I have said that a lot of things are stupid here at the plague chronicle. Most recently, I said the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement is stupid. I have also said that Following the Science is stupid, that the campaign of the German Health Ministry against summer heat waves was stupid, that the booster campaign was stupid, that mask mandates were stupid, that mass containment was stupid, that the CDC's pamphlet on "safer sex and monkeypox" was stupid, that fact-checkers are stupid, that politically loaded comparisons to National Socialism are frequently stupid, that pandemic wargames are stupid and that a lot of specific powerful people are stupid.

You must understand that this is only a very partial list; I have said that many other things are stupid as well. I stand by all of these posts and I will not apologise for my monotony. Stupidity is an obnoxious, frustrating and yet very constant and obtrusive feature of the systems that rule us. I emphasise this quality because I think the accent of much dissident commentary is too much on the malicious, authoritarian and often evil nature of government in the West. Don't misunderstand me. The powers that be are very bad too, but it's important not to lose sight of the fact that their collective actions and statements are often just astoundingly dumb. Probably never in the history of humanity has stupidity been so abundant, and so apparently ineradicable, as it is now.