Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of the world and limiting desires. Correspondingly, Epicurus and his followers generally withdrew from politics because it could lead to frustrations and ambitions which can directly conflict with the Epicurean pursuit for peace of mind and virtues.[1]
THE PLAGUE ATHENS
‘Twas such a manner of disease, ’twas such
Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands
Whilom reduced the plains to dead men’s bones,
Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens
The Athenian town. For coming from afar,
Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing
Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,
At last on all Pandion’s folk it swooped;
Whereat by troops unto disease and death
Were they o’er-given. At first, they’d bear about
A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain
Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,
Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;
And the walled pathway of the voice of man
Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,
The mind’s interpreter, would trickle gore,
Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.
Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,
Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had
E’en into sullen heart of those sick folk,
Then, verily, all the fences of man’s life
Began to topple. From the mouth the breath
Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven
Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.
And, lo, thereafter, all the body’s strength
And every power of mind would languish, now
In very doorway of destruction.
And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed
With many a groan) companioned alway
The intolerable torments. Night and day,
Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack
Alway their thews and members, breaking down
With sheer exhaustion men already spent.
And yet on no one’s body couldst thou mark
The skin with o’er-much heat to burn aglow,
But rather the body unto touch of hands
Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby
Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,
Inbranded, like the “sacred fires” o’erspread
Along the members. The inward parts of men,
In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;
A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze
Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply
Unto their members light enough and thin
For shift of aid—but coolness and a breeze
Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs
On fire with bane into the icy streams,
Hurling the body naked into the waves;
Many would headlong fling them deeply down
The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth
Already agape. The insatiable thirst
That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make
A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.
Respite of torment was there none. Their frames
Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear
Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw
So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,
Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,
The heralds of old death. And in those months
Was given many another sign of death:
The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread
Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance
Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears
Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short
Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat
A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts
Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,
The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.
Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands
Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame
To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount
Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour
At last the pinched nostrils, nose’s tip
A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,
Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,
The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!—
O not long after would their frames lie prone
In rigid death. And by about the eighth
Resplendent light of sun, or at the most
On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they
Would render up the life. If any then
Had ‘scaped the doom of that destruction, yet
Him there awaited in the after days
A wasting and a death from ulcers vile
And black discharges of the belly, or else
Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along
Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:
Hither would stream a man’s whole strength and flesh.
And whoso had survived that virulent flow
Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him
And into his joints and very genitals
Would pass the old disease. And some there were,
Dreading the doorways of destruction
So much, lived on, deprived by the knife
Of the male member; not a few, though lopped
Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,
And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O
So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!
And some, besides, were by oblivion
Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew
No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled
Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts
Would or spring back, scurrying to escape
The virulent stench, or, if they’d tasted there,
Would languish in approaching death. But yet
Hardly at all during those many suns
Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth
The sullen generations of wild beasts—
They languished with disease and died and died.
In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets
Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully
For so that Influence of bane would twist
Life from their members. Nor was found one sure
And universal principle of cure:
For what to one had given the power to take
The vital winds of air into his mouth,
And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,
The same to others was their death and doom.
In those affairs, O awfullest of all,
O pitiable most was this, was this:
Whoso once saw himself in that disease
Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,
Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,
Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,
Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,
At no time did they cease one from another
To catch contagion of the greedy plague,—
As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;
And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:
For who forbore to look to their own sick,
O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)
Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect
Visit with vengeance of evil death and base—
Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.
But who had stayed at hand would perish there
By that contagion and the toil which then
A sense of honour and the pleading voice
Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail
Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.
This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.
The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,
Like rivals contended to be hurried through.
And men contending to ensepulchre
Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:
And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;
And then the most would take to bed from grief.
Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease
Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times
Attacked.
By now the shepherds and neatherds all,
Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,
Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie
Huddled within back-corners of their huts,
Delivered by squalor and disease to death.
O often and often couldst thou then have seen
On lifeless children lifeless parents prone,
Or offspring on their fathers', mothers' corpse
Yielding the life. And into the city poured
O not in least part from the countryside
That tribulation, which the peasantry
Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,
Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,
All buildings too; whereby the more would death
Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.
Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled
Along the highways there was lying strewn
Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains,—
The life-breath choked from that too dear desire
Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along
The open places of the populace,
And along the highways, O thou mightest see
Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,
Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,
Perish from very nastiness, with naught
But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already
Buried—in ulcers vile and obscene filth.
All holy temples, too, of deities
Had Death becrammed with the carcasses;
And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones
Laden with stark cadavers everywhere—
Places which warders of the shrines had crowded
With many a guest. For now no longer men
Did mightily esteem the old Divine,
The worship of the gods: the woe at hand
Did over-master. Nor in the city then
Remained those rites of sepulture, with which
That pious folk had evermore been wont
To buried be. For it was wildered all
In wild alarms, and each and every one
With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,
As present shift allowed. And sudden stress
And poverty to many an awful act
Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they
Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,
Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath
Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about
Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.
The Covid pandemic that went up in smoke – a statistical analysisExternal Writer -2 November 2021 at 09:50
Contents
But what exactly is a Pandemic?
Natural immunity for C-19
The case of Sweden
The military hospital that was never used
Cold
Mortality in Sweden – “There is no excess mortality”
“The average life expectancy in the country is 84 years and the average age of deaths of C-19 is 85 years”
1993-2018: from 4300 IVA places to 534
Swedish healthcare has been on its knees for a long time
COVIDA DATA ANALYSIS. This article on the revealing data of the covid crisis has previously been published in the Swedish edition of Epoch Times, but in a greatly shortened version and without statistical graphs. NewsVoice was given the opportunity to publish the complete version.
Text: Mikael Reichel, writer with a large number of publications in, among others: Teknik & Människa, Vision, Pilotmagazinet, Studio Sound, Hardware Magazine, Broadcast Engineer. Reichel also produces films, patent texts and reports in Swedish and English
It is seldom the case that what our senses perceive is the whole of reality. In fact, we all have our very own image of what is happening outside our bodies. Fortunately, as usual, the differences are so few that we can, together with what has led evolution forward, work together. Good, productive collaboration needs concrete facts without which the product of the collaboration only rests on a seesaw. One way to look far beyond our own sensory limitations is to compile what has happened from a macro perspective. Such compilations are not infrequently made with statistical tools.
We have all heard the expression “lie, accursed lie and statistics”. There is something thought-provoking in this and for us simple citizens, statistics got a new life with Hans Rosling’s fantastic presentations. High level pedagogy.
Many of us mourn His untimely death, he gave us insights from the statistics that showed that population growth is slowing down properly and not least why, that poverty is about to be eradicated and much more that shows that we live in a time where we never had it better, but then came a Pandemic that changed everything, yes you could say that for many the carpet was ripped from our feet. We were forced to a new normal.
But what exactly is a Pandemic?
It is basically an epidemiological definition. An influenza pandemic occurs when the virus that causes it has little or no immunity among the population. The important thing to keep in mind is that how fast the virus spreads, its virulence, has nothing to do with the definition.
I will, however, return to the question of immunity a little later, but would like to take the question further as to who has the precedence of interpretation here, science or bureaucracy? Apparently epidemiologists have long agreed on this definition, but from whom do we seem to be listening?
Most would probably answer the World Health Organization , WHO. They are a UN-affiliated individual activity based in Geneva, a so-called NGO ( non governmental organization ), ie no authority. The business is financed in part by grants, donations. You do not bite the hand that gives birth to you is an old motto that is often relevant in today’s globalized world.
In short, many nations have binding agreements with the WHO that require them to comply with its directives. May seem innocent or even wise before a reflection on the type of power agreed upon to a non-authority with a few large financiers.
In order to ignite a spark of reflection, in addition to some pure nations, the WHO lives with support from:
EU
COVID-19 Solidarity Fund
GAVI Alliance
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BMGF
GAVI may require an explanation. It is an NGO, also based in Geneva. As a private company, GAVI has succeeded in obtaining full diplomatic status even though it is not a nation. This means that it has legal immunity (why not, it’s about vaccines).
In short, GAVI is about propagating vaccines across the globe as the solution to a non-existent threat.
They are funded by donations from both nations and businesses (source GAVI annual contributions and proceedings). GAVI is an example of what is called “public private partnership”, meaning that power no longer emanates from the people. BMGF, which owns vaccine manufacturers and has an extensive patent portfolio around vaccines, finances GAVI.
The WHO has for a long time had a vague definition of pandemic , which has led to a heated debate among scholars on the subject, a debate that has been going on for over 10 years, but in 2009 something happened. On the one hand, H1N1 (swine flu) appeared, and on the other hand, the WHO declared that it was a pandemic. It was 41 years since they did that. However, it turned out that mortality was like a regular seasonal flu. We did not know then what a lockdown meant and a few years later we would realize what a vaccine can have for long-term effects when narcolepsy ravaged.
Natural immunity for C-19
There is a particularly interesting question , which never really took hold in the public debate, about whether there was natural immunity for C-19. A really interesting event occurred in February 2020 when the cruise ship Diamond Princess took on board a guest who infected the entire ship with 3711 passengers and crew with C-19. In addition to the crew, the passengers were for the most part in the risk group.
We can learn a lot from Diamond Princess as traceability and isolation could be implemented, which in open societies is very difficult. One thing that was clear in this context was that 81% did not fall ill. Do not forget that these were already in the risk zone (> 70 years), which is why the figure seen over a normally distributed population should be higher. So in view of this, the definition of Pandemic is not met. This article wants to see if that’s true.
A heavyweight in epidemiological circles is Stanford Professor John P. Ioannidis . In May 2020, he presented his meta-study (a study of many other studies) and found that the doomsday prophecy that many countries seemed to act on was too exaggerated.
According to Ioannidis, the C-19 in the mortality rate of patients aged <70 years was 0.00% to 0.31%. These are numbers that are so low that C-19 is classified as a mild flu. Following the usual peer review, the WHO posted the document on its website. Despite this, they did not back down from the fact that this was a pandemic.
The case of Sweden
Sweden was one of the few countries that had to take both rice and rose in 2020 for its relatively low requirement of isolation for its population. We got the impression that the public health authority considered it not so dangerous, while the media directed harsh criticism at how the elderly care and MSB ignored to act directly to isolate the elderly, as well as, the system error in the care structure. For a while, we had high mortality in that category, completely unnecessarily.
What was not mentioned in the media was that Sweden has a constitution that prevented mandatory lockdown. Instead of coercion, another at least as effective psychological tool was used, fear.
For it to work, the propaganda must reach out, and the message must be clear enough so that fear settles properly. The propaganda machine was started, among other things with messages that made us think that the corpses were literally stacked outside our intensive care units.
Field hospital for Covid-19 patients at the Stockholm Fair April 2020. Photo: Swedish Armed Forces
The military hospital that was never used
The defense was called in and a field hospital was installed at the Stockholm Fair. When the question was asked to Fonus [funeral home] if they had a lot at work, the answer was that for a short period it was possibly a small peak, but largely normal.
The military hospital was dismantled without being used because all measures taken by FHM have been reactive, not proactive. Whatever they did, it was too late. For those of us who are looking for figures, some also began to appear at Statistics Sweden.
Read more: Insider Astrid Stuckelberger reveals how WHO created a false covid pandemic
Cold
Influenza has the peculiarity that they hit us in the autumn and leave during the first quarter of the new year. In folklore, we call this “cold”. A deep dive among older age groups (> 70) shows that January and March are the deadliest months.
It follows that if you are going to study the effects of a virus, you do so over two years and the turn of the year. If, on the other hand, you strive for a “cursed lie”, you only present one year. Now we will look at what it has looked like in the country over a much longer period and we will do it seasonally.
Mortality in Sweden – “There is no excess mortality”
But, we warm up by looking at the country’s mortality rate from 2002 to 2019. These are all deceased, from reduced infant mortality to the inevitable end of life. There is an argument in including all the deceased because that data is difficult to manipulate, it is the truth in its rawest form.
Death rate / population in Sweden 2002-2019. Source: SCB.se
[note; Y-axis is truncated]
We can directly observe that people are living longer because the death toll is falling, but also that 2019 stands out with a significantly lower number of deaths. Keep this observation.
To get a clearer idea of trends, you can apply a mathematical trick that creates an easier-to-read picture. We look at the deviation from the norm established for the period above. Instead of a line with a downward slope, it is now horizontally straight. We have now added the year 2020.
Death rate (exceeding) in Sweden 2015-2020 per age group. Source: SCB.se
The period 2015–2018 shows the seasonal variation, all normal. On the other hand, there is a large deviation in 2019–2020. First, there will be significantly fewer deaths in 2019 and then in 2020. The deficit is almost entirely offset by the surplus. It is already very difficult here, bordering on impossible, to discern a pandemic. There is no excess mortality.
Now the period 2020–2021 is not over why we have not dated for this, it would be purely argumentative that the 2020 excess mortality continued into 2021. Let us examine this.
Accumulated deaths in Sweden 2019 – July 2021. Source: SCB.se
We have data until July 2021 (that was when the graphs were produced).
Now we have taken out the magnifying glass and look at accumulated excess mortality monthly in the period October 2019 to July 2021. We see, taking into account the declining trend, that Sweden in July had an excess mortality of 1600 people, in relative terms it is 1% excess mortality . Pandemic?
“The average life expectancy in the country is 84 years and the average age of deaths of C-19 is 85 years”
It is possible to dismiss a pandemic even easier , in a single sentence explaining that no pandemic exists in Sweden. Namely that the average life expectancy in the country is 84 years and the average age of the deceased of C-19 is 85 years [source: National Board of Health and Welfare ]. The truth shines with a clear flame and shows that the pandemic has gone up in smoke.
It is never wrong to find other correlations in case of doubt at this point, because there are other registers to examine. One such is SIR, the Swedish Intensive Care Registry . To understand the state of resources for Swedish healthcare in general, one only needs to be somewhat sensitive to how doctors ‘and nurses’ work situation has developed over a couple of decades. After all, the media has reported this.
With regard to the special care required for the very sick, one needs to take a historical perspective and realize what level of disarmament has taken place. We can start with where we stand in relation to the EU. The average in the EU 2010–2011 was 11.5 intensive care places (per 100,000 inhabitants), Sweden had 4.8 places to offer (source SIR). Germany, which is high in the EU, then had 24.6 seats. Outside the EU, we find that the United States had 20.0 places at the same time.
1993-2018: from 4300 IVA places to 534
Since 1993 , Swedish healthcare has gone from 4,300 IVA places to 534 places in 2018 (military included). That is a decrease of more than 8 times and then we do not take into account the fact that the population has increased in round figures by a couple of million. It’s about money, the metaphor can be made of running a hotel.
The best profitability is obtained if you manage to keep the hotel fully booked, ie do not have more staff available for the service than needed and no empty rooms, but bad if you want to be able to receive guests for large events in the city.
In addition, the statistics give a skewed picture, when it is overcrowded in Stockholm, it may be empty in Gothenburg. Empty floors in our hospitals testify that it is a question of access to staff, not beds and technology where the shoe is pinched.
As the defense has been reduced even more during the 1990s and 2000s, that preparedness has gone up in smoke. More specifically, 50 military hospitals (source DN 200315). Now the availability of equipment does not play a major role when there is a lack of staff.
Swedish healthcare has been on its knees for a long time
We must not forget that Swedish healthcare has been on its knees for a long time and when C-19 started knocking out people over the age of 75, there was chaos on many individual IVAs. C-19 can affect people who were already at risk for completely different reasons. At the same time, the length of care increased during IVA treatment because there was a lack of insight into how few people get on their feet, it still does.
Comparison between 2020 and 2021 regarding covid positive cases of infection. Source: Swedish Public Health Agency
At the top are data from FHM themselves, of weekly C-19 “cases”. In the middle there is coating on IVA during the same period and at the bottom it is dead. Do you see a pandemic here?
It is incredibly tempting to start analyzing and breaking down alarmist propaganda from our authorities such as “42 percent increase in cases per week”. This has been done but I refrain from presentation as there is a fundamental mega-big problem with “cases”.
They rely on the only measurement method used, rt-PCR. The test, which the author Kary Mullis emphatically said must not be used for clinical diagnostics, is exactly what the world, including Sweden, is doing, has the peculiarity of showing false positive results. As many as 97% become falsely positive at CT values (a kind of volume control in the mechanism) of higher than 24. It is good if you want to be scared, but bad if you are looking for scientific facts.
The trend for the year shows that there is no flaring epidemic, there has never been one to begin with. We do not have to be epidemiologists to state coldly that we have been deceived by our elected representatives. Many questions arise about criminal suspicions, laws, ethics, corruption and not least if it can be the case that crazy theories about conspiracy have become entrenched in reality?
A damning investigation into the World Health Organisation’s hidden practices.
The Western economic system is coming to an end
by Thierry Meyssan
Producing is no longer enough to live on in the West, while China has become the “workshop of the world”. Only those with capital make money, and lots of it. The system is about to collapse. Can the big capitalists still save their fortune together?VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 19 OCTOBER 2021
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2 thoughts on ““free will which living things throughout the world have” (libera per terras … haec animantibus exstat … voluntas)”