Every 3 months?

I'm going to say it. As a left-libertarian, I see government and industry working hand in hand. The public is always being distracted from what the industry is doing, by being told it's their responsibility to clean up the mess. Let me take the lid off it so you can't unsee it:

1) The industry adds highly processed sugars and starches into foods, genetically engineers high fructose corn syrup into everything and overuses antibiotics for animals. As a result, we have unprecedented levels of diabetes and obesity in this country, even for kids. (And by the way this has correlated heavily with morbidity and mortality from this coronavirus.) https://www.dhhs.nh.gov/dphs/nhp/documents/sugar.pdf

What is the public told? Exercise consumer choice. Diet and exercise, take care of it yourself. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The brainwashing gets so bad that they rose up in arms against Bloomberg's ban on giant sugary drink containers, in the name of "freedom".

2) The industry turns all farms into factory farms, as a result of capitalist competition so the hamburger can be $1 cheaper. Billions of animals are raised in appalling conditions. Chickens for example are caged with dung dropping from the animals above them, and can barely even spread a single wing. Their beaks are cut off so they don't peck each other. Pigs, turkeys and others are treated horribly as well. Antibiotics are overused in order to make them bigger, which might begin to lead to superbugs that make this pandemic seem like a walk in the park (I hope I am wrong) https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/blogs/antibiotic-resist...

What is the public told? Exercise consumer choice. Go vegetarian. You can change the world, etc. But this isn't your grandmother's farming industry. People are used to having cheap meat but they don't think about what happens behind the scenes. They even used to happily eat "pink slime" in hot dogs, McDonalds etc.

3) Plastic containers. While beer companies still use glass, companies like Coca Cola and Snapple have switched from glass to plastic, to save money on transportation, and so forth. But the materials are non-biodegradeable, so it produces externalities all over the world. Same with clothing companies and polyesther and other plastics. Instead of researching and switching to non-biodegreadeable plastic, they push their negative externalities onto the environment and people: https://theconversation.com/plastic-plastic-everywhere-airbo...

What is the public told? Exercise consumer choice. Opt out of plastic bags and straws. Some cities are now MANDATING this, yet the companies upstream continue to produce metric tons of this crap every day.

Oh yeah, also the public is told to RECYCLE, and that was mandated too, but it was revealed to be largely a scam in the USA: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/7025017...

4) Fossil fuels. We all heard of this one. But do you realize that the vehicle are locked into a monopoly of fossil fuels, and that the electric car could have been already invented if the government wasn't distorting the market subsidizing fossil fuels for all these decades against OPEC and others? They pollute the environment with carbon dioxide and other chemicals, they contribute to the greenhouse effect that makes the planet warmer, acidification of oceans.

What is the public told? Commute to the office. Take public transportation. Don't drive so much, etc. Well, in this case I actually agree, we need to address the demand side, too much waste with all those parked cars etc. And the pandemic made people realize they can work from home, and the industry is FURIOUS. But it was the largest drop in emissions ever.

5) Vaccines. The government and industry failed us with mask production early on, they had months to prepare and didn't. And the Trump government took out all the stops and "Operation Warp Speed" greenlighted mRNA vaccines. And they are FAST indeed. They just made one for HIV, even. But somehow ... lo and behold, this "warp speed mRNA industry" can't seem to update their vaccines for delta, mu, lambda. I mean, they clearly have the capability, and they can simply target the latest mutation. But they are engaging the government to mandate you inject yourself with LAST YEAR'S PRODUCTS, because they are selling like hotcakes all over the world.

What is the public told? Get a jab of last year's vaccine, or you lose access to your job, your entertainment, your restaurants, whatever. The companies are MANDATED in the USA to do what Google is reported to be doing here.

The initial curve was too steep and lots of morbidity because no one had immunity to the novel virus. Now that so many people have been exposed, natural immunity is shown to be more robust than vaccines (by the way what do you think the immunity after breakthrough infections is due to, the vaccine? that's what they will claim in their data LOL). But the government is going by inertia on how bad the omicron coronavirus is, and treat it with much more mandates than t the flu. But what gets me is that no is talking about the major effect of always putting responsibility and mandates on the individual it lets the industry off the hook! In this case the mRNA pharma industry from producing up-to-date vaccines like they do for the flu. The government and media is carrying water for them and helping them sell last year's product, so they have no incentive to cannibalize their own business with R&D. Imagine being forced to download unpatched Windows 95 for years in order to be allowed to get on the Internet. That's how this is.

So you see the government constantly telling the public to stop using plastic straws (while Coca Cola produces metric tons a day), to stop watering their lawns (while industries waste water), to go vegan (while factory farms raise billions of animals in abysmal conditions), to stay healthy (while putting sugar and corn syrup in everything), to recycle (while using more and more plastic).

George Carlin and Greta Thurnberg were right, there are people running the show, and they want you to be guilt tripping each other into cleaning up their mess so you never look upstream at where the problems come from. At least with fossil fuels, we have finally begun to do so.

And this is true in other states and countries, too, governments tell people to stop watering their lawns (while industries waste water), we have aquifers running dry and Day Zero for water around the world drawing closer while industries siphon their water to ship globally. Bolsonaro the "business friendly" president wants to clear away tons of rainforest and displace native tribes so he can grow Soy and more Cows for the world. Exports and capitalism at the expense of the environment, again.

There are people who say there is nothing wrong with capitalism, but. But no, these are quintessentially issues specifically arising from market competition and firms turning to government as an enabler, even against the people and the environment. Whether it's the government of Flynt Michigan letting their private buddies pollute the water supply, or privatization of water in Bolivia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War), or factory farms emerging as a result of cutthroat competition in agribusiness, private ownership and competition and capitalism are at the root of many of these issues.

As a left-libertarian, I recognize that government works with the capitalists (including bailouts to banks, stock market, whatever). And we the people need to call for reform of the system. But when they do, they are told "Bernie, Buffett, why don't YOU pay your taxes, and leave the system alone, capitalism is the best thing that's ever happened you socialist freak." These people are calling for common sense things that are done in many other countries, and they're social democrats, not socialists, btw.

I would start with UBI FUELED BY PIGOVIAN TAXES on all the above things. This will avoid the yellow vest protest phenomenon and align incentives correctly.

Read the above and tell me if you don't see a pattern...

Vaccines are just one of many examples of the big problem.