Goodall initially believed animals to be kinder.
In fact up until the 1970s, the famous British primatologist and anthropologist believed chimpanzees to be “rather like humans, but nicer”. She then w... View MoreGoodall initially believed animals to be kinder.
In fact up until the 1970s, the famous British primatologist and anthropologist believed chimpanzees to be “rather like humans, but nicer”. She then witnessed a prolonged, war-like conflict between two groups of chimps in which one group was entirely annihilated by the other.
The experience profoundly shook Goodall and she had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that chimpanzees were just as brutal, bloodthirsty and utterly merciless as even the worst of human beings. And that they could turn on neighbors and long-time friends with appalling cruelty:
“For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound [1.8 kg] rock at Godi's prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé's thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes…”
Goodall saw infanticide, cannibalism, brutal murder and torture. She saw cruelty for the sake of cruelty and the horrible treatment of others in order to gain dominance and assert control over them. It shattered her preconceived notions, her idealism — she would forever be a champion of chimpanzees and fight for their protection, but what she observed robbed her of some illusions.
Animals can’t fire missiles or guns. They aren’t in the habit of stabbing one another with sword or building elaborate torture dungeons. They are less sophisticated in their cruelty, less organized in their brutality. But it’s there, all the same. We humans have a strangely romantic view of animals as wholesome and ourselves as thoroughly corrupted, when all the evil things we do, they’d do too if they had but the ability.
But the Spanish study, which was peer-reviewed and published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, proves yet again that Covid’s risk is too low to measure — not just not to healthy children, b... View MoreBut the Spanish study, which was peer-reviewed and published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, proves yet again that Covid’s risk is too low to measure — not just not to healthy children, but to all children. It is the strongest evidence yet that the oft-repeated claim that Covid has killed 2,100 American children is fiction.¹
The researchers examined medical records from 2.7 million Spanish children and teenagers from mid-2021 through the end of 2022, a period in which the Omicron variant infected almost everyone worldwide with Covid. The vast majority of those kids and adolescents, about 2.2 million, had not been vaccinated.
Yet none of those 2.7 million died of Covid.
None. As in zero.
—
(Good thing we closed the schools!)
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