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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32255 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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For 5, what's your explanation for why their reported numbers are shooting up now? To me it always seemed likely that they were covering up their real numbers but I don't see why they would stop that now, whereas if they were telling the truth and have a mostly COVID-naive population then it would make sense that at some point they would have to pay the piper.

I'm going to use another conspiracy theory to explain this one: several of the Vietnam vets I grew up with claim the wall is missing names. That vastly more Americans died over there, but that only some names made the wall. But by randomizing it, it just becomes a bunch of guys who know one guy who was missed, so the natural reaction is oh well it was an oversight, what's one more one way or another, but that it adds up to thousands. But 59,000 is a big enough number that thousands more can get lost in the sauce.

I've never looked into it beyond that, but a similar dynamic might work here. ChiComms are increasing the number of reported dead, to "catch up" to unreported dead, so that the numbers get big enough that they're hard to check.

This sounds like POW-MIA conspiracy theory mangled in retelling.

TL;DR: many more Americans than officially announced were captured by North Vietnam. US government knew about it, and deliberately let them die in captivity.

Mainstream history take

Conspiracy theory take

Oh the POW/MiA conspiracies are in my view true, and separate.

What I'm saying is that I was told directly, riding to a trade show with a one time Green Beret, that so and so got blown to bits in front of him and the name isn't on the wall. This is the same story I've heard from multiple vets.

Now, it's not impossible they were confused! They missed the name, the name he went under to his buddies wasn't his legal name that's listed on the wall ("James <estranged father's name>" legally; "Jimmy <Mother's name>" to his friends), the guy didn't die but was grievously wounded and 40 years of alcohol have conflated complex and traumatic memories, or they're flat lying to make a point about Vietnam. But the dynamic is the same: you have one guy claiming a few names are missing out of 59,000; well it's probably just an error and the overall narrative remains true. But how many errors can you cover up before the narrative itself is false?

Idk what that number that allows Chinese COVID dead to disappear into the ether would be. But it's more than they were reporting prior. At that point, a smart journalist could have collected enough names to throw numbers off. Now they need a big enough number that reporting its falsehood becomes difficult, impossible without setting off government alarm bells. Can you gather 100,000 anecdotes without getting into trouble in China? I doubt it.

Because it's getting too big to hide? Especially once full lockdown is removed, people start talking to each other and notice some people are missing. If the official statistics (arbitrary example) says there are 100 people dead in the whole China, and you know 20 people with dead relatives just in your city, it's impossible to believe. But if you add up a bit more, then it becomes more plausible.

I mean, I don't have any data now, right now it's just a suspicion, a theory and a gut feeling. We'll see.

Given how much more quickly it swept through the rest of the world, it doesn't seem plausible that it's been raging for two years in China and is just now getting too big to hide.

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