uploaded on Pornhub.

There very well might be aliens of the more intelligent type out there, but so far we can only speak of probability pertaining to a complex topic rather than anything close to certainty. For what it's worth, I think there is the potential for other lifeforms similar to mammals on earth somewhere in the universe—whether they still exist, are now extinct, or will soon (relatively speaking) come to be.

Additionally, some other animals on earth are even quite intelligent, like dolphins, but they evolved in such a fashion that they couldn't manipulate tools or interact with the world in the same way that humans—or even non-human primates—could.

One critique of the "little gray/green men" that are often depicted as aliens is that they are too similar to humans. Aliens from a different world should have much different selection pressures than earth would, even if they are "earth-like."

Many of the strange quirks of the depicted aliens—such as the gray alien who is the subject of the Roswell autopsy hoax footage—could even be similar to what you would see from a human with rare chromosomal disorders and combinations of other conditions. If we ever confirmed some kind of living creature resembling what was found in the Roswell autopsy footage, I would immediately assume it was the result of some grotesque experiment on human fetuses, perhaps crossed with the DNA of other animals, long before I would ever think it was a captured alien. There are some researchers who think aliens might look quite similar to humans, though.

If selection pressures are unlikely to create anything similar to a human, then perhaps some aliens may be bestowed with a form that leaves them unfit for interstellar travel, or even conquering their world, as humans have.

Dolphins appear to be living a good life. They have no need to build or expand into new frontiers. What more do they need? Their only real problem is that humans have advanced, leading to dolphins being hunted and their territories being polluted. If humans had not come to dominate the world as they did, then the life of dolphins would be as close to perfect as you can get.

Perhaps primates are one of the few lifeforms to have any hope of changing the world so drastically, and regardless of capability, they may be the only one with the drive to do so. There is the possibility of other physiological configurations with the same potential, but we have never witnessed such a creature. Of course, an alien could also have a humanoid form and hands or something hand-like to allow them to manipulate objects. We may never know.

It's also entirely possible planet earth is the only planet with life. Other planets (or even moons or other astronomical bodies) may have been close, but not enough.

It should be stated that most who are optimistic about alien life tend to omit any information suggesting aliens might not exist or are far less abundant than we would have previously thought.

Update: The above paragraph was written based on my misconception about whether or not astronomers believed most stars were part of a multiple star system. As is explained here, it was widely believed for a long period of time that the majority of stars had companions—as many as 80%!—and single star systems were rare. This belief seems to have held until sometime in the 1990s. In the milky way galaxy, 2/3rds of stars are thought to be single, and 1/3rd are binary or greater.

There are reasons to believe it is difficult to find habitable planets within multiple star systems, so the former arrangement being true greatly strengthens the arguments of those who are skeptical about alien life existing or interacting with our solar system. It appears that the current view actually gives more support to the "believer" than the "skeptic."

There are still astronomers and various astronomy-related sources (for example) that either share my misconception, or this subject is far more contentious within the field of astronomy than is being properly conveyed in popular science articles. It's not clear how many stars in the universe are multiple star systems, but a lot of this information is based on models that may probably turn out to be inaccurate, so I'd suggest taking many of these findings with a grain of salt.

Some astronomers have posited that all stars began as binary star systems, including our own. Astronomy is a very theoretical field, but there is a lot of speculation about how binary (and triplet) star systems form—and whether or not a binary star system can transition into a single star system. Statistical analyses seem to indicate most—if not all—stars began as binary systems. Who knows if it's really more like 50% or 20% or if their models are even accurate. Multiple scientists have had similar results, and to lend credence to the hypothesis, young stars that are found tend to be part of a binary system. If true, this has serious implications for how galaxies and solar systems form.

The stars of Binary star systems are often depicted as being right next to each other, but they can be as far apart as 500-1,000 AU—1 AU is the distance between the sun and the earth—about 93,000,000 miles. Supposedly, about half of binary stars are separated by 1,000 AU or more. You would think with such distance, planets could orbit one of the stars in a stable fashion, but the other stars can affect their orbit quite a bit—either having a more elongated orbit or ejecting them from the system. It really sounds like most binary systems will be too unstable to support life. Yes, the planets can enjoy a comfortable temperature and orbit similar to the earth—but just because it has found the "sweet spot," doesn't mean it won't be disrupted.

Some articles place binary star systems in a more positive light for habitation. [1]

As was mentioned in the update above, multiple star systems are numerous enough to impact the likelihood of alien encounters, but probably not so numerous as to make a huge difference for the formation of life. If it's true that stars start as part of a multiple star system, and these systems tend to be less habitable than a single star system, then these stars would have been delayed from forming viable solar systems.

However, as can be witnessed from the many contradictions and uncertainties pondered upon in this article alone... we really can't say for sure. Science rapidly changes as we accumulate more information, but astronomy is so speculative that it might as well be science fiction; that's an exaggeration, but people really cling to the words of these astrophysicists and astronomers like the information being presented is more certain than it really is.

Since multiple star systems are probably (Who knows?) far less abundant than I originally thought they were, it'd be good to touch upon the most abundant star, and its deficiencies for life. Red dwarf stars are the most common kind of star—possibly amounting to as much as 70% of milky way stars. I've also seen estimates of 80% and higher.

These red dwarf stars have a low mass, and it's thought that the photons will not be strong enough to sustain plant life for quite a few of the ones that appear relatively habitable. Perhaps simpler organisms would be possible, but without much oxygen, more complex lifeforms are unlikely, based on what we know from earth, and the lack of any apparent life on the surfaces of other planets that we've observed.

The universe is supposedly 14 billion years old, and red dwarf stars are thought to survive for as long as 100 billion years. This means that these stars are mostly quite young, and so they have powerful magnetic fields, releasing devastating solar flares and solar winds that can destroy a planet's atmosphere.

Get too close and the planet is bombarded with the intense radiation of solar flares, and too far will mean the dimness of the star will result in a frigid wasteland.

Orbit, spin, and proximity to the star are all a number of factors making determining whether or not a planet will be a good candidate for life far more complex as well.

The majority of locations that appear habitable may only support simple organisms or will be disrupted before any organisms can form at all. The more you look at it, the more you realize how slim the pickings are, and sustaining life is based on sheer luck.

Who is to say a great race couldn't form on a particular planet, with far more potential than humans, only to get snuffed out like a candle—their planet hurtling off into an ice age?

The pessimists on the alien questions have a pretty good case against the optimists. Even if the optimists are right, life seems to be so rare and spread apart, the chances of humans stumbling across another alien life form may be nil.

However... I think all of this speculation is ultimately a moot point and irrelevant to the topic at hand—that is, whether UFOs and other alleged phenomena are related to aliens. There is a lot of postulating about aliens being the source of UFOs, but all we have to assume that would be nothing but fun sci-fi concepts and theoretical physics and astronomy.

There doesn't appear to be a lot of substantive evidence for faster than light speed travel, worm holes, warp drives... really anything that could allow aliens to traverse the universe quickly, and the universe is massive. Maybe there is an alien rocket (or something more sophisticated) out there that is vastly superior to what we currently have, but we should put that into perspective first.

Proxima Centauri, the closest star outside of our solar system, is 268,770 AU away, which is a very long number in km or mi. Voyager 1 is supposed to be moving at a speed close to 35,000 mph, and is estimated to take 73,714 years to reach the closest star. The Parker Solar Probe is supposed to be able to reach speeds of 430,000 mph, and it would take 6,619 years to reach the same star. Light speed would take about 4 years.

How close we—or lifeforms with similar or superior intelligence—could get to the speed of light is unclear, but no matter how intelligent an organism is, it takes time and trial and error to even get to the point we have reached. Aliens would have to go through similar milestones and beyond, whether they could achieve them faster or not.

Harassing us or flying around to observe us would be impractical unless they have colonized planets along the way, and the closest planets don't have any obvious signs of colonization.

Sure... they could have colonized mars before we had recorded history and cloaked a base or hid it underground, but what's the point? They would clearly have vastly superior technology to be able to do that, so there's no need to be so secretive. And for such sophisticated ships, they sure are alleged to have crashed on earth and had their pilots and ships salvaged by Lockheed Martin or the government quite a damn bit, so I'm not sure if they're competent or incompetent, or that their technology is really so vastly superior after all, to be entirely honest...

I suppose a setup like the Russian sci-fi novel Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers (interesting book/film and a wonderful concept), where the humans blend in to the society of another planet while having superior technology, and the aliens (who look just like us and are functionally the same) are in a stagnant period equivalent to the middle ages, could be possible, but all of these unlikely assumptions do get tiresome.

Occam's razor, while not always correct, is probably best applied to this situation. The universe is inordinately vast, and aliens simply have not made contact with us humans, therefore, the UFOs are terrestrial—either a hoax, or, if real, some kind of government project or experimental crafts.

I'm not really interested in getting heavily into the Fermi paradox [2] and Drake equation debate, but the former does seem to lead to the reasonable conclusion that if our star is thought to be about 4.5 billion years old, and other stars in the milky way galaxy are believed to be even older—one being at least twice the age of our sun, then an alien race equivalent to our potential or much greater probably would have already arrived or we would see clear evidence of them having been here. 10 billion years is a lot of time for an alien race within our galaxy (and potentially outside of it) to surpass our current potential enough to colonize nearby planets or dock a spaceship relatively close to earth.

The alternative would either be these aliens died out before they could achieve such a feat as to travel to earth, their capabilities are less than that of humans, they haven't developed enough yet, or they're on their way (though if they were on their way, they would probably be detected before they could get sufficiently close). Otherwise, subtracting any possible alternatives I'm forgetting about or haven't thought of, aliens don't exist.

I don't find the Fermi paradox—at least as it's often presented—entirely convincing, but speculating about it like this just strengthens the notion that we most likely haven't made contact with aliens, and we won't in the near future, so any of the peculiar activity we've seen is not alien in origin.

That certainly seems sounder to me than saying the probability of aliens being real is high, and we see strange stuff in the sky that we can't explain, ergo, the strange-stuff-in-the-sky-we-can't-explain is a result of aliens who are far advanced compared to humans, who also regularly harass us semi-surreptitiously. All the while, probing our butts, mutilating our cattle, making cool-looking and sometimes aesthetically pleasing crop circles, and just generally being obnoxious and creepy.

There are thousands of reports of UFOs being spotted every year. 2019 had 5,971 reports alone. That is reported sightings—think of how many are either not reported or are not seen. If even a small amount of these sightings are aliens, just what are they doing every year that they would need to come back to earth so often? Taking soil and feces samples? Maybe they're filming us, and this is just one big macroscopic Truman Show, and they're beaming the footage back to their home planet for other aliens to laugh at.

The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.

In conclusion, aliens might exist, but it's pretty clear that the UFO question is not related to aliens, and the main purpose of this article is to set up my historical and current reviews of the UFO question.

NOTES

[1]: For more specificity about different forms of binary star arrangements, this blog post is interesting.

[2]: The Fermi Paradox stems from a question by Enrico Fermi, when he asks, "Where are the aliens?" The Fermi Paradox is a quick shortcut used by those who believe aliens don't exist. But as Fermi conceived the question, the answer may have been more so about interstellar travel being achievable than whether or not aliens can be found in our galaxy or the universe—we hadn't even launched a satellite into space when Fermi had his conversation, and we really haven't made an incredible amount of progress when it comes to interstellar travel. Hart and Tipler's views on the subject aren't particularly persuasive to me and probably are more narrow-minded than what I believe Fermi had ever meant.

For a further look at the subject, here is a publication by Robert H. Gray on the Fermi Paradox. Regardless of where you stand on the Fermi Paradox, it appears to be more so an invention of Michael Hart in the 1970s, using Fermi's question as a framing device, with additions by Frank Tipler in the 1980s.

Thursday, June 3, 2021

Does Jean-Claude Juncker Dream of Electric Aliens?

Jean-Claude Juncker

As part of the articles I'm writing on UFOs and aliens, I've been researching prominent figures in military and politics who appear to be espousing the idea that aliens are among us and we are in contact with them. I felt this segment was unnecessary to include in the main article, so I'm publishing it as a standalone.

Jean-Claude Juncker was the president of the European Commission—the executive branch of the European Union—from 2014-2019.

In a June 28, 2016 speech Juncker delivered to the plenary session of the European Parliament on the result of the Brexit referendum in the UK, there was a segment where he appeared to be speaking of being in contact with rulers of alien planets.

Transcript: You should know that those who observe us from afar are concerned. I have met and listened to several leaders of other planets. They are very worried because they ask questions about the path the European Union will pursue. We should therefore reassure the Europeans and those who observe us from far away.

Juncker is old, but he was only 61 in 2016 and seemed reasonably competent—certainly more so than Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, or some other high-profile American politicians, all of whom come across as senile at best and dementia patients at worst. Juncker does have a reputation as an alcoholic, which could contribute to some odd behavior. Otherwise, is it possible he misspoke or had something of a senior moment?

There aren't really any big publications that commented on the incident. The most recognizable would probably be the Irish Mirror, which is considered a tabloid—a word carrying quite a stigma, but it doesn't mean the reportage can't be true. New York Post and the Daily Mirror have actually published a lot of very accurate stories.

There aren't even a bunch of "debunkers" saying it's fake. There's simply very little information on the event beyond the video.

If the translation is accurate, the EU website editors took the route of mistranslating the passage to obscure what Juncker was saying.

Make no mistake, those who are watching us from afar are concerned. I have met and listened to several leaders. They are very worried because they are wondering about the course the European Union will take. So we must reassure Europeans and those who are watching us from further away.

What left me immediately suspicious of the "alien" speech is the original source of the video's translation appeared to be Mars Moon Space TV/SpaceLinkTv, according to secureteam10, who also uploaded the video—both uploads are from July of 2016. I'm not very familiar with the former, but the latter is a YouTuber, known for rather sensationalistic coverage of UFOs, and he has faked content before.

Of course, that doesn't mean the "less authoritative" source is the wrong one.

The earliest source with a translation for the incident that I could find was from a small channel by the name of Sabeuze on June 29, 2016, just a day after Juncker gave the speech. The translation (I'm not familiar enough with Youtube's closed captions to know whether or not the uploader was responsible for the translation or if it was Youtube's automated captions) is different from Mars Moon Space TV's, but the meaning of the words are exactly the same.

Alleged French speakers on Youtube videos and others sources almost universally claim that the French spoken by Juncker accurately translates into his speech referencing aliens. Unfortunately, I don't speak French.

A French user of The Daily Stormer supplied a French transcript of the passage in question from Juncker's speech next to his own English translation:

Here’s what he said:
Il faut savoir que ceux qui nous observent de loin, sont inquiets. J’ai vue et entendue et écouté plusieurs des dirigeants d’autres planètes. Ils sont très inquiets parce qu’ils s’interrogent sur la voie que l’union européenne vas poursuivre. Donc il faut rassurer et les européens et ceux qui nous observent de plus loin.
This is the direct translation:
You should know that those who observe us from afar, are worried. I have seen and heard and listened to several leaders of other planets. They are very worried because they’re wondering which way the European Union is going. So we have to reassure both the Europeans and those who observe us from further away.

I listened carefully to Juncker's actual words, and the French transcript is accurate. When machine translated in Google Translate, my results were identical in meaning:

You should know that those who observe us from afar are worried. I have seen and heard and listened to many of the rulers of other planets. They are very worried because they are wondering what path the European Union will pursue. So we have to reassure both Europeans and those who are watching us from further afield.

While I would love to be able to confirm the accuracy myself with my own French or consult a French speaker I trust, I think it's safe to say, based on a majority of French speakers saying it is accurate, as well as multiple translations from various sources, that Juncker did mention speaking with several leaders from other planets. Plus, the media either kept mum or accepted that Juncker said this without the slightest kerfuffle—the only minor point of dispute is the EU website's translation, which is inaccurate.

Then the question remains as to whether Juncker meant what he said, misspoke, or meant what he said and misspoke.

What he said seemed far too dry and humorless to be a joke, and he was speaking in an atmosphere of deadly seriousness.

If Juncker had made the alien comment in recent years, I would think he's probably being genuine, but he said that in 2016. Senator Marco Rubio somewhat jokingly entertained the possibility of aliens being smarter than us if they had the wherewithal to get here while we can't get to wherever they live (to be clear, I don't believe Rubio necessarily thinks aliens are responsible for the UFO incidents). Haim Eshed, a retired Israeli military general claimed last year that Tel Aviv and Washington had made contact with a "Galactic Federation" of extraterrestrials. Both of those comments came well after Juncker's comments, so he's not "in the moment," like these other two figures. Juncker was also not being interviewed about aliens and the passage concerning aliens was quite short and seems somewhat off the cuff or ineptly improvised.

The jokey nature of Rubio about aliens—and other figures taking the issue of UFOs seriously—compared to Eshed indicates that UFOs are getting recognition by world governments, especially the U.S., but leading figures are mostly hesitant to talk about aliens definitely being the source of the UFOs just yet. Eshed is retired and 87 years old, so there really aren't any repercussions for him.

Taking a soft approach to aliens being the source of UFOs or hinting at the possibility has become more common, even with high-profile figures, however, including former President Barack Obama and former CIA Chief John Brennan. Though none that I've seen have taken on the upfront hardcore approach of Eshed.

But UFOs are indeed being mainstreamed. The U.S. government's usual stance was to avoid acknowledging much of what was going on to the public, other than various reports on the Roswell incident. That's now changing with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) having been founded in 2020 to investigate UFOs. This time with some degree of transparency, unlike previous projects with similar goals.

Juncker's statement is actually somewhat reminiscent of Eshed's, however. Since the speech was about the UK attempting to leave the EU, there's this idea of not only world leaders but also alien leaders being dismayed by what is happening. One should probably be asking why the hell aliens would care if the UK leaves the EU. That's a good question...

There is speculation that the government could hoax the existence of aliens, so these "superior beings" can have a moderating influence on the public. An example would be Project Blue Beam—in Serge Monast's Project Blue Beam (NASA), he proposed that NASA would collude with the rest of the U.S. government and the United Nations to use holographic projections to start a new age religion to usher in the Antichrist and a New World Order (NWO). Monast went beyond just proposing this might be done and claimed he had proof of a conspiracy of this nature, but he never presented any proof, so he wasn't credible, but the idea of hoaxing an event like this for an NWO does seem plausible.

It needn't be the Antichrist or something that is a true inversion of Christ, but aliens could easily be used to supplant Christ or the Antichrist (maybe there's not really a difference...).

On June 3, 2021, former President Barack Obama made several statements about aliens:

Speaking with Ezra Klein on The Ezra Klein Show, the 44th president was confronted with a potential scenario in which humans had verified that alien life was probing the earth, but as of yet had no way of making contact with the mysterious beings.

Mr Obama replied that his overall political viewpoints would likely not differ, while predicting that many people around the world would see their own philosophies challenged and a whole host of new discussions would arise.

“It’s interesting. It wouldn’t change my politics at all. Because my entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space,” said Mr Obama.

“But no doubt there would be immediate arguments about like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend ourselves. New religions would pop up,” the former president continued. “And who knows what kind of arguments we get into. We’re good at manufacturing arguments for each other.”

Obama is suggesting the threat presented by UFOs—perhaps with or without aliens and alien technology—could lead to the ramping up of the military-industrial complex. No surprise there, but the notion of new religions forming is the far more insidious one. What does Obama mean? Openly, he's probably suggesting random people will form cults or religious groups centered around aliens, yet these could just as easily be a government-backed.

The government already funds terrorist outfits in the Middle East through proxies, and the CIA backed the Falun Gong and Dalai Lama. These people will back virtually anything if it conforms to their interests.

Atheism and science already take on a religious quality at times.

Science is so often dictated by the elite donor class and politics and has been perverted from once noble intentions into a sort of secular religion known as Scientism—it's as dogmatic as any religion, only bereft of anything good, true, or beautiful.

Scientism is woke, ultra-liberal, atheist, anti-traditional, responsible for propping up bad science on a regular basis, and suppressing science that goes against the orthodoxy of the elite.

With the aid of the media, Scientism has become quite strong, and, perhaps, one could say Anthony Fauci was a sort of "Technopriest" before his emails were leaked to the public. Though I imagine he will weather the storm, either way.

Even many people who aren't religious feel like there is something lacking in our society, though "trusting the science" might provide them with some superficial meaning. For example, the ridiculous mask-wearing and other rituals that began with the so-called Covid-19 pandemic. Even with close to half the country vaccinated and mask mandates variably being lifted, there are vaccinated liberals who STILL opt to wear their mask to virtue signal and show they're not knuckle-dragging conservatives.

The Covid-19 vaccines are being compared to the mark of the beast, and... it makes a lot of sense. For those wanting to mock such a reference because it comes from an ancient text that can't be verified, it really doesn't matter if the bible is correct or has predictive power—life often imitates art. While I doubt many of these influencers are true satanists in the Aquino or LaVey mold, satanic imagery and references have become pervasive in pop culture. Christianity became demeaned and watered down in the U.S., and the satanic posturing that arose was meant as an affront to any shred of tradition remaining.

Wokeness and scientism reign supreme, and satanism will be employed to mock anyone so bold as to still be Christian. The old religion is out, and the new one is in. The new religion is materialistic—there is nothing spiritual about it, so why not worship super-intelligent aliens who will unite us into an NWO?

Of course, that's all hypothetical. I think it's entirely possible that the ruling elites will find aliens are too hokey, and they will stick to using alleged or actual UFOs to create false flags and blame the attacks on Russia or China, but utilizing aliens remains a distinct possibility.

Back to Juncker. It appears he did talk about aliens in his speech, but did he misspeak?

A Youtube commenter said, "So he mixed up the words. Big deal. Try speaking four languages without making a mistake, especially bearing so much responsibility. Most people would freeze being exposed to speaking at a crowd."

Yeah, fair enough.

I personally think he just misspoke and the alcohol isn't doing him any favors. His reference is also not well-timed and was covered up by the EU, so it wasn't meant for public consumption; this is not to say that they altered the text because the information was accurate and not meant to be leaked—the most likely reality is the EU was simply embarrassed by the gaffe. In conclusion, It's an interesting segment from a high-profile bureaucrat, but, unfortunately, I don't think there's any real substance here.

To conclude, I will reiterate what should be seen as the primary potentialities resulting from the UFO/alien question:

UFOs will be used as false flags to blame China, Russia or whoever else.
UFOs and/or the suggestion of alien technology will be used to further the aims of the military-indestrial complex.
An alien hoax will be implemented as part of a cult/religion and the establishment of an NWO for the management of the herd.

All or none of these points may result from the UFO/alien question. There is a very strong possibility that the second point will be accurate. The first also seems likely, and it would coincide well with foreign policy ambitions. The third would be the most complicated to pull off, so if it happens, it will probably be many years or decades from now.