Given our more recent trips around the sun, social justice warriors patrolling professional workplaces may want to spend some time mulling over what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about justice.
Authentic justice, it states, is “the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor.” It continues: “Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. ‘You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.’”
And then, it adds: “‘Masters treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing you also have a Master in heaven’” (CCC 1807).
Shortly after the Village People stopped singing “YMCA” on January 20, President Trump got to work signing a long list of executive orders, including one ending remote work for federal employees. His critics were quick to claim that the president represents the harsh leading edge of the return-to-the-office movement.
But even a cursory review of the facts reveals this is not true. Amazon began their efforts to move staffers back to the office in 2023 and has been trying very hard to enforce a five-day schedule. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Dell and Boeing (among others) each have five-days-in-office policies. A much longer list of companies is enforcing a roughly three-day-per-week schedule. Of those, PWC—the global consulting giant—announced during Q4 2024 that in coordination with its return-to-work policy, it was laying off 1800 workers and installing tracking software on company devices to ensure staffers followed the firm’s order.
Whatever progressives think of these policies, Trump isn’t the pied piper here. In fact, some of their biggest donors are. The simple reason is that over the past fifteen years or so, social justice warriors have taken over boardrooms and c-suites and having employees work from the office has proven quite effective for inculcating these values. And executives aligned with a national party pushing free abortions and vasectomies at their presidential convention understood that allowing moms and dads more time with their families and single men and women more opportunity to contemplate the loneliness of their work-life choices was hardly a formula for organizational success. The work-from-home movement was not their idea; COVID sprung it on them. At the same time, company execs weren’t going to let a serious crisis go to waste.
A little history: in the years leading up to the pandemic, corporations had discovered a critical platform for rallying the troops. The 2010’s brought a wave of young employees into the workforce vocal about a perceived disconnect between their hopes and aspirations and the realities of corporate work. They demanded not just a good paycheck and a career but greater workplace meaning and purpose. At the time, the still-nascent “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) movement provided companies a vehicle for reassuring new professionals that work could fulfill these broader needs.
But after years focusing on product and service-centered green initiatives, execs realized that the ability of such projects to sustainably satiate was waning. By the early years of the first Trump administration, college campus cauldrons were bubbling over, popularizing victim and villain language for mass consumption. And so, with the restless natives seeking still greater workplace meaning, c-suitors pivoted to corporate culture. Through it, they would change society. CSR soon morphed into diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG). The alphabet armies began their march.
By the end of the 2010s, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi were household names. College presidents, business school deans and human resource teams were scurrying to hire consultants to organize lunchtime discussion series and enlist good corporate citizens to become “anti-racists”. Social justice warriors disavowed their privilege, called out microaggressions and created safe spaces. Of course, they were also motivated to move past the gender binary, become allies, and fight systemic oppression.
Those were amazing times but, as it turns out, they were making for some long days at the office. While Bob in accounting had always seemed to be a nice guy, more than a few co-workers were starting to wonder about him. His Pittsburgh Steelers coffee mug, coupled with his penchant for wearing “girl dad” t-shirts at company outings, seemed to reveal a disregard for the inherent nature of gender’s social construct and his implicit resistance to queer theory. Yes, there was that big client presentation due at the end of the week, but it was becoming clear that the more pressing question was: did HR know about Bob? Was he on their radar? See something, say something, they say. That client presentation could wait, but reporting a guy like that shouldn’t.
For some, COVID may have come to town just in time. Sending folks from their cubicles to their couches offered the only-slightly-left-leaning members of the corporate class a reprieve and a chance to do a cost/benefit on the cultural shift playing out in branch offices. But for the hardcore, committed true believers, work-from-home was a blessing in disguise; it was an opportunity to turn up the dial. As Mattias Desmet explains in his brilliant book entitled Psychology of Totalitarianism (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022), if professionals were looking for meaning before COVID, that need would be even greater when they were sitting at home during a pandemic feeling increasingly disconnected, depressed, and disheartened. And, as evidenced by the events of summer 2020, nothing would or should hold back the arc of history or suppress the urgent need to de-colonize society. For those in that group, the power structures of the traditional in-office workplace would always have both prevented corporations from fully and authentically embracing the marginalized and discouraged them from understanding the complexities of intersectionality. In fact, as remote modalities became the sole method of corporate communication during the pandemic, email signatures and Zoom name tags offered a new canvas to signal and enforce corporate virtue.
Crank up the pronouning; full throttle woke was on. A new age had begun.
For many of us, that period seemed as if it would last forever. But, behind the scenes, the data suggests that executive teams were discovering that corporate messianism was aging poorly.
A recent piece for Axios features a graph entitled “Mentions of “DEI” or “diversity, equity and inclusion” in quarterly earnings calls” from Q1 2020 through Q1 2024. While no perfect information exists about the inner workings of a company, earnings calls represent management’s communications with investors and analysts to keep them informed about the company’s overall financial health and operating activities. This graph shows a steep spike in DEI activity between 2020 and 2021, with it remaining relatively high into 2022 before dropping off precipitously at the end of 2022, reaching levels similar to those at the beginning of 2020 by the start of 2024.
In other words, analysis of approximately 9000 earnings calls reveals that DEI activity reached its zenith when everybody was working from home but dropped off significantly as companies were bringing people back to the office.
Pollsters probably do not find this surprising. Post-election Pew Research data indicates American workers’ views of DEI have grown more negative and a very recent Fox poll reveals that almost a full third of American voters say it is “extremely important” to end it.
And that brings us back to thinking about justice.
Blaming and defaming appear to have run its course. Corporations should have acted better, but they didn’t. And now they find themselves in an amusingly difficult situation. They pushed for safe spaces and are now struggling to fill empty offices.
What is it again that Scripture tells us about those who hunger and thirst for justice?
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Covid was a scam perpetrated against the people of the USA and elsewhere. It showed how easily people could be so frightened that they could be so easily cajoled to do almost anything. Covid helped explain a lifelong lingering question for me about how the German people could send 6,000,000 Jews and other innocents to the gas chambers. How the communist Soviets could send 60,000,000 people to their death. How women in the USA have managed to murder 60,000,000 of the own babies.
You’re wrong. People don’t die of a “scam.”
I have held this virus in my (gloved) hands and lived to tell you about it.
In 2020, COVID was (and still is) a very real and dangerous infectious disease caused by a novel (new; hasn’t been found in humans in the past) virus that killed or incapacitated approximately a million Americans (and many more humans around the world). Doctors and health-care professionals scrambled to treat those who were infected with the COVID-19 virus, and thanks to Pres. Trump, researchers worked 24/7 for months to develop a vaccine that would prevent the virus from infecting/killing humans.
I am a retired medical laboratory technologist (Bachelor’s Degree with internship) who was working in the microbiology department of a large inner-city hospital during COVID (I was 62 during the peak of the COVID outbreak). The shutdowns in the U.S. resulted in our department of 8 techs going down to 2 techs, as those techs with school children had to be at home after the schools were closed. We also lost 5 lab staff members to death or permanent disability caused by the “scam”–COVID-19.
It was a nightmarish time, as the two of us arrived at the hospital between 5 and 5:30 a.m. and didn’t leave until 5:30 or even 6:30 p.m., and worked all day (including 3 weekends a month), often without a break even for lunch, to do all the COVID testing along with all the other routine microbiology work required for a full house of patients (many suffering and eventually dying from the “scam” of COVID) and an Emergency Room overflowing with patients.
We tried to send out cultures, but the three big reference labs in the U.S. were also short-staffed and overworked and were not accepting additional specimens. Because of the influx of hospitalized COVID patients, the lab was hyper-busy doing all the tests that are regularly performed on in-house patients (along with out-patient testing, which arrived in large shopping bags on all three shifts).
We were setting up and reading around 150 urine cultures every 24 hours (usually we did around 50 urine cultures every 24 hours)–and that’s just urine cultures! We also were performing hundreds of COVID tests (once the test was developed and released to the clinical labs in the U.S.) every 24 hours. At that time, the newly-developed COVID test took around 15 minutes to set up and complete.
You may not be aware, but almost all hospitals and clinics are dangerously short-staffed at this time in American history, as many of the Baby Boomers (like me) have retired, and we’re not seeing the interest in medical careers (nursing, lab, X-ray, respiratory, etc.) that we saw when I was a teenager. (No wonder–the current TV shows featuring hospitals and medical personnel are simply awful.) It seems many young people are interested mainly in information technology jobs, which often allow them to work from home. I can’t say I blame them, but it doesn’t bode well for the future as we still have a large number of aging Baby Boomers (like me!) in the U.S. who will most certainly end up hospitalized at some point. The scourge of abortion is producing its deadly fruit now, as we don’t have enough people in the U.S. to do the work, especially medical work, that must be done. I pray that we will recognize the need to have more children, and that we will admit more immigrants who want to work and be American citizens!
During COVID, all of our hospital departments lost around half of their staff or more (and most of these departments were already short-staffed) because they had to be at home caring for and teaching their under-aged children because schools were closed. (At that time, we didn’t know whether COVID-19 was dangerous or not to children, so we decided to play it safe and isolate them.) Only 2 X-ray techs were available on the day shift. The call went out for respiratory techs to work with the many COVID-19 patients who filled the beds in the house and crowded into an ER with a skeleton staff–these professionals were true heroes during the COVID nightmare, as they were in close contact with patients and their respiratory secretions, and therefore at great risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus during a time when there were no vaccines.
The day the first vaccines were released, the hospital offered them at no cost to all staff, and the line to receive this blessing was long and included everyone from doctors and administrators to nurses, ancillary workers (lab, X-ray, respiratory, PT, etc.), housekeeping, security, etc. All of us, especially the doctors in the line, were expressing gratefulness, often to God, for helping scientists to develop a vaccine in record time.
What you don’t seem to understand is that in 2020, we simply did not know for certain what we were dealing with–this was a NOVEL (NEW!!!!) virus and it was very real, not a movie or a rumor or a scam! The COVID-19 virus had not been seen before and there were no standardized treatments, and the virus seemed to do its evil work quickly and mercilessly. I was there, and I can testify that this was no “scam”–we were fighting an enemy that we had never met before and we didn’t yet have the knowledge or weapons to fight that enemy!
IT WAS NOT A SCAM!!! I was there, on the front lines battling a very real and terrifying virus. Were YOU there, sir? Did YOU look that virus in its very face on the end of a swab of respiratory secretions before subjecting the swab to testing?
Did you lose a loved one(s)? I honestly hope you didn’t.
A “scam” does not kill a million people.
Yes, we have developed immunity now, some naturally, and many of us because of the vaccine. That’s what happens when novel viruses are no longer “novel.” God has given humans amazing immune systems that learn to fight off novel viruses, and He has given humans the brains to create (after Him) vaccines, anti-virals, and antibiotics. Thanks be to our Creator for His marvelous design of nature!
But the COVID-19 virus still hospitalizes and kills humans because it is REAL, not a scam.
If you are certain that “COVID” was a “scam,” then I would appreciate if you would go to the cemetery and tell my dead beloved husband, who spent 30 days in the hospital fighting COVID for his life before dying the day after Christmas in 2020.
We had been married for 41 years (and dated for 6 years before we got married), and he left me and two daughters, a son-in-law, and his precious unborn grandson behind, along with his parents (who died within the next few months in part because of COVID infection), his brother and sister, his nephews and niece, his cousins, his co-workers and friends, and hundreds of figure skaters around the country who had met him during ice dancing competitions and wrote notes of sympathy to me and donated to his memorial fund, which was used to offer a free ice-dancing clinic.
We were blessed that our parish was allowed to hold funerals in our parish nave at that point (as long as people remained “socially distant”), and a large crowd was there to hear not only Father’s comforting words, but also a eulogy written and presented by my daughter, a professional stage manager, who did not break down until the very last few words. Our priest said that it was best lay eulogy he had ever heard, and friends at the parish still tell me how much they appreciated that beautiful eulogy.
It’s been 4 years now, and I miss him every day and often every moment of my good “retired” life and look forward to seeing him in heaven. His daughters still cry, and his grandson–well, he will never know his Grandpa, never be with him and learn about electricity, tools, computers, jewelry-making, typewriters, rocks and fossils, ice dancing, and all the other many hobbies and interests that my husband, a true life-enthusiast, pursued.
Humans who defied God and committed sin in the Garden of Eden are the reason why pathologies, including those caused by viruses, developed, and began attacking and killing humans. These pathology-causing viruses are very real and continue to kill human beings. To call them “scams” is to reject what human sinful rebellion against God released into this world. In His wisdom and mercy, God created humans with immune systems that began to work as soon as the first viruses started attacking them, and He also created humans with brains that have solved many mysteries of human pathology, including pathologies caused by viruses. I pray that YOUR God-given immune system will protect YOU and your loved wones should, God have mercy!–another novel virus begins attacking and killing humans.
This is a public forum. People are not interested in reading about the intimate details of your life, and it is not appropriate to be posting these long meandering screeds on the site. Make your point briefly and succinctly or don’t make it at all. And the previous posters are correct. Covid was a scam.
I am interested in rejoicing with those who are joyful and weeping with those who weep. And I don’t mind listening to the long meandering stories of those who are sorrowful but still trusting in God and accepting of His plan for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Sorry for your loss, but there were many many many scams in the handling of Covid.
The White House supressing(sp) anti vaccine posts is one of them. (Zuckerberg just told the story about this not long ago). Another scam was the fear the left put in people; e.g., couples driving by my country home with the windows up and both fully masked. In addition, the burden put on our youth, many who lost two years of a decent education, was a big scam and is still being felt – now parents and kids think it’s fine not to show up for school. .. and on and on
you write:
..and He has given humans the brains to create (after Him) vaccines, anti-virals, and antibiotics. Thanks be to our Creator for His marvelous design of nature!
I’m assuming you wrote this knowing the mRNA was developed from fetal cells lines from two abortions? Is an abortion defying God?
A former Blue Cross Blue Shield of MI employee (a staunch Catholic), who was fired for refusing to take the shot because of the abortions, was recently awarded almost $13M for an unjust termination/denial of religious exemption(she worked at home not in an office). There are about 150 more BC employees with similar lawsuits.
As a sort of disclaimer, I had covid and was starting to shut down from Pnem – had to be hospitalized for 3 days.
Sharon, believe what you will. It’s clear that it takes little to brainwash people.
“[T]hanks to Pres. Trump, researchers worked 24/7 for months to develop a vaccine that would prevent the virus from infecting/killing humans.”
I am sorry for your loss, but the reality is, the vaccine did not (and still does not) work.
a lot of the people who left us had underlying conditions and a lot of “COVID” death certs were incorrect, intentionally
our country’s population is out of shape
Agree. Washington state experienced one of the first waves of infection which showed up in a nursing care facility. A handful of Covid-related deaths (pneumonia) occurred in 85+ year-old frail and disabled residents together with a few younger residents, staff, or visitors whose ages averaged 55-65 years. In those early days, the county published ages, locations, and comorbidities of all patients who died.
I worked at that time in a nursing home in the town adjacent to that where the first wave occurred. Soon Covid began to claim a few lives in my facility, and it was believed to have been transmitted from a nursing aide who worked in both facilities; she herself had a mild but non-lethal case.
In the weeks before the first wave, I was working as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Eucharist in the second nursing home. I was administering Holy Communion to many elderly residents. I spent time praying and talking with many elderly residents. Many were frail, unable to rise from bed, coughing, recovering from the flu which had just subsided, sickening many. It was January.
Two of the residents with whom I’d spent time and who had just received Eucharist, died in the ten days or so after I’d been with them. I was certain I would follow. I had no symptoms but I believed I’d soon have them the next morning if I awoke the next day. I received a call to inform me that I certainly had been exposed to the virus from more than a few residents.
I succumbed to the virus twice afterwards, the first time 18 months after the first infection was noted in the country, and the second time about two years later. Both infections were not more serious than the flu. In bed for a few days, weak, with congestion and body/joint aches. No death. No hospitalization. No sequelae. Except for a bit of overweight, I’m fairly healthy, middle-aged. My disabled young son also accompanied me on my ministry. He too did not suffer from the first and most serious wave of infection. I took no vaccine.
My experience led me to believe that the Covid scare was overblown, heightening people’s fears, causing us to see others as death-inducers, leading us to socially isolate, whipping our children out of school and out of enriching activities of social development with their peer, weakening our economy, and allowing government to control and coerce without cause. CLOSING CHURCHES WHILE KEEPING MARIJUANA RETAIL AND ABORTION ESTABLISHMENTS OPEN. The handling of Covid was A farce. A scare. A scam. Sure, the virus was real and could kill those with pre-existing advanced age or comorbid conditions. Otherwise, it was not much more than a wild and dangerous experiment in social and unreal biological terror.
Our Governor Whitmer kept saying, “Follow the science, follow the science,” in her daily press briefings early in the shutdowns, where almost no questions were asked and answered.
To date, this science was found to be non existent, as far as I can tell.
That “scam” you write of put me in the hospital. I had seemingly recovered from COVID last January, but a “side effect” changed my life. Unfortunately, though I had gotten all the previous vaccines early on. I waited till last January to be vaccinated after I was already incubating COVID for 5 days.
I can be specific since the only place I had been was the vigil Mass and sat next to a lady who came down with COVID two days later. Last February 17 nearly a month after COVID I was feeling chilled and “off” but went as always to the 5:15 vigil mass. I collapsed under the crucifix, was stabilized in the ambulance, and rushed to the hospital where I spent 3 days.
Yet I was fortunate, I lived. This last COVID iteration was “mild”. It only destroyed my previously enviable metabolism by attacking my thyroid also giving me A-fib. Since then, I am on levothyroxine for thyroid and flecainide for the rest of my life.
My niece’s husband had the first COVID iteration and spent 6 months in a private facility. Hospitals were full and turning away patients at that time. My nephew had to learn to walk again and rebuild his entire body. My neighbor also contracted the initial COVID and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
See my comment above
Grammar marm says: COVID sprang it on them.
“Crank up the pronouning”. I love it!
Re DiaconusSineNomine above – Ditto.
I, among others, no longer have blind trust in the Catechism of the Catholic Church given the latest updates are implemented at the whim of a Progressive Church administration or interpretation by liberal Bishops. If asked by someone desiring to join the Church, I would suggest they choose the specific Church very carefully. All that our local Church offers is access to the Sacraments and feel good Homilies and Petitions of the People. Justice can only be understood in concert with Mercy and Grace….Justice, one gets what one deserves, Mercy, one does not get what one deserves and Grace, one gets what one does not deserve. Simple, objectively True and effective. To which one contends that the virtuous life is the good life, the virtues of courage, temperance, prudence and stewardship in service in accordance with the order of love.
The tide of DEI recedeth, and yet corporate America is still on record for helping swing the U.S. Supreme Court into creating the worst of “DEI” before it was thusly branded and marketed…
Way back in 2015 corporate America formally positioned itself in favor of oxymoronic “gay marriage”. As broadly reported and richly rewarded in the mainstream media, AT&T and Verizon, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, and the San Francisco Giants, were among nearly four hundred boardrooms that weighed in. Just movin’ things along…
Together they spontaneously filed their carbon-copy legal arguments inventing a constitutional right to same sex “marriage.” The reason: stock market numbers might benefit marginally from spending patterns! Maybe an added one billion dollars annually, as a minuscule sliver of a $27 Trillion GNP (1/27,000th or 0.077%!). If heavily taxed, the $37 Trillion national debt will be erased in no time!
By this capitulation to the LGBTQA demographic (not a community), the multi-tasking business czars have given an entirely new meaning to both society and the term “bottom line”.
Further to my comment above (3:52 a. m.) – No, I don’t believe COVID itself was a scam but I do believe that the lockdown, while understandable at first, was a questionable response.
I appreciate your comment that COVID was not a scam. I can understand why you think the “lockdown” was a scam, and I agree that it probably went on for much longer than necessary, but in any emergency in which the knowledge of the source of the “threat” is limited, a temporary lockdown is a reasonable response. When COVID, a novel (new) virus first emerged, we had no idea how it was transmitted–aerosol (sneezing/coughing, heating/cooling, etc.), touch (fellow humans, surfaces, etc.), animals, contaminated food/drink, etc. Considering the ability of the COVID virus to quickly attack and kill vulnerable humans (the elderly, children, people with immunocompromised immune systems e.g., HIV, cancer, etc.), it made sense to shut everything down to protect susceptible fellow human beings until we obtained more information. Also, when a “novel virus” emerges, we do not know how to treat it–antivirals, oxygen, surgery, etc. The containment of the virus to as few humans (and animals) as possible is important until we have more knowledge in order to preserve as many lives as possible. In retrospect, the use of cloth masks (usually homemade) was rather pathetic, as once the cloth became moist as people breathed into it, the mask was non-effective. Handwashing and hand sanitizers always make sense. Social distancing/containment probably was one of our best defenses until the efficacious vaccines were developed, although once we had the vaccine which enabled us to provide humans with a degree of immunity, it’s too bad that many people were (and some still are) afraid to venture out. It’s also too bad that many people have avoided getting the vaccine, often because of distrust of “the establishment”. But again, a desire to preserve one’s life is understandable.
I hope that you remember that the lockdowns destroyed many small businesses, and the livelihoods that they provided. They were not cost free. Around May of 2020 I was wondering about the so-called “two weeks to flatten the curve.” The lies told about masking at the beginning of the pandemic damaged the public health and medical professions credibility. So did being loosey-goosey with distinguishing between people who died of COVID with those who died while having COVID. Then there was the Stalinist censorship of medical information, using the medical establishment to silence any medical dissent. The abridgement of civil liberties. Politicians found not following their own rules, many of which were very arbitrary. The pandemic seemed to bring out the very worst in many people. Putting them at each other’s throats, bringing to the surface shocking levels of social rot and decay. Just keeping a cool level-headed response to the pandemic was enough to accuse a person of being a COVID denier. I found it very interesting that the same vaccines that were touted as being “safe and effective” were being given under emergency use authorization, which blocked any legal recourse by anyone harmed by the vaccines. People being forced to take an experimental vaccine with threat of job loss. We were well on the way to a medical police state.
*
The pandemic was the perfect stress test for demonstrating the effectiveness of low intensity biowarfare against Western societies. I had two risk factors for COVID but I thought that there had to be better ways to protect people like me without the wanton destruction of other people’s livelihoods.
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I’m not sure if the pandemic has taught the public health and medical professions the need for honesty, and the willingness to admit to the limits of their knowledge.
A good summary, and my understanding is there’s a public fund for people harmed by things like this done for the public good (like dying from a vaccine, myocarditis etc..) but almost nothing has been paid out
if you haven’t read about Karl who told Whitmer to take a hike: : Owosso Barber’s Fight for Freedom: Supreme Court Ruling Explained
By John
Published on: November 3, 2024 Karl from Owosso, MI
it doesn’t bother you that the public was lied to about the mRNA shot prevents you from spreading it to Grandma?
Social distancing and masking were pointless, as it turns out, so that was a lie. Children were the least vulnerable, so shutting schools down was a lie. Stating that people who were vaccinated would not get covid was a lie. Your post is a list of worn-out talking points that would make the people at NPR and MSNBC proud. Maybe you should post your comments there.
Please, not the Covid wars again…
It’s more than that Mrs. Cracker Barrel, it’s about our country’s leaders taking away individual rights for no good reason(s)! Another one is “It’s okay for you to speak up as long as you know we already agree with you.”
A scam huh?? I watched three members of my family die of COVID. Shame on you both.
I didn’t say covid virus didn’t exist. When I refer to it, I intend the hysterical way the country responded to it. Viruses exist now (even the covid virus still exists) but all of a sudden the crisis “disappeared.” Why? Certainly not because the virus was eradicated.
I agree. I do not deny many died, but I find it interesting that, at least in my experience–and my experience is as valid for me as others’ experiences are for them–2025 is a much harsher year for “the flu” (and flu like illnesses) than in 2020.
I knew one person who was seriously sick in 2020. I am currently surrounded by folks who sound and look absolutely horrible, including a poor girl at work who has used so much hand sanitizer on her hands in an effort to avoid becoming sick the skin on them is destroyed. She sounds as if she has bronchitis And this is all after the latest round of Covid and Flu boosters.
the flu was not a factor during covid because the planes were shut down to the south and people weren’t near each other — my understanding is the travelers usually bring it up from the southern continents, but maybe a reader here understands better
this is mostly a result of the left scaring everyone into believing the end was near without compliance, and there’s no TP!
an older parishioner, who had the mRNA shot, contracted covid. he had some wild times with the temps up and down and the sweats. his ER doctor mentioned to him that until this goes through the population, it won’t be going away – he appears to have been correct – once Omicron hit it finally started waning
at the same time, his wife tested positive and had no symptoms
I would suggest to the gentleman writing this article that he think carefully about use of the word “equity.” Equality in the sense of before God, treatment by the law, and finally, access to opportunity, is the word he should be using. Equity implies an outcome dictated by quotas, affirmative action and so on. Equality permits the opportunity to succeed by our own efforts, rather than a government dictum to ensure equal outcomes.
His first use of the term is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (par 1807), which uses it in a specific way, from within the Catholic tradition. The author then criticizes problematic understandings of equity.
Remote work is not much different than Small Office/Home Office (SOHO). The PC’s, associated office equipment, and broadband connectivity, especially in the age of Starlink, are readily available. So long as the worker is productive and getting the job done on a timely basis that should be what matters to the employer. As the article points out, some office cultures are toxic. These toxic office cultures can be a drag on employee productivity. DEI is full employment for the HR department and the DEI consultants. DEI has developed its own industrial complex.
Remote work allows parents to stay home with young children and live in more rural areas where they can afford housing. It sounds like a win to me if we’re concerned about the falling birthrates.
some companies and gov’t offices require another adult be present when you’re working from home with children
when you kids were sick they were sick, you couldn’t concentrate on much else except making lunch for the other 7, right?
they need to pay men a family living wage so the mother can stay at home with the kids until they go to school
The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life declared in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2017 that in the absence of alternatives, Catholics could, in good conscience, receive vaccines made using historical human fetal cell lines. In December 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provided a note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines.
Yeah, about that. I have always wondered if God really would have wanted something more from His people.
The gain-of-function Covid Virus was no scam: it was engineered in a laboratory with US Tax-Payer Funding via Anthony Fauci and was released on humanity by a Freemasonic New World Order obsessed with reducing the Worldwide infestation of Homo-Sapiens.
There are product liability laws for very good reasons. When the government gave immunity to the manufacturers of the covid vaccines, I became very wary of taking it. Was it rushed to market to the detriment of the patients receiving the vaccine? What recourse would recipients have for any demonstrated ill effects of the vaccine? Prudent people exercised their decision not to take the vaccine weighing the risks/benefits for them and they were demonized, penalized and ostracized for the decisions they made.
When my man Trump pushed this through without the normal testing period I knew he was worried about the reelection.
I’m glad he’s taken care of the healthy young men who were canned from the military for not taking an unnecessary, potentially dangerous venom.
We read: “in the absence of alternatives”….
Four points:
FIRST, without discounting your expertise in the science, one could still question the direct translation of lab science into totalitarian policy. One absent alternative would have been to quarantine the vulnerable populations (many over age over 65), plus herd immunity for all the rest—without putting the whole world into lockdown. Deaths from other untreated diseases (foregone cancer treatments, etc.), and educational/social isolation/suicides in a generation of less vulnerable and home-bound students could have been avoided.
SECOND, and about the very general science and sociology (!) of species-jumping, which is not limited to the epidemiological field. Take, for example, der Synodal Weg as an institutional “virus” jumping into Church governance from the insect life of anthills. A parallel worth pondering!
Theologically, in all of human history the alternative coherence of Faith and Reason is a very narrow and fragile pathway for “walking together,” enabled by only the Incarnation of God Almighty into our finite world of fallenness, stupidity, oversimplification, and fictional theory building.
THIRD, in so many arenas, science dictates sweeping policy while politicians cherry-pick random facts. Eric Voegelin’s “immanentizing of the eschaton”—through political ideology—even applies. Example: the remark attributed to the prophet Stalin: “if the facts don’t fit the theory, then too bad for the facts.”
FOURTH, the lab science of COVID, like astronomy, presented the world with a modernday Galileo Moment. So, thinking very generically about the “absence of [policy] alternatives,” we might recall that long before Galileo, the 13th-century Thomas Aquinas already said this about the officious Ptolemaic universe:
“Reasoning is employed not as furnishing sufficient proof of a principle but as showing how the remaining effects are in harmony with an already posited principle; as in astronomy the theory of eccentrics and epicycles [the Ptolemaic universe] is considered as established because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; NOT however as if this proof were sufficient, since some other theory [!] might explain them” (Summa Theologica, I, 32, I, ad 2; cited in L.M. Regis, Epistemology, 1959, p. 455).
SUMMARY: About reason versus ideology, too bad about the COVID-related facts versus Fauci’s Ptolemaic theory of indiscriminate “lockdown”: “ready, fire, aim!” The policy absolutism of the unelected Dr. Fauci and now the policy absolutism of the unelected Elon Musk? Instead of either, but with Edmund Burke about political revolutions, “those who destroy everything will likely remove some abuse.”