Bestselling author James Perloff discusses his new book COVID-19 and the Agendas to Come, Red-Pilled—which systematically explores many of the burning issues raised during the past six months on this radio show, including:
—Are the virus’s health risks greater than those posed by the lockdowns?
—What does the science say about masks and social distancing?
—Why were no lockdowns imposed for previous pandemics of comparable magnitude?
—How accurate are the death numbers attributed to COVID-19?
—Is the virus completely natural, or could bio-engineering have played a role?
—Should the world’s population take a COVID vaccine developed at “warp speed”?
—Why is Bill Gates formulating health policy, even though he has no medical credentials?
—How might a “second wave” be different?
—Is the COVID crisis being exploited to push us into an Orwellian future of mass surveillance, digital IDs and cashless transactions?
COVID-19 Red Pilled is a terrific introduction to, and summary of, information and perspectives that aren’t getting a fair hearing in the corporate MSM.

Yes, it is very real.
Yes, it is biowarfare.
Yes, they will exploit it to make our lives miserabler.
Duh.
There was never any verification of the Chinese claim about a new virus. Not one lab in the world has isolated or identified Covid 19. 300,000 people in China die of the pneumonia every year with millions of respiratory infections. It was easy to come with “Covid cases.”
Principia Scientific Intl. reports:
The New York Times reports that as many as nine out of ten coronavirus tests are wrong. The newspaper tells us:
“The most widely used diagnostic test for the new coronavirus, called a PCR test, provides a simple yes-no answer to the question of whether a patient is infected…. The results may include a rough estimate of the amount of virus in the patient’s body…. In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.” [emphasis added]
It’s all guesswork, you see. When the article tells us “barely any virus” it is word play, disinformation. What the tests reveal are proteins not virus. We confidently can assert no such virus has even been proven to exists.
Just like the very existence of the COVID19 virus itself when no laboratory anywhere in the world has been able to identify and isolate this alleged new coronavirus to sufficiently present a ‘gold standard’ to allow other researchers to develop a vaccine (if we even needed one!).
The medical world has been chasing a phantom because, as we reported, ‘Group Think & Guess Work Taints COVID19 Medical Diagnoses.’
The author of the article, Apoorva Mandavilli, admits that these tests rely heavily on an amplification technique that attempts to increase the likelihood of detection the slightest amount of the telltale protein that scientists have been claiming is proof of the presence of the novel coronavirus.
Indeed, at the very best a positive test can show that there is ‘some’ coronavirus in a patient – it could be ANY coronavirus – even a trace of common cold. The standard test, itself, is not designed to measure the viral load, the key to determining disease causation.
As Apoorva puts it:
“The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.
This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.”
“Never sent to doctors or patients?” Talk about the blind leading the blind!
The ‘genetic matter’ being magnified is actually common to us all – whether we have been sick or not! This is why there so many reported ‘asymptomatic’ cases (people who have nothing wrong with them, despite a positive test). Indeed, so worthless as a medical diagnosis theses tests can be relied on to merely prove scientifically that the patient is human – nothing more.
The criminals with the help of the MSM have been promoting fake viruses and vaccines for years.
From Jon Rappaport:
I take you back to the summer of 2009, when the CDC and the World Health Organization were hyping the “deadly H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic.”
They were, of course, also urging people to take the new Swine Flu vaccine. On that subject, here is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (3/27/20):
“For example, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci once shilled for the fast-tracked H1N1 influenza (‘swine flu’) vaccine on YouTube, reassuring viewers in 2009 that serious adverse events were ‘very, very, very rare.’ Shortly thereafter, the vaccine went on to wreak havoc in multiple countries, increasing miscarriage risks in pregnant women in the U.S., provoking a spike in adolescent narcolepsy in Scandinavia and causing febrile convulsions in one in every 110 vaccinated children in Australia—prompting the latter to suspend its influenza vaccination program in under-fives.”
Thank you. Dr. Fauci. Explain to us why you haven’t been downgraded to pumping gas in Death Valley or sent to prison?
However, that is only half the Swine Flu story. The other half—which involves an astounding hoax—was surely something Fauci was aware of at the time.
Fauci was, in fact, recommending a highly dangerous vaccine for protection against AN EPIDEMIC THAT DIDN’T EXIST AT ALL.
His friends and professional colleagues at the CDC were creating the hoax.
Let me run it down for you.
In the summer of 2009, the CDC was claiming there were thousands of Swine Flu cases in the US. But behind these statistics lay an unnerving secret. A major crime, considering the CDC’s mandate to report the truth to the American people:
Secretly, the CDC had stopped counting cases of Swine Flu.
What? Why?
CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, discovered the CDC secret; and she found out why.
The routine lab testing of tissue samples from the most likely Swine Flu patients was coming back, in the overwhelming percentage of cases, with: NO SIGN OF SWINE FLU OR ANY OTHER KIND OF FLU.
Attkisson wrote an article about this scandal, and it was published on the CBS News website. However, the next, bigger step—putting out the story on CBS television news—was waylaid. No deal. And CBS shut down any future investigation on the subject. Attkisson’s article died on the vine. No other major news outlet in the world picked up her article and ran with it deeper into the rabbit hole.
Here is what Attkisson told me when I interviewed her:
Rappoport: In 2009, you spearheaded coverage of the so-called Swine Flu pandemic. You discovered that, in the summer of 2009, the Centers for Disease Control, ignoring their federal mandate, [secretly] stopped counting Swine Flu cases in America. Yet they continued to stir up fear about the “pandemic,” without having any real measure of its impact. Wasn’t that another investigation of yours that was shut down? Wasn’t there more to find out?
Attkisson: The implications of the story were even worse than that. We discovered through our FOI efforts that before the CDC mysteriously stopped counting Swine Flu cases, they had learned that almost none of the cases they had counted as Swine Flu was, in fact, Swine Flu or any sort of flu at all! The interest in the story from one [CBS] executive was very enthusiastic. He said it was “the most original story” he’d seen on the whole Swine Flu epidemic. But others pushed to stop it [after it was published on the CBS News website] and, in the end, no [CBS television news] broadcast wanted to touch it. We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype. It was fair, accurate, legally approved and a heck of a story. With the CDC keeping the true Swine Flu stats secret, it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.
—end of interview excerpt—
So…fake pandemic, CDC crimes, and a damaging vaccine.
But that wasn’t end of it. The CDC wanted to commit another crime. About three weeks after Attkisson’s findings were published on the CBS News website, the CDC, obviously in a panic, decided to double down. If one lie is exposed, tell an even bigger one. A much bigger one.
Here, from a November 12, 2009, WebMD article is the CDC’s response: “Shockingly, 14 million to 34 million U.S. residents – the CDC’s best guess is 22 million – came down with H1N1 swine flu by Oct. 17 [2009].” (“22 million cases of Swine Flu in US,” by Daniel J. DeNoon).
Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.
Fast forward to 2020. Who in his right mind, armed with a little history, would believe anything the CDC is saying about COVID-19? The discovery of a new coronavirus. the case numbers, the accuracy of the diagnostic tests, the need for lockdowns and economic devastation, the safety and importance of a vaccine, the fear porn? Who would believe any of it?
And who would believe anything coming out of the mouth of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who hyped a highly destructive Swine Flu vaccine for an epidemic that didn’t exist at all?
The following breaks down the trajectory used to promote fake epidemics. By reporter Jon Rappaport who has studied this psychological weapon of medicalized fraud for over 30 years:
This article is based on my study and investigation of so-called epidemics over the past 30 years.
In the case of COVID-19, I’ve written at least one piece covering, in detail, each main element of the illusion. Here, I’m laying out the pattern. It is the same for each fake epidemic.
ONE: Through many meetings, exercises, planning sessions, a structure is welded in place to promote and launch the IDEA of an epidemic. World Health Organization, CDC, influential public health officials attached to governments around the world, etc.
TWO: There is a purported incident. An outbreak. The most obvious cause is intentionally overlooked. For example, horrendous air pollution, or the grotesque feces and urine pollution on a giant commercial pig factory-farm. Instead, the world is told a new virus has been found. Local researchers, if any, are augmented by researchers from CDC, WHO.
THREE: There is no air-tight chain of evidence explaining exactly how the purported new virus was discovered. From details released, there is NO proof of discovery by convincing methods, no proper unified study of MANY supposed epidemic patients.
FOUR: But WHO/CDC tells the world this is an epidemic in the making, caused by the new virus. The promotion and propaganda/media apparatus moves into high gear. Ominous pronouncements.
FIVE: Diagnostic tests for the unproven new virus are rolled out. They spit out false “proof” of “infection” like coins from a jackpot slot machine. These false-positives are an inherent feature of the tests.
SIX: Thus, all case numbers and death numbers, which are based on the tests, are rendered meaningless. And…they were already meaningless, because the supposed new virus “being tested for” was never properly discovered in the first place.
SEVEN: Nevertheless, these tests (plus useless eyeball diagnosis) are used to build official reports on case numbers. For the duration of the “epidemic,” reports keep coming, and escalating numbers are trumpeted. Within the basically meaningless structure of these reports, there is fiddling with totals, to make them more impressive and frightening.
EIGHT: Real people are really getting sick and dying, but for the most part, they are people who are dying from traditional and long-standing conditions—flu-like illness, pneumonia, other lung infections, etc. These people are “re-packaged” under the new epidemic label—e.g., “COVID”. The official description of the “new epidemic disease”—the clinical symptoms—is sufficiently general to easily allow this re-packaging.
NINE: If there is new illness, it can be explained by causes having nothing to do with the purported new virus. For example, a toxic vaccine campaign. A highly destructive drug. Highly toxic pesticides.
TEN: Over time, the definition of the epidemic is arbitrarily widened to include more symptoms and clinical features, in order to inflate case numbers.
ELEVEN: Control of information about the “epidemic” is hardened at the top. The talking heads, from the press and public health agencies, know as much about actual science as rabbits know about drone strikes. But they are “in charge.” Dissident information is attacked and censored.
TWELVE: Medical drugs and procedures (e.g., ventilators) used to treat patients are quite harmful. If a vaccine is rolled out, it, too, is toxic. Illness and death resulting from these and other medical attacks are counted as “epidemic cases caused by the virus.”
THIRTEEN: ABOVE ALL OTHER ILLUSIONS, the main deception is: “the epidemic is one disease or syndrome caused by one germ.” This is sold with unceasing propaganda. Most people fall for it. They will even argue among themselves about which “it” is the single cause of the “it” disease. There is no “it” cause or disease.
FOURTEEN: The public is sold lie after lie about contagion and the “spread” of the “it.”
FIFTEEN: The public chants (as if no one has ever died before), “People are dying, it must be the virus.”
SIXTEEN: The virus fairy tale always functions as a cover story for government or corporate or medical crimes. It obscures and hides these crimes. For example, a large factory is spewing horrendous pollution into the ground and water of an area, and people are getting sick and dying? Wait, the researchers say, the cause is actually a new virus no one has ever seen before.
As I wrote at the outset of the COVID illusion, the only difference this time, in 2020, is the weight of the lies—because they led to the lockdowns and the economic devastation. This is West Nile, SARS, Swine Flu, Zika, writ large.
Needless to say, the persons and groups responsible for launching these illusion-operations must hide their crimes.
The criminals have their weapons, of course. Among their most powerful: control of the press, and arcane technical language which pretends to relevance. This language is so dense, the uninitiated stand no chance of penetrating it.
For instance, researchers can babble for hours about their vaunted diagnostic test, the PCR. However, the simple truth is, the test has never been vetted. The test has never been tested in the real world outside the lab.
I have written about this extensively. Using a little guideline called SCIENCE, you would “test the test” by lining up, say, a thousand patients, some healthy, some sick from a supposed virus. Any virus. Tissue samples would be taken from each patient.
PCR mavens would run these samples through their equipment, reporting which patients show what they call high “viral load.”
This means: these particular patients have millions and millions of virus actively replicating in their bodies, and they will be unmistakably and visibly sick.
The PCR princes would then announce, “Patients 3,45,65,76,132…are all definitely sick.”
Now we un-blind the study and see what’s what and who’s who. Are these designated patients ill or are they running marathons? That’s called simple scientific method. Not technical gobbledygook.
This chunk of research has never been done. It never will be done. It’s too real. Too naked. Proponents of the PCR would have too much to lose, if their assessments of who are healthy and who are sick turned out to be absurdly wrong, and their arcane technical rhetoric about the PCR ended up being useless gibberish.
I include this illustration to indicate there are, indeed, ways of exposing professional liars, if you change the venue on them, if you use common sense, if you stand outside their self-appointed temples of mystical pretense and observe what their lies look like when you boil them down to human terms…
Here is another study of the PCR test that has never been done and never will be done, in the real world: line up a thousand patients, take tissues samples from them and send the samples to 40 different labs. Have the labs run their PCRs and announce their specific findings. Compare the results. You can bet the farm the labs will come up with contrary results.
This is part of a pattern: keep “scientific details” close to the vest; keep them “in-house”; don’t permit large-scale independent studies that will either confirm or deny basic tenets of official research.
COVID is a fraud from top to bottom. From beginning to end.
No transcript, no justice.
Or anything else?
They’ve been on the other side for a long, long time.
“miserabler” is not a proper word. You should use the term more miserable.
Dr. KB, I did not appreciate your perpetrating this media-promoted canard/red herring of the “white supremacist.” I call “Foul!” on that one. Mr. Perloff, I am surprised and disappointed that you did not catch and counter that one from your host—snuck in (or added due to a lack of being properly informed) at the very end. Otherwise, both of you, this was a fine discussion.
James Perloff was the best of the best for years and years in the new alternative media, which he in fact pretty much created! Jewish, so clearly under big money. Very intelligent, everything well written, and sensible to everything… Now the guy so much as disappeared under ridiculous justifications…
I may have used the term “white supremacists” loosely or inaccurately. But historically the US does have a white supremacism problem. At least through the 1960s, and to some extent since then, there have been efforts by whites suffering from low self-esteem to deem themselves, by virtue of their supposed membership in the “white” group, superior to blacks. This is simple historical fact, just like white supremacism in colonized Southern Africa, Jewish supremacism in Occupied Palestine and to some extent elsewhere, etc.
I don’t consider all pro-white activists supremacists. Some I even admire: https://www.unz.com/audio/kbarrett_craig-nelson-discusses-his-defamation-suit-against-the-splc/
As far as comorbidities see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20009666.2017.1335156 New-onset acute thrombocytopenia in hospitalized patients: pathophysiology and diagnostic approach 15. Virus induced thrombocytopenia Platelets have a far more extensive and complex interaction with viruses than was previously thought. As a result, mild thrombocytopenia is often seen with chronic viral infections. Some acute viral infections are associated with severe thrombocytopenia and life threatening hemorrhagic syndromes [43]. Several mechanisms are deployed by viruses including inappropriate platelet activation and consumption, suppression of hematopoietic stem cells and megakaryocytes, decreasing TPO synthesis by liver, direct interaction with platelets leading to their premature destruction, immune complex mediated removal of platelets, and splenic sequestration [43,44]. Direct interaction with viruses is mediated by several receptors on platelet cell membranes such as integrins, Toll-like receptors (TLR), and lectins [45]. The acuity and severity of thrombocytopenia depends on the type of virus involved. Treatment is usually supportive and of the underlying viral infection. So maybe in some people there is a tipping point like this…. number of platelets that this virus/viruses has an effect on. Also keep in mind there may be more than one type of virus and they can actually plant various viruses at various locations. It does not necessarily have to be a one virus global thing. but the worst viruses trigger cytokine storms?
“This article is based on my study and investigation of so-called epidemics over the past 30 years.”
Just curious as to what are your credentials and why you, compared to other people, are telling the unvarnished truth…
“Through many meetings, exercises, planning sessions, a structure is welded in place to promote and launch the IDEA of an epidemic. World Health Organization, CDC, influential public health officials attached to governments around the world, etc.”
Of course, this statement requires evidence on your part, rather than an assumption it occurred in the manner you believe. But I see why you did it–it is easier to construct and support a false premise. Perhaps Castalia House would be interested in your fictional account…
This is quoting from reporter Jon Rappaport. I stated that at the top. I don’t waste my time on fiction or whoever Castalia is. I find it incredible that the government can spin the fiction of a virus that not one laboratory in the world can verify or identify with any kind of real scientific test much less the standard Koch’s postulates, then roll out a fake test along with fake numbers and people believe in this fiction. Same elites that did all the other fake viruses and the AIDS epidemic, 911, global warming, WMD’s, fake Floyd, fake shootings and staged riots. Everything the Zionists do is a lie and a fraud or should we say fiction.
First, I listened to the interview with Craig Nelson that you linked. Here, here to the matter discussed in, roughly, the first half of the interview. Items in the second half were problematic, but this is off-topic here (sort of). Second, and to my main point, I must utterly reject your statement: “…historically the US does have a white supremacism problem.” I have taught in different parts of the U.S. About half of those were predominantly non-White situations. Further, I lived outside of the U.S. I know experientially that resistance to other races is characteristic of every non-White group, including members of the Black, Hispanic and Asian groups with whom I have interacted. White people are only unique, perhaps, in their rare openness to other races. This statement that causes me concern is an example of biased spotlighting grossly lacking in statistical context. Next, I avoid using the term ‘supremacism’. It is an emotionally-laden term that is difficult to define whether from the perspective of those who want to promote it, or from that of those who want to detect it and condemn it. As a concept, it does not lend itself to high-level analysis. My own research involved the measurement of behavior, albeit much simpler behavior than that that psychologists of personality and psychometricians attempt to measure. Because a term like ‘supremacy’ invokes values, ends, and intractable statistical universes, it is very difficult–if not impossible–to quantify. Value-free concepts of ecological and evolutionary dominance and competition within niches might be useful, but those terms, and the results forthcoming, are likely to be hard and clinical. I do not think that employment of these concepts would assuage the anger of non-White advocates if they cannot tolerate biological realities such as measurements of intelligence.. I found the article by Joseph Kay at ‘American Renaissance’, “Blacks and Whites: We Need a Divorce,” September 4, 2020 and “Race: A Very, Very Dismal Reality,” by Fred Reed–here–at the ‘Unz Review’, September 7, 2020, to adequately match or supersede possible attempts by me. The Kay article, whatever the practicalities required, was refreshing in its advocacy for what I want to call a “no-fault” divorce between Whites and Blacks and some other groups. The Reed article further drove home the point as to why the separation is now likely to be inevitable. It is a relief that we do not need to assign blame in this separation, because there is no blame in the fact that the cultures are different. In growing numbers, individuals in all groups seem, in explicit as well as incrementally implicit terms, to be calling for a separation. Moreover, culture is not a property of a people that can be simply, whimsically or justly modified in a day. History is filled with examples of well-meaning Whites attempting to be helicopter parents to other groups. The intentions of some may not have been completely pure. These were regrettable cases. What went wrong? What went wrong was a poor understanding of intelligence and evolutionary biology. Genetics strongly influences neurobiology. The structural and functional aspects of neurobiology strongly influence the emergent properties of intelligence and other traits of personality and subsequently-expressed behaviors. The cognitive aspects expressed through the motor systems of humans constitute the social and physical environment, that is, the culture in which the individual is immersed. Races, and even ethnicities to a lesser degree, differ in their cognitive makeup. Cultures need to be co-natural with the individuals who create them and who must thrive in them. Admixing cultures, especially by force and at invasive levels, is extremely harmful and unjust to the individuals of all races involved. Sovereign borders are necessary for maintaining peace and justice. Borders are the principal tools that enhance communication and conversation between different people in different ethno-national states. There must be a preservation of differences fitting for the biologically-influenced preferences of different people. Differences are essential as a vital, driving force for communication, conversation, exchange and trade just as the cells of the body require electrical, chemical and molecular gradients and identities vis-à-vis their surroundings and other cells. We love diversity, correct? Sovereign states reflect the need that races and ethnicities have for their cultural extensions to be protected in geographic proximity. Space and proximity matter for people to interact with their co-ethnics if assortative mating and business relations are to proceed efficiently. Racial differences are not merely skin–or worse–skin-color deep. Racial differences are biologically profound—deep into every fiber of an human organism. But racial differences also extend outward, into the environment, creating and also interacting with the culture. Overstated perhaps, we might playfully consider culture as almost a projecting “organ” of the minds that our brains produce and facilitate. Political states must be concerned with the preservation of the full range of traits of their peoples. This is where every people’s greatest opportunities can be found. Countering the lie and patent injustice of the oxymoronic, homogenizing multiculturalism by re-instituting international respect for sovereign, ethno-national states, as best as can be achieved, will create situations that best enable various peoples to develop their future generations. Rather than exploiting other ethno-national states by corporate conquest or bombing the daylights out of them to fulfill the ends of globalist misanthropes, we could better assist the talented individuals of other nations lead their societies in the order that they prefer and toward their notion of flourishing. But these societies must accept the results of their choices. Also, aid must be at primarily at the level of the intellect, not the wallet. Kleptocracy in third-world nations can be resisted if the sophisticated, financial kleptocrats of first-world nations have been booed out of positions of power and self-aggrandizement. It is most certainly apology time. White Americans, and European people around the world, need deep and profound apologies for what they have suffered over many decades, even centuries, at the hands of other races. During this time, the best intentions of Whites have been repaid with the most vile, post-modernist, arational defamations; violent assaults occurring in exceedingly disproportionate numbers; and irreparably large material losses and financial burdens. Whites cannot take it any longer. Europe, the United States, and all of the other countries where Europeans have established themselves, need to reassert in clear and effective terms that our states are White-European, Christian, scientifically and technologically advanced states and that Whites are the protected and dominant class within their own countries just as other races must be understood to be the protected members of their sovereign nations and the societies within. This is what is desirable and just for any people group around the world.
“I find it incredible that the government can spin the fiction of a virus…”
Except the virus is NOT fiction. Why are you spreading a falsehood?
“Everything the Zionists do is a lie and a fraud or should we say fiction”.
That is a lie itself.
I agree that we should stop bombing and murdering non-whites.
Your fundamental mistake (like those of the racists and racialists you cite) is focusing exclusively on the extreme political correctness of the past few decades. The historical reality is that Europeans conquered most of the world and brutally subjugated most non-Europeans, starting a few centuries ago, killing hundreds of millions while singing pious hymns to their own superiority. Recommended remedial reading: https://www.amazon.com/Exterminate-All-Brutes-Darkness-European/dp/1565843592 https://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Imperialism-Biological-Expansion-Environment/dp/0521546184
I do agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and that the current wave of anti-white hysteria is obnoxious and often downright insane.
Dr. Barrett, I am sorry for the delay in replying. I think your use of the word, “remedial” was impolite and presumptuous. I endured, as an academic, decades of accusations and insinuations against my people regarding what you–lacking proper contextualization–poisonously call “White supremacy.” This is reckless of you.
I simply walk into Mass and into Walmart. I do not wait to let ushers at church shoot temperature-detecting devices at me. I do not wear masks. The priest kindly administers Communion to me on the tongue after Mass. That is a compromise I can tolerate temporarily.
Dr. Ted Noel is a retired physician who does an excellent demonstration by exhaling Vape smoke through various masks.
Video Link
Tobacco smoke size: is 10 nanometers (nm) to 1,000 nm in size while the SARS-CoV-2 virus particle is 60 nm to a maximum diameter of 140 nm. In the video by Dr. Noel, one can see that the smoke–much of which is comparable in size or larger to the COVID virus–easily exiting all types of masks.
https://www.coloradoci.com/bin-pdf/5270/ParticleSize.pdf
I know of a woman that was in an ICU Unit four weeks ago due to renal failure. She was forced to wear a mask. She needed an oxygen cannula for comfort, not a mask. The family, also masked, was unable to communicate well with her through the mask. She suffered a fatal cardiac arrest by early afternoon. This is infuriating.
Just resist. Patrick Wood, Technocracy Today, provides plasticized card on a lanyard that can provide HIPAA and 1st Amendment language that people can wear when in public.
Be courageous. Push the envelope. Do not simply cave and crumble up into a ball.