PS: We came into Europe unvaxxed and untested, UsAnThem. Yeah, that was also in a big aluminum tube full of people. Luckily, at least Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have left behind this particular type of stupidity.

I wonder how many of the "refugees" in Spain go through what the average Spaniard and money-spending tourist does to keep down the Black Death 2.0.

PS
We were in Spain last month and a lot more people were masking than I expected. However, they require non-EU travelers to test coof negative prior to entry and masks are "required" on all public transportation. Stupidity is everywhere.

When we returned, I needed to give up some blood at my doc's office - mandatory masking of course for all who enter (at their own risk, of course). This after two ten hour flights in an aluminum tube with hundreds of passengers, the vast majority whom were unmasked. Stupidity abounds...

PS: Alarmist, that was a pretty big funeral. With that many people, and that controversy that was brought up (not your idea), it's lucky there weren't any more deaths.

Black funerals have many more shooting deaths - White funerals may have more vax deaths though. Hopefully, the vax won't take out more than one pallbearer per funeral - could be a problem.

PS: Mr. Hail, thanks for that take on the Oriental v Occidental societal attitudes. Regarding the cartoon people in Japan, we, OK, maybe I should write "I", tend to think that other societies don't have any of the stupidity that this country does. We would be wrong. It may be of a different sort, but still...

What I care about is that the weirdness is not force on us.

I have also noted the "mask chic" in a few columns on this blog. There are a couple with the "Kung Flu Stupidity" topic key that are titled "Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize" (fashion advice).

Finally: As I wrote, I have not spent any time actually (other than inside the airport) in Japan. In China, I'd seen face masks on people 15 years ago - that was for the (extreme) particulate pollution.

PS

I’m not saying the death stabs actually killed those three ... their deaths were merely a coïncidence.

Coïncidence theory is OK ... it is conspiracy theory that is beyond the pale.

PS

I went to a funeral back in April (stroke after vaxx, not COVID) and was one of only three out of one hundred and fifty or so who did not mask for the ceremony. One of the attendees asked whether I was fully vaxxed and which one I chose, and I said I was unvaxxed. So she asked why I was unmasked and if I was not afraid of catching it, and I replied that the masks haven been shown in multiple reputable studies to be ineffective against respiratory viruses, masks are little more than talismans of misguided faith placed in scientistry and the state, and that I’d rather place my faith in my God-given natural immune system. This being Europe, I was probably one of the few actual Christians at what was supposed to be a Christian ceremony.

I don’t know anyone who actually died because of COVID, nor do I know anyone who died merely with it (the distinction is important, because we have constantly been lied to), but I know more than a few (all of my vaxxed colleagues and friends) who caught COVID despite multiple vaxxes and constant masking (with whom I’ve been healthily mingling unmasked for most of 2 1/2 years), and I know three who died of cerebral or cardio events shortly after being vaxxed.

PS

(...finishing some thoughts on Japan and masks and related topics, continued from previous two comments...)

Besides "mask chic" and the desire to be comfortably anonymous in public with the magic of a mask (the basic reason masking developed as a minor habit in Japan---suiting the needs of psychologically fragile or super-shy women, or others who didn't want to be "seen" for any reason), there were new factors in 2020, group-based elements introduced during the Panic:

(1.) mass compulsion, especially in such 'Asian' countries and other authoritarian political cultures (which is much of the world); and

(2.) political-loyalty signaling, especially in the West (whose sick political cultures today tend to be addicted to war-against-the-domestic-unclean-heretic ideological-crusading, which transferred onto Masks as such).

Collectivist cultures like in East Asia had inner resistances too weak to avoid the incipient Panic regimes there from taking pretty full control. Too few dissenters, too few a pool of Neutrals willing to sympathize with the dissenters. The "principled dissenter" is a rare species in the Orient, and the "person who understands principled dissent" also rare. These are both natural to us and unnatural to them. If a man got on a bus without a mask during the Panic, a median White-Westerner might think: "Oh, here's one of those goofy anti-maskers we hear about." The White-Westerner may or may not be angry about it (there's a flu virus out there!), but would understand. An 'Asian' in Asia, though, would think: "Ah. Here is a mentally disturbed man. Maybe he is dangerous. I pity and fear him. I hope he is put in line." And so it was that ubiquitous masking became the rule.

I know from observation how few dissenters or non-maskers there were in these places. Even teenagers, supposedly rebellious everywhere, obediently went about in public with masks. It was common to see bicyclists and motorbike riders without helmets, but rare to see one of them without a mask.

Seeing those people police themselves and others on masks is a quick lesson in comparative sociology and even on the history of world civilization.

As for the West, the now-dominant political culture of top-down organized "ideological crusading against the (usually White-Christian-Male) heretic" transferred pretty smoothly onto all the non-maskers, anti-maskers, vaccine-decliners, CDC-skeptics, Just-the-Flu'ers, and all subspecies of Covid Denier out there.

This pre-existing political culture we'd somehow developed (a MUCH WORSE sickness than "Covid" at its worst) greatly weakened the Western political "immune system" against such Panic. The dissenters and refusers and Covid Deniers (the real heroes, the people who were morally and factually right) were cast as villains. This is not supposed to be our political culture.

PS

I remember thinking that the whole "masking" thing, which you could occasionally see in Japan, was a strange custom and not a good sign. But really it's no stranger than the hobby some there have of dressing up as cartoon characters for fun and going about in public, including doing normal things while dressed as such. That's known as "cosplay."

Like wearing a surgical mask, Cosplay was also uncommon but not zero. If you go around long enough you'll see it. Similar to if a visitor goes around a major U.S. city long enough, he'll soon see homeless tents, BLM-related graffiti, and people who look to be drug dealers hanging around. You won't see this everywhere, but you will see it sooner or later.

Medical masking and dressing up as a cartoon character might have more connection than meets the eye in some cultural way. And I stress that they were visible (in the 2010s) at similar rates, all else held equal. You would see more cartoon-people in certain sections of Tokyo (there is one neighborhood where they tend to congregate most, and there you can always find them). You'd see many more masks, I presume, during a publicized flu wave, or maybe during a high-pollution "danger zone" day. But both phenomena, in normal times and places, were minor. There are (were) too many other "strange" or unusual or appealingly new things to observe to make too big a deal about the masks (or the cartoon-people).

My 2010s-era observations masks in Japan hold up in the West as well, I think, with the 2020-2021 big proliferation of public masking imposed on us by the Panic-pushers. Maskers are more often female, and people like doing it for anonymity, or in some cases fashion if they like the way it looks somehow. There is a "mask chic," which is one of the many ugly things to come out of the Corona-Panic.

PS

I've been to Japan on several occasions. On the longest visit, about 2015, I remember making some observations on the mask wearing habit and felt that by observation with a fair sample size, that I'd gained some reasonably objective view of the strange custom.

The most important thing about masking in Japan was this: VERY FEW people did it, wore masks in public. There is an idea out there that it has always been common. You might have seen selectively-taken pictures of crowds with a lot of masked people and get this impression, or hear people talk up the custom to stress the Cool, Weird Japan idea. But you could wander around all day in a big city and not particularly notice any. It was not common, but it was also not zero.

My observation was, the few who wore masks in public were invariably women. From even passive and indirect observation, I concluded they wanted to be anonymous. They would pair the mask with a low-hanging hat or some kind, and other such things, and their faces would disappear. Such women were also alone. There were no pairs of masked people chatting it up. The maskers were all solo women who wanted to be invisible, maybe for personality-problem-related reasons, maybe something else.

A study in some medical journal came out about that time in the 2010s which concluded that the practice of masking in public was, in most cases, a sign of social pathology. This may be partly unfair. In some cases I think it was a kind of fashion thing of its own. I think someone told me sometimes celebrities would do this to ride the subway while totally avoiding detection. And a related phenomenon is when a woman below whatever age has not properly washed her hair and prettied up with makeup, she is ashamed to go out, so the mask is a very convenient invisibility amulet. Low-riding baseball caps often get the same job done...

PS Wasn't it bat meat stew or the horny MIL Olympics?
Clown World productions is a bit lax with the scripts lately.
All of the COV victims I know are elderly and it is a handful in a large family and all got the not-a-vax experimental gene therapy.
Those pensions, Soc-Sec and homes are needed for the replacements.

O/T-Reading about the CHIPS act from Brandon and there will be a bag of pot from Taiwan in every rubber chicken as the supply chain crisis gets solved and don't worry Nancy will be getting way more than ten percent.

PS: OK, fair enough then. 1 at this point.

PS I know someone who died from covid.