How Many People Have Died of the Omicron Variant?
HINT: It's a nice round number
We’ve seen a lot of headlines about the Omicron variant, which is the latest thing we’re all supposed to panic about. That’s how it works: You must be driven into a perpetual state of hysteria. You must never be allowed a moment to stop and catch your breath and think about what’s happening, because you might fall into badthink. The latest name for that is Omicron.
Omicron! OMG!! Run around like a headless chicken!!!
But here’s a question that none of our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press are asking, because they have no incentive to ask: How many people have died of Omicron?
Like, in the entire world. It doesn’t need to be a precise number. A rough estimate is fine. You can round up to the nearest 10.
Anybody? Hello?
I’m not sure how trustworthy Snopes is, but they say the number so far is… zero.
Zip.
Zilch.
Goose egg.
1 - 1.
None.
So please excuse me if I don’t freak the hell out every time somebody gets Omicron.1 Every story about it lists the number of cases but glosses over minor little details. Like what happens to the people who get it.
Do they get sick?
If so, how sick do they get?
If not, what’s the problem?
The media is just selling fear, as usual. Yes, COVID-19 is real, and a lot of people have died. No, nobody is dying from this Omicron variant. That’s good news, which is why the “news” isn’t interested.
It’s like Kirk Douglas told us 70 years ago in Ace in the Hole:
Here’s another example of this fear porn, from one of the few CNN employees who hasn’t been caught in some sort of scandal:
They think you’re as stupid as they are. Like Glenn Reynolds says, I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people who tell me there’s a crisis start acting like there’s a crisis.
Now New York is going back to mask mandates. Which means we can look forward to footage of Kathy Hochul partying maskless. That’s how these things tend to go. Rules are for the little people.
(BTW, Jake Tapper really was a spokesman for Hooters back in the ‘90s. That’s the only thing about him that I actually like. At least back then he was serving a purpose to society.)
If you don’t know what I mean by CNN scandals, here are two more just from the last few days:
Chris Cuomo’s CNN Producer Indicted for Baiting Young Girls into ‘Sexual Subservience’ Training
The CNN producer is named John Griffin, and here he is with Chris Cuomo in happier times:
What is it about CNN and sexual predators?
And then there’s this:
Libs don’t care because Janice Dean works for Fox News. They’re only concerned about the mistreatment of women when it suits them.
And now they’re all pretending they never cheered on the Cuomo brothers.
Kyle Smith at the NY Post has some career advice for those creeps. Where do they go from here? If you want an idea of the tone:
Sewage diver: Someone needs to put on a wetsuit and get down there to inspect the machinery and whatnot. And the job carries the benefit of anonymity. In a lake of poop, no one knows you’re a Cuomo.
Oh $#!+.
And Cuomo’s BFF Don Lemon is also in the news for tipping off Jussie Smollett that the Chicago police didn’t believe his story.
Welcome aboard, Chris Wallace! You’re in good company.
Does Joe Biden work for America? Or China?
The island of Taiwan was colored green on the map, and China was red. That’s because Taiwan is an independent country, not part of China. But the Chinese Communist Party keeps lying about Taiwan, and now the Biden White House is helping them.
Why?
Anne Rice, R.I.P.
I read Interview with the Vampire and a couple of her other vampire novels back in the ‘80s, and it’s still crazy to me that 1) They made a movie of it, 2) Tom Cruise played Lestat, and 3) It mostly worked. Maybe I’ll go back and re-read those…
Over the weekend I checked out The Matrix Awakens, a weird PS5 demo that’s designed to show off the new Unreal 5 game engine. You can watch the first part of the demo here:
I have no idea how the tech works, but it’s pretty damn impressive. It makes GTA 5 look like an Atari 2600 game. There’s still an uncanny valley effect going on with the close-ups of the virtual, near-perfect Keanu and Carrie-Anne…
Yikes! 👀
But once the demo leaves you alone to drive or fly around Mega City to your heart’s content, it’s amazing. It looks and feels like you’re moving through a modern city in real life. I can’t wait to play a game using this engine.
This demo doesn’t seem to have any direct tie-in to The Matrix Resurrections, but I had a lot more fun with it than the last two Matrix movies. The developers remembered what the Wachowskis forgot almost 20 years ago: Show, don’t tell!
Bad news, fans. Once again, I have been overlooked:
Oh well, maybe next year.
Happy Monday, and thanks for reading.
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Which shouldn’t even be called the Omicron variant. It should be the Xi variant, but nobody wants to offend the Chinese Communist Party. Well, you and I do, but nobody in a position of power does.
Jim, I want you to know that everyone here voted for you.
As of today, somebody in Britain—one person--has died. Boris Johnson is picking his words carefully when he states that somebody died “with” the variant:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/britain-omicron-death-variant-coronavirus/2021/12/13/cd87da44-5c0a-11ec-b1ef-cb78be717f0e_story.html