Bittersweet Symphony: How COVID Data became.........Sexy?

Fighting oppression with actual facts & regressions

Note: **The Prometheus Hub page/post** compiled research and resources [1,500+] I’ve used/found/analyzed/watched/etc. during [and prior to] my efforts with DRASTIC, so that those who are looking for more about COVID’s origins can find it in one place.

I don’t plan on ever charging a subscription fee for any of the content on my site; everything I keep here is the result of 18 months of research conducted because it needed to be done and very few were doing it. However, this has literally been my full-time job since March 2020, so any ‘subscription’ as a donation will help me continue this work uninterrupted by the real world. Or, if you’re still in the recovery phase of the financial pandemic, spreading the word could be just as helpful to the cause; after all, everyone has suffered from the lack of honest & unbiased information from our leaders that would’ve helped us be clear-eyed about what we were going to face. I have no greater responsibility with this site than to keep it accessible to anyone who deserves the truth - which, of course, is all of us.

Alternatively, if you despise the shackles of Substack’s limited subscription options, you can donate any amount you want via Paypal @SARSCoVRix

Timing, apparently, is everything

The pro-freedom, anti-censorship, anti-idiot, rational ‘wing’ of humanity that I lean towards on the sanity spectrum has racked up a number of significant victories lately, and it’s created a new class of heroic figures - wielding an unexpected ‘arsenal….

data?

In the first year of the pandemic, the image of Johns Hopkins University's COVID Tracker map was ubiquitous on all of our electronics’ screens, but pandemic data was mostly just a way for the public to keep track of how the virus was playing out in their area. There’s been a palpable shift away from numbers for numbers’ sake and towards analysis -

or, more appropriately, counter-analysis.

The first time I downloaded the data from the JHU tracker was 3/10/20, the morning after I started feeling sick and 3 days after I got back from Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. I was motivated by a combination of free time, curiosity and frustration at the blatant ineptitude of the media and their reporting on the growing crisis. Modeling, mitigating and overcoming WMD threats as a career had given me some tools and perspective and a healthy respect for common sense during times of uncertainty; thus, I took it upon myself to dig into the data so that I could provide a clear interpretation of what was actually happening for my friends and family [see most of my pre-2/25/21 articles, which were transferred over from my Wordpress blog].

In 2021, this weaponization of data for the purpose of fighting back against the mainstream narrative has absolutely exploded in popularity, largely as a response to the vaccine cults and government-sponsored fear porn that’s designed to help politicians maintain their grip on their new-found excuse for technocracy. Luckily, Substack has played a leading role in this effort, which has likely helped grow my audience. I only knew about Substack because of Glenn Greenwald, who came to the platform after resigning from the news site he co-founded [The Intercept] after they refused to publish an article about Hunter Biden last October.

The crackdown on dissenting opinions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, mitigation measures and/or anything pro-Trump has driven many Twitter notables to Substack, including Eugyppius, Igor Chudov and especially Alex Berenson. It’s ironic and bittersweet, lol, because this shift occurred right as I shifted gears to focus on investigating the origins of the pandemic with DRASTIC. Thus, my audience was miniscule when, for instance, I argued that the Floyd protests clearly triggered the summer pandemic wave in the US in 2020:

My chart depicting the impact of the George Floyd protests upon the emergence of the second wave in the US. I can’t fault the protestors for wanting to protest, but it was politicians who exploited it. Once again, at OUR expense

Few saw my [now known to be highly accurate] projection of last winter’s COVID wave:

Wake Me Up When September Ends II: perspective is only useful when used

Or, most of my COVID Charts & Graphics archive [Pictured below; [139] mostly 4/20 - 3/21], for that matter:

No Rest for the Wicked-No Regrets

Unlike almost every other occasion with the term ‘historic’ is used, the COVID-19 pandemic has actually had a profound impact on many aspects of our lives. My academic foundation is history, and as a historian with morality & honor I try to be circumspect, within the bounds of logic.

How bad has our pandemic experience been? 2 sentences ago, the words history, morality, honor, and circumspect appear. Try and think back - how many times did you hear those words over the last 20 months? How many times did you hear anything positive?

Crickets, of course.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of ways to fight back against the evil Empire, and missing the boat on being a data sex symbol has allowed me to focus on the underlying injustice stemming from the fact that we have a pandemic at all.

I will not stop until that’s been achieved. Which is probably for the best, since my ‘sex symbol’ potential is less promising, lol.

~Rixey