May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Skepticism and critical thinking is not panacea, but can help to understand the world better
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.” President Dwight Eisenhower,
“Chance for Peace” speechApril 1953,
COVID-19 provided an interesting way for the USA population to pay the price for the militarism of its elite.
We can already can state the the US government reaction was subpar:
Both the federal and state governments (especially is the most densely populated areas such as NY metropolitan area failed to
act swiftly despite the expectation that the new virus would become a pandemic.
Both the federal and the USA government failed to adapt and change measures and their strategy as technology to fight the virus
as new facts became available. Failure to protect medical personnel is one of the most blatant blunders. The same is true about
protection of nursing homes, which became hotspots of infection.
The the federal government failed to properly provide for the poor and working poor. These people are forced to demand a lifting
of lock-downs in order to survive financially. Now it is clear that the epidemic disproportionally hit old and poor.
As of April 25, 2020 the COVID-19 epidemic in the USA is over the peak and is on decline. Period of exponential growth ended around
March 22, 2020 and since then the acceleration is stably negative and now is around 8% a day ( 5 days average). This is a huge, four
times drop from around 32% a day during the exponential phase.
Fearmongering graphs with absolute numbers is just a smoke screen over the fact that statistically COVID-19 did not exceeded the
lethality a common seasonal flu (nobody is denying that virus pneumonia caused by COVID-19 is much worse then bacterial pneumonia
-- a common complication of ordinary seasonal flu). Fearmongering using absolute numbers is pretty effective and a very nasty trick
( please note that average mortality in the USA is 8K a day (240K a month) and average number of infected by seasonal flu in tens of
millions; 0.8 million is just minuscule number in comparison), Emphasizing number of positive case helps to create drama, but the only
interesting figure is the number of hospitalization which Hopkins disinformators conveniently omit. And inside the number of hospitalizations
the number of severe cases (patients moved to ISU is also pretty informative; none is provided )Also the default in right bottom square
should be "daily cases" because "confirmed" is not only uninformative, but represent pure fearmongering.
Unfortunately this silly, alarmist
and incompetently constructed web site became the reference site for the epidemic. It just scream: give me money poor Pinocchio.
Below is the simple spreadsheet that I constructed and that provide a little bit more clear picture of what is happing since the beginning
of the epidemic. From it is is clear that we are past peak and that the virus retreats in all metrics (daily positive cases, daily death,
daily hospitalization, daily ICU cases (ICU cases stabilized at around 14K total and change very little from day today now), etc)
The USA handing of the coronarovirus epidemic is interesting by its unique mix of effects of neoliberalism and incompetence
of Trump administration (which was distracted in December and January by impeachment farce, thanks to Pelosi and friends). Effects of
neoliberalism with its offshoring on manufacturing, outsourcing of essential functions, and long transcontinental "just-in-time" supply
chains was especially drastic. The country with one trillion military budget had found itself without masks without sanitizers and even
without special goans. Navy leadership was caught without pants, and
Captain Crozier who raises alarm about
the epidemic on USS Theodor Roosevelt paid the price for reveling this sad fact.
Some idiotic race for ventilators also unfolded despite the fact that it was not clear if they are proper tool for treating severe
cases of COVID-19. Unconfirmed information exists that this is more like high altitude sickness due to depletion of hemoglobin for which
ventilator is useless, than malfunction of chest muscles or breathing regulation. In the latter case ( the case of ARDS ) ventilator
does help some small percentage of patients; most die anyway iether while on ventilator or soon after due to mechanical damage to the
lungs). Idiotic statement of governor Cuomo about NY need of 40K ventilators can be viewed as the pinnacle of this "ventilator
hoarding" epidemic.
As you would expect the performance of the neoliberal state during epidemic can be anything but competent because "greed is good"
and depreciation of solidarity does NOT fare well at such times. Add to immanent to neoliberalism (aka casino capitalism) existence
of largely parasitic class of financial intermediaries (FIRE sector) which like intestinal worms weaken the social organism.
Another factor is the level of degeneration of neoliberal elite. The incompetence on many levels during this epidemic is a symptom
of a morally-degenerate managerial class (in especially its most parasitic forms represented by equity sharks such as Romney,
the gallery of "banksters" like Goldman Sachs "financial hackers", and vulture funds "titans" such as Paul Singer. Regulate corporate
management (such as in IBM or Boeing) also is perverted by MBS types and mostly concerted with self-enrichment by offshoring,
outsourcing, cutting the head count and using this instruments pushing up stock prices and getting outsized bonuses. People infected
with neoliberal ideas have no sense of responsibility to anyone other than themselves.
The bank bailout in 2008 buried neoliberal ideology (the preachers of the neoliberal agenda suddenly found themselves without an
audience) but also exposed the level of hijacking of the state by financial oligarchy. It is hard to distinguish between
incompetence and fraud. Much that looks incompetent conceals fraud (stock buybacks, Boeing fiasco, etc). And note that Boeing
moved its headquarters to Chicago “to be more like GE”. Well they’ve destroyed the company to be more like the looters and liars and
cheats. Along with GE there are some other notable poster-children of how private enterprise has committed suicide through the wanton
bloodletting of its skilled employees (Boeing being a recent case-in-point).
The same phenomena can be found in universities, colleges where faculties are no longer bolstered by a strong bench of tenured
staff, contract and non-tenured hire-and-fire disposable staff are now the norm. No matter how many “systems” and “quality functions”
they put in place, experience matters.
The story of the USA reaction on the emerging
coronavirus pandemic can also be viewed as the case study of bureaucratic incompetence, when conflicting institutions and agenda
paralyze any efforts. Fauci slept completely the first two months and then start running from one news outlet to another crying Wolf!
Wolf!. Trump incompetence is only the tip of the iceberg. The whole Deep State proved to be too rigid to properly react to the epidemic,
because each measure looked too drastic and too damaging to neoliberal globalization, until it was late to implement it. And then it
was implemented anyway. One effect of any large bureaucracy is that any rare oasis of reliable and timely information
that exist is to be suppressed. And this is not Trump fault, although his incompetence exaggerated the effect. This is iron logic
of any large bureaucracy.
What is interesting is that the epidemic is localized in few hot spots with the largest being New York metropolitan areas. So governments
could took measures immediately even without federal government prompting them. And that would be much better that nationwide shutdown.
And FBI and CIA have the local governments in pocket anyway (this is a national security state, not something else after all). So where
was the CIA boss when we needed her ? Or she is just capable of running Russiagate gaslighting operation type of operations? CIA
honchos used to have audacity to launch the efforts to depose Trump. Can we believe that they can't bypass Trump when they need to?
One of the problems is that financialization and securitization of everything revealed during this epidemic is that has effectively
separated the managerial class in both private and public sector from knowledge and experience of actual logistics and execution. Transferring
securities with the push of a button is not the same as getting an industrial plant or phone center built, trained, and running efficiently.
Companies and organizations with a history of doing this well manage to lost that capability in only a couple of years after financial
shark CEO was installed (e.g. IBM, CDC, FEMA, numerous companies taken over by private equity ). They know the price of everything
and the value of nothing
The rise of the FIRE sectors as a percentage of GDP has been obvious for a long time. And now the USA economy is over-financialized.
All this has done is with layer after layers of debt and interest payments to the detriment of the real economy. Financialization
creates a positive feedback loop. Every system with positive feedback loop will crash, sooner or later. Neoliberals worked really hard
to remove not just the negative feedback, but any traces of the negative feedback on financial sector. That makes COVID-19
recession more serious then in other circumstances and requiring much large bailout of FIRE sector.
The idea that “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence” (Hanlon's
razor - Wikipedia ) is not longer true. The neoliberal America has a lot of corruption. Some obviously stupid actions are explainable
for short term greed motives. That explains much of what we are seeing now.
CDC botched testing program during COVID-19 epidemic became a textbook example of bureaucratic incompetence. They do not do
competence in Washington. You need to start holding people responsible and that's impossible with the new neoliberal aristocracy (financial
oligarchy), which inherited all vices of the old but none of its virtues.
The virus epidemic which started in the USA in full force only in March (two month after the start of epidemic in China) will probably
follow Chinese pattern. Which means the time to the peak will be around two-three months (which means approximately in late April
ot early May the epidemics might start subsiding.). The worst pandemic going on in the US and around the world in not Covit-19,
it is opioid pandemic, 53,000 died last year in the US from opioids abuse alone. And this is not just in the US it is a world wide problem.
The aggravating factors for the USA include amazing lack of discipline (especially for teenagers), ignorance, petty greed, incompetence
of the elite, and paradoxically widespread nutty religiousness (allowing religious services while keeping everybody on quarantines is
pretty strange to me.)
Extremes meet: Orthodox Jews and Christian conservatives behavior patterns during this epidemic were very similar to Muslims: the
funniest irony of it all is that while Iran has exacerbated coronavirus spread due to religious ignorance of population, similar incidents
happened in the US too. Add to this the "American exceptionalism" which in reality is primitive nationalism, and neoliberalism with
its deification of "free markets" which prevent some necessary measures, and "Huston we have a problem"
IMHO any elite who is detached from the actual production process and engaged primarily in parasitic activities (finance), is decadent.
Any elite who is detached from the actual production process and engaged primarily in parasitic activities (finance), is
decadent. In other words financialization of the economy means decadence of the elite
Pretty drastic measures taken by some states like NY, NJ, California and Washington (Currently New York Metropolital are is the epicenter
of the epidemics with around 50% of all positive test for coronavirus ) were compromised by religious nuttiness and "covidiots" a sizable
faction of younger population and students which went to Florida and other resorts during spring break despite warnings and then, because
universities were closed, brought infection to their communities. Some people considered losing a couple of thousand dollar which
they paid for cruise ship trip more valuable then their health and went to cruise ship tripe even after the incident with Diamond Princess
(the first bad news about passengers on the Diamond Princess came on Feb 4, 2020).
Till March 2e we saw typical for initial stages of any flu epidemic exponential increase of cases, with the number of patient
doubling in approx. three days but a very low number of critical cases and hospitalizations. Later the speed of epidemics start
slowing down and in April dropped to less then 10% a day.
The peak of the USA elidemic might happen somewere in late April, early May. Number of infections among medical personnel, another
important metric, are unavailable (worldometers.info)
It took the USA eight days to get from 100 cases to 1000 and another eight days to get from 1K to 10K. Some of the dynamics
can be explained the low availability of test kits -- this was the area where CDC royally screwed the US population
Unfortunately, the current atmosphere increasingly exhibits the characteristics of a collective panic—and that is always a poor basis
for intelligent policy decisions.
The neoliberal society with its twisted guiding philosophy of radical individualism and competition combined with a supremacist “that
could never happen here” attitude quickly falls into panicked chaos when reality kicks in and reveals the society’s underlying vulnerabilities.
Countries with weak social safety nets and an ideological opposition to social responsibility are extremely vulnerable to systemic breakdown
when their societies are hit with unexpected stress. That is what we see in the USA. This virus is revealing just how ineffective the
neoliberal social Darwinism (“every man for himself”) ethic (aka "neoliberal rationality") is and how deeply in denial and out
of touch with reality these societies are. Including first of all neoliberal politicians.
The for-profit health system in the USA is certainly is very efficient in raking in cash for insurance companies and big pharma.
But health care outcomes are mediocre at best and other countries do a far better job for far less money. The most basic needs of patients
and health care workers are often unmet. Health care workers complain they haven’t received proper training putting them in danger of
infection and do not have supplies to protect themselves even as they treat COVID-19 patients. And that's in richest country in the
world.
...system can’t provide enough hand sanitizer the governor of New York came up with a solution. Andrew Cuomo announced that
the state will produce hand sanitizer made by
prison labor .
We already are No.1. NYC is now world capital of coronavirus infections. The fact that the country with one trillion
military budget and 17 intelligence agencies was caught without pants for this epidemics is incredible. No plan for dealing with epidemic.
States improvise as epidemics unfold, often overreacting with disastrous for the economy results.
We definitely have "Coronavirus recession" now as the second stage of 2008 recession/stagnation. All neoliberal transformation of
the USA economy now had blow into our faces. Silicon Valley is partially guilty as the staunch promoter of neoliberalism and globalization
in the USA. I would jail a couple to "tech titans" just as a useful scapegoats, but only after banksters (especially NYC faction of
private equity sharks who destroyed the US healthcare). Renovation of Alcatraz for this purpose would be a very worthwhile project :-)
The USA might fare worse then China in this epidemic as there are a lot of overweight, deeply unhealthy people in the USA.
Many overweigh people are diabetic. Especially among African Americans, I sometimes watch with amazement and horror how many barely
walk and have difficulties getting out of the car. Especially all those 300+ pound women and men.
For a country with one trillion military budget not having enough masks and ventilators and accepting help from China and Russia
is very humiliating. Level of bureaucratic incompetence demonstrated in this particular case is just staggering.
Now it is clear the healthcare system has military importance. What is worse is that as the USA is considered now "not capable to
adhere to signed treaties" there might be a new round of armed race in this particular area.
And in the USA healthcare is almost completely broken and taken over by private equity sharks. Only people with a good insurance
are OK in this environment (let's say top 20% or so). Most of the population are screwed up. Ambulance ride can cost you neat $5K even
if you have insurance, as most ambulances are conveniently "out of network" and are owned by Wall Street scum. Doctors here are not
always trustworthy. For example, dozens of cardiac surgeons landed in jail performing unnecessary operations of healthy patients. And
for one caught, probably tens exist that were not caught. Horrible stores abound. Inserting stents into healthy patients became a national
hobby. Such a money sucking insects in white gowns.
Many people are afraid to go to the hospital even in case of real emergencies, as they do not have health insurance. That includes
most of contractors. Because hospitals now are also owned by Wall Street scum. Financialization, as it is called. AKA Casino Capitalism.
Selling stocks, buying stocks, getting bonuses. Most readers probably know the game and participated in this game (as marks ;).
That means that those people will propagate virus and make the epidemic worse and much longer. In NJ not 100% of front
line staff of shops that still open still wearing masks (and almost nobody wear masks before March 20 or so). What is the value of quarantine
is such situation is very unclear to me. Also not all shops force visitors to disinfect hands on entry. This is another big no-no.
Some shops that enforce two meter policy inside create lines of hundred of people outside which probably serve better for the propagation
of the virus then presence inside the shop as the period of close infection is longer.
Frontline staff of still opened shops who do not wear masks will propagate virus and make the epidemic worse and much longer.
In NJ (No.2 state in the USA, as for the number of tested positive) not 100% of front line staff of shops that still open
still wearing masks (and almost nobody wear masks before March 20 or so).
What is the value of quarantine is such situation
is very unclear to me.
It is quite possible that the virus originated from the USA. There was so called "vaping pneumonia" epidemic int he USA in august
2019. Google "vaping pneumonia" -- it looks very similar to the COVID-19 virus pneumonia. Just a different category of affected:
mostly smokers of some nasty staff. And for some reason nobody made genomic analysis of this the pathogen in this illness, which raises
an important question: Is it different from COVID-19 or not?
I would like to state it again: the fact that the country with one trillion military budget was caught without pants for this epidemics
is incredible. And this is for a country with laboratories which store anthrax and other nasty staff. IMHO a large part of Pentagon
brass, all those "Pentagon perfumed princes" need to be replaced after this incident.
Not enough stockpiled masks (even regular surgical mask, to say nothing about N95 masks), no ventilators (or more correctly not enough),
no reserve production capacities to produce them, no plan how to deal with epidemics, some ad-hoc improvisations on state level. In
other words this country does not have ability to produce N95 masks in quantities needed even for hospital staff (and you be be
sure that in case of epidemic international supplies will not difficult to get.) Just a bunch of expensive and semi-useless F35 and
aircraft carriers to feed military industrial complex. BTW aircraft careers and submarines proved to be perfect places for the propagation
of this virus. Warships (like cruise ships) are for this virus like mosquitoes for malaria.
To add insult to injury this court jester Dr. Fauci, since 1984 the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) slept over all January and woke up only in late February, crying Wolf,
Wolf. He should not only be dismissed but prosecuted for criminal negligence. This old hat should travel to China or Korea in Jan and
access the situation immediately because close ties between China and the USA in globalized economy. You do not need to have Ph.D to
understand the NYC and LA will be next after Wuhan.
On the positive side epidemic is slowing down in the USA from average increase of positive probes 34% a day to 24% a day. I calculated
some statistics and it is clear the danger is overblown and just enforcing wearing of masks in public places would do the job in this
particular case.
There are only slightly above 30K hospitalizations (read cases of virus pneumonia) in the USA so far. Statistically this is just
noise in comparison with seasonal flu (810K hospitalizations) but the virus pneumonia itself is very nasty (with fibrosis of lungs of
various degree as a common outcome), so this is not apple-to apple comparison. Flu mainly causes bacterial pneumonia.
The original reaction in the United States government to the corona outbreak was surprisingly casual. It is unclear what information
multiple intelligence agencies have had, because now they were engaged in efforts to save face and blame Trump administration and China
(U.S.
intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic ).
One of the most regrettable blunders was that the administration did not close access to senior care centers for visitors and some
of them which became the local centers of infection. As well as religious congregations. Some orthodox congregations and evangelical
congregations became hot spots for propagating infection. Is it so difficult to worship your God in masks ? Hand disinfection
was also not implemented.
Trump administration did absolutly nothing in January and February to rump up local production of masks and other clothing necessary
for medical personnel to fight infection. Medics, who are in most danger among all population groups, were not systematically
trained by Koreans (the USA has two month to do so). Proper protocols were not established. This was the major blunder of
Trump administration and the case of bureaucratic incompetence what will be studying in textbooks.
In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately,
we do not know if these measures
work. School closures, for example, may reduce transmission rates. But they may also backfire if children socialize anyhow, if school
closure leads children to spend more time with susceptible elderly family members, if children at home disrupt their parents ability
to work, and more. School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious
disease.
The USA government behaviour drastically changed in March 11 with Trump's surprise announcement of cancelling air travel from
EU countries for 30 days. Initially GB and Ireland were excluded, which provide for strangled travelers a "window" of escape. Later
they were added. Still all this was badly planned and caused major panic with ticket prices for the last flights from EU to the
USA skyrocketing to ten thousand dollars.
CDC blunders is another parts of the story of bureaucratic incompetence. CDC did not launch the training of medical personnel in
January to use protective gear, despite that the fact that the virus severely affected medical personnel in Wuhan.
There was no efforts to create "reasonable" safeguards in US airports, despite that fact that both are known centers of infections.
There were only very limited attempt to establish the screening and mandatory quarantine of passengers in airports, arriving from international
flights.
Looks like the USA government completely wasted the whole January February and met flaring up of infections in March unprepared.
And what is most important CDC botched the production and distribution of virus tests leaving the country without them till late March,
when testing can change nothing. Gin was out of the bottle.
It seems the CDC, NIH and the USA privatized health care system in general was caught flat-footed and didn't have any plan to execute.
Currently CDC does not even provide the information about how this particular virus spreads Look at this pitiful document (Transmission
of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) CDC)
The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.
Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs.
Spread from contact with infected surfaces or objects
It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching
their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
And this is from organization with several billion dollars budget and specialized labs which theoretically should be able to establish
precisely how virus replicates in short order. And what are possible health effects for those who get severe and critical cases but
did not die.
At the same time Trump attempted to fight panic spread by neoliberal MSM as for mortality and that's probably the only positive
part of the government response (
Trump disputes World Health Organization death rate )
Asked about WHO's coronavirus fatality rate findings during an interview Wednesday, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity: "Well,
I think the 3.4% is really a false number."
He added, "now, this is just my hunch ... based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of
people will have this, and it's very mild."
Trump later put the number at less than 1%.
Later events proved that he was right.
While some problems that the USA now experiencing with coronavirus are the direct or indirect result of blunders (like CDC blunder
with test kits; of overcrowding of returning passengers in airports on arrival from Europe after the fight ban), some are not.
Many things are rooted deeply in neoliberal globalization and perverted neoliberal rationality. Both make proper reaction to dangerous
epidemic almost impossible. So by-and-large the USA current problems were unavoidable.
Also in epidemics like in war mistakes are to be made. At the same time repeating Chinese mistakes was pain vanilla incompetence.
Classic bureaucratic incompetence, if you wish. While there are no perfect responses in the current environment (the availability of
a vaccine would change everything), the earlier government reacted, the slower the virus would spread.
But under neoliberal globalization any reaction like closing international travel and mandatory 14 days quarantine for arraval entails
severe economic disruption, and that means that the measures were postponed till it's to late for them to be affective while providing
the same level of economic disruption. Meanwhile large sectors of the economy, here and abroad, are nearly collapsing because
of fears about COVID-19 epidemics that are not entirely justified.
Watch the interviews below. Dr. Anthony Fauci who is the
head of the head of the
National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) This high level "medical diplomat" in his March interviews carefully avoid mentioning
that fact that CDC completely botched producing and distributing test kits and the government did nothing substantial to combat the
virus the whole February. And that he spept all january and February doing tnothing to prepere the county to the epidemic.
As the result the USA goverment was not able to provide adequate quantities of masks even to medical workers. Frontline personnel
in grocery shops, Wall Mart, etc still working the first half of March without masks. That makes a joke the fact that the USA was viewed
as a country best prepared to facing the pandemic:
Ever since the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, which the Global Health Security Index calls
"a wake-up call," projects like this have been created to put better mechanisms in place for
future pandemics of all kinds; be they naturally occurring viruses or genetically engineered bioweapons.
The tests the Index was based on concerns whether countries have "functional, tested, proven capabilities
for stopping outbreaks at the source" which are then "regularly tested and shown to be functional
in exercises or real-world events." Pretty serious stuff, then.
Countries were assessed based on six criteria: “Prevention, Detection and Reporting, Rapid Response,
Health System, Compliance with International Norms, and Risk Environment.” Of those six, the US topped
the field in four, even scoring an almost perfect 98.2 in “Early Detection & Reporting.” (So
much for that.)
Overall, the US put the rest of the world to shame, scoring 83.5 out of a possible 100. In second place
was the United Kingdom, followed by the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. Italy is in 31st place overall,
and China is in 51st place. Most of the lowest scoring countries are small islands or African countries,
and Equatorial Guinea gets the wooden spoon. The full list and report can be viewed
here.
A comedy of errors
Being one of the richest countries in the world at the cutting edge of scientific innovation and medicine
should have gone some way towards making America pandemic-proof. So why, then, are they in such big trouble
now? The answer lies in their government’s poor decision-making from the very beginning, which has sent
them on the most dangerous of all possible paths.
They were
too slow to begin testing suspected cases, and when they did, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
bungled the rollout. Their cases really began to spike around mid-March, but now that they have taken
the lead in confirmed cases outside of China, one feels that they will not look back. Just how bad the
situation could deteriorate in the US remains to be seen.
Most airports did not perform even elementary screening of arriving passengers. And the operation of returning the US citizens
from Europe after travel with EU countries was banned was also completely botched. All February the administration essentially was allowing
the flow infected passengers from Italy and France without screening and quarantine (two severely hit by COVID-19 countries with
large tourists flows from the USA) to spread the disease in the USA:
But there is some progress. With national emergency declared on Feb 13, FEMA's USD 50 billion is unlocked to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
FEMA is one of the few federal institutions which still works and works well.
Arrival of warm weather on Eastern Coast may significantly change the dynamic of epidemics, slow down infections and help NYC, which
is the most severe affected on this coast and the most densely populated area.
Measures for self-isolation of seniors that state like NY, NJ and California tries now, with all their shortcomings, is of
vital importance and it should have been done much earlier, because the USA has advantage of Chinese experience with this epidemic (which
it by-and-large ignored). This was not done. There should also be the prohibition of air trips and remove vacations (including cruise
ships) for this category of people. Violators they put their own life and lives of other people especially medical personnel in unnecessary
danger. Seniors are the major factor is overcrowding of intensive care beds in the hospitals. Trying to protect them from this
virus is probably the most important part of "flattening the curve" efforts.
The USA has a lower population density than other affected countries so outside of large cities like New York it is in much better
position to suppress the epidemics. Large parts of the country such as Texas already have warm weather which typically helps
to suppress such epidemics.
Globally COVID-19 is spreading more slowly then in the USA slowly: 69K cases on Feb 15 vs. 162K cases on March 15: in other words
the number of cases approx. doubled in one month period. Assuming that the next month will be same and then epidemic start to
subside replicating the shape of the curve before the peak, we will have globally around 162+324+162K=648K or something like half-million
cases total for this virus
The delay between the shutdown in Wuhan and a fall in new daily cases
was 12 days . That suggests that in two weeks from now (April 2) we will probably see a drop in the number of new cases
in the US. But that is not guaranteed.
The priority is to slow down the spread of the disease to lessen overcrowding of hospital beds with severe
cases.
At the same time there are multiple cases of selfish, reckless behaviour of a part of the population. Some young people from
closed schools and universities engage in travel as tickets and hotels are dirt cheap now. Those who carry the virus are spreading the
infection with them. Some people who are at risk are not wearing mask and engage in reckless behaviour disrespecting community
interests such as shopping using public transport or other encounters with large number of people. Years of neoliberalism brainwashing
("Greed is good", "shareholder value" mantra, glorification of unlimited predatory competition as in Latin saying "homo
homini lupus est") converted a large part of the US population into greedy and selfish animals, and while
such people concentrate in FIRE sector, other segment of population are also severely affected. The situation is especially
bad in NYC.
Years of neoliberalism brainwashing converted some part of the US population into greedy and selfish animals and this epidemic
and while such people concentrate in FIRE sector, other segment of population are also severely affected. Epidemic of hoarding
also had shown the ugly face of neoliberal rationality
in full grace. The situation is especially bad in NYC.
So far infections are clustered within families and friends of initially infected persons. For example, if wife is infected, the
husband and children typically became infected too. Common spreading centers are religious gatherings and conferences. The same danger
represents travelling with the infected person in public transport if he/she is not wearing a mask, or any other close and prolonged
contact. Most of initial US patients had recently visited Wuhan or attended meeting/conference were at least one infected person
was present. "Community spread" cases, where person was infected in transport or public places like grocery shops like on this
early state of epidemic are relatively rare.
The lower you are in the USA "wealth pyramid" the worse it is for you. Particularly for the elderly underclass.
Is the Chinese Government using the Corona outbreak as a cover for some other purpose?
Definitely. Iranian too. Related to trade war/sanctions I feel. The bottom line, everybody on top wins, in this game. Say….up
to 20 %. The rest are designated losers. Lower in the pyramid worse it is. The elderly underclass in particular. Good
gig…for some. So far works like charm.
Critique of the "flattening the curve" approach adopted by the USA
Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common
diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, etc that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm
the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being
overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason
we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.
One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long ockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy and society.
Hyping the threat by MSM already produced harding epidemic in the USA. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including
financial crisis.
At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.
In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the
infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people
died.
We can discuss whether CODID-19 represents a pandemic or not, but hoarding epidemics in the USA is very real.
It also feels like a scam: there is no shortage of snake oil sellers who hope stoking such fears will make people buy more supplies.
The reality is that there is little point “preparing“ for the most catastrophic scenarios some of these people envision. As a species,
we live and die by our social world and infrastructure — and outside some minimal stocks (say two weeks supply of food in areas
affected by infection and which might be subject to quarantine (which are currently only two cities in the US.) Moreover,
it is difficult to predict what will be needed in the face of total catastrophe (Preparing
for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S. - Scientific American Blog Network ). You can't drink sanitizer and you need minimal amount of
it when you are outside of home. In all other cases regular soap is more effective against this virus, so hoarding sanitizer is
far from the best move you can make:
American Association for the Advancement of Science By Derek Lowe 4 March, 2020
Since this is going to be a post about the coronavirus, let's start off with this PSA: wash your hands. These viruses have
a lipid envelope that is crucial to their structure and function, and soaps and detergents are thus very effective at inactivating
them. It's fast, it's simple, and it's one of the more useful things that any individual can do under these conditions.
The real crisis scenarios we’re likely to encounter require cooperation and, crucially, “flattening the curve” of the crisis
which includes sharing not hoarding, so the more vulnerable (older folks) can fare better and our social world and the infrastructure
will be less stressed. For those who can do it that way that means switching to work from home and avoiding unnecessary travel
and meetings. Most think those days can be done via phone of via teleconferencing.
We do not need to contribute to the panic, and to panic buying isopropyl alcohol and hand sanitizers as if there no tomorrow.
From state to state, shelves at grocery stores are being emptied. Community after community is stocking up on essential goods as they
anticipate a very remote (or non-existent in many areas of the country ) possibility our of fears of forced China style
self-quarantine. In reality only retired persons in areas with active cases of infection need to self-quarantine as they are the
most vulnerable and can overwhelm hospitals. They generally should stay home, avoid direct contact with relatives and friends
(which are rare those days, anyway, so no big deal) , and do only rare shopping which should exclude all shopping for clothing, etc.
They need a lot of exposure to sun, vitamins, flesh air to boost the immune system. Abandoning bad habits like smoking would be
nice too. No or minimal visits to restaurants, entertainment centers like casino, or God forbid cruise ships or international
travel. For the sake of everyone else, they should prepare to stay home for a few weeks, while epidemic burns out in their neighborhood
and try their best not to be infected. This way they will reduce their own risks, but most importantly, they will reduce the burden
on health care and delivery infrastructure and allow frontline workers to reach and help the most vulnerable.
What does “flattening the curve” mean for the current COVID-19 threat facing us: the emerging pandemic of this human coronavirus?
Epidemiologists often talk about two important numbers: R0 or how infectious a disease might be, expressed as the number
of people that are infected by each person who’s been infected; and the case fatality ratio (CFR): the number of people
who die as a result of being infected. For example, an R0 of two means each infected person infects two people on average,
while a number less than one means the disease is likely dying out in the population. Some diseases are deadlier than others: the
average case fatality ratio for Ebola has been around 50 percent, for example, while the common cold is rarely deadly for otherwise
healthy individuals.
The infectiousness of a virus, for example, depends on how much we encounter one another; how well we quarantine individuals
who are ill; how often we wash our hands; whether those treating the ill have proper protective equipment; how healthy we are to
begin with—and such factors are all under our control. After active measures were implemented, the R0 for the 2003 SARS epidemic,
for example, went from around three, meaning each person infected three others, to 0.04. It was our response to SARS in 2003 that
made sure the disease died out from earth, with less than a thousand victims globally.
... ... ..
All of this means that the only path to flattening the curve for COVID-19 is community-wide isolation: the more people stay home,
the fewer people will catch the disease. The fewer people who catch the disease, the better hospitals can help those who do. Crowding
at hospitals doesn’t just threaten those with COVID-19; if emergency rooms are overwhelmed, more flu patients, too, will die because
of lack of treatment, for example.
But what we see in the USA is primitive and destructive hoarding epidemic. Toilet paper, sanitary wipes and sanitizers are in short
supply as stocks are being exhausted. As of March 3, 2020 a 250 ml (8 ounces) bottle of hand sanitizer on Amazon was $60 or so (while
its regular price is $2 or so ;-). This is not only ridiculous but it beats "socialist back market" prices.
Ana
I know someone who is the head of security in the SF Bay for a large big box membership store that all of us in the States
are familiar with. Their stores in the SF Bay area have been selling out of water, hand sanitizers, gloves, masks and other
similar cleaning supplies, along with boxed mac and cheese and similar long shelf life foods.
Their regional supply center that brings replacement supply in over night by semi trucks has not been able to refill it’s own
pallets from suppliers. He just texted me pics of local big box stores in the Bay with empty shelves and no back stock is available.
I can’t find info on sales of things like generators. I don’t care what soothing nonsense the TV and feds blather at us. People
are trying to get what they think they need to cope with serious disruption.
Ana in Sacramento.
P.S. By the way, I was one of the paper pushers who designed emergency response and business resumption plans for the State
of California. This event was never considered or planned for. I’m retired so it may have been added after I left.
The dynamic of the USA panic can be watched via Amazon prices for those items and as of March 7 the panic is still in full swing
(you can buy the same 250 ml(8 ounces) bottle for mere $35 ;-) . And they used to say that such hoarding behaviour is typical
only for socialism ;-).
And despite chaotic and botched containment of epidemic (CDC botched development and production of test kits so badly that the officials
responsible probably should be tried for criminal negligence ) the USA government managed already take several measures to slow down
the spread of the virus (please note that time is working against the virus -- warm weather in East cost will come in May or even earlier).
For example, starting Sunday, Feb. 2, the US citizens, permanent residents and immediate family who have visited China's Hubei province
undergo a mandatory 14 days quarantine. On Mar 11, Trump administration prohibited all flights from Europe firs exampling UK and
Ireland and later adding them.
On Mar 13 Trump has declared the coronavirus a US national emergency and offered $50 billion for support of state and local governments
to fight the virus with FEMA.
At the same time the US Fed has increased its public support of the global private banking system in amounts looking to total in
the trillions of dollars and our Congress Critters are setting up to re-authorize the Patriot Act suppression of human rights.
On March 15 CDC recommended that all gatherings of more than 50 people within the United States be canceled for the next 8 weeks.
The same day California ordered all bars and nightclubs to shut their doors, restaurants to cut the number of tables in half and
for millions of seniors and people with chronic health conditions to immediately “self-isolate” at home
(mercurynews.com)
As the coronavirus continues its rapid spread, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday afternoon issued an urgent call for all California,
restaurants to cut the number of tables in half and for millions of seniors and people with chronic health conditions to immediately
“self-isolate” at home.
Newsom’s unprecedented call for action is designed to slow the infection rate, especially among the most vulnerable. The governor
stopped short of asking eating establishments to shut their doors, saying the need for food service during the pandemic remained
vital.
“We need to prioritize our focus,” Newsom said during an hour-long press conference in Sacramento. “We are looking at this from
a very holistic perspective.”
It was unclear how long the self-quarantine for seniors should continue.
NYC closed all schools staring Monday, March 16, 2020. NJ followed the suit. Both states resorted to pretty drastic measures.
All schools, entertainment outlets such as bars, nightclubs and non-essential shops are closed in NY and NJ. Meetings over
50 people prohibited. Malls are also closes in some counties.
The CDC stunning failure to provide the coronavirus testing kits needed to control the spread of the outbreak is a national outrage.
Their incompetence threatens to increase the scope and prolong the duration of epidemics and contributes to troubles that now
the USA economy experience.
It is unlearn why the CDC failed to make mass production of test kits its top priority and who is responsible. But it is clear that
heads should roll (The Mercury News editorial,
South Korea is testing 20,000 people every day, thanks to a biotech firm that anticipated the threat in January. South Korea is
providing free tests for anyone a doctor deems necessary at more than 100 facilities across the nation. The result is that South
Korea is now seeing more recoveries than new cases.
Contrast that with the state of California, which has only 10 million fewer people than South Korea. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday
that the state has been provided with 8,227 testing kits from the CDC. But some of those kits did not contain all the chemicals needed
to administer them to Californians — a glaring failure given that it’s been nearly two months since the coronavirus outbreak began
in China.
Newsom compared it to “going to the store and purchasing a printer, but forgetting to purchase the ink. You need multiple components.”
All told, as of Friday [Mar13, 2020], California had conducted a total of only 1,573 tests at its 18 state test labs.
The problem stems from the CDC’s botched first effort to mass produce test kits, followed by delays in sending promised replacement
kits for several weeks.
“The incompetence has really exceeded what anyone would expect with the CDC,” Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard University,
told the New York Times. “This is not a difficult problem to solve in the world of viruses.”
Testing is crucial to slowing the spread of the disease because it allows those who are infected to be quarantined. Health officials
can then trace who they may have been in contact with and test and possibly quarantine those people.
It’s essential that Congress investigate what went wrong and take steps to prevent it from happening during the next inevitable infectious
disease threat. But that’s for another day. The focus now must be on taking steps to minimize further spread of coronavirus and its
impact on people and the economy.
The state is turning to its major hospitals and private labs for additional help. It’s possible that their testing sites could be
up and running in the next week. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on Friday could also eliminate red tape and
speed the testing process.
Once upon a time, the United States was the global leader in fighting infectious diseases and serving as the provider for testing
kits to the world. Those days are long gone. The CDC must act to make up for its incompetence and take whatever steps necessary to
protect Americans against current and future outbreaks.
The CDC must also give clear direction on how hospitals can treat patients during this national emergency. It is not done. China
recommended three drugs that can help some patients. CDC does not provided any recommendations at all.
Abrupt announcement caused panic and airports on arrival became so overcrowded that they became epicenter of spreading the decease:
they manage to replicate the situation that was far worse that exists on cruise ships with many thousand of people.
Air conditioners are also known to circulate air-borne diseases such as Legionairre’s Disease, a potentially fatal infectious disease
that produces high fever and pneumonia. For efficiency air-conditioned on cruise ships, bases and airplanes mix fresh air with the already
circulated air and this is a concern. For example, some experts think that
in Diamond Princess cruise ship epidemic AC might help to spread the virus to all cabin
Currently there is no strong evidence to support the claim that the virus can be transmitted through the air conditioner recirculation.
It is believed to be spread mainly through droplets on close contact with infected person (less then 2m). In this case the mucus or
saliva of an infected person who sneezes or coughs can be inhaled and infect the person. This virus is likely to die when the
droplets dry up (Can
the coronavirus be spread through the air, Singapore News & Top Stories - The Straits Times):
Experts say if the virus could really survive even after the droplets carrying it have dried up, it would have spread through
the air as dust particles and potentially infected 10 times more people, which is not the case.
Last week, a Shanghai official, Mr Zeng Qun, said the virus could spread through aerosol transmission, or the mixing of the virus
with airborne liquid droplets.
This would allow the virus to linger in the air and infect those who inhale it, he said. Diseases that are known to spread
this way include tuberculosis, chicken pox and measles.
But an infectious diseases expert at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Mr Feng Luzhao, refuted this on Sunday,
stating that the droplets carrying the virus travel only about 1m to 2m and
do not stay suspended in the air. This is why you are unlikely to catch the virus through transient (or short-term) contact
such as on public transport.
Ultraviolet rays and heat from the sun can kill the virus as virus does not last long on fresh air in a sunny day. This is
true for all viruses. The likelihood of viral persistence outdoors is lower, as most studies indicate that viruses do not survive in
hot and humid environments. This refers to a temperature of over 30C and a humidity level of over 80 per cent.
Using humidifier at home and maintaining 50% humidity might help to protect you and family members.
Trump is a neoliberal to the core so he postponed invocation of the Defense Production Act (DPA). That did not stop him from threatening
toinvoke it, but people at the top understand that those threats are toothless. Trump has a chance to prove that his is not
complete stooge of Wall Street and financial oligarchy.
On March 28, 2020 he threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force General Motors to ramp up production of
ventilators. He did did not actually invoked it due to the big business lobbying (including powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce) against
the use of the emergency powers (Trump, Biden
and the Defense Production Act - FactCheck.org):
Five days later, on March 18, Trump
invoked the Defense Production Act “just
in case we need it.” But Trump stopped short of implementing the act to force production of certain goods. Later that day, Trump
tweeted, “I only signed the Defense Production Act to
combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need.”
... ... ...
In the following days, Trump said that he was reluctant to use the Defense Production Act to force corporations to make products,
likening such a move to “nationalizing
our businesses.”
This sucker does not even understand that nationalizing can be a temporary measure:
Trump, March 22: We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela; ask
them how did nationalization of their businesses work out. Not too well. The concept of nationalizing our business is not a good
concept.
Trump, March 26: For the most part, the companies … We say, “We need this,” and they say, “Don’t bother. We’re
going to do it.” I mean, we — we’re dealing with Ford, General Motors, 3M. We’re dealing with great companies. They want to do this.
They want to do this. They’re doing things that — that frankly, they don’t need somebody to walk over there with a — with a hammer
and say, “Do it.” They are getting it done.
“Our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal
course,” Trump said in a statement. “GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that
will save American lives.”
Trump also said the country “will be making over 100,000 pretty quickly.” States have warned of a dangerous shortage of the breathing
machines.
Trump also tapped White House aide Peter Navarro to coordinate policies enacted under the Korean War-era law that gives the president
broad authority to increase the manufacturing output of critical items in times of national emergency, including public health crises.
“My order establishes that Peter will serve as national Defense Production Act policy coordinator for the federal government,”
Trump said Friday during a White House briefing. “That's a very important position. More important probably than it's almost ever
been in our country.”
All he did is a little bit ruffle GM brass feathers:
TheHill
“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give us
40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar.
Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke ‘P.’ ”
On Friday, before Trump invoked the DPA, Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, told The
Hill that the move would be unnecessary.
Because companies had already stepped up to address the country’s needs, Bradley said, the call for more DPA authority is like
a solution in search of a problem, adding, “Should we do something that won’t produce any positive effect just because we can say
we did it?”
On Friday, the Chamber also launched a tool that showcased corporate America’s robust contribution to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
“When the issue of DPA comes up, it’s a question of would that allow us to do something that we couldn’t otherwise do?” Bradley
said Friday afternoon. “Or [would it] help us meet the needs, at least with respect to increasing production itself? The answer is
no.”
But by Friday evening, Trump signed a presidential memorandum placing at least some of GM’s production lines in the hands of the
Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump’s order directed his administration to use “any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require
General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators.”
Companies are required to accept and prioritize contracts from the government and to prioritize “materials, services, and
facilities to promote the national defense or to maximize domestic energy supplies.” While this provision has historically been used
to ramp up military production, in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic the act will be used for medical supplies.
The second provision in the act provides financial measures, such as loans, loan guarantees, purchases, and purchase commitments,
to speed up the production of materials “needed to support national defense and homeland security procurement requirements.”
The act also addresses voluntary agreements – or what the government says is “an association of private interests, approved by
the Government to plan and coordinate actions in support of the national defense.” The proviso permits business competitors to work
together to plan and coordinate measures to increase the supply of materials.
Along with the three main provisions, the act also provides the government with the authority to obtain information from businesses,
authorizes establishment of the National Defense Executive Reserve, and a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States –
which works on the effects on national security of certain mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers related to foreign investment in
the U.S.
When the act is invoked it requires the administration to file an annual report to Congress on the impact of offsets on the defense
preparedness, industrial competitiveness, employment, and trade from the act.
Nobel-laureate Dr. Michael Levitt (Chemistry and structural biology at Stanford) has made
another prediction on July 25, 2020:
"US COVID19 will be done in 4 weeks [Aug 25] with total reported deaths below 170,000. How
will we know it is over? Like for Europe, when all cause excess deaths are at normal level
for week. Reported COVID19 deaths may continue after 25 Aug. & reported cases will, but
it will be over."
Yes this is the same person who on May 04, 2020 said:
"If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they've reached herd
immunity, and we didn't need to do any kind of lockdown."
Contrary to claims by the media and the ego maniac Dr. Fauci about a tidal wave of Covid
infections, I have first hand, albeit anecdotal evidence, that there is a lot of bullshit
surrounding reports of people who have "tested" positive for Covid.
Some 260 cases of the coronavirus have been tied to attendees and staff at a North Georgia
YMCA children's camp in June, according to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, one of the largest known superspreading events in the state.
The report details how COVID-19 spread rapidly among children and teens within the camp and
raises questions about the effectiveness of safety protocols as school districts and colleges
contemplate reopening for in-person instruction this fall.
YMCA Camp High Harbour, identified in the report as Camp A, suffered an outbreak at its Lake
Burton location in late June. As of July 10,
about 85 cases of the virus had been linked to the camp, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
previously reported, a figure that has since tripled. Explore Complete coverage of COVID-19 in Georgia
The CDC study of 597 campers and staff from Georgia found the camp did not follow its
guidance to require campers wear masks, though staff did.
Three-quarters of the 344 attendees and staff for whom the CDC was able to obtain test
results tested positive for the virus.
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The CDC said the overall attack rate of the virus was 44%, though the agency acknowledged
that's an undercount because it includes more than 250 for whom they had no results.
"This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are
susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports might play an important role
in transmission," the report said.
Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a Maryland nonprofit that assists public
health agencies and a former epidemiologist in Georgia, said the report is a warning for local
school districts and others about the potential for spread in congregant settings.
"This should show you how actively kids can transmit it," he said. "If you have a low
prevalence in your community, you can start to do things. If you have rampant and rapid
community spread, then there is no opening school, there is no opening colleges. It is not
going to work."
Ga. OK'd camps with restrictions
Gov. Brian Kemp initially allowed
day camps to open for the summer as part of the state's broader reopening plan. An
executive order in May later allowed overnight camps to operate, but outlined health and
hygiene guidelines, including temperature checks and a requirement for campers and staff to
have a negative COVID-19 test within 12 days of the start of camp.
Though many camps opted not to open, some, including High Harbour, did.
Spokespeople for Kemp did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
"This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are
susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports might play an important role
in transmission."
- New CDC report
Dr. Harry J. Heiman, clinical associate professor at the Georgia State University School of
Public Health, said spread of the virus was growing in June, presenting a high likelihood the
virus would spread in a camp setting.
"We know that congregate settings, particularly indoor congregant settings, are among the
highest risks," he said.
High Harbour followed the governor's executive order, the federal report said, but the camp
did not follow CDC recommendations for universal masking of campers or for increased
ventilation in buildings. Staff were required to wear masks, the report said.
"Relatively large cohorts sleeping in the same cabin and engaging in regular singing and
cheering likely contributed to transmission," the CDC said. "Use of cloth masks, which has been
shown to reduce the risk for infection, was not universal."
The CDC said its investigation is ongoing and will attempt to identify specific sources of
exposure, the course of the illness and "any secondary transmission to household members."
"Physical distancing and consistent and correct use of cloth masks should be emphasized as
important strategies for mitigating transmission in congregate settings," the report said.
Statement of regret
The YMCA did not make anyone available for an interview. In a written statement, Parrish
Underwood, chief advancement officer for the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, said the organization now
regretted holding the camp.
"We made every effort to adhere to best practices outlined by the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) and the American Camp Association," and the governor, Underwood said.
"Attending Camp High Harbour is a tradition numerous generations of Y families look forward
to every summer," Underwood's statement said. "Many of these individuals reached out to our
staff to express their desire for us to open our residential camps in an effort to create
normalcy in their children's lives due to the detrimental impact of COVID-19. This weighed
heavily in our decision to open, a decision in retrospect we regret."
The YMCA said it notified parents that a counselor tested positive for COVID-19 on June 24.
The camp told parents they could pick up their children early. The YMCA closed its Lake Burton
and Lake Allatoona locations.
The YMCA said the counselor passed required health screenings, as did all other campers and
staff.
Parents who have spoken to the AJC have said they did not think the YMCA showed enough
urgency. The camp was not immediately closed. Parents were given the option of picking up their
children over a period of a few days before the camp closed for the season.
Fever, headaches and sore throat
The CDC study offered some caveats to the infection rates. Georgia suffered high rates of
spread at the end of June, and some of the infections might have occurred prior to or after the
camp.
Information about the conditions of infected campers and staff also was limited, and the
report did not detail the severity of infections.
But the report said of the 136 cases with symptom data, about a quarter reported no
symptoms. Of the three-quarters reporting symptoms, fever, headache and sore throat were the
most common.
The median age of campers was 12 and staffers was 17. There were seven staffers between the
ages of 22 and 59.
Fifty-one kids, or roughly half, of the children aged 6 to 10 tested positive. About 44% of
children aged 11 to 17 tested positive and a third of the remaining people from 18 to 59 tested
positive, the report said.
Cases of COVID-19 tend to be milder for children and young adults than for the elderly, but
the disease isn't without risk.
There have been 12,290 confirmed cases among children 5 to 17 in Georgia, with 165
hospitalizations and one death, an analysis of state data shows.
To date, 186,352 people in Georgia have tested positive for the coronavirus, including about
4,000 announced Friday. There have been 3,752 deaths, including 81 reported on Friday.
Georgia in the 'red zone'
Knowledge of transmission between children and adults is not well understood, but health
experts have told the AJC they fear infections in children and adults can easily spread to more
vulnerable people.
Though people over 60 make up the largest cohorts of hospitalizations and deaths, a recent
Emory University
study said children and adults under 60 are much more likely than the elderly to spread the
disease to others.
Some schools are pushing forward with August opening plans, while allowing home instruction
or blended in-person and distance learning.
Other systems, including Atlanta Public Schools, announced plans to
delay the start of the school year and to begin instruction online amid substantial
community spread of the virus.
On July 24, the CDC published guidance endorsing the full reopening of schools, citing risks
to children's health and education that could be inflicted by not having schools open for
in-person instruction. That guidance came after pressure from President Trump, who has called
for full reopening of schools.
The CDC guidance called for keeping students in small groups, staffed by a single teacher
and to use outdoor spaces for learning. The guidance includes recommendations for masking and
other hygiene protocols and plans for when a student contracts the virus.
But many independent public health experts, while acknowledging the importance of in-school
instruction, have been critical of the new CDC guidance.
Heiman, the Georgia State professor, said schools often have poor ventilation. Reopening for
in-person instruction endangers students and their family members and school staff.
Georgia is one of 21 states outlined in a White House task force report in the "red zone"
for coronavirus spread. That report has recommended the state mandate masks and close bars,
nightclubs, entertainment venues and put stricter limits on indoor dining and groups.
Kemp has so far decided not to mandate masks, though he has encouraged face coverings. He
also has balked at new restrictions on the movement of business and people.
A group of more than 2,000 medical professionals have called on Kemp to implement the White
House task force's recommendations and to allow local jurisdictions to enact stricter
measures.
"Many of us have said all along that unless we can get the level of COVID-19 down in
communities, it is not safe to open schools and colleges," Heiman said. "This (report)
certainly reinforces that."
WASHINGTON -- An investigation released Friday by House Democrats says President Donald
Trump's administration overpaid by up to $500 million on
ventilators as the
coronavirus pandemic first struck the United States.
Click to expand 00:00 00:47 Fauci
optimistic on COVID-19 vaccine availability
In a review of thousands of pages of internal administration documents, Democrats on the
House Oversight Committee said Phillips North America was contracted to deliver 43,000
ventilators to the federal government for a significantly higher price than it did under
previous contracts for functionally identical ventilator models delivered under contracts
dating to President Barack Obama's administration.
"The American people got ripped off, and Donald Trump and his team got taken to the
cleaners," said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., whose subcommittee led the investigation.
"The Trump Administration's mishandling of ventilator procurement for the nation's stockpile
cost the American people dearly during the worst public health crisis of our generation."
Phillips denied the report's findings, saying the company did not raise prices in relation
to the pandemic, and argued the increased price of the ventilators actually represented a
"discount."
Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips, said in a statement the company did "not recognize
the conclusions in the subcommittee's report, and we believe that not all the information that
we provided has been reflected in the report."
"I would like to make clear that at no occasion has Philips raised prices to benefit from
the crisis situation," van Houten said.
According to Phillips, the list price of the ventilator ordered under the contract is
$21,000 and was supplied to the Trump administration for $15,000, which the company called a
"discount" given the rushed production schedule.
The report, however, disagreed with Phillips' claim. A functionally identical ventilator was
delivered to the Obama administration under a 2014 contract for $3,280. Based on the report's
review of purchases between December 2019 and May 2020, other small purchasers, even those that
purchased only one ventilator of the same model, secured them for as low as $9,327.
"No American purchaser paid more than the U.S. government," the report said.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told USA TODAY in a statement the report was
"misleading and inaccurate."
"Because of the President's leadership, the United States leads the world in the production
and acquisition of ventilators. No American who needed a ventilator was denied one, and no
American who needs a ventilator in the future will be denied one."
Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Ryan Murphy said the Trump
administration's efforts ensured the "federal government procured enough equipment to care for
all hospitalized patients in the United States who needed a ventilator for respiratory support
related to COVID-19 infections."
Some of the ventilators ordered under the contract were already in use to treat COVID-19
patients, he added.
Murphy declined to comment on an ongoing contract, but said HHS follows "all Federal
Acquisition Regulations for Strategic National Stockpile contracting efforts."
The Trump administration has frequently touted the production of ventilators as evidence of
its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
"When you look at the United States response, you look at the fact that we were supposed to
have a ventilator shortage. In fact, we had a ventilator surplus," White House Press Secretary
Kayleigh McEnany said at a Friday briefing.
Phillips had first signed a contract with the Obama administration to deliver 100,000
ventilators in the event of a pandemic by June 2019, but the delivery date was pushed back,
eventually to June 2021, as the company missed deadlines, the report said. Phillips approached
the Trump administration about moving up the delivery date in January 2020, when the first
coronavirus cases were reported in the United States, but the Trump administration ignored the
offer, according to the report.
Then, in March 2020, the Trump administration agreed to extend the ventilator delivery
deadline to September 2022, but did not ask Phillips to produce more ventilators or move up
delivery times. Instead, in April 2020, the Trump administration negotiated a new contract with
Phillips to deliver 43,000 ventilators at a price of $15,000 per ventilator.
According to the report's review of documents, "the Administration accepted Philips' first
offer without even trying to negotiate a lower price."
According to emails released by the committee, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who
served as the lead negotiator with Phillips, offered to prepay half of the total cost, or over
$323 million, to Phillips before a single ventilator was even delivered. Department of Health
and Human Services staff later reduced the amount prepaid to 10% of the total cost of the
contract, or about $65 million.
N95 Masks DO WORK, and the Proof is Available All Over the Net!
There has been so much oh-so-earnest and so much oh-so-authoritarian nonsense bruited
about on this site about the non-effectiveness of the N95 masks that it's getting really,
really disgusting. It also calls into question either the honesty (trolls?) or the
intelligence of those who could so easily have just looked up the information from, and
about, the inventor of the N95, Dr. Peter Tsai.
If they had done just that little bit of research, they would have discovered that the N95
works because of an inner layer of plastic fiber that carries an electro-static charge that
attracts and destroys the virus, and that can be cleansed and sterilized for re-use by a
number of different techniques.
Please do not believe any of the contra-factual and sometimes dangerous nonsense being
spewed about by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Oh, and N95 masks are not all "vented to breathe straight out without filtration." Not
those intended for medical use, for certain. There are some vented N95 masks that are
intended for firefighters and other non-medical usages, and not for protection against
viruses. And as you can see below, the electric charge attracts even sub-micron particles, so
the idea that the mask cannot trap viruses because they're too small is simply more nonsense
from uninformed and/or deviously motivated individuals.
//
Here's just a small sample of information that's easily found all over the net:
Brief bio: Peter Tsai, Ph.D.
Employment: Research faculty, Joint Institute of Advanced Materials, The University of
Tennessee, Knoxville
Expertise: Development of meltblowing (MB) systems and the electrostatic charging (EC) of
materials for making air filter electrets. The MB and the EC developed by Tsai have been used
in the industries worldwide making tens of billions of pieces of N95 respirators or face
masks. He has received three prestigious awards from UT in recognition of his contribution to
technology innovation. Tsai is a Fellow Member of American Filtration and Separation Society
and a member of Electrostatic Society of America.
https://utrf.tennessee.edu/information-faqs-charged-filtration-material-performance-after-various-sterilization-techniques/
//
Peter Tsai and the Electrostatic Filter Mask
https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2020/04/peter-tsai-and-electrostatic-filter-mask.html
"Prof. Tsai's innovation was to find a way to take a cold pre-fabricated mat of non-woven
material and subject it to two electric discharges of opposite polarity, one after the other.
Under the right conditions, this process embedded quasi-permanent electric charges into the
plastic fibers and made them very attractive to even sub-micron particles, like the
100-nanometer-diameter SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The charge is durable and will
persist even if the masks are sterilized with steam, according to a new article that Prof.
Tsai just put up on a University of Tennessee website.'
//
The retired inventor of N95 masks is back at work, mostly for free, to fight covid-19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/07/07/peter-tsai-n95-mask-covid/
//
More technical information for those curious enough: https://aim.autm.net/public/project/53844/
//
Finally, let's dispense with a couple of other oh-so-popular misconceptions:
"Q: Do face masks cause oxygen deficiency?
"A: The prolonged use of medical masks when properly worn, does not cause oxygen deficiency
nor CO2 intoxication, according to WHO. Make sure your face covering fits properly and that
it is tight enough to allow you to breathe normally.
" 'This is a common misconception being perpetuated that has no evidence behind it,' said
Krutika Kuppalli, a Palo Alto infectious disease doctor and a biosecurity fellow with the
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
"Q: Does wearing a face covering put you at risk for carbon dioxide poisoning?
"A: No. CO2 molecules diffuse easily through everything from bandannas to medical masks to
N95 respirators, allowing for normal breathing." Aidin Vaziri. San Francisco Chronicle
Thanks b. The mask - a simple and elegant precaution in high risk environments. But so
much foaming hysteria and opposition from pumped up nay sayers its just like the response to
the early motor car or the mandatory seat belt. Extraordinary, hyperventilated nonsense and
inflamed debating points.
I assume this noise is to distract from calling it by its proper name - Fort Detrick
Flu.
Mr Gohmert then wondered if his mask was to blame for contracting COVID-19.
"But I can't help but wonder if my keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, that if I
might have put some germs or some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in -- I don't
know. But I got it, we'll see what happens from here, but the reports of my demise are very
premature," he said."
about a decade ago there was outbreak of TB in Seattle I was a nurse at the time. We were
told by infection disease at the time if we were to see TB patients we had to wear an
individually fitted respirator... every nurse was fitted and red pepper was sprayed around
the masks to test the fit. I couldn't wear one ... and was told I could wear a surgical mask
but that it would only provide about 30 min of protection and then I would need a new mask...
Now tell me why me way a fashion mask, a bandanna or scarf can protect me or another from a
virus (which is much smaller than a TB bacteria?
I just drove from coast to coast across the US. I avoided large cities and felt perfectly
comfortable with social distancing. I was in two states that never had a "true" lock down and
no mask mandates,,,, and you know what people weren't dropping like flies, people weren't
afraid... they were just acting respectful to one another"s personal space.
Let's see now... we have an aerosolized pathogen; shades of the discussion in 2001
regarding weaponized Antrax! We have, seemingly, a very low number of mutations; it's either
been out there or cultured for some time. No one has any 100% accurate test; the test
criteria of Koch's Postulates seem to have
been forgotten or ignored. In the dearth of trustworthy data, the deluge of untrustworthy
data, and the general level of greed-generated-mistrust towards all western societal
organizations, no one in the general public has the proper knowledge to make life-or-death
decisions concerning themselves or their families. Perhaps, rather than the "Trump flu" that
the partisan-oriented commenter proposed previously, if a large group of people called it
instead the "Fort Detrick Flu," western governments might be persuaded to seek and/or
spread truthful data.
The purpose of the mask is to stop (asymptomatic) carriers of the disease from spreading
it, or at least dramatically reduce the spreading. The mask limits outgoing aerosols,
not incoming ones.
Moreover, rural areas where people spend a lot of time outdoors and generally meet only a
limited amount of different people are much less likely to be affected by the initial phase
of a pandemic than densely populated cities where most people spend most of their days
closely packed with numerous other random people in badly ventilated indoor places such as
offices, factories, subways.
This new disposition of things, which we are quite unprepared for, will demand a revival of
the building wisdom of the ages. It will be a vast improvement over the anxious, neurotic
exercises that can now be plainly described as yesterday's tomorrow . The necessary
return to traditional modes and materials will yield a revived architecture of grace notes,
humility, and decorum. Wait for it!
TAC seems to publish an article deriding modern architecture on a monthly basis. Like
jazz or cilantro, modern architecture is something you either love or hate. Waste of space
to argue about it.
There's actually a specific group of olfactory genes (OR6A2) that people have or don't
have, that changes the taste of cilantro and causes this whole differentiation.
The thing I find about modernist architecture is that some of it is quite beautiful such
as the early BauHau and Art Deco design aesthetic. If you compare lets say a band or an
entertainers early work which is smart, crisp, new, innovative to their later works which
often arent good. They look like copies of earlier successes (resting on ones laurels so to
speak). In modernist architecture which was truly innovative at the time incorporating
large plate glass windows (from floor to ceiling) integrated the outdoor environment with
the indoor environment. It created rooms with lots of natural light and unobstructed views
which made older buildings which were gorgeous on the exterior with architectural
embellishments and gorgeous moldings, wallpapers, paint colors, fabrics moldings, etc
adorning the interior, look like windowless caves or coffins. Modern and Contemporary
Architecture (form, fit, function) was innovative because it deconstructed all architecture
down to the skeletal structure and windows but then comes the problem. A design can only be
deconstructed so much before its sterile, bland, dead. Its why some of the great modern and
contemporary architecture is surrounded by older buildings that have more embellishments
which magnify the clean lines of the structure. Its hard to achieve urban density with
modern buildings because the clean lines and large windows require some open space between
the buildings. As with most art and design movements, the best of the prior movements will
be incorporated into something new....but instead of deconstructing...a new architectural
movement will be adding rather than subtracting
Salingaros published ATOA in 2006, and has published several books since. Not
that his writing isn't timeless, but there are no details in this piece to tease out what
is new.
Easy to overlook is the role of building designers in pushing their idea of
..whatever... and the role of developers especially in wanting things built as quickly and
cheaply as possible. The latter are primarily responsible for strip malls, which are truly
awful, but utilitarian..
I'll be reading both these books, but the key failures of contemporary design and
planning aren't really about style, its about building codes, land use laws, transportation
and the way development is financed. Why does the strip look like the strip? Because its
the preferred mode of planning commissions, tax collectors and, most of all, banks who are
lending the money.
I agree with the author that modern architecture is ugly, but this is not some isolated,
mysterious ailement. Architecture is a form of art, and modern art is every bit as ugly,
inhuman and soul killing as modern architecture. I recently spent a seven month stretch
working inside many very expensive homes in Aspen Colorado. These multi-million dollar
homes are full of the most ugly and repugnant examples of modern art you could ever
imagine. There are paintings that sell for over a million which literally look like someone
vomited on the canvas. I don't have to tell that today's music is mostly garbage. All of
this reflects perfectly the modern world view. Namely, there is no God, there is no Truth,
there is no beauty. Humans are just accidental, meaningless beings, living pointless lives
in a pointless universe. As long as modern society clings to these awful lies, art in it's
many forms has no chance of making a comeback. When we earnestly return to God and
reverence for the eternal beauty of his creation, we will again seek to honor God and our
fellow humans with works of love and beauty. It's not complicated really.
The taste of the rich does not stand separate from their relations with the rest of us.
In acknowledging the turning point about a hundred years ago, Kunstler overemphasizes WWI
and under-emphasizes the 1917 Communist revolution in Russia. Before that year, Marxism was
a fringe movement that had never held power anywhere. Given that atheism was part of its
philosophical foundation, people of faith could not believe it would ever be anything else.
After that year, the elite realized that God was not protecting their supremacy and began
to fear the common people. Therefore the old aesthetic which allowed the elite to have the
same taste as everyone else but just express it more expensively was supplanted by a new
aesthetic that upheld tastes acquired and formed through an expensive education. The point
was not to impress the common people but to confuse them. It was part of the Cult of the
Expert. Its purpose was to convince the common people that they could not understand what
was going on at the elite levels and therefore they were not fit to rule. I remember some
British writer who called sunsets "sentimental", which puzzled me until I figured out that
this writer was part of (or was mocking) a movement to narrow the definition of beauty to
that sort of beauty that only people of refined (i.e., elite) taste could appreciate, while
beauty that could be appreciated by everyone was downgraded by renaming it
"sentimentality". After the decline of the Soviet Union became obvious in the 1980s,
ornament and detail were allowed to return, but only in an ironic or whimsical way. There's
still an element of confusion there, of calculated incomprehensibility.
At a time like this one, beauty is still being produced but on the fringes. Surrealism
lives on in the works of artists like Jesse Allen and Susan Seddon Boulet, who don't rate
Wikipedia pages but whose paintings are easily googled. Michael Reynolds builds Earthships
(conservationist architectural fantasies in the mode of Antoni Gaudí) out of literal
trash. (It's no accident that Reynolds, like Christopher Alexander and many other
architectural innovators, went to the Southwest, where snobbery-informed building codes
have historically been lax or non-existent. Traditional musicians from around the world
connect with each other and cross-fertilize to produce the genre known as world music. If
you don't care what the elite like, it's actually a glorious time for the arts.
Modern architecture neglects the person and substitutes visual ideas as its mission for
providing places to foster human well-being, delight and comfort.
The whole game is given away by an exchange with one of my design tutors while studying
architecture: we gave our presentations of our displayed projects (that is, pretend
buildings) and the tutor remarked that none of us talked about people. We had all tried to
mimic the journals (picture books usually) that we read and pretended to be abstract
sculpture artists. Crap, of course.
But being cheeky, I piped up and said "its because you guys never talk about people!"
We had been taught that buildings are 'walk-in scupltures' where as they are places for
meaningful personal purpose.
During an in-depth interview that will air Tuesday night on ABC News as part of a primetime
special, "American Catastrophe: How Did We Get Here?," Fauci was pressed to explain why, months
after COVID-19 first reached U.S. soil, the U.S. government is still struggling to provide
adequate testing for Americans and sufficient personal protective gear for essential
workers.
"We keep hearing when we go to these task force meetings that these [issues] are being
corrected," Fauci said. "But yet when you go into the trenches, you still hear about that."
Fauci said he does not have a "good answer" and "cannot explain" the discrepancy, especially
since those matters are not part of his "day-by-day" responsibilities, but part of the problem
stems from the fact that "many of the things that we needed were not produced in the United
States."
The U.S. government ended up competing for those materials with other nations stricken by
the pandemic, and the White House ultimately had to invoke emergency powers to push U.S.
companies to help.
Those challenges were exacerbated by what Fauci admitted were early missteps on testing by
the Centers for Disease Control, which developed tests that "didn't work" initially because
– it turned out – their results were based on potentially contaminated samples.
That forced the federal government to further rely private companies.
Asked about any missteps he may have made himself – including initially telling the
public that the average American didn't need to wear a mask – he said such decisions were
"based on the information at the moment."
In a segment due to air this
weekend, 'America This Week' host Eric Bolling sat down with Dr Judy Mikovits, a disgraced scientist who believes that the
coronavirus pandemic was orchestrated by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr Anthony Fauci and Bill
Gates to push vaccines on the population – a theory she set out in the documentary film 'Plandemic,' which has been effectively
censored off the internet.
Bolling called Mikovits' claims "hefty," and brought on medical contributor Dr Nicole Saphier to refute them, but CNN
claimed
the
host didn't push back hard enough against Mikovits' "baseless conspiracy theory," and hammered Bolling for allowing Mikovits to
"continue to make her case."
As CNN's article circulated
on Twitter on Saturday morning, the network's liberal audience called for a boycott of Sinclair. The broadcaster initially stood
by its decision to run the segment, declaring that
"at no juncture are we aligning with or
endorsing the viewpoints of Dr Mikovits."
However, within an hour,
Sinclair bent the knee and pulled the episode from the air until additional content could be added to counter Mikovits.
"All
stations have been notified not to air this and will instead be re-airing last week's episode in its place,"
Sinclair
tweeted. For good measure, the company added
"we valiantly support Dr Fauci and the work he
and his team are doing to further prevent the spread of Covid-19."
Sinclair is an incredibly
powerful organization to have been swayed by an online outrage campaign. The company and its partner organizations own nearly 300
local TV stations around the country, and reach 40 percent of American households.
Proponents of the boycott
celebrated their victory on Twitter, declaring that
"we shamed them into doing the right
thing."
Amid a recent upsurge in
'cancel culture,' few campaigns have brought a company to its knees as fast as Saturday's blitz by CNN. Similar campaigns have
been mounted against Fox News'
Tucker
Carlson
– with an advertiser boycott and attempts by journalists to doxx his family among the most recent moves, but Carlson
remains on the air and unapologetic.
For Bolling and his
colleagues at Sinclair on the other hand, it's back to the studio to reshoot their offending segment at CNN's behest.
I'd be interested on peoples views on this important link.
One hour long. A whistle blower nurse in a hospital in New York ! I have watched 10 mins and
am already shocked, disgusted and sickened. I'll get back to it when I'v calmed down.
The real problem is masks that don't measure up.
This article says half of the masks manufactured in China don't actually capture 95% of
particles. Since all of my masks are from China, that is concerning to me. However, even if a
mask only does 50%, that's still better than most non-respirator masks.
Mask-wearing obligatory in confined public spaces in France from today .Initially
announced by Macron in his july 14th speech for the first of August,but over the weekend
Health minister said it is in application from this monday 2 july.Fine is 135 euros.This will
lead to more gigs cancelled,unless they are in the street.How can one sing masked?
Well,I tried wearing one saturday,but it is a sloppy experience and I don't think I will wear
one correctly,it hangs down from my nose,it is to escape french fines.Before people start
insulting me for that,i have to tell you that I see practically nobody,apart from going to
supermarket once a week....
I pointed out that cloth masks were ineffective relative to N95 months ago here. The
hierarchy is N100, N99, N95, surgical masks, then anything else. There is a reduction of
maybe 25% in effectiveness per level (except for the N masks.) T-shirts are almost useless,
having an effectiveness of maybe 10-15%.
*Doesn't mean they shouldn't be worn.*
People don't seem to understand that avoiding infection is a game of probabilities. It's
not a binary either-or situation. Anything you can do to impede the progress of a viral load
from the environment to your vulnerable surfaces is worth doing if it's practical. Wearing a
mask is practical.
Minor repeated reductions in oxygen or increases in carbon dioxide is not going to kill
you and is unlikely to have long-term physical effects. And there's a good chance that
eventually we'll stop wearing them once the virus has been reduced in the environment.
Asians have been wearing masks frequently for a long time. Health workers wear masks
frequently for extended periods. Cite a study where that has had long-term negative health
effects.
"But there is a graph here that if I explain this properly, it'll make sense to you. This is
from the Centers for Disease Control. And it is death counts attributable to COVID-19 through
July 11th. The week ending July 11th, which is the most recent date for data. They run about,
you know, a week to two weeks behind here.
So throw the chart up. This is by age. All sexes by age. So if you look at the top line, the
red line, the very top, that is the week ending April 11th. You can't see this on the chart. Go
ahead and put the chart up there, Brian, switch it over. The top line is red. You can't even
probably tell that. But, trust me. The top-most line is red, and it occurs on April the 11th.
That is the peak death rate, and it's probably about 6,000 . I don't know in what interval that
this thing is reporting.
Probably Eh, it's in a week. The key is to go all the way over to the right side. You see
the peak of death rates was April the 11th. It isn't now. The peak death rate was April 11.
That red line is people 85 years and older. The line under it is people 75 to 84. That's the
yellow line. The blue line underneath that is people 65 to 74. We're under 4,000 now in a week.
So the top line is people 85 and older.
If you go to the This is where I'm not gonna There are two reds, but you can't tell the
difference in them. Just trust me. Let's move to the far-right side of the chart. That's July
11th, and you'll see that the death rate is not even 500, right now, per week -- CDC -- in all
ages, in all demographics, says the CDC. We're not at peak death rate. The peak death rate was
April the 11th to April the 18th." Limbaugh
I see now we are being encouraged to ignore "death rate" as unimportant. What we are told to
panic about is a higher incidence of "positives" among population under 40 years of age. This
population apparently doesn't have as bad an outcome (hospitalization/death) and that's "bad"
because they don't get contact traced and thus have "community spread".
I just love how AP/NYT and local journos all quote seemingly random "experts" with no
discussion of just what their "expertise" consists of, other than perhaps a credential (and the
relevance of the credential to the "expert statement" (more correctly opinion) is never
provided).
Sir, Yes. You are thinking right about Cuomo murdering the elderly that cost the state so much money
- many having the homes and medical treatment paid for by Medicaid (Medicare only pays for 30
days). Only it wasn't just Cuomo it was also Witmer in Michigan and Murphy in New Jersey. They
killed off the costly elderly and got the bonus of more deaths to raise the fear of the virus
and gain subsequent control over the lives of citizens + via twisted logic, try to give Trump a
black eye. Those govs are are morally sick people. It is a no brainer, if you care about the
elderly, to not place people with what you believe is a deadly highly contagious virus in homes
full of elderly infirm people. I mean what is there to even consider or weigh about that
decision?
Had those murderers handled the nursing homes correctly (like Florida did) the virus would
have been a lot less deadly.
Btw, with regard to schools re-opening, note that the line of the graph for school and
college age people is basically synonymous with the X-axis; meaning they didn't die from the
virus even at its peak lethality.
To know what Fauci [don't wear a mask it don't help; wear a mask it helps] would say, let's
look at how Aristotle would help us elucidate this answer.
Q: What can one conclude from [the mouth of] the liar [Fauci]?
A: Answer: nothing Absolutely Nothing. +++++++++++++++ And on this basis, from his mouth, our national "pandemic" "strategy" was thus formulated, from
Mr. Nothing aka Fauci.
And onto more black humor, and the wearing a mask as virtue signalling -- since they can
only slow down by at most ten minutes any disease transmission of the novel coronvirus, there
is this "gem" spoken by someone who apparently believes the mask kool aid? I D K . . . --and
for me at least, his essay, Attorney Jonathan Turley, was funny to read, irrespective of
whether that was his intent:
[[There is a new form of protests sweeping across the country as individuals put on
anti-Mask masks to defy mandatory mask rules. The anti-masks are made of thin material, mesh or
even crochet and are advertised as having no protective qualities for Covid-19. The question is
whether they are legal. They appear to be so.]]
Whether you like it or not, the world is going for "herd immunity." Unfortunately, there is
no other viable option; there will be no vaccine, there will be no miracle cure and besides,
the virus isn't even all that dangerous if you are young and healthy. Simply put, COVID-19
won't flame out until 50 to 80 percent of us get it (the precise number is open to debate).
For the past century, most people have accepted that from time to time they'll get a cold or
flu. It was considered a fact of life and an inconvenience. Somehow, in this age of fake news
and social media, a disease that's a bit worse than the annual flu, has taken on a persona
that's terrifying. I understand why that's happened; the media and various "influencers" sell
fear and astute politicians harness this fear for votes. Meanwhile, anyone with a dissenting
voice is marginalized. Along the way, data has been tampered with and facts have become
bastardized. Is anyone else disturbed that the Democrats and Republicans each support different
miracle cures? Basic science hasn't been this politicized since Galileo opined about celestial
bodies.
... ... ...
Now, I don't intend this post to be political; you can twist most data to prove almost any
spectrum of facts. Rather, let me throw out a strawman; let's assume COVID-19 led to almost
certain death, do we have the ability to stop it? We could quarantine all of humanity for
years, but COVID-19 would still be out there; it wouldn't die out -- there would always be new
flare-ups as people got sloppy or ignored the rules. We tried an aggressive quarantine in
America and did little more than "flatten the curve." Unlike smallpox or polio, there will
never be a vaccine (there has never been a COVID vaccine for a variety of reasons) --
therefore, as soon as quarantine ends, we'd all begin to spread it again, as there will always
be infected humans. Countries that hermetically sealed their borders would not be immune either
-- they've simply deferred infection. Eventually, there would be an accident -- one single
pathogen would undo years of work. You can quarantine a village in Africa and stop a disease
like Ebola that strikes fast and often kills the host. You cannot stop the spread of something
that tens of millions of global citizens unknowingly have, while lying dormant for up to three
weeks.
I think it should be obvious that you cannot stop COVID from spreading, at best, you can
slow it down so that hospitals do not become overwhelmed. Instead, governments are passing
draconian and arbitrary laws that do little to slow the spread, yet destroy businesses and
communities. If anything, this takes a biological crisis and turns it into an economic one.
The the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was actually on sidelines and
did not yet contribute anything signigicat in understadning this coronavirus
The level of subservience of Fauci to Big Pharma is open for review
WASHINGTON -- Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's
recent criticism of him in which he called the infectious disease expert an "alarmist."
... Fauci warned last week that the coronavirus pandemic could be as bad as the
1918 flu pandemic, which is estimated to have killed at least 50 million people worldwide. He
also warned late last month that the number of
COVID-19 cases could top 100,000 a day.
And this Big Pharma stooge was right: in open spaces unless you are inthe dence coud there is no reason to wear any mask
Notable quotes:
"... No – for a solid hour, I heard the following: that COVID19 – in reality, at most, a moderately serious flu virus – is the worst medical threat the United States has ever faced. ..."
For anyone who has forgotten, Fauci told 60 Minutes that:
There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an
outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better and it might even block a
droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think it is. And often
there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep
touching their face."
But he does make an astute point:
"Recently I had the poor judgment to turn on National Public Radio for about an hour, under the impression that I was
going to learn something about the day’s news.
... No – for a solid hour, I heard the following: that COVID19 – in reality, at most, a moderately serious flu virus – is
the worst medical threat the United States has ever faced.
...
But the real theme of the hour was masks, masks, masks: how to make them, how to wear them, their different types, who
doesn’t seem to have enough of them, and why muffling our faces (even though no such thing was ever demanded of us during
dozens of past viral outbreaks) is absolutely, positively good for us all."
When it comes to the topic of clown cars, we'd say Dr. Fauci gets a limo version all to himself...
Yesterday he uttered the following incoherent babble, saying the recent surge in new cases is because the Virus Patrol didn't
go far enough in throwing 50 million Americans out of work:
'We did not shut down entirely,' Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. 'We need
to draw back a few yards and say, "OK, we can't stay shut down forever." You've got to shut down but then you've got to gradually
open.'
Got that?
What does this pretentious old windbag think - that the blooming, buzzing mass of a $21 trillion economy can be calibrated up
and down by the week via some magical dimmer switch?
Never mind because he was then on to this preposterous comparison:
Fauci also said he expects the public to compare the Covid-19 pandemic to the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed around 50 million
people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Well, it so happens that the US death rate from the Spanish Flu was 655 per 100,000 persons (675,000 deaths in a population of
103 million). That's obviously orders of magnitude larger than the 39 per 100,000 deaths to date from the Covid.
In fact, the impact of the Spanish Flu was not only 17X greater in terms of the overall mortality rate, but it was also a true
Grim Reaper in the sense that it struck across the entire age spectrum of the population (dark blue bars).
It actually started in the giant domestic military training compounds stood up by Woodrow Wilson to join a European war that was
none of America's business, but the virus did kill tens of thousands of 18-30 year-old draftees in their own barracks long before
they got to the killing fields of France.
By contrast, as we now surely understand, and you would think Fauci would, too, the Covid (light blue bars) is primarily a harvester
of elderly persons already struggling with life-threatening respiratory, heart, vascular, renal and diabetic illnesses.
Accordingly, among the 191 million Americans under the age of 45 years, there have been only 1.5 WITH-Covid deaths per 100,000,
while for the elderly, the opposite is true. Nearly 70,000 or more than 60 percent of all WITH-Covid death have been among the 75
years and older population, resulting in mortality rates as follows:
85 years & Over: 581 per 100,000 persons;
75-84 years: 200 per 100,000 persons;
Now, you don't need to take a single class in epidemiology to understand a core truth: That is, when nearly 60 percent of the
population under 45 years accounts for only 2.5 percent of the reported WITH-Covid deaths and has a rounding error mortality rate,
while the 6.5 percent of the population 75 years and older accounts for 60 percent of the deaths -- you don't fight the disease with
a one-size-fits all strategy of generic lockdowns, quarantines, and social regimentation.
And surely you don't shutdown the schools, gyms, bars, restaurants, movies, ball games, concerts, beaches, theme parks etc. because
the vulnerable elderly don't patronize these venues in appreciable numbers anyway, and could easily be warned to stay strictly away.
The key point, however, is that this whole unspeakable Lockdown Folly does not remotely stem from the "science", as the MSM supporters
of Fauci claim.
It's just a hair-brained experiment in social control that happened because the Donald was too weak, ill-informed, distracted,
and innumerate to send Fauci and his camarilla of doctors and vaccine-peddlers packing when the mid-March guidelines were first issued
by the CDC.
Yes, the Donald's political enemies in the ranks of big city mayors and Blue State governors have feasted upon the chum Fauci
& Co have persistently tossed into the fetid waters of national politics, but that doesn't let Trump off the hook.
If the truth be told, this is the Trump Lockdown Folly and ranks among the greatest blunders ever committed by a US President.
That's because even at this late date nearly four months into the resulting economic disaster:
there is no evidence that asymptomatic persons are transmitters of the virus,
there is powerful statistical evidence that 95 percent of the population can cope with the disease and recover if they do become
infected.
Yet, the twin pillars of Fauci's hare-brained social regimentation scheme assumes they very opposite: Namely, that healthy Americans
must be put under house arrest because they are silent spreaders and killers of their fellow citizens; and that the disease is so
virulent that its #1 enemy -- the powerful immune system of every healthy American -- cannot be trusted to do its job if the virus
is permitted to follow its natural course of contagion and eventual herd immunity.
As to the silent spreaders trope, here is how the very head of WHO's COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, recently explained
that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic patients appears to be very rare:
It still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual."
For crying out loud. That knocks the very rationale for stay-at-home orders to hundreds of millions of healthy citizens into a
cocked hat.
In a constitutional democracy, where the liberties and properties of citizens are protected by law, you need overwhelming proof
of an existential threat to society before ordering mass house arrests. But in this instance, the head of the WHO task force–the
agency that fomented the whole coronavirus hysteria in the first place–has said quite unequivocally: No cigar!
In a word, Dr. Fauci is peddling dangerous humbug under the banner of pseudo-science, and should have been shut-up and forced
into retirement long ago. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the Donald is too chicken to use the Fake "your fired" tool that
made him a short-lived TV star, if not a successful businessman.
His defenders, of course, mumble that his hands are tied because Fauci is a member of the legally protected Senior Executive Service
(SES). That's Jimmy Carter's gift to insubordinate bureaucracy, which your editor happily voted against back in the day -- but the
excuse is poppycock.
Under Federal law, Fauci can be fired if he is found to have engaged in --
misconduct, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or failure to accept a direct reassignment or to accompany a position in a transfer
of function", is or to be "less than successful [in his] executive performance.
If not "malfeasance", what would you call the absolute savaging of the livelihoods and life's work of tens of millions of American
workers and small businessmen for no good reason of state, which have resulted from Fauci's idiotic pronouncements and guidelines?
The thing is, after four months Fauci's blatherings and instructions to state and local authorities have fomented an outright
public Hysteria of biblical proportions.
It is not just that officialdom has closed restaurants and gyms via unconstitutional "takings" of their owners' properties. By
now, Fauci's Virus Patrol and its megaphones and misanthropes in the MSM have rendered large portions of the American public fearful
about leaving their own homes.
And, needless to say, they have also given the Donald's legions of rabid political enemies license to stage malign theatrics in
the name of Covid-fighting that would be unthinkable under any other circumstances.
For instance, it has now been announced that the school districts of Los Angeles and San Diego, which collectively serve nearly
one million students, will not have in-person teaching to start the school year.
But if you are conversant with any facts at all, you can only sputter: WTF!
There are nine million school age children in California, and not a single WITH-Covid death has occurred among them.
That's right. There have been 27,400 positive tests among these nine million kids, but all of them, positively all of them, have
been either asymptomatic or mildly ill -- as children are wont to become -- and have recovered.
Yet here is where America's growing fleet of clown cars comes in. It seems that the politicization has gone so far off the deep
end that the LA teachers union–35,000 strong -- is now taking the schools hostage for their own parochial ends.
They recently proclaimed that no schools should open in LA until there is a Charter School freeze; the police are defunded; Medicare-for-all
is adopted by the US Congress; new state taxes on the wealthy are enacted; and there is a Federal bailout of the LA school district.
You can't make this stuff up. And while they were taking the children hostage in the name of Covid-fighting, they also insisted
that the already dysfunctional schools of LA become completely pointless:
The union outlined numerous major provisions it says will be necessary to reopen schools again, including sequestering students
in small groups throughout the school day, providing students with masks and other forms of protective equipment, and re-designing
school layouts in order to facilitate 'social distancing.'
Of course, the latest outbursts of this kind of mindless social destruction has been fueled by the absolute mendacity of the Virus
Patrol and its MSM megaphones with respect to the so-called outbreak of new cases in the Sun Belt states.
But the whole brouhaha is a crock. There is no public health crisis in the so-called hot spots, as the up-to-date chart below
makes abundantly clear.
Yes, the 42-day trend of "new cases" has risen sharply in tandem with far more testing, and repeat testing of the same individuals
-- outcomes that were inherent in re-opening plans, which required employers to have their employees tested as a condition of operating.
But, alas, the death count trend in these 50 counties has not risen at all - except for the last few days when a lot of "catch-up"
data for earlier fatalities was thrown into the data hoppers by some of the counties involved.
That hasn't stopped the Covid-Howlers from proclaiming a phony medical crisis in Texas and elsewhere, with the same old tropes
about overflowing hospitals and strained ICU capacity in places like Houston.
But as the eagle-eyed maven of the corona-data, Alex Berenson, tweeted this AM, it's just a big fat lie. While CNN may have managed
to find one or two crowded facilities in the whole of the Houston-Harris county region of some 5 million souls, there are actually
still more than 2,500 empty hospital beds in the area.
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Here's the thing. The Virus Patrol has switched from the death count to the "case" count because the latter is not at the 3,000
per day predicted by the CDC in early May, and ballyhooed by the NYT and MSM as the leading edge of a horrid "second wave" coming
down the pike.
In fact, during July to date (thru the 14th), the daily WITH-Covid death count has averaged 613, or only one-fifth of the projected
June-July-August surge; and even that level is suspect, given the growing evidence that many local jurisdictions are doing retrospective
death audits to pad their case counts.
In any event, the readily available state-by-state data tells you all you need to know. This so-called Sun Belt wave of cases
is, indeed, the equivalent of the normal flu.
In the case of Florida, for instance, during the first 14 days of July, there have been 139,195 new cases reported, but only 4,322
new hospitalizations. So that means only 3.1 percent of this ballyhooed surge of cases was sick enough to even require hospitalization.
Needless to say, that's not a crisis; it's just one more part of the indictment against Fauci and his gang of malpracticing doctors.
They have put the anti-Trump press into a rabid feeding frenzy, and that coverage, in turn, has caused the American public to head
back into their Covid holes.
As it happened, three of the nation's largest banks reported their totally confected earnings for Q2 this AM, but the one thing
that stood out as meaningful was a collective $28 billion provision for future loan losses. That is, they see the massive wave of
defaults set in motion by Fauci's misbegotten Lockdown Nation strategy, and are getting prepared for the worst.
Meanwhile, the Fed's lunatic $3 trillion injection of liquidity into the canyons of Wall Street since the Lockdown Nation incepted
in mid-March continues to do its mischief, fueling a stock market bubble that gets more ludicrous (and dangerous) by the day.
We noted yesterday that during the Monday's great reversal on the stock market that Tesla had gained a "GM" ($38 billion) in the
morning spike, but lost a "BMW" ($42 billion) in the afternoon.
A timely piece by Bloomberg this AM helps explain how this kind of madness actually happened:
Almost 40,000 Robinhood accounts added shares of the automaker during a single fourhour span on Monday, according to website
Robintrack.net, which compiles data on the investing platform that's much beloved by day trading millennials.
The frenzy in interest means that as of the end of Monday's trading session, there are now roughly 457,000 users on the Robinhood
app that hold shares of the company in some form. That makes it the 10th-most popular stock on the platform, ahead of even Amazon.com
Inc., which is held by 358,000 users.
The one-day return may not have turned out so well. Tesla was up as much as 16 percent at one point before paring gains through
the day and finishing 3 percent lower. It was a rare losing day for the high flying stock, which has surged 56 percent over the
past 10 days.
So how did these mindless gamblers reason about a company that has never, ever made a four-quarter profit, and which reported
Q2 volumes well below last year, in coming to a peak valuation of $325 billion Monday morning?
Well, a sell-side analyst explained both that question, and the large fleet of clown cars now cruising up and down Wall Street
about as well as could be expected. Said this master of the crystal ball:
'At the current price, Tesla's stock reflects an expectation of 2030 volume of 5 million units, which is more than ten times
what the company appears on track to achieve this year,' Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said.
Why, you don't say!
Then again, projecting EV car sales in the year 2030 is probably as good a use for Wall Street's clown car riders as any other.
Certainly, it would not dawn on them to ask whether a stock market held up by the Terrific Ten, and especially the FAANGs and
Microsoft, has anything at all to do with the dire state of the US economy.
It seems these trading sardines make up a quarter of the S&P 500 index by value, but just 8 percent of its composite revenues
and a mere 1 percent of jobs in the American workforce.
So, yes, the Acela Corridor has the clown cars coming and going - even as the stock bubble which will take down this whole fantasy
reaches its historic asymptote, as we will essay further in Part 3.
Nearly 71,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year...
Soaring overdose deaths in the US have helped drag down average life expectancy for 3
straight years, and by the looks of it, No. 4 might be right around the corner.
play_arrow
sbin , 1 hour ago
St Floyd died of an overdose.
2 years of drug overdose killed as many Americans as plandemic.
Work for funeral homes many more overdose and suicide deaths 20 to 40 year olds than covid
+70 and most were already dead but still breathing and making nursing home money.
Lucius Quinctius , 1 hour ago
The Chinese have a legitimate grievance ,(actually several), with regards to the
deliberate introduction of opium into their country by the British, in the 1800 s,as a means
to repatriate sterling used to pay for tea .Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank,(HSBC),very central
to funding this traffic as well as a Jewish-British banking family, the Sassoons, originally
from Baghdad ,directly involved.The immiseration of millions of Chinese in opium addiction as
well as the failed Chinese attempt To free themselves from this in the Opium Wars has left
them bitter,rightfully.
So, introducing fentanyl to the west is payback. Two years ago I looked up on Alibaba ,out
of curiosity ,the cost , quantity and availability of a common antibiotic, Vancomycin. It was
amazing, at least 30 responses, producing in quantity, hundreds of kilograms, cheap ....,,you
want it when? The Chinese pharmaceutical production capacity is enormous. Fentanyl is no
problem to produce in huge quantity for these folks. They, in their minds, have reason to
send it our way. We are at war.
MerLynn , 1 hour ago
yes its a Bio Chemical War.... and all Bio Weapons come from the Barrel of a Needle
Sid Davis , 1 hour ago
If you are free, that means you can make good choices for yourself and bad ones, too.
When you are a slave on the big government run plantation we call the USA, pain from being
subjugated encourages escape, and since the underground market in drugs is one of the few
remaining free markets, you still have the freedom there to make bad choices.
It isn't much solace to those you leave behind that you managed to permanently escape your
pain.
Off topic, but yesterday on Newsmax network in the US the guest COMPLETELY ripped into
Gates and Fauci. Newsmax is a major conservative media outlet that has both a TV network and
website with millions of viewers/readers. You can watch it here: https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/1283315374025515008
"And when Fauci was telling the White House Coronavirus Task Force that there was only
anecdotal evidence in support of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus, I confronted him with
scientific studies providing evidence of safety and efficacy. A recent Detroit hospital study
showed a 50% reduction in the mortality rate when
the medicine is used in early treatment.
Now Fauci says a falling
mortality rate doesn't matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide
the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can
open." Navarro in USA Today
-------------
"Laputa's population consists mainly of an educated elite, who are fond of mathematics,
astronomy , music and
technology, but fail to make practical use of their knowledge. Servants make up the rest of the
population.
The Laputans have mastered magnetic levitation. They also are very fond of astronomy, and
discovered two moons of Mars. (This is 151 years earlier than the
recognized
discovery of the two moons of Mars by Asaph Hall in 1877.) However, they are unable to
construct well-designed clothing or buildings, as they despise practical geometry as "vulgar
and mechanick". The houses are ill-built, lacking any right angles, [6] and
the clothes of Laputans, which are decorated with astrological symbols and musical figures, do
not fit, as they take measurements with instruments such as quadrants and a compass rather than with tape measures . [7] They
spend their time listening to the music of the spheres. They believe in astrology and worry
constantly that the sun will go out." wiki on Gullivers Travels.
--------------
Ah, I see it now! Dr. Fauci is a Laputan seer! He is devoid of any real comprehension or
respect for the ordinary humans trying to deal with actual pandemic problems rather than "the
music of the spheres."
Is he a Democratic Party operative? I doubt it. He is simply "out of it." pl
Fauci doesn't matter. Over the weekend the WH tried to strongarm parents to get on board
with school reopening. They are fucking with the wrong interest group.
There is a better, albeit a more difficult way to undermine Fauci. Educate the people that
this issue has vast economic consequences and we must factor in those consequences when
crafting an over-all policy. Fauci, I expect, will openly admit he is approaching the topic
from a purely medical perspective...which is exactly what he's supposed to be doing.
As is, Trump is leaves himself wide open to the obvious counter: Neither he nor his
economic adviser have any medical expertise.
"Tony Fauci has many, many vaccine patents and there's one vaccine patent that he has that
is a way of packaging a coronavirus with some other vaccine in a protein sheet and then
delivering it through a vaccine he somehow ended up owning that patent Tony Fauci will be
able to cash in . So Fauci's agency will collect half the royalties for that vaccine [related
to the coronavirus]."
"Sunderland co-founded the VC firm, known for making ambitious investments, after having
led program-related investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided
financial support to Moderna while she was there. Since 2010, Moderna has been working on
developing messenger RNA (mRNA) that allows the body's cells to act like reprogrammed
biological factories, producing antibodies needed to battle diseases, including viruses.
"The nice thing about big bets is that they play out over time. ... We made an investment
five years ago in Moderna, and mRNA was a big bet, and you see it playing out in terms of
their ability to get a rapid vaccine for Covid. ... You have to take those big bets,"
Sunderland said."
"The other thing that is amazing in its evolution is the amount that we've learned about
HIV pathogenesis, the reservoir, the potential for controlling the virus, either in the
absence of antiretroviral [treatment] or in a modified regimen that takes away the need to
have a single pill or multiple pills every single day. The thing that remains the holy grail
of unaccomplished goals is the development of a highly effective, safe vaccine. And that is
something that's not surprising because of the very special situation with HIV, that the body
-- as much as we study pathogenesis and understand it so incredibly well -- the body does not
make an adequate immune response against HIV, which is the reason why no one has yet
spontaneously cleared the virus by their immune system. And so what we need to do, and where
we're combination putting a lot of effort into, but also struggling with, is the issue of the
development of a vaccine that would be effective enough to be able to be deployed.
We have one situation that took place, well after that meeting in San Francisco, where a
trial of a candidate vaccine -- in a trial named RV 144 that took place in Thailand -- showed
a 31% efficacy, which gave us some great hints of correlates of immunity and are the basis
for a number of subsequent trials, but still was not good enough to deploy. So we have a
number of very large vaccine trials, going on now throughout the world, including a heavy
concentration in southern Africa. But we also are pursuing another line of vaccine research,
which is the attempt to present to the body, in the proper conformation with sequential
immunizations, the capability of making broadly neutralizing antibodies. And if we're
successful in that, then I think we have a really good chance of developing a vaccine that
would have an efficacy and safety profile good enough to actually deploy it."
I think over time mrna "vaccines" will change medicine. Are we opening Pandora's box?
Possibly.
Navarro wrote in the
op-ed for USA TODAY Tuesday that "Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he
has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."
...
The White House's deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, who has been by the
president's side since the 2016 campaign, on Sunday posted a cartoon on Facebook depicting
Fauci as a running faucet washing the U.S. economy down the drain.
"Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I'm going to disagree with a colleague, such as
yourself, it's done publicly -- and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks. See you
tomorrow!" Scavino wrote in a caption accompanying the cartoon.
"... The cash must be Russian sourced , per the NYT, because a couple of low level Taliban types, who were likely tortured by the Afghan police, have said that it is so. ..."
There is particular danger at the moment that powerful political alignments in the United
States are pushing strongly to exacerbate the developing crisis with Russia. The New York
Times, which broke the story that the Kremlin had been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties to
kill American soldiers, has been particularly assiduous in promoting the tale of perfidious
Moscow. Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both
intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by
delusional nonsense from former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks "Why
does Trump put Russia first?" before calling for a "swift and significant U.S. response." Rice,
who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice President, certainly knows about
swift and significant as she was one of the architects of the destruction of Libya and the
escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations directed against a non-threatening
Syria.
The Times is also titillating
with the tale of a low level drug smuggling Pashto businessman who seemed to have a lot of
cash in dollars lying around, ignoring the fact that Afghanistan is awash with dollars and has
been for years. Many of the dollars come from drug deals, as Afghanistan is now the world's
number one producer of opium and its byproducts.
The cash must be
Russian sourced , per the NYT, because a couple of low level Taliban types, who were likely
tortured by the Afghan police, have said that it is so. The Times also cites anonymous
sources which allege that there were money transfers from an account managed by the Kremlin's
GRU military intelligence to an account opened by the Taliban. Note the "alleged" and consider
for a minute that it would be stupid for any intelligence agency to make bank-to-bank
transfers, which could be identified and tracked by the clever lads at the U.S. Treasury and
NSA. Also try to recall how not so long ago we heard fabricated tales about threatening WMDs to
justify war. Perhaps the story would be more convincing if a chain of custody could be
established that included checks drawn on the Moscow-Narodny Bank and there just might be a
crafty neocon hidden somewhere in the U.S. intelligence community who is right now faking up
that sort of evidence.
Other reliably Democratic Party leaning news outlets, to include CNN, MSNBC and The
Washington Post all jumped on the bounty story, adding details from their presumably
inexhaustible supply of anonymous sources. As Scott Horton
observed the media was reporting a "fact" that there was a rumor.
Inevitably the Democratic Party leadership abandoned its Ghanaian kente cloth scarves, got
up off their knees, and hopped immediately on to their favorite horse, which is to claim loudly
and in unison that when in doubt Russia did it. Joe Biden in particular is "disgusted" by a
"betrayal" of American troops due to Trump's insistence on maintaining "an embarrassing
campaign of deferring and debasing himself before Putin."
The Dems were joined in their outrage by some Republican lawmakers who were equally incensed
but are
advocating delaying punishing Russia until all the facts are known. Meanwhile, the
"circumstantial details" are being invented to make the original tale more credible, including
crediting the Afghan operation to a secret Russian GRU Army intelligence unit that allegedly
was also behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury England in 2018.
Reportedly the Pentagon is looking into the circumstances
around the deaths of three American soldiers by roadside bomb on April 8, 2019 to determine
a possible connection to the NYT report. There are also concerns relating to several deaths in
training where Afghan Army recruits turned on their instructors. As the Taliban would hardly
need an incentive to kill Americans and as
only seventeen U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan in 2019 as a result of hostile action, the
year that the intelligence allegedly relates to, one might well describe any joint
Taliban-Russian initiative as a bit of a failure since nearly all of those deaths have been
attributed to kinetic activity initiated by U.S. forces.
The actual game that is in play is, of course, all about Donald Trump and the November
election. It is being claimed that the president was briefed on the intelligence but did
nothing. Trump denied being verbally briefed due to the fact that the information had not been
verified. For once America's Chief Executive spoke the truth, confirmed by the "intelligence
community," but that did not stop the media from implying that the disconnect had been caused
by Trump himself. He reportedly does not read the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), where such a
speculative piece might indeed appear on a back page, and is uninterested in intelligence
assessments that contradict what he chooses to believe. The Democrats are suggesting that Trump
is too stupid and even too disinterested to be president of the United States so they are
seeking to replace him with a corrupt 78-year-old man who may be suffering from dementia.
The Democratic Party cannot let Russia go because they see it as their key to future success
and also as an explanation for their dramatic failure in 2016 which in no way holds them
responsible for their ineptness. One does not expect the House Intelligence Committee,
currently headed by the wily Adam Schiff, to actually know anything about intelligence and how
it is collected and analyzed, but the politicization of the product is certainly something that
Schiff and his colleagues know full well how to manipulate. One only has to recall the
Russiagate Mueller Commission investigation and Schiff's later role in cooking the witnesses
that were produced in the subsequent Trump impeachment hearings.
Schiff predictably
opened up on Trump in the wake of the NYT report, saying "I find it inexplicable in light
of these very public allegations that the president hasn't come before the country and assured
the American people that he will get to the bottom of whether Russia is putting bounties on
American troops and that he will do everything in his power to make sure that we protect
American troops."
Schiff and company should know, but clearly do not, that at the ground floor level there is
a lot of lying, cheating and stealing around intelligence collection. Most foreign agents do it
for the money and quickly learn that embroidering the information that is being provided to
their case officer might ultimately produce more cash. Every day the U.S. intelligence
community produces thousands of intelligence reports from those presumed "sources with access,"
which then have to be assessed by analysts. Much of the information reported is either
completely false or cleverly fabricated to mix actual verified intelligence with speculation
and out and out lies to make the package more attractive. The tale of the Russian payment of
bribes to the Taliban for killing Americans is precisely the kind of information that stinks to
high heaven because it doesn't even make any political or tactical sense, except to Nancy
Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and the New York Times. For what it's worth, a number of
former genuine intelligence officers including
Paul Pillar, John Kiriakou , Scott Ritter , and
Ray McGovern
have looked at the evidence so far presented and have walked away unimpressed. The National
Security Agency (NSA) has also declined to confirm the story, meaning that there is no
electronic trail to validate it.
Finally, there is more than a bit of the old hypocrisy at work in the damnation of the
Russians even if they have actually been involved in an improbable operation with the Taliban.
One recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s the United States supported the mujahideen rebels
fighting against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The assistance consisted of weapons,
training, political support and intelligence used to locate, target and kill Soviet soldiers.
Stinger missiles were provided to bring down helicopters carrying the Russian troops. The
support was pretty much provided openly and was even boasted about, unlike what is currently
being alleged about the Russian assistance. The Soviets were fighting to maintain a secular
regime that was closely allied to Moscow while the mujahideen later morphed into al-Qaeda and
the Islamist militant Taliban subsequently took over the country, meaning that the U.S. effort
was delusional from the start.
So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on American
soldiers intended to accomplish? It is probably intended to keep a "defensive" U.S. presence in
Afghanistan, much desired by the neocons, a majority in Congress and the Military Industrial
Complex (MIC), and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump. The end result could be to secure the election of a pliable
Establishment flunky Joe Biden as president of the United States. How that will turn out is
unpredictable, but America's experience of its presidents since 9/11 has not been very
encouraging.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that
seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website ishttps://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
.
The Deep State vermin who pulled-off the violent, proxy overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014,
and who are also behind the Arab Spring, Syrian Rebels, ISIS, and the ongoing domestic unrest
Stateside, are the descendants of the vermin who overthrew Christian Russia in 1917 using the
same modus operandi of color revolution and “peaceful protests.”. Putin undid all
their hard work in Russia and kicked them out and seized their ill gotten gains: this,
coupled with their congenital hatred of Russia, is the reason for the non-stop, bipartisan
refrain of “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
It is probably intended to keep a “defensive” U.S. presence in Afghanistan,
much desired by the neocons, a majority in Congress and the Military Industrial Complex
(MIC), and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump.
There are other reasons for wishing to stay in Afghanistan. Generals don’t like
losing wars. It is personally humiliating to retreat. The whole country is also worn down by
lost wars and the psychological blow lasts for over 10 years like during the post-Vietnam
era. Keeping 10,000 troops in Afghanistan permanently won’t win the war but it will
prevent a defeat and potentially humiliating last minute evacuation when the Taliban retake
Kabul.
Also Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan: “Al-Qaeda has 400 to 600 operatives
active in 12 Afghan provinces and is running training camps in the east of the country,
according to the report released Friday. U.N. experts, drawing their research from interviews
with U.N. member states, including their intelligence and security services, plus think tanks
and regional officials, say the Taliban has played a double game with the Trump
Administration, consulting with al-Qaeda senior leaders throughout its 16 months of peace
talks with U.S. officials and reassuring Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, among others, that
the Taliban would “honour their historical ties” to the terrorist group.”
https://time.com/5844865/afghanistan-peace-deal-taliban-al-qaeda/
While the melodrama about trump=pro Russia and dems=anti Russia makes good political
theater to keep folks running in circles chasing their tails, this is not the main reason for
the continuous attacks on Russia by organs of the zpc/nwo. The main reason is Russia is not
owned by them. Not a colony. The main reason for the psywar is not about trump vs dems, it is
about keeping the Russia=bad guys theme seeded in the propaganda. That was the main reason
behind “Russiagate”, as well. And as with that scam, both “sides”
knowingly played their part hyping the theater to keep that Russia=bad guy propaganda theme
in the mind of americans.
I can’t imagine that any intelligent person believes this bullshit about Russia. I
completely tune it out the same way I tuned out any news about “CHAZ.”
“So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on
American soldiers intended to accomplish? It is probably intended to keep a
“defensive” U.S. presence in Afghanistan, much desired by the neocons, a
majority in Congress and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), and it will further be
played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated incompetence of Donald Trump.”
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the story is true. So what? I don’t
see how it can be used as justification to double down on a pointless war. (Reasonable people
might see it as another reason to get out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later).
Moreover, I don’t think they’d have to create such drama to get Trump the
imperialist to keep the troops in Afghanistan (if he actually had any intention to withdraw
them in the first place).
This propaganda effort reminds me of the Skripal affair. Perhaps Trump’s handlers
and enablers realize that he’ll lose the election (if we have one) so they’re
trying to manipulate him into escalating tensions with Russia (just as they are with China,
Iran and Venezuela).
The Americans were always very proud and upfront about how they organized, trained,
equipped and financed the Taliban to oust the Russians from Afghanistan. In view of this, why
do they act so surprised should the Russians do something similar on a much smaller
scale?
Obviously, the whole story was concocted in Washington, but so what?
Anyone with half a brain should know that the Americans are in Afghanistan because the
Americans control the world trade in narcotics. Columbia is the cocaine end of the
business.
I do wish some smart chemists would synthesize heroin and cocaine in a laboratory and put
the CIA out of business.
“and it will further be played and replayed to emphasize the demonstrated
incompetence of Donald Trump”
The demonization of a democratically-elected President by the zionist-owned New York
Times , Washington Post and CNN is somewaht reminiscent of the demonization of a
certain Austrian in the Western media after the 1933 World Jewry’s declaration of war
on Nazi Germany.
“He who controls the narrative controls the consciousness”
With Wolf Blitz’s, Bolton’s, and this week’s release of Trump’s
relative’s book discrediting his mental health. How many books is that now???
But, times have moved on. Trump can ride this wave by learning the dark art of playing
the victim using the mantra ‘look how hard I’m trying’ and appealing to
US voters as their ‘law and order’ president.
Geopolitically speaking, if the US Zio-cons were smart, rather than suffering from
‘Groupthink’, they would be trying to entice Russia away from its partner, China,
and draw Russia into playing a greater role in Europe. Recall that Putin had asked if Russia
could join NATO.
But, alas, they’re still making the same mistake they did in 1991 after the collapse
of Central Industrialism in the former USSR.
The Mujahudeen morphing into Al Qaeda is a new one on me that I have never heard before. I
had read and heard countless times that it was Al Qaeda all along in Afghanistan that the
U.S. assisted to fight against the USSR. It does not make sense either, since the MEK (
Mujahudeen ) is a twisted Shiite cult Iranian, and Al Qaeda is Arabic and twisted Sunni cult.
So, the language and religious differences do not make any sense that one became the
other.
I guess that it makes perfect sense to say anything at all, regardless of the facts, to
the Terrible Trio in the DNC, just to keep the focus on themselves, rather than on Biden.
Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both
intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by delusional nonsense from
former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks “Why does Trump put
Russia first?” before calling for a “swift and significant U.S.
response.” Rice, who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice
President, certainly knows about swift and significant as she was one of the architects of
the destruction of Libya and the escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations
directed against a non-threatening Syria.
The pathetic Rice has plenty of company. During a 7/5 CNN puff segment with Dana Bash,
Tammy Duckworth (another potential Biden VP), out of the blue said that the Russians put out
a bounty on US forces. Of course, Bash didn’t challenge Duckworth.
Downplayed in all of this is the fact that Russia was one of the first, if not the first
nation, to console the US on 9/11, followed by Russian assistance to the US military
operation in Afghanistan.
“…the kind of information that stinks to high heaven because it doesn’t
even make any political or tactical sense, except to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff
and the New York Times.”
Pelosi is the proud daughter of a shabbos goy father; Schumer is “shomer” or
professed guardian of Israel; Schiff is the decendent of the Internationale Banker who
supported Trotsky’s take down of the Czar; the NYT is what happens when Hebrews learn
to write English. The Jews have been trying to rule Russia for almost 200 years as
Solzhenitsyn would have told us if he could have gotten a publisher in the Jewish American
publishing industry. If Stalin hadn’t thrown the Bolshevik Jews out, there might not
have been a cold war. Watch out Gentiles. These people have taken us into 3 wars for their
interests and they NEVER change.
And, of course, the “conservative” maggots are going along with the obvious
liberal lies once again. There has never been a group of more cowardly and worthless
individuals than American “conservatives”.
Russia
The hope of the world.
Edgar Cayce
Famous US psychic.
As the USA continues its path into a political, moral and military cesspit of pure
corruption, lies, violence, mass murder and sheer evil, it is increasingly difficult to argue
with Cayce.
He was certainly on to something, and that something was like, 80 years ago.
One can even put more belief and trust in a psychic these days – than anything being
claimed or reported by the USA alphabets, government or MSM
Sickening and frightening really.
There are other reasons for wishing to stay in Afghanistan. Generals don’t like
losing wars
You would have thought by now the American Generals would have got used to ‘losing
wars’.
They haven’t won one other than Grenada in living memory.
The Russians even had to win WW2 for them….
Russia and China would eat them alive today.
So we are now down to sheer bullying, bluster and illegal economic sabotage.
Venezuela springs to mind.
Yes, but they also hate Putin for liberating Russia from its rapacious oligarchs, nearly
all of whom were Jews. The present artificially created hatred for Russia in the US is in
reality the hatred of the frustrated Jewish Mafia.
“I can’t imagine that any intelligent person believes this bullshit about
Russia”
Lenny is clapping his hands excitedly.
“Oy believe it, George ! I do – I do – I do !”
George grunts, clears his throat & spits with some force & accuracy at a scrunched up
copy of the NYT.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that the story is true.”
For amusement’s sake, lets wonder what would happen should the Russians offer a bounty
to US & allied troops to kill each other . A kind of cash incentive to bring back
the final years of the Vietnam war.
It sure will be entertaining to watch Joe Biden try to cope with the duties of the
presidency. He makes the fictional President Camacho from the movie “Idiocracy”
look like a statesman with the intellectual skills of a Teddy Roosevelt by comparison. I can
picture his inaugural address in my head, as he inevitably loses his place on the
teleprompter and starts babbling about pony soldiers and you know, the thing. After a grope
fest at his inaugural ball, instead of the Oval Office he will immediately be consigned to
the White House basement for the duration of his term. If you thought an inarticulate
President Donnie made for good reality TV, just wait till a totally incoherent President Joe
has the whole world rollicking with laughter. Plus, Republicans get their turn to amuse with
grid lock of the Congress and the discharge of mass quantities of bog sediment at the
administration every single day for four solid years. It’s a win for comedy no matter
which candidate is elected!
Ann, you’ve got the quote wrong. Here is what he actually wrote:
“So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian
bounties”
I’m going to assume you didn’t mean “forks” but actually
“faux”.
Using “faux” is here is not incorrect. Giraldi could have meant the NYT article
was “not real, but made to look or seem real” — which goes considerably
further than “false”.
However, that does not necessarily mean that other users of “faux” are not
indulging themselves in a “silly fashion”.
@Emily
to consecrate Russia to the heart of Mother Mary – which still hasn’t fully been
fulfilled, btw – is another indication of Russia’s leadership in a community of a
shared future for humanity, aka Community of Common Destiny (CCD), as advocated by the
Russian President’s ‘double-helix’ partner, China’s President Xi
Jinping.
Compare and contrast that with, then President, Obama’s words to Putin: “The
United States has exclusive rights to anywhere in the world.”
@Alfred
family bankruptcy when every pharmacist knows they re-branded and off-shored their loot
several years ago. Their fine was pocket lint to them.
But that fake allowed the corporate-government axis to make ALL serious painkillers
effectively illegal, including the ones being used safely before Purdue Pharma came
along.
Narcotics are safe when used properly, but where’s the CIA’s take there? So
they killed their competitors and made your family doctor an agent. And sell lots of dope.
Because the nation the CIA protects is in terminal debt, agencies need hard cash from
somewhere .
That’s why the democrats and the left fight to keep the southern border open ,the
hordes of third world peasants are just a “bonus”……look at who the
drugs are destroying i.e. the target
The Democrats have predictably been outdone by the anti-Trump Republicans in this matter.
You can’t sink any lower in Russia-baiting than the Lincoln project’s recent
release, “Fellow Traveler”. Beyond stupid and revolting. Gives you a clue of
their very low opinion of the American voter
There is a dangerous illusion – characterized in part by demonizing rivals –
and that is the developing crisis is merely a re-run of the Cold War. After the Napoleonic
wars the Congress system was established to maintain peace in Europe. It worked reasonably
well, interrupted significantly by the Crimean war, but finally buried with the outbreak of
WWI in 1914; it did not prevent that cataclysmic conflict. Then came the League of Nations
for a short time; it did not stop WWII. The United Nations and other post-war institutions
were established in the 1940s. Now we are in the approaches to WWIII. But very few see. The
apocalyptic conflict feared during the Cold War is nearing. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Russia Hoax 2 is supposed to keep our minds off the Uniparty’s anarcho-tyranny, but
it’s awfully hard to fear Putin with orcs and shitlibs running amok wrecking statues of
racist elks.
@Robert
Dolan olostomy Bag, or were able to steal it on election night, Trump would be spending
the rest of his life in prison right now.
And Russia would have acquiesced to, though more likely quietly assisted, the frame-up.
What we don’t know at this point is what generational geopolitical payoff Russia was
promised by Brennan in March 2016, for its participation. My suspicion is that Nord Stream II
was merely a down payment.
I don’t envy Barr or Durham. How do they resolve this greatest political scandal in
American history when at the center of it you have a former CIA Director who is a Russian
mole.
If you review the New York Times editorial page and its oped pieces you will see more half
of the content each day is anti Trump. The Times has also played up the civil rights aspect
of the BLM movement while playing down the hooliganism of Antifa and the looting by Blacks
which has accompanied it. Many neighborhoods in Manhattan were trashed and looted far beyond
what The Times reported. So promoting the “Russian Bounty” lie doesn’t
surprise me at all. Remember also Times employees went absolutely crazy when the paper
printed an oped by Sen. Tom Cotton. What a bunch of lying flakes and chicken shits.
@tyrone
of more and more of the total of products and services produced in the US economy every year
(GDP) goes to capital, i.e., the holders of wealth, rather than workers, which in turn
creates a drag on further GDP – so eventually it becomes self defeating.
Think: Vicious Cycle of Poverty, as opposed to Virtuous Cycle of Prosperity.
But that explains why neither the Dems / Repubs are determined to do anything about the
1,000,000+ illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexican border every year.
As said many times by many others: ‘The US has one political party – the
business party, with 2 wings.’
The Soviets actually had to stop the Wehrmacht cold (very cold, indeed) and be ready to
start rolling it back before the USA even dared to join the war.
US Ziocons movement is a family affair. They’re into the second and third
generation, who are still following their daddy’s’ or grandpa’s playbook.
Original ideas are hard to come by with this lot.
The Democrats are suggesting that Trump is too stupid and even too disinterested to be
president of the United States so they are seeking to replace him with a corrupt
78-year-old man who may be suffering from dementia.
Good one but what do you mean may be suffering ? (Grin)
Not only replace Trump with Biden but with all the radicals now infesting theDemo’krat
party and manipulating demented, sleepy Joe.
These are all made up stories. By the time one fake story is laboriously dismantled
another one is made up. It’s always a game of playing catch-up. Russia makes a good
boogyman and has served well in that role for three generations now so it’s a tested
formula. It’s a dangerous game since all these idiots could sleepwalk us into an armed
clash with Russia somewhere. Then of course there’ll plenty of problems but perhaps
there’s a calculation that something like that could benefit this band of war
inciters.
I know old liberals have ate up all things Russia, Russia, Russia. Have the POBs (people
of brown)? Have all those post ’67 immigrants? They all vote democrats, and are now the
future demographic of America. Its their kids that have to wanna die for the war machine now.
Has the Yiddish propaganda sheet worked its magic on them? The 1619 Project sure did. My
humble guess is no, despite their voting. Most just want money.
Folks, it is time to get your love ones to stop enlisting and re-enlisting in the US
military. It is the only boycott we can do that will actually hurt.
For what it’s worth, Pillar got shitcanned and rusticated by Cofer Black, Kiriakou
got locked up, Ritter got framed as a pedo, and McGovern got the shit beat out of him by my
DoS goons. So shut the fuck up a little, OK?
So, what is a leaked almost certainly faux story about the Russian bounties on American
soldiers intended to accomplish?
To sound like a broken record again , the CABAL hates Russia and specifically Putin
because he re-established Christian Orthodoxy as the de facto state religion of Mother
Russia. They would get The USA into a hot war with Russia if it meant hurting Putin, never
mind what it would do to us. Their hatred is so strong that they could care less what it
would do to America, the snakes that they are.
All Russians would have to do to exploit the current unrest in America would be to knock
out a social media platform or two, or perhaps to leak dirt on the people ginning up war.
Those targets are absolutely hated by the American people outside the Imperial City.
@Zarathustra
and historically illiterate pseudo-intellectual BS about 1619 and Evil America that, because
its evil, should change the names of the military bases where those soldiers trained under
the impression they were going to defend their country!
The Hostile Elite is a rabid dog so totally out of control it needs to be put down
immediately.
Whatever happens, no one should ever take the moral condemnation of psychopaths
seriously.
Battered Wife Syndrome?
I give you Battered Nation Syndrome.
Time to prove to the world it’s possible to recover from it and move into a larger
freedom.
@No
Friend Of The Devil not called al-
Qaeda at this stage but some other name. Apparently the name al-Qaeda was first used by the
FBI to reference this group due to some sort of misunderstanding, but it eventually became
the name they adopted for themselves since that was what everybody was calling them anyway
when they became famous after further adventures.
The above should be taken with a grain of salt since this is only what I have been able to
glean from reading various articles. Presumably what is called al-Qaeda today are the
descendants or associates of personnel from this particular group as opposed to other groups,
but I don’t know.
When Russia was controlled by Marxists, Leftists and Liberals loved Russia, defended
Russia, excused Russia, promoted Russia. Now that Russia has survived Marxist totalitarianism
and begun rediscovering Russian cultural heritage, which features Christianity, Leftists and
Liberals HATE Russia.
Who coulda thunk it possible?
More important is that our Neocons and our old guard Yank ‘conservatives’
– who control foreign policy for both Republicans and Democrats – in the military
and the spy game see Russia today exactly as the Leftists and Liberals see Russia.
Both the Neocons and the Yank WASP Country Club types in the so-called
‘conservative’ arena agree with Leftists and Liberals about Russia.
There’s plenty of meaning there for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.
The Dem’s election strategists are grasping at straws again.
The deplorables they despise the most are flyover Americans who go to church or who serve
in the military. These are the people they think are stupid and easily manipulated by wild
tales and false flags.
The “bounty on American soldiers” is hogwash to gin up what they perceive to
be a voting bloc of gullible whites.
The Dems weakness with working class whites is one they will try to shore up by crassly
fake, flag-waving appeals to bedrock patriotism.
@anonymous
equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men
are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to
this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty
– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base
alloy of hypocrisy.”
With Russia abolishing serfdom and slavery at the time – and much later than Western
Europe – something had to be done to not be outdone by the Russians, of course. The
hypocrisy would indeed have been unbearable. It still is.
@Really
No Shit the mass of whites before the post-WW2 era, then you are ignorant. If you think
the current Deep State is entirely Jewish, or even majority Jewish, you are ignorant.
Without any doubt, Jews now, and for decades, have per capita dominated the American Deep
State. But they did not create it, nor did they create its evil. The Mossad did NOT
create MI6 and the CIA. British Secret Service created the CIA and the Mossad.
America has a Deep State that flowed naturally from the British Deep State. The Brit
Empire was the Anglo-Zionist Empire Part 1. America is the Anglo-Zionist Empire Part 2.
US strategy at the end of WWII included letting Germans and Soviets wear each other down
and kill as many of each other as possible, without US forces involvement. Obviously
“we”, various US investors and the US taxpayer still gave the Soviets too much
stuff, that propelled USSR economic success claims for the next 20 years.
Just more Liberal/Dim/Zio/CCP sponsored horsesh*t, to drive US and Russia apart, to drive
Russia toward China, when US would be better off trying to treat Russia neutrally (hang our
CCP paid dems).
The Deep State vermin who pulled-off the violent, proxy overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014,
and who are also behind the Arab Spring, Syrian Rebels, ISIS, and the ongoing domestic
unrest Stateside, are the descendants of the vermin who overthrew Christian Russia in 1917
using the same modus operandi of color revolution and “peaceful protests.”.
Spot on!
But, a more accurate name than The Deep State is Judeocracy Inc.
followed by Russian assistance to the US military operation in Afghanistan.
Few people seem to understand the logistics of the war in Afghanistan. The US and their
allies were hugely dependent on the Russian railway system. It is just so ridiculous to
listen to these monkeys who pretend to be statesmen and women.
Susan Rice clearly uses skin whitener and hair straightener to look as much as possible
like those she hates so much.
Unfortunately, the matter with Russia is settled. And while I did not think there was
evidence to support the matter. The current executive sign an intel report that accused the
Russians and Pres. Putin specifically with sabotaging US election and murder and attempted
murder. Unless our executive can reconcile that matter by extracting some manner of penance
for hat behavior — reconciling with Russia is just a flat water tide.
Their actions constituted acts of war and while I may disagree with the assessment
—
that is the US disposition on which nothing Russia says can be taken further than a
pipe.
That intel report which this executive signed locks our posture in place regarding Russia.
We kill people in this country for being suspects.
I don’t think the US citizen would look to kindly on shaking hands with a saboteur
and murderer.
Whether the signing was a matter of political expediency is irrelevant,. The executive
openly cited Russia as an enemy of the US. For me it was one of the most painful memories of
the executives tenure, because
1. destroyed a large portion of our foreign policy agenda of toning down our presence
anywhere
2. demonstrated the executive was not as string as I believed he needed to be.
If they were willing to interfere in our election and engage in political murder in allied
states —there’s no reason to doubt that they would support the murder of our
troops in a conflict one.
———————-
It was a devastating moment when the executive agreed to that intel report.
@mike99588
r Germany.
And vastly profiting from both sides – shamelessly.
Britain and the Commonwealth faced Germany alone through dark days indeed until Russia became
our ally – before the USA incidently – conveniently overlooked..
The Americans finally came in Dec 1941 after Russia was already standing with us.
It has not been forgotten in Britain to this day.
The USA bled this country for decades, paying for what was so much crap amongst all
else..
Lend lease – what a scam that was!!!!!
Whilst you traded and supported the nazi war machine against us.
When you work that into the British Empire acting to prevent Russia from forcing the Turks
out of Europe and thereby liberating Constantinople, and acting to harm Russia deeply in
order to win ‘The Great Game,’ you perhaps will then see that back to Oliver
Cromwell and the Puritans that WASP Empire is Anglo-Zionist Empire.
Well, unlike the JewSA, Russia isn’t enthralled with the Jews. Putin and company
kicked out Soros and his Open Society as well as the Rothschild bankers. Lastly the four
billionaire Jew oligarchs who were running the Yeltsin economic shitshow were also shown the
door. Perhaps the “Assad must go” flop played into Jewish ire as well.
Amusing to see Democrats so deeply concerned over the “Russian threat”. I was
in the Agency during the Cold War. When the Soviets REALLY were a threat, most of those same
Democrats urged retreat, compromise, submission. It makes my guts churn to see these
“patriots” making hysterical claims against Russia. It is almost as if they
resent the fact that Putin has rejected their entire Globalist plan, re-Christianized Russia,
and locked up at least a few of the so-called “oligarchs” who were looting the
Russian people of their patrimony. The case of Bill Browder deserves some attention. This Red
Diaper baby (his grandfather was Earl Browder, chief of the CPUSA) has been one of the
cheerleaders in the campaign to demonize Russia. Following the family tradition of a lack of
loyalty (he holds British and U.S. passports, just in case!) this weasel used his
granddad’s old Soviet contacts to make hundreds of millions carting off anything of any
value left in the old Soviet Union. Of course, he worked with an equally greasy gang of
former Soviets to do this, including one Sergei Magnitsky, a “tax advisor”
working with Browder who assumed room temperature in a Russian jail after he was nabbed by
the tax police. I really wonder if some of these Democrats and others who so denounce Putin
had visions of sugar plums and hundreds of millions of dollars dancing in their heads, dreams
rudely brought to earth by Putin?
Oct 20, 2009 Taliban Is Getting American Troops Hooked On Heroin
It diminishes the effectiveness of our troops as well as raises money for the Taliban, who
are the ones growing the poppy. How can the US combat this new strategy?
LONDON— Recent news item: The Justice Department is investigating allegations that
officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000
pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials.
@EliteCommInc.
e accused is served by having his lawyers present. Since the defendants have refused to
appear in person – three of them disputing the Dutch jurisdiction — the defence
lawyers should withdraw.”
@Emily
t was only done to get into a position to share the spoils. Britain was no more than a vassal
state of the US after WW I, and in no position to defeat Germany. Only Russia could, and they
did, and would have done so with or without the Anglo-Americans. Stop whining about suffering
you brought onto yourself. Besides, Britain suffered very little compared to the continent,
including Germany, and European Jewry, and all of them would have suffered less without the
British arrogance that they had to defend their national honour. Hope they stay out of
European affairs now but it doesn’t look good at this fake Brexit moment
Wisely, Agent76 said, “The CIA Drug Connection is as Old as the Agency.”
Re; above, I suggest Grandfathered by Operation Gladio and it’s Vatican Bank money
laundering component???
Am aware how an England bank, USBC, was caught laundering the Afghanistan drug trade
billions and got a “slap on wrist.”
Linked below is an obscure article on President Putin’s special (on scene)
Afghanistan envoy, Zamir Kabulov, who accused US intelligence in Afghanistan of drug
trafficking.
@No
Friend Of The Devil to attack Iran. They are totally despised by ordinary Iranians. They
are a cult with something in common with the Cambodian Pol Pot way of life. Very dangerous
people. They have absolutely nothing in common with the Taliban who are trying to liberate
their country from the Americans.
@Gidoutahere
ld bring to an end a fledgling democracy and a return to the Cold War days.
“In return, Maxwell’s massive debts would be wiped out by a grateful
Kryuchkov, [Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB] who planned to replace Gorbachev. The KGB
chief wanted Maxwell to use the Lady Ghislaine, named after Maxwell’s daughter, as a
meeting place between the Russian plotters, Mossad chiefs and Israel’s top politicians.
? Apparently the Rothschilds/Israel Deep State wanted Gorbachev or Yeltsin.
Events are so tangled and interconnected, as Ghislaine is still a Israel Deep State
operative.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians hating themselves or other Whites for being proud
of their heritage.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians tearing down monuments and statues or desecrating
their flag.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians wanting their country to be invaded by hordes of
hostile nonwhite WMD.
Funny, I don’t see White Russians apologizing or backing down from identifying
themselves as a Christian nation.
Oh, I get it. This is why the so-called, “Deep State” and “Neo-Cons aka
Neo-Commies” hate Russia so much. I get it now. It burns (((their))) collective asses
that there are actually some largely homogeneous and traditional White nations still around
who aren’t willingly accepting their own genocide or apologizing for being evil White
racists. My gawd, this is my epiphany, this is MY AWAKENING ( shout out to Dr. Duke’s
EXCELLENT BOOK), now I know why Russia is so vilified by (((our media.))) (((Our media))) is
racist against Whites, and (((they))) hate the idea that a traditional White Christian nation
still exists, especially a powerful nation like Russia. Oh dear, how could I be so gullible
not to see this one. I’m Irish American and I am told I must hate the Russkies to be
patriotic by other patriotic Israel Firsters.
It has to do with two things, and only those two things, all other rubbish about
“human rights”, “international law”, blah blah blah, is propaganda
meant for the common man.
1) Russia is white, that means it can easily be demonized and is demonized.
2) The jews that fled Russia are an especially virulent strain of the jew, their hatred for
Russia has few equal.
Maybe someone has already stated the obvious. Regardless of the validity (or lack of) a
bounty program; it’d be real hard to affect US troops if there were no US troops in
Afghanistan.
@Erzberger
ica and the Balkans.
Fourth, had the Admiral Canaris led traitors not been hiding munitions or sending them to the
wrong place, the Soviets may not have recovered even with the US re-supply.
If there is something to yawn about, it is the WWII narrative is tiresome. Stalin
wasn’t a “good guy”, and neither were Churchill or Roosevelt. The reality
is that it took the “world” to defeat Germany. The Italians were of no help, and
the Japanese were as much a drain as a resource to Germany. Germany was destroyed to allow
the advancement of Marxism, which had already embedded itself in the UK and US.
The zionists are pissed that Russia has saved Syria from the zionist mercenaries aka AL
CIADA aka ISIS, which are creations the CIA and the MOSSAD and MI6 and NATO and so the anti
Russian propaganda, pouring out of the zionist owned MSM.
Obviously “we”, various US investors and the US taxpayer still gave the
Soviets too much stuff, that propelled USSR economic success claims for the next 20
years
The Russians paid for all the “giving” with gold. Kindly stop repeating lies.
Even the British went almost bankrupt repaying the Americans for their
“generosity”.
It will be interesting to see how the Russians will treat the Americans when the USA
experiences feudalism. I suspect the Russians will be far more generous than the Americans
deserve.
@neutral
kids.
Hilary Clinton has been a very effective butcher of Libyan and Syrian population at large;
young children and pregnant women were the greatest victims of Clinton’s subhuman
policies.
Susan Rice was good at promoting mass slaughter in Syria, and, along with H. Clinton, S. Rice
should be credited with the slave markets in Libya.
Nuland-Kagan helped to make Ukraine into the poorest country in Europe, where zionists and
neo-nazis found a complete mutual understanding. So much for holobiz squealing.
What’s wrong with the US? How come that the US society produced these
monstrosities?
Being that America kills other countries’ soldiers (and civilians) all the time, why
can’t Russia (or any other country) do the same thing? What goes around comes around,
right?
Some things (Russiagate) are just too silly to bother with.
I agree – except that I’m getting quite a chuckle these days at the sheer,
utter desperation of the “Russia did it”, “Saddam did it”, “Bin
Laden did it”, “Assad did it”, etc. etc. etc. noise from the crowd who DID
do it.
Shlomo is cornered and exposed – and that IS worth the subscription fee to watch,
FINALLY.
“There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states.” General
(((Wesley Clark)))
Obviously a patriotic “American” General like Mr. Clark has no problem with
the racist state of Israel.
Just another COHENcidence? Nah, after finding about “6 million” COHENcidences
you start thinking for yourself, stop dropping the idea that “conspiracy
theories” are “conspiracies” and start realizing you have been fed a load
of horseshit for a century and counting. We don’t have a Russia problem but Houston, we
do have a problem. Wonder what that problem is?
@Tom
Welsh te Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, at a time when that meant something. He also wrote
(presumably without the assistance a ghost writer) some 40-odd books, as Tucker Carlson
pointed out in a recent monologue.
I think by any standard, these achievements indicate a fairly high level of intellectual
skills.
Whether or not he was a nutcase is another matter, and not mutually exclusive of his
having considerable intellectual skills. A good place to start on this question is to read
what H.L. Mencken wrote about him.
And it is said that Roosevelt is included in the Mt. Rushmore tableau because he was
friends with Borglum the sculptor.
@Trinity
of different nations. But they live in harmony. Their common language is Russian. When Putin
goes to visit the Dagestan, he tells them that their men are brave and their women beautiful.
They love it. And they love Putin for it. Sadly, Google and Youtube seem to have cleaned up
this stuff.
The current news that the Brutish govt has approved new arms sales to Saudia because Saudi
mass killings of Yemeni civilians are all “isolated incidents” so it’s
quite proper to sell them the means seems to prove your point.
“Your decision, Mr President, to grant the Soviet Union an interest-free loan to the
value of $1,000,000,000 to meet deliveries of munitions and raw materials to the Soviet Union
is accepted by the Soviet Government with heartfelt gratitude as vital aid to the Soviet
Union in its tremendous and onerous struggle against our common enemy — bloody
Hitlerism.” (here)
The US is in central Asia for much more than that, it’s about blocking China and
Russia, as well as partially cutting off Iran on it’s eastern flank. Iran is almost
surrounded by US bases. The US wants to have more control point/choke point control over
continental transport routes in Asia. (One such prize would be the Dzungarian Gate, but
that’s a little too ambitious for the moment. ) Afghanistan does have resources, but it
would be a target without them, as it is so valuable as a (potential) transit corridor.
@Emily
ulture/history/item/4691-china-betrayed-into-communism" rel="nofollow"
href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4691-china-betrayed-into-communism">Marshall’s
doing all in his power to ensure the victory of Mao over Nationalist forces in 1949
U.S. civilian leaders seem to swoon over enemy sanctuaries for some strange reason. Kill
U.S. troops in theater. No problemo but pinky swear we won’t go after you if you go
back across the border.
God bless Richard Nixon and his destruction of NVA base areas in Cambodia. Thereafter,
enemy activity ceased around my camp and all through MR IV.
Reading your comment, Wally, I find your name extremely apt.
None so blind as those who refuse to even read.
You can take a horse to water but cannot make him drink.
You can put all the proof necessary but if you refuse to check it out – well –
stay a ‘ Wally’.
I guess you subscribe to the philosophy of ‘Ignorance is bliss’.
@Curmudgeon
Wehrmacht, the Warsaw Rising they so strongly encouraged would not have happened, and not
have led to the disaster it was for the city and its inhabitants
“Stalin wasn’t a “good guy”, and neither were Churchill or
Roosevelt. “ no objections
“The reality is that it took the “world” to defeat Germany. “ Much
of Europe fought on the side of Germany because they realized that Stalin, Churchill and
Roosevelt weren’t good guys, and they had nothing to look forward to but a horrible
peace in case of their victory. Why do you think the EC got together so quickly after the
war?
Also: the sheer idiocy of claiming that poor little “Britain and the
Commonwealth” stood alone against the German monster state! Do you ever look at a map?
at human and natural resources? This should have been a turkey shoot if your side had not
been as lacking in courage as it was, and as incompetent. And if the rest of Europe
wasn’t to a very large extent in the German camp, as it is today
Scott Ritter has a separate article at consortiumnews noting that the Russians have been
giving money to the Taliban (AID) to fight Americans, the CIA and their ISIS proxies since
2014. Surely Obama and/or Biden would have stopped these Russian “bounties” if
they were important.
“Please at least proofread your gibberish. Some of it might even make
sense.”
The executive in the WH has agreed that Russia sabotaged the US election process and
engaged murder and attempted in states of our allies.
There is no turning the clock bank unless Russia makes some gesture of amelioration
— there behavior constitutes an attack on the US. As such they are active enemies of
the US.
Unfortunately anyone seeking some manner of Russian love fest — should probably
forget it. Whether the executive signed for politically expedient reasons simply
doesn’t matter.
“If you believe any of the Skripals nonsense and the MH-17 false flag, you are
either gullible or a troll.”
Uhhhh, wholly irrelevant. My position in opposition to the contend that Russia sabotaged
the US election was vehemently dubious. My comments at the time make my position abundantly
clear. The evidence for the case against Russia in the US simply no there. But at the end of
the day, the executive choose to go the other direction. That is unfortunate. But it was also
a sign of things to come concerning the executives ability to stand.
And my comments today make that very clear. Your knee-jerk response that I believe what
the executive signed onto is incorrect. I knew that his choice destroyed a good deal of his
foreign poliy admonition to reduce tensions.
But that was his choice mistake or not he made that choice and as I expressed at the time
— we would have to live by it.
——————————————–
In fact, if I were on the opposition, I would like nothing better for the executive to
start behaving as though the intel report doesn’t exist. Because I would pull out that
report with his signature and commence calling him a weakling, indecisive, and a danger to
the US — who is to toothless to hold Russia accountable for her acts of terror in the
US and Europe.
I would then commence a campaign explaining why the executive wants to decrease troops ion
Europe — he wants to cede our allies over to Russian domination —
But then I am not on the opposition. It was a mistake on the facts for the executive to
sign that report for which there was little to no evidence supporting it.
Now if you have a response that gives the president some manner of face saving as he makes
nice with a country that overthrew a US election in the US, and engaged in murder and
attempted murder — have at it.
—————
Minus some kind of amelioration by the Russians or an about face by the current executive
(and tat would really be interesting) no peace and love and understanding can move forward. I
can say with certainty
Russia, Pres. Putin has no intention of apologizing for something they most likely did not
do regarding US elections.
Though I am sure he will once again have reason to chuckle.
Those of you angry, frustrated, irritated . . . and yada I suggest you take that up with
the WH They made that choice.
But by all means name call as opposed to deal with the obvious reality.
The US can not make nice with Russia until Russia makes amends for sabotaging the US
election and engage in acts of murder or attempted in murder in the sovereign states of our
allies. So says the executive in the WH. In fact he says that Pres. Putin ordered the
sabotage and murder.
I think you understand.
There is no way for the current executive to move forward with better relations with
Russia without extracting some admission and compensation for sad acts without reaping
serious political damage — I would say a loss of credibility, but that is already in
question – sadly.
Interestingly, whoever invented this lie about Russia and Taliban not only did not know
the realities of Afghanistan, but was stupid enough not to consult someone who knows. There
is no such thing as a bank transfer in Afghanistan. It exists in the Middle Ages (democracy,
my foot!), so the only form of money that functions there is cash, in hand, in a case, or in
a bag, depending on the amount.
The USA is quickly going to find itself in a corner. There is no realistic path away from
a total confrontation with Russia. No politician will dare dissent. I hope Russia is prepared
for this.
“The deplorables they despise the most are flyover Americans who go to church or who
serve in the military. These are the people they think are stupid and easily manipulated by
wild tales and false flags.”
Well let’s face it, they usually are. These are the milch cows the MIC relies on to
keep its funding secure.
Everyone knows that Americans are the most dumbfuck stupid people on the planet. It is
more shocking to think that propaganda would NOT affect most of the population.
Anecdotally, when my family lived in England in a village near London in 1957-58 we were
treated like royalty. I’ve always assumed it’s because we were the beloved Yanks
who saved Britain’s behind in the war. That doesn’t undercut what you say about
the underlying resentment, but my clear impression and that of my parents was that the
post-war Brits loved them some Yanks.
Another anecdote, this one not so feel-good. In 1956 we lived on Lakenheath AFB in the UK.
During the Suez crisis the base was on full stand-by alert in case we had to go to war with
Britain. Seriously.
@Patagonia
Man re in Washington is beyond repair. The despicable sinister schemes, backstabbing,
lies, fake facts in a quest for power has nothing to do with democracy but criminality.
It is time to galvanize support for direct voting…enabled by evolving technology.
That process would eliminate:
@ need for electing deceiving proxies that always betray their promises to represent the
public interest.
@ Washington proxies making decisions…should be reduced to debating issues.
@ the special interest groups, lobbies self-serving agenda.
@ sending our young people dying on far away places in unnecessary wars.
When was Paul Craig Roberts last an insider? Do you think him capable of picking cover
stories generically, that is without relevant particular knowledge of inside stuff?
And you seem to claim to have that ability to pick a cover story. So…. how? What
are the generic indicia?
Oh gee, your point would make one think that no other pagan Christian Church has
produced such mass murderers, or in fact, even greater ones… which would be ludicrous as
per history, yeah?
The real source of such satanic evil should be traced to Whitevil (including their Judevil
cousins of course) supremacy and their in-house “niggas,” such as the witch you
mention.
Looks like a lot of the blonds here except the ones here date thugs and run around til
they’re 24ish from dude to dude til they discover the joys of pills & meth and take
the full bath into the toilet….
@Ann
Nonny Mouse political dancing around and inventing another culprit as criminals always do,
successfully disappeared them. Don’t hope they will ever appear again.
And this is the Brutish government that killed another Russian by polonium poisoning and of
course invented another culprit, again as criminals always do.
And is now selling weapons for mass killing to Saudia says mass killings are merely
incidentals.
Consistently, modern Britain makes Nazi Germany look angelic. Consistently.
These are not Christian moral values. What religion or ritual system or control system acts
like this once it takes charge?
@Wizard
of Oz The same person also fuzzes up threads by pretending to be more than one commenter,
the technique known as “sock puppetry.” See under Mr. Derbyshire’s February
15, 2019, article comment ## 28, 42, 43, 44, 68, 122, where he/she/they got sloppy also posting
as “Anon[436].”
Over time, Wizard has emerged as sympathetic to the international bureaucracy of the
Establishment of which he may even be a (former?) part, the type of “diplomat”
exemplified by Mrs. Nuland’s Ivy League cookie caddy in Ukraine. He broke character a
while back, showing emotional hostility to China. But who can be sure? Among this
website’s oddest, sophisticatedly trollish commenters.
You will find that Roosevelt privately was giving both the UK & France assurances that
if either were attacked, the US would come to their aid well before 1938 – even
tho’ US multinational corporations were still trading with the NSDAP in Germany well into
1941.
As you can’t even get the Julian Assange bit right I don’t suppose it’s
any use asking you to justify your bald assertions or even flesh them our with detail. Let
alone explain when Britain became “modern” and ceased to be the country which is
rightly credited with ending theslave trade and led the way in abolition of slavery.
Yes, several governments have treated Assange contemptibly but he is remanded without bail
pending the resumption of the extradition hearing, not imprisoned for life in cruel or any
conditions. How can you waste readers time with such garbage?
How much credit do you give to someone who sloppily uses the term “terrorist in that
context referring to the equovalent of precision bombing in contrast to area bombing without
precise aiming?
I am really not qualified to comment on the internal wrangling of the various factions in
the USA. I look at their foreign policy actions, not proclamations, with much greater
interest.
@Erzberger
ut down war industry was started by Germany, arguably in Belgium in August 1814 but certainly
in December 1914 when German cruisers indiscriminately shelled three North East England towns.
An aberration? No. It was followed by Zepellin raids on London and the use of Big Bertha
against Paris. Then, what message and implicit set of rules do you find in the destruction of
Guernica? And many civilians were killed in the bombing of Warsaw. Even the virtually symbolic
bombing of Berlin was a response to bombs dropped on London, the only point in your favour
there being the fact that those bombs were probably not meant to be dropped on London.
How intriguing. Not having your obsessive interest in warning about Wizard of Oz I have
failed, at my level of diligence, to find any evidence at all of emotional hostility to China
or indeed, about anything much except perhaps the hypocritical mistreatment of individuals like
Julian Assange by governments. Can you help?
The Germans couldn’t believe how inept the average French, American, and British
soldier really were, even British described how frightened many of the America soldiers, most
barely old enough to shave, appeared. The German was appalled at the physical fitness of the
British soldier as well, describing them as weak and frail for the most part. Here is the
truth, Western Europe and America fought the German B team at best, often these Germans were
little more than schoolboys in some cases. Everyone knows that the bulk of the serious fighting
was done on the Eastern Front. Think if tiny Germany hadn’t had to fight on two fronts
against what must have seemed like half the world. It doesn’t speak well that it took so
many years to defeat a country as small as Germany, a country that was at an extreme
disadvantage. The average Western soldier, be it a Frenchmen, a Brit or an American was nothing
special to say the least. This isn’t a I hate America thing, but merely the truth. The
average German soldier was head and shoulders above the average Brit or America G.I.
Finally, seven days after its ‘scoop’, the NYT ran another story on the
subject, entitled ‘New Administration Memo Seeks to Foster Doubts About Suspected
Russian Bounties’, which was published on July 3 and buried in the bowels of the
paper.
Its opening paragraphs sought to back up the original story, claiming that an intelligence
memo had said the “… CIA and the National Counterterrorism Centre had
assessed with medium confidence – meaning creditable sources and plausible, but falling
short of near certainty – that a unit of the Russian military service, known as the
GRU, offered the bounties.”
It was only in the last paragraph that the real story – that there was no story
– was revealed: “The agency did intercept data of financial transactions that
provide circumstantial support for the detainee’s account, but the agency does not
have explicit evidence that the money was bounty payments.”
So the blood libel lasted a week!
One of the greatest things about the Trump Presidency was to carve the ‘Fake
News’ meme on the MSM’s forehead.
Mister/Miss, since when the zionized Congress of the US serves the citizenship of the US?
Thank you for reminding (and you do this regularly) of the unfortunate fact that the US is an
occupied territory and the US Congress is a nest of liars, war profiteers, and rabid
zionists.
Les Wexler, Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer, and Clintons have inflicted more harm to the US than
any Maria Butin and such. And don’t forget Dick Cheney and Co, the committed traitors and
profiteers by any means.
In my experience people who are sloppy with language are sloppy with thinking. I thought you
might have had similar relevant experience unlike most commenters here. For example, if you
were employing a director of research or even just a junior researcher for a committee of
inquiry would you not rate their careful use of language as a qualification? You want to be
able to rely on the facts they turn up and their reasoning underlying proposed conclusions do
you not?
I am content to know that you don’t read my comments and are as sloppy and inaccurate
in calling me hasbara as the person who called destroying an Iranian nuclear facility
“terrorist”. To extend my last comment, you wouldn’t even be on the long list
for assisting any inquiry I chaired.
Do you know at least, what were you fighting for in Vietnam? How Vietnam threatened US
shores?
Do not tell me fighting communist ideology, because the same Nixon and Kissinger that bombed
Cambodia civilians embraced that communist ideology in China with grave consequences. We have
lunatics in Washington and it is time for direct voting – majority rules.
@Wizard
of Oz as right in the sense that despite the British and French declaration of war, not
much happened – other than the naval blockade and the lame French invasion of the Saar
region. Neither Britain nor France had the courage to follow up on their war declaration, for
fear of unpopular casualties or further destruction of land and people (France), and both hoped
to gain a cheap victory by starving out the German war effort. Had they actually opened a
second front in the fall of 39, the Germans would have collapsed, and the war would have been
over before Christmas.
The GErman victory over FRance surprised everyone, including the Germans
I think the EC got together so quickly because the US wanted to impose their economic model
on Europe with the illusion of control. The Marshall Plan was unraveling as the swindle it was,
and the EC was the answer to keep up the illusion. While the UK was in on the scam, they were
the front for the Americans, as the idiot Churchill had pissed away the Empire to buy his 15
minutes of fame.
Once the shooting starts there are no good guys. Like all wars, WWII was an economic war. The
German economic system could not be allowed to succeed, it was catching on.
You must must have quite a deteriorated mind when Russia can influence your vote. Tell me
the logistics of the process. You must have equally deteriorated mind believing what CNN,
MSNBC, WP or NYT and others dishonest outfits tell you – they are a propaganda machine
for a small unpatriotic parasitic group.
There is a hierarchy in the blame game . Trump isn’t on the top . If he were, the vile
Democrats would be asking review and discussion by broader media ,Dept of Justice and Treasury
either to discredit or confirm the following story
in–“Venezuela’s interim government wants access to funds confiscated in
the US from corrupt officials, saying it belongs to the Venezuelan people. But US officials
appear to have other plans. The Treasury Department diverted $601 million last year from its
forfeiture fund to help build President Trump’s border wall. (Leer en español)
https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/legal-battle-over-venezuelas-looted-billions-heats-up
Since the United States initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected leftist
government in January 2019, up to $24 billion worth of Venezuelan public assets have been
seized by foreign countries, primarily by Washington and member states of the European Union.
President Donald Trump’s administration has used at least $601 million of that looted
Venezuelan money to fund construction of its border wall with Mexico, according to government
documents first reviewed by Univision Univision reviewed US congressional records and court
documents and found that the Trump administration tapped into $601 million of the Treasury
Department’s “forfeiture fund” to supplement the wall constructio https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/29/trump-stolen-venezuelan-money-border-wall-mexico/
Reason no-one is doing it is because hating Trump could always be swapped for worshipping
something more sinister and idiotic .
We would have heard a similar story only if Russia extracted something like this from
Ukraine or Libya .
I suggest you seek treatment for you pathological hate. Russia want to be a friend in
peaceful coexistence but it is sinister players in Washington that constantly need/create
enemies to build military industrial complexes instead of consumer goods which are supplied
from China.
I have been a supported of the current executive before he considered running. And his
choice to agree with the intel report and more was a fairly tough pill to swallow. As it turns
it was but one of many.
No I found the intel dubious. And I think the executive could have challenged in a manner
that did not call the CIA and other agencies DIA, etc. or damage his ability to curtail his
policy agenda. But having signed — he essentially states Pres Putin and the Russians are
active enemies of the US given that scenario
one would draw on our behavior in Afghanistan hen we supported the Taliban with weapons to
kill Russian soldiers —-
@Trinity
fought more effectively and efficiently than the novice American soldiers. Then there were
technical factors which were naturally advantageous to the more experienced military. For
example the famous 88mm anti-aircraft gin turned anti-tsnk gun was never matched by the Allies
(I thin) and the German tactics for its use were also superior. Germany, though less than the
Soviet Union had another advantage over Britain and France. It’s population went on
growing fast for a generations beyond the end of high growth in Britain and, especially,
France. For example there were 2 million Germans born in 1913 to provide young men for the army
in the 30s.
Yes, as I’ve said repeatedly, the ‘sinister players’, the Judaic NEOCON
cabal want to keep America and Russia apart mainly for their hate of Christianity and gentiles,
and try to destroy them both.
@Curmudgeon
uld be a return to what was indeed Hitler’s scheme of continental autarky and a more even
distribution of wealth, and a democratic model much more in line with the Prussian model, the
latter bearing significant resemblance with the Chinese Mandarin system. The Chinese Communists
are really doing nothing different than the old emperors running a meritocracy rather than an
idiocracy. Western democracies, esp the US, with their insane and horrendously expensive
election circuses tend to achieve the latter. I hear Kanye West is running for president now.
The problem with China is not Communism but their adoption of Western state-capitalism.
I am sure President Putin would be delighted to draw international attention to this new
symbol of a Christian resurgence in Russia. President Trump would appreciate the splendor of
such a backdrop for his meeting with another major head of state. Many of the Evangelicals
among Trumps’s base would be gobsmacked to learn that Mr. Putin is not running a godless,
soulless Communist hellstate. And many of people in the US State Department and the rest of the
Swamp would utterly sh*t their pants.
True dat. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the exceptionals.
And Cheney’s daughter burns the midnight oil in order to keep the pot boiling in
Afghanistan. MUST have U.S. troops there to oppose “terrorists” with AKs.
NYT is a rental rag that always favored Soviets and now CCP, why cite it anymore?
The Russia distraction distracts from Piglosi, Feinstein, Biden, Bushes, congress and corps
etc etc being in bed$ with China. With the side benefit of Russian alienation from the US
driving Russian goods into the China slaughter house on the cheap.
@Derer
pants over Assad’s or Gaddafi’s purported authoritarianisms like they’re
skunk pie. Eeeww!
You’re right that we have lunatics in Washington but I don’t think “direct
voting” is the answer. Devolution plus draconian anti-trust enforcement. crucifixion of
the Antifa filth, massive deportations, ending black privilege, brutally honest debate over
black failure, draconian anti-vote fraud operations, and naming and neutralizing the role and
power of organized Jewry and its wealth seem more likely to get us back on track. Please be
more creative then “majority rule.”
Jesus. “Choke points” can be dealt with from afar. It takes a while to rebuild
railroad bridges. The concept of the Russian and Iranian enemies has worn a little thin these
last few days. It’s just assumed that Russia is a malignant force just as it’s
universally assumed that “special sauce” is the way to go on McDonalds’
hamburgers. I accept neither proposition.
I want troops on the U.S. southern border not on the “flanks” of Iran or
policing “transit corridors” here and there but that’s just me.
@Wizard
of Oz a refuses to extradite a woman to Britain for actual homicide. Zero grounds to hold
him.
From their political standpoint the safest way out is for Assange to simply die in the
maximum-security prison, so the extradition proceedings can simply be dropped. All problems
solved.
So, he is in actual fact in prison for life.
Never mind that Britain did something virtuous in the distant past. Today is today. And
notice that serial murderers can be friendly and courteous between murders but that nice
behaviour doesn’t exonerate them for the murders. Nazi Germany looks angelic relative to
the Britain of today.
“The Gulf of Tonkin “event” was a lie, so there’s that.”
No. It in reality, it was a series of confused messages from the patrol boat. But was used
to support a defense of S. Vietnam — the matter is of no consequence. The US was going to
defend S. Vietnamese sovereignty regardless of the Tonkin event.
Today on TruNews Rick interviews Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, a free speech
alternative to the tyrants at Twitter. They discuss how the Silicon Valley elite use their
satanic bias to silence opposition and have a mission to purge Christianity from their
platforms.
FYI while BLM and RG draw our attention and now RABAS have made all other conspiracies
recede into Corona graveyard
( Russia gate and Russia Afghan Bounty American Solider )
Kushner stoke and his DNA repaired the monetary damages back at home of origin .
Israel lobby organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America ($2-5 million),
Friends of the IDF ($2-5 million) and the Israeli American Council ($1-2 million) are grabbing
huge 100% forgivable loans from the CARES Act PPP program.
According to SBA data released on Monday, Israeli’s Bank Leumi has doled out a quarter to
a half billion dollars under the PPP program, despite being called out for operating in the
occupied West Bank.
Leumi has given sweetheart deals to fellow Israeli companies Oran Safety Glass (which defrauded
the US Army on bulletproof glass contracts) and Energix, which operates power plants in the
occupied Golan Heights and West Bank.
This exchange took place today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.
This video clip with additional information is available on IRmep’s YouTube
Channel.
Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book The Israel Lobby Enters State Government. He is
director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy IRmep in Washington, D.C. which
co-organizes IsraelLobbyCon each year at the National Press Club.
@geokat62
– colonial expansion,
– rolling genocide of the Palestinian people, witness 2014 Operation Protective Edge,
– terrorist attacks of neighboring Arab/Muslim states – Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq,
Occupied Territories, Iran & Syria;
– terrorist attacks on Western nations, incl. the UK, the US, & France (since its
Parliament voted to recognize Palestine as a state in 2014), and
– sponsoring of terror organizations e.g, ISIS, to continue its proxy war on
Syria.
– etc, etc
In addition to Constantinople, years later defending Ottoman remnants in Bosnia and Kosovo
against the Christians by “cigar” Clinton and warmonger Blair that introduced the
Islamization of Europe.
@Erzberger
e lines of making distinctions e.g. between deliberate murder of harmless civilians and forcing
choices on them (starve Russian prisoners and ration food to mothers and children e.g.). Of
course the choice to get rid of their government and stop the war is unrealistic even in the
post Cold War world. What did sanctions on Iran produce?? Just civilian deaths.
** it is only recently that I discovered that it made a big contribution to diverting German
effort from the Eastern Front though it is not surprising that Stalin thought the absence of a
Second Front in France was meant to help the Germans savage the USSR.
@Patagonia
Man he approx dozen Israeli dual citizens he alleges are in the Australian Parliament
contrary to the provisions of the Australian constitution.
So, don’t encourage him Geo, by thanking him. That Israeli nonsense is enough to brand
him as a nutter.
As to Quadrant, what does it matter that, in the 50s, and maybe till about 1970, it was
given some financial support by the CIA? Really, what is the point in the 21st century? Does it
matter to current affairs that Robert Maxwell owned the Daily Mirror till the 90s?
If I don’t reply to all the rubbish no one should infer the truth of anything
Patagonia Man alleges.
He takes various commandments of God and distills it into a silly… Debt = Sin.
Indeed, it is true that one can take anything and make it fit their delusional way of thought.
E.g. the 3 in 1, of the pagan Trinity.
Of course, that does not mean, Usury (extortionate moneylending) ≠ Sin, which it most
certainly is.
The Ten Commandments were about debt? A silly interpretation. They are primarily about
Monotheism and a righteous way-of-life, and refraining from usury is just one aspect of it.
Christianity got perverted? Yes, it most certainly is a pagan perversion of True
Monotheism.
“Sure, Poland bears major responsibility for WW 2, and lending themselves to now
hosting US nukes and troops to be moved over from Germany signals that they once again have not
learned a thing from their past.”
— Stepping on rakes as a national pastime.
@Ann
Nonny Mouse an associated organisation whose stated objective is to ‘maximise support
for the State of Israel within the British Liberal Democrat Party’…
Spaight claims that drawing the war to the British isles was done in solidarity with the
Soviets. This is nonsense but a timely propaganda move at a time when German defeat was
assured. Stalin did no fall into that trap. He lknew about Operation Pike and Operation
Impossible, and had zero reason to trust the British. Wikipedia has a page on either
Operation
Denialist? A careful textual analysis tells me you are saying WoZ denies what you assert,
which is that there are about a dozen Israeli dual citizens in the Australian Parliament,
contrary to law. Instead of coyly dancing around the issue what about meeting the challenge to
name at least some?
@Erzberger
Thanks. Mind you I think the Blitz was pretty indiscriminate bombing before Britain was in a
position to inflict much damage on Germany. I gather attacks on London from the start were a
strategic error by Hitler because the Liluftwaffe should have kept up its attacks on Britisk
airfields. Interesting that Albert Speer, in the “World at War” series, said that
four more raids like the 1000 bomber raid on Hamburg (or maybe it was Cologne) would have
finished the war. Why couldn’t Bomber Command do I it? Maybe it was because Eisenhower
won the battle to have bombers diverted to bombing the Pas we Calais (mostly) and Normandie.
“Mind you I think the Blitz was pretty indiscriminate bombing before Britain was in a
position to inflict much damage on Germany.”
Wrong.
BTW, the Blitz is a misnomer. Blitzkrieg is tactical air support for ground troops. Neither
applies to the air attacks on German cities in May 1940, or the German retaliation, several
months later, that we know as the Blitz.
Richard Overy though has argued that the German Blitz showed the British how it was done
efficiently, so they improved their bombing strategy accordingly afterwards. Whatever
Aren't they counting now everyone who doesn't say "No, I don't have the virus"? It's
strange to me that they shift the narrative every time - even including all the tricks they
use - it looks like it's finally over.
Wearing mask(if it eventually ingrains itself as a widespread public behaviour) will bring
deathknell of all the facial recognition hardware & softwares? What will happen to the
millions of webcams which were capturing 24x7 in the public spaces but cant capture now!
All investment lost ? It seems to me this is a battle by some TPTB vs some other TPTB.
Much as I love MofA's work I am getting rather fed up with the horror stories with no sense
of scale over Covid.
What proportion have been infected to date? 5% 15% 25%. No comment from MofA.
Is there a proportion of the pop that is simply immune (like most kids seem to be)? No
comment from MofA.
Assume everyone caught it how many would that kill? No estimate from MofA.
Of course it is fair to say that no scare mongers talk about these things, not
governments, not the mainstream media that is terrified of challenging the Fear factor. But
I have learnt to expect proper analysis from MofA.
6 months in, we are still debating Public policy and personal policy without even
discussing the potential scale.
My guess is that if nothing is done to prevent everyone being exposed to Covid, then on
average we will have our lives reduced by 2 months per person. Which sounds pretty awful
for someone in the last 2 years of their life, but frankly is nothing given the big gains
in life expectancy in the last couple of decades (excluding US).
I'll happily debate that 2 month estimate with anyone who dares to discuss estimates of
the crucial scale factors above.
But recall the CDC implied estimate of death rates per infection is 0.26% - and I haven't
seen one scare monger accept a 1% number yet.
It's called CULLING! There are no jobs, it's Marx's 'reserve army of the unemployed',
surplus to requirement (by capitalism). Once more, it's NOT THE VIRUS that's killing
Americans, it's CAPITALISM!
@1 - Indeed. Hit the nail on the head. More than any previous (corrupt) administration, the
Trump administration is a kleptocratic enterprise designed, in part, to enrich himself and
his business cronies. They have, and will, use any event positive or negative to that end.
@Kevin (multiple) - 1) Use any search engine. USA Today is reporting that 56 Florida
hospitals have hit peak ICU capacity. That's just in Florida. 2) You clearly know nothing
about the American system of jails/prisons. You're lucky to get a meal that consists of
more than 6oz. of week-old Frito pie (look it up if you're not American). Furthermore,
masks were incredibly hard to come by and the Trump administration had, in fact, shipped a
buttload of them over to China in secret while they were in short supply in the USA. And
finally do you think that they'd give masks to prisoners even if they had them? LOL if
so.
I'm sorry to the doubters; it's time to accept that this thing is real and that masks
work in more ways than one provided they are used properly and sterilized correctly if
needed. But I feel more sorry for the people who suffered and died (will die) as the result
of the shoddy American political and medical systems.
So why have the absolute number of covid-19 deaths been in decline since mid-April? Where
are all the stories of overloaded hospitals?
Posted by: Kevin | Jul 8 2020 18:12 utc | 4
That's your homework. Go to your local hospital and ask where Covid19 are being kept.
You want to disprove something you're going to need hard evidence to back your own
claim.
If masks are effective, why was it necessary to release prison inmates to prevent them from
getting covid-19?
Posted by: Kevin | Jul 8 2020 18:14 utc | 5
This is dunning Kruger effect. You must have heard your assertion somewhere instead of
coming up with that yourself.
Virus are spread through droplets either from your mouth or noses. Wearing masks can help
to contain said droplets spread to others or into public space where many people can be at
risk. The virus did not hover in the air through fine dust particles.
Where did anyone read that the "absolute number of COVID-19 deaths" (in the USA) is in
decline? The count increases every single day.
If what they mean is why is the death rate falling, presuming it is and stays that way,
then the answer is complex and still unfolding, but on a high level it's because they are
finally able to test more people and many of the positive tests are the asymptomatic or
light cases. Hence, we just *know about more* of the actual cases, not to mention that
lockdowns, bar and beach closures, and mask mandates have also helped slow it down. For
now. The fall and winter could be horrible.
White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and
learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day, according to three people familiar
with the White House's thinking, who requested anonymity to reveal internal
deliberations. Americans will "live with the virus being a threat," in the words of one
of those people, a senior administration official.
That's also Boeing's strategy post-737 MAX. Be aware with its soon to be re-licensed
planes.
US has currently raging Covid fires in Florida, Texas, Arizona. Cali and S Carolina and
Louisiana are not far back. Forget about deaths for a minute. The large # of daily
infections and hospitalizations will still put a major strain on US healthcare, logistics,
food supply and then economy.
The hospitalizations should be a huge wake up call alone. Only 130 ICU beds in entire
Arizona left available. A state of 7 million inhabitants.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that at the very least there will be a
huge hospital bed shortage in US for months and months.
Businesses will keep closing and going out of business for then foreseable future.
Even if we get zero deaths for Covid from today on, this is still a clusterf....
MofA topped my dailing reading during the Syria war and until February.
No longer, as other readers I am sick and tired of the Covid paranoia spread on this
blog. The coverage shows a complete lack of political, economic and even statistical
analytical skills. Almost as if there are two different authors.
Read Swiss Policy Research for a realistic, science-based assessment of this election
year propaganda hoax.
Within the Outlaw US Empire, there's been some consistently accurate reporting done by
USA Today , but it's clear the Troll Brigade's talking points remain the same; and
quite frankly, they are becoming very tiresome, allowing today's Global Times
editorial to invoke a Chinese Proverb that:
"describes someone as quenching one's thirst with poisoned wine, and now the proverb can
be used on the hysteric US government....
"while US society has become accustomed to it and even cooperated with it, which is
degeneration ."
"Just like on the field, success will depend on how many players are safe at home.
"'That's going to be the biggest challenge for this game to move forward -- the
off-the-field stuff and what guys do,' said Vincent, an eight-year major league veteran.
'It's just going to take one team to mess it up for everybody. I hope everybody gets that.
It'll take five guys to get a whole team sick, and then if a whole team is sick, that could
end the season for everybody else.'"
And COVID-19's growth is almost completely related to "community exposure." I think it's
rather important for b to echo the message of the linked editorial:
"The Trump administration is leading the country to 'co-exist with the novel
coronavirus.' But we must tell Americans that such inaction is terrible . People's
understanding of the virus is insufficient, but it has been proven that it can spread fast
and infect humans, and the death rate of COVID-19 is much higher than the common flu. If
the US keeps the status quo, its number of deaths will be incalculable, and so will be the
lasting of the raging virus and its long-term impact on the economy ." [My
Emphasis]
I see Chicago now requires a 14-day quarantine of people arriving from the same states
as does New York:
"Effective Monday, July 6, travelers from the following states are directed to
quarantine upon arrival in Chicago: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida,
Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas, and Utah."
The new book coming out about Trump is titled correctly: Too Much and Never Enough:
How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man .
Much as I love MofA's work I am getting rather fed up with the horror stories with no sense
of scale over Covid.
What proportion have been infected to date? 5% 15% 25%. No comment from MofA.
Is there a proportion of the pop that is simply immune (like most kids seem to be)? No
comment from MofA.
Assume everyone caught it how many would that kill? No estimate from MofA.
Of course it is fair to say that no scare mongers talk about these things, not
governments, not the mainstream media that is terrified of challenging the Fear factor. But
I have learnt to expect proper analysis from MofA.
6 months in, we are still debating Public policy and personal policy without even
discussing the potential scale.
My guess is that if nothing is done to prevent everyone being exposed to Covid, then on
average we will have our lives reduced by 2 months per person. Which sounds pretty awful
for someone in the last 2 years of their life, but frankly is nothing given the big gains
in life expectancy in the last couple of decades (excluding US).
I'll happily debate that 2 month estimate with anyone who dares to discuss estimates of
the crucial scale factors above.
But recall the CDC implied estimate of death rates per infection is 0.26% - and I haven't
seen one scare monger accept a 1% number yet.
Posted by: Michael Droy | Jul 8 2020 18:37 utc | 7
You don't have to fear it but you shouldn't forgoes the medical guidelines against
pandemic either. Else you might contributed to catastrophic healthcare system
overloading.
What's your plan other than going into hospital once you're sick ? There are no over the
counter medicine that are effective against this new diseases.
It is simply not true that there are 1 Million tests in Germany per week. There is no such
thing like mass testing in Germany. Only if you feel ill or in the few cases of contact
tracing tests are being conducted, I personally know no one who has been tested at all. Due
to the low numbers of active symptomatic cases numbers of tests should be low accordingly.
Greetings from Germany !
There were approximately 100,000 test-positive deaths in the United States by the end of
May. The overall mortality rate since the beginning of the year was, however, in the range
of the strong flu season of 2017/2018 (see chart below).
In an open letter, over 600 doctors warned US President Donald Trump of the dangers of
an extended lockdown. The lockdown was itself a "mass casualty incident".
@_K_C, Why would more testing drive the number of deaths down? Is there some miracle
treatment that they are keeping a secret? Consider also the generous criteria for
classifying a death as resukting from covid-19.
Actually, the case in Florida seems to be even more dire than what is indicated here -- at
least according to a report I saw from the Independent:
The data, which comes from the state health authority, show that more than four dozen of
Florida's hospitals have now hit full intensive care capacity, while more than 30 are at
90 per cent capacity. And in just the last few days, the statewide percentage of ICU beds
available has dropped from 20 per cent to 17 per cent.
We need to look at the DEATH RATE, NOT the number of infections, or the so-called EXCESS
DEATHS and the problem is that they (the US and the UK) no longer record the actual CAUSE
of death, because the state doesn't give a fuck! In the UK, over half of all deaths have
been in CARE HOMES, ditto the US. Again, they've been CULLED!!!! Offered no protection to
their carers or to the ones they care for. This is EUGENICS or to use it's common name;
FASCISM.
The rich don't give a fuck that more people are now dying from all other kinds of
things, from untreated heart attacks, to starvation.
Hospitals get a significantly higher Medicare reimbursement rate for patients diagnosed
with covid-19. So we are supposed to believe that the healthcare system motherfucks us
every time EXCEPT when it comes to being incentivized with higher covid-19 reimbursement
rates, especially at a time when revenue from other medical procedures is down?
I might add that a lot of people are dying because their immune systems have been fucked by
the foul food, air and water, not to mention the stress of living under a dying capitalism.
div> Im a working class stiff, most people in america simply cant isolate
themselves cuz they need to work to pay the bill a couple weeks without pay is a disaster.
What im concerned about is as a person who got laid of, federal unemployment assistance runs
out at the end of july, after that ill be getting only 300$ a week from the state.which is
not enough
Im a working class stiff, most people in america simply cant isolate themselves cuz they
need to work to pay the bill a couple weeks without pay is a disaster. What im concerned
about is as a person who got laid of, federal unemployment assistance runs out at the end
of july, after that ill be getting only 300$ a week from the state.which is not enough
The microwave generated steam decontamination method (MGS) is confirmed by many studies.
I saw the study you (b) posted, before one month.
It supports up to 20 decontaminations cycles without loss in filter performance and mask
fit.
I use that method for mask decontamination too. It only works for respirator masks
though. Presence of metal on the respirator mask is not a problem, the steam makes sure
that there are no sparks, as studies and myself found.
For surgical masks, the microwave steam decontamination method did not work for me
though, and it destroyed the surgical mask. According to studies, you can use another
method for up to 10 decontaminations of surgical masks - put the mask for 5 minutes over a
steam flow created by boiling water. But do not touch the boiling water with the surgical
mask, just steam it.
For cloth masks - wash the mask in washing machine at 60 C, for at least 30 minutes. You
can put some disinfectant in the washing machine, such as commercial Heitmann solution for
disinfection or Hydrogen Peroxide instead.
I quote the Chief Medical Officer for the UK, Chris Whitty:
For the vast majority (85%) the virus is NOT life threatening, most don't even know
they've had it. Even most of those with co-morbities, survive, the overall death rate (not
the total numbers) is around 0.1%
"Nationally, levels of influenza-like illness (ILI) and COVID-19-like illness (CLI)
activity remain lower than peaks seen in March and April.."
Notice they conflate the statistics of ILI and CLI- together to fudge numbers?
"Mortality attributed to COVID-19 decreased compared to last week"
Increased testing will inevitably find more cases despite b's claim to the otherwise
There have also been recent reports from Oxford
Link
that this virus has been around for some time already- as evidenced in sewage
samples
"Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine
at Oxford University, and visiting professor at Britain's Newcastle University, says there
is growing evidence the virus was elsewhere before it emerged in Asia"
Dr Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewerage system
or shared toilets, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and
sneezing.
"There is quite a lot of evidence of huge amounts of the virus in sewage all over the
place, and an increasing amount of evidence there is faecal transmission. There is a high
concentration where sewage is four degrees, which is the ideal temperature for it to be
stabled and presumably activated. And meat-packing plants are often at four
degrees.
"These meat-packing clusters and isolated outbreaks don't fit with respiratory
theory, they fit with people who haven't washed their hands properly.
"These outbreaks need to be investigated properly. You question people, and you
construct hypotheses that fit the facts, not the other way around."
As for Germany their R number was up weeks ago- despite their massive fines and mandatory
mask policy.
Still the mask psychosis persists
Corrected for population, the 1957/58 Asian flu killed over 230,000 Americans, and the
1978/69 Hong Kong flu killed about 170,000. COVID-19 is a bad epidemic, but it is only the
third worst since WWII. 230,000 would be a death rate of 0.007%.
B and of none of the non-American commenters and most American commenters do not
understand that the US has a real federal government with local police and health matters
in the jurisdiction of the States. Within the States themselves counties and cities have a
great deal of independent control. Most health and crime enforcement is at the city/county
level. My sheriff has more authority over me than the state police. And my county health
department has more authority than the federal government. The federal government has very
little authority in local matters. The response to the coronavirus is almost entirely in
the purview of the state governors, and the feds authority is mostly advisory. So look to
the Governors to assign blame.
About half fo all the US cases and deaths are in the NYC metro area, so it was the
Cuomo/De Blasio screw ups that mattered. They also got bad advice and faulty test gear from
the CDC. Notably, public transit was not shut down anywhere, and in NY nursing homes were
forced to accept elderly COVID patients. Over 40% of the deaths in America have occurred in
nursing homes.
The lockdowns are not a panacea. There has been truly massive economic losses, which
made take a decade to retore. Continued lockdowns will precipitate a Worl Great
Depression.
Geographical spread. The early infestation was in the north-east, and now it's less a
problem there, if I understand correctly. Now it's in the south and southwest, which
weren't touched before.
"The goal is to convince Americans that they can live with the virus -- that schools should
reopen, professional sports should return, a vaccine is likely to arrive by the end of the
year and the economy will continue to improve."
Anyone know how us americans can purchase n95 masks from europe? They are still unavailable
here and it will get worse. I get a long while of intermittent use of each so dont mind the
$6 pricetag
@ Posted by: barovsky | Jul 8 2020 19:11 utc | 27; @ Posted by: R Rose | Jul 8 2020 19:16
utc | 32; @ Posted by: Kevin | Jul 8 2020 18:52 utc | 16; @ Posted by: Kevin | Jul 8 2020
18:12 utc | 4; @ Posted by: Roberto | Jul 8 2020 18:56 utc | 19
Your argument is irrelevant, for the simple fact that the extra risk of death is still
greater than zero (i.e. a person with COVID-19 still has a greater chance of dying than an
exact copy of that person without COVID-19).
The American economy is consumer-based, i.e. it can only grow as long as people keep
buying things they don't need in ever greater quantities in money-terms. That makes the
opportunity cost of consuming something you don't need too great even if, in absolute
terms, you could argue the risk is still at the safe zone.
Even if COVID-19 mortality rate was similar to the common flu (it isn't: it's more than
10 times the common flu's mortality rate), you still have to face the fact that we're not
at flu season, and that two flu seasons are deadlier than one flu season. The opportunity
cost of consuming things you don't need still applies: people are not going to the
restaurant at a random Sunday if that means they have a +1.5% chance of dying because of
that. Keep in mind that this +1.5% chance of dying going to the restaurant piles up over
the other risks (of being murdered by a robber, by being ran over by another car, by being
hit by lightning etc. etc.) - it doesn't offset them.
I thought the stories of Cuomo having nursing homes being forced to accept covid-19
patients was conservatard ranting. But even the NY Times admits it.
Then you need to be more precise/correct with your language. You said, in your original
post "So why have the absolute number of covid-19 deaths been in decline since
mid-April?"
Perhaps you don't know the difference between "average daily deaths" and "absolute
number of deaths." The latter is increasing every day. The average number of deaths,
however, is indeed *currently* in decline after a previous spike and that is due in part to
all of the preventive measures that the "Troll Brigade" (as karlof1 has dubbed them) are
constantly claiming don't work. Masks, closures, more testing and quarantine/isolation,
etc.
I already know you're not going to read the "in part" in my previous paragraph, so I
thought I'd make sure to repeat that the situation is complex and it is completely
reasonable, even without evidence from other countries on those counts (which does in fact
exist and has been posted ad nauseum here), to conclude that the decline in deaths per day
as we speak is partly due to the measures mentioned.
Another fact about COVID-19 that I found very interesting. It's a lot more complex than the
average virus. And thus has capacities which the average flu virus doesn't.
The SARS-CoV-2 genome is a strand of RNA that is about 29,900 bases long -- near the
limit for RNA viruses. Influenza has about 13,500 bases, and the rhinoviruses that cause
common colds have about 8,000. (A base is a pair of compounds that are the building
blocks of RNA and DNA.) Because the genome is so large, many mutations could occur during
replication that would cripple the virus, but SARS-CoV-2 can proofread and correct
copies. This quality control is common in human cells and in DNA viruses but highly
unusual in RNA viruses. The long genome also has accessory genes, not fully understood,
some of which may help it fend off our immune system.
With the US now at 10% of its peak death-rate and falling, despite the known rapid spread
of the virus for at least a month now, Covid-19 is barely newsworthy at this stage.
Good timing, b.
Vic.gov's credibility tanked last week in the wake of a fiasco involving a silly lapse of
'medical security' at a hotel being used, exclusively, to quarantine infection suspects. It
turns out that the people hired to manage/supervise the inmates' adherence to best practice
were casual security guard types with no relevant skills and 5 minutes of 'training'
i.e. a cheap solution.
Being low on the pay-scale pecking order, these people lived in low-rent suburbs. A
sufficient number of them lived in high-density, 20-storey public-housing complexes that
they carried the infection into 9 such complexes. It wasn't until residents began testing
positive for COVID-19 that Vic.gov realised the magnitude of this thrift-induced blunder.
The residents of the apartment blocks received i hour's notice of their forced confinement.
What began as a policed lock-down of 9 apartment blocks became a lockdown of 10
Melbourne postcodes (40 to 50 Northern suburbs) on June 30, and escalated into a panic-mode
lockdown of most of metro Melbourne announced pm on July 7, effective midnight on July 8.
So now Melburnians are back to April restrictions - only reasons to leave your place of
residence/suburb are Work, Essential shopping, Medical issues, exercise.
So everyone is feeling very pissed off and very, very perplexed. The measures imposed
have a reasonable chance of working but 6 weeks of lockdown is going to expose some
psychological cracks. Imo.
Anyway, I have sufficient masks to quarantine 3 masks per day for 7 days. I have yet to
wear one but expect to be doing so fairly soon...
Those doubting the importance of this dangerous pandemic are simply attempting to justify
the preservation of neo-liberal capitalism at the expense of human lives. When 'Droy' says
that the net effect will be to lower life expectancy by an average of two months he is
trivialising the agonising deaths of hundreds of thousands of people due to occur in the
coming months.
As b points out in the coming months the US Healthcare non-system is headed for a
monstrous car crash, a catastrophic collapse in the face of hundreds of thousands of people
who are going to need treatment which is likely to be unavailable. This will have a knock
on effect on large numbers of others, whose needs for medical attention will go unsatisfied
because there is no spare capacity and the system has already been strained beyond its
limits.
Then there will be the victims of poverty inevitable in an economy in which few have
savings and subsistence depends upon the labour market-with demand for labour declining,
unemployment will increase and consumption go into further decline, a vicious circle
leading to famine and the sort of malnutrition which undermines societies for generations
to come.
Credible reporting in incredible times.![Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"53","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17jamr.img?h=746&w=1119&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2395&y=851"},"dpi":1.4,"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17jamr.img?h=584&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2395&y=851"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"42","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17jamr.img?h=584&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=2395&y=851"}})
© Evan Vucci, AP Images President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the
White House.
