#businesses in Covid-19

[odinsblog]

That last tweet sums it up perfectly: “They realize COVID isn’t over. But while they may not take precautions to protect your health, they will to protect their money.”

Pretending that COVID is over is one of the worst things our government has done to us, but COVID isn’t over. It’s not even close to being over. If it were, insurance companies and big businesses wouldn’t be going through such extreme measures to protect themselves against coronavirus-related lawsuits. And you just know if a case went all the way up, this illegitimate, morally bankrupt & corrupt Supreme Court would rule in favor of big business having no responsibility to protect their customers.

In our ass backwards society, antivaxxers and anti-maskers practically can’t be barred from going everywhere they want, and businesses probably won’t be held liable for conditions that expose people to dangerous diseases (and the antivaxxers who love spreading diseases).

Anyway, I got all my scheduled vaccines and I still mask up in public. 😷

[halorvic]

[onbearfeet]

On the San Diego trolley after a long day at Comic-Con. I am still in half a cosplay, visibly sunburned, and wearing an N95. Rando guy next to me is blasting music from his phone speaker.

Rando: Hey, ma'am. Covid is over.

Me: *considers the long and shitty road that has led this man to be the kind of shithead who tells a strange woman, minding her own business on public transit, what she should do with her face but ALSO calls her ma'am while doing so*

Me: *dead-eyed stare* Yeah, but tuberculosis isn't.

Rando, visibly skeptical: You got tuberculosis?

Me: Maybe. *coughs* And maybe I don't wanna give it to you, huh?

*train pulls into station*

*rando exits in a hurry*

*I get off too because it's my fucking stop*

*rando spots me turning south on the platform*

*rando turns north*

I dunno what he did after that, but the north end of that platform is a dead end, so lol.

[necromatador]

So my entire household (except me so far) has COVID and I can't meaningfully quarantine, so I have to stay home from work for several days. I would highly appreciate a bit of help to make up for the financial hit so here's some ways if you'd like to toss some support my way!

Donate to me or buy from my shop on Ko-fi! (everything will be shipped after the house is clear of the 'rona!)

Support my latest pin Kickstarter! (we're funded and hit the first stretch goal!)

Buy from me on Itch!

Buy from me on Threadless! (this benefits me the least of the options)

[elftwink]

just saw a tweet that was like "imagine if 9/11 happened 2 mos earlier and 7/11 had the worst PR crisis ever" like that wasn't basically what happened to corona beer in 2020

[unpopularly-opinionated]

It is asinine how many tiktok videos I’ve seen from locals throwing out any and every excuse under the sun to push the blame for why Portland is in the state it’s in away from the protests or the homeless.

I actually just saw someone’s video where she made all these snarky remarks about “oh no, what will we do if mom and pop stores like Walmart go out of business” AS IF SHE WAS EVEN MAKING A POINT because I KNOW she’s referring to the fact that a couple weeks ago it was on the news about how Walmart was leaving “the city” due to rampant theft, as she’s walking in the heart of Portland. You know where these Walmart stores were? On like the furthest edges of what you could reasonably call Portland. Frankly, they were nowhere near actual Portland, but because Portland encompasses a lot more than just the central city, it’s still considered Portland. She may as well be trying to connect a store closure in Sherwood with Portland for all that’s worth. Actual mom and pop businesses are still shutting down all the time, but here she is pretending like it’s only the big bad businesses that were impacted.

Then she had the gall to say “Let me ask you this, what do you think’s made all the people work from home, the pandemic or the protests?” relating it to the fact that all of the businesses were closed…except this is a blatant false equivalence. The question you should be asking isn’t “what made everyone work from home”, it’s “what made all the businesses close down”, and the answer was quite literally both. She acts like businesses weren’t shutting down in droves immediately prior to the pandemic due to all the riots.

Prior to the pandemic, protests were rampant in the city, and it’s quite frankly a disservice to protest to even be calling them protests. They were riots, and they were terrorizing the city, destroying property left and right, and driving everyone out of the city. Even without the aid of the government fucking over every small business in the country, these riots nearly did in every small business here. The few that survived were graciously rewarded with government overreach that forced most of the survivors to shutter their businesses or massively pivot their entire business strategies (if even possible). Not to mention, the riots only exacerbated the homeless issue because dozens of those rioters decided to have a little camping trip in the middle of the city for weeks on end, which only further trashed the city, drove people away, and encouraged the homeless encampments that Portland is quite literally still battling on a daily basis.

And the saddest thing is that even though the riots and pandemic have since stopped (for now), this isn’t a problem that we simply spring back from. Businesses that are closed are closed for good. Jobs lost are lost forever. The echos of these problems are still being seen on a regular basis as more and more people are struggling to keep afloat. Don’t get me wrong, the astronomical rent prices are also a pretty big fucking reason for why people are fleeing Portland in droves. But to sit here and pretend like the riots and the homeless aren’t equally—if not more damaging to the overall livability of the city is just downright disingenuous and deceitful. Fuck out of here with your false equivalency bullshit. Nobody who is complaining about Portland is doing so for the sake of Walmart, or Starbucks, or REI, or whatever big ass corporation you feel the need to divert people’s attentions to. Fuck off with your bitching about union busting when you’re talking about why the city is in the state it’s in.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Jared Kushner ordered that the incoming Biden administration be excluded from COVID-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a former aide said.

Alyssa Farah Griffin made the claim in an interview with the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot, according to a newly released transcript.

Farah Griffin told the panel that Kushner shot down the a suggestion to include President Joe Biden's transition team in planning discussions after the election had been called for Biden, per the transcript.

At the time, Trump was angrily refusing to concede defeat, and hyping his baseless theory that the election had been stolen. Though he left office in January 2021, he continues to claim he won the 2020 vote.

In the transcript, Farah Griffin described former COVID Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx asking whether they should be "looping" the incoming Biden transition in.

"Jared just said, 'Absolutely not,'" Farah Griffin told the panel. "And then we just moved on."

Farah Griffin's allegation, which was first reported by The Independent, is the first to directly put blame for the stonewalling on Kushner.

Biden officials complained at the time that the Trump administration was refusing them access to COVID-19 data in the weeks after the election.

Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told "Fox News Sunday" on November 15, 2020, that the Trump administration had stonewalled crucial COVID-19 data and plans.

Biden also said that week that Trump officials were harming the US by denying them access, per The New York Times.

"If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind," Biden told reporters, referring to the date of his inauguration. "More people may die if we don't coordinate."

In the same speech, Biden pressed the Trump administration to provide more details about the allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations. "The sooner we have access to the administration's distribution plan, the sooner this transition would be smoothly moved forward," Biden said, per Politico.

It comes from one of the dozens of witness transcripts released by the January 6 Committee in the past week.

Kushner did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

[memenewsdotcom]

China expands covid-19 lockdowns

[frankbelloriley]

[megachirottera]

Chi era responsabile della risposta fallita alla pandemia?

Qualsiasi forma di medicina che cerchi di modificare il processo di malattia sarà intrinsecamente pericolosa e, sebbene la medicina moderna sia inutilmente pericolosa, un certo numero di morti è inevitabile indipendentemente dal sistema medico utilizzato. Source: 2022, Jun 24; A Midwestern Doctor on The Forgotten Side of Medicine (more…) “”

[ashleyrider]

Investment with us.

[newspapers110]

Blockchain: the new way of certifying Covid tests

A Mexican medical company adopts blockchain to verify the authenticity of Covid-19 tests.

Source

[head-post]

Delayed payments jeopardise goals of pandemic recovery fund

Delays in the payment of the EU’s COVID-19 recovery fund severely hamper the ability of member states to recover from the pandemic, according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA), Euractiv reports.

The ECA report noted that by the end of 2023, EU countries had spent less than a third of the €723bn originally allocated to the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Auditors also warned of additional risks of delayed absorption before the RRF’s scheduled expiration in August 2026.

Ivana Maletić, the study’s lead author, stated:

“The RRF was a crisis instrument and [the EU] was supposed to do everything very, very quickly in order to recover [member states’] economies. How can you recover if you don’t invest quickly?”

Maletić added that the main reasons for the delays were member states’ uncertainty about the rules for implementing the RRF, their underestimation of the time needed to implement the reforms, and especially the lack of administrative capacity.

The problem [of a lack of administrative capacity] is not only at the level of public administration. The problem is also at the level of the private sector, because then [the government has a] tender, but they don’t have firms who are actually applying to these tenders because (…) they simply don’t have the capacity.

Approved at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the RRF was designed to stimulate EU economies in the post-pandemic period by financing critical green and digital investments in exchange for targeted reforms. It initially consisted of €338 billion in grants and €385.8 billion in debt-financed loans.

However, a lack of engagement by Member States led the Commission to reduce the fund’s available resources from €723 billion to €648 billion earlier this year.

The ECA highlighted that the minimal impact of the RRF on the EU’s “real” economy was compounded by the fact that of the €213bn of allocated funds, less than half eventually reached the intended final recipients.

The auditors also noted that some Member States interpreted the term “final recipient” to refer to the companies or public institutions that actually receive the funding. Others understood the term to refer to government ministries or institutions that simply allocated the resources of the fund.

“Even this €100 billion [is] not something that is inserted in the economy. It’s still, in many cases, at the level of the ministries and other public bodies. We need to know how much money will reach the real economy, and who are the beneficiaries of this money.”

Zsolt Darvas, senior fellow at EU policy think-tank Bruegel, said that strong opposition from Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden meant that the chances of extending the RRF beyond 2026 were slight.

The RRF came to life because COVID-19 hit Europe. In the absence of another big external shock, I would give a low probability that RRF will continue, and I don’t think that the implementation pace has an impact on that.

Read more HERE

[kharmii]

Thought I'd share the typed-out transcript for the part of the segment called: Tim Walz Imprisoned A Small Business Owner During COVID

Never forget this is what the government did to us worldwide, particularly the left-wing government. Stop wearing masks and pretending Covid-19 was ever real.

Here's Lisa Hansen a small business owner in Minnesota who was shut down and eventually arrested by Tim Walls during Covid. Let's hear what she has to say when covid happened and in the state of Minnesota.

Lisa Hansen: My business was located in the state of Minnesota, -Southern Minnesota- and it was a lovely wine and coffee bistro that had been in operation for going on eight years by the time that my business was shut down and destroyed. When I say it was destroyed, I'm speaking of being shuttered and not being able to survive because of what Tim Walz -Governor Tim Walz- and Attorney General Keith Ellison did to me and to my business as well as our employees.

So what happened is with the first shutdown we didn't really know what to do or what was going on. We did comply and I hate to say it looking back at everything I've stood for, but we did comply because we didn't know what else to do. He never fully opened up the state to point this out.

Who did he shut down? Governor Walz shut down only some of the businesses. The essential businesses got to stay open, so I guess that means that we were a non-essential business. He shut down bars, restaurants, gyms, dance studios, hair salons, etc.

Who did he not shut down who were the essential business owners? That would have been your big box stores with hundreds and hundreds of people coming to visit through their doors a day mingling and being close. He did not shut down liquor stores. He did not shut down strip clubs, so we opened up. I can't tell you for sure how long we were open but immediately within 24 to 48 hours the state came down on us with a vengeance. They attacked me a woman small business owner as well as other small business owners in the state of Minnesota. They came down. They sent the health department down. They sent everything they could against us. They employed all of their resources against "we the people".

I went to court. I was found guilty. I was given a sentence of 90 days which was the max sentencing. I was also fined $1,000 which was the max fine for this supposed thing that I did where I was standing on my rights.

Matt Walsh: That's how much Tim Walz supports small business owners, how much he supports female business owners that he arrested not just one, but this one along with many others for the crime of opening their business and trying to make money to feed their families.

This is the same guy remember who said 'mind your own business'. That was his line about anyone who attacks him 'mind your own business'. Well you certainly weren't minding your own business when Lisa Hansen tried to open her store and God forbid make some money to take care of her family.

The most depressing thing about this and this is maybe one of the most -as the kids would say- one of the most blackpilling things. I don't know if the kids say that anymore. Is that blackpill-red pill it might just be a millennial thing. I don't know if the kids are carrying on that torch or not, but anyway black pill is the fact that Covid and everything that happened during Covid -the lockdowns and everything- is the fact that it seems to be politically irrelevant at this point.

Rewind the clock four years when covid was all that was happening in the world, and it was all that anybody was talking about. It had totally taken over all of our lives. You know whether we liked it or not -and none of us did- totally taking over all of our lives. They're shutting down businesses. You can't leave your house. You got to wear a mask right.

If you could rewind the clock back three or four years and someone had told you that. "Hey in the in the next election in 2024 this won't matter at all." -Like no one's going to care about any of this. It will have no impact. All the people responsible for doing this to you will face no political ramifications whatsoever.

If anyone had told you that four years ago you wouldn't have believed it. That's where we are. Maybe that can change. I hope that it can okay because this is not ancient history. This didn't happen 100 years ago. We all lived through it. If this is now irrelevant the fact that he was putting business owners in jail for opening their business. If we allow that to be completely politically irrelevant then I don't know. Shame on us.

Note from OP: It was amazing the people who'd pretend like Covid was still a big deal loooooong after it was apparent it wasn't. That's when I started believing that most of these people at every level don't even believe their own bullshit. That liberal white women next to me at work would snivel about how she supposedly knew someone who died of it in their forties, but she never wore the mask or took off a year paid free by the government so she could pretend to be afraid of the pandemic. She was going through a divorce at the time and couldn't afford to take off and not be stockpiling cash, I assume.

[briearesea]

Different family member, seeing the N95 mask I'm wearing at the wedding reception, tells me I shouldn't live in fear. Also that I should stop being trans or I will go to hell and be tortured for all eternity.

I guess I don't understand the concept of not living in fear.