Email I read today from an industry HR person. It is pretty difficult right now negotiating the local, state, and federal ever moving goalposts on workplace safety.
This whole thing and lack of consistency are insane. It goes from one extreme to the other: if you’ve been exposed and not symptomatic, come to work, wear a mask. If you’re a healthcare worker in CA, fine to come in if you are positive and asymptomatic. Oh, wait, if you’re positive, you can’t come to work, even if asymptotic if you are not a healthcare worker or work in any other state. You don’t have to wear a mask if everyone in your area is vaxed. Wait, we can’t disclose status due to HIPPA, so everyone should mask. Plus, even if you’re vaxed, you can still transmit it, so you should mask. Oh, actually, if you are asymptomatic and positive and mask, you probably can’t transmit it, so you’ll be ok to work in the hospital in NY soon. The messaging is so mixed. Depends on where you are reading the info and what day it is.
The fact that you can get fired for not getting jabbed, but still come work if you test positive, you would think might cause some cognitive dissonance in people, no? But this thing hasn’t ever been about logic, and people have been driven too insane to come out of it easily. I have no idea what it will take.
My office closed in mid-December (most people were still working fully remote anyway), and just announced that the new policy is no jab, no coming in to the office, where before the rule had been you had to mask if unjabbed, but could unmask at your desk if jabbed. Completely stupid, both before and after, but I assume they’re setting up to say no jab, no job.
@Brian – as a side note on that last part – this is going to be a boon to smaller companies who are maybe going to see a nice influx of talent from larger companies/those demanding no jab no job. I fully expect to see some resumes in the near future.
One of the major factors that Amity Schlaes identified with regards to the Great Depression was “uncertainty” due to constantly changing government policies. You can’t plan or project, because those policies are always in a constant state of flux; so, what do you do? Nothing.
That’s what kept the Great Depression great. It wasn’t until the post-WWII era when they finally got rid of all that BS that things started to improve.
They’re doing the same damn things, today, just differently. This crisis isn’t going to be over until and unless we get the meddling incompetents out of government.
Remember Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut’s entry from ‘Welcome to the Monkey House’ the horn that would scramble thoughts, there is that, it’s also THX 1138 sterile dystopia, (why lucas had to move on to american graffiti and star wars) throw in Bradbury’s shells, we all have one of those,
imagine if in the 18th Century, they had banned citrus, well the scurvy would have gotten out of hand, or fleming and his peniccillin, and only resort to vaccines like pasteur, well the world would be sicker and more on edge, heaven forbid we get a real contagion like that hemorrhagic fever coursing through China, or whatever was in the lab in Kazakhstan
Forty odd years ago, I worked for a farmer that ran a small potato warehouse where the potatoes were put into bags for stores and distributors when when it was announced that OSHA was going to be applied to farmers generally and processors especially. I made the monumental mistake of reading the reg as if it meant what it said. It was the size of a large novel at the time.
Long story short, it would have been impossible to upgrade the existing warehouse and fines for noncompliance were many thousands of dollars per item and even per day, supposedly, so we shut it down with the intent of building a new, expanded warehouse. This being the stagnant ’70’s, we never managed to get the financing together.
In the mean time, all the neighbors that basically ignored it and continued as before, did just that. In the 25-30 years that I was close enough to the area to follow what went on, out of dozens of warehouses, there were maybe a half dozen small fines levied and even fewer collected. There were years on end with neither hide nor hair of an OSHA inspector seen.
I’d be willing to bet there will never be one red cent collected and I’m fairly sure that by now the Biden maladministration is hoping that the Supreme Court will save them from their own program.
MCS: “In the 25-30 years that I was close enough to the area to follow what went on, out of dozens of warehouses, there were maybe a half dozen small fines levied and even fewer collected.”
But you can bet that if someone who owned one of those warehouses had crossed the local Democrat, OSHA would have been down on that person like a ton of bricks.
The Political Class has created so many (frequently contradictory) laws that we are ALL guilty of something all the time. The only question is who gets prosecuted and who does not. This is government by men, not government by laws.
Gavin,
You’d think it would be a prime source of political payback, instead you won’t see OSHA unless there’s a fatality normally. I think I recall reading that there are less than ten for the state of Texas.
*le sigh deep*
Today, my daughter and I with Wee Jamie in tow, ventured onto deepest Federal Property – that is, For Sam Houston, where masks are obligatory — after almost a year of them being optional everywhere else. (I had to get some prescriptions filled at the clinic, plus we wanted to check out the Commissary, a place where we haven’t been since before my daughter enlisted.
Yes, masks, although Wee Jamie, at 8 months, didn’t have to have one on, so his baby cuteness was displayed to the world. I’m beginning to believe that the Biden oligarchy insists on masks and vaccinations for Fed-Gov activities and properties because it’s about the only place that they can insist on them, outside of slavishly cooperative hellholes like California.
Seems like a good place to drop this link…
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/if-you-are-a-vaccine-company-executive
It would seem that others see the same things that most of us here do.
Going to be interesting, the lawsuits are…
Of course, if the fertility aspects are as bad as some of the ones in the lab animals, we’re never going to see trials. Most of those responsible will wind up suffering horrible fates at the hands of an entire generation of women who won’t be able to have healthy kids.
Makes ya wonder what the hell they were thinking, if this was planned. Did they expect everyone to just quietly expire, waiting for the end, while their betters just went on living normally? That’s about the one thing I can guarantee won’t happen.
Alex Berenson was showing, conclusively, last summer that the vaccines were “failing” (one can debate what they are actually supposed to do, but at the time we were all supposed to believe that the jabs stopped transmission and symptoms, not just deaths) after ~6 months, and he got ridiculed and slandered and finally banned from social media. I believe everything he was banned for as “misinformation” now falls under “oh we’ve always known that”, but don’t expect him to ever be allowed back or apologized to.
I’ll offer up my opinion of what they were thinking- they thought the pandemic was the perfect way to rid themselves of the Bad Orange Man.
Supposedly the vaccines were actually available early in the pandemic, or so I’ve read. If true, that implies that “they” knew full well that there would be a vaccine available very soon, and not years as some people expected. And it is certain that the announcement of the vaccines was delayed so that Trump wouldn’t benefit politically.
Not only that, but the lockdowns were deliberately made as onerous as possible- certainly in demonrat-controlled states- and actions were taken to make the death toll seem as high as possible. For example, the thousands killed when certain governors sent infected residents back into their nursing homes, and the endless reports of people dying from such events as motorcycle accidents being counted as covid deaths.
The problems began when it turned out that the vaccines didn’t actually allow a scripted ending to the pandemic as expected, oops. And now they’re scrambling to undo the damage, realizing they face a political catastrophe coming in a few short months.
They have worked not wisely but too well. A large fraction of their own base has become terrified beyond all reason of covid, and never wants the lockdowns to end. The rest of the country is fed up with it all.
The clumsy flailing evident now is the regime attempting to have their covid cake and eat it too. They’re trying to make it seem like everything is under control, so their crazies will feel safe to leave the house again, and they’re simultaneously attempting to end the endless lockdowns, so everyone else can go back to work.
I don’t think it’s going to work. And if the Supreme Court doesn’t save them from themselves, all bets are off.
The randomness and contradictory nature of all of the regulations are there for a reason. To quote Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”:
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”
The guilt, the fines, the de-platforming, the de-monetization…not just the government, but their high-tech lynch-mob minions, as well.
“Atlas Shrugged…it’s a COOKBOOK!”
“The problems began when it turned out that…A large fraction of their own base has become terrified beyond all reason of covid, and never wants the lockdowns to end. The rest of the country is fed up with it all.”
They made their base (at least the white college educated women who now dominate their base) go absolutely insane with Trump derangement and they have no idea how to bring them back to sanity.
“…we wanted to check out the Commissary.” I hope they were well-stocked, Sgt. Mom. I was in the local Giant grocery today, and the fresh produce shelves looked like something out of the late Soviet Union. I’ve never seen anything like it. Fortunately, I own a little land. I need to contact my old neighbors in Idaho for some tips on growing potatoes.
Strange pictures today of barriers going up at the White House.
Plans for a big freedom rally in DC on the 23rd.
I’d advise staying away, same as I advised before January 6.
The government is an illegitimate regime and cannot be trusted. Who knows what they’ll try next, as things continue to decay.
Lemme give any of y’all a clue about these “rally” events: When the time comes that the cries of “À la lanterne!” are actually going to happen, and there will be actions taken? Trust me on this: It won’t be scheduled. It’ll just happen, and you’ll know it because you’ll feel the tectonic shifts as the regime-backing types suddenly dig their hidden MAGA caps out of the backs of their desk drawers, and they fearfully join in with the rope-tying activities going on around them.
Ceaucescu events take everyone by surprise. Granted, I will admit that the Ceaucescu’s got their notice from their public at a rally, but it was one they’d scheduled themselves in a feat of delusion that has few parallels elsewhere in history.
Events like they’ve scheduled here? False-flag operations, meant to pull a Mao-type “Let a hundred flowers bloom” swindle off. Don’t go, don’t participate, but take careful notes as to what happens to those who do. They’re going to be lucky to wind up like the January 6 types–The next time, the increasingly desperate regime is likely to play for what they think are keepsies. I don’t think it will be pretty.
That crew of false-flag operatives wandering around dressed up in khaki slacks and all that? Almost certainly stalking-horses, meant to draw out the credulous. Don’t fall for it.
You’d think it would be a prime source of political payback, instead you won’t see OSHA unless there’s a fatality normally.
Unless you are the founder of “True the Vote,” in which case you will have every federal agency knocking on your door.
The January 23 rally is legitimate, as far as I can tell. But it’s clearly an obvious opportunity for the feds to pull another phony false flag event. Who knows what they might try, they must be getting desperate.
Helian … the commissary kind of freaked me out because it was all but empty. Just a handful of retirees, a wandering colonel and a major, and a bare handful of others. The shelves were well-stocked … but the place was empty. I suppose that it wasn’t the 1st or the 15th, and it was after lunch on a weekday … but when I was on active, and sometimes did a commissary run on my lunch hour, the base commissaries were always pretty lively. Sometimes even jammed. My daughter says it’s because Fort Sam is a training base, and that the many, many junior enlisted living in barracks don’t have any reason to shop at the commissary, because they can’t cook in their rooms (legally!) and snack foods from the Shopette are more their thing. The commissary did have full shelves, as near as we could see. Prices were about on par with the local HEB, though – another reason for shoppers living off-post to go to local grocery stores. It’s been true for as long as I’ve been in San Antonio, that there really isn’t that much to be saved, shopping the Commissary.
The thing with OSHA is that it’s a lot like the state Department of Labor and Industries–There ain’t enough of “them” to do more than very random spot checks, and come in after disaster happens to shoot the wounded. Everyone has this image of an inspector behind every door, but the reality is that they make most of their bones off of someone either reporting the violations, or someone getting killed when reality catches up to the people cutting corners. It’s mostly theater.
I’m of the same opinion that Mike Rowe has, when it comes to safety–It’s not so much “Safety First” as “Get it done without killing or injuring anyone…”. You put too much emphasis on safety, and what winds up happening is that your safety measures themselves start to become the tail that wags the dog, and then morph into actual hazards in and of themselves. It’s like body armor on the troops in combat… Sure, you can layer that Kevlar and ceramic on until they’re safe from .50 caliber MG fire, but the problem then becomes that they’re too heavy to move, and they’re not winning the war sitting there sweating or plodding along at a tenth the speed of the guerrillas they’re going after.
It’s all a question of balance; risk has to be measured against a cost/benefit ratio as much as anything else, and if you’re actually saving lives by some of the things you do…? You might need to re-examine the purpose of those saved lives. What good is it to save a half-dozen lives in half-ass combat today, when instead of victory you’re running the war on for another ten years and killing more men than you’d have lost by going in light, fast, and hard from the beginning?
Same-same with a lot of OSHA endeavors… Like your story with the warehouse, what real good does “workplace safety” do you, if your workplace winds up exported to some country where they place a much lower value on human life? Ultimate “workplace safety” effectively means “no workplace at all”.
The hell of it is, it’s all mostly lip service, anyway–There’s always going to be some new and improved idiot that’s going to bypass safety features and lock-outs on the machinery. I’m of a mind that eliminating risk is both impossible and an irresponsible goal, because it tends to create a vast sense of overconfidence in the workplace. It’s sorta like the way that Dutch traffic engineer removed all the traffic control measures and signs, to witness a drastic decrease in car accidents where they’d done that. You want safety, you have to really do it by instilling the correct attitude and values systems in the guys doing the work; they need to be active agents out there, doing the right thing. Putting up a sign doesn’t do it; idiot-proofing a piece of equipment won’t do it, either. Mostly because they’ll usually bypass all that safety crap because “it gets in the way”…
On the one hand, I’m against the really insane levels a lot of people here in the US have gone to, safety-wise, but on the other, I’m also really against the fatalistic viewpoint I saw on jobsites in Korea back during the ’90s… Stories I could tell.
It’s all about the balance.
Sarge… Sad! I remember commissaries as lively places as well. They were not only well-stocked, but significantly cheaper than the local grocery stores back in the day. That was particularly true of the one in Nuremburg, but I’m sure it’s long gone by now. Apparently, there were several commissaries in Vietnam, although I never saw one. According to Google they were all looted by the locals in 1975.
I always thought the main benefit for the commissary was in states where they charged sales tax for food…if not, then there wasn’t really any reason to shop there…
The song said “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” But of course, the revolution that actually took place against the settlement of 1945 was televised–it might never have happened without TV, nor would it have proceeded the same way.
Americans actually have very little understanding of political revolutions, and many don’t even bother to pay lip service to the US one, and see the French Rev as some sort of disastrous mistake for the world.
All while enjoying the benefits that revolutions have brought.
This year there will be many opportunities for lawful protest, and the Organs will certainly do their best to slander the participants, and inflame them, as everyone here recognizes.
Predictions of things to come.
Housing and rental inflation is close to 20% last year.
Ny son’t small STEM college is equally confused. I you test positive for covid, regardless of vax status, you must isolate off campus (the college has blocks of hotel rooms reserved) for 5 days and can return to class on the 6th day as long as you have no fever. If you are EXPOSED and vaxed you must quarantine for 5 days but if unvaxed it is 10 days and no positive test.
They have also changed the definition of vaccinated to include boosters, in contradiction to the CDC’s decision NOT to do so.
Did I mention this is a STEM school?
My wife is supposed to be in Paris (the one in France) in early March, and then on to London.
She is frantic to know what can not be known, and completely at the mercy of medicrats and politicrats in three fearful countries.