And here’s yet another piece of juicy information, in case you wonder if you missed your chance at taking the miraculous cure: Romania is the least vaccinated country in Europe, and the COVID cases are well tapered out; in spite of what media reports, the COVID cases in Romania are few and rare between. The general population consensus is: “Screw ‘em and their experimental vaccine! Not doin’ it.” On public forums, people go mock the vaccinated and say just how unbelievable silly it is that “some idiots” accepted the vaccine. The vaccine are basically the laughing stock of the nation right now.

At the same time, the authorities have made tremendous efforts to promote the vaccine. A number of mayors posed while supposedly getting the vaccine, smiling and offering health advice. Because being a mayor qualifies you to be some sort of patron of health, supposedly. Incentives, like Romanian traditional sausages, were offered on the spot for those who accepted vaccines. That wasn’t enough, so then they started with money incentives – about 10% of an average pay check.
That still didn’t work. So far, the population that got vaccinated is just under 30%.

False reports of high percentages – like 60-80% have been promoted in the Romanian media, in order to put create enough pressure on the population to accept the vaccine. Nope, still didn’t work.

One of the adult Romanian’s favorite saying to us, when we were kids growing up, was:
– Well, why did you do that?
– Because so and so did it too!
– And if they jump in a pit, are you jumping head in too??

Never have I ever been left off the hook with my parents or teachers by invoking that I did something stupid because someone else did it first, or because we were in cahoots. In fact, the adults in our society have always made efforts (sometimes successful, sometimes not as successful) to figure out the share of responsibility that I had in whatever went wrong. And the punishment was always applied only once, and always corroborated with what their understanding of my fault having been. Of course sometimes they got it wrong, based on how persuasive the other little rat who got in trouble with me was, but at least I always knew that I will get my say in what happened and I will have room to explain why I did what I did.

That “pit” saying was engraved in our brains since we were kids; there are also additional sayings that helped us remember the reasons why we have a brain, like: “Carrying that head of yours so it doesn’t rain in your throat?” or “Is that head just a gap filler between your ears?”

So now, since the epidemic needs to taper out and the rest of the world is supposed to just carry on – of course, with the understanding that we have established a new normality, the normality of excluding out of the society the ones who don’t comply to the will of the majority – they have no choice but to re-open Romania to the world as well. (“Bummer!”, think the vaccine sellers, right?) But because Romania didn’t fall in the trap of making a vaccine just because everyone else does it, there are two MAJOR changes that are on the way to be happening: one, it is a very subtle but yet with great consequences change in the school curricula  – of course it is!!! – and the second one is, there is a new wave of compensation for the good puppies who did what the master asked: 60 days of free breakfast for the vaccinated. Oh, yum!

So let’s talk about these two changes.

First of all, outside the glorious socialist era in Romania, never in the history of Romania had anyone ever gotten food from the government in exchange for any medical procedure. Granted, if you go to the hospital and donate a particular amount of blood, the hospital will give you a voucher enough for one meal, with recommendations regarding the needs of your body and how to replenish the iron quickly after a considerable amount of blood had been removed from your veins.

Other than that, no other procedure that you can just walk off justifies – according to the National Medical Association – free meals subsidized by the government. (Of course, if you are being admitted for a surgical procedure, you are on the hospital diet, but that is also covered by your monthly pay check – Romania’s insurance system is greatly different than the American one.)

But with the COVID vaccine, for 60 days after the shot, you seem to desperately need veggies and fruit. So the state compensates you for doing the right thing and making the healthy choice and taking the vaccine.

I’m trying really hard to see what other good and healthy choice that people do is SO enthusiastically supported by any other government in the world. I struggle to find one. It’s not like we have lung health contests in which the ones who smoke the least win EBT cards for veggies and fruit. It’s not like the ones who read the most win any prizes. It’s not like the most faithful husband wins husband of the year award or the tidies mother wins any mom of the month award.
We don’t compensate those who make healthy choices regarding their diet; we don’t compensate the increasingly vanishing non-obese population in America, and we would never applaud anyone not stealing from their company.

At any rate, if you want free veggies and have had your vaccine, maybe take a trip to Romania. Or maybe just hand on for another 2-3 months, until you start having vaccine nutrition privileges in your own country. (Worry not, it will happen; stupid ideas spread like wildfires.)

But the more interesting aspect of this COVID aftermath is the changes that are being proposed to the curricula. What exactly are they suggesting should be changed? The math curricula. Specifically, they are planning on removing the vector geometry curricula that is currently studied in high school, grades 9^th and 10^th.   

Just as a general idea regarding the level of math that pupils study – or rather, used to study – in Romania: during Ceausescu’s time, one of my aunts, her husband and their two daughters were able to escape the country and made it to the States. They somehow landed in the former conservative Oregon, over 35 years ago. My cousins, by the time the socialist system fell and were able to travel freely back into the country, were high school aged. They came to visit us for a summer holiday, and since the visit was going to be a 3 months re-acquaintance with the large family left behind type of thing, they brought their notebooks and summer homework to work on while in Romania. They were stuck at math. My elder brother, 5^th grade, and myself, 3^rd grade, we did their homework. The American math level was just about the same as a 3^rd grader’s and a 5^th grader’s math level in Romania. (You’re not misreading. A 3^rd and 5^th non-genius graders breezed through the high school math homework of American-educated kids.)

Now, what is geometry good for?

First of all, the most notable reward for studying geometry is that geometry helps you to bring together both sides of your brain. In other words, not just be a right-brain dreamer, but also a left-brain thinker. The left-brain is the more logical, technical field, whereas the right-brain is the part that visualizes and where the artist gets their creative inspiration from. Most left leaning people only use their right brain. Most conservative people use their left brain only. Not many people have the ability to make the two connect and work together as one – in fact, there are only very few personality types that naturally use both their right and their left hemisphere; this is a trait that naturally, the INTJs poses. (INTJs are the second rarest personality type in the world, btw.)  Geometry will assist in creating pathways that help people think comprehensively and analyse a situation based not only on their natural proclivities but with the added power of the half of the brain that they don’t naturally use. It’s a win-win for both thinkers and dreamers.

Second, when you learn to use geometry you also learn to think logical. The capacity to think critically and to understand concepts needs to be developed, just like the ability to walk. Populations can and are being dumbed down by simply not stretching the pupil’s brains with enough mental exercises, among which, the most remarkable exercises are the geometry ones. Having a critical thinking is very important in everyday life, as it is in the process of electing representatives, leaders and governors. When thinking logically many difficult problems become digestible and simple solutions can be found. To reason logically is one thing that you learn in Geometry.

Third, by applying geometry students learn to think outside the box. The same solutions can be applied to many other areas of your life. For instance, when studying the different population groups, understanding statistics and understanding when statistics are misinterpreted and misquoted.

There are merely three benefits of studying geometry that are in no way related to a career in mathematics or sciences. These are benefits that really, even artists would benefit from, because if they can’t understand the market they operate in and make projections for income and expenses, they’re going to fall into the trap of “starving artist” myth. (I can assure you that any starving artist is starving merely by choice; there will ALWAYS be a field in which their greatest creative assets can produce something that someone else will want to buy. But because artists are only using their right brain, they can never find the right niche to sell their skills.)

Do you think there is any connection between the fact that this experimental vaccine failed so miserably in a country that glorifies math and geometry in particular? By the time the average Romanian student finishes high school, they would have studied: analytical geometry (starting with 4^th grade till 5^th grade), descriptive geometry (6^th to 8^th grade), 2d geometry (6^th grade – 12^th grade), 3d geometry (7^th grade – 12^th grade), trigonometry / vector geometry (9^th grade – 12^th grade), projective geometry (10^th to 12^th grade).
Specialty high schools also study sacred geometry in the 12^th grade.
Differential geometry (2d+3d combined, 8^th grade) and neeuclidian (n dimensions) geometry is studies at universities, first couple years, depending on the major and minor.
At least, this was the curriculum that was taught to students my brother’s generation, my own generation, and the generations after us (born around or after the revolution in 1989). These people, the online folk who refused the vaccine, are my age back in Romania.

This is just some food for the thought. Of course, students don’t “have” to study old Latin, geometry, arithmetic, literature and arts. Why would they? You can make it in life without these. – Of course you can! But you simply can’t train your brain to think critically if you have never worked on creating those pathways that will be used for thinking and taking decisions further in life.

Do you genuinely believe those who decide what the curriculum will be in public schools don’t have access to the information that clearly proves that if certain pathways are not created in the brain at the right age, people will be literally dumber and will simply not be able to use their own brains to understand, analyse, think, and take a self-standing decision?…

Look, regardless whether you have been vaccinated or not, there’s one thing we can’t deny: there have been made tremendous pressures for everyone to get vaccinated FAST, and without enough trial time. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am just against somebody else deciding for me to take a pill – or a vaccine, or a procedure. Whatever it is, I cannot force it on anyone else, and no one else should even begin to think that they can force it on me. At the same time, the idea that those who make a choice different to ours can / should be removed from the society is appalling and beyond dangerous. If the great majority starts thinking that, we’re past the point of no return.

This incentive program in Romania is diabolic. The incentives anywhere on the globe for any kind of procedures or treatments are diabolical. It should be completely out of the question for the state to offer benefits or incentives for certain health-related choices.

I am not saying Romania is getting it right all the time. In fact, Romania sometimes gets it so wrong that 3 million adults left their homeland in order to live, work and play in other countries. But on this issue, Romania was spot on: “Give me the information, let me decide. If you push me, I won’t do it merely because you’re pushing me, which makes me suspicious that you’re not telling me the whole story.” Spot on! Well done, Romania!