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This Week in the New Normal #18

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. “The unvaccinated should pay with their freedoms”

Emily Sheffield, writing in the Evening Standard, is fed up with the unvaccinated ruining everything through their “selfishness and obstinacy”.

Apparently, 90% (allegedly) of the UK being vaccinated just isn’t enough, and it’s time to punish those vaccine-refuseniks by implementing a vaccine passport system, just as they have done in Canada, France and Germany.

You don’t need me to go through the article in detail. You know what she says, and if you’re regular readers of OffG you likely know the counterpoints by heart. There’s nothing new here, nothing freshly upsetting, honestly I’m numbed to the outrage.

No, the only reason to make any special mention of this article, in particular, is the end. After twenty paragraphs of ranting about the unvaxxed, how they shouldn’t be allowed outside without getting the jab, she ends with this:

Maintaining that our “freedoms” are threatened by vaccine passports is a bogus argument from the conservative Right that has fuelled the mad obstinacy of the unvaccinated.

(Note: The quotes around the word “freedom” are hers, and I have no idea what they are supposed to mean.)

“We should take people’s freedom away unless they do what they are told, but this is not a threat to freedom.” is one of the more amusing examples of pure doublethink we’ve seen recently.

2.veganuary

It’s the new year, which means it’s now officially “veganuary”, the most awkwardly and weirdly named calendar months since someone decided to make “Movember” a thing.

For those who have escaped encountering this before now, “veganuary” is a the official month of veganism, when everyone is encouraged to forego meat and dairy for 31 days to see if their lives magically improve.

This is a totally organic event, and not at all a cynical move designed to harness people’s new year’s resolutions and general feelings of dissatisfaction into furthering the corporate pro-vegan agenda.

This week the Metro is reporting that:

NHS would save £30,000,000,000 per year if everyone went vegan

The headline is not really honest, and certainly not supported by actual evidence. Rather, it’s the bastard child of a study done in Taiwan (on vegetarians, not vegans) and some very tortured maths.

Veganism is one of the slow-burn agendas, simmering in a crockpot for years.

We have seen dozens of stories in the media claiming veganism could prevent climate change. There was also a report which claimed non-meat eaters were less likely to get Covid.

Last year we even were told veganism could “prevent the next pandemic”…because if people didn’t eat pangolins anymore then viruses wouldn’t jump from animals to people (yes, seriously).

3. Illegal virus infection

OK, not from this week, but we missed it at the time and it’s too funny to ignore. The Swiss government’s health body has said getting infected with Covid on purpose should be a criminal offence.

Apparently, this is a response to the rise of “infection parties”, where people try to catch Covid deliberately in order to gain natural immunity.

Legally it’s an interesting position. How could they prove the party was an “infection party”, supposing you’re infected…how would they prove you did it on purpose? I have no idea. Offhand I would say that was more or less impossible.

Nevertheless, if you’re found guilty of wilfully self-infecting you could face up to five years in prison.

Taking suggestions for what, exactly, we would call this new kind of offence. Grievous bodily autonomy? Virion smuggling? infection with intent to distribute?

BONUS: Hellhole of the week

Be honest…how many of you guessed it was somewhere in Australia just by the title?

This week Northern Territory leader Michael Gunner announced that NT is going into another lockdown….but only for the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated people are confined to their homes unless they require medical treatment or need to buy food.

Yes, they’re not even allowed out of their houses to work or exercise anymore.

It’s not all bad…

Anti-lockdown protests this week took place in Glasgow, where thousands marched against Nicola Sturgeon’s new measures, and Montreal, where they protested vaccine mandates, lead by politician Maxime Bernier.

Our non-protest good news this week comes from the US courts.

In late 2021 the US Food & Drug Administration was asked to release all their data on the Covid19 “vaccines”, they responded that they would do so, but that there was so much data – roughly 450,000 pages – it would take 75 years to process it all.

But now a federal judge has ordered them to increase the rate at which they release the data from roughly 500 pages per month to 55,000 pages per month, meaning all the data will be public inside 8 months.

The ruling could be overturned, and the data could be meaningless, but it’s still a legal victory.

Also, Dr Michael Yeadon was on Neil Oliver’s show this week:

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All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the rise of flurona or the mess in Kazakhstan.

There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.

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