“Virus # 26”; Director’s Cut: Chapter 10 “Lessons Learnt from COVIDs: Propaganda’s Effect”

In the guise of a never-ending flow of “public service” messages Canadians were bombarded with an incessant stream of propaganda. Propaganda is primarily a tool of totalitarian governments to maintain control of its citizens. The volume of it will dim independent thinking. However, at some point it just becomes noise and has little effect if not the opposite effect of what it was intended to accomplish.

As for COVID-19 it had some effect at least for wave 1 and 2 but after that point it was resented and rejected by those who previously lapped it up. Masks have been proven to have almost no beneficial effect. Social distancing was manslaughter for those “in shelter”. About the only truth was the benefit of washing your hands.

It was really disturbing for me that so many people blindly accepted the propaganda for so long. In the end social distancing and mask wearing were tired old phrases and too bad so many millions smiled like deer in the headlights. Many of these people were highly educated (and well paid until they lost their jobs) and what a shock to see them parrot what was being rammed down their gullet.

So why all the propaganda? Firstly, it was a legitimate excuse to reward advertising agencies run by the friends of the politicos. Secondly it was an attempt to silence anyone who had different ideas about “sanitary measures” through shame and ostracization. Thirdly it justified all decisions taken by the politico-medicos. It also showed the paternalistic attitude of the politico-medicos. I think it also had people in so much fear they were easier to control.

At the end of the day it served to justify the decisions of the politico-medicos and crush anyone with opposing views.

But what is the expression? You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time?

I had the great opportunity as a long haired knapsacker to spend several years in the Iron Curtain in the 1970’s. Czechoslovakia in 1974 was particularly bad with propaganda being blared over loudspeakers in the street Gustáv Husák the communist leader had witnessed the Czech uprising of 1968 and decided to try crude mind control through propaganda being blasted out to the street in loudspeakers.  In Canada’s case television and radio were the loudspeakers bolstered by an unthinking and compliant media. Even my favourite classical and jazz station had their announcers cozy up to the party line. The sad thing was they actually believed the loudspeakers and became the loudspeakers. So much for the integrity of the media!

“Travels to a Different Time”: 28July2000: Samos, Greece; Pythagorian: Charming Seaside Town

Took the municipal bus from Vathi to Pythagorian. The bus service is decent but many tourists seem intimidated by public transportation and ride by taxi. I have no complaints. Buses are clean and air conditioned. The drivers are helpful. The schedule is well laid out and the buses are on time. A breakfast of oranges, honey and Samos honey from thyme flowers. There is no better honey in the world and I have tried countless honey in my travels. The trip was 20 minutes and impressive scenery with pine forests. The town is charming. Touristic but tastefully so. Vathi is more of a business centre and Pythagorian can be best described as a laid-back beach town with narrow streets, lots of bars and restaurants. Many of the bars are in the harbour and a glass of wine overlooking the fishing boats, yachts and the statute of the famous mathematician Pythagoras the town in named in honour of is a treat. Both the church and the castle were closed the latter for renovations so walked further down the road amongst ancient ruins in the fields to Doryssa Bay resort one of those upscale seaside complexes very tastefully done unlike so many Mexican resorts. There is even a recreated Greek village where “houses” are used as accommodation. I understand the Greek government under the junta expropriated property to ensure construction of the resort but one condition was there be a recreated Greek village constructed. There are mostly German and Dutch tourists and many with children. The beachfront is not spectacular as Greek beaches go but the water is clean and warm. Had a Greek salad for lunch poolside. The prices are somewhat steeper than in Vathi. A beer in a restaurant in Vathi costs 350 drachmas, at Kedro Beach bar 400 and at Doryssa 700. I am not saying tourists are hosed in Greece but when in a major tourist spot crammed with foreign tourists expect higher prices. Stayed on the beach and then walked back to Pythagorian at 17:00 . There was a nice breeze to counter the blazing sun. The hills and fields have been blackened by fire. Samos is so dry it has a forest fire issue. Had a beer at a café by the bus stop. With the sun, ocean and the beer you get a bit dozy. However the change of routine and scenery that travel generates recharges the soul. One slows down in Greece. How will one adapt to a hectic go go North American lifestyle when the vacation ends?

The beach at Doryssa Bay: Photo Robert K. Stephen

RKS Wine: Kacaba and a Trip Down Memory Lane

Years ago while on a trip the Ontario Wine Society took to several Niagara wineries I picked up a bottle of Kacaba Rebecca Rosé and it was superb. But that was years ago and a trip down memory lane can bring smiles to one’s face but that was then and today is now. So what is now going to be for Kacaba Rebecca Rosé?

What does the aroma do? It impresses. A deep and penetrating exposition of watermelon, raspberry, Niagara cherries, strawberries and it suggests a possible sweet touch. On the palate it is youthful and not overly serious but not flippant. The boisterous nose is slicked down on the palate making this a happy go lucky rosé. There is everything on the palate that is on the nose but more subdued and it is dry. It is one of those sultry summer rosés that is a good hot afternoon sipper if you have done enough errands or yard work to justify taking it easy.

It would pair well with a Greek Salad or a pasta with a rosé cream sauce such as smoked salmon added at the end of cooking a pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes, Ontario garlic, scallions, your home-grown basil all prepared with a good splash of this wine.

Enjoy until the end of 2022. This will go well with a Thanksgiving roast turkey.

(Kacaba Summer Series Rebecca Rosé 2021, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Kacaba Vineyards, Vineland, Ontario, $20.15, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 227025, 750 mL, 11.7%, RKS Wine Rating 90/100).

Virus # 26” Director’s Cut: Chapter 9 “Lessons Learnt from the COVIDs; People Can Be Such Amoebas”

At least a toddler has some power of rational thought including the power to stand up to parental dictatorship. That may manifest itself in stubbornness, anger or temper tantrums hence the expression “terrible twos”.

The overwhelming majority of the population sucked up the steady stream of propaganda shoved down their throats by advertisements from the politicos and reinforced by a media that lost my respect very quickly for parroting the politico party line. Like Radio Moscow or Voice of America in the old Iron Curtain days! And the blind acceptance of the media campaign lapping up and spewing out the politico party line showed the lack of free thought of the established media so heavily funded by incessant Big Pharma product advertising. Yes CNN don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

Doctors, lawyers, accountants, construction workers and those in the service industry initially humbly bowed down to the exhortations of “social distancing”, “stay at home”, “stop the spread” and countless hackneyed phrases developed by the politicos and medicos supporting them. But after the 4th wave the good citizens of Canada were questioning the politico messages they had initially eagerly imbibed. Was it Moses that said, “Let my people go.”

Anyone voicing any opposition to the politico party line was treated as an uncooperative conspiracy theorist. Suggestions of a cheap fix to boost immunity like Vitamin C and D was a lie by the conspiracy theorists even though there was ample medical research supporting the fact that these vitamins were used by China in the first wave and then adopted by some American physicians initially in the Long Island, New York hospital community then globally.

Most physicians in the Western World hitched their wagon to the hope of a vaccine or cure developed by Big Pharma with financing by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   And a minority of physicians, like myself, realized by the time it took to develop a vaccine the virus would have mutated rendering the vaccine futile somewhat like the unreliable flu shot. Our minority view was that a strong immune system created by a healthy diet and lifestyle bolstered by some key supplements was the best defence. Big Pharma claps its hands with childlike glee watching Americans killing themselves with processed and fast food as it accounted for the Midas touch of cholesterol medication! Yet the masses were so conditioned by Western medicine to believe that Big Pharma products were the answer they failed to see or ignored that Big Pharma makes huge profits not by developing a cure but perpetuating their profit by developing and selling drugs that managed, into eternity, symptoms but never cured them. Why this blind faith when Big Pharma had failed to deliver a cancer or Alzheimer’s fix despite some 85 billion USD spent on finding the magic bullet. Imagine a vaccine for each mutation of the COVID virus. The state was sucked into a money pit of a crumbling house of cards of vaccine efficacy. Big Pharma cleverly sidestepped the oversell of vaccines by saying they were “effective” in reducing hospitalizations. Why was it that smallpox, polio, measles and most vaccines were preventive yet COVID vaccines had to be remodeled every few months so that they could become effective?

With successive waves of COVID some of the terror stricken and obedient masses became more difficult to control as hungry and displaced persons are often harder to rule especially when desperation began to nudge obedience and money to subsidize the unemployed and small businesses was exhausted hence the development in the United States and other countries of what we can generically call “Fuck the Vulnerable Movement”. Let the old geezers, fatsos, primitive Third Worlders and aged take the hit.

By the time Virus # 26 descended a deep political polarization had been growing throughout the globe. But more about that later.

I and many others wondered if the slick political-medico machine had faced massive resistance at the outset and social distancing had been rejected and herd immunity developed whether the early successive waves of COVID-19 would have been so crippling. However amoebas simply sucked all the politico-medico teat up setting the stage for a slaughter. “Stay Safe” at the end of the day meant “Be Prepared to Die”. The assassinations of many of the politico-medicos was too little too late for the millions that died because they had “Stayed Safe”. 

“Travels to a Different Time ” : 27July2000: Samos, Greece: To Kedros Beach and a Catchy Supermarket Jingle

Picked up some liquids and breakfast of cheese, olives, bread and grapes. The supermarket is not that large. They have a catchy jingle playing with the store’s name in it. “Galanos, Galanos” it goes. I am puzzled that the chickens are frozen and are from Denmark. Off to Kedros Beach on the bus. A short trip and it is near the church I was at yesterday. There are few people on the beach because it has not yet been discovered so you might want to call it a hidden gem. Beautiful clear water. It is a pebbled beach but go waist deep and there is sand. There is a ramshackle restaurant and bar. Spent a fantastic afternoon. The best beaches in Europe are in Greece. Took a taxi home fearful of getting run over on the road.

Virus # 26 Director’s Cut: Chapter 8 ” Lessons Learnt from the COVIDs; People Were Treated Like Toddlers”

Now if you have raised children when they get to the terrible twos and have started their growth into toddlerdom you find constant repetition is necessary to correct their behaviour. Keep drilling the message in. In political terms it amounts to parental dictatorship.

From the Canadian perspective the COVIDs exposed provincial and federal governments as purveyors of crude propaganda. It wasn’t some exhortation to revolution but rather a more mundane “keep safe”, “wear a mask” and the wretched phrase “social distancing”. Over and over ad nauseum until after a few weeks of it most of us were getting tired of if and angry about these advertisements. Or was it propaganda to egg the masses on to a state of jellied minds? It assumed social distancing was effective where I have previously said social distancing was a miserable failure as it only delayed subsequent waves of COVID-19 and hit hard at the compliant who being “in shelter” developed no immunity. Like lining up victims before a firing squad.

Millions of taxpayer dollars were pissed away by governments on “advertising”. The assumption being citizens had the lowest common denominator of intelligence whereas the governments spewing out “the message” proved to be so terribly wrong and that is why subsequent waves of COVID-19 were so deadly.

And in some respects, at least for the politico-medico elite, the propaganda campaign was a success as people did behave like obedient toddlers. As in a political propaganda campaign those who resisted were treated as ignoramuses and ostracized and were subject to fines and in some cases imprisonment perhaps acceptable in a totalitarian state but in Western democracies mostly unheard of.

The mainstream media purred the message on without question. The fifth estate were no more than appendages of the ruling politico medico elite. The good citizens of Western democracies criticize totalitarianism but couldn’t see the “medically based” COVID totalitarianism as anything but benign. And when all the toddlers jump on the bandwagon, they become sheep and it so passed they were being led to slaughter to the Temple of COVID correctness.

RKS Wine: The Dão’s Morgado Silgueiros Touriga Nacional

The Dão region of Portugal may not be as spectacular as the Douro as far as scenery goes but it’s huge glacial boulders give some of the Dão an otherworldly look. This is a co-operative produced wine. I have not been to their production facility but they are headquartered in Viseu a charming city not so far from Porto. In fact our media bus to Viseu departed from Porto. I regret that I had not stayed longer in Viseu.

A student celebration in Viseu! Photo Robert K. Stephen

In this case we are dealing with a single varietal a Portuguese red grape stalwart Touriga Nacional.

On the nose no doubt a Touriga Nacional with loads of blueberry, black cherry, blackberry, wet stone with a smidgen of black licorice. The palate presents us with mild tannins, perfectly controlled acidity, cassis, cherry nectar with a velvety smoothness. Not much complexity though. Best suited with food such as a rich pasta sauce with field tomatoes, fresh basil, jalapeno peppers and Spanish Mackerel filets served over wild rice. The mackerel filets only need to be in the sauce in its last 15 minutes of simmering.  I see it as a utilitarian wine.

It will hold until the end of 2023 but I can’t see much benefit to ageing it. There is but a tiny hint of vanilla indicating oak. It has been aged 10 months in oak and I suspect old French oak?

(Morgado Silgueiros TN 2017 Touriga Nacional, Adega Cooperativa de Silgueiros, DOP Dão, Viseu, Portugal, $19,95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 25074, 750 mL, 14%, RKS Wine Rating 89/100).

RKS Film: “My Tree”: The Loss of Ignorance and the Great Repair

For his 1975 Bar Mitzvah in Toronto Jason Sherman received as a gift a certificate issued by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that a tree had been planted in his honour in Israel. Not having any real emotional connection with Israel Sherman became curious about this tree. With some effort Sherman searched JNF records in Toronto and with a certificate from the JNF issued to his brother on his Bar Mitzvah and the help of a researcher in Jerusalem he took an educated guess it might have been planted in Canada Park in Israel. Canada Park was created by the JNF to plant trees donated by Canadians.

Sounds innocent and purely charitable but Sherman discovers that Canada Park was planted around and over an Arab village Imwas. Imwas residents were forcibly evicted by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in 1967 and the forest planted over it and surrounding lands. Over 90 other Arab villages suffered the same fate being buried under forests and 600 villages destroyed. In Canada Park there is no signage indicating the Arab eviction. The JNF refuses to speak to Sherman rather strange for a registered tax-free charity which is also one of the biggest land developers in Israel.

Sherman meets the sheik of Imwas and his son and is told of the 1967 eviction of residents and of the bulldozing of the village. Trees as weapons! The greening of Israel buried under what some Israeli critics call ethnic cleansing and an Israeli occupation of Palestine. Sherman feels as if innocence has been stripped away and looks for rabbinical guidance in Toronto and is told that by all means come to grips with what has happened and deal with it as his conscience dictates but if you deny the existence of Israel you are moving towards anti-Semitism. He feels there has been an injustice committed which needs a repair. Imwas was in the Canadian media but was quickly forgotten. As in the 1970’s with Palestinian “terrorism” Palestinians were not well regarded by many and not deserving of compassion.

I suppose Sherman’s recounting his story is an attempt at repair. It is a story worth listening to and it is not new except Canadian Jews were never told the human cost attendant to the JNF greening of Israel.

A fascinating story of the rise of Zionism, the development of the JNF, the harsh treatment of the Palestinians, the lack of transparency of the JNF and the history of Israel. It also exposes the existence of an increasing amount of Israelis calling for rapprochement with Palestinians. As many of us know the Israeli and Palestinian problem can only deteriorate beyond repair unless both sides sit down and really listen to and understand each other. As matters stand sadly this does not look like it will happen.

The documentary proposes no solution of the Israeli-Palestinian divide but offers a glimpse of the psychiatry propelling both sides without being overly polemic. With hatred and extremism there will never be peace.

I was expecting a lighthearted story but in reality not so.

Written and directed by Jason Sherman.

There will be a limited theatrical release on July 29th and availability digitally as well.

You can watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/713383521

RKS Film Rating 91/100.

“Travels to a Different Time” : 26July2000: Samos, Greece: Off to the Agia Paraskevi Religious Festival and Feast

Off to the religious feast and festival at a tiny church on the oceanfront near an area that is called Kedros. The church is a tiny country church overlooking the Aegean. It was a short trip on the municipal bus and was left off at a gas station with a small road leading to the tiny whitewashed church. It is so small I wonder if more than 10 people can fit in! A lengthy service standing in the blazing heat. Bread was passed around to all in attendance. All were given a container of “yorti” which is buckwheat cooked with a bit of beef. What an event for a non-Greek. Not a tourist in sight. What a setting on a hill overlooking a turquoise-coloured ocean.

Headed off to the beach after buying a spanakopita (spinach and feta cheese pie). The beach was a town beach called Gagou with a disco playing cool music to the joy of the youth of the town having a great time. Not the most picturesque beach by Greek standards but the water was warm and clean. There were a few wrinkly older European women topless. Welcome to a beach with Germans! The snack bar had very reasonable prices and the vibe was very young. The long hot day caused a collapse at 22:00 and slept until 10:30 finally waking up feeling like a rested human being. Jet lag is the curse of transatlantic travel but it is your body telling you it needs time to adapt!

Virus # 26:  Director’s Cut:” Chapter 7 “Was Reopening Premature?”

From a traditional medical perspective re-opening the economy repeatedly during the COVIDs was an error of huge magnitude. But the medico perspective coming from upper middle-class physicians far removed from the economic realities of the working class and small business owners not surprisingly failed to account for job losses caused by the closure of businesses that couldn’t afford perpetual rounds of lockdowns. So much emphasis was placed on “flattening the curve” it blinded a reality check that as effective as social distancing and home imprisonment was it simply insulated millions temporarily from being infected. The miserable failure of vaccines with the vaccinated becoming infected multiple times led to a feeling of hopelessness that often manifested itself into a variety of mental illnesses.

Out of the protective cocoon of home imprisonment many simply became easy meat for the COVIDs. And it was too late to crawl back in the cocoon. Social distancing was fated to fail and its only success was enabling hospitals to deal with a reduced load of serious COVID cases and its biggest failure was social distancing itself as setting up the world for a big fall.

Now I am a medico so my job is to protect lives and social distancing as a mantra initially made good sense to me. But after several months of the first wave as for social distancing anyone could see it was a dilatory tactic as opposed to a long-term effective management tool. So I became more of a proponent of economic realities and their psychological effect of the millions that lost their jobs. The stress and anxiety of job losses took a huge mental toll but as we physicians know all too well stress and anxiety is a killer just as COVID might be. There was a dramatic increase in domestic abuse, suicide, substance abuse and a general decline in physical and mental health and therefore ultimately to immunity.

Of course, there was political expediency in getting the economy running again. Governments were running out of money to financially support the unemployed and failing businesses. Social unrest was growing. Hungry and stressed-out people are a very dangerous political force as we shall see later.

So tossing caution to the wind, as it was becoming unaffordable, we opened up the gates to a decimating successive waves of COVID-19. Decimating as it was it did help establish herd immunity rendering the third, fourth and successive waves of COVID-19 very weak.

The propaganda machines particularly the government and their medicos endlessly shoving social distancing down everyone’s throat realized the governments of the world could no longer afford social distancing so the new mantra was a vaccine “cure”. That cure never arrived but a partially effective vaccine did with collateral damage sickening thousands along the way with its side effects that sometimes took many months to manifest themselves.

My point is that there was the virus and economic and social issues at play. The easy answer it would seem was to focus on the virus including testing, social distancing, hygienic practices and running the numbers game. That is a physician for you a technocrat with blinders on. Above and beyond the virus were economic and social issues that most physicians failed to diagnose. Blinded by the trees most physicians had no idea of the forest.

Photo Robert Tuomi